• I’m listening to the CD for Brian Tyler’s score to Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem as I type this. Holy cow. This may honestly be the most bombastic and aggressive film score I’ve ever heard. I may be underestimating the intensity of this movie. I’m very anxious to see it, and listening to this score has made me even more anxious. Tyler has taken elements of Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien, James Horner’s Aliens and Elliot Goldenthal’s Alien 3 and stripped them down to their core components (favoring texture and orchestration over themes). The majority of the influence is from Horner’s Aliens (and judging from the trailer, I see more influence from the film Aliens than most any other). It’s cool to hear fairly heavy use of Goldenthal’s Alien 3, as it’s a massively under appreciated score (EASILY the greatest aspect of that film). Goldsmith’s Alien is referenced most indirectly, but the trained ear can hear the influence scattered throughout. If there’s any influence from John Frizzell’s Alien Ressurection, I wouldn’t recognize it anyway. Frizzell’s score to Resurrection is lame at best, so I remember very little of it. Then there’s the added fun of mixing in Alan Silvestri’s Predator scores here and there (in a more thundering and scattered arrangement). The orchestra members must have been sweating by the end of each recording session. Not to mention deaf. And this CD is chock full of material (some 77 minutes or so). I’m wondering if this might end up being the sleeper action movie hit of the year.
• Get a free Sarah Connor Chronicles poster (by signing up for the newsletter)
• I finally sprung for a premium membership over at Airliners.net. Such an awesome site. I started an initial photo album over there with favorite pics as I stumble upon them. Haven’t added a whole lot of pics to it yet, but there’s some fantastic ones in there so far.
• So, with USB 3 in the works, the FireWire spec is being bumped up, too.
• UAV’s that charge off power lines. Too cool. Like something out of Deal Of The Century.
• A study of why pregnant women don’t topple. I just find the usage of the word “topple” funny in that context.
• A cool video (pardon the pun) of a train plowing through a bunch of snow
• A real life Garfield
• Whoops

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Ponderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.