It’s listing as December 17th, can you guess what it is? Perhaps you should watch the newly released trailer and see for yourself. Its powerful. Its dark. There’s a deep sadness to it. Wow. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King will be awesome!

For those interested, the theatrical trailer has been released for Matrix Revolutions - go get it while it’s hot!

IMDB described the movie “Underworld” by saying

Underworld reimagines Vampires as a secretive clan of modern, aristocratic sophisticates whose mortal enemies are the Lycans (werewolves), a shrewd gang of street thugs who prowl the city’s underbelly. The balance of power is upset when a beautiful young Vampire and a nascent Lycan # deadly rivals for centuries # fall in love.

While I agree in part with that description it isnt entirely how I would have phrased it. Underworld isnt a reimagination of the genre as such, it’s a “what if” based on the period drama vampire stories; it says, “what if time has passed, where would the decadent aristocratic 18th/19th century Eastern European vampires be today?” Underworld applies what we know of history to the older vampire myth and carries it forward in a fairly logical way.

One reviewer thought a major drawback of the film was its dense information content. They were obviously looking for it to be the standard Hollywood fair, devoid of substance. On the other hand, we went to see the movie and were pleasantly surprised with the rich backstory and character histories. The motivations for the characters were well formed and the “bad guy” (for once) wasnt the unredeamable black-hearted monster that Hollywood prefers, he had depth and you find out he’s not so much evil as just in opposition to the main characters. Characters you thought were bad turn out to not be, good guys turn out to be bad, and a genuinely codepentent situation that causes trouble for other people.

There wasnt a Friday Five this week so this is the one I skipped from last week.

1. Who is your favorite singer/musician? Why?

Right now I am alternating between Rebecca St. James (in the car) and Evanescence at work. I noticed recently that my favourite artists are female. Not sure what that says about me as a person! As to a favourite I think I would say Rebecca St. James since she’s a solo act.

2. What one singer/musician can you not stand? Why?

I dont even have to think about this one: Alanis Morissette. If I am in a store and they begin playing her music I will leave. If she comes on the radio, I will turn it off. It all goes back to her TV debut in England - on the Jools Holland new year TV show. She performed “You Oughta Know” and I remember thinking at the time 'Wow, what an angst ridden little witch!' and there’s been nothing since then to change my mind. I cant stand her. If you ever want to get rid of me, put it on your stereo.

3. If your favorite singer wasn’t in the music business, do you think you would still like him/her as a person?

Rebecca St. James does a ton of stuff outside of the music biz … so it’s another no-brainer question. Without a doubt I would like her and support her work.

4. Have you been to any concerts? If yes, who put on the best show?

Recently went to see Def Leppard, followed a couple of months later by Evanescence. I blogged about the Evanescence gig - it was stellar. Fantastic. I’d go to another of their shows in a heartbeat!

5. What are your thoughts on downloading free music online vs. purchasing albums? Do you feel the RIAA is right in its pursuit to stop people from dowloading free music?

Respect copyrights. I scour the places that sell used CDs and cant remember the last time I bought a CD for full price. I’ve got hardcopies of all of the tracks that on my hard-drive now. Everything is legit since everything came off the CD and the CD is stored on my shelf. Downloading stuff should lead to buying it if the music moves you enough to want to play it over again and again. It’s a corrupt business, the record labels are ripping off the artists BUT that is not enough justification for ripping them off. Indirectly it does harm the artists.

Whoa! No sooner had I clicked “Post and publish” on Chronicle Lite than my phone rang. It was the bookshop from Concordia Seminary to tell me that they didnt have both of the books I was looking for. The only one they had was (strangely enough) the only one thats missing from my list (”Introducing the New Testament” by J.W. Drane). So, 4 for 4 through contacting 2 of the seminaries and my local Borders! Better yet, there was no wait while shipping them; I get my sticky little paws on the books before the first week of classes.

Well, Amazon.com came up a big loss - the order doesnt want to ship until mid-October. In other words, too late for the courses I will be taking! I turned to other avenues, like trying my local Borders store. It was a long shot but I was surprised to find that “A testament of devotion” was in stock! Next up was a call to Covenant Seminary (about as close to where I work as the Borders that I called) and they had “Gospel of the Kingdom” and “A Theology of the New Testament” on their shelves. That just leaves “Introducing the New Testament” to track down, and I havent even tried the Barnes and Noble stores!

As a service to other people coming along in future, I logged my Amazon.com purchases under a “So you’d like to…” guide (“So you’d like to… Buy books for Vineyard Leadership Institute”) and a Listmania list (“Vineyard Leadership Institute required reading”). Books are on order for the 1st course of the year (”The leader’s self-understanding and spiritual formation”) and for the 2 fall insensives (”The synoptic gospels” and “Acts and missions”). Hope this helps - I’m planning to keep the guide and the list up to date with books lists as I order mine so that it makes ordering easy for someone else after me.

RFC 3092 (rfc3092) - Etymology of “Foo” also showing usage in various other RFCs. Wonderful reading! In fact, there are a number of other RFCs that were created in jest. Well worth plughing through the boring stuff to find the gems!

The BBC news website is reporting on the Democrats’ presidential contenders with a short bio on each of them with another piece asking the question “Can Democrats topple Bush?“

The Gospelcom.net Open Source Software page lists a number of open source / free software projects. But, what is the Gospelcom alliance?

Seven years after its launch, Gospelcom.net has grown to become the most popular Christian website in the world. From its 1995 inception with 10 alliance ministries, Gospelcom.net has mushroomed to now include over 300 individual online ministries working to use technology and the Internet to reach the world with the message of Jesus Christ.

I got an email this morning telling me that Chronicle Lite has been added to their members Open source page. Cool!