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I picked up one of these when I saw it on sale at a local electrical store, I’d been eying potential mp3 players for a while and had already decided long ago that it would be anything but ipod as I’m not a fan of iTunes, their battery life or their poseur hipster status symbol. The aforelinked site offered favourable reviews of the Sony line and I’ve never had any problems with a Sony product in my life so I figured why not.

It’s a lovely bit of kit. I’m not sure if the media management software is necessary but its functional and easy to use - except in the area of playlists, whereby you just need to sync up to WMP11 (or equivalent) and transfer via that. The UI is slick without being flashy, quick, easy to use and minimalistic. The sound is great and as you would expect, the earbuds provide clear sound. The unit itself is very slim and lightweight with a nice metallic front over a hard plastic back.

I only got the 4gb model despite having some 40gb of music because I’m a rotational person and like to swap-in/swap-out to force me to listen to new things, otherwise I’d probably listen to the same 100 or so albums forever. It also does video but I got over the idea of 240×320 resolution movies or TV around the same time as David Lynch.

I took it for my first jog (or rather jog-walk-hybrid) today and it performed well. My running playlist kept me on the move including such hits as Training Montage and Hearts on Fire from the Rocky IV soundtrack.

Just before I get my 2008 movie post going, I thought I’d repost my updated 2007 list:

Top 10

1. No Country For Old Men
The Coens forge a masterpiece regarding the black depths of humanity around the staples of noir - a fickle cold-blooded murderer, a risk-taking everyman, an aging cop with a weary mind, a stolen bag full of blood money. Brilliantly adapted, beautifully shot and endlessly provocative.

2. There Will Be Blood
Another masterpiece in terms of cinematography and writing, but this time the acting shines brighter than the rest of the movie - Daniel Day Lewis is Daniel Plainview, the obsessive oil-man who slowly destroys everything around him as his compulsions are left with nowhere else to turn. A powerful tale about identity and greed given life by one of the best performers in the business.

3. Hot Fuzz
Parody has never been so close to loving homage as it is in this movie, upping the ante significantly from Shaun of the Dead - where it could be argued that a lot of the laughs are cheaper to win in a gore-fest comedy with a genre that has provided so much unintentional hilarity over the years - Wright, Pegg, Frost and co. return to take on the action buddy-cop genre and the result is a brilliant piece of action comedy that pokes fun at its genre conventions while taking them to the next level.

There’s not a lot of fat in between that top 3, all top class movies that are inherently watchable and have already been revisited since. The rest of the top 10 are great movies in their own right and belong on there, but without any commentary from me.

4. The Mist
5. Eastern Promises
6. Ratatouille
7. Superbad & Knocked Up (tie)
8. Stardust
9. The Valley of Elah
10. Zodiac

Amazing. A breathtaking epic. The hyperbole was all true. It’s the Empire Strikes Back and Godfather Pt II of Batman movies. It’s 2.5hrs of unrelenting, edge-of-seat, nail-biting tension. It’s thrilling, amusing, scary and above all, enter-fuckin-taining.
It’s true, Ledger provides the definitive Joker here. He’s scary, he’s funny, he’s chaos personified, an “unstoppable force”, as a character he’s stripped down to pure pathological purpose and insanity absent of context, and as a result, is pretty damn terrifying.
However, this is also Harvey Dent’s movie and Aaron Eckhart is the heart and soul of The Dark Knight, and really, the title is more about him than Batman. As the tolls of his war against crime lead him down a dark path, away from Justice and towards Vengeance, his transformation into Two-Face is believable, moving and one of the best FX jobs I’ve ever seen.
Batman is the driving force behind everything, he’s the catalyst that got things moving and he keeps the action rolling without pause. There are some amazing action sequences and Bale’s commitment to the role shines through as the tortured protagonist caught in the middle of so many battles and half wanting to give up.
There are flaws, sure, the HK sequence is almost entirely superfluous, there are a number of quick cuts in certain scenes that left me slightly dazed and confused, Nolan still can’t direct a close-combat action sequence, there’s also one or two leaps in narrative logic that are a bit extreme, but these are tiny roadbumps on a roadtrip peeling down the motorway at 200 miles per hour, bullets whizzing past and the wind rushing in your ears.
If you’re not dazzled by the cinematic spectacle and sheer awesome scope of what is effectively two massive arcs crammed into one movie and instead focus on the negatives, you’re a complete asshole.
This is the best movie of 2008. The best comic book movie ever made and an instant favourite of mine for a long time to come.

Post-script: Oh yeah, caught this on an IMAX screen, pretty awesome and definitely the way to go for this movie - especially given the few scenes that were filmed specifically for the 25 meter screen.