Best of 2010
Well folks,
Blatantly inspired by def_fr0g_42, I'm gonna list my favourite media stuff of 2010. I will try to only list things that came out during that year, but please bear in mind that I live in Australia and we are often behind the times in some respects.
BEST COMICS
This was a great year for comics, and not only that... it was a year where many of my favourite books were produced by my friends. So I'm not going to talk about STARGAZER, WITCH DOCTOR, LUTHER STRODE, DIGESTED, A MIND OF LOVE, THE DEEP, THE LIST, SOLDIER LEGACY or DAKR DETECTIVE. But you should go out and buy all of that stuff. I wrote the introductions for two of those books, if you want to know how firmly I will stand behind them.
INCOGNITO vol.02, by Brubaker and Phillips. Also, the newest volumes of CRIMINAL by the same guys. What can I say? They're some of the best in the biz.
METAMAUS is not technically a comic; it's a massive book about how art spiegelman created the Pulitzer Prize winning MAUS--but it's a must-read for anyone who's interested in comics-lit.
SPACE MAN by Azarello and Risso. Excellent, warped new SF series that doesn't need to explain itself to you.
LOCKE AND KEY by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Okay, this has been going for a couple years now, but I only just got into it and... holy shit. Great characters, great pacing, and a great concept that Hill is milking for everything its worth. It sounds like a fairly pedestrian horror adventure, but... jeez. You see tons of 'concept' books and movies these days, but very few that really dig in and explore the crazy ideas fully. This book is just great--frightening, compassionate, hugely inventive and faultlessly executed.
BEST BOOKS
I read a lot of things this year., but not all of it was recent. Let me see...
I guess George RR Martin's DANCE WITH DRAGONS has to come first. The book was, frankly, a bit of a mess, especially the first half. It went slow on material I wasn't especially interested in and then bounded through material I wanted to savour... but fuck me, I was captivated by it, anyway, and I felt bereft once it was over. The last two books in the series have been a bit unfocused, I thought, but I believe... I hope... that Martin now has this monster back on track and he's lining us up for a killer finale.
DJIBOUTI, by Elmore Leonard, was exactly as you'd expect: pure gold by the master of crime fiction.
BEST MUSIC
This was the year I gave up my eMusic subscription, so... I didn't buy as much stuff as usual, but I did get a fair bit. Still, I am mainly listening to albums I bought in 2010 at the moment, so I guess that shows my input has fallen. Also, some much-anticipated stuff disappointed, so I won't go into that here.
BAD AS ME: by Tom Waits. Look, it's not my favourite album of his, but it's as good as the majority of them, and as much as I liked the last two records--a compilation of rareties and a live CD--it's great to have some new material. The song "Hell Broke Luce" is up there with Waits' best.
GRINDERMAN 2: Not as raw or as funny as the the first album by Nick Cave and rock-band kit (a cut down version of the Bad Seeds), but it is darker and crazier and every bit as enjoyable. The original Grinderman seems like a prototype the eponymous album that Cave followed it up with and I wonder if that will be true for the next one.
PHOSPHENE DREAM is a bit of a return to form from drone-rockers the Black Angels after the draggy DIRECTIONS TO SEE A GHOST. IT doesn't have the same Creedence stompiness as their first album, PASSOVER, but it's still a treat to wrap your ears around.
BEST MOVIES
THE GUARD. Easily the best movie I saw this year. An Irish cop-drama-comedy that is actually as clever as Guy Ritchie thinks his movies are. Just feckin' brilliant.
DRIVE. An old school crime movie, beautifully written, well acted, occasionally surreal, and directed with an implausible combination of style and restraint. If PRETTY IN PINK was an adaptation of a Richard Stark novel with a screenplay by Elmore Leonard it might be something like this.
THIRTEEN ASSASSINS. Miike Takashi turns his hand to a chambara samurai epic and it's glorious. The characters are great, the missions is straightforward, the main villain is a classic of the carpet-chewing variety, the writing is sharp and the bodycount is enormous. Even so, it's not as bloody as you might expect, given Miike's back catalogue. The fight choreography isn't particularly special, but this movie is just so much wall-to-wall fun I don't even care.
SOURCE CODE: Hey, a Hollywood movie actually made the list! Good script, nicely written (although of it's clear that nobody involved in the picture actually knows what "Source Code" really is) and it moves along with a maximum of pathos and a minimum of bullshit. Shame about the cop-out ending, but.
TRUE GRIT: Do the Coen Brothers really count as Hollywood? Why the hell not. This is the Coens, doing a Western with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. You don't need me to tell you it was good.
The year that was. Not a bad year after all.
