US – Saturday, July 4
The Grid
The week's releases
Metro staff reviews the latest CDs, DVDs and books for your reading pleasure.
 
Movies
The gangster of Hollywood
FEATURE. Johnny Depp doesn’t know what time it is. Though he technically calls an adorable village in France home and owns an island in the Caribbean, the mercurial actor spends so much time working that his internal clock is all out of whack.
 
 
Movies
Directorial debut is a shot at the ‘Moon’
INTERVIEW. When directors are limited to a $5 million budget and a 33-day shooting schedule, they usually won’t do anything too arduous — especially for their first films. But director Duncan Jones, 37, tells us that he “wanted to do something with ambition” for his debut flick. So instead, Jones, who is the son of David Bowie, decided to make the sci-fi adventure “Moon,” which opens Friday. The affable Brit explains how.
 
The Word
The Beckhams’ island getaway
GOSSIP. According to the Sun, David Beckham is planning a trip to Necker Island, Richard Branson’s private island hideaway, to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary with Victoria Beckham. And the best part? It only costs $51,000 a night to have the whole island to themselves.
 
Movies
Bale does light-lifting
 MOVIES. Christian Bale is more relaxed than usual, and with good reason. The heavy lifting in promoting his latest film, “Public Enemies,” falls to Johnny Depp. For once, the success or failure of the movie doesn’t rest on Bale’s shoulders. There’s no talk of on-set outbursts or franchise potential. And for that, he’s grateful — and cheerful.
 
Published 20:53, June the 25th, 2008
Send
 
The visuals on Fuzz.com’s mix “tape” page bring you back to junior high school mixtapes. The visuals on Fuzz.com’s mix “tape” page bring you back to junior high school mixtapes. 
 

Mixing it up online

Allow Metro to be your Internet music ‘tape’ measurer

You want to listen before buying, your roommate needs a pick-me-up, or you have summer job-induced boredom — just a few of the reasons why we use online music players. Their sheer number may seem too vast to navigate, and each boasts a variety of features, so let us be your music-loving guinea pig.

Seeqpod (www.seeqpod.com) could be the new Pandora, which was last year’s YouTube, which was the year before that’s MySpace, all the way back to Napster. Its scientists developed a flash player to work with over 11 million indexed results for audio and video on the Web, where others host it. It can also find videos, interviews, artists’ info and, if they’re touring, a jovial green button appears with a red “On Tour!” banner. It redirects you to www.songkick.com for tour dates. Seeq-pod sidesteps the illegal downloading conundrum by not actually enabling you to download songs. It’s more like a lending library.

If Seeqpod seems too corporate — the site recently added advertisements — then perhaps Muxtape (www.muxtape.tumblr.com) is more your tape speed. It’s a unique, albeit disorganized, method for hearing what everyone else is listening to. Its simple design — a grid of boxes  representing the “tapes” of other users, will warm the heart of anyone who’s ever pressed “record” when a certain song came on the radio. Besides browsing this crisscross of compilations, you can upload your own MP3s to share. If you’re just in it for discovery, though, it can be difficult to find the playlist you want, since most go by esoteric names like “mailing a bear.” But with patience and nostalgia, Muxtape works.

Patience, shmatience, right? Some of us don’t have time to devote to searching. Instead, head to Fuzz. At www.fuzz.com/mixtapes, prepare to save time with its better organization, or waste it away with an opportunity to be tediously creative. We discovered Fuzz as an application on that other free-time-destroying site, Facebook. Fuzz’s service stems from an already valuable site for music lovers, and lets you create your own mixtape by either uploading songs or browsing through an extensive library. The coolest part is that you can decorate the intangible cassette tape before sharing it with friends — or at least the ones who won’t be weirded out receiving an online mixtape from you. Remember, if they’re sending it to all their friends on Facebook, it doesn’t mean they LIKE you like you.