Top 8 of 08: Music (Tracks/Albums)

Warning: This post sounds better than it reads.

Music has to be the biggest thing of 2008 for me. Making friends with His Whoreness and being introduced to the music blogosphere has had a large hand in that. Spending more time in Japan this year than 2007 and being exposed to the wonderful barrage of artists that visit these fair shores has too.

So, I figure some lists of music I happened to really enjoy this year is only fitting. Order is generally not important - it's hard enough to pick just 8 of each catgeory, let alone order them.
Bon appetit.

Top 8 "Non-Club" Songs

The Whip - Trash
The Kills - Cheep & Cheerful
Elbow - Grounds For Divorce
Portishead - Magic Doors
Jason Mraz - Details In The Fabric
Santogold - Say Aha
Ladytron - Ghosts
Grace Jones - William's Blood

Top 8 "Club" Songs

Utah Saints - Something Good 2008 (re-hash by Van She) [This could be seen as a remix, but I have enough of those and no-one actually remembers the original, so it counts]
Alex Gopher - Aurora
autokratz - Stay The Same
The Presets - My People
Kill The Noise - Hey You (Le Castle Vania Remix is actually better, but hey)
Le Castle Vania - Zero Machine
Fred Falke - Sanctuary
Fake Blood - Mars

Top 8 Remixes

Bjork - Dull Flame of Desire (Modeselektor's "For Girls" Remix)
The Whip - Muzzle #1 (Bloody Beetroots Remix)
Ladyhawke - Back of the Van (VanSheTech's Turbo Fire Engine Mix)
Hot Chip - Touch Too Much (Fake Blood Remix)
IAMX - Spit It Out (Designer Drugs Remix)
Justice - Phantom II (Boys Noize Unreleased Turbine Mix)
Mystery Jets - Two Doors Down (Duke Dumont Remix)
Sebastien Tellier - Sexual Sportswear (Sebastian Remix)

Top 8 Albums

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
The Whip - X Marks Destination
Sebastien Tellier - Sexuality
Danny Byrd - Supersize
South Central - Owl of Minerva
Santogold - Santogold
Portishead - Third
Jason Mraz - We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things

Honourable Mention:
Teenager - Thirteen
Does It Offend You Yeah? - You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into

May I now suggest that you go and find said music (perhaps on Youtube) and enjoy it.

Top 8 of 08: Movies

Warning: This list is a relative flop.

Top Films of 2008 (That I managed to see):


8. "Baby Mama" - I know it flopped, but it was far superior to Get Smart and other comedies featuring ex-SNL stars. Fey vs. Poehler is my favourite female comedian combination.

7. "Horton Hears a Who" - Decent adaptation and with all the good humour that adults help to sneakily get out of a kid's movie.


6. "The Magic Hour" - Japanese film by the inimitable Kouki Mitani, set in a faux-1920s about a bumbling idiot who angers a Yakuza boss and has to use a washed-up actor to bluff his way out of trouble.


5. "Son of Rambow" - a schoolground bully and a reject team up to remake Rambo. Think Billy Elliot with more blood (well, and better).


4. "El Orfanato" (The Orphanage) - Spanish thriller about a woman who goes to live in the house that was her orphanage when she was young, only to find the past was waiting for her. Beautifully shot, well told, and jumpy. Avoids the "serial thriller" label well.

3. "Wall-E" - Classic Pixar. A few moments in it made me think it was a bit sell-out, but that was only because the flow of the movie changes quite a bit and in the end it's just a great piece of work.

2. "Iron Man" - Scores higher than Wall-E for dry RDJ lines, fantastic graphics and for restoring everyone's faith in Marvel comic movies.

1. "The Dark Knight" - Not many movies get watched by me more than the 5 times I've seen this, which puts it in good company with LOTR: ROTK, Fight Club and The Matrix. If Gladiator can win best picture, TDK should sweep.

The list feels a bit lacking to me, but that's mostly because Japan doesn't get half the quality movies available around the world (hence I have to wait for DVDs), and when they do they tend to be up to 6 months late. There's a much more promising list of movies of 2008 I want to see:
- Burn After Reading
- Man on Wire
- Quantum of Solace
- Body of Lies
- Be Kind Rewind
- Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
- The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
- Synecdoche, New York
Perhaps the original list is a mite premature.

Helicopter

On a backstreet in south Osaka,
the boy stumbled upon the holy grail.

Warning: This post kicks like a mule.

So the older of the youngers came to visit for a few days lately, and much fun was had. So much fun, in fact, that I'm almost glad he left. No way could I keep that schedule up for another week.

Bought a funky new camera for him to use on his travels - a Canon Powershot 910IS (called the SD870IS in America). This is an outdated camera - the 920 came out recently - but the nice thing about that is it was half the price. And to be honest, I don't think the 920 could have been much better.

One of the nice things about it (and there are many) was the superior video quality, blowing my Olympus out of the photo bath. Of course, with great quality comes great megabyte-age, and 100mb per min of film is a little difficult to get up on youtube (especially these days: am I the only one who's noticed how deathly slow uploading is there lately?). However, I was able to get a few vids up over the weekend.

The first of these is at Cafe Absinthe (which I may have mentioned before), where my Israeli bartending friend demonstrates one of the more complicated cocktails on their menu: the Helicopter. Made of (I assume) absinthe & black sambuca, the kick on it is only topped by trying to inhale the remaining fumes afterwards. As Luke's reaction shows, it's not really for the faint of heart.
Cheers.