like pagan and/or dark music?

Check out today's Wild Hunt post. It includes a short video of Faith & The Muse currently in concert, links to other performers from the Faith & the Muse shows, and a link to his A Darker Shade of Pagan top ten pagan albums for 2009. ADSOP is my favorite music podcast these days.

Tasty!

*The Secret of Kells*

was unexpectedly good! Yes a kid's movie, but not a stupid American kid's movie, if you know what I mean. :-) It has humor, but it's not a comedy. It's perhaps a quest story. It follows a young boy who lives with his uncle (who is very afraid of Viking raiders, and is making a great wall) in a monastery. A monk comes, bearing the Book of Iona (which will one day be the Book of Kells). The boy ventures into the forest, meets a fairy/goddess, has adventures, takes risks, grows up. The fairy is unpredictable, adorable but not saccharine. 

The use of art and animation in The Secret of Kells totally surprised me. Celtic art is subtle in nature, right there in the vines and boughs of the woods, then it dances on the page. I love that it's a movie where religion underlies some of what is going on, but it only underlies, it is never brought to the front. Some of the animation is 2D, some 3D. Some of it  is very simple, yet entirely original and effective. 

If you like Celtic art, good kid fantasy, or are interested in animation, go see this movie. Oh yeah, the soundtrack was excellent!