buy Banlieue 13

It’s one of my favourite albums. Here’s an example of one (complete with musical accompaniment)

A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off – The Magnetic Fields

The Favor psp

Lean on Me trailer

Great Bear Rainforest video

Hat tip to Facebook friend Emma Ryman. The Day After Tomorrow move

• buy 2001 Maniacs

• Absolon download

Still Smokin trailer

Bringing Up Bobby video

download The Four Feathers

• Dodsworth full movie

Finally finished listening to the new Neko Case album, the Middle Cyclone, and I think it’s just as good as Fox Confessor, her previous album. I got pointed to this great little piece from Paste on the 17 things that Neko loves (and the corresponding feature) Here are a few highlights:

1) She’s a reader, a wide-ranging voracious reader. She tackled everything from Lynda Barry to Joseph Mitchell while recording the Middle Cyclone.

2) She loves us. By us I mean Canadians. We already kinda knew this but, aw shucks Neko, we love you back.

3) Bats!

4) John Hughes’ Weird Science.

Tom and Jerry Tales

If you can’t get enough of Ms. Case, there’s this nice profile in the New York Times too.

Catch That Kid movie

download What Women Want dvd Update: I’ve made a virtual mix cd from albums mentioned in this post. Listen to it here.

The alternate title to this post could be, “Bon Iver makes things better”

Just in case people were wondering, here’s what I listened to a lot this year. I tried my best to keep up with all the great music that came out this year. Not sure if it was me but it felt like a year built for more introspective, yet emotionally-tense music. It’s probably because I was listening to far too much Bon Iver. Here they are in alphabetical order:

Bon Iver, For Emma Forever Ago
Born Ruffians, Red Yellow & Blue Dismal movie

Blitzen Trapper, Furr

Fleet Foxes, S/T
Islands, Arm’s Way
MGMT, Oracular Spectacular

• Pokemon 4Ever movie download

She & Him, Volume One The Little Shop of Horrors buy
TV on the Radio, Dear, Science
Vampire Weekend, S/T (I can hear the groans, boos, hisses and catcalls from here!)
Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer

Honourable mentions:
Elliott Brood, Mountain Meadows
the Constantines, Kensington Heights
Okkervil River, the Stand Ins Pokémon: The Movie 2000 on dvd
Shearwater, Rook

Cast Away dvdrip A couple of things to note. Interestingly there’s only one Toronto band on the list (the Constantines and Elliott Brood made the shortlist) and the She & Him album was probably the weakest out of that batch. Zooey Deschanel, well she’s just peachy keen and kinda had to be included on the list for that reason alone.

For some weird reason, as the year went on the Talking Heads got played more often (particularly this song). A sign of the times?

My good friend Mason Wright also has a list of 50 tracks that had him hooked in 2008. He listens to far more music than I do and I implicitly trust his musical judgment. Also, the man knows how to dance.

I’ve also resurrected my last.fm account, it had been neglected for far too long.