Busy month, so I didn’t get to watching as many films as I would have hoped. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is as beautiful as it is poetic, quite possibly Julian Schnabel’s best piece. Lars and the Real Girl only reinforces my love for Ryan Gosling’s acting, putting two of his films (Half Nelson and this) in my top favorites. I also watched Annie Hall again, it’s been years, and can’t believe how similar Larry David’s comedic prose are to Woody’s. To think the two will be in a film side-by-side next year really gets me excited.

• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly ★★★★
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead ★★★
• Lars and the Real Girl ★★★★★
• Atonement ★★★
• American Gangster ★★★
• Reservation Road ★★
• Annie Hall ★★★★★

This eclectic release from Adult Swim and Ghostly International has seen some heavy rotation on my iPod in the past few days and I wanted to share. If you don’t know Ghostly, they are part record label, part art gallery with an emphasis on digital forms of creation and distribution. Here’s what they have to say about the compilation:

A genre-busting 19-song collection, stretching the entire Ghostly International galaxy, Ghostly Swim explores the Avant-Pop style that the Ann Arbor/New York City label has been been championing for the past 9 years. Ghostly Swim features artists like Matthew Dear, Dabrye, Tycho and Aeroc and features new signings like UK cult band The Chap and NYC producer Michna.

I highly recommend giving this thing a listen, it has introduced me to some great artists and a new approach to music in general.

Check it out »

The current state of the Internet is a confusing one. When Web 2.0 emerged, it was all about creating profiles, making friends and conveying your personality to as many people as possible. Now, the constant introduction of services and the growing number of profiles any given person holds is getting overwhelming. Aggregation services like FriendFeed for profiles and Techmeme for news try to help wade through this mess — but in my opinion, have only created more noise.

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This is unbelievably cool. Robert Hodgin of Flight404 created this stunning visual interpretation of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” using an application he built that incorporates beat detection. On top of that Hodgin went the extra mile by manually inputting every single snare hit, high hat, literally every beat and it took him over 6 hours. The result is really cool and trippy - I recommend viewing it in full screen.

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo

[Via Jakob Lodwick]

This is a guest post by Becky Clawson.

Peter Spellman of Music Business Solutions talks about the impact of negative word of mouth in his latest newsletter:

I listened to a story on NPR this afternoon about the negative impact of bad word-of-mouth. Very scary. The basis for the article comes from research by the Wharton School of Business. They found that 1 out of 2 customers has a customer service problem when they shop. Worse is the fact that they then tell friends, family, and colleagues about it and embellish the story in the retelling. The overall result is that 1/2 of those that hear the bad news story won’t shop at those places they heard about. Ouch! Those that improve on the situation certainly create a business advantage.

This is so true–at least as far as I can relate. Last summer, my hard drive crashed, and after searching the Web for a nearby certified store, I found a shop and took it in for repair. They were friendly, informative, and timely in their turnaround. Great. But a few months ago, my hard drive crashed again, and this time, I asked my peers where they recommend. I told them about my prior visit to the local repair shop–no complaints to speak of–but everyone I talked to insisted that I definitely should not bring it back to Shop A. “They’re terrible. They’re always messing things up. Everyone knows that. Go to Shop B.” And so even though I had no bad experiences with the Shop A, I went to Shop B because I trusted that their bad reports were legitimate, and I just didn’t want to take a chance that I might suffer the same. Am I any better off? Who knows. Shop B did an adequate job, so I’m no worse off.

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Photo Credit: Phawker

Where else would one expect the hipster-funk dance party quintet of Hot Chip to play in Philadelphia besides the Starlight Ballroom? An inevitable traffic jam of road bikes inundated N. 9th Street but we breezed right inside the sold out show with a little friendly name dropping and made a beeline to the bar. The scene was every bit as one would expect and the venue as always was ablaze with pent up excitement. A few minutes and several beers later, the band casually walked on stage, picked up their instruments and got right down to it. We were there to dance, and Hot Chip brought the party.

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Totally forgot to post these. No time to go in depth. Definitely check out Lust, Caution and Into the Wild.

• Mulholland Drive ★★★
• Into the Wild ★★★★
• Oldboy ★★★
• 30 Days of Night ★
• The Hoax ★★
• Lust, Caution ★★★★
• Arrested Development Season 3, Disc 2 ★★★★
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut ★★★

The 17th annual Philadelphia Film Festival began this past Thursday and runs through April 15th. The festival has grown enormously and will host over 240 films in its seventeenth year. There are about fifteen films I’m intersted in seeing including Deficit which is directed by and stars Gael Garcia Bernal (from Babel), Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame which is directed by 19-year old Hana Makhmalbaf and Roman de gare.

There is a wide range of genres spanning indie and documentary with a very substantial foreign showing including the North American premier of several Indian films. The festival’s website has been completely redesigned with a very convenient feature that allows you to create a schedule of all the films you want to see. Tickets can be purchased directly online or at TLA Video stores around the city. Packages of 5 or 10 tickets can be purchased at a discount.

This will be my first time attending the festival and would love some suggestions of films to checkout. Hopefully I will have time to writeup a few short reviews in the near future.

Update: I created a Facebook group so people can discuss, suggest and review the films with each other.

Photo credit: awe! productions inc.