Samuel Van Eerden
Sam Van Eerden is an award-winning author and freelance journalist with published works that have appeared in dozens of online and print publications worldwide. Sam generally writes articles dealing with current trends in culture, technology and the internet.
Contact Information
Articles by Samuel Van Eerden
February 17, 2009
The top 25 best songs of 2008, broken down and individually discussed.
April 24, 2008
Listen to Switchfoot's brand new song "This Is Home" which they recorded for the new "Chronicles of Narnia" film: "Prince Caspian" which debuts on May 16.
March 21, 2008
Want to watch every game of March Madness whenever you want? Well now you can -- free and legally!
February 06, 2008
The teaser trailer for M Night Shyamalan's new movie "The Happening" debuts online, but will this R-rated eco-thriller resurrect the director's plummeting career?
November 27, 2007
To say the Philadelphia Eagles vs. New England Patriots Sunday night match-up was a David vs. Goliath of our times would be an understatement. The Patriots have been a monolith of aggressive domination all year long, coming into last night's game with a 10-0 record and a top-ranked offense which is...
June 15, 2007
The alternative rock group Lifehouse hails from Malibu, California with their fourth studio album "Who We Are," which hits stores June 19. Up to this point, the band had only made their lead single "First Time" available for streaming on their myspace (www.myspace.com/lifehouse). That song is a re...
June 10, 2007
I've written about this before, but as you all know, the internet is a vast series of tubes and keeps on pumping out new things. The music industry especially is in a constant state of evolution, changing and adapting, trying to find its own; and at the center of it all, is the internet (propelled ...
April 05, 2007
The Christian music industry is notorious for claiming secular artists as "theirs." Back in 2003 in an Entertainment Weekly interview with Evanescence, vocalist Amy Lee said of the band's album "Fallen:" "We're actually high on the Christian charts, and I'm like, What the f*** are we even doing the...
March 29, 2007
In recent interviews with MTV and horror-movies.ca, Eli Roth talked extensively about his upcoming films Hostel 2 and Cell (the Stephen King novel-to-movie adaptation). With just two major film releases under his belt (Cabin Fever and Hostel), Eli Roth is already shaking things up big-time in tinse...
March 07, 2007
The gems of filmody are the movies that don’t allow you to just watch actors and wonder what their character is going to do, but force you to look introspectively at yourself and decide what you are going to do about the film.
I have seen many, many movies in my life, and in most cases, the only ...
February 06, 2007
So were the paraphrased words of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in an open letter to Bill Gates, wherein he begged the Microsoft co-founder to "show mercy and withdraw your complaint against Alexander Ponosov." The prosecution is attempting to not only fire Ponosov--who is a teacher at a mi...
February 02, 2007
A couple days after rumors popped up (facilitated by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) that Brett Favre wanted the Green Bay Packers to actively pursue Oakland wide receiver Randy Moss (yeah, the guy who mooned the fans in Lambeau in a 2005 playoff game), the Iron Man, himself announced to a Mississip...
February 02, 2007
On Sunday, a combined force of US, UK, and Iraqi troops won a decisive battle against more than 700 terrorists near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Iraqi Security Forces obtained intelligence that the large group of militants known as the "Soldiers of Heaven" had gathered and were planning to raid t...
December 30, 2006
As of this moment, I believe there is only one video publicly available of Saddam Hussein's recent execution. The video was taken by an Iraqi with a cell phone, and records the entire hanging in a 2 1/2 minute clip, though Saddam's actual death takes a fraction of a second.
This was a dictator wh...
December 19, 2006
Several months ago I wrote an article called "Alternatives to p2p file-sharing." In it, I listed many legal ways that music lovers can listen to the tunes they love without paying for them. An article of that sort is really never complete; theinternet keeps finding new ways to make the music indus...
December 18, 2006
In the December 25th issue of Time (which hits newsstands Monday), the magazine selected its annual "person" of the year: YOU. Or...more precisely all of us. First of all, don't let their selection get to your head; according to the magazine's accompanying article "people who mattered," it seems o...
November 09, 2006
For those of us who follow motion picture music--the works of composers like John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Ennio Morricone--the news that Basil Poledouris had passed away yesterday, was a great shock. And a sad revelation.
Poledouris, the USC grad and composer of famous soundtracks like Conan ...
