With Bill Murray.

“It’s such a sadness when you think you’ve seen a film in on your fucking telephone.” (via Boing Boing)

To conclude my end-of-2007 music post trilogy (well, 2.5-ogy) I intended to do a top ten albums of the year. I wrote a list, but it was too long. I pulled a few out… it was still too long. So I gave up on the top ten idea.

Here’s a bunch of albums I liked in 2007 in no particular order. There’s more than ten, and I probably missed some really good ones.

The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City
Thrill Jockey Records
thefieryfurnaces.com
myspace.com/thefieryfurnaces
Ex-Guru music video
Fabchannel: Live show video

Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Epic
modestmouse.com
myspace.com/modestmouse

Kings of Leon
Because of the Times
Hand Me Down
kingsofleon.com
myspace.com/kingsofleon

The National
Boxer
Beggars Banquet
americanmary.com
myspace.com/thenational

Battles
Mirrored
Warp
myspace.com/battlestheband

Justice
†
Ed Banger
myspace.com/etjusticepourtous

Arcade Fire
Neon Bible
Rough Trade
www.arcadefire.com
myspace.com/arcadefireofficial

The Go! Team
Proof of Youth
Memphis Industries/Sub Pop
www.thegoteam.co.uk
myspace.com/thegoteam

New Young Pony Club
Fantastic Playroom
Modular
wearepony.com
myspace.com/newyoungponyclub

!!!
Myth Takes
Warp
chkchkchk.net
myspace.com/chkchkchk

Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer?
Polyvinyl
ofmontreal.net
myspace.com/ofmontreal

Simian Mobile Disco
Attack Decay Sustain Release
Wichita
simianmobiledisco.co.uk
myspace.com/simianmobiledisco

What have I missed?

In what’s now becoming an annual tradition, here’s what last.fm considers my top 20 most listened to artists of 2007. Some serious surprises in there. I’ve listened to a lot of music this year and some of these I hardly remember hearing at all.

1. The Fiery Furnaces
2. Beastie Boys
3. New Young Pony Club
4. Kings of Leon
5. !!!
6. The Go! Team
7. Cansei de Ser Sexy
8. Broken Social Scene
9. Prefuse 73
10. Hot Chip
11. Death From Above 1979
12. The Arcade Fire
13. Ratatat
14. Four Tet
15. Klaxons
16. Ikara Colt
17= Man or Astro-man?
17= Disney
19= Django Reinhardt
19= Justice
19= MSTRKRFT

Massive oddities include Disney (playing the Musical History of Disneyland just once accounts for 65 tracks!) and Django Reinhardt (his haunting version of La Mer/Beyond the Sea from Bioshock made me search out more by this Jazz great. More Bioshock soundtrack tips here, incidentally).

Some old favourites like Man or Astro-man? and Ikara Colt have re-entered as well, thanks to iPod shuffle.

It doesn’t look like DoCopenhagen have compiled their own list of top music videos for this year so you’re going to have to make do with this top 50 from Pitchfork. Still marvellous.

I love this site. A daily cartoon created from the most random archive illustrations.

Vid22.com digitallly processed the whisper between Bill Murray and Scarlet Johannsen at the end of the movie Lost in Translation in April. It’s only just being picked up by every blog and their dogs seven months later. I discovered it in the Guardian today. Spoilers lie within.

It seems sitting on the Disney board gets you all kinds of perks. Distant Creations report that an audio-animatronic (1970s, in-garage) Steve Jobs has been added to EPCOT’s Spaceship Earth attraction as part of its recent face-lift.

Spaceship Earth is scheduled to re-open in February with a new theme (more about technology and less about communication), narrated by Judi Dench. (via The Disney Blog)

City 7: Toronto Conflict is an interesting looking mod, produced as part of the first thesis project from the Game Design program at George Brown College in Toronto, for Half-life 2.

City 7: Toronto Conflict, is an action packed Half-Life 2 mod with a variety of unique levels and game play. Explore what has become of City 7 in areas like Dundas square, Eaton Center , Mel Lastman square, St. Michael’s Hospital and TTC system under the Combine rule. This version features Gordon Freeman as the main character, stuck in Toronto due to a teleporting accident in Kleiner’s lab. Try to escape this war torn city by finding any type of teleporting technology and send him back to City 17.

Despite our small development team and short production time, we managed to get halfway to the CN tower and have already created 2-3 hours of fun and action packed game play! We want to finish this mod the way it was intended it to be, as a glimpse at what happen to a part of North American during the Combine invasion.

I’ll have to check this out at the weekend… Though I still haven’t played through Episode 2! (via Boing Boing)

Seeing as we’re on the topic of Half-life 2: Episode 2, here’s a bunch of cool stats that Valve released on the game (that I meant to write about before, but forgot). There’s some cool new stuff in there like a heat map of where players have died the most.

Mr T (above) and William Shatner star in commercials for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. They really play. No, really, they do.