I’m watching CBC News Montreal right now. There was a report about two young women that supported the Ottawa Senators last night at Bell Center that got assaulted by several male Habs fans. They threw beer bottles at them, hit them with towels, called them whores and so on. 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ottawa-senators-fan-katie-kerrick-harassed-at-habs-game-1.3039078

This is exactly what is bothering me about this franchise. Most of their fans are extremely fanatic and disrespectful. Even when some of these so-called fans come to bars or arenas in towns of other teams, they mock about local teams and their supporters, think they are allowed to do anything they want and have absolutely no class. I have also seen examples of high school students in Quebec that supported other teams than the Canadiens and which got bullied by their classmates. If you are going go to a pharmacy or supermarket anywhere in Quebec, even in cities more than twelve hours away from Montreal, you can buy an elevated number of stupid articles from the team: bubble gum machines, lipsticks, sunglasses, towels, water bottles and so on. If you watch a sports channel from Quebec, they are talking about the Canadiens at least 90% of the time (even after they got eliminated) and another 5% about the Quebec Nordiques, a team which doesn’t exist anymore since 1995 and which won’t come back anytime soon even though a megalomaniac and self-centered mayor and a capitalist millionaire who wants to become a Prime Minister to manage a country that will never exist as if it was a business are forcing governmental institutions and citizens to spend several hundred million dollars on a new arena which will probably become a big white elephant.

Many people in Quebec are blindly supporting the Canadiens as if it was a national team and some people even add a political statement to that which is incredibly stupid. Since the decrease of Catholicism in the province, most people have found a new religion in the Montreal Canadiens. I firmly believe sports and politics or religion should always be regarded separately. That goes without saying that everybody in this team is obviously communicating in English and that there isn’t even ONE single player in their roster that actually comes from Montreal and there are only three players from the province of Quebec. Most fans identify with the past but don’t seem to understand what the Montreal Canadiens are all about in the present: a great multi-cultural team from a great multi-cultural town. 

If you look at the Ottawa Senators, it’s much easier to identify with them. Four players come directly from Ottawa (including Kanata and Gatineau) and many more from the province of Ontario. Everything around the team and the city is bilingual and respects both cultures and languages in an open-minded way. Their fans are enthusiastic without being aggressive to others and without adding a patriotic note to sports. They see their players as great sportsmen but not as national heroes. I’m getting sick of the Canadiens’ worship of Jean Beliveau. He was a great player and from what I know probably a great human being but the whole “We have to win a cup for him!” and adding the number 4 on all jerseys and even on the ice not only for a few weeks after his death but for an entire season, is not honorable but simply exaggerating. It’s the same thing for Maurice Richard, without a doubt one of the best hockey players of all times, that gets idolized as a revolutionary rebel who stood up for the rights of poor French Canadians against evil Anglophones which simply isn’t true. 

I have come to the conclusion that this whole patriotic fan culture is disgusting and going way too far for me and that’s why I have taken some serious distance from the team. Don’t get me wrong: I still like the Canadiens, I’m still going to the Bell Center from time to time and I wish them all the best for a Stanley Cup win but I have become a lot less enthusiastic about them than when I was a teenager due to their image and fans.

Please enjoy the Stanley Cup playoffs and stay classy, open-minded and respectful.

Ladies and gentlemen!

Apocalyptica is back! The legendary band from Finland is going to release its first studio album in almost five years in North America next Tuesday. This is definitely a new beginning for one of the most original bands of the last twenty-five years. Check out my review below, open up your mind and support this great band.

By the way, you can still listen to a free and legal stream of the entire release for the next few days only:

Apocalyptica has always been a diversified yet unique band. In the past five years, the band has released a video game soundtrack, recorded a commercially successful regular album and gone back to its classical roots inspired by Richard Wagner for a couple of sophisticated concerts that were recorded for a great live release. “Shadowmaker” also tries out something new as the line-up includes a regular singer for the very first time in Apocalyptica’s career. Franky Perez has a powerful and versatile voice even though he isn’t the most charismatic and impressive singer. Still, his continuous presence on the record adds a coherent flow and Apocalyptica sounds like a real band rather than a project that invites a couple of random guest singers as it was the case on the previous efforts. Another thing that keeps the album together is its atmosphere somewhere between melancholy and mystery.