November 06, 2006
Last night we experienced the end of a cultural phenomena. Or at least roughly 2.7 million of us did. That was the unofficial Nielson rating for the television show The O.C. In case you're unfamiliar with the adolescent soap opera, it's aired on Fox since August 5th, 2006, in which time it became...
October 03, 2006
On Friday, September 29, Republican Congressman from the state of Florida—Mark Foley—resigned from his position in the House of Representatives. The decision came immediately after ABC News got a hold of Foley’s sexually-inappropriate correspondence with underage male congressional pages. Since t...
October 03, 2006
In the past, I'd always been a talk show fan, especially of the right-wing gurus Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Unfortunately, I've observed an alarming movement amongst these popular conservative pundits where they are selling out to the current (enormous) Republican agenda of republican-ism...NOT...
September 20, 2006
Ever since the original Napster, conventional media—like big name record companies and (in the last few years) movie studios—have been under attack. And it’s not just the decline of the “hit” either (as documented in Chris Anderson’s excellent new book “The Long Tail”), but rather, the rise of peer...
September 12, 2006
Just a few days after I reported that Myspace was going to take a big chunk out of iTunes’ digital music retail business, the store strikes back by offering up videos through their store.
iTunes is once again ahead of the game with this latest media offering, beating out competitors AOL and Amazo...
September 10, 2006
This is going to be a different type of article than what I normally write. I’ll warn you right off the bat; call this a rant, or pass it off as the senseless ramblings of an American teenager if you want, but I have to get some things off my chest.
Two years ago I was in an American History cla...
September 08, 2006
www.Myspace.com is already the sixth-most popular website in the world (third in the U.S.). It contains over 106 million user accounts with a reported 230,000 new ones added daily. The social networking behemoth has completely squashed its competitors (such as xanga and friendster) and now account...
September 02, 2006
Maybe you’re new to the world-wide-web and you’ve never heard of the viral phenomenon youtube (quick—check for a pulse!). Last week I wrote an in-depth article on the 18-month-old website, detailing its rise from a fledging start-up domain to what has now become the 13th most popular website in the...
August 30, 2006
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” didn’t make big waves at the box office when it was released in the fall of ‘93. Perhaps it was the macabre storyline that kept parents from taking their children to see it, while the concept of animation (stop-motion, no less!) scared the ‘big-kids’ away. Whatever...
August 26, 2006
I was reading through the Cue section in our local paper The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, yesterday, when I came across a listing for the (in)famous ‘Family Values Tour.’ Despite its name, the ensemble of alternative and metal rockers contains anything but family-friendly fair. Korn and Deftones ...
August 16, 2006
. . . In the virtual sense, of course. But when you take into account the fact that this site has only been around for 18 months, it’s pretty darn amazing that this website has not only become one of the most popular spots on the internet, but a revolutionary staple-mark of contemporary society.
...
August 15, 2006
Technology is growing in huge strides. The “geek” is no longer an unloved member of society. He may be mocked and teased for his bug-eyed glasses and unkempt hair, but underneath the stereotype, he is revolutionizing the world, one kilobyte at a time.
And the rest of us marvel.
Sometimes, th...
August 14, 2006
No one has ever claimed that Hollywood is a catalyst for morality. There have been bright spots throughout the movie industry’s long and storied history, but even in the so-called ‘golden years’ of film, decadence reigned. (Thomas Doherty has written an interesting book on the subject, entitled ‘P...
August 11, 2006
Has anyone heard about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade on July 28 when he was pulled over for speeding and drunk driving?
I thought so.
Yeah, the media has pretty much turned that incident into one of the biggest news stories of recent weeks. By this time, Mr. Gibson is probably praying for ...
July 09, 2006
I was expecting a big first weekend for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (the second in the ‘Pirates’ trilogy), but I don’t think anyone—myself included—predicted an opening three day haul of over 132 million dollars. Opening midnight Friday morning (on 2,100 screens) and later that day w...
June 29, 2006
I shelled out nine bucks last night and settled into a packed showing of Superman Returns at the local Marcus UltraScreen. Early reviews and trailers depicted lots of special effects, a couple story twists, and compelling acting by Brandon Routh (in his third film role). I noted Producer Bryan Singe...
June 29, 2006
2005 was the first year since 1991 that the year's total domestic box office gross was less than the year preceding it. Last year saw a drop of 6.2 percent over 2004.
The number isn't entirely revealing though, because ticket sales are the real pulse behind the box office heart-rate, and statist...