Tell us what's happening in your life

Sorry to hear, Vinny. Condolences

Condolences to both of you on your recent losses. Sad times.

Ouch.  That's horrible.  Here's wishing you well, Vinny.

How is everyone doing at this present moment? I hope you're doing great!

I'm doing very well Pelle. Struggling a little with my work-life balance & rarely finding enough time to myself but generally can't complain as I'm in good health, have a beautiful family & live in the very best part of the world. Where are you from? Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm glad that you find yourself in good spirits despite it all. This might come as a bit of a shock but my name isn't actually Pelle... I don't know why but i'm not comfortable in sharing my real name online. It's always been a thing with me. Sometimes I go by John, Scott and now, i'm Pelle. I'm from the Philippines and life is going great. I'm not at a stage in my life where I have to worry about employment yet but the prospect of finding good work kind of terrifies me. I think I'm just very weary about the future in general. I'm very happy at the moment, though and I hope you continue to be happy as well.

Well, we're very pleased to have you here at the Academy Pelle & would like to encourage you to get as involved in the site as you wish. There's a whole bunch of cool activities to choose from. You can help us vote on potentially incorrect genre tags in the Hall of Judgement, can submit your favourite tracks from the last month for the monthly clan Spotify playlists or can take part in nominating our monthly clan feature releases for example. If any of those options sound interesting then please feel free to send me a private message & I can help you with the finer details. Until then... have fun with the site & we hope to see a lot more of you around these parts. :)

Doing well up here in the Mitten (Michigan USA). I work as a high school building substitute teacher. This means that I work to fill vacancies in just one specific building, rather than a traveling substitute, it's kind of an ideal niche I found myself in. I have the stability and priveleges of a standard teacher but not nearly as much take-home responsibilty so I'm freed up to play in bands and write about metal with all you lovely people. 
We are nearing the end of the school year for summer, just 3 days to go. Summer plans include getting central air and heat installed and updating the electrical outlets in the home, as well as remodeling the kitchen. There might be a trip down to Florida for a small vacation somewhere in there.
Musically, I'm working with a long time friend on a pop-rock project, jamming in a second group that does standard blues and classic rock, and then working on my own project-a nautical themed black metal project with my saxophone playing friend-called TrencH. 
Life is good, I have a beautiful supportive wife, a good ol hounddog, a 5.7L V8 equipped Dodge Ram 4X4, and a Gene Simmons signature (G2) Gibson Thunderbird with my trusty Orange big combo amp... so all my basic needs are comfortably met. 
Concert-wise I am looking forward to local groups Chain Ripper and Flood the Desert in July. Big name act In this Moment in August and the next day a local slam band called Krocophile that have the best album cover of all time. Probably gonna add some patches to the ol battle vest in there too. 
The challenge is to lose weight but I've hired a personal trainer and dietician, so I think we drop another 20-30 before school fires back up in the fall. 

FOr the next hour, and this one hour only, you may all me a giddy little girl.

I just watched my 3000th movie.  I'll post a review here tomorrow out of excitement.

Del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

Let's take a look at the countless Resident Evil adaptations that took over since the early 2000's. There was the live-action movie series, the CGI series, the reboot with Kaya Scodelario and finally: the Netflix series which nobody asked for. Eventually everyone was fed up. And now we have a few Pinocchio movies within just the last few years. There's the 2019 live-action film, the CGI film "A True Story," the DIsney one and this. Did we really need so many in such a short time? No. But thankfully, one of those movies is an instant classic for all the right reasons. I watched the CGI one yesterday for number 2,999, and decided I'd get through this one for 3000.

In this version of Pinocchio, he is created by a depressed Geppetto after losing his son to the Fascist war. This Pinocchio is very curios but a bit bratty, and wants to learn as much as he can. Overtime, he is caught and accidents and learns from the spirit world about life and death, and uses it in his interactions with the various friends and enemies he makes.

DAMN THIS KID CAN ACT AND SING. Did they go through ten years of searching to find this kid? Despite all of Pinocchio's realistic shortcomings as an overeager brat, his cheerfulness is and energy are adorable. Watching him learn about good and evil throughout all these circumstances, natural and supernatural, is exactly what this film needed. This performance alone makes the movie enjoyable. Everything else could be halfassed like the live-action 101 Dalmatians and I'd probably watch this twice.

And let's take a look at many of the other performances. Filch himself, David Bradley, delivers a perfectly realistc performance as a self-pitying Geppetto who's definitely prone to alcohol. Just watching him complain his its own burning charm. Ewan MacGregor plays Sebastian the Cricket, and while his performance is fine, I don't feel like he's being challenged here. But he has some of the best dialogue in the movie as Sebastian's excellent at explaining reason. Tilda Swinton plays two sisters: the Wood Sprite who brings Pinocchio to life, and Death herself, living in her own world and explaining the rules of life and death to Pinocchio. We have Ron Perlman issuing a perfect performance as a Facsist Podesta and Finn Wolfhard with an accent playing his son, Candlewick. And get this, a monkey speaks through grunts and speaks perfect English through various puppets. That's Cate Blanchett. It's Cate Blanchett. Let that soak in. First, Patrick Stewart gets excited to play a poop emoji and now Blanchett plays Mel Blanc with a tail.

