The Year in Media
december 29, 2008 02:23pm – in Korea
I think David Letterman effectively hammered home the irrelevance of "Top 10" lists when he started doing his "Top Ten" segments however many million years ago that was. A list of top ten non-sequiters really goes a long way in showing that these numbers are arbitrary.
Then Nick Hornby swung things around with High Fidelity, in which he splattered every event in a person's life onto neat little top 5's. That sort of had me organizing things into lists for a while.
This year I saw a "Top 10 Top 10 lists" post on a news aggregator site that I use. Also Roger Ebert's streak of reliable top 10 lists of movies ended this year, when he couldn't help but post a top 15.
Generally I like to break down my top ten lists of movies and albums at the end of the year just for my own personal satisfaction, but I'm not going to do that. It's a tidy way of wrapping up a dull year in an interesting way, but It's been a really wild year, and I'm just going to post my thoughts, disorganized, sure, but at least not forced into an artificial shape.
Deaths Of Famous People:
As I get older, I notice more and more famous people dying. Naturally this is because as I get older, I become aware of more people. This year, Heath Ledger died, which was strange, and started off the year in death with a huge bang. Then a bunch of other people died, but the one that really effected me has been George Carlin.
Carlin was getting old, but he didn't seem close to death. Elizabeth Taylor seems close to death. George Carlin was, to me, heading into his slow decline away from dignity and relevance, but certainly due for another decade of tribute shows, and lifetime achievement awards. He died though, and maybe it was for the best. Hunter Thompson killed himself long after he felt embarrassed to still be alive. Carlin was still performing, still relevant, and dying now saved him a lot of time in tuxedoes, smiling politely as Larry the Cable Guy dedicates a fart-themed song to him. Still, two days after I found out he died, I quietly cried about it.
I also cried after Paul Newman died, and I watched this:
Movies:
This year was full of movies I know I'm going to remember. Possibly because seeing them in Korea gave them a strange context, but also because there were just a lot of great movies.
Hellboy II was one of my favorites of the year. Guillermo Del Toro consistently makes brilliant movies, but this one took everything I loved about Hellboy and then added everything I loved about Pan's Labyrinth (and nothing I hated), and mashed them together to make something equal parts awesome, blow-em-up spectacle, and feast of the imagination. These are platitudes, so I'll be specific.
This scene in particular gives the hero of a movie (a totally muscle-ripped demon with a huge gun) a huge moral dilemma (no spoilers here), he makes his choice, and the result is the coolest and most beautiful visual from any movie this year. There's also this part:
The Angel of Death was just so cool. And then the part where they go into that underground world that is what Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter movies should look like, but doesn't.
By not relying completely on CGI, Del Toro lets his characters and the monsters seem to inhabit the same world, and that gives them a palpability that's lacking from most other fantasy movies.
There was also Wall-E, which WAS my favorite movie of the year.
I would work 9-5 at a desk for the rest of my life and be okay with it if the desk were at Pixar.
Music:
Keeping up with music for me means seeing live shows, and I have not been able to do that this year for the most part. There have been a few concerts of derivative local punk that made me miss crowding into tiny rooms and feeling the buzz in the air as everyone prepared to b serenaded by a person they really admire. The most fun I've had at live shows this year has been playing the drums at a few of them, with one exception.
In music, for me, this was the year of Jens Lekman. He has practically been the soundtrack for my trip to Korea (and literally the soundtrack to one of my video blogs), even though he released his most recent album last year. To make matters more perfect, I was in Seoul when I unexpectedly happened upon a Jens Lekman concert. For one fantastic hour (in a room mostly full of foreigners) I was transported back to the musical environment where I felt at home.
I also caught up with the music of Cat Power, Built to Spill, and Broken Social Scene. I don't know what my life was before these artists. In particular, Cat Power. Without this song:
...I couldn't have made it through the year.
Most of my favorite NEW stuff from 2008 was the new stuff by artists I already loved: David Byrne (and Brian Eno), Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and Sun Kil Moon.
I also loved Fleet Foxes, just like everyone else. I have lost my enthusiasm for music videos, frankly, but this Fleet Foxes video is just wonderful. Modest in ambition, perfect in concept, and solidly executed. I'm jealous.
Also, I'm announcing here that I am NOT, in fact, staying the extra six months. I expect to be back in California (after some backpacking) in April.