We’ve run into a real string of bad movies lately, haven’t we? Not that I thought Parasomnia was going to be any different, and not that you haven’t come to expect bad movie write-ups from me, but when you hoe the low budget road, there’s usually some awesome surprises waiting for you. Besides, this one was written and directed by William Malone, the same dude who did House on Haunted Hill and Feardotcom (yeah, okay, also not great but at least these were legitimate theatrical releases and starred people like Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, and Stephen Dorff), so I suppose one could gleam a glimmer of horror hope from this one. But all hope was quickly dashed and there weren’t any surprises waiting for me. Only a mundane, low budget fantasy lost in a shitty dream world of love, blood, and madness.

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Avantasia
The Wicked Symphony
Nuclear Blast

Avantasia
Angel of Babylon
Nuclear Blast

No disrespect to Cathedral’s recent double album, The Guessing Game, but Avantasia’s monumental box set featuring two new albums, The Wicked Symphony and Angel of Babylon, is easily the most impressive release so far this year. When I say impressive, I am of course referring to the scope and magnitude of Avantasia’s symphonic power metal, which is at once audacious, indulgent, theatrical, and fantastical. We’re usually only presented with Avantasia’s larger-than-life heavy metal fairy tales one album at a time, but Tobias Sammet must be feeling awfully courageous these days, finishing off the last two parts of The Scarecrow Saga/The Wicked Trilogy (the first part being the 2008 album, The Scarecrow) in one fell swoop. But I suppose if anyone can pull it off, it’s Sammet and his cast of usual suspects, who have gathered once again to fill their roles in this epic and evil installment of Avantasia’s latest production(s).

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Any time Jemaine Clement, as Dr. Ronald Chevalier, esteemed science fiction author, opened his mouth to speak in Gentlemen Broncos (2009), I started laughing; his deep, conceited tone, his nonsensical cosmic ramblings, and his penchant for all things sci-fi (“May the glistening chrome of the Borg Queen shine upon us all” he quotes from Star Trek). Hell, any time he appeared on screen, dressed in his faux 80s, shamanistic, turtle-necked, Stetson garb, with a thick salad atop his head, a blue tooth in his ear (which he never once uses), and the type of manicured beard you only see on dudes in old cigarette ads, I laughed. Mainly because it’s Jemaine Clement, but also because Chevalier is the cream of the Jared Hess character crop. Hess, who’s also responsible for Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, has created yet another quirky universe inhabited by odd, awkward, out-of-touch loners, including Chevalier and Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano), a young science fiction writer, whose latest creation, The Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years, has been pilfered by Chevalier and turned into a best-selling book.

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