Oh, and the famous ****wipe Mussolini is played by SpongeBob.

It starts off dark, as I expected it to. And we stick with the darker themes throughout the whole film while we also get some balance in the plot relevance of multiple villains. This is a movie that recalls the true intentions of fairy tales and even the subject matter of classic fairy tale movies. This creates a level of excitement which may require parental guidance but adds another layer to the morality, especially considering that Del Toro changed the time period to Fascist Italy where the war is going on. War themes put Pinocchio through other realistic horrors that the more famous adaptations are unfamiliar with. This can also help recreate certain levels of excitement that the Zemeckis remake failed to recapture, like the dogfish scene. While the role of the giant fish essentially stays the same, turning the Coachman into the Podesta and turning boys into soldiers was a perfect choice, as it helps develop the brotherly relationship between Candlewick and Pinocchio. Excellent choice, Del Toro. While the fox and the cat were turned into Volpe and the monkey, their effect of the plot is maxed out to the point of perfection.

On top of which, every reinvention of a trope or story element taken from the book MAKES PERFECT SENSE. Every bit of dialogue is thought out to make sure the plot progresses naturally with the themes, which is more than I can ask from most nonsensical and random fairy tale adaptations. This is especially impressive considering that Del Toro has a bad habit of favoring theme over magic, as shown in the lacking ghostly horror of The Devil's Backbone and the slim and occasional ventures into the fantasy world of Pan's Labyrinth. Here, we have a perfect balance between magic and theme, which as far as I've gathered hasn't been so perfectly balanced in Del Toro's works since Hellboy.

Now let's talk about the puppet animation: it's the perfect combination of charming, grotesque, cute, cartoony and realistic. Some serious research must've been put into these designs because everyone of them works. Such designs like this are beautifully ugly and rare to come across. It's one thing to create old men with cartoon features that still bear the realism of grumpy old men, but even the design of the giant dogfish and Volpe's red hair bear the kind of ugliness that's fun to watch.

After ranking this in my chart I found that this had become the highest rated fairy tale movie on that chart. And I might find myself watching it many times. This is currently my favorite Del Toro as well. All of the imagination of Del Toro's past movies and the love of thematic exploration is in the best harmony his movies have ever had, and there isn't a soul in this world I would not recommend this movie to. This truth to the source material molded with Del Toro's choice of Fascist Italian subject matter makes for a perfect example of a "faithful artistic rendition," and it only makes me ten times as impatient to see Del Toro's upcoming Frankenstein film. I am perfectly happy that this is my 3,000th film.

I just watched my 3000th movie.  I'll post a review here tomorrow out of excitement.

That reminds me, I submitted my 1,000th Metal Academy review a week ago. That seems almost impossible on paper but apparently I’ve managed to accomplish it somehow. I wonder how many of them were actually helpful or have even been read?

I just watched my 3000th movie.  I'll post a review here tomorrow out of excitement.

That reminds me, I submitted my 1,000th Metal Academy review a week ago. That seems almost impossible on paper but apparently I’ve managed to accomplish it somehow. I wonder how many of them were actually helpful or have even been read?

You've been running this site for a while now.  I'm personally surprised it's ONLY 1000.  Although I typically only read reviews for albums and movies I've already seen, so I've read quite a few of yours.

Hello, fellow metalheads. So I'm going to a two-week hospitality management training program, from September 23 to October 4, every weekday, from 9 to 5. Don't worry, I'll still be active here in Metal Academy, and I'll post the October Feature Release threads when the month starts, along with doing the usual clan playlist commenting and submitting tracks in the playlist suggestion threads. I just won't be able to do any big projects like discography reviews (the occasional singular album review is fine), and whether or not I'll submit feature releases and Revolution playlists for the following couple months will depend on if I end up getting a full-time job to follow up from the program. If that happens, I might have to take a two-month break from submitting feature releases and ask someone else to work on The Revolution playlists during then, just like when I had that 3-month break last year. I'll let you all know if the full job and my two-month break from major MA activities will be confirmed or not, once my training program ends. Wish me luck, all!

Good luck, Andi. Hope it all goes well.

Thanks, Sonny.

Update on my training program: Today was the second-to-last day, and after the main program ends tomorrow, the graduation ceremony won't be until sometime next month. This means I might have to wait one or two months until I find out whether or not I get the paid job. With that, I don't have to take that break after all! At least until after the graduation ceremony. So I'll continue submitting feature releases and Revolution playlists, beginning with the ones for November and December. Whether or not I'll have a break from those activities for two or 3 months afterwards will depend on if I get the paid job following the ceremony. Let's hope for the best!

Good luck! That'd be a massive load off if you can transition directly into a position, trying to navigate the job market nowadays is absolutely terrible and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. 

Thanks, Xephyr.