I can't remember if I've written about this on here or just made scattered comments on other peoples' journals, but after a conversation on the weekend I was thinking a lot about my views regarding art.

I think contemporary culture has this problem in that the word 'art' is used to mean two incompatible things:

• One, a 'classical' conception based on the idea that a piece of art is an object removed from everyday use and admired strictly for its formal aesthetic qualities. 
• Two, a 'romantic' conception based on the idea that a piece of art's whole purpose is to express the personal experiences of its maker.

(Perhaps these aren't the best terms, but I'm not in art history and I think they're close enough for my purposes.)

These aren't absolutes, but rather ends of a spectrum.  Abstract art I would view more in the former terms, because the more minimal it is the harder I think to analyze except in purely formal aspects.  Politically-charged art I would view more in the latter terms, because while politics is of broader concern than purely personal experiences, it is more concrete and less abstract than formal aesthetics.  And pretty much all popular music I would definitely view in the latter terms, for reasons that some of my examples below will probably make pretty clear.

Well that didn't take long at all: here's the 'real' Symphony X video I was looking for:



Not the best picture quality, but those of you who like watching angels fighting one another may still enjoy it.

Beowulf in 3D was awesome. The near-constant urge to dodge spears / arrows / flying bodies / giant sprays of creature-blood was somewhat amusing.

I have a few thoughts about how the story was done and characters portrayed, which I'll put behind a cut for those who don't want spoilers.

I saw 300 today with sirstompsalot and the_pest. I liked it more than I had expected to. I think there are two main reasons for this:

1) While there was lots of blood flying around, the gore was much more toward the stylized-spray-of-blood end than the look-how-realistic-this-organ-falling-out-of-this-guy's-body-looks end. I was worried from what some people had said that this movie was just going to be basically pornography based on violence rather than sex, but in the end I didn't find it as bad as I was expecting for that kind of obscenity.

I suspect that the fantasy / comic book aspect helps with this issue also though: in particular watching the exotic-looking enemies get slaughtered was more like watching a violent video game than gritty-war-movie-kicked-up-a-notch, so again, less obnoxious than I was worried it might be, or at least obnoxious in a different, more entertaining (to me) way.

2) What I knew of the movie (which admittedly was not much) had led me to expect a lengthy macho bloodbath in which women would be either entirely absent or present mostly for decorative purposes. The Spartan queen was thus a very welcome surprise. Not that I am the sort of person who thinks that any movie that isn't perfectly gender balanced and/or has a strong female character and/or whatever automatically sucks. I just thought it was cool in this case because I so totally wasn't expecting it after all the going-on about hard male bodies I'd been hearing in connection with this movie.

One other thing I appreciated about the movie: there were several points at which I heard dialogue that closely approximated certain readings in my Latin classes - the conversation about the enemy's arrows and having to fight "in the shade" for example. I'm not saying at all that I found this impressive in the "wow, historical accuracy" sense - this movie had how many what-appeared-to-be ogres in it again? - but more that it just caught my attention how on several occasions I realized I'd read about this part of the battle previously.

And incidentally, I thought the film had some pretty entertaining dialogue in it just in general. Over-the-top, chest-thumping and etc., yes, and entertaining for precisely that reason.

sirstompsalot and I saw The Fountain tonight. I liked it a lot, for many of the reasons that perpetual_lent mentions here.

I'm just amused that due to the following factors...

• How the movie was advertised;
• The fact that dj_dandroid liked it a lot and, at least as far as I recall, connected it to transhumanism;
• I saw that perpetual_lent had written a review, but since I didn't want any surprises spoiled, didn't read it at all beyond the title indicating that it was a review of The Fountain, and given the point I made previously about dj_dandroid liking the movie, had assumed perpetual_lent didn't like it;

... I was caught pretty much totally off-guard re: the movie's actual perspective on and message with regard to mortality and eternal life. That is, I was worried at the beginning that the movie was going to be excessively idealistic about literal eternal life, and was pleasantly surprised to find that its conclusion was much closer to my own views about death.