Fear not, old fans, for the band still includes a couple of great instrumentals on the album plus a few epic songs where the instrumental passages add much more to the listening experience than the vocals. The menacing bonus song “Reign of Fear” would be a perfect tune for a horror movie. In the beginning, the track sounds disturbing, heavy and slow and by the end it sounds dramatic, epic and fast. This is the best instrumental track the band has done in a while. “Riot Lights” is another outstanding instrumental track based on hypnotizing and rather fast cello sounds but it features an elevated amount of electronic samples and some weird background noises that give the song a quite unique identity. This is definitely the most courageous track on the new album. Those who want to hear some calmer and purely classically inspired material should appreciate the epic album closers “’Til Death Do Us Part” and “Dead Man’s Eyes” even though the latter one has some noticeable lengths and fails to end the album with a bang.

In general, the useless short opener and the unfocused closer are the weakest parts of the album and fail to kick the record off on a high note and end it in a glorious way. The only other track that I don’t appreciate on a personal level is “House of Chains” which sounds a little bit like a commercial metalcore song on cellos that could also come from Bullet For My Valentine or Trivium. I know a couple of great metalcore bands but the mixture of classical music and this kind of modern metal just sounds odd and reminds me of the track “Repressed” from Apocalyptica’s greatest hits record. The track feels alien on this album.

All other songs with vocals work quite well. “Cold Blood” is really catchy and features great cello riffs, intriguing background noises and truly soulful vocals. The song has the most promising commercial potential along with the compact bonus track “Come Back Down” which sounds a little bit out of context on the album but that convinces with an experimental drum play and a chorus that I would describe as chaotic beauty.

The gloomy title song “Shadowmaker” goes in a very different direction as it sounds really epic and mysterious. I immediately liked this courageous first single choice that never falls off despite a challenging length of eight minutes. “Slow Burn” is another really melancholic song that could have found its righteous place on Apocalyptica’s amazing self-titled effort ten years ago. “Sea Song (You Waded Out)” has a similar approach but has a more elegiac yet hopeful tone that should please to those who liked Apocalyptica’s “Reflections” release twelve years ago. It’s not just because of the title that the song sounds like Apocalyptica’s own take on Rammstein’s melancholic ballad “Seemann”.

The great thing about this release is that almost all tracks have grown on me after four or five spins. At first contact, I wasn’t all that impressed and missed Apocalyptica’s old classical and emotional style. This album is still not as consistent and profound as “Cult” or “Apocalyptica” but the record has convinced me with a balanced mixture of Apocalyptica’s old classical style and more recent commercial efforts, a fusion of a clear guiding line in form of a mostly melancholic and mysterious atmosphere and an elevated number of short experiments, a potpourri of extended instrumental parts and solid vocal performances by the same versatile singer. My first advice to fully enjoy this effort is to buy the limited edition of this release and to always listen to the record as a whole. My second advice is to give the album time to grow on you. Don’t give up after one or even two tries. Let the album work on you in different situations. I’m sure you will get rewarded for your patience at a certain point. It’s great to see that Apocalyptica has shifted away from more accessible music and delivered it most profound studio record in ten years. This album can be seen as a new beginning for the band and I’m curious to see where the band goes from here.

Final verdict: 8.5 out of 10 points

Please support the band and check out the following links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Apocalyptica

Homepage: http://www.apocalyptica.com/en/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ApocalypticaVideos/videos

''Kundo: Age of the Rampan'' is a South Korean period film which has become one of the country's highest grossing movies ever upon release. It has also won eight awards in five different film festivals. The movie is primary an action movie and costume drama in authentic locations. The film has a sinister atmosphere filled with tension due to a charismatic acting by Kang Dong-won who is playing an ambitious villain and Ha Jung-woo who portrays a sympathetic antihero who becomes an inspiration for oppressed citizens. The fight scenes are filled with both brutal tension and elegant aesthetics. Despite the coherently dark mood, there are a couple of more amusing and emotional scenes that keep the movie dynamical over an epic length of nearly two and a half hours.

The story takes place during the late Joseon era and is partially inspired by authentic historic events. In a time of aristocratic tyranny, an illegitimate son strives for power and hires a poor butcher as assassin. Since the butcher is unable to complete his mission, he is terribly punished but manages to survive. He decides to change his life in order to protect those he was supposed to kill and fight those who have punished him. He changes identity and becomes a ferocious swordsman who helps the poor, persecuted and helpless people until the time is come to challenge his worst enemy to a final duel.

The only negative points about this movie are the fact that the story itself is quite predictable and standard for its genre despite a couple of good conspiracies and intrigues and the exaggerated final fight that feels incoherent if compared to the rather realistic fight scenes in the rest of the movie.

Still, ''Kundo: Age of the Rampant'' is a highly entertaining movie with lots of action and drama, great actors and characters and stunning locations and settings. Fans of historically inspired action movies can't get around one of last year's best Asian movies. 

