• San­sho the Bailiff does­n’t haunt me like Uget­su, but Mizoguchi does things with light and tex­ture unlike any oth­er film­mak­er. Recommended.
• I’ve been in a mid-year rut with music. I’m dis­ap­point­ed in the New Pornog­ra­phers’ Chal­lengers on first lis­ten; I haven’t heard any good buzz about Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [aside from the love­ly New York­er ret­ro­spec­tive]; and I’m wor­ried that the new Liars’ record will be a com­plete bust. What can I say? I’m a pes­simist! I hope I’m wrong [or that some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pens to renew my inter­est in music 2007.]
• Arthur and Yu is pleas­ant. Bloody Pan­da are pret­ty cool. Chris told me to give Gowns a chance. I may be done writ­ing for Paper Thin Walls, but I can think of few sites so thor­ough­go­ing in their cura­to­r­i­al capac­i­ty. Not sure if that trans­lates into traf­fic, but cred has to count for some­thing, does­n’t it?
• [Con­fi­den­tial to WOEBOT: S. Reynolds has been man­u­fac­tur­ing crises for mate­r­i­al for quite some time now. He wears cul­tur­al trends like a jack­et he can toss on the couch when­ev­er he feels like it. How’s that for bring­ing back “dis­cur­sive ener­gy?” I mean, how can you lament the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of a tech­nol­o­gy and music?]
• Read­ing Mediaor is great, but it also points up just how much redun­dan­cy their is in Web/Music 2.0 appli­ca­tions. I just want some­thing to replace MySpace now — awful ad-clut­tered inter­face, spam night­mares with a hor­ri­ble media play­er. Some­body? Anybody?
• Speak­ing of which, I want want want to read this like yes­ter­day. I’ve been a lit­tle more inter­est­ed late­ly in where dig­i­tal music and video and the inter­net are headed  more than the video and music that are dri­ving it.

Though it’s gone down­hill recent­ly, Cin­e­marati will be sore­ly missed. There’s always Film­brain…I hope! And here’s some­thing I applaud over at Self-Styled Siren!

I think we as Amer­i­can music crit­ics expect too much of British artists. We want 1984 and Bil­ly Liar. Por­tishead and the Kinks. So I had to laugh when I saw Wiley on the cov­er of The Wire this month. Do they not know that the whole world went post-grime the moment Lady Sov first melt­ed down, you know, like two years ago? Did­n’t Dizzee just release an album this week to no fan­fare at all? Now Soul Jazz is releas­ing a dub­step compilation?

Did The Wire pur­pose­ly tank the moment I bought a sub­scrip­tion? I know that’s not true, but when they changed graph­ic design­ers a few years ago, the look and feel of the mag­a­zine suf­fered and the con­tent soon fol­lowed suit. What happened?

I’m not sure that Hype­bot’s six part series on eMu­sic’s recent tur­bu­lence was any­thing more than sound and fury sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing, or at best, very lit­tle about dig­i­tal music at all. Seems to me that it was more about the blood in the water than any­thing else, and like fren­zied sharks, eMu­sic rep­re­sen­ta­tives took the bait when they prob­a­bly should’ve steered clear. On the one hand it’s inter­est­ing to see exec­u­tives who care so much about their prod­uct, but on the oth­er, they should’ve exer­cised bet­ter judg­ment when it comes to open let­ters, etc.

The dig­i­tal music busi­ness is a shad­owy world.

I’ve been swamped. I love duck­ing in here like I’m try­ing to get out of the rain…which is a nice segue [cough] into:

1. Rihan­na — ‘Umbrel­la’ [I’m inter­view­ing her lat­er this week. It’s about that time for R&B pro­tec­tion bal­lads. There’s a war on, after all.]
2. Mutant Sounds. I was a lit­tle tired of Chocoreve [even though that blog has some amaz­ing moments] so I threw this in the blogroll in its place. Brace your­self for tons of weird music, post­ed faster that you can reload your rapid­share account.
3. The new, yet not so new House is a Feel­ing. The team blog con­cept is great, except that undoubt­ed­ly every­one’s already over­com­mit­ted else­where [Back and Forth, RIP] and the blog just dies alone [though some a great repos­i­to­ries that should­n’t be delet­ed.] Ronan’s picked up the torch quite admirably here, with nice new mix­es appar­ent­ly almost daily.
4. Try­ing to under­stand why the newest New Pornog­ra­phers song just isn’t that good, yet is still being post­ed every­where on the inter­net with an OMG tag. Just anoth­er instance of all your blogs are belong to us, I guess.
5. Net­flix. Dream­girls and Kies­lows­ki. Where the hel­l’s the Waj­da war tril­o­gy though? Hav­ing been a ded­i­cat­ed employ­ee and devo­tee of brick and mor­tar rental since for­ev­er, this was a major step for me. It already makes a hell of a lot more sense than leav­ing the house to find titles that every oth­er nerd in town wants too. And new releas­es? Sweet. I can’t wait for the Ray­mond Bernard box to come out!