Aki's Blog

I strongly recommend any American reader out there to check out Futurama’s (broadcast) season finale “The Mutants Are Revolting” this Thursday on Comedy Central (more info at www.comedycentral.com).

Futurama is the greatest show on air (if not in history), and has recently returned for a sixth season after all too many years of hiatus. It follows Philip J. Fry, a delivery boy who accidentally freezes himself in the year 1999 and wakes up one thousand years later, only to join up with a one-eyed alien, an alcoholic robot and his grand nephew, Professor Farnsworth. All four seasons and the four films are available on DVD and the sixth season can be downloaded through torrents until its DVD release.

Check. It. Out.

Finnish symphonic power metal act Amberian Dawn has now officially announced their third album “End of Eden” to be released this October. It is to be heavier than their previous albums “River of Tuoni” (2008) and “The Clouds of Northland Thunder” (2009).

For those who still haven’t noticed, the brand new season of Futurama have started, with the first episodes since the cancellation seven years ago. Two awesome episodes released last Thursday, and a third one tomorrow, all’ll be available at thousands of torrent sites.

Det här började som ett foruminlägg men blev mycket mer, och jag vill dela med mig till andra som är vilse i sitt teologiska tänkande. För mig har det varit klart länge, men innan det visste jag inte hur jag skulle tänka.

Vissa skiljer på vetenskapligt och religiöst tänkande, någonting jag inte förstår. Ta evolution mot kreationism: ingenting går att bevisa, men allt tyder på att evolutionen är korrekt, och oavsett vad har kreationismen inte mer argument än “jag läste det i en bok” medan evolutionen har utförliga studier. Det är inte religionshat, det är logiskt och vetenskapligt tänkande. När lite argument kommer fram kan kreationismen få lika undervisning med evolutionen i skolan.

Samtidigt förstår jag inte varför religiösa alltid måste förneka evolution och Big Bang-teorin. Jag är agnostiker, och tror att om det nu finns en gud är den så stor att vi aldrig kan uppfatta den fullt ut – och om vi nu kommer kunna det i framtiden kan vi vänta tills dess med att diskutera hur hen ser ut eller hur hen vill göra med livet. Om det finns en intelligent gud tror jag inte att vi är mer än labbråttor, delar av ett enormt experiment, och då går det vidare — är gud bara ändå som oss, och leker gud? Har hen egna gudar? En egen värld?

Om det nu finns en gud måste ju den ha sett till att Big Bang skett och att evolutionen startat. Det får Gud att låta mycket mäktigare än att ta fram Warcraft IIIs World Editor och ställa ut lite människor där, lite apor där, kossor där, en kulle där. Men oavsett vad kommer människan nog aldrig fullt ut förstå vad som fanns innan Big Bang, hur Universum kan vara oändlig och vad medvetande egentligen är. Så varför lita till samma böcker som påstår att det finns drakar och att kvinnor har mens för att Eva snattade äpplen?

The computer’s sound just didn’t work. And earlier today I actually dropped the computer – for the first time, I should add. I also recently updated to the second Ubuntu 10.04 ???beta, and I started to panic—what was broken, what was wrong? I checked through the configurations and the drivers, tried out two different headphones and one external loudspeaker, googled around. I then tried rebooting the computer, and whoopsidoopsi it worked. Sometimes I just wish I’d start tackling every problem with rebooting.

I just finished reading the last issue of Crossed (Garth Ennis / Jacen Burrows), and it was the best ending I could have hoped for. A wonderful series coming to an end, now I’m just waiting for the paperback.

This new song definitely showcases another side of Kamelot, a development from Ghost Opera. I must say I love it.

The book is a true masterpiece, but the movie?

This is simply a book that couldn’t be filmed. Not because of ?special effects or anything, but simply because of the tons of inner dialogues. This film is more or less a series of bland characters walking around in a bland background with a too simple storyline that doesn’t pay off until the very end. Although this ending is well-made and clever, it’s simply not worth two hours of bore before that.?

I stepped into the cinema with a mixture of expectations. I love the stories by Lewis Carrol, as well as the 1951 animated Disney movie, but this is something totally different. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a mixture of a re-imagining and a sequel, telling the story of Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) returning to Underland (who she falsely called Wonderland last time) by the age of 19, thinking the memory of her last visit had just been a bad dream. Underland has been destroyed by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) finally turning entirely crazy. We meet a cracked, broken down world that is still as off the knock as Tim Burton’s and Lewis Carrol’s minds put together, and truly beautiful visually. This is definitely Helena Bonham Carter’s best role, and Anne Hathaway’s only good role, working perfectly as the Luna Lovegood-ish White Queen. Johnny Depp, one of my favorite actors of all time, is wonderful as the Mad Hatter, working both as the crazy character he uses in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Carribean, and the cracked man of Edward Scissorhands. I will not say that this is his best role, but close to it.

Unfortunately, I kind of expected more of the ending. What begins as a wonderful story of a lunatic girl who just doesn’t suit her own time, turns into the story that has been told too many times: Child of our time finds a gate into another world, who has choosen him/her as the one with ancient prophecies, and although our hero first hesitates, he/she finds courage, saves the kingdom and returns home with this newfound character. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland simply falls a little too much as The Matrix meets Narnia, and although these are all great stories, he could have pulled something better off.

One final praise must go to Mia Wasikowska – this unknown but wonderful actress who simply is the perfect Alice – naïve, dreamy, and really cute. And managing being so childlike even though her boobs just almost shows in every scenes (due to her clothes being to big) is just amazing.

The Millenium trilogy is one of the best film series of the late 2000′s, and some of the best Swedish films ever. This is definitely the best of the three films, perfectly balancing on a line between overdone and realistic violence, between epically grande and simply too long. It’s just magnificent, although I keep feeling Noomi Rapace’s character to be somewhat overdone, constantly varying between being herself and actually trying to upset in the sense of an emo kid. I know what they are grabbing for, and I know how hard it is to pull off, but sometimes it’s too much (and I definitely think this is more of a script fault than Rapace’s talents).