Since I'm a fan of dystopian movies, I decided to watch ''Insurgent'' even though its predecessor ''Divergent'' was quite shallow due to exchangeable actors, average effects, unimpressive locations and an ordinary story. The second part of the series came as a big surprise to me as nearly everything improved.

''Insurgent'' focuses just as much on a gripping and twisted story as on character development. The first part was overwhelmingly emotional and stereotypical at times and didn't have a strong story. This movie comes around with interesting ideas from start to finish. 

The acting has become more charismatic and mature. Shailene Woodley was an average actress with average looks in the first part but her acting feels more realistic and unique in the sequel. The film feels also more serious because there are more interesting adult actors than before, namely Daniel Dae Kim and Naomie Watts who deliver a solid job. Kate Winslet's acting as main villain is much colder and meaner than before and improved a lot as well.

The effects have also improved but aren't overused in the movie. The different intense simulations the main character needs to go through are visually stunning. Only the three-dimensional effects could have been a little bit more present and didn't add much to the movie. The locations in this film aren't anything spectacular but they are all quite dark and oppressive. This movie's atmosphere is definitely more coherent and gripping than what we have seen in the first part.

The ending is also quite promising. On one side, the story that has been built up over two movies comes to a satisfying end while another intriguing story starts that has already convinced me to go watch the last two parts. It's up to you to decide whether you stop following the series or continue watching it from here on while the first movie didn't give you that choice as it ended with some sort of cliffhanger in the middle of nowhere.

In the end, both fans of the franchise and the genre and critics who didn't appreciated the flawed first part should give this movie a try. Despite the high amount of dystopian movies that have come out over the past twelve months, this film is easily the best of its kind and left the ''Maze Runner'' and the ''Hunger Games'' series behind. 

"It Follows" is an independent supernatural horror movie that takes place in and around Detroit, Michigan. The nightmarish story, the electronic score and the use of wide-angel lenses are inspired by classic American and European horror movies from the sixties and seventies. Especially the works of Dario Argento, John Carpenter and George Romero come to my mind.

The main idea of the movie is fairly interesting. After sexual encounters, people are somehow infected since they are slowly followed by a supernatural entity that can take any appearance and which is trying to brutally kill them. Only infected people can see the danger while the supernatural entity isn't dangerous for anybody else as long as they don't try to interfere on purpose. It's impossible to kill the supernatural entity but one can chase it away by violently attacking it. Infected victims usually try to pass on the curse by having sexual encounters on their own but this doesn't seem to be an efficient solution either. The whole thing gets even more mysterious since it's not possible to pass the curse to everybody. Some people get infected during sexual encounters while others don't.

The movie tells the story of a female college student that got infected by her new boyfriend who tries to hide his real identity and whereabouts. Along with her sister and several friends, she tries in vain to escape from the supernatural entity. She also tries to pass on the curse to several friends who want to help her. The movie features in fact three quite boring sex scenes and much more useless sexual innuendo that only distracts from the story. Since the danger is still present, the college student and her friends finally try to set a risky trap to kill the strange entity for good.

The movie has sparked numerous interpretations in regard to the source of the supernatural entity and the film's symbolism. Some critics believe that this movie is simply portraying a nightmare and that there is no deeper meaning behind it. Others have interpreted the film as a parable on sexually-transmitted diseases and its consequences. Some people claim that the movie deals with primal anxieties about intimacy and first sexual relationships. As you can see, there are a lot of interesting questions around this phenomenon but none of these are actually answered.

Sadly, the interesting concept, the great vintage atmosphere, the brilliant score and the clever use of wide camera angles aren't enough to make the entire movie enjoyable. One of the main flaws of the movie is its constantly slow pace and lack of gripping tension. I have no problem with restrained supernatural horror movies but most of them get more and more menacing and end in a really intensive way. This isn't the case at all with this film. One constantly expects the movie to get a little boost as time goes by but it ultimately falls flat. Another problem is the generic acting and the exchangeable characters. I'm aware of the fact that this movie tries to portray a bunch of ordinary teenagers that get shaken up by things they can't fight or understand but the actors and especially actresses are so dull that one simply doesn't care about their fates at all.  

In the end, this overrated movie wastes a really mysterious plot idea and great inspirations from classic genre films for a lackluster flick without any true highlights. Since this amorphous film doesn't have a real ending, there are rumours about a sequel with another interesting story. In this potential project, some infected teenagers try to trace the supernatural entity back to find out where it came from and how the curse started. That's why I'm not yet giving up on this project but as it is now, I would recommend you to skip this over-hyped revival flick and wait for a more interesting second instalment.