Let the Right One In - not your average vampire movie, exceptionally good story, disturbing only in its honesty.

Choke - while the first 15 minutes remind me of Fight Club (same author), the sheer absurdity of the movie is engaging and ultimately enlightening.

City of Lost Children - french movie, very strange bordering on absurd, but with a captivating story – if you can follow it.

it’s unclear whether The 69 Eyes take themselves seriously… but it’s emo-metal from Helsinki… so it’s pretty much awesome either way. if you count HIM among your guilty pleasures, you’ll like The 69 Eyes too. if you need a quick primer, buy their best-of album titled Framed in Blood.

and finally our friends to the north have produced something definitely worth listening to in 3 Inches of Blood. if you’re not familiar with them, their Advance and Vanquish album covers the important metal topics (orcs, medieval war, naval power, and futuristic robots). their new songs sound cool, but they’re a bit more prog than previous albums i think. prog rock pretty much started in the great white north with rush, so why not have some prog metal from 3 Inches? one song actually reminded me of mastodon’s blood mountain album – if you discount the vocals. which isn’t a bad impression to make. i only wish they had gotten more songs in.. they were the opening act and only did 7. (and this was the band I most wanted to see)

next week – Killswitch Engage and Dragonforce!

The way I set it up, the top wheel scrolls documents like any normal mouse and the left-right clicks are set to do Prev-Next in my iTunes playlist. The thumb wheel is set to do volume up-down and click to mute. Then it still has the browser back button, a middle click for tabbed browsing and an interesting Search button where you can highlight text and press it, then it opens a google search on that phrase. Cool. Very cool.