Ghibli's Latest, From Up on Poppy Hill

I love myself some Studio Ghibli.
As well I should, since Studio Ghibli makes some amazing movies.

Anyway, they have a new one coming out soon, From Up on Poppy Hill. The trailer makes it seem somewhat in the vein of Whispers of the Heart, which is a bit more true to life, less fantastical than most of their movies. Since the slice of life bits are what usually stick out in my mind from even the most out there of  Ghibli movies, this is a good thing in my book.

The film was directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro (although Hayao worked on the screenplay), and is said to be quite an improvement from his first, Tales From Earthsea. Also of note, the movie will be released by GKids, rather than Disney, which has been handling distribution for Ghibli for years.

Romney: Child Murderer, Shuttle Destroyer

I love the fake news site The Onion, but they have been running a lot of recycled material recently. Consequently, I have not been keeping up with their articles as much as I would normally be inclined to do. Still, when The Onion is on, it's ON, And this article about Romney being a murderer is The Onion in top form.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/romney-murdered-jonbenet-ramsey-new-obama-campaign,29114/

The article kind of reminded me of the following Mr. Show sketch:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c7b36fe4c6/gibbons-vs-fairsley-from-mrshow_fan

Dude, Batman, let's take it down a notch

Seriously, Bruce, take it easy. You're going to strain something.

Preview Trailer for new Further Seems Forever album, Penny Black

I haven't listened to these guys in a little while, but I freaking loved Further Seems Forever a few years back. The big news is that Chris Carraba is back behind the mic this time around. He gets a lot of flak for his work with Dashboard Confessional, who have put out a lot of mediocre stuff over the last four releases or so, but his work with Further Seems Forever was really impressive. Listening to the preview, he seems to have lost some of his grit from those days, and his voice sounds more akin to the way it has sounded on recent DC albums, but his vocal melodies sound like they could be on par with the early stuff.
For the record, I have liked every iteration of Further Seems Forever (they've had three singers on three albums), so I have pretty high hopes for this one.

Rurouni Kenshin Live Action Trailer: Now With 100% More English

I first saw this trailer a few months back, but now that it has subtitles, I couldn't not share it. Rurouni Kenshin, while admittedly somewhat uneven as a series, has some great stories to tell. The Trust and Betrayal movie, as well as the Kyoto Arc of the story, are absolutely fantastic.
Story-wise, it looks like the movie will be covering the events of the first season of the anime, with some flashbacks to Kenshin's time as an assassin during the revolution. Hopefully, this will open up the doors to make a sequel based on the Kyoto Arc.
Anyway, I am officially stoked now.
What my friends thought while reading that last sentence:
"More like you are officially a huge nerd now."
I can make fun of myself myself, thank you very much.

 

Cloudkicker? I don't even know 'er.

... or something like that.

Anyway, for the uninitiated, Cloudkicker is one of the best solo instrumental projects out there these days. It started out as metal, with a bit of djent influence, but he's branched out a lot over the past few years. 

Now, I had heard that he was working on a new album, and that said album would be pretty heavily influenced by 90's alternative, ala Smashing Pumpkins, etc., I had no idea that the album was coming out so soon. He announced it and then, suddenly, it was out. The last two albums were actually really mellow, so in some ways this one is something of a return to form to his more traditional fare, although the aforementioned 90's alternative influence is pretty noticeable. In a good way.

The album is moody, atmospheric and, most importantly, really good.

Check it out.

A Cause We Can All Get Behind - Spoilers

The people over at CollegeHumor have gathered several well known actors and actresses to help them fight one of the scourges of our modern society, the spoiler. They propose a series of rules and guidelines concerning the discussion of spoilers that I think should be adopted as law... except for maybe the bit about knife fights.