Bolt (voice of Travolta) is a celebrity dog and the star of a hit TV show where his amazing feats and powers draw big ratings. But when a mail-room mix-up finds him roaming free on the streets of New York City, the wonder dog will have to learn to rely on his actual strengths -- as well as his new friends, an abandoned housecat and a starry-eyed hamster -- in order to find his way back home to his owner and co-star, Penny (voice of Cyrus).
In her new town of Forks, Washington, misfit teenager Bella Swan (Stewart) falls for her alluring and mysterious classmate, Edward Cullen (Pattinson). As it turns out, Edward belongs to a lineage of vampires, although he doesn't fit the typical vampire mold. As their passion reaches dizzying heights, can Edward resist his natural urges, and will he be able to defend Bella from his family members who have come for her?
Metermaid Les Franken (Rapaport) has an unexpected reaction to the anti-depressant he's taking as part of a clinical trial; suddenly convinced he's a superhero, he embraces his new powers, dons a homemade costume, and hits the streets to protect the citizens of his city. the corporation behind the pill, fearing bad publicity about their drug, set out to bring down our hero, who in turn hones his abilities to fight off his new arch-nemeses.
Pandora.com: Your Own Personal DJ
A few years ago, I was happily snurfing (surfing the web while you are talking on the phone) at my local community college between classes when I stumbled upon an ad for Pandora: Radio from the Music Genome Project. I like to look things up on the web and “have a knack for those kinds of things” (as a friend says who also claims that I can find anything out via the web, ha) I explored it.
Pandora once described itself as “your own personal DJ.” Though I was a little cynical about this since I am exceptionally picky about my musical tastes and having developed a moderate distaste of over popularized mainstream music, I decided to give it a try.
It asks for very little information from you aside from a birth date, an e-mail address and a password. Once I logged in, I was able to type in a name of a song or artist that I liked. (Or you can also choose from 17 different genres and 133 sub genres if you don’t know where to start.) For example, ‘Lacrymosa’ (by Evanescence) is one my ‘stations’ that I have. When you do a search it creates what is called a station that plays similar artists and songs to that of what you typed in. Through several stations I have found bands like Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, Epica, Within Temptation, In Tenebris, Plumb, Octavia Sperati, Battlelore, Eyes Set to Kill, Naio Ssaion and Sirenia.
When you create a station a song is played and you have different options. Thumbs up (to play more music like this), thumbs down (to never play this again) or no response (which will not change the play options of the station). It will play any song that is similar in 400 different attributes with over 2,000 focus traits of the music that you have selected inside that station. For example some of my attributes and focus traits were “subtle use of vocal harmony,” “a vocal-centric aesthetic,” “minor key tonality,” and “heavy electric rhythm guitars.”
Popular or not; the point of Pandora is to find new music for you found from music you already listen to. Since the music is streaming via a browser window there is nothing to download and is free to use. You cannot demand music to play instantly and can only skip six songs per hour because of licensing laws. So if you run out of music on one station, you can always move to another station. The point of Pandora is to introduce you to new music through your musical tastes and inputs you provide to the songs being played; and not to be your personal iTunes library.
If you are not a fan of main stream music or just looking for new bands to listen to, then this is the place for you. You can listen to Pandora at any computer anytime (given that you are within the United States). There is also an option of bookmarking favorite songs for reference and buying the CD from Amazon or iTunes.
I absolutely love this website and its service for music lovers. I listen to it more often than I should… It’s constantly on at work. I recommend it to anyone who is looking to broaden their musical library or just looking for their own personal DJ.
