'Nick and Norah' Website's Loaded with Distractions

I got up early this morning to play with the website for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, a Wackness-meets-Go-type movie featuring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings.

It feels totally inspired by the chaos of Manhattan. You're hit with a trailer, after which you can enter the site, riddled with cardboard cut-outs, frenetic noise (honking horns, sirens) and, under "Music," an Infinite Playlist that's not so infinite. (Two songs so far. Will there be more? Somebody needs to contract this guy.)

Available downloads, littered around the site, remind me of 2002: all desktop wallpaper and "icons." One cool feature, courtesy of Sprout, lets you build a personalized (within reason) mixtape/video widget. Look how fun! Impulse downloads are managed by iTunes and Amazon.

If music's not your thing, there's also a virtual book club where I guess Nick and Norah fans can gush about the novel that started it all. Very cute, sorta indie-meets-mainstream, looking forward to seeing the movie along with all the 30-somethings still on MySpace. (Speaking of, thanks to Jane Tattersall, who manages MySpace Canada, for getting my feelers out about this flick. She turned me onto The Wackness too, which I really really liked.)