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It’s been a great year, and I’m enjoying being in full blogging mode again after my months in the wilderness. Hope everyone has a great time tonight, and if you’re watching Wayne Coyne roll around in his gerbil ball at the Cox Center, look for me in the nosebleed section.

1. Public Enemy, “Don’t Believe the Hype.”

2. Dizzee Rascal feat. Lily Allen, “Wanna Be.” From Dizzee’s Maths + English, which got scant attention here in 2007, meaning the general public never got to hear this absolutely monster track featuring Staticblog’s favorite. This is every bit as good as anything on Alright, Still — granted, Dizzee’s got the lead, but Lil’s got the chorus, and the reggae dub beat is pure Alright. Despite her eggo being preggo, we’re allegedly going to be getting a rash of new music from Ms. Allen in new year. More, please.

Hey look — I didn’t post a photo of Lily Allen! Hey look — The ground is opening up and swallowing me whole!

3. Georgie James, “Need Your Needs.”

4. Devo, “Speed Racer.”

5. Cat Power, “Hate.”

6. Destroyer, “Painter in Your Pocket.”

7. Pleasure, “Out of Love.” British electro from a synth main man named Fred Ball. Featuring vocals from former Gus Gus singer Heidrun Bjornsdottir, “Out of Love” is almost too sugary for its own good — it nearly sounds like Japanese pop music from the ’80s. All that’s needed is a video starring Hello Kitty, and the illusion is complete.

8. Voxtrot, “Trouble.”

9. Busdriver, “Pompous Posies! Your Party’s No Fun.”

10. Stereolab, “Miss Modular.” While Emperor Tomato Ketchup is the best Stereolab disc top to bottom, 1997’s “Miss Modular,” from Dots and Loops, is my favorite track by the band — Gane and Sadier’s quintessential bachelor pad song if your pad is packed with Eames chairs. A new disc is due in early ‘08, and while I’m not expecting massive sea changes from the band, they make great utility music if you have fantasies of driving a Citroen and being ungodly suave.

I’ll also see you in early ‘08 — Wednesday, to be specific. Cheers, and Happy New Year,

George

Ellen Page, left, and Olivia Thirlby in “Juno.” 

Think of the premise and it sounds like a dozen Lifetime movies: a teenage girl gets pregnant, and resolves to find the perfect parents to raise her baby. Seen it all before, right?

Now, erase all preconceived notions of canned angst, the disappointed and embarrassed mom and dad, the scorn of classmates and other standard plot devices, and Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody’s wondrous “Juno” emerges from the fog of all that melodrama. It feels fresh because it is, thanks to Cody’s sharp-witted script as well as the agile brain and expressive face given to the title character by actress Ellen Page.

In the opening scene, Juno is standing in a front yard in suburban Minnesota, chugging Sunny D and staring at the battered living-room recliner where it all happened. She surprise-seduced her best friend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera of “Superbad”), and now her “eggo is preggo.” She briefly considers abortion, but after being turned off by the casual nature of the clinic, she decides to find suitable adoptive parents.

She finds them in the Penny Saver: Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) are picture-perfect and live in a spacious suburban home. Vanessa is baby-crazy, and Mark is a former alternative rocker who now keeps his artifacts of cool in a spare room. Juno and Mark find common ground based on punk rock and gory films, and the girl is convinced she’s found the perfect place for the child.

But not everything is exactly right, and not for stock reasons. “Juno” works so miraculously because it clues into things that drive people — hipster credibility, a primal urge to raise children, reclamation of lost youth, and pure friendship as the basis for love. And Cody’s first script is like music: when characters use super-hip lingo, it’s a defense mechanism — they wield language like ninja stars.

There’s real relationship stuff in this dialogue. When her father, Mac, played by J.K. Simmons, sees Juno at 8 months, he says, “Hey there, big puffy version of Junebug,” just like a loving dad who’s a little bewildered by his daughter’s condition might say to take the edge off things. Simmons is great here as a tough but good-natured father, and the rest of the cast, including Allison Janney as her stepmother, Bren, is spot-on.

But Reitman and Cody rightly rely on Page (“Hard Candy”) to bring their creation to life, and she delivers with a refreshing and natural performance — this is only the beginning of a long and great career for this Canadian actress. With “Juno,” Reitman, who debuted last year with the impressive “Thank You for Smoking,” has made a film with just as much wit as his previous work, but with a lot more heart.

1. Girl Talk, “Bounce That.” Having one of those days when you can’t decide between listening to the Emotions, LCD Soundsystem, the Breeders, Stevie Wonder, Steve Winwood, the Pointer Sisters, Elastica, Britney Spears, Wreckx-N-Effect, Ciara and Ludacris? Gregg Gillis is here to help.

