Away from her (2008)

A heart-wrenchingly beautiful film about a couple coming to terms with Alzheimer's. Julie christie superb. But almost everything about this film was handled with sensitivity and raw humanity, and yet it found a way to transcend that to reach something more ethereal. What with the Auden and the canadian winter. Fiona is my new favourite name for a girl. And this is definitely one of the top films ever. As a sidenote, I'm typing this on my new iPod touch haha it is brilliant.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

one of the most fun records ive heard this year, a very invigorating sound that one can't really put a finger on. straight off they come through on mansford roof and oxford comma with the clean tones of african pop and the seemind everpresence of a snare drum in the background, and it is precisely this combination that really puts them apart from bands like maximo park or the long blondes. in terms of tunes and pickups, even song structure in some cases, vampire weekend manage to sound oddly like clap your hands say yeah, except (rather uncannily in the words) with the acerbity of the strokes and with less random droning.

happy lyrics all around with some of the most delightful imagery. and, so witty! haha.

no excuse to be so callous

dress yourself in bleeding madras

charm your way across the khyber pass

tracks of note: oxford comma, m79, walcott, the kids dont stand a chance

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

a quiet film set in a small canadian town that examines the fallout from grief and loss with astounding clarity. a schoolbus accident that results in the deaths of most of the children in the small town is tied in with the personal vendetta of a lawyer carrying the baggage of a broken family. how to resolve a tragedy? the characters of the film - the bus-driver who survives only to be tormented by guilt, parents, siblings who have lost their young ones and also their futures, all struggle with varying ways of dealing with their loss only to despair at its pervadence.

low-level pain, man.

There Will Be Blood (2008)

another epic kinda film. won daniel-day lewis an oscar, which he was pretty obviously gunning for, and also deserved. the film felt quite old and slow in general but i guess the surprising thing is how many memorable scenes there were. the eli character was quite genius, as was his son. great acting, great cinematography. but the best thing about the film was still the final 15 minutes, with the scene in the study with hw and in the bowling alley with eli. a strangely brilliant film in so many ways.

one disconcerting thing though is how daniel conned the town into buying his dig-oil-for-better-economy line. its like all of us are little abels and all the little elis are in church or in prison.

I Feel It All - Feist

i have a strange thing for this video.

The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting - Milan Kundera

there are so many gems of narratives in this that about 10 times while reading the book i came upon a passage i was determined to write it down and document it somewhere, but i never did. and now i can't remember where those passages are.

in essence, the book is really all about laughter, and forgetting. through 7 loosely connected narratives kundera gives new meaning to the phrase variations on a theme. at times while reading it i felt like i was listening to a beethoven sonata that wasn't actually there. kundera finds exuberance in the most unlikely places, the big nose of some long ago lover, a mother remembering a poem she recited on a school stage once, and inescapable pathos in more hopeful moments, a father unable to speak to a son trying to make up for lost time, a widow finally able to forget her husband. rapidly the author and his protagonists seem to be weighed down by their own comedy, and attempts at satire seem only able to reveal irreversible disappointment.

only in the book's later chapters does the author reveal the fundamental parameters of that feeling at the very centre of each one of his stories - that word litost. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery. "

"Facing her are six long necks topped by tiny heads with straight bills opening and closing soundlessly. She does not understand them. She does not know whether the ostriches are threatening her, warning her exhorting her, or imploring her. And because she does not know, she feels immense anguish. She fears for the golden ring (the tuning fork of silence) and keeps it convulsively in her mouth.

Tamina will never know what those great birds came to tell her. But i know. They did not come to warn her, scold her or threaten her. They are not at all interested in her. Each one of them cane to tell her about itself. Each one to tell her how it had eaten, how it ahd slept, how it had run up to the fence and seen her behind it. That it had spent its important childhood in the important village of Rourou. That its important orgasm had lasted 6 hours. That it had seen a woman strolling behind the fence and she was wearing a shawl. Then it had gone swimming, that it had fallen ill and then recovered. That when it was young it rode a bike and that today it had gobbled up a sack of grass. They are standing in front of Tamina and talking to her all at once, vehemently, insistently, aggressively, because there is nothing more important than what they want to tell her."

Persepolis (2008)

my favourite animated film in years. i went in thinking it would be making political statements about iranian misgovernance, but that turned out only partially true, and there were points while watching the film when i thought, boy are those ayatollahs going to be pissed. but iran isn't really the main thing. the film actually takes an entirely humanistic view on cultural identity, civilisational dislocation. the everpresent jutting edges that come with forcefitting oneself. going somewhere and finding out that there are significant things about the place that you can never be comfortable with. yet at the same time accumulating such habits that would render you out-of-place at home. that hit a spot with me i think, but for now i have somewhere i can confidently call home. i hope i always will.

No Country For Old Men (2008)

one of the most gripping films i've watched, ever. something the destitution of the film's texan setting only serves to exacerbate. this coupled with the too conspicuous absence of the thriller tension music intended to build atmosphere but inadvertently tells everyone that something dramatic is going to happen, creates a film that seems to roll on unflinching while leaving audiences to reel in the wake of its inevitable, yet almost fickle brutality. i watched this film in my room on my laptop, and still had to hit the pause button a few times so i could remember to breathe. intense stuff.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

this is technically a 2007 phenomenon, but who cares no one's going to draw the line. panda bear is like spaced-out beach boys plus brian eno haha. with better rhythm. this guy is from the nyc band animal collective, although he is based in portugal. and he claims to not listen to much music at all. maybe thankfully, cuz what we have here is some of the best and most original stuff to come out of, well, anywhere, in 2007.

tracks deserving mention:
comfy in nautca
take pills
bros
goodgirl/carrots

Radiohead - In Rainbows

only 2 months into the year and i already know that this is going to be one of my favourite records. a straighter record than theyve done for some time, probably since amnesiac. its easy to draw comparisons between radiohead albums, to say that one is more accessible than another, more experimental, whatever. but im trying to avoid doing that, since theyre such different records that make me feel so different anyway. but i have to say this will definitely be a firm favourite, in time to come.

tracks deserving mention: all

in the past 2 months i have, at some point or another, been in love with every track.