Blizzard has released its first music CD, featuring 15 tracks of ancient horror, medieval glory, and futuristic war. I don't actually know when it came out, but I have recently gotten my hands on it. I think it's completely splendid.
The music of the Warcraft universe is the grandest and most spectacular. Hm, "spectacular" is derived from "spectacle", hence it has a notion of sight. You can't see music. Can you even use "spectacular" to describe music? Anyway, it's basically all that nice brassy fanfare and base drums, intermingled with serene sequences and rough rhythms that make me think of the loading screen.
Seeing as that I have never played Starcraft, the music from there was all unfamiliar. Still, I think that they are very good, though a bit strange in several parts.
Diablo music is what I am most familiar with, and now it's the same creepy music, only in epic orchestral style. The oboe was created for Diablo. There can be no other reason for its existence.
The soundtracks were always a big part of the fiction I enjoy. I even have the soundtracks of certain games that I have never played. The books may always be better than the movies, but books don't have soundtracks. Movies do.
Speaking of movies, Tom Hanks will be returning to play Robert Langdon, in the film adaptation of Angels & Demons. This is good news, I suppose. Now I have a reason to go to the theatre and eat an entire bag of potato chips.
I've always thought that Angels & Demons had a better story than The Da Vinci Code. The only reason that the latter novel was more popular was because of the whole controversy with the Christian community. Because of that, Angels & Demons became "the other book that Dan Brown wrote", instead of "the Dan Brown book that you should read".
I'm not expecting the film to be much. But with films come movie memorabilia. And in this case, that means ambigrams.
I will watch it, though. It's been a while since I've heard about a movie and wanted to see it. This past year has been all about superheroes. The previous year it was pirates.
Actually, the only reason I wrote this post was that I wanted an excuse to share this awesome comic with everyone, without looking too lazy.
Ah, but I think scientists should unite against the common enemy before training man-killing squids.
-Joe