Hercules and Love Affair’s “Blind” tops our list.

2008 is drawing to a close here in California, and in the spirit of clearing our plates and looking forward to 2009, here are the top 10 songs of the year as selected by yours truly and music blogger Alina Xu. Each selection is accompanied by either the official music video (rare; only if you’re lucky), a YouTube video with the song but not an official video (likely) or a link to the song on Imeem (only happens once!). Happy New Year everybody, and here’s to the best of 2008! (Click here to read more…)

I’m up in Big Bear for a few days, and the other night I got an email from my editor with a link to a story that I want to share with you.

The story, “‘Don’t Let Me Drown’” Headed to Sundance,” summarizes the life and work of two Californian filmmakers, Maria Topete and Cruz Angeles, now married, and focuses on their latest film, “Don’t Let Me Drown,” a love story set in a post 9/11 New York, which has been selected as a candidate for the prestigious Grand Jury Prize at the annual Sundance Film Festival held in Utah. (Click here to read more…)

Grizzly Bear

Now that the year-end-listmaking madness has (mostly) died down, maybe we could start talking about releases to get pumped up for in 2009? Stereogum recently compiled a nice list of 20 albums, to which I’d also add Liars, the National, Bat for Lashes, Andrew Bird, Franz Ferdinand, Bone Thugs n Harmony, and lots more. Some of these are coming up disturbingly quickly (Animal Collective in 3 weeks?!!) and new material that’s been debuted from bands like AC and Grizzly Bear sounds promising. Here’s hoping next year is a, um, better year for music than this one was (not that 2008 lacked its strong points, of course).

Image Source: Ohmpark

Hey all, I hope you’ve been having a nice break so far.

On my flight home, I sat next to an ex-Air Force man and he told me about this video (or movie, really) some guys made in their attempt to blow the collective “conspiracies” of  the last 10 or so years out into the open. How well it is accomplished is for you to decide.

It’s by no means a breaking video (it came out summer of ‘07), but interesting nonetheless.

The aptly named “Zeitgeist.”

Where did the ‘The Dark Knight’ sit for individual writers?

Here we present to you lists of the top movies and albums of the year for our writers who came up with such numbered lists. Though the official top 10 list for The Daily Californian was determined through a forum in which our writers debated and ultimately decided our choices, these lists serve to demonstrate the diverse tastes that went into those top 10s. (Click here to read more…)

Gus Van Sant’s biopic ‘Milk’ impressed critics nationwide this year.

Truth be told, I had my share of doubts about American cinema this year. Looking past the incredible promise of a certain batch of mainstream works, it was difficult to discern what could make 2008 an extra special one for cinephiles, especially with the onset of equally qualified films from Europe and Asia: Cannes Palme d’Or-winning “The Class”, Matteo Garrone’s neo-gangster epic “Gomorrah”, Wang Xiaoshuai’s shattering family drama “In Love We Trust”, et cetera. It appeared, early on, that American movies would once again be trumped on the international stage by their foreign counterparts.

My other chief worry was that this year would surely falter in the wake of last year’s uniquely North American excellence: After all, it would be difficult for any year to follow up what 2007 offered us. I was so impressed by Todd Haynes’ metaphysical tone poem “I’m Not There” that I placed it atop my year-end list, after a lengthy inner debate that veered between that film and David Cronenberg’s equally impressive “Eastern Promises”; but the good stuff didn’t stop there. P.T. Anderson’s elegiac vision and Daniel Day-Lewis’ barnstorming performance in “There Will Be Blood” left me reeling, and both David Fincher’s “Zodiac” and the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” created lasting impressions and broke new ground in terms of depicting the elemental forces of fear and tension in modern society.

So what was the outcome of all this fearful, pessimistic theorizing on my part? That this season’s offerings would pale in comparison to those from last year’s American renaissance. That 2008 < 2007.

Or was it? (Click here to read more…)

This is a song that I play every Christmas day, but this year it seems to resonate more than ever. It’s a song called “Happy Christmas (War is Over),” by the great John Lennon.

From all of us here at Arts: It’s What’s for Blog, happy holidays.

If you’ve seen any sort of romantic comedy featuring Reese Witherspoon or Vince Vaughn, do not feel obligated to see “Four Christmases,” because you’ve already seen it before: Cloyingly cute Witherspoon plays a strong and feminine brainiac; Vaughn challenges himself to portray a good-humored guy with commitment issues. Even with its trite rom-com cookie-cutter characters, it has its moments of chaotic hilarity. These are fabricated in such an uncanny framework you may find yourself balking at the screen in shock and inspired to make resolutions for the New Year (”May I trust my instincts next holiday season and resist the gag-me-with-a-spoon cutesy chick flicks!”), as well as to count your blessings. After an hour and a half of “Four Christmases,” I am particularly thankful for the following reasons:

1)   I do not have an aunt that chucked my friends and me around an inflatable castle jumping bed in tender formative childhood years.

2)   I do not have a niece that chews on peed on pregnancy tests. 

(Click here to read more…)

So I managed to get my hands on a screener copy of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and in my office as blogger I feel like I have some sort of 21st century citizen-journalist right to share it with you.

If you know nothing about this movie, it’s an Oscar and Golden Globe darling, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, about Pitt’s character, the titular Benjamin Button, who is born quite symbolically on the eve WWI ended as an old man and lives his life backwards through senility to infancy. Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I know you may be anxious, so I’ll start out by saying that it’s not bad. I’m not sure it deserves all the press and Oscar speculation, but the film, as an artistic whole, is good. It’s just the pieces and presentation that suck.

On my way home (I saw the movie in the context of a multi-family dinner/movie night), I came up with an apt analogy to describe seeing this film:

It’s like going to the Hollywood Bowl (I’m in SoCal now) and taking in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, except rather than play a symphony, they play two or three measures from the first bridge in a loop for two and a half hours (the length of “Button”). (Click here to read more…)

Winter break has finally breathed its chilly relief down the back of my neck after several painful weeks spent preparing for finals. Now that I’m stuck at home and final/dorm-distraction free, what am I to do with all my free time? Catch up on all the movies I didn’t believe in paying full cost to see! Disney’s “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” is among this honored number. (Click here to read more…)