Blatantly inspired by def_fr0g_42, I'm gonna list my favourite media stuff of 2010. I will try to only list things that came out during that year, but please bear in mind that I live in Australia and we are often behind the times in some respects.
BEST COMICS
This was a great year for comics, and not only that... it was a year where many of my favourite books were produced by my friends. So I'm not going to talk about STARGAZER, WITCH DOCTOR, LUTHER STRODE, DIGESTED, A MIND OF LOVE, THE DEEP, THE LIST, SOLDIER LEGACY or DAKR DETECTIVE. But you should go out and buy all of that stuff. I wrote the introductions for two of those books, if you want to know how firmly I will stand behind them.
INCOGNITO vol.02, by Brubaker and Phillips. Also, the newest volumes of CRIMINAL by the same guys. What can I say? They're some of the best in the biz.
METAMAUS is not technically a comic; it's a massive book about how art spiegelman created the Pulitzer Prize winning MAUS--but it's a must-read for anyone who's interested in comics-lit.
SPACE MAN by Azarello and Risso. Excellent, warped new SF series that doesn't need to explain itself to you.
LOCKE AND KEY by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Okay, this has been going for a couple years now, but I only just got into it and... holy shit. Great characters, great pacing, and a great concept that Hill is milking for everything its worth. It sounds like a fairly pedestrian horror adventure, but... jeez. You see tons of 'concept' books and movies these days, but very few that really dig in and explore the crazy ideas fully. This book is just great--frightening, compassionate, hugely inventive and faultlessly executed.
BEST BOOKS
I read a lot of things this year., but not all of it was recent. Let me see...
I guess George RR Martin's DANCE WITH DRAGONS has to come first. The book was, frankly, a bit of a mess, especially the first half. It went slow on material I wasn't especially interested in and then bounded through material I wanted to savour... but fuck me, I was captivated by it, anyway, and I felt bereft once it was over. The last two books in the series have been a bit unfocused, I thought, but I believe... I hope... that Martin now has this monster back on track and he's lining us up for a killer finale.
DJIBOUTI, by Elmore Leonard, was exactly as you'd expect: pure gold by the master of crime fiction.
BEST MUSIC
This was the year I gave up my eMusic subscription, so... I didn't buy as much stuff as usual, but I did get a fair bit. Still, I am mainly listening to albums I bought in 2010 at the moment, so I guess that shows my input has fallen. Also, some much-anticipated stuff disappointed, so I won't go into that here.
BAD AS ME: by Tom Waits. Look, it's not my favourite album of his, but it's as good as the majority of them, and as much as I liked the last two records--a compilation of rareties and a live CD--it's great to have some new material. The song "Hell Broke Luce" is up there with Waits' best.
GRINDERMAN 2: Not as raw or as funny as the the first album by Nick Cave and rock-band kit (a cut down version of the Bad Seeds), but it is darker and crazier and every bit as enjoyable. The original Grinderman seems like a prototype the eponymous album that Cave followed it up with and I wonder if that will be true for the next one.
PHOSPHENE DREAM is a bit of a return to form from drone-rockers the Black Angels after the draggy DIRECTIONS TO SEE A GHOST. IT doesn't have the same Creedence stompiness as their first album, PASSOVER, but it's still a treat to wrap your ears around.
BEST MOVIES
THE GUARD. Easily the best movie I saw this year. An Irish cop-drama-comedy that is actually as clever as Guy Ritchie thinks his movies are. Just feckin' brilliant.
DRIVE. An old school crime movie, beautifully written, well acted, occasionally surreal, and directed with an implausible combination of style and restraint. If PRETTY IN PINK was an adaptation of a Richard Stark novel with a screenplay by Elmore Leonard it might be something like this.
THIRTEEN ASSASSINS. Miike Takashi turns his hand to a chambara samurai epic and it's glorious. The characters are great, the missions is straightforward, the main villain is a classic of the carpet-chewing variety, the writing is sharp and the bodycount is enormous. Even so, it's not as bloody as you might expect, given Miike's back catalogue. The fight choreography isn't particularly special, but this movie is just so much wall-to-wall fun I don't even care.
SOURCE CODE: Hey, a Hollywood movie actually made the list! Good script, nicely written (although of it's clear that nobody involved in the picture actually knows what "Source Code" really is) and it moves along with a maximum of pathos and a minimum of bullshit. Shame about the cop-out ending, but.
TRUE GRIT: Do the Coen Brothers really count as Hollywood? Why the hell not. This is the Coens, doing a Western with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. You don't need me to tell you it was good.
The year that was. Not a bad year after all.