January 2011
36 posts
3 tags
The Best Films of 2010: Part I
This is my year-end list. It’s coming at the end of January because I’m a completist who doesn’t live in New York or L.A. While there were certainly trends in 2010 cinema (the nature of truth being one of them), it’s hard to sum up the whole year beyond what you personally liked. So that’s always my plan. I didn’t get to see everything, of course, but I got to...
4 tags
Rick Ross feat. Jay-Z- “Free Mason (Screwed...
2 tags
1 tag
2 tags
“Does nobody understand?”
– The last words of James Joyce, spoken on his deathbed in Zurich, 1941 (via nomadic-revery)
3 tags
4 tags
"Scenic Routes: The Godfather"- Mike D'Angelo- The... →
2 tags
"83rd Annual Academy Award Nominations Announced"-... →
I went 38/45 with my predictions, although I bungled which screenplays were original and which ones were adapted. Some nice surprises here (Winter’s Bone, Exit through the Gift Shop, Dogtooth), but I can’t believe Christopher Nolan and, more importantly, Inception’s editor Lee Smith didn’t get nominated. Good thing these awards are pointless exercises in self-congratulatory...
2 tags
2 tags
Johnny Thunders- “You Can’t Put Your...
1 tag
Oscar Nomination Predictions
The Academy Awards nominations come out tomorrow, and every year I take a stab at predicting the major categories. Last year I went 36/45, which is kind of low for me. BEST PICTURE Black Swan The Fighter Inception The Kids Are All Right The King’s Speech The Social Network The Town Toy Story 3 True Grit Winter’s Bone BEST DIRECTOR Darren Aronofsky- Black Swan David Fincher- The Social...
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
"Imaginary Lines from an Imaginary 9/11 Sex and... →
“Meanwhile uptown, Samantha was having a few explosions of her own.”
“It was at that moment Charlotte resolved that if her fellow countrymen were brave enough to revolt against knife-wielding hijackers, the least she could do was take off her bra during sex.”
“Ooooh! Oooh! New Blahniks! AL BUYDA!”
“Later that day I got to thinking about Muslims and relationships. If I couldn’t even tell Big...
4 tags
"Odd Future, Wiz Khalifa, and the Internet-Rap... →
5 tags
"Little Pink Polos for You and Me"- Eric Harvey-... →
Everyone brings his A game for the Pazz and Jop issue. “True to its name, Contra focused on what divides us—from global anxieties to interpersonal insufficiencies—while daring us to feel comfortable in our own Sperrys. The album launch was a virally circulated Polaroid of a girl in a popped Polo, and the band smirked as the Internet used her as a dartboard for its cultural assumptions...
3 tags
4 tags
Top 15 Albums of 2010
As usual, I wore myself out writing about my favorite songs of last year, and I’m now so late on the albums that I don’t even have time to do full write-ups for each record. I can’t do the films list until Blue Valentine comes to my city. The Weinstein Company needs to hit me up with some screeners. That which does not destroy us makes us stronger I guess. 15. Fabolous- There Is...
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
Watchpitchfork:
R. Kelly sings “Happy Birthday” to himself while sitting in a leopard-print chair. He turned 44 on January 8. (Via @KellZodiac.)
3 tags
2 tags
5 tags
2 tags
4 tags
1 tag
Patton Oswalt- “Steak” From his album...
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
4 tags
Three Ways Removing the N-Word Will Screw Up 'Huck... →
youmightfindyourself:
A new edition of Mark Twain’s seminal Huckleberry Finn is going to be scrubbed clean of all 215 uses of “nigger.” According to Alan Gribben, a Twain scholar who is leading the creation of the politically correct edition, “Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”
This censorship is silly for a number of reasons, of...
3 tags
"List of Tarantino's 20 Favorite Movies of 2010... →
I’m surprised Q.T. didn’t like Black Swan more. Of course, the big winner of this list is the mental image of Tarantino buying a ticket to see Tangled.
3 tags
"An Album and Its Buzz"- Jon Caramanica- New York... →
“Mr. West received these simultaneous accolades for several reasons. There’s the recent egalitarian streak in pop criticism — the death of nongeneralists — even if this specific embrace of Mr. West is merely a case of exceptionalism masking as democracy. ‘Twisted Fantasy’ is a hip-hop album accessible to both insiders and outsiders, arriving in a moment in which other genres...
2 tags
3 tags
The Top 25 Songs of 2010: 5-1
Part One Part Two All songs in a downloadable playlist. 5. Katy Perry- “Teenage Dream”- Until now, Katy Perry has been an artist singer figure associated with gimmicks. From kissing girls to dating celebrities to dressing like Betsey Johnson’s wet dream, her cult of personality has always been bigger than the songs themselves. So when the stadium pop of “Teenage...