Velvet Revolver: Live performance on myspace.com

Velvet Revolver will be playing live on myspace.com on Tuesday, July 31st 2007 at 6PM Pacific Time/8PM Central/9PM Eastern.

Requests will be taken via myspace IM's, which I may just skip. But won't miss this show for the world!

If you can't watch this, but are still interested in seeing what VR is like when live, check this out:
    Velvet Revolver live at MSN Music in Concert

Update: 7/31/2007 10:30 PM, The e-concert was awesome! A very interesting novelty indeed. Looking forward to seeing VR in October.

Here's their bassist Duff McKagan promoting the e-concert.

Hey, Play This!

I'm going to hopefully see these guys live in October, with Alice in Chains.

Movie Trailer: The Darjeeling Limited

I may not have mentioned this before on blog; I happen to be a fan of Wes Anderson movies. His next film, The Darjeeling Limited is about three estranged American brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) travelling through northern and eastern India by train. Looks like an interesting and mellow comedy like other Anderson flicks.

Check out the trailer:

Trailer on Apple.com

If I were a Simpson's character

I'm not the biggest Simspsons' fan, but I found this to be hilarious!

Go to http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/avatar and make your own avatar. If I were a Simpson's character, I would be Apu's nemesis from back home, named Babu and this is what I'd look like:


Click Here to View Image!

Movie Review: Transformers

Movie Title: Transformers
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro and Jon Voigt
Directed by: Michael Bay
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Comic-based
My Rating: 7/10

Great special effects, clichéd storyline, strong supporting cast and 144 minutes in length would best summarize this movie. The love story starts when a high school geek (LeBeouf) tries to impress his class-mate hottie (Fox) and buys a car within his miserly daddy's budget, the car starts playing herbie for the first half of the movie at least. The action starts when a U.S. Military base in Qatar (which is in the Middle East for those who don't know, a U.S. friendly nation near Saudi Arabia) is attacked by a huge machine with a brain of its own and acquires intel from the servers there. Valiant survivors of this attack (Duhamel, Gibson) decide to take the probe of this attack into their own hands when they return home.

These brained-machines are a species from another galaxy's planet and are called auto-bots or transformers as humans like to call them. There are bad auto-bots on earth since their planet was destroyed, so the good ones arrive as well to protect human-kind, in good faith.

How does the kid get involved in this? His car is not just a love-bug, but also an auto-bot itself assigned to protect him and his family. His ancestor was one of the first to find an auto-bot on earth in the Arctic ice. So now it's more than just the car that impresses the hottie.. Hmm...

Despite the special effects, the fights between the good and bad auto-bots are sometimes too fast for live-action, and would have been better when animated. CGI can't always make everything real and visually appealing. The supporting cast carried the movie throughout. Rachael Taylor, the young Australian actress, impressed as a Department of Defense intern who finds the code and assesses the intent of the bots. The accent was definitely a plus.

Otherwise, I would have probably enjoyed the movie better if I was 15. I did enjoy the cartoons around that age and before. Despite the PG-13 rating, I felt too old to appreciate the movie too much, even thought I haven't hit 30 yet!

7/10. Maybe 8/10 on DVD, or if you take your kids/nephews/nieces.

Smashing Pumpkins' Tarantula Video: Re-edited by some Genius!

Smashing Pumpkins recently re-united, well... with only 2 of the old band-members and 3 new ones, and have just released their new album called Zeitgeist and it so far sounds awesome! Very typical 90's Alternative Rock brought back to life.

Their first music video from this "Tarantula" was re-edited with a different background by a genius on youtube, and now the video's theme is American foreground, European background. Kudos to Rev-24for the good work!



Watch it here.

In other news, I hope to be seeing the Pumpkins in concert on October 25th, but hope to see Velvet Revolver on Oct 9 first! WOOHOO!

The Best Fake Trailer Ever!

Watch this.

Is this real? I wish. My current favorite show Entourage (now that Sopranos has concluded) has their lead character Vincent Chase (played by Adrian Grenier) acting as drug lord Pablo Escobar in the biographical film Medellín. Basically, it's a film inside a TV-show, and unfortunately, it's not real.

Even casting Sofia Vergara in the fake movie was a great idea.

Maybe some day, Benicio del Torro will take up the role (even though he's already playing Che in Argentine).

Movie Review: Fantastic 4 - Rise of the Silver Surfer

Movie Title: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon.
Directed by: Tim Story
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Comic-Book Adaptation
My Rating: 6.5/10

Going by the rating I gave this movie, I think it would be wise to keep the review short as well. The movie wasn't horrible; Chiklis and McMahon acted rather well actually. Gruffud's a better actor and should go back to serious roles now that Hollywood has acknowledged the brit's acting prowess. Jessica Alba looked her worst that I've ever seen. Maybe it was the hair color or the tan, I'm not sure. I'm actually even half-hearted about taking out her Sin City poster that I have on my wall.

It's not a bad movie to watch with kids, teenagers. Not bad to wait for it to come on HBO either. The special effects were okay; the surfer character wasn't well personified. The return of Dr Doom was probably the mere saving grace of the movie, along with the Thing's wisecracks. The good thing about this movie is: you won't go in with high hopes like you may have had for spidey-3 or Shrek 3.

Movie Review: Ocean's Thirteen

Movie Title: Ocean's Thirteen
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Ellen Barkin, Eddie Izzard, Andy Garcia and Al Pacino.
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Genre: Comedy/Crime
My Rating: 8/10

So I'm finally back from a 4-week vacation and found some time to catch up with blogging movie reviews. O-13 was a good film, entertaining and consistently funny. Maybe not as many wisecracks as the first film, but as good as a "threequel" can get.

