The lack of updates around here are largely due to a very busy week for me. I’m not going to say too much about why it was busy (as is my tendency to minimise the amount of personal stuff on this site), but I am going to give nods to some of the bands I’ve seen this week (10 in total).

Sparta put in an interesting performance, showing the more balanced side of former band At The Drive-in (while The Mars Volta pushed forward with the more esoteric side). Catchy lyrics meant I had songs stuck in my head days later and had to buy their second album to get them out.

yourcodenameis:milo put on the best visual show, mixing up modern rock with a video show that illustrates the style of all their video and artwork thus far perfectly. Very clean, minimalist artwork that must be a marketer’s dream; pulled off well. Black and white is the new black (not, as some might say, orange jumpsuits).

Who else? Degrassi showed signs of things to come. If they get signed soon, they will be the next big thing in rock. Although there were some technical difficulties, they made an astounding performance look effortless.

Finally, Seafood put together the best musical show, going straight from a lengthy piece of intro music into the first song proper seamlessly. The mini-acoustic set in the middle was superb (featuring an acoustic version of normally bass-heavy, chunky propaganda track, Cloaking), and the extended set was appreciated by all.

There were, of course, 6 other bands but they didn’t come close to these 4. All worth a listen if you like various facets of modern rock and indie.

You may remember that I rather liked Japanese ultra-violent flick Versus. For the benefit of anyone in the UK with access to cable, satellite or pay-to-view TV, FilmFour are showing it at midnight tonight (or first thing tomorrow morning for those pedants out there). It’s also Freeview weekend on FilmFour, so you don’t have to be a subscriber. Excellent!

Worth watching.

Having installed Firefox 1.0 PR recently on Windows and Linux, I have to say how much I’m impressed by it. I think it’s finally ready for the masses. It automatically, and sensibly, imports various pieces of data from existing browsers (history, bookmarks, etc), and has a completely uncluttered interface.

The sensible approach to updates surprised even me. Firefox checks whether it or any extensions have been updated in the background, and displays a small icon next to the throbber when changes have been made. The actual updating process is a simple click-through dialogue, making having the newest versions of everything trivially easy.

Then there are the extensions themselves. Old favourites like Mouse Gestures and tab browser extensions still appear, while new extensions like FoxyTunes are proving to be very handy.

Let me just emphasise that: FoxyTunes is incredibly handy! It integrates with most music players (Winamp and iTunes included) to provide controls inside the browser. I can’t imagine being without it in a browser now.

Finally a release to recommend to non-technical friends.

After having the martial arts aspects of Hero trumpeted, and knowing there was a strong cast (Jet Li and Tony Leung et al), it was with some doubt that I went into the film; it couldn’t possibly be as good as people said.

One word: beautiful.

Truly a film that uses the medium to its fullest potential. Care has gone into every leaf, the colour of every rock, the splashes of water, and the wardrobe. It is not just the still imagery that is stunning, the kinetic effects are also perfect; water, the breeze, limbs. Harmonious.

That’s not to say the film is without faults. The story was somewhat lacking and the fight on water scene did nothing but be silly (yes, it’s ballet, but a poor one).

Those weaknesses do not remove from the visual splendour of the film, and the enjoyment derived simply by watching.

Surprisingly, Dodgeball is amusing. It is dumb but, as with many Ben Stiller films, that is entirely the point. All the usual plot features can be expected: the main character learns an important life lesson, the losers become winners, the guy gets the girl, and some rather tasteless jokes.

The mark for these sorts of film can largely be determined by how many memorable lines and moments there are (I’m sure that we can all still remember the best ones from There’s Something About Mary). This has enough to make it amusing. That’ll do for me.