Beyond that, I'm kinda tired and lazy right now, and most of what I would have wanted to say about the movie was said in perpetual_lent's review, so again, feel free to check that out here.

The Opeth concert I'd have to say was a good one, even though it was in some ways not one of my favorite concert experiences. Dark Tranquility had good sound, but didn't play any songs that I recognized - between that and the 'Devil Driver' banner already being up, I actually wasn't even sure it was them until after the fact.

Devil Driver wasn't really my kind of metal, but I thought they too had good sound, especially for something a bit more death-metally than black-metally (or so I thought anyway), which makes for a nice change vs. some other metal shows I've experienced. I also found it amusing that since they were filming their DVD, they actually gave people instructions on how to do the mosh pit, i.e. "You with the mohawk, stand 20 feet to the right. Put up your hand. Can everybody see him? Acknowledge him!" (cheers etc.) "Now the girl with the really big... balls. Stand 15 feet to the left. Put up your hand. Acknowledge her!" (cheers etc.) "Now we want a circle pit from here to there, and none of this emo screamo kickboxing bullshit..." etc. etc. Seriously, it was like that, and it was quite funny, I thought.

Then there was Opeth, perhaps the only metal band I've seen in which as well as people in the pit, there were also people at the back of the hall lying on their backs looking at the ceiling and having a perfectly good time. Pretty mellow metal at times, in other words. I thought the singer did a bit too much talking between songs for my tastes - maybe hardcore fans liked it, but I think it may have been pissing off portions of the rest of the audience. But as with the other bands, no complaints about sound quality. I'd have to say this concert was one of the most consistent I've ever been to as far as sound quality amongst all three bands goes, especially given the genre of music and the venue.

All that said, while it was 'good,' I was getting kind of bored/worn out by the end, partly due to Opeth playing a lot of slow songs that I didn't know and/or that I didn't find all that striking, and also perhaps the cumulative effects of standing in line for longer than usual, getting grumpy at people bumping into and cutting in front of me, having a sore back, etc.

(Which reminds me, before the trip to Germany in summer there are two things I'd like to try to get: 1) platform boots that are basically flat as opposed to the heel being way taller than the rest, and 2) some kind of black, pleated, rivetty skirt with big cargo-pants-like pockets so I can have money + make-up + my inhaler + my phone without having to carry my back-pack purse. I'll probably talk to Does It Come In Black? about the latter - if anyone has suggestions about where to get boots of the former description, preferably in Calgary or nearby so I can try them on myself instead of guessing sizes over mail-order, I'd be interested. I think both of these items would increase my comfort and hence enjoyment at concerts.)

Anyway though: between being sore + tired + listening to slow music for long periods of time, I got sleepy... oh, that and there was more pot smoke than I usually experience in MacEwan Hall, and I think I was actually starting to get sore eyes and munchies because of that - I know I was still full from dinner yet I found myself thinking "hmm, I'd like to snack on something" which is very unusual for me. In any case though, I took off pretty quick after the concert, so apologies to those who may have been wondering where I disappeared to. I still had a good time, just not a wildly enthusiastic good time.

Fornax and I went to see Blixa Bargeld's Rede/Speech tonight. Having never been an EN fan (and having an inability to spell that band's full name without copy-and-pasting-it that is just embarassing ), I was actually pretty amazed and impressed at how much I got into it. Impressed, especially, at Blixa's apparent ability to present complex phenomena with just his voice: as per dAndroid's blurb, he really did "create a solar system" and "invent Angel DNA," amongst many other things - including, on the lighter side, an impression of bad techno music that was totally hilarious.

Hydraulic Empire and Dervish vs. Ryllheim were awesome too. The only thing about the show in general that I didn't think was that great was some of the visuals. For one thing, the looping became evident after a point, and more importantly, while there was some cool industrial stuff in there, I also saw a few things that seemed a bit "if I put a few visual effects on this, hopefully no one will notice these are slides from my vacation / random pictures I had lying around / etc." or something. Really though, everything sound/music-wise in the evening was cool enough that this really doesn't matter very much.