2. Rhymefest, “Fever.”

3. Ween, “Mister Richard Smoker.”

4. Matthew Alvin Brown, “New York City Girls.”

5. The Chalets, “Sexy Mistake.” This Dublin group, which successfully meshes ’60s girl group tropes with ’90s girl group tropes, has singers named Pony and Peepee. How’s that for self-image?

6. Hindu Love Gods, “Raspberry Beret.”

7. Jay-Z Feat. Pharrell, “Blue Magic.”

8. Datarock, “Maybelline.”

9. Steely Dan, “Black Friday.”

10. The Pipettes, “I Love You.” Speaking of girl group tropes, Gwenno, RiotBecki and Rosay say it all in a minute and a half, choreographed complete with synchronized hand gestures and dressed in fetching polka dots. We Are the Pipettes finally got released on CherryTree/Interscope in the U.S. on Oct. 2, but so far there are few takers stateside. Guess the masses are too blitzed on Soma to care, and by Soma, I mean “Apologize” by OneRepublic feat. Timbaland.

Maybe Mr. Mosley should remix the Pipettes.

Maybe not.

Six years in hip-hop history is like sitting out a century, and that’s what Wu-Tang Clan did after 2001’s militaristic “Iron Flag.” After that extended hiatus, which saw the resurgence of Ghostface Killah as first-rate MC, the rise of RZA as Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” music supervisor and the death of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, it’s understandable that (a) “8 Diagrams” has a markedly different sound and (b) no one in the group except producer RZA seems to like it. But taken on its terms, “Diagrams” succeeds as an ultra-mellow and thoroughly modern take on the Wu.

This is fully evident on “Take It Back,” in which RZA sculpts a jazzy underlay for the Wu’s new mission statement, delivered largely by Ghostface. “Rushing Elephants” drops references to J.R.R. Tolkien and Zorro while ominous orchestration marches in the background. After the full-bore blaxploitation epic “Unpredictable,” the Wu lays back on the superbly sleazy “The Heart Gently Weeps,” featuring the melody from “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” sung by Erykah Badu and played by John Frusciante and Beatles scion Dhani Harrison.

The guest appearances do not stop there — George Clinton shows up for the haunting spaghetti western funk of “Wolves” — and perhaps it is understandable that inter-group attitudes toward “8 Diagrams” are so diffuse: RZA has rebuilt the Wu-Tang Clan’s sound as a low-and-slow quiet storm. But there are no justifications for a return to the classic sound of 1993’s “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).” They’ve been there and done that, and with “8 Diagrams,” the Wu sounds positively re-energized with this lush and carefully crafted effort.

What is the deal with air travel? 

The great shame of “Ocean’s Thirteen” is that it should have been “Ocean’s Twelve.” Instead, the second installment of the “Ocean’s” series was a self-indulgent trifle filled with lame in-jokes and saddled with a disengaged European setting that felt more like a paid vacation for George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the rest of the neo-Rat Pack. Fortunately, “Ocean’s Thirteen” is a solid course correction that lands the team back in Las Vegas.

Al Pacino’s Willy Bank is a super-charged Steve Wynn/Donald Trump-alike who cheats the ailing Reuben Tishkoff out of co-ownership in a massive casino that looks like a Dubai skyline nightmare. The team led by Danny Ocean (Clooney) hatches a plan to ensure that Bank’s palace of cash keeps losing — if it loses its five-diamond rating, then Reuben regains control. Of course, none of this matters, because the joys in “Ocean’s Thirteen” come from the fun that everyone on screen is having with the cool-as-dry-ice dialogue.

 When Pitt’s Rusty Ryan “does an Irwin Allen” on Bank, it means dangling the threat of a natural disaster. How about “a Billy Martin”? That’s code for being welcomed back in order for the “Steinbrenner” to stage a full retaliation. For director Steven Soderbergh, the “Ocean’s” films are larks, but that does not mean he puts less effort into them. His own cinematography (credited to Peter Andrews) is typically beautiful, and the great spy-music score by David Holmes gives it all a rich sense of suavity. This time, “Thirteen” is lucky.

LCD Soundsystem’s “45:33” was commissioned by Apple and Nike as part of the companies’ “Nike + iPod” jogging utility system, but LCD’s James Murphy used it as an opportunity to stretch out and create an exhilarating long-form dance-rock composition. Previously available only on iTunes, “45:33” now comes bundled in compact disc form, complete with some superbly funky bonus tracks and remixes tacked on for post-jogging dance explosions.

