This is just amazing – Spider-Man 2 done entirely in action-packed Lego-mation. Truly, I am in awe. The creators, Spite Your Face studios, also have lots of other cool stuff on their website. Check it all out.

Not all new concert announcements, but some changes and clarifications to previously announced ones, in chronological order:

Detroit’s Slumber Party is no longer opening for Camera Obscura July 23rd at the Horseshoe. Instead, Montreal’s Pony Up! will support. It’s too bad because I was pretty excited to see Slumber Party – the stuff up on their website sounds great. I’m considerably less chuffed about Pony Up! – their website samples aren’t doing anything for me. Sigh.

The Emily Haines solo show at the El Mocambo on July 24 just graduated from “maybe” to “must-see” status – Amy Millan of Stars is also on the bill. Tickets $10 advance.

Old 97’s will be at Lee’s Palace September 12, and not the Opera House. This is good because I hate the Opera House and I love Lee’s Palace. And I can walk to Lee’s Palace whereas I’d have to take all sorts of crazy transit to get to the Opera House. Tickets will be on sale sometime in late July. Their new album Drag It Up is in stores July 27.

The legendary British pop singer, songwriter and producer Nick Lowe will also be at Lee’s Palace on Setpember 15, tickets $23.50. He was the man behind the boards for all of Elvis Costello’s early stuff from My Aim Is True through Trust and wrote “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding”, if you need a brief CV.

The Magnolia Electric Co. or whatever Jason Molina is calling himself that week will be at the Horseshoe on October 2, tickets $10.50. This one will certainly sell out. I hope I’m in town for the show. Pitchfork has some info about what else the band is up to this Fall.

Got my Wilco tickets yesterday – paid a little more than maybe I would have if I tried another outlet but I definitely didn’t want to run the risk of missing out while trying to save a couple bucks. I think the pre-sale sold out in under half an hour – but there probably weren’t that many tickets in their allotment. Either way, I am hooked up.

P-Fork reports that Neutral Milk Hotel will be the next subject in the 33-1/3 series of books (wherein authors or artists write a book about an album that changed their life or something). I hadn’t looked at the full list of books in the series before now, and there’s some intriguing stuff there (Alan Moore on Jethro Tull? Whoo!). Has anyone read any of the books in this series? Worth hunting down? Update: The Boston Phoenix has a review of the book series. From LHB.

Three of the four principal roles in the Fantastic Four film have been cast. So they’re NOT going for big-name recognition, I see…

Part two of The Onion interviewing The Kids In The Hall is now up.

Chaos. Everything is chaos. Work is up to my eyeballs, trying to get ready for my trip is all (wave hands frantically in the air), and I picked the wrong week to be trying to sell off my excess guitar equipment. Chaos. Some people thrive on chaos. I don’t think I’m one of them. But I did pick up this swanky new backpack for the trip. It’s got lots of pockets! Pockets are key.

np – Sea Ray / Stars At Noon

Broken Social Scene have been added to the lineup for the Olympic Island concert on August 7 at with Sloan, Sam Roberts and a slew of others. They had originally been connected with some Modest Mouse tour dates in the US, but those seem to have quietly been taken off the board.

Britain’s Hope Of The States will be at Lee’s Palace on July 26th, tickets $13. You may have heard of them as their guitarist died in the studio this past January while recording their debut album, The Lost Riots. Michelle, whose site is now back up, says they sound like Godspeed with vocals and recommends them. Okay.

Also from the UK, Gomez are making up their Lollapalooza date August 6 at the Opera House Phoenix.

Check out the video for The Shins’ “Kissing The Lipless” at MTV.com. No world conquering penguins like in the “So Says I” vid, unfortunately. From Slatch.

Billboard has some info on a couple of reissues being released by Rhino on August 3. You’ve probably already heard about the upcoming reissue of The Velvet Underground’s Live At Max’s Kansas City – In case you were looking for specifics on the release or a reason to replace the 1972 edition you already have, here’s the skinny.

Also coming out that day are the next batch of Elvis Costello reissues. Double-disc remastered editions of Almost Blue, Goodbye Cruel World and Kojak Variety will be out on August 3 – details here.

Grandaddy are releasing a DVD of their bearded selves doing various bearded things on October 26.

Update: My server is having some hiccups that have disabled the photo galleries. Trying to get that sorted out now.

np – Bob Dylan / Blood On The Tracks

Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance has a couple tracks from Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley’s forthcoming solo record Grey Will Fade, coming out August 9 in the UK (is there a North American release? Anyone? I’m a little behind the curve on this one). And man, is “Summer” aptly titled – catchy stuff for the season of the sun. Hooks galore, cute girl, ripping guitar – what could be better? I was never big on Ash, but I may have to pick this record up. You can also get an mp3 of the first single “Kim Wilde” off her website. And finally, Guitar Geek has a schematic of her guitar rig… if anyone cares. Besides me.

The lord high nutbar of them all (and pop genius, yes) Brian Wilson will be touring this Fall in support of the release of The Beach Boys’ Smile on September 28. Look for a Toronto date on October 7 at a venue to be determined. In the meantime, you can read this New York Times interview with the man (registration required) – he doesn’t like Summer. Who knew?