I took a bunch of video (.avi) with my digital camera. i.e. warning, these are large files. Proportions may be a bit weird on these clips, but I fixed it when I watched them by just dragging my window to be a different size. The sound isn't great, but it's better than some shows I've tried to record...

Awhile ago, someone - I think blue_rinse_eyes but I could be wrong - had a thread on her journal about trying new places.

In that spirit, I just wanted to say that I went somewhere new (for me at least) tonight, and it was pretty good. The place in question is Jupiter in Kensington (124 10th St NW). It looks like a small pub inside, but the food and drink menu is more like that of a lounge. The most similar place I can think of is Crush, but Jupiter is a lot smaller.

Good features:

• Very friendly service.
• Cozy, i.e. small but not too cluttered (not sure if it might seem so say, on weekends though).
• Good food, especially mussels, for fairly reasonable prices as lounges go. (Standard selection of trendy lounge appetizers + salads, sandwiches, pasta, a few other random entrees)
• Best chocolate martini ever. I find usually chocolate martinis have too much 'bite,' but the ones this place had were very smooth. Incidentally, the martini list wasn't super-long like Vicious Circle's or anything but it was still decent.
• Dark, but not so dark that you can't read the menus.
• Music was at a reasonable level for having conversations over.
• A rather unique, cool-looking chandelier.

Not-so-good features:

• An awful lot of TVs in such a small place. The upside is though that there are places you can sit where you don't necessarily have them in your line of sight, and at least they aren't playing sports all the time.
• Inconsistent music quality. To be fair though, it's no worse than, say, the Ming, in the sense that you are probably going to get some kind of underground hip-hop variant for at least part of the night, but on the other hand at least it's not mainstream hip hop (or worse yet, pop).

So yeah. In general I was pretty happy with Jupiter, and I'd definitely want to go back sometime.

... wrote a few more pages on my paper. Yay me.

... got all the CDs I ordered from Storming the Base. Impressively, no cases were broken in the mail, because unlike every other mail order company I've tried for music (except Amazon), this one was actually intelligent enough to use a box instead of a padded envelope. Between that and having reasonably prompt service, I'm definitely recommending this company to others (at least in Canada) for their goth-industrial CD needs.

... watched Batman Begins. Basically, I agree with what pretty much everyone says about it being a good movie, but I found there were a few things that interfered with my enjoyment of it. One was the unrelenting and, for me, abrasive self-righteousness of the female main character. Don't get me wrong, I understand why she was the way she was, given frustration with corruption etc., and I do respect her for having a more intelligent view of the possibilities of a relationship with a superhero than some **coughcoughSpiderMan2coughMJcoughcough** superhero-girlfriends, but for whatever reason I just found her irritating. Maybe it's just something about this movie's take on good and evil generally that didn't quite do it for me, I'm not sure.

Something funny though: near the beginning of the movie, there was a moment where I was like "OK, I realize this is a comic book movie, but: the ninja army purposely designed to destroy Gotham City? Ghay!" Of course, once I found out later that the characters in this order/organization/whatever claimed to have destroyed other great civilizations in history, then I was okay with it, but I was having some suspension of disbelief problems prior to that point.

None of this is to say I hated the movie though. The technology was cool, and the way they played the bat phobia was cool, and Alfred was very cool. It's just that I was rooting for the bad guys to take the chick down so I didn't have to listen to her voice anymore. **shrug** Sometimes there are people you just don't like.

Finally got a more detailed version of my essay outline done today. I think progress should probably be more rapid from this point onward. Getting over my cold/flu of course helps as well.

Anyway though, between being sick and just random chance, I've watched a lot of movies lately. So here are some pocket-sized reviews / random thoughts about each: (some risk of spoilers, but seriously, everyone I know except me has probably seen the movies in question already.)