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Where do you go to find reviews for new things to listen, watch or read?

I like Salon and A.V. Club. Great writing style and always updated. They have a little of everything.

For music I often go to Pitchfork or Drowned in Sound.

There are many bloggers commenting on these things but I like focus. A site where I can read just what I want.

Your comments?

Imagine a radio station playing just the songs you like, and giving you the ability to tell when a song doesn’t fit your tastes and not playing it anymore. That is what Pandora does.

Pandora is a web based service that allows you to create your own music stations. Stations that “learn” what kind of music you prefer based on the choices you make. Pandora only needs a web browser with the Flash player plugin installed, that is almost any computer in the world.

Pandora rewards our curiosity, hence the name. It’s a great way of finding new music. No matter if it’s the latest hit by a mainstream artist or an unknown local band from Biloxi, Mississippi.

I signed up to Pandora a couple of months ago and I instantly loved it; thus, when I got a newsletter written by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora and who started the Music Genome Project in 1999, I decided to ask him for an interview.

Tim replied quickly and we had a talk over the phone yesterday.

Here you have it, Tim Westergren from Pandora, at Ventanazul.

Continua leyendo …

Right, everybody is inviting, or being invited, to Gmail.

The initial rush of “please invite me or I’ll die!” has, apparently, vanished.

Don’t you believe me? Take a look at this comic strip.

Johhny Depp is an undercover FBI agent, working under the name of Donnie Brasco during 1978.

Al Pacino is “Lefty", an under ranked mob guy who will become friend with Donnie.

This movie has remarkable performances by both, Depp and Al Pacino, most of the story is based in a real case.

The story occurs at New York, Brasco will infiltrate the NY Mafia, Lefty is the man who, without knowing Brasco is FBI, will introduce him to this world.

We will see how Depp’s character changes over time, he hangs out with these mobsters and starts acting like them sometimes, his wife and his three daughters don’t know how he spends time in his “work".

One of my favorite scenes is when Lefty and Brasco discuss about how to pronounce “forget about it!", it reminded me of some Tarantino scenes.

I also loved the way in which Lefty leaves his things in a drawer before leaving his home when he is “called".

Nice quote: “You don’t walk out of me!, I walk out of you!”

Michael Madsen, as Sonny Black, and Anne Heche, as Donnie’s wife, also offer solid performances.

If you have not seen Brasco, it’s time to do it, if you have, then see it again, it’s a great movie!

I have just read that Orson Scott Card sold the rights to produce a movie based in Ender’s Saga to Warner Bros.

The movie would be directed by Wolfgang Petersen and the script would be written by Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, who wrote the X-Men 2 script.

I just hope they don’t spoil these fabulous novels.

Last weekend I rented two movies: Last Samurai and Cold Mountain, I would like to share my comments about them. Let’s start with Last Samurai.

We all know what to expect from a Tom Cruise’s movie, lots of shots of his face, this time he is bearded and with long hair, great for the ladies in the audience. Last samurai is full of cliches: Cruise is an alcoholic soldier who fought at the civil war and has a not so decent job helping to sell Winchester guns, he is hired to train japanese soldiers fighting a group of rebel samurais and transform himself in a good man.

Cruise is captured by the samurais in the battle, amazing point number one: Why they did not kill him at the battle field?, oh yeah, my girl said: “The samurai chief has realized that Cruise has some special in him, he fights as a tiger", of course! that’s what the director wanted us to think!, they even shot a tiger flag in slow motion!.

Cruise is taken to the samurai’s village and kept there as a “prisioner", what a great prison!, he had a pretty japanese girl taking care of him, feeding him and even curing his alcoholism!.

Fortunately the samurai chief, I mean the “last” one, speaks english and wants to be Cruise’s friend. Our hero starts to train with the samurais and needs only one year to learn japanese and be able to kill four bad guys armed with swords, being himself unarmed. Aparently Mr. Cruise felt so excited about that scene that asked the director to repeat it in slow motion.

In the final battle we are informed that there are like 500 samurais ready to fight, the bad guys have canons and machine guys so the sword mastering won’t be enought to win this time, all the samurais die but, oh surprise, there is one survivor: Cruise.

In one of the final scenes a puppet young emperor receives Cruise advice and does not sign a treaty with the yankees, great!, we had to kill 500 samurais for that, why don’t you speak at the beginning of the movie guys?

At last Cruise returns to the samurai village to (we hope) live a long and happy live with the japanese girl and her two childred. Oh, did I mention he also killed the girl’s husband?, apparently that was not too important.

Well, I saw the film knowing what to expect, at least I wanted the fights to look real, eveything was Cruise in slow motion, Cruise here, Cruise there, well you get the idea.

My last word: Don’t see this movie, Harry Potter is much more fun.

I only hope Troy won’t be like this.