I’ve been quite public about my distaste for the RIAA and its pathetic methods. I’ve called for people to stop buying CDs of artists who belong to the RIAA in hopes we can avoid giving those litigious vipers anything more to fuel their anti-entrepreneurial crusade, but you may ask yourself (as I did), “How do I know who’s with the enemy and who’s safe?” That’s an excellent question. With their roster changing regularly and new mini-labels popping up here and there, it seems impossible to know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Enter the RIAA Radar. The RIAA Radar uses the Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox to index the item you are viewing on popular sites like Amazon.com against the RIAA membership list to indicate whether a CD is safe to buy or not. When viewing the artist’s purchase page, it displays a helpful message over the album picture to indicate whether this album is “clean” or not. If the artist is an RIAA member, the message is red (buying this album pays for your lawsuit at some point) or green (indicating profits from your purchase are unlikely to be used against you). I cannot express enough how important a tool like this is, or urge you enough to use it to make informed decisions. As such, these are explicit instructions on how to install and use it: 1> Go to the Greasemonkey for Mozilla homepage and install the plugin under Firefox 2> Restart your browser and install the RIAA Radar Greasemonkey script. 3> Restart your browser again and continue about your business. To test I went to Amazon and searched out Metallica, which predictably came up Red. I then searched for Skinny Puppy, which happily displayed Green. I encourage you all to contribute to the RIAA Radar site to support someone who did something good for us all.

That’s where I’ve been. The TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) has gained notoriety as on of the top film festivals in the world and this year included some quality films that were worth seeing. On my agenda were the following: Deadgirl 09/06/2008 11:59pm Tears for Sale 09/10/2008 09:15pm Eden Log 09/11/2008 11:59pm Sexykiller 09/12/2008 11:59pm

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This weekend marked the opening weekend of the highly anticipated sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight. Warner Brothers did an excellent job of keeping the actual plot under wraps, having only revealed that The Joker would be the main villain in this installment and leaving fans of the popular series of Batman comics by the same name to speculate. I saw this film in a late showing in IMAX and the best I can do is “Wow!” This is a perfect film for IMAX and if you have the opportunity to see it this way, I highly recommend it. Other 30-somethings may remember a successful graphic novel by the name of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. This graphic novel gave us a vision on The Joker that was far more twisted and sadistic than previous depictions. It showed us a villain who didn’t need super powers or fancy inventions to make the citizens of Gotham fear him. THIS is the Joker Christopher Nolan gives us via Heath Ledger. A Joker who will cut out your tongue for no reason other than he finds it amusing.

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I went to see The Incredible Hulk this weekend and I have to say, I couldn’t have been much more pleased. It succeeds in all the ways Ang Lee’s Hulk failed. Rather than pick up where the flop left off or even try to re-tell the poorly scripted story of Hulk, Louis Leterrier picks up the story sometime down the road from Bruce Banner’s fated experiment. He accepts that we all know the story behind the Hulk’s creation and goes over it quickly during the opening credits, before jumping right into the setup for this film. With the star studded cast in this film, the acting is right where it should be. Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner is every bit the troubled and complex scientist we’ve loved and watched for so long both on TV and in comics. Liv Tyler plays an excellent Betty Ross and Tim Roth is ever the asset he always is. It’s not just the story that makes this movie a winner, or just the acting. Some of the real gems come in the form of cameos and comic relief with clear nods to Bill Bixby and cameo appearances by Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno. Moments like these will satisfy even the most critical fans of the television and comic series. The only real problem I saw in this movie was with the CGI. Much like in Hulk, The Incredible Hulk relies on CGI to render the title character and at times the proportions of certain parts seem wrong. This ends up being only a minor problem, as in most scenes he appears in where we see his full body, everything looks fine. Leterrier shows no hesitation in showing his main character and in a bold showing prepares the viewer for not only a sequel, but a Marvel crossover one.

I watched Stephen King’s The Mist last night. After seeing so many of King’s tamer novels and short stories set to film with such inspiration through the years (one might recall The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption), recent attempts to adapt his more signature horror stories have been lackluster of late (like The Mangler and Thinner). We haven’t seen a GOOD horror movie adapt from Stephen King since IT, so after almost 2 decades of crappy attempts, my expectations were set pretty low. All that being said, I actually enjoyed this film. While Thomas Jane’s bland acting style is no big attraction, Marcia Gay Harden delivers a chilling performance as the town’s religious nutjob, even if her roles becomes predictable at times. The fact that we never get a clear shot of the really terrifying creatures helps maintain the suspense and fear factor of the film. What little we do get is quite enough. This movie is absolutely NOT a gore fest, but does have a liberal amount of blood and horror fans will likely rejoice at seeing veteran actor William Sadler returned to the genre. Although the story takes some predictable turns, it never attempts to conceal them and patronize the audience into thinking they are anything but predictable and while elements of the plot throw back to 1950s monster movies, the premise is fresh enough to carry it off. I won’t ruin the ending for any reading who’ve not seen it, but I will say, I didn’t quite see that one coming, although I expected where it was going. Overall I’d give this one 4 out of 5 skulls.