The movie summarizes as Danny Ocean's (Clooney) crew of crooks and grifters decide to take revenge on casino owner and millionaire Willie Banks (Pacino) for forcefully taking possession of a senior member of the crew's (Elliot Gould) share in a new casino at Las Vegas. Running short of funds, the crew takes a loan from their former (and possibly current) foe Terry Benedict (Garcia), who also conveniently has a personal grudge against Banks. In need of further technical assistance, they also recruit the brit computer genius Roman Nagel (Izzard) - to complete the thirteen.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt show their seniority and maturity, yet look much older than in the previous two movies. Matt Damon's character is given maturity too, with more responsibilities including playing decoy to distract Bank's right hand woman (Barkin). The others played their short but significant roles rather well. Bringing in French actor Vincent Cassel to continue playing Andy Garcia's acrobatic pawn was a waste, in my opinion. The biggest waste was probably of Mr. Pacino himself, playing a TV actor's role as a movie baddie.

Otherwise, setting that backdrop in Las Vegas again, and showing a different strategy in exploiting the new casino without exactly robbing it was interesting and well planned. This movie could make a dignified, non-disaster, end to the series.

8/10. Try not to expect too much. Especially with no Julia Roberts playing herself, nor Ms. Zeta Jones who distracted me too much from the story in O12.

Arrivederci, Goodbye Sopranos

I just wanted to take a small posting to big farewell to the greatest television show ever made - The Sopranos.

Last night was the final episode ever. With his right-hand and brother in law Bobby shot dead and consiglieri Sil in a death-bound coma, Tony was made organizationally weak with the next crosshair likely to hit his face. But no, it was a relatively peaceful finale. A sad one, nonetheless. Closures, galore. Characters that you haven't seen since the first season (e.g. Meadow's friend Hunter), AJ's finding a new meaning of life and a career (thank God!), and many implications that Tony was likely to be indicted on RICO charges soon - were all highlights of the episode.

The last scene showed the Soprano family (Tony, Carmela, AJ and Meadow) meeting up in a diner, and the screen went black for 80 seconds, followed by the end credits also without any music in the background. David Chase just decided to leave that all to imagination. Some guys in the diner could have been hitmen. Or maybe just patrons.

Farewell, my favorite show. You've entertained well.

Movie Review: Knocked Up

Movie Title:Knocked Up
Starring: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel and Kristin Wiig.
Directed by: Judd Apatow
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Stoner
My Rating: 9/10!

I kid you not. Unless Live Free or Die Hard or something unexpected like Stardust takes the box office by storm, Knocked Up has got to be the best summer release this year. It is not just a comedy, but I would strongly refrain from calling it a chick flick too. It does have some humor comparable to 40 Year Old Virgin, yet manages to portray something totally different and new. It's about time we saw something new, anyway.

Seth Rogen plays Ben Stone, a stoner who lives with a quartet of stoners, all dreaming of launching a web site and making a lot of money one day. But until then, their only goal is smoking up and stoner activities. On the other hand, gorgeous Katherine Heigl plays Allison Scott, a behind the scenes assistant at the E! channel, who lives with her sister and brother-in-law in their out house. Allison gets promoted to an on-camera interviewer and in joy, decides to celebrate with a night out. At the club she meets Ben, they both get drunk, come home to Allison's place and ta-da! Some miscommunication makes Ben not use a condom... and the consequences of the same occur weeks later.

Upon confirming she's pregnant, they both decide to make the one-night-stand more than that and try knowing each other better. But her being a career woman, and him a stoner with weak perspective make matters more and more difficult. Allison's older sister Debbie, played by Leslie Mann who looks more glamorous than ever, has had a dysfunctional marriage with her husband Pete, played by an ever-reliable-and-funny Paul Rudd. This discourages Allison from getting deeply involved with men and yada, yada, yada, breaks up with Ben.

But yea, this is barely half the movie what I've written out for you above. And I may have made it seem like a chick flick which it is not. The laughter and wisecracks/dumbcracks in the movie are constant with a lot of "unused" humor. The gynecologist scenes, of course some stoner scenes, Ben and Pete bonding, and the two sisters getting angry and throwing out the F-word like a bad hangover. Katherine Heigl is absolutely hot when she cusses, reminds me of the scene in Grey's Anatomy when she had to admit she underwear-modeled her way through medical school. I haven't watched that show since the first season, and now I'm glad that's no longer the source to see some Katherine Heigl/Izzy.

Seth Rogen beyond excelled in his first major lead role. He totally owned the part. Katherine Heigl did a great job too, better than one would expect. Hope this gets her more good movie roles and break-away from that homewrecker of a TV show. The cameos were hilarious as well. SNL's Kristin Wiig contributed her creepy-low-but-constant voice for a couple of scene, SNL's Bill Heder too said a word or two as a cutting room guy. The gyno's (including Office's BJ Novak) were all funny in their own way. Above all, Ben's stoner friends - heading by Jason Segel from How I Met Your Mother boldly played their parts which would get them roles in the next National Lampoon stoner flick, or if they make a Harold & Kumar 3.

What I liked about this movie was: it did not encourage nor discourage pre-marital sex or abortion. It does not self-righteously make any religious, liberal or moral proclamations whatsoever. But it does show the heavy consequences. The climax in this movie, spoilers saved, is less realistic and less likely, but a cheerer ending to have.

A laugh-riot comedy, eye candy (Heigl), extreme stoner stuff and in the end a feel-gooder. Now that's a great dish to serve!

The movie does nudge over 2 hours, but lacks boring moments. Take lots of pop corn.
9/10 - never thought I'd give that to a summer movie.