Of course it does. It’s a piece by A.O. Scott after all.

I did my own version of this for CS Monitor in December — but it barely registers on the radar compared to what the NY Times did.

I also wrote a little about why Scott’s story works as a piece of journalism (in Romanian).

I’m not a sucker for sunsets and I’m not one to indulge much in star-gazing or in the occasional open-sky-as-a-parable-for-freedom banter. I once dumped a girl because she used to do too much of it.

“Oh, those stars clogging the sky, you should have seen them,” she could have said.

“Oh my God, please don’t go there,” I must have thought to myself.

But I do let the occasional imagery fool me, especially when accompanied by the sound of the train rocking the tracks (the draft of this post was written on the Bucharest-Sighisoara IC). I’m a train kind of guy—it has this romantic quality, a ‘loner on a mission’-allure that, while cheesy, I find attractive. It’s comforting to crash into your assigned spot, open your book and let go.

And the occasional gaze out the window just as you’ve escaped a tormenting passage describing stomach-removal followed by an orgy involving spray-painted pink bunnies (hypothetical reading material) is like the bite of chocolate you take at night after you brushed your teeth: clichéd but fantastically rewarding and awkwardly self-affirming.

But I’m afraid I’ve derailed the discussion from where I intended it to go. Wednesday night I saw Cristian Nemescu’s beautiful “California Dreamin’ (endless)” and one thing I can certainly say about it is that I wasn’t nearly as perky on the bus ride home as I am now (Lavi knows).

The movie is ruthless in its portrayal of an absurd situation that takes place at a desperate time for Eastern Europe and involves characters desperate to hang on to their personal quests.

In the movie, a train packing American NATO troops (led by Armand Assante) and military equipment bound for Kosovo is stopped by the station master (a devastating Razvan Vasilescu) of the small Romanian village of Capalnita. The train ends up sequestered there for five days because it lacks proper customs forms. The station master is a crook and the master of his fiefdom: he collects (or simply pockets) mountains of bribes from passing freight trains: everything from cigarettes to bags of cement. But he stops the NATO train under the legitimate pretense that it doesn’t have documentation.

As a recent returnee and a former Romanian exile, this is when my heart began racing. This was kafkian bureaucracy and clerk-bullying at its best: people at the mercy of a hypocritical scumbag who randomly decides to use the law today, while ignoring it on every other occasion.

Many of us who’ve left the country have left because they didn’t want to fight that. Many of us who returned still think we can change it. What hurt me most is that the man’s actions (the character is brilliantly written and is far from being one-sided although I know I make him as such) are often dismissed by people as being „the way things are.” He is a prime example of how things should not be and he illustrates the failure of an entire system, not just one station master. The fate of the NATO train was chosen randomly—little peons in the system often have that power—but its long-term stay was sealed by a lack of action at all the levels above. Nobody brought the customs papers from Bucharest and all the way up to the minister people tried the same approach of „fixing the problem” by throwing more bribes at it.

The station master-type freaks people out because of the power he wields and I admit that this archetype scares me, too. That is why Nemescu’s movie is so good. Because it shows what journalism has taught me in recent years—even bad men sometimes have good (or at least understandable) reasons for their actions. In this case, the station master stopped the Americans because they never came to save him and his family after World War II. Blocking their passage to Kosovo, where they would aid the US army bombing the Serbs, was his revenge on what life had bestowed upon him. Not to mention that stopping the Americans somehow feeds his illusion that he can keep his daughter (Maria Dinulescu) from eloping into the world.

The Americans, though mostly a group character, are no caricatures either. They slowly give in to local temptations (yes, that means women), allowing some personality to shine through their soldiers’ uniforms. The captain though has his own obsession—he has to finish the mission and get the train to Kosovo no matter what.

It’s hard to believe that the American captain and the station master understand their mutual obsessions. Their devotion to their mission, which Nemescu conveyed so clinically to the viewer, is too blinding for them to open up to a stranger.

California Dreamin’ is a movie about the early times of when the West met East; about a clash and mesh of cultures in the unlikeliest of circumstances, where not even a translator can do much good. It pits American idealism and slight naiveté to Romanian laziness and slight cunningness and the result is epic chaos on a minimal scale. In such chaos, the only hope lies with the dream of escaping—whether it’s the train escaping its imprisonment or the station master’s daughter escaping his grip.

