Curious indeed

I came across the trailer of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button a few days ago, and I can't wait to watch it.

It is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born with the body of a 70-year old and grows backwards, that is, younger, as the years pass. Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac) says of the film: "It's dark, it's romantic, and it also deals with mortality in a pretty unflattering way. Button is born in 1919 - with the film itself beginning in World War I, traveling around the world and carrying on all the way through to the year 2000." According to wiki, Fincher used a camera system called Contour (developed by Steve Perlman) to capture facial deformation data from the actors' performances. A character rigging system called AnEmotion was then used to recreate synthetic actors to illustrate Brad Pitt's reverse aging. Awesomeness.

We will have to wait quite a while though. The movie is set for release in December. In the meantime, you might want to read the story here. Or listen to an audio version at thoughtaudio.com.

I knew it would happen, just not this soon. OMG!

(Photochop by flygirl24 of pinoyexchange.com.)

According to David Cook himself in an interview with 104.5 Chum FM (a Canadian radio station; the American Idol tour played Toronto yesterday), he has just booked his first solo gig: January 27th in the Philippines. Huzzah! Happy birthday, me! Still, I'm waiting for an official announcement from local media.

Of all the countries on earth, why the Philippines? <-- sort of a timeline tracing David Cook's popularity in the Philippines. Yeah I documented it.

Note: I noticed just now, I ran out of bandwidth (my media players are ugly waah). Sucks to have a free account. Oh well, come back after 20 days, Cook fans. I know you did it. ;-)

David CookFEST at Campus 99.5 FM: Encore

The 2-hour special, for everyone's enjoyment. I do think last week's CookFEST was better, though. In this encore, the DJs played a number of songs twice (gah, there are so many more songs to choose! I even pointed them to The World I Know from the Taste for A Cure event, sheesh.), there were more and longer commercial breaks and whatnot (hello, even 6 Cycle Mind's Saludo was in there somewhere; I thought it was supposed to be 2 hours of cookification? On second thought, maybe it was because of the OPM rule? What do I know, I hardly listen to radio.), there weren't enough shout-outs and messages from listeners and fans, and their research sucks: they said David did not acknowledge right off that he would sing Chris Cornell's cover of Billie Jean during Top 10 night (Ryan Seacrest announced it right before David performed), and that he is currently working with Ryan Tedder of One Republic for his album (outdated info - Tedder has since denied this).

(Photo from deseretnews.com; faux-lomofication by me.)

Download the whole file (mp3, 79.7 MB).

You have about 2 days left to watch Joss Whedon’s epic. supervillain. musical!

Joss Whedon, geek/writer/director/producer extraordinaire, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, has unleashed Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a 3-part miniseries available only in the internet until midnight of July 20. Why? You’re asking why? Here, read his Master Plan.

Neil Patrick Harris stars as a mad scientist applying for membership in the Evil League of Evil. In Act I we see him planning his next heist (hello freeze ray!) while mooning over a girl from the laundromat. Naturally, he breaks into song! We also get to see his arch nemesis, the wonderfully self-absorbed Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion). I don’t know what happens in Act II because I haven’t seen it yet. Which is why I have to wrap this up. So. Click on Dr. Horrible below to go to the official website:

I’ll bend the world to my will, and time will stand still… with my freeze ray I will stop the world

Creative comes out with a new one

Check it out, Creative's newest media player:

The Zen X-Fi. Really noice and sleek and spiffy. No, it's not quite like the iPod Touch, but what do I care, I'm not an iPod'er. I don't care about the status symbol, but functionality. Creative gives me more value for my money. And it actually sounds better. A fellow poster at pinoyexchange.com compares Creative players and iPods like so: The former have a warm, clear sound, while the latter have sharp, tinny sound. Warm and clear is exactly how I like my music. And with the X-Fi Crystalizer turned on? It becomes even crisper and richer. Aah heaven! (Don't think for a second that I can actually grasp what an X-Fi Crystalizer is, I'm just taking this reviewer's word.) There are other features that come with this model but they aren't that much of an advancement over the current Zen. The wireless feature actually only means you can access the music in your computer without having to use a cable. Duh, it's not internet-capable.

I don't know why I'm even talking about this though. I just got me a Zen Vision W a month ago. And I had resisted buying it since it came out what, 2 or 3 years ago! Sheesh. I'm enjoying it, check out the large screen:

And whee, with Media Monkey I can even load album art. Sweet!

Plus, I can even load the contents of my compact flash card onto it, very nifty when travelling. And because it's a hard disk drive, I can also load data into it like a portable drive. In any case, they still have to work out some kinks with the X-Fi. In a year or two perhaps, it will be much much better. My other Zen's still working anyhow. *justifies to self*

In anticipation of Hellboy II: The Golden Army

So yeah, I enjoyed the first Hellboy movie very much. (And I've come to lurve Guillermo del Toro. ) Hellboy II should be showing soon in these parts, yay. As if the trailer weren't enough to pique my curiosity, this promotional video turned up on the web. It's an animated prologue that tells the backstory of the Golden Army. Gorgeous visuals!

Cookification 101 at Campus 99.5 FM

I’ve been writing in LJ about how Philippine radio has been getting cookified since Always Be My Baby shot to #2 at Magic 89.9, mere hours after it was released on iTunes. Since then David Cook has been all over the radio (it’s still charting to this day, along with the magic rainbow song er I mean Time Of My Life), and his music has been floating around in uh *whisper* you know, those places where you can find stuff you can’t get anywhere else around here. (Thank goodness for my fellow royalmisfits who gifted me with iTunes songs, yay.)

Anyway, here’s further proof of cookification. Over the weekend, Campus 99.5 had a 3-parter David Cook special: 3 solid hours of Cook music including his AI live performances and studio recordings, plus songs from his indie album Analog Heart. Songs were interspersed with bits from various interviews. It’s a veritable introduction to cookification, heh!

Although live streaming was available, I recorded the CookFEST since I know a majority of the fans on the other side of the world would be sound asleep as the program aired. These are for you, Word Nerds, Cookies, Cooktards, Cougars, Cook-kulets. Enjoy!

(Thanks to livehead16 for the video from which I made the screencap above.
Played with it a bit in Photoshop.)

I just heard that they will have another CookFEST on Sunday, July 20 at 5-7pm (Manila time). Here's the live streaming link for you to bookmark. Btw, they have been playing Cook songs (every hour if I heard correctly) for the past week til now, still as part of the David CookFEST.

(Note: I’m posting this inline player to serve as a preview, for those who are wary of downloading the files. I’m not even sure the flash player can handle these large files. Maybe Cooky will break it, or my blog. Coz he's been known to break things *fan inside joke*

Download: Part 1 (57MB) Part 2 (58MB) Part 3 (49MB)