My favourites: August, September and October

First of all, I have a little bit of explaining to do. The last post I did was about a month ago, so I have been away for quite a while. The reason for this absence had been the start of the new scholastic year for me. I started my Masters in translation at university and the amount of work kind of overwhelmed me so much that I couldn’t put myself to write for my blog. Now however, I’m settled a bit again, and I decided to start again this weekend and what better way to start then by telling you about my favourites of the last month(s).

Well, it’s almost the first of November and therefore the perfect time to make a favourites list. For a while now I’ve been using the music scrobbler from Last.fm to keep a record of the music I listen to. This program – easy to install! – keeps track of what you listen to on your computer – in the windows media player as well as in iTunes (you can even let it synchronize your iPod to scrobble the songs you listened to on there). On your online profile you then can see what artists you have listened to the most – over the last week, the last year or overall, but also (important!) over the last three months. This has given me the idea to, at the start of every new month, make a list of the 10 artists I’ve listened to the most over the previous 3 months – with a bit of extra info on the why?

These are the lists (artists and songs) of the months August, September and October.

Favourite sites

In this blogpost I’d like to talk to you about some internetpages and – let’s call them – applications, that are related to my love for music and movies. I’ll give a short description and why I like them so much!

Imdb.com

This is a very, very, very handy tool for everyone who watches a lot of movies and is a bit obsessed with finding out the answer to the question: Where have I seen that guy/girl before? The Internet Movie DataBase is – like the title says – a database with a lot of movies. You can search on movie title, actor, actress, director, composer etcetera. Almost everything I always want to know, you can find there. I usually use it to check what other movies an actor was in, or if they played a part in a television series I know, so I can place him or her. I love this site, just because it gives you all this general information and it’s easy to use. Just click on link after link and see where you’ll end up!

Link: http://www.imdb.com/

Studying and music: a good combination?

In this post I want to talk about something a bit in general: Listening to music while you’re studying. I always work better with music playing, but it all depends on a few factors that I’d like to tell you about.

Firstly I should tell you a little bit about my studies. The last couple of years I’ve studied Italian, which meant that a lot of the texts I had to prepare or assignments I had to do were in Italian. Basically, in all the courses I took there were three languages that were used in texts, during classes and for essays and stuff: Dutch, English and foremost Italian.

Review: Æon Flux – Karyn Kusama (2005)

A (relatively) short review this time. Not because there’s not much to say though! I wanna talk about a movie called Æon Flux, which was directed by Karyn Kusama. A short introduction: The movie was based on a series of animations made by Peter Chung that aired on MTV in the early nineties. It’s about this female assassin. The story of the film is based on that character.

The female assassin is played by Charlize Theron. The story takes place in a city in the future called Bregna. Apparently a long time ago there was a deadly virus which took out the whole population of planet earth, except those people who united in Bregna. This community has been living there under the authority of the Goodchild family for centuries, but there’s a rebel movement that wants to overthrow their regime.

Lyrics: Wouter Hamel - Ride that sunbeam

This is one of my favourite Wouter Hamel songs. The lyrics are very upbeat and if you're feeling a bit down it makes you feel a little better.... At least it makes ME feel better sometimes.


It speaks for itself!


Ride that sunbeam
If you're truly in love with him
follow your dream, ride that sunbeam
'till you find what you've missed
in you're bittersweet years
It's time to dry those tears

Life will happen the way that it should
let your feelings guide you
Don't settle for less
just aim for success
and love just might find you

My favourites: June, July and August

It’s the first of September and therefore the perfect time to make a favourites list. For a while now I’ve been using the music scrobbler from Last.fm to keep a record of the music I listen to. This program – easy to install! – keeps track of what you listen to on your computer – in the windows media player as well as in iTunes (you can even let it synchronize your iPod to scrobble the songs you listened to on there). On your online profile you then can see what artists you have listened to the most – over the last week, the last year or overall, but also (important!) over the last three months.

This has given me the idea to, at the start of every new month, make a list of the 10 artists I’ve listened to the most over the previous 3 months – with a bit of extra info on the why?

These are the first lists (artists and songs) of the months June, July and August.

Review: The Brothers Grimm - Terry Gilliam (2005)

About three days ago I watched this movie and since then there have been some moments in which an image of The Brothers Grimm came popping up in my head. I thought: why not write a review on this movie then! So here you go...

The movie was directed by Terry Gilliam, one of the guys from Monty Python and that you can definitely see (I’ll discuss that a little later).

Review: Aloe Blacc - "Good things" (2010)

In this post I’d like to write my first review! A little while ago I listened to the album “Good things” released in 2010 as the second album of soul artist Aloe Blacc. He was born in Panama and his real name is E. Nathaniel Dawkins. He learned to play the trumpet, the guitar and the piano and after a few years working in the corporate world he decided to get into music, the field he really loved. I discovered him while watching a Belgium show about entertainment on TV. It was about a show Aloe Blacc did in Belgium and after that I downloaded his album. Want to know what I think about it?

Introducing my favourite movies (selection)

In my last post I talked about my favourite artists as a kind of introduction to my taste of music. Now it’s time to do the same thing with my favourite movies. Here’s a small selection, mostly arranged in categories:

I wanna start with a movie, that’s actually not a movie.

Introducing my favourite artists (of this moment)

You know what my problem is? I’m kind of an omnivore when it comes to the things I tend to like in my life, whether it’s courses to take at university, books to read or films to watch. The same thing happens with music. My favourites can change from month to month, from week to week or even from day to day. It’s difficult for me to name my favourite songs or albums or even artists. I CAN tell you however about the artists I currently listen to a lot or still listen to regularly so you can get a sense of my taste in music. (It’s still just a small selection though :P)

Newbie’s

I’ll start with some artists I discovered only recently – either because they’ve only just had their musical debut, or because I didn’t know of their existence up until recently...

Introducing...

My name is Linda and I’m currently 21 years old. I started this blog to give you an insight in my two passions in life: music and movies. These passions basically emerged from the passion that my parents have for either music and movies. From when I was little there was almost always music playing in the house when we were home, music ranging from classical music to hard rock, from jazz to country. Out of that I have been developing my own musical preferences starting about five years ago, along with discovering some of my favourite movies.