A seamless composition broken into six movements for disc-scanning purposes, the music on “45:33” resembles the African “high life” period of Talking Heads and Brian Eno — the treated vocals and propulsive percussion evoke the Heads’ 1980 classic, “Remain in Light.” Fans of this year’s “Sound of Silver” will recognize elements of “Someone Great” and “Get Innocuous” floating through “45:33,” long before they were fleshed out into full, stand-alone songs, but they fit perfectly with Murphy’s tribal flow. 

The special bonus is “Freak Out/Starry Eyes,” a new and low-slung funk burner that segues into a Can-like electro-pulse. “Hippie Priest Bum-Out” and a remix of “North American Scum” appeared previously on an EP, but these tracks mesh well with the epic churn of “45:33.” This is high-level dance music, something exceedingly rare these days, and beyond its obvious superiority to 95 percent of current club fodder, “45:33” has got a nice beat and you can jog to it.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and now it’s back on our heads at work. Behold, the iPod doth speweth!

1. Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir.” You can hear the anger even if you are challenged in the Francophone department, but this French electro singer is basically saying that Cuizinier, the leader of the French hip-hop trio TTC, is, erm … well, this is a bit like Lily Allen’s “Not Big,” but with more vitriol. 

2. Cecil Taylor Trio, “Rick Kick Shaw.”

3. Dr. Dog, “My Old Ways.”

4. 3rd Bass, “Wordz of Wisdom.”

5. Evangelicals, “Here in the Deadlights.” From the forthcoming disc “The Evening Descends.” This Norman band is frighteningly great, evoking shoegazer music, Pink Floyd and the Shins, all during this one song. See them with Starlight Mints before the Lips show on New Year’s Eve.

6. Asobi Seksu, “Red Sea.”

7. Ghostface Killah, “Jellyfish.”

8. Junior Boys, “In the Morning.”

9. Pavement, “Conduit for Sale!”

10. Isobel Campbell, “Willow’s Song.” Fans of the original 1973 version of “The Wicker Man” will remember this as the song Britt Ekland lip-synched while getting spectacularly naked and singing through the walls of her bedroom, trying to seduce Edward Woodward’s Sgt. Howie. “Willow’s Song” has been covered many times, but Campbell truly does it justice.

He Who Must Not Have a Nose 

With “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the saga of the young wizard becomes steeped in allegory. It’s hard not to watch David Yates’ adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s fifth Potter novel and its themes of corruption in the Ministry of Magic, media manipulation and other worldly concerns without seeing it as the first Potter film with one foot in magic and the other in true, adult reality.

But beyond Harry’s battles against the ministry and its efforts to cover up the return of Lord Voldemort (played with supreme creepiness by Ralph Fiennes), “Phoenix” is particularly interesting because Yates infuses the film with other types of realism. Witness how Harry’s cousin, Dudley Dursley, has become what is called a “chav” in British slang — a thug with gold chains who talks like a yob — and how Yates exhibits better than any other previous “Potter” director how a real London co-exists with the wizarding world.

Like the previous two films in the series, “Phoenix” compresses a great deal from the book, so some characters such as Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Tena) just seem to be passing through. But evil-insane Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) gets more time, and it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Carter doing justice to the scenery-chewing role. Yates, who will return for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” does not transform the series like Alfonso Cuaron did with “Prisoner of Azkaban,” but he is proving to be a good steward of Rowling’s characters and intent, and for rabid fans of the series, that can be all that matters.

1. The Brunettes, “Small Town Crew.” Of all the tweeness I loved in 2007, the Brunettes’ Structure and Cosmetics was the finest. With their move to Sub Pop, the harmonies got coated with another layer of candy goodness and the orchestration was beyond lush.

2. The Reelists feat. Ms. Dynamite, “Back to Life.”

3. Sparks, “Pretending to be Drunk.”

4. Be Your Own PET, “Bicycle Race.” On that hit-and-miss tribute to Queen from a while back, some artists did amazing, pointillistically rendered copies — you would not believe how sharp those mall punks in Sum 41 sound on “Killer Queen.” But Be Your Own PET, led by Nashville feral child Jemina Pearl, slash the tires on this old Schwinn and kick it into a ditch.

5. M.I.A., “World Town.”

6. Van Hunt, “Character.”

7. Brazilian Girls, “Jique.”

8. !!!, “Heart of Hearts.”

9. Lovage, “Herbs, Good Hygiene and Socks.”

10. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, “Something’s Changed.” The coolness of 100 Days, 100 Nights goes well beyond the abundant ’60s funk and Jones’ unbelievable soulfulness. The production on the thing is pure vintage — the Dap-Kings played on Wino’s Back to Black, but Mark Ronson’s mix was that kind of dense, integrated production we’ve been hearing since the ’70s. On this one, the horns are in one speaker, the bass is in the other, the drum parts are split, and Jones is wailing in the middle. Cool as hell.

“I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger.”