Urban geography

The blog Twin Cities Sidewalks presents fine, fine pictures of the sidewalks, lampposts, and streets of the Twin Cities, with informative and witty writing by an urban geographer. At the end of this post on the lampposts of St Paul was a little added bonus, a video presenting the lampposts of London, set to the 1812 Overture!

Where to find great film writing on-line?

The Suburban World used to show movies. I wish it still did. For most of the fifteen years I lived in Berkeley, I lived just a few blocks from the Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive. I don't know how many hundreds of movies I was able to see for just a dollar or two at the PFA--I wish I'd kept a list! Here in the Twin Cities, the U Film Society and The Oak St.Cinema, the Walker Art center's film festivals and the Landmark Cinemas serve up more films than I can possibly see, but I do miss being able to stroll a few blocks to the PFA.

Last year, someone made a new year's resolution to see fifty movies and blog about them. I thought it would be fun to keep a list of movies we were seeing in my agenda, but lost track after just a month--not a priority. So this year, I'm going to list the movies I'm seeing either in the theaters, on TV or through Netflix, with links to IMDB. Quite a few of these are films I think I need to see for work, and some are films that have been in the Netflix queue for so long I've forgotten why they're there in the first place.
That way, when my swiss-cheese memory reduces me to saying, "YOU know, that movie with that guy, the one who was in that other movie...." I'll be able to look it up. I haven't decided yet if I'll include movies that I've seen before and see part of again by accident on TV (Four Weddings and a Funeral).
I don't have time or the inclination to write my own reviews, but I love to read great writing on film and popular culture.I am looking for sites that feature really good writing about film. Portal sites like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes give access to lots of reviews and user comments, but you have to wade through too much trivia to get at the good stuff.
Here are some sites I plan to check out for more substantive reviews and discussion:
Film Comment's Top Fifty list, Green Cine, Blog Critics, The Guardian's film blog, and we can't forget Pajiba!

Caribbean music (with Celia Cruz morsel)

Only five more midterms to grade!!! I'm gettting ready for a for class tomorrow in which we are going to talk about the roots of Caribbean music.
Here is Celia Cruz on TV with Sonora Matancera. I saw here in Berkeley when she was already in her seventies, but she sang and danced hard for at least two hours. Amazing.

Professor Zero turned me on Radio Batanga's music site, where one can listen to streaming audio in all genres of latin popular music. It's a wonderful way to find about about the latest hits or about songs that are old favorites. Although it's a commercial website, with lots of ads and mostly devoted to the popular music biz, it doesn't limit its playlists to the top of the charts. There are interviews, reviews, and links to videos.

But to learn more about the history of the music, and particularly or music of Africa and the African Diaspora (including African roots music in the Americas and its influence on music in Africa today) , Afropop Worldwide is great. They have archived feature articles, book and CD reviews, streaming audio playlists, and news from all over the music world. I find the site easy to use and generous. If you buy tunes from them, it helps support their mission of spreading knowledge about this music.

Their online music store, a great place to find music from all over the world and buy it without leaving most of your money in the hands of corporate distritutors, is run through Calabash Music, which bills itself as a Fair Trade Music site. Rather than organizing by musical genre, they divide the world geographically, and North American and South America are subdivided by country.