October 28th, 2009

Not really much of a theme to today's post, just thought I'd share a couple things I've been digging today. We finished this great movie today in my French class today called L'Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment). The film follows Xavier, a young French man enrolled in a post-college educational program called Erasmus, which puts him in a cramped apartment in Barcelona with other students enrolled the program. Each of his roommates hail from a different country, and while the characters interact in a mix of Spanish and English, Xavier narrates his life in French. The movie succeeds in the excellent chemistry between the members of the apartment as they each learn more and more about each other and themselves through their romantic involvements, past and present, and experiences in the city of Barcelona. In addition to its humor, the movie tackles many deep emotional and psychological questions and the lessons we learn. I highly recommend it, the beautiful shots of Barcelona, strong performances and interplay between languages all add to the films artistic merit. Not to mention it also features the always stunning Audrey Tatou. Oh yeah, and the only two songs used throughout the film are Radiohead's "No Surprises" and Daft Punk's "Aerodynamic." Pretty awesome.

I've also been reading this interesting book for my environmental class called The End Of The Wild by Stephen M. Meyer. It's pretty depressing but you can't argue with the stark facts that Meyer's present about the state of the world around us. Current conversation ethics focus too much on economics or human resourcefulness, he says. We have accelerated species extinction at an alarming rate and we have reached the point where our lifestyles and the way we assess environmental problems will not allow us to prevent the further marginalization of nearly all species. I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the future of the environment but Meyer's is perhaps not far off in his prediction. Whether we can reverse or damage or not, the situation calls for dire action.

Good news from the world of DOOM! Producer Madlib and presiding hip hop king DOOM (formerly MF DOOM, also known as King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, Metal Fingers, etc.), assuming the alias Madvillain, have announced that they are working on a follow up to 2004's Madvillainy, in my opinion, one of the greatest collaborations and rap albums of all time. The album will feature guest work from Dave Sitek(!) of TV On The Radio and Mos Def. Above you can hear some new early sketches from the forthcoming album, premiered by DJ JROCC. The delightful surprise of this year's Only Built For Cuban Linx... Pt. II has convinced me that records with ridiculous anticipation and hype can follow through, so my hopes are high.


I had the extreme misfortune of sitting through the track "Can't Stop Partying" from washed up, indie rock nerds Weezer's upcoming LP Raditude. The song, which uses the exact same corny, overbearing chord progression in MGMT's "Kids," also features the always annoying Mr. Carter, aka Lil' Wayne. And guess what! The Weezy/Weezer collaboration is about as terrible as you can get. If you're still curious enough to check out this abomination, you can hear it here, but take it from me, its a waste of your time.

That's all for today. Hopefully we'll have some album reviews coming your way soon. Until next time.