At this point, you've probably already seen The Dark Knight - perhaps multiple times, even. You surely don't need me to tell you that it's the sequel to Batman Begins, the entirely excellent and badly needed reset to the franchise with Christian Bale in the lead role. I'm sure you're aware that the late Heath Ledger turned in a much lauded reprise of the Joker. You may or not know that the movie is very dark - and I don't mean in terms of color schemes or lighting - and contains material far heavier and more adult than the PG-13 rating might indicate. Given all that, I'm not sure what this review stands to accomplish, but if you need just one more voice in the choir to push you into seeing this film, perhaps mine will be it.

I read a few reviews and caught wind of the praise for The Dark Knight that was making the rounds before heading to the theater. Going into the film, I was entirely uncertain how Heath Ledger (a guy I didn't really know or care about) could merit the praise he was being buried in, nor how the film could exceed its excellent predecessor in quality so wildly. I was a bit curious, but entirely ready to be a little bit let down. I was gratified, however, to see that all the raving about The Dark Knight is entirely earned. The film mandates, it, even. Ledger turns in the performance of his lifetime, even if he had lived till ninety, creating, in my experience and memory, the most teriffying, intriguing, and lasting villain in cinema. His acting was superb, but he was not the only one responsible for his greatness. The man had terrific material to work with, as did all the actors. The plot, the dialog, the characters - everything is as good as it gets. This may be an action film, but you will not walk out of there with car chases and brawls forefront in your mind. And that's how you know it's a truly great film, and more than just a superhero flick or a summer blockbuster.

The movie stuck with me long after I left the theater. The situations that unfold in it are excruciating, the questions raised haunting, and the ideas put forth worthy of more than passing consideration. None of the material is particularly happy stuff - very much the opposite, really. The choices are not even as simple as bad and worse; matters are far more gray. The characters change and twist under the unique stresses the Joker brings to bear on them, each responding in different ways. It's a study in character, in persons, in people, and morality. And while it's not entirely hopeless, it is at times crushing, and oppresive, and bleak.

Don't let my focus on writing make you think that action badassery is lacking, or even in short supply. The movie kicks off with a heist that sets the tone for the rest quite well. There are plenty of moments that are shockingly awesome - the kind of scenes you rarely get, where one will make a movie, and The Dark Knight probably has a half dozen. The action sequences are suspenseful and creative, certainly no weak link.

Speaking of making movies, I don't think the Joker steals the show, but I'll be goddamned if he isn't fascinating enough that he would have in almost any other film. He's a unique character in cinema, a man that makes no sense, and yet is perfectly understandable. He's entirely crazy, yet the only sane one around, always in control, always in possession of hidden aces, and able to turn an innocent-seeming action or situation rather devastatingly to his favor. He is a badguy, no question, bereft of any sort of sympathetic past that would make you feel for him. And yet I found myself rooting for him, which is a bit disturbing in its own right. The only explanation I can come up with is that he is incredibly badass, and it's hard not to like a character like that on some level.

The Dark Knight is a once a decade, perhaps even once a generation kind of film. I'm not even sure what the last one in its class was. It's the kind of movie that's really worth the cost of the ticket, no matter how overpriced it may seem the rest of the year. I see precious few movies each year in a theater, and this is not only one of those few, it's actually the first film in my life I will ever have seen in the theater more than once.

I actually picked up Burial's second album, Untrue, back in late '07, when it was all the rage among bloggers and indie kids. It's a rather unique album in that respect: it was heavily lauded among the indie press, including a Top 10 of 2007 mark from Pitchfork, and yet it's a rather odd, dark, instrumental album. If those reviews are to believed - and I certainly have no clue if they're right or not - Burial occupies the "Dubstep" genre, which I can only imagine is some sort of sub-sub-sub-genre so specific that I've never heard of a single other artist that occupies it.

