Amph My Year in Art: 2015 Retrospective: MOVIES: Best Female Performance, Top Ten!

So, a couple of notes. I like to look back on art I’ve experienced every year; I enjoy looking, not at art released that year, though that’s also fun, but on art I’ve experienced in a year. I just use the plain calendar year January to December, which has caused some confusion. But I’m talking about the year I personally experienced in art; it’ll include a lot of 2015 releases and a lot of non-2015 releases. I have four categories: Books, Film, Television, Music and a series of categories in each of those: writers, actors, directors, vocalists, musicians, movies, books, episodes, albums, etc.

Why do I do this? People have accused me of bragging or something (!). Hardly. The number of movies I see in a year isn’t anything to brag about; any person reading this might have seen more. Going to the movies isn’t a skill; it’s something anyone can do. It’s no great accomplishment. No, I do this because I love to talk about art; I love to write; and I love to recommend the things I love. This is the perfect trifecta: I’m telling you about art that I love and hopefully exposing you to something new. You can’t talk about the great art enough. If a book is great, I’ll take whatever opportunity I can to tell you to read it. That’s what this thread is. I’m just taking my yearly opportunity.

Today’s category is dedicated to men and women who put pen to paper or strokes to keyboard or whatever. The great writers behind the books I read in 2015. This time, it’s the honorable mentions; tomorrow I’ll give you my top ten. But the honorable mentions are nothing to sneeze at. I read fifty-two books this year (oh, wow, look at that; a perfect book a week average). So getting in my top twenty is a pretty big deal; these writers are all, safe to say, brilliant. Oh, yes, also, every year don’t we encounter things that suck? So, okay, the worst writer I encountered this year is also here.

BEST WRITING (Honorable Mentions)
Special Bonus: WORST WRITING

WORST WRITING



Erin Morgenstein – The Night Circus

In The Night Circus, Morgenstein sets out to conjure a magical world of a mystical, eternal carnival that contains miracles and awe-inspiring spectacles inside every tent. Against this backdrop, she attempts to set a love story for all time and an intense battle across time between good & evil. I say she “sets out” and “attempts” because she does none of those things. Amateurish, overwrought, corny, downright annoying.

BEST WRITING (HONORABLE MENTIONS)



Kate Atkinson – Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Atkinson’s first novel is told in the voice of Ruby Lennox and Atkinson gives her a witty, charming, intelligent voice; her first words are spoken in the seconds after conception, a delirious “I exist!” and Ruby’s story of her tragic, dysfunctional family unfolds in prose that is lyrical, hilarious, deeply sad and profoundly atmospheric.



Kate Atkinson – Human Croquet

Her second novel also features a gifted female narrator, but one that somehow moves freely in time and space and also sits comfortably outside of it. It’s an intricate story, hopping through time in increasingly confusing and baffling chapters. But the strong hand of the author keeps the book centered in the distinctly human emotions of the characters.



Margaret Atwood – Alias Grace

Atwood narrates her tale of a convicted murderess and the doctor sent to examine her through many voices. Both the doctor and the murderess have their own distinct way of speaking, vocabulary and tone. And both, we being to believe, are less than honest; the true story is hidden between the lines of their contradictory narratives. It’s a book where every single word matters.



Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Gaiman conjures the world of childhood to perfection. As his aged narrator reminisces of his childhood, Gaiman builds a world more magical than any he’s created to date, filled with gods and monsters, the mundane and the magic, humor and terror and tragedy. In less than 200 pages, Gaiman creates something that’s beyond extraordinary.



Franz Kafka – The Metamorphosis

Rereading this story, in a translation by Malcolm Pasley, was a pretty grim experience. Brilliant high concept aside, the book works in its grim, merciless prose. It’s clinical and dark, slowly building a claustrophobic atmosphere of despair.



Laurie King – The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Or On the Segregation of the Queen

King captures Mary Russell, the young narrator of this book, to perfection, a precocious, arrogant young girl; she captures the voices of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson equally well, making them feel like the characters we already know and love and yet also deepening them in interesting ways. Atmospheric as well.



Gustav Meyrink – The Golem

In this seminal horror novel, Meyrink, and translator Mike Mitchell, build an ugly, brutal ghetto, populate it with grotesque, dark characters and craft a slowly intensifying, often terrifying narrative.



Philip Roth – Everyman

Roth stripes down his style in this minimal exploration of an unnamed man’s life; progressing through his life via his health difficulties, Roth is cool, detached & clinical, never saying a word more than needs to be said. But all the sparseness adds up and after less than a hundred pages, you know the Everyman completely.



Saki – The Chronicles of Clovis

The master of the sardonic short story does his finest work in the form with his characteristic snide, snarky and biting prose hitting everything from horror to pure comedy. Delicious.



M.L. Stedman – The Light Between Oceans

Stedman’s quiet, beautiful prose anchors us in the emotions of the three characters at the heart of this story. Stedman carefully scrapes away the pains to reveal the real hearts beneath. Never flashy, but never less than beautiful.

Well, some great authors there and some great books too. And those are just the honorable mentions. Tomorrow, my top ten.

 

you are an impressive specimen stephen. i don't know how you can listen to 30 podcasts and watch 15 movies a day and still find time to read books. i think just writing the reviews would take up my every waking moment.