Nemescu and his co-writers penned one of the most touching tales of longing, obsession and cultural difference I’ve ever seen. The movie is sad, but hopeful in that things move on, which in itself is a metaphor for the backstory of the movie. Nemescu and his sound engineer died in a stupid car crash before the editing was finished, but this rough won the „Un certain regard” section at the 2007 Cannes film festival.

Romania has always dreamed of the Americans coming and whatever we feel about them today (be it hatred for how their late and often condescending arrival or appreciation for their long-expected and just as often enthusiastic arrival) is borne out of this sense of longing. And for some, like the station master, this longing was endless and overpowering.

I woke up early to be as close to spending 24 hours on the Bucharest streets as possible–thus shining a brief ray of light on Adi’s day, who wakes up every morning at 5 AM to work. Yes, dear reader, somewhere in the bowels of the Bucharest neighborhood of Militari (big up, ba!) there is a man in PJs trying to see the world in the 5 AM cold and no matter how you curl up, you will still wake up in the sound of his furious typing.

One day a few years ago when Andrei was trying to express the fact that he missed me, he said he liked waking up to the sound of me pounding the keyboard. I told him it was not the most heterosexual of things to say, but that I will accept such statements from a man who makes soup wearing nothing but boxers and dancing simultaneously.

Back to the Bucharest Friday.

It kicked off with me being nervous as I had to engage a group of journalists in a discussion about the future of online journalism in Romania and the likes. Although Lavi had promised she will bring some major embarassment to the event (by yelling “yeah!” after I uttered the words “Next Journalism,” I escaped unharmed and with my self-confidence nearly intact. All I can say is that the Romanian online news wars are going to happen in 2007 and it’s not going to be a pretty sight.

From there (12:05 PM probably), the day generated/descended into a consumerist debauchery powered by the fact that there was no way I was going to return home until Saturday. Purchases included: a frozen margarita at Amsterdam Cafe (nothing memorable), cheese pies, cofees, a shirt, a reliable 1,5 L bottle of Cappy Ice Fruit (like, sooooo many vitamins), a Poiana chocolate, two breast-shaped plum gombotzes at Villa Crose, a concert ticket and some vodka tonics.

The anchor piece of the afternoon was “Hartia va fi albastra” (The Paper Will Be Blue), the third movie about the Romanian revolution to hit the street in the last month. It closes an unrelated trilogy and certifies an important moment in the history of Romanian cinema. What could this moment be? Well, seeing three Romanian movies in a row that don’t feature agression towards women or excessive filth and consumption thereof is quite a treat.

“Hartia va fi albastra” is the weakest of the three movies. Sure, they can’t be compared in how they decided to tackle the topic, but they can be compared feeling-wise. And the predominant feeling I experienced watching this movie was sleep. No offense to director Radu Munteanu, but my eye lids were flickering heavily soon after the opening scene. It’s true that it was damn cold and deserted inside the Patria theater–things which encourage sleep–but a steadier hand wouldn’t have been bad.

The movie centers on the unanswered question of “who shot at us” (us, the freedom-hungry people) on the nights of Dec. 21-22. During those nights there were random burst of gun fights in cities across the country and we have yet to figure out who was shooting whom. Popular mythology says the people and the army joined forces to fire at an unknown enemy we call “terrorists.”

The movie doesn’t shed much light on the question and it more or less fuels the frustration. When Costi, a young police officer who leaves his patrol team to join the people defending the television building (where the message of freedom was broadcast from), starts firing at shadows without asking who he’s shooting at it becomes clear how the cover of night and the idea of the revolution was blinding enough to turn frustrated Romanians into paranoid robots.

Here’s what the website of the movie says:

The original inspiration for the film is a tragic incident which took place in the Romanian revolution in 1989, in which two armoured squads of Interior Ministry troops that went to protect a military unit were accidentally butchered. This episode received considerable media attention.

In the days following the departure of the Ceausescus, when the Romanian people had no clear enemy, over 1,000 people died in such accidents and personal vendettas.

This is not a bad movie (not like Munteanu’s “Furia” anyway), but it does fall short in conveying the drama of these accidental deaths.