Genres I know almost nothing about, but music I can handle. Burial blends what I can best describe as electronic hip-hop beats with ambient, reverb-heavy music, and twisted and warped sampled vocals. The sampled vocals are modified to the point of taking on "another one of the instruments" quality; as I mentioned earlier, I'd put this in the "instrumental" bin. The small snippets of singing are pitch shifted at spots, over-pitch corrected in others, and in all cases given a healthy dose of reverb. The end effect is that they end up becoming ghostly and inhuman, another part of the distant ambient landscape.

The music takes on much of the same quality. There are no identifiable instruments here. There are drones and swells of what could possibly be, but isn't quite, an organ. There's a rumbling bass line that certainly doesn't sound like an electric or acoustic bass. The instrumentation is big, and spacious, with no identifiable hooks or instruments, and nothing to really grab onto. The beats are perhaps the one exception to this, though only in part. They're pretty immediate, without the distant feel of the music. But they're electronic enough to still maintain the inhumanity of the rest of the album.

It's a pretty odd album, at least relative to the rest of my collection. The many months between when I picked it up and now, when I'm actually reviewing it, does help to give a certain amount of perspective. I honestly don't listen to it all that much - though that's true of 95% of what I buy. On bringing it out, though, it's still intriguing and a good listen. It's not for everyone, but if you're looking for something that's lonely and distant, and most importantly, a bit off the beaten path, Burial's Untrue is as good a place to turn as any.

I headed to the Northside Tavern once again to check out the reformed and revised Infinite Number of Sounds, the local favorite from my old hometown of Cleveland, now down two old members and plus one new one. When I arrived at the Northside, I was a bit distressed to see no musicians and no gear where the opening act should have been playing. I didn't have the time to give it thought, though, as I really needed to use the restroom. My surprise was furthered when I found the restroom completely gone, replaced by a hall that lead to a big, beautiful room complete with an actual stage, a sound guy, and a separate bar. The floors were beautiful polished hardwood, there was a nice curtain along the back wall behind the stage, there were ceiling fans and plenty of ventilation, and there was lots of room to dance. Apparently the venue will start booking bigger national acts, which is great to hear, and which they can certainly manage with their entirely impressive new room.

Seeing the new Infinite Number of Sounds definitely threw me for something of a loop. Familiar elements are still there - the eclectic video montage accompaniments to the songs, and a certain distinct sort of quirky feel to the songs. Other than that, though, everything is different. There are no traditional rock instruments. The electric bass is gone, the electric guitar is gone, and the acoustic drums are gone, replaced by a very striped down electronic set. Infinite has gone electronic, bringing laptops and synths in place of the old instrumentation.

It's a bit hard to know how to approach or take a change as radical as that. To an extent, the best thing you can do is try and get away from what you're used to or expect from the band. All the material was new, a full ten songs that I've not heard before. It's tough to remember all the details of the various pieces in such circumstances, which doesn't help me to give a very accurate impression of the new material. There were some songs that were better than others, for certain, and some songs that maybe could have been tightened up and trimmed down. A few had a nice groove to them, and there was one that had a very spacey, floating feel to it.

I think there's definitely some good material among the new stuff, but it'll take some time to get used to hearing this incarnation of Infinite Number of Sounds. I'll be curious to see how they grow into their new setup, too, and how things change and evolve.

I am failing at updating in as timely a fashion as I would like and failing at reviewing new games because I have once more been sucked into World of Warcraft. Goddamn the game, and goddamn me for playing it once more.

I had thought that there was plenty to do at the end-game when I quit pre-Burning Crusade, but now there is an almost disgusting amount of crap to keep you occupied. There's a nearly endless supply of worthwhile to semi-worthwhile factions to grind all the way to exalted, and a handful of worthless factions as well. There's a shitload of extremely expensive recipes to purchase, plus that costly epic flying mount. And then there's the inordinate amount of honor-purchasable PVP gear, on top of the difficult to attain Arena gear.

