Got to see TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON in 3D IMAX today!

It was this afternoon and my retinas are still exhausted!! Between Michael Bay's signature 'splosions and blowing stuff up real good and all those pretty pixels from Industrial Light and Magic, magnified to ginormous proportions (not to mention the gigawatts of sound coming at ya) it was quite the Transformers experience! I'll recommend seeing it at least once in IMAX 3D as it was certainly worth driving to Durham to catch it there (along with lifelong best friend Chad, who after seeing it agreed with what I wrote in my original review a few days ago that this was a better Transformers movie than the first one!

Now, if we can only get a fourth Transformers flick. I'm still hoping to see Unicron depicted in the live-action series (and the more I think about it the more I'm liking the idea of Morgan Freeman voicing the Dark God and Devourer of Worlds :-)

Okay, I've probably made enough posts about giant mechanized aliens lately. I'll try to make my next post about something else...

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Captain and Tenille find the place where credibility goes to die

Or... something. Still not quite sure what this is. But listen to it too much and you just might be reaching for a glass of whiskey, a gun and two bullets.

So here is "Taste The Biscuit" by Toasters 'N' Moose...

I would thank Scott Bradford and Kristen Bradford for finding this, except I'm not all that clear about what it is that I would be thanking them for...

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Ten best Tom Hanks movies

With his new film (co-starring Julia Roberts) Larry Crowne opening today, it's a great time to reflect upon the career of Tom Hanks: easily among the very most varied and versatile actors in cinema history. Over at Tailgate365, good friend T.J. Lee has compiled an EXCELLENT list of what many will agree are Hanks' top ten movies. Hanks has had a very interesting journey from the days of Family Ties and Bachelor Party and Splash and T.J. did a great job with this retrospective of it all. I'm glad that three of my favorite movies ever (Apollo 13, The Green Mile and Forrest Gump) made the list. Click on over and you'll no doubt find some of your favorites listed also!

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"Gerrymandering is okay when WE do it!"

The Republicans in the North Carolina legislature should just say it and get it over with.

Matt Mittan was the first to bring my attention to the just-released maps for North Carolina's newly-redrawn congressional districts.

And how has the GOP now "controlling" (I have never liked how a party "controls" a legislature and I don't see how anyone else should like it either) Raleigh done, following decades of Democrat-led gerrymandering?

By doing their own gerrymandering!

From the original article at Carolina Journal...

(Carolina Journal) Three Democratic incumbents will face a tough re-election fights next year under new congressional maps released today by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

The redrawn maps significantly weaken U.S. Reps. Brad Miller, D-13th; Heath Shuler, D-11th; and Larry Kissell, D-8th. Republicans currently have six of 13 congressional seats. If previous voting patterns hold, the GOP could gain a 9-4 or even 10-3 advantage in 2013.

For Shuler’s diminished chances, Reps. Patrick McHenry, R-10th, and Virginia Foxx, R-5th, are the culprits. McHenry’s new district would cut into Buncombe County, a hotbed of Democratic votes, diluting Shuler’s base of support. In addition, Shuler picks up some conservative regions of Foxx’s district.

“The anchor for Democrats in this district has always been Buncombe County,” Davis said. “Not only has half of Buncombe County been put into Congressman McHenry’s safe Republican district, but several of the most Republican counties in the state have been moved from districts held by Congresswoman Foxx and Congressman McHenry to Heath Shuler’s district.”

I almost used the word "chutzpah" to describe what the Republicans in the legislature are doing. But let's call this for what it really is, folks: hypocrisy!

This country is facing trial and tribulation as it has never known in any recent memory. Perhaps any living memory. And the elected politicians continue to play their stupid little games of power: never mind that it was such shenanigans that in large part brought us to this place to begin with!

(Funny thing: I seem to remember many if not most Republican officials in this state complaining about gerrymandering and how they were against it. So what happened? Huh? Hello? Hello? Bueller?)

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Steve Jablonsky writes this blog about TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON score CD!!!

When it comes to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon's orchestral score, you can't get much more authoritative a source than the man who composed it! A short while ago Steve Jablonsky sent me an e-mail about the current state of the score album's CD. In it he not only explains what's going on with it, he also provides a fascinating insight into the makings of a major summer blockbuster!

So without further ado, here is Mr. Jablonsky...

Hi Chris

Nice to hear from you. As you probably know the score is now up on iTunes. The physical CD situation has been more complicated. I finished the album weeks ago, but we didn't actually finalize it until a few days ago. Michael Bay is really happy with the score and he wanted to check out the album before it went out. As you might imagine, he's a busy dude. He's been flying all over the world promoting TF3, making it difficult to get approval. But I was happy that he wanted to be a part of the soundtrack and I did not want to release anything before he had his say. The record company tells me they need 4-6 weeks to get the album produced and into stores, which would put us into August at this point. A lot of discussion went into this, but the decision was made to wait on the physical CD, and release some kind of special edition alongside the blu-ray release (maybe autographed copies or other goodies, we don't know yet).

I know people are probably disappointed. Believe me I wish I could get physical CD's out there tomorrow. But it's just the way things went this time around. I can see why Paramount would rather not release a score CD almost 2 months after the movie release. To them it makes more sense to do something special around the blu-ray/DVD. I understand that.

So anyone interested in a CD should rest assured that it WILL happen. It just won't happen until later in the year unfortunately.

These big movies are so complex sometimes!! I hope you've been well!

Steve

In the past 24 hours a wazoo-load of folks have written in, wondering if there was going to be a CD at all, based on a number of indicators. But there it is from the man himself: Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score WILL be coming out on nice and shiny physical media... and in comparatively the same amount of time that we had to wait for Transformers: The Score. Which in retrospect wasn't too awfully long a wait. It's just that too many of us wanted Steve Jablonsky's beautiful work to get the respect that it deserved... as it indeed it is getting this time, without a doubt :-)

In the meantime however, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score is already available on iTunes! I purchased it last night and have been listening to it like crazy all day!! This whole album is amazing and there are some positively powerful tracks on here. "Sentinel Prime" is particularly haunting (but that's all I'm gonna say, for sake of those who haven't seen the movie yet but who no doubt wil be doing so soon ;-)

So there y'all have it: the score CD is gonna be rolling out soon! Thank you Steve, for passing along the word :-)

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TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: THE SCORE is on iTunes!!!

Well, that didn't take very long, did it? :-P

Seibertron.com is reporting tonight that Transformers: Dark Of The Moon: The Score is now available on iTunes!

All of you know what I will be doing for the next few hours :-) And now you know where to find it too. So go buy Steve Jablonsky's epic score now!!! Or, perish in flame.

It's your choice. But, not really.

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Cover for the TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON: THE SCORE album

This popped up tonight on Amazon.com's page for the product listing...

It's still listed as "Currently unavailable". But we've got the album cover art.

That has to be mean something good, right?

(Incidentally, at this moment I've got iTunes playing "Decepticons" from Transformers: The Score. With this one track composer Steve Jablonsky did something that had never adequately been done before in the whole history of the Transformers franchise: conveyed the utterly alien nature of the Transformers. I love this music!!)

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