Before I get to the second big moment of the day, let me just say that walking around Bucharest carrying a plant doesn’t make a man look like a sexy beast. It was Jo’s birthday this and the second half of her gift (Luiza’s idea) was a plant–a small bamboo to be more exact (although there were heavy fights over whether the green thingie is actually a bamboo). I had to carry the damn plant, along with its stone-infested little jar for enough streets to feel there isn’t a pick-up line in the world you can succesfully feed a woman while holding this object. Imagine the possibilities of embarrasement a sentence using the word “plant” presents.

The plant spend the night on the couch in B52 where we descended for the “Niste Baieti” show. Yes, the same “Niste Baieti” that I praised in a previous post have returned home to Bucharest to punk after a succesful tour through the country. One of the most fortunate coincidences, because as I write this, my voice is still raspy and the back of my neck is still sore. It was great, great, great and oh yeah, GREAT!

The night did have a specialness to it as it was my last one in Bucharest for a while. Parting with friends is never easy. Parting with them after three months of crazy freaky nights, of stupid conversations, of shared hopes and expectations, of sorrows, joys, regrets and happy coincidences is even harder. I feel like I am leaving home all over again, feeling about as lost as I felt three years ago. And the only thing soothing my psyche in such moments is loud, pumping guitars that have taken upon themselves to say the unsaid and do the heavy emotional lifting.

As Pitchfork said in its review of The Killers’ “Sam’s Town”:

Rock music in the 21st century has been subject to an unprecedented emotional arms race of Cold War proportions. Displaced from its traditional role of party music by dance and hip-hop, rock has focused more than ever on introspection, aiming for resonant feelings rather than escapist fun.

There is no escaping the pain and introspection you feel when you jump on the train and leave Bucharest behind. It’s not the city that breaks my heart. It’s all of them that I leave behind–smiling, crying or poking fun at me…

It was at that point that Luiza told me I should look at Romanian film to see things moving. Now, almost three months into my stay, I can say she was right. The cherry was served tonight tonight when I laughed so hard that found myself muttering outloud: “this is so good, this is soooo goood!”

Tonight I saw “A fost sau n-a fost?” (“Was there or wasn’t there?”), another film about the Romanian revolution. It was precedeed by “Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii” and will be followed shortly by “Hartia va fi albastra” (“The paper will be blue”). This is no Romanian revolution trilogy, just a happy coincidence out of which I believe “A fost sau n-a fost” will stand out. This is the best Romanian movie I have seen in my life and certainly the most lighthearted one despite its sober premise. Thank you Corneliu Porumboiu.

We’re in a Romanian city, 16 years after the 1989 revolution. A pensioneer, a history teacher and a TV journalist come together in a local TV broadcast to discuss whether their town experienced a revolution or not. This is no big picture debate over whether Romania experienced a revolution. Actually, it smartly takes for granted the fact that something happened in Timisoara and Bucuresti. But what about the smaller cities? Did they join in?

For the over zealous local TV journalist who tends to quote mythology as he opens the show, whether a revolution happened or not is determined by the time people took to the streets. If they were protesting in the square before 12:08 PM (the time when Ceausescu fled the Bucharest Communist party headquarters on Dec. 22, 1989) than it was a revolution because people would have been there without knowing how the events would play out. They would have taken a risk. If they came after 12:08 PM then it wasn’t a revolution.

His guests don’t question the premise but don’t dwell on the significance of the time either. The history professor says he was in the square before 12:08 PM although several callers to the show accuse him of being a drunkard (true) and a liar. The pensioneer admits he only came after 12:08 because it was the safer alternative.

The movie’s best feature is that it doesn’t take this debate too seriously. The production of the broadcast is a complete failure, the guests are bored (the old man makes paper airplanes), the callers use foul language and the host loses his temper. In the end their debate doesn’t illuminate the question it wanted to, but it tells us viewers that it’s perfectly OK if the revolution wasn’t the seminal event in our life.

For the host it was his chance to jump from textiles into journalism (not much seems to have changed in his approach to working), for the professor it was another failed opportunity to make something good of himself, and for the old man it was just another day that started with a domestic quarrel. To those that the revolution touched personally (a woman caller whose son died that December), the answer to the question doesn’t matter anymore. What matters to her is that it’s finally snowing outside and Christmas is near.

There is another wonderful character in this film–a Chinese immigrant who owns a little store in this city. People bully him and pick on him for being foreign and for selling firecrackers to children, but he loves them anyway because they are the family he lives among. Despite all their faults, he is willing to wait until they all come to their senses.