According to the House Of Blues, tickets for the Wilco show at the Mod Club August 3rd go on sale today and will run you $35 before shit-fuck charges. The paranoid in me wants to get the tickets ASAP, charges be damned, while the pragmatist thinks that Rotate This will have tickets by tomorrow, and since the show hasn’t even been announced in the mainstream media outlets, there’s not going to be a run on tickets in these first couple days. But both sides agree, frosted mini-wheats aren’t just for kids. And that I’m going to have my tickets one way or another before I head out west.

Update: Tickets did not go on sale today. They will go on sale through Musictoday tomorrow and the remainder through Ticketmaster on Thursday. Rotate This will have tickets on sale Thursday at 11AM, but recommends that anyone who wants to be sure to get tickets buy them online.

Update 2: From Wilcoworld.net: “TICKETS FOR TORONTO, GO ON SALE WEDNESDAY, JULY 7 AT 12 NOON EDST VIA WILCOWORLD, AND WILL GO ON SALE VIA TICKETMASTER AS SOON AS OUR ALLOTMENT IS SOLD. TICKETS FOR TORONTO, GO ON SALE WEDNESDAY, JULY 7 AT 12 NOON EDST VIA WILCOWORLD, AND WILL GO ON SALE VIA TICKETMASTER ON THURSDAY AT 10 A.M.”

MusicTap is reporting that the new Fountains Of Wayne album has a tenative release date scheduled for… April 5, 2005. So, uh, get in line now. I guess.

That Saddam is such a joker, even while he’s on the stand. Lowculture has some fun with the same pics.

np – Yo La Tengo / And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Dirty Pretty Things is the latest film from director Stephen Frears, and is a return to the darker, grittier tine he’s known for after making the music geek comedy High Fidelity (though you could argue that record store owners belong just as much to the underbelly of society as anyone else). This time, he’s telling the story of illegal aliens working under the radar in west end London. A quick synopsis – Okwe is a Nigerian exile working as a cab driver in the day and a hotel clerk at night, while Senay is a Turkish maid at the same hotel being targeted by immigration and a chance discovery in the hotel one night embroils them in an organ smuggling ring. Got it? Good. The film is a pretty low-key but tense thriller, being more about the characters and how they handle the situations they find themselves in rather than the situations themselves, if that makes any sense. It succeeds mainly on very strong performances by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, though the supporting cast is excellent as well. It’s a good watch and raises some interesting moral questions for both the characters and the viewer. Recommended.

Aging Welsh agit-rockers The Manic Street Preachers will release their seventh album Life Blood on October 4th in the UK. It was produced by longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti. More info here. I used to be quite into the Manics but lost interest of late, but it’s a slow day so this qualifies as news.

It’s funny – for weeks now I’ve been complaining about the ever-growing backlog of reading material that sits on my coffee table, waiting to be gotten to. Books, magazines, comics, the daily newspaper, it just kept coming and I barely had the time to keep it from overflowing, let alone work the pile down. Well thanks to this four-day weekend, I have almost eliminated the pile – just in time for me to realize that I am going to need a good supply of reading material for my trip, as I’ll be spending a fair amount of time on planes, trains and ferries. So I have had to stop the reading so as to at least keep enough stuff on hand to get me through the flight out there. Which means I now have nothing to read…

np – Built To Spill / Ancient Melodies Of The Future

“…And your dog refused to look at it.” Looks like I’m going to inadvertantly have a Galaxie 500 theme running through the blog this week (check out the mp3 of the week if you haven’t already). Or at least for today. That’s okay, there’s worse fates. Happy 4th of July to our American cousins.

Last year for their 10th anniversary issue, Magnet compiled a list of their top 60 albums from 1993-2003. They’ve just now gotten around to putting it online. Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age nabs the cover for the new issue out soon.

The Toronto Star has a piece on how the digital age is affecting comic book creators and publishers. Myself, I don’t like reading traditional comics on my computer – the aspect ratio is all wrong, the pages take too long to load if they’re at a decent resolution and I miss the Charles Atlas ads. However, fellows like Keaner.net, whom Kate introduced me to at The Beguiling yesterday at Free Comic Book Day, and local dude M@B are making good use of the online medium with sort-of comic blogs. I guess I just like my Spider-Man on Mando paper and mylar-bagged.

My West Coast trip is beginning to take some shape. After flying into Vancouver, I’m going to ferry out to Victoria for a couple days, then ferry down to Seattle and hostel it for a night or two, then Amtrak will get me back to Vancouver. All cheaper and probably nearly as fast as driving would. I figure I’ll still get to see the coastline from the train. I do need a new backpack to replace my ratty old one from university though, and am right now browsing through MEC’s selection. Do I really need one with an ice axe tube? I don’t know, better safe than sorry I guess.

I haven’t really started planning WHAT I’m going to do in these respective cities once I arrive, though. I figure the transportation and accomodations are more pressing issues. Here’s a question – if I’m going to arrive in Seattle at the ferry pier around 11:30 AM on Tuesday, is scheduling a departure at 6:00 PM the next day not giving myself enough time to have a decent wander around the downtown? Or should I plan to depart the next morning? Though now that I think about it, I don’t know what I’d do with that extra evening – if things close up at night, particularly on a Wednesday, then I may be better off just heading back to Vancouver that night. There’s no shows I’m interested in from what I can tell. Hmm. Oh, and where are the good record stores in Seattle?

np – Television / Television