Category: Recommended

Reviews, praise, or otherwise promoted.

Categories
Recommended

Flickr Rules To The Power Of Two

I’ve waxed
ecstatic previously about how much Flickr rules. It’s ridiculously simple to use, it has nice social software functionality, it’s syndicated up the wazoo, etc etc etc.

Tonight, as the saying goes, Flickr has passed rad and cruised straight into awesome.
Everyone who purchased pro accounts at some point in the past n months
(and there are a lot of us) just received:

– Double length pro accounts (mine won’t expire now until the end of 2006)
– Double the monthly upload capacity (1 GB -> 2 GB)
– Two free Pro accounts to give to friends.

Not only that, but people with free accounts have had their monthly upload capacity doubled as well, from 10 to 20 MB, and their storable photos doubles (100 => 200).

And not only that, but Pro accounts are now just $24.95 a year. Talk about a steal!

That’s some good stuff. Check out more on the FlickrBlog, including the best pictoral pun in ages.

Categories
Recommended

Four Pack Of Mashups

I’m frequently scouring the net for the latest and greatest in mashups and bootlegs, and this week I’ve struck pure gold with four fantastic tracks. So, to share the love, here’s some recommendations:

WHO: [Boppledanger](http://shocker.club.fr/music.html)
WHAT: Requiem For An Usher
HOW: Usher’s *Yeah!* crossed with Clint Mansell’s *Summer Overture*. That’s right. The theme from *Requiem For A Dream*.
WHY: Sure, *Yeah!* had a nice hook of an instrumental before, but it’s 10x better as a power ballad.

WHO: [DJ Earworm](http://www.djearworm.com/)
WHAT: [Policy Of Sweet Dreams](http://www.djearworm.lunarpages.com/Policy_of_Sweet_Dreams_256.mp3)
HOW: Eurythmic’s *Sweet Dreams* blended into Depeche Mode’s *Policy Of Truth*
WHY: You take two great synthpop hits of the 80’s like this, and you have to wonder why you never realized why they fit together so well before.

WHO: [Party Ben](http://www.partyben.com/)
WHAT: [(Triple) Freak Me Out](http://www.partyben.com/PartyBen-ChicFranzieBoys.mp3)
HOW: It’s a three way dance: Chic’s *Good Times* plus The Beasties’ *Triple Trouble* plus Franz Ferdinand’s *Take Me Out*
WHY: *Good Times* is one of the classics of disco; the first song sampled into hip-hop (see: Rapper’s Delight). *Triple Trouble* is the most mashed Beasties song in the last year, and who can blame the scene: it’s a good old-school style Beasties rap. And *Take Me Out* needs no explanation. Ain’t no party like a Party Ben party.

WHO: [Lionel Vinyl](http://lionel.elektrobank.net/index.html)
WHAT: Danger! Hard Lola
HOW: Another threesome: Shapeshifter’s *Lola’s Theme* vs. Busta Rhymes’ *Dangerous* vs. Daft Punk’s *Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger*
WHY: Because this is the best one of the four. I am a sucker for Busta Rhymes in the proper context. I am an even bigger sucker for modern disco house. And I like Daft Punk just fine. This is seven minutes and thirty seconds of audio sex.

Categories
Recommended

Oldboy

Katie and I had a chance to see a private pre-screening of [Old Boy](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/ “IMDB listing”) tonight, thanks to our lovely friends at [Gothamist](http://www.gothamist.com/).

Short synopsis before I get going: Oh Dae-Su, a man with a reputation for getting drunk and womanizing, is mysteriously imprisoned in a fake hotel room for 15 years, living on fried dumplings and TV only. After the 15 years are up, he finds himself awake on a roof. He is given fancy clothes, a cell, and money. But what his captor has waiting for him after his release – while Oh Dae-Su plots his revenge – may be far worse than his imprisonment.

I can’t remember the last time I came out of a movie feeling so emotionally drained – it’s like my soul got in a fight with the movie and lost.

The acting was fantastic for all the key characters, especially the two leads. Choi Min-sik, who plays Oh Dae-su, has *huge* range, and the acting muscle he shows in the last 20 minutes leaves me unable to even find one person in US cinema to compare him to. Yu Ji-Tae, playing his captor/tormentor, comes off as genuinely evil without descending into camp to get the point across.

Somewhere in here is the single best fight scene I’ve ever witnessed that wasn’t boosted by special effects. There’s also some well-timed black humor, more than sufficient character development, and more than enough twists and turns that you’ll get slack-jawed at least once. (And in the good-for-Dan department, there weren’t enough plot holes to make me deconstruct the whole thing after the fact.)

People who have been reading my blog for long enough know I don’t write a lot of movie reviews. I save the indivudual movie posts for one of two cases – a [really good movie](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2004/09/aim_for_the_hea.php), or a [really poor movie](https://vjarmy.com/archives/2003/09/the_occasional.php). Oldboy completely falls on the side of the good movies, and until further notice is my Favorite Movie Of 2005.

Check out [the trailer](http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/old_boy.html), and be sure to catch it when it opens in the immediate future.