[ABOUT THE LENGTH: I haven't written about movies, music, or anything critical in nature for over a year, so many of my selections include extensive capsules. Please indulge my over-written opinions and excuse all the clip art; I got too damn excited.]
Album of the Year
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Neko Case)
Top Five Albums of the Year:
1) Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Neko Case)
2) Destroyer’s Rubies (Destroyer)
3) Ys (Joanna Newsom)
4) Rather Ripped (Sonic Youth)
5) The Crane Wife (The Decemberists)
ALSO: 6) I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (Yo La Tengo) 7) At War With the Mystics (The Flaming Lips) 8) A Thousand Miles Off (The Walkmen) 9) Post-War (M. Ward) 10) The Life Pursuit (Belle & Sebastian)
HONORABLE MENTIONS (alphabetical): Broken Boy Soldiers (The Raconteurs) Everything All the Time (Band of Horses) The Greatest (Cat Power) Rabbit Fur Coat (Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins) Show Your Bones (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Song of the Year
“Star Witness” (Neko Case)
ALSO (alphabetical): “Another Sunny Day” (Belle & Sebastian) “Cheated Hearts” (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) “Chinese Translation” (M. Ward) “The Greatest” (Cat Power) “Louisiana” (The Walkmen) “Police Sweater Blood Vow” (The Fiery Furnaces) “Province” (TV on the Radio) “Turquoise Boy” (Sonic Youth) “Your Blood” (Destroyer)
Artist/Band of the Year
Chan Marshall
[For going sober and hitting a (tenuous?) creative peak.]
Worst Album of the Year
Boys and Girls in America (The Hold Steady)
[Here’s my half-baked theory: the Hold Steady’s aura as a drunk-nerd-bar band—an image reinforced by their recent Blender profile, among other pieces—strongly appeals to music writers/journalists who’re nearing their forties and feeling the first real pangs of nostalgia about their careless 20s. (See: ringing endorsements from Rob Sheffield, Chuck Klosterman, lotsa blogs, every online tastemaker, etc.) This close identification resulted in an indie music version of the Sideways backlash, with these thirty-somethings highly overrating a sloppy, maudlin paean to teens dabbling in sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Most importantly: aside from hesitant approval of a couple of songs, I haven’t met or heard from anyone under 30 who genuinely related to Boys and Girls, which seems odd given that our generation’s sexual and drug-related travails is the subject matter. And, yes, Craig Finn’s vocals are a huge turn-off, and all attempts at channeling Kerouac—whose “On the Road” inspired the album and title, a fact Finn mentions to every fawning interviewer—read like C-grade Writers’ Workshop drafts, creepy in an I’m-a-lecherous-35-year-old-drunk kind of way. “Hey, remember that time we did mushrooms, chugged a case of beer, and made out in a tent?” Well, Craig, sure I do, but I’m still going to pass on your fallacious, annoying recollections.]
Guilty Pleasure of the Year (song, artist, or album)
Gnarls Barkley
[J.J. started playing a pirated UK copy of St. Elsewhere back in January, and I was hooked. It was just great fun, as were the movie costumes, kooky videos, and T.V. appearances. Then, after a year and one too many magazine covers, the Gnarls phenomenon was nothing more than a diverting gimmick that (I think) will end in a Fatboy Slim/Moby-like flameout. Oh, well, thanks for the laughs.]
Movie of the Year
Children of Men
[If I were an East Coast critic, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows would be #1, based on a technicality. But nevermind...for the purposes of this poll, I will instead award the top spot to the astonishing Children of Men, a complete tour-de-force in every sense, the Apocalypse Now of our time, and so on and so forth. Flaws notwithstanding, no other film this year—and few this decade, I’d wager—packed such a visceral punch. Make an effort to see it on the big-screen, by the way—I suspect that this bleak, strangely funny, invigorating sci-fi/war epic will lose much of its impact on DVD.]
Top Five Movies of the Year
1) Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
2) United 93 (Paul Greengrass)
3) The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
4) Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck)
5) Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (Michel Gondry 2005)
ALSO: 6) Bubble (Steven Soderbergh 2005) 7) Match Point (Woody Allen 2005) 8) Jackass Number Two (Jeff Tremaine) 9) Brick (Rian Johnson 2005) 10) Casino Royale (Martin Campbell)
HONORABLE MENTIONS (alphabetical): Cache (2005); The Descent (2005); Inside Man; L’Enfant (2005); Manderlay (2005); Mutual Appreciation (2005); The Prestige; A Scanner Darkly; Scoop; The Three Burials of Melquides Estrada (2005).