I guess that’s how many of us are. Waiting for the country to come to its senses. With movies like this one, I’m more and more optimistic that it’s on the right track.

*** The film’s English language title at festivals was: “12:08 East of Bucharest.”

What a pathetic event it turned out to be and it wasn’t because of her art. The photos were nice. Not spectacular, but nice. Plus, I didn’t have a chance to read her poems as the show was stolen by the local intelligentsia, as embodied by high school literature professors.

I had to get out of Teatrul 74 after two local middle-aged white guys with literary pretensions introduced her work. I felt chained to the totem pole of metaphor and whipped until the stream of blood became thick enough to carry hairballs of thoughts, which unraveled on the cement into perfectly calibrated haikus. You get the idea.

In Romanian literature classes no one cares what you think–a professor type the speakers embodied. The hierarchy of greatness has been established decades ago and there are dozens of great minds who have labored to craft an analysis of a poem or a novel. Who needs the student’s opinion? They would probably add shit to the literary conversation, so what they do is copy down everything the teacher dictates and then recite it back word for word. That’s how you score big! Not by thinking, but by endorsing the wisdom of middle-aged white guys with a poached belly who speak about the “lyrical discourse of amazement,” the “surrealness of love” and other assorted crap.

I hate acts of public masturbation and last night, the local literature crowd performed plenty of them. Metaphors, criticism built from joining words only devout dictionary readers can define and a cacophony of quotes from middle-aged white guys of the past. That’s what a book launch should be like. It made me feel like watching a sleazy fat creative writing professor trying to pull the panties off his students with musings on the “civilization of the hand.” It was gross, but all so fitting in the pool of Romanian arts, where (I’m generalizing for literary effect) men are the misunderstood thinkers and women the whores that torment the purity of their inner lives.

If you think this kind of discourse applies to the fading generations of Romanian lit professors, think again. The hip generation has its exhibitionists, too. They publish a magazine called Re:Publik, a glossy, over-priced exercise in snobbery.

Next on the list was a recent and heavily decorated Romanian film called Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii (The way I spent the end of the world). At heart this movie is, as the tagline suggests, a trip through memories. But the memories of this movie are the memories of the last year before the Romanian revolution of 1989. I can’t help describe Cristian Mitulescu’s movie as a movie about the revolution, even though the actual revolution only takes up a few minutes at the end. But the state of mind that preceded it, is beautifully captured. The paranoia, the absurd of it all, the poverty and the happiness people found in everyday life are all packed in this time capsule.

The word “revolution” is easier on some and harder on others (my dad, who was in Bucharest tending to patients shot during those days, called it a “bloody perestroika” once) but few could deny its value as a turning point. What the movie does so very well is ignore it for a good period of time. Why? Because there was no way a high school student in the fall of 1989 could anticipate the fall of the regime two months later. So lives were being lived. No great plans were being masterminded. Sure, some dreamt of leaving the country, others dreamt of Ceausescu’s death, but wishing for change is a natural part of the minutiae of daily life, which includes love, laughter, sadness, school, work and so on. You can see a lot of the products we used during those days (and the days immediately following December ‘89) on the La trecut blog.

Mitulescu creates a brilliant character in a little boy who decides Ceausescu is at fault for the problems of his family and decides it’s his job to get rid of him. It’s touching because the movie allows him, and us, to believe Lalalilu did play a part in it. When the December days finally roll around, I was shifting nervously in my seat. Yes, I was only a little older than Lalalilu is in the movie and I remember being on the balcony of a friend of mine staring at people marching towards downtown and yelling for “freedom.” I had no idea what “freedom” was but if so many people asked for it, I thought, it should be something pretty good.

Lavi said it already, but it’s important. This movie doesn’t have the misery, violence and the purposeful grotesque that so many filmmakers use and have used to portray Romania. We are nowhere near making a brutally romantic and disarming film like Amelie, but “Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii” is a step in the right direction.

No matter how cynical I get about the revolution, its spark and its backstory, I can’t deny that it has allowed my generation to walk out of a theater after watching a political movie and into a club where a Romanian rapper dropped waves rhymes over a bunch of ecstatic 17 and 18 year-olds. I couldn’t help feel odd and overtaken by corny pronouncements. Vexxatu Vexx was rapping in a Targu Mures club on a Friday night because something happened on the streets of Bucharest.

