one last thing before I quit

With the year winding down in the next couple days, there always seems to be an abundance of 'Top (insert category) Of '08' lists. And so, I've decided to take up more space on the internet and compile a short list of some of my favorite things of this past year.

Favorite Movies Released in 2008
(In no particular order)
- Cloverfield
- Be Kind Rewind
- Iron Man
- The Kite Runner
- Tropic Thunder
- Zach and Miri Make A Porno
- Kung-Fu Panda

Favorite Movies Released Before 2008
(That I watched for the first time this year)
- Babel (2006)
- This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)
- JFK (1991)
- Hot Fuzz (2007)
- Green Street Hooligans (2005)
- Everything Is Illuminated (2005)
- Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Favorite Albums
- Red Tooth And Claw (Murder By Death)
- Weezer (Weezer)
- Spectacle (DJ Mike Relm)

Most Memorable Concerts
- Foo Fighters
- Neil Young
- Iron Maiden

Songs Most Listened To
(According to last.fm)
- Everlong (Foo Fighters)
- Rapture Of The Deep (Deep Purple)
- Tweeter And The Monkey Man (Headstones)
- '52 Ford (Murder By Death)
- Do You Wanna Come Walk With Me? (Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan)

Even with the easy accessibility that most of us have to different means of design around the world, there's always new things out there that seem to just show up and grab my interest.

A worker for Emery Studio, Axel Peemoeller, came up with a way-finding-system for a parkade in Melbourne, Australia.


Basically, the distorted letters on all of the walls can be perfectly read when you're driving/standing in the right position. Then by reading said words, you know which direction to go.

On further looking around, this whole style is known most commonly as 3D Chalk Drawings. There are many that look like they were difficult to produce or even more interesting to look at, but kudos to the people Down Under for welcoming such a creative medium to be used to help everyday people in a consistently confusing public space.

Rita MacNeil's Christmas Special? .... Why?!

Despite not receiving a reply to a letter I had written to him a few years back, as well as him not being a fan of Kevin Smith in any way, I still remain a Tim Burton fan.
Kevin's take on the incident (watch out for language)

His reliably different Gothic style, where things tend to simply just be black/depressing/death-ish, only sets the stage to have all of his characters pop more from the scene, both visually as well as emotionally. To have such a palette in which no one seems to be able to come near to replicating, speaks directly to how influential he is to cinema in our generation. His hair is also quite possibly the one person's worse then mine.

This simply brings me to a new movie that he's got coming out, "9". This movie was actually made into a feature film, after it had actually been nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2006 Academy Awards (The Moon And The Son: An Imagined Conversation was the winner). Though, beware. Tim is not the director. He is not the writer. He is merely a producer. But with that said, it looks to be that he had some influence in the character models and cinematography.

Watch the trailer here.

There's a new Beethoven movie coming out on Boxing Day. Seriously. That's gross.