 

There he goes bragging about all the art he's experienced again.

 

Goddammit slidewhistle

 

BEST WRITING, TOP TEN



Tana French – In the Woods

French’s debut rides on her beautiful prose; it’s a haunting story of childhood trauma and the lines we cross. French is able to craft sequences of real beauty, but then there are also sequences of almost unbearable suspense and even terror. It’s the most quotable book I’ve read in ages. French manages to be both hard-bitten and beautiful.



Tana French – The Likeness

French’s second novel is narrated by a different character from her first and the character’s voice is different, but no less beautiful. The prose here is dreamier, less stark than In the Woods, but it’s equally atmospheric and transporting. French manages to change her voice dramatically, but somehow not lose the things that made her first voice so great. That’s what I call genius.



Philip Roth – Indignation

Roth’s Indignation is a beautifully crafted gem. Just when the story itself begins to get interesting, Roth steps outside of it with one of the most shocking passages of the past ten years. And if Roth’s clinical detachment is often where the beauty is found, it’s in the sheer emotional rawness of the ending where this book comes together. This is Roth like you’ve never encountered him before.



Philip Roth – Nemesis

A polio epidemic in a sweltering summer is the setting of this harsh masterpiece. Roth conjures this neighborhood in stark detail and I’ve never read a book before where the natural setting was so alive. The heat seems to ripple right off the page, the too-bright sunshine beam into your eyes, the claustrophobic feeling of dread devours everything. As Roth ages, he’s only gotten better.



Saki – The Unbearable Bassington

Saki’s incredible ability to puncture the upper classes with snarky, biting satire is in full evidence, but this book features Saki’s prose at his most beautiful, not just his sharpest. The dark humor is there, but Saki finds a strange pathos in this story and creates beautiful, lyrical prose when the story calls for it. It’s nothing but his masterpiece.



George Saunders – Tenth of December

Saunders is surely the greatest short story writer of his generation and in this stunning collection, he excels. The stories are in a variety of formats and a variety of voices, but Saunders captures interior monologue like no one else. Painfully hilarious, bracingly angry, deeply sad; Saunders captures everything in his spare, unflinching prose.



Maria Semple – Where’d You Go, Bernadette

When a young girl sets out to find her vanished mother, she begins an assemblage of documents that contain clues. Semple unfolds this brilliant fictional story by crafting what is essentially a scrapbook, filled with court depositions, e-mails, school bulletins, police interviews, tape transcriptions, chatlogs, etc. It’s a brilliant way to tell the story and the high concept never loses its charm. Semple is quite a cat herder.



Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt tells a labyrinthine story of one young man’s journey to adulthood and the journey of a stolen painting mixed up in one. Tartt’s eminently readable prose makes the characters come intensely to life and she’s able to keep the reader turning the pages violently, even when she’s spending five pages on a couple of potheads smoking dope on a playground swing set. Tartt captures the rhythms of life, the rhythms of epic adventure and collapses them on top of each other in this dizzying, never less than fascinating eight-hundred page epic.



Jesmyn Ward – Men We Reaped

Ward is angry and deeply sad in this non-fiction memoir. Over the period of just a couple of years, five young black men from her hometown die violent deaths and Ward hopes to use these specific stories to get at the heart of a general question: why do young black men die so very, very often in our world? She weaves a story about each of these men and threads it through her own life story in that small town. It’s an amazing feat of storytelling, of raw emotional catharsis. Ward is a beautiful storyteller and she never loses sight of the heart-wrenching realities at the heart of her stories.



Lawrence Wright – Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief

Wright went inside the terrifying world of Al-Qaeda with The Looming Tower; now he’s in the breathtaking, strange, unsettling, horrifying world of Scientology. Wright’s writing is clear, sharp, clever. He writes this story like it was a novel and, given the plot twists and vivid characters, it kind of seems like it could be. Wright keeps you turning the pages, twisting the knife at the right times, hammering home some moments, letting others sit there quietly until you get it. Wright’s one of the best non-fiction authors of our age, if you ask me. He could write about anything and it would be compelling; give him a subject like this and it’s non-fiction writing like you’ve never seen before.

Okay, tomorrow, I’m going to flip to the movies, I think, and talk about the runners-up in the category of Best Directing! Oh, good stuff! Be here for that.

My Year in Art: 2015!

 

*looks over at the YA Star Wars novel sitting half read on nightstand*

 

Oh, I guarantee you that I've read far worse Star Wars stuff than you have.

 

Yeah, but you balance it out with oodles of highbrow fare. I... just read more junk .

 

BEST DIRECTING, HONORABLE MENTIONS
Bonus: WORST DIRECTING

Best Director – Honorable Mentions (10)



Sean S. Baker – Tangerine

Baker found a real high energy, twitchy feel by taking to the streets of Hollywood and shooting the entire film on iPhones, but he has a surprising eye for beauty, even in the midst of the grimy settings. He’s able to capture light as well as anyone this year, from the hot baking sun of afternoon to the gorgeous orange glow of sunlight to the dark blues and blacks of night. Gorgeous film.



James Cameron – The Terminator

Watching this movie again is a real reminder of the gifts Cameron actually