I once wrote about how this 18 year-old kid practically died in my father’s arms in December ‘89 telling him: “I hope I’m not dying in vain.” Romania is a much different country now than it was then and yes, it’s no shame in admitting people died so we can see a movie about how they felt in the months and days before a stray bullet killed them. People died so we could wear jeans, find a suitable definition for freedom, eat chocolate, experiment with hairstyles, buy unlimited amounts of bread and listen to a rapper bring down the house on a Friday night.

On a crazy Targu Mures Friday night.

We kicked off the night with a movie. We thought Romanian cinema might need a few extra lei so we decided to go see Margo, a movie we knew would feature women kissing women, women being redeemed from prostitution, old-fashioned abuse, heavy drinking and other celluloid clichés that make European movies so heavy and pretentious. Margo is easily one of the worst Romanian movies I have seen. Actually it’s so bad it would occupy two places on my Top 5 Worst Romanian Movies list (I saw “High Fidelity” again so I’m back in list mode).

Margo is like metaphor-crammed closet. You have the big breasts of women, who can command anyone’s attention, but they are actually filled with loneliness and they weep. Yes, the tragedy of the modern Romanian woman who can’t find a man unless she trips herself and drops a tit on his nose (excuse the vulgar language, but life is a vulgar beast). Then you have your central character, a whore.

“Yes, I’m a whore,” Margo says matter of factly a few times as if trying to convince the audience their kids should consider it as a career. After all, a whore makes good money and lives in nice apartments. She also owns expensive clothes (and horrid fashion sens). She is taken care off and who needs more than that, right? As in any self-respecting EuroMovie her pimp is actually her father. No!!! I didn’t see that one coming!!!

But she is a whore with a kind soul (even gays have a kind souls in this movie) and a steady hand because she spends much movie time with a camera in her hand videotaping life. Yes, she sucks in the life around her. The children in the park. The trees. The fields. The friends. The old ladies on the forgotten train. She videotapes them all to cure the solitude and the darkness of her rotting soul. Not to mention the pleasure the director seems to take from interspersing amateur images among his professional takes.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, the movie suddenly switches to the country side–a deserted unreachable village hidden in the mountains. That is Margo’s birthplace and she returns home for her mother’s funeral. Much drama and drinking ensues. The shrieks, yells and bucolic imageries are pathetic. Of course there is a tree growing through the roof of the house to illustrate deep and penetrating ties to the land. Of course the priest gets wasted and starts dancing. Of course the mayor is curious about the clitoris–after all, the clitoris is a staple of Romanian funerals. Has anyone ever been to a funeral where the clitoris has not been discussed?

Margo is the kind of movie that will show you heaps of trash to illustrate how gloomy and shitty both our inner and outer (Romanian) lives are. How dirty and smelly and rotten we are. I hate film makers who get off on their own soul-crunching ability to notice misery (anyone remember “Wild Dogs“?) and their oh so subtle ways to shove it down our throats. Excuse me while I puke.

This movie isn’t held together by any kind of narrative string. Urban misery meets rural misery. Rural Gothic meets City Depravity. Girl meets a Boy she doesn’t like but because she was a hooker in her lifetime, she should be so lucky to at least get the fat loser. Because, as the movie all so wisely informs the public: “If you have to find happiness in shit, you’ll find happiness in shit.” There are no alternatives to shit.

We paid almost $2 a head to watch such junk. I expect Ioan Carmazan, the director-guru of this flick to call and offer me the money back.

What’s the best thing to do after watching Margo in Targu-Mures? The best thing to do is to get into a car and drive to a gardening and tools store (Praktiker, a store for the practical people) and attend its grand opening concert featuring poppy bands like Vank and Vama (until recently Vama Veche).

Drinking cheap draft beer in the parking lot of a big box retailer is almost touching. We got there just as Vank were ruining some of their perfectly decent sing alongs (yes, I own a best of Vank record) and stayed long enough to watch the set of Vama, which is what’s left from Vama Veche, one of Romania’s biggest bands in the past decade. Vama Veche announced their official split earlier this week and this was Vama’s first concert, complete with a stunningly drunk lead singer in Tudor Chirila.

What a historic moment. I was clutching a plastic cup of Ciuc in my hand and staring at the 16-year old boys in front of me who were jumping and yelling. I left Romanian Gothic behind and here I was in the unpretentious embrace of Romanian Joy. I was drinking beer in the parking lot of a giant store that proves people in my town do have money. I watched the corny fireworks and even mumbled the lyrics to some of the songs, all without the employing the same kind of condescension dumped on me by Margo.

