Yes, it has finally happened. After two long years of waiting, Infinity Ward’s latest installement in the Call of Duty franchise, Modern Warfare 2, is finally available for purchase on retail stores everywhere. Although I’m certain there are many fans out there who have already purchased their copy and are already at home “pwning teh n00bs,” for those who haven’t picked it up yet, Gamestop is currently running an excellant deal. In return for trading in two old games when making your purchase, you can pick up a copy of MW2 for only $20. Considering the list of qualifying games is quite large and includes some surprisingly old games, this could be the perfect opportunity for some gamers to maximise the trade-in value on games they no longer play in order to save themselves a cool $40 on a new game.

In addition to the $20 Modern Warfare 2 promotion, Gamestop is also running a separate, but similar, $20 promotion on the following games:

-Halo: ODST
-Brutal Legend
-Assassin’s Creed 2
-Tekken 6
-Uncharted 2
-Dragon Age: Origins
-Smackdown vs. Raw 2010

For more details on this promotion, go here. Both promotions end 11/22.

Since it’s a bit of a dreary Monday in my area, I’m hoping today’s Monday Music will brighten up the day for those suffering from similiar weather conditions. Today’s video, “Steal from Walmart” is a slice of white boy gangsta nerdcore silliness by an artist named “Ghettosocks. The video isn’t much to look at and the song ends rather abruptly, but the lyrics are hilarious. My suggestion is that you put it on repeat and play in the background while surfing the disturbingly funny “People of Walmart” website.

Sand Serpents isn’t going to when any awards, but it’s a decent way to kill an hour and half. Despite being a B-movie, the special effects are at least several notches above the drek that normally appears on the SyFy channel every weekend and the acting was passable most of the time. The story of a group of soldiers being terrorized by giant underground earthworms in the mountains of Afghanistan is really nothing new since Kevin Bacon did is better and with a bigger budget back in the 90′s with Tremors. Still, I enjoyed myself even though I wish the film had spent a bit more time actually dealing with the titular sand serpent menace rather than spending valuable film time on increasingly repetitive battles with Taliban terrorists.

Oh, that reminds me, it was quite refreshing to watch a horror movie that didn’t bash the military or our mission in Afghanistan while still taking the time to depict the Afghani people as normal people who are NOT all terrorist sympathizers. This middle of the road approach was a nice pace to the preachy anti-war, anti-military, global warming propaganda that’s been so pervasive in the horror film industry as of late. Thankfully, it appears that you can still make a silly low budget movie these days without including that kind of retardness.

Bottom Line:

Sand Serpents is a passable B-movie that with better than average production values compared to previous SyFy channel productions. It’s not going to set your world on fire, but the unintentional camp and the lack of any sort of heavy handed political brow-beating made it far more enjoyable than I expected it to be. I suggest you watch it off Netflix’s instant queue as I did or wait for it to air on the Syfy channel again.

Final Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by: LC1
Review Format: Netflix streaming video via Xbox Live

I had actually planned to post a completely different video today, but as usual, I stumbled across something newer and more interesting as I wandered the interwebs this past weekend. In this case, while making a pit stop an eclectic music site called the “The Sixty-One,” my ears became entranced by the swirling dance rhythms and pop-ish vocals of the song, Sleepyhead. Passion Pit’s work mixes original music and lyrics to create a sound that instantly reminded me of another favorite band of mine, The Avalanches.

I had hoped to post a video for another song by Passion Pit called The Reeling, but unfortunately YouTube is not allowing me to embed it, so you’ll have to hit the hyperlink I added. The video for “The Reeling” is weird and trippy with a gritty low budget feel to it that I really liked. Plus the song itself is every bit as infectious as Sleepyhead.

To find out more about the group, Passion Pit, you can visit their website or pick up their CD, Manners, on Amazon.