Around the world #5

from We Went to Wonderland, by Xiaolu Guo (showing at ND/NF) * One of my favorite contemporary writers, Jeffrey Eugenides, has a new story up at The New Yorker. That's nice and all, but does he have a sparsely read music blog that he intermittently updates?! I bet he totally doesn't! [The New Yorker] * The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art present their annual New Directors/ New Films Festival. Considering I want to see about ninety percent of these movies, I'm gonna go ahead and pronounce this a pretty impressive slate. [ND/NF 2008] * A nice review of David Gordon Green's highly anticipated (by me, anyway) new movie, Snow Angels. [Chicago Reader] * J-Direct's Live and J-Direct celebrates its one-year anniversary with a half-off sale! (Here's what I had to say about it way back when.) In related news, start getting excited about their upcoming followup, which I hear is going to be another standout. [J-Direct] * Peeps dioramas: a helluva lot cooler than the gefilte fish dioramas I was trying to craft for Passover. [Washington Post] * Another day, another Santogold interview. The cynic in me wants to snipe that her debut album hasn't even dropped and she's already overexposed. But the rest of me just can't wait to find out this fantastic this LP will be. [Fact]