It was one of those Friday nights in Targu Mures where little seems to make sense. But at 2 AM, when Big Papa is the only decent fast food place open downtown and Geo curses the fact that his pants keep getting caught underneath his sneakers, who cares?

But even worse is the translation of the actual movie title. Sometimes, the translation reflects the title (which happened in the case of “Inside Man” or “Ask the Dust”), sometimes the title makes the job easy because it doesn’t need a translation (“Ultraviolet”, “Miami Vice”) and sometimes the translation is so far removed from the original title, you have no idea what movie you’re about to watch.

It is this third category that we’ll feature here today. Below are 15 examples of movies recently featured on the big screen. Please add your own.

1. The Squid and the Whale = The Dog and the Cat
2. Lucky Number Slevin = Slevin: Not Guilty and with Bad Luck
3. Chaos = Hostages Under Cover
4. The Break-up = Apart, but Together
5. You, Me and Dupree = Just You and Me. The Third one is Extra!
6. Failure to Launch = How to Kick out of the House a 30-Year Old Bachelor
7. Hoodwinked = The Wolf, the Ridinghood and the Enigma
8. Find Me Guilty = I’m Pleading Guilty?!
9. The Constant Gardner = Absolute Friendship
10. 16 Blocks = Deadly Testimony
11. Prime = Taking Love to the Psychiatrist
12. Keeping Mum = A Nanny Full of Surprises
13. Wedding Chrashers = Wedding Crackers
14. RV = A Trip with Suprises
15. She’s the Man = I Love the Wrong Person

Much the same as we have to tolerate the thousands of permutations of Evangelicals Doing Stuff, now we have to put up with endless stories on the red-and-blue theme. One of the latest (and most ridiculous) is Matt Bai’s “King of the Hill Democrats” in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

Bai opens by explaining that the idea of “South Park conservatives” is all wrong. To understand American politics today, one must “set the TiVo” to catch “King of the Hill,” of which the blue governor of red North Carolina is a fan. Therefore, it must be gospel.

Bai writes that Hank, the central father character, “embodies all the traditional conservative values” because “he’s a proud gun owner and a Nascar fan.” But wait! There’s a kicker — as the North Carolina governor explains to our poor New York journalist, Hank is more complicated that he may seem. “Hank may be a lover of the environment — he was furious when kids trashed the local campground — but he resents self-righteous environmentalists like the ones who forced Arlen to install those annoying low-flow toilets.” See, Blue America? There is hope for us after all!

Bai’s most irritating commentary comes when he’s describing King of the Hill’s audience. He writes, “You might expect that a spoof of a small-town propane salesman and his beer-drinking buddies would attract mostly urban intellectuals, with their highly developed sense of irony.” Cause, you know, the only way to get a laugh out of those of us from the Heartland is to show some guy get kicked in the nuts.

So it comes as a huge surprise to Bai that the show’s viewers are mostly men, 18-49, a quarter of whom own pickup trucks. Yes, pickup trucks! Who knew pickup-truck drivers functioned on a high enough level to understand the complex irony of an animated sitcom on Fox? Bai closes by explaining that, “understanding the show’s viewers might resolve some of the mysteries confronting [Democrats] about the vast swaths of red on the electoral map.” Please, God, make it stop.

If this is what we have to put up with in the off-season, I shudder at the thought of what may come in 2006, especially during sweeps week.

1. The Decemberists – Picaresque
2. Bright Eyes – I’m wide awake… it’s morning

And unranked, here are the other three:

System of a Down – Mesmerize
Hot Hot Heat – Elevator
The White Stripes – Get behind me Satan

There are a few others that I played incessantly this year although their release date is pre-2005. They include in no particular order: Tilly and the Wall – Wild like children, The Arcade Fire – Funeral, Green Day – American idiot, the Garden State Soundtrack and Straylight Run – Straylight Run.

It’s even harder to compile a top five of movies because I prefer movies to records. I’ll try listing a few of the ones I saw this year (some “officially” opened in 2004): The Machinist, The Motorcycle Diaries, Batman Begins, The Power of Nightmares, Bad Education, Sin City, Life Acquatic and Downfall.

A special mention goes to March of the Penguins, a disarmingly beautiful movie that was just released.