Blog peer pressure is a dangerous thing...

So, I finally bit the bullet and added my "playlist" of music to the sidebar, which I've taken the liberty of calling my "Choice Cuts." These are albums I'm currently listening to either in my car, on my computer, or on my iPod (or, in the case of Picaresque, on my record player). Some are new releases, but some are albums from last year that I didn't get a chance to listen to until now. In anticipation of Zero 7's new album The Garden (which will hopefully see a May release date here in the States), I bought their last album, When it Falls, on iTunes for $9.90. Not a bad deal.

I also saw Ice Age: The Meltdown last night and, I gotta say, if it wasn't for the continuing adventures of Scrat and his attempts to snag an acorn, I would've hated the movie. I just didn't care about any of the characters this time around. I also think that this is the first time a children's film has made sex an integral part of the plot, and doesn't just use it as innuendo, a la Shrek. Granted, the film does have a generous amount of sexual innuendo, but when there's nothing on the surface of the story to disguise it, is it really innuendo anymore? I'm talking specifically of the relationship between Manny the Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano) and Ellie (voiced by Queen Latifah), a mammoth who thinks she's a possum. When Latifah was interviewed on "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart showed a brief clip from the film and it was blatantly obvious to me that the film (or at least that scene in particular) was not trying to appeal to kids. No wonder computer animated films are in decline; they've lost their target audience.

If you'd like to see what Blue Sky Studios, the company that made the Ice Age films, made before they got picked up by 20th Century Fox, check out Bunny, which won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. Fun Fact: Chris Wedge, the writer and director of Bunny, provides the voice of Scrat.