Actor of the Year
Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson)
(This kid’s got chops—as a crack-addicted junior-high teacher, Gosling nails the trickiest, most demanding role of the year.)
Actress of the Year
(tie)
Meryl Streep & Lily Tomlin
[I wish Altman got the chance to take their characters from A Prairie Home Companion and build a different, superior homespun comedy around them…something like a country-western 3 Women. (No, Lindsay has to stay.) Either way, R.I.P.]
Worst Movie of the Year
Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
[Hate to pick on the Little Sundance Sensation That Could, but National Lampoon’s Emo Vacation was trite, off-putting, and easily more annoying than (far worse) movies featuring superheroes (from either D.C. or Marvel), Forrest Gump with hair extensions, and Jack Black in Mexican wrestling tights. Too many offenses to mention, but anyone—fan or not—ought to be insulted when they pass off the embarrassing “Super Freak” dance-off as a climax; also, the Proust-inspired exchange on the beach was sub-Braff nonsense unbefitting to a talent like Steve Carrell. If this watered-down, Wes/P.T. Anderson-knock-off is nominated for best picture, it’d be a travesty of Crash-like proportions.)
TV Show of the Year
Wonder Showzen
(A ruthless, avant-garde Sesame Street satire, Wonder Showzen—undoubtedly the best thing on television by virtue of existing in the first place—shoves good taste in a radioactive microwave and pisses on the smoldering ashes. “Beat Kids!”, hand puppet sex, “He-Bro,” the opening title montage (surely the funniest ever), “Horse Apples”…girls and boys, you just had to there, I could go on and on; basically, often this show dares you to keep watching, and, goddamnit, I accept the challenge. Some individual, five-minute clips could play in fringe European art museums. Mention it aloud to anyone, and, for better or worse, you can tell by the look on their face whether they’ve seen it. For me, this MTV2 program outdoes all the animation pastiches wading through Adult Swim and then some.)
Top Five TV Shows of the Year
1) Wonder Showzen
2) The Office
3) Lost
4) The Daily Show/Colbert Report: Election Night Coverage
5) 30 Rock (Any Scene with Alec Baldwin, though the other actors are just fine)
Top DVD Pick-up of the Year
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade 2004)
[Originally broadcast last year on the Sundance Channel, this documentary, which generates ambivalence and tension equal to that of the brilliant Paradise Now series, offers an even closer inside view of a murder trial, one from 2001, in North Carolina, involving a husband accused of brutally murdering his wife. De Lestrade shifts perspectives between the prosecution, the defense, and the children of the family-in-crisis, and the piecemeal flashbacks and sophisticated organization lead to a highly affecting finale. Over five-hours long, and considerably better than every best documentary Oscar winner I’ve seen, The Staircase moves faster than a single, snooze-inducing episode of Law & Order while making a convincing case for healthy skepticism toward the United States legal system...I now digress. (O.K., maybe I’ll just say that it’s funnier and more engaging than every Network police procedural and legal drama and leave it at that.)]
ALSO (alphabetical): The Conformist; Curb Your Enthusiasm (season five); Dazed and Confused (Criterion Collection); Lost (season one); Lost on iTunes (season two); Petulia; Wonder Showzen (seasons one & two); Young Mr. Lincoln (Criterion Collection)
Guilty Pleasure of the Year (TV and movie)
Deal or No Deal
[Please, NBC, give me those hours back.]
Borat
[Just because, you know.]
Best Episode of the Year (TV)
Justice (Wonder Showzen)
ALSO (alphabetical): “Branch Closing” (The Office); “Casino Night” (The Office); “Cooperation” (Wonder Showzen); “Exit Strategy” (Arrested Development; even more poignant since the hanging); “Two for the Road” (Lost season two; the one with Michael and the gun)
Best Scene of the Year (movie)
Car Ambush (Children of Men)
[WARNING: May cause seizures. Approach at your own risk. Starts light and offbeat before coasting into a masterful example of innovative editing. But, so what? It’s a harrowing, fever-pitched single take from the dashboard of a car…sounds hackneyed, right? Like Truffaut, but with even greater emphasis on spontaneity and desperation, Alfonso Cuaron, who is the best, most humanistic Amigo of the Three, reinvents the car shot for a new era, one in which CGI effects stir the viewer and make high-minded mainstream movies viable. Of all Children of Men’s staggering triumphs—least of which is providing a welcome antidote to Spielberg’s similarly ambitious-yet-stagnant sci-fi epic, A.I.—this scene’s strange and unnerving power is the one I admired the most.]
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