And that's not even counting the raids that open up to you after you've hit the level 70 dungeons, and then the heroic modes of those dungeons and the previous ones as well. Actually, the raid situation is both thankfully and annoyingly the end to my progression at 70. I'm involved in a guild made up entirely of real life friends, which makes things fun and essentially drama free. We're sitting around ten people, though, which is great for Kara, and will be fine for Zul'Aman soon, but is quite a ways from the twenty-five needed for the bulk of the end-game content.

This is good, because it provides me with a stopping point, at least as far as PvE is concerned, but bad, because it locks me out of most of the neato encounters. Organizing twenty-five people is a fucking bitch, and turns the game into work in a lot of regards. I can't believe people ever did forty. I can't believe I ever did forty.

This is also why I both salivate over and dread the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, now poised to enter closed beta. One of the core features of the game is that all raids will have a ten and twenty-five man mode, with more complexities and better loot reserved for the twenty-five. This means that when we clear Kara on Tuesday and aren't geared enough for Zul'Aman yet, we'll have something to do as a ten-man guild. Wonderful addition, and definitely a move that will open up a lot of content to way, way more people while still retaining bonuses for big raiding guilds. Which is why I fear it so.

Once again, I need an intervention.

Every studio album in Sigur Rós's career has come with a pretty significant shift in the band's style. The Sigur Rós of Von isn't even recognizable as the same Sigur Rós that produced Ágćtis Byrjun. ( ) is bleak enough to be the soundtrack to a funeral, and it was followed by the at-times effervescent Takk... Sigur Rós's newest release, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, is the biggest shift in the band's direction since the change from Von to Ágćtis Byrjun. Most of the things that you thought defined the band are gone, but what remains is still very much Sigur Rós.

Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust translates to "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly," which, along with the album's cover art depicting several people running naked across a road on a sunny day, does a fairly good job of capturing the album's feel. Where Takk... wove from joyous to sorrowful and back again, Med Sud is almost entirely upbeat. The few songs on this album that aren't outright happy are generally uplifting.

But that's not what marks this as a significant departure for Sigur Rós. The bowed, reverbed-out electric guitar that has been the band's trademark? Gone entirely. The echoey, ever-so-slightly inhuman vocals that sometimes accompany Jónsi? Also missing. In fact, Jónsi's androgynous falsetto is no longer the mainstay, substituted for by a voice that's a little less androgynous and certainly out of the falsetto range. They've all but abandoned their made up, voice-as-an-instrument Hopelandic for Icelandic vocals, with English making its first appearance on one song (though to be honest, I've yet to figure out which one, bets being on All Alright, of course). Electrical instruments are pretty scarce on Med Sud, with the band making heavy use of strings, horns, piano, and even the occasional acoustic. The whole ethereal nature that was so much a party of Sigur Rós's sound is subdued, replaced by a feel that I could almost call folky at times.

Gobbledigook is quite an appropriate opener, with its acoustic guitars and stomping drums. It's energetic and fun, from the fast pace to the full-band "lalala" sing-along. Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur is as joyful as anything they've ever written, while Goean Daginn adapts some of that familiar Sigur Rós ethereal beauty to their new upbeat purposes. Festival, the longest piece on the album, is sadly my least favorite, courtesy of a very sparse intro that drags on and on without much justification for doing so. The latter two thirds of it whip gradually to a blissful climax that keeps me from disliking the song entirely, though.

Things slow down a bit in the second half, with the stripped-down piano and vocals of Ara Batur carefully leading into an uplifting swell of choir and strings. The acoustics of Illgresi are the closest the album comes to folk, the disarming closeness of it being a bit different for Sigur Rós. Straumnes is a wonderful ambient piece that is the epilogue to Fljotavik, the two songs together making Med Sud's most sorrowful moment, though it still comes with a touch of hope. All Alright ends things on a similar note, slow, sad, and faintly uplifting.

It's rare that a band can successfully reinvent itself with each album, but Sigur Rós has continued just that tradition, achieving rather spectacular results with Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust. The album strips away almost all of the things that are trademark Sigur Rós, yet what remains is an excellent album that is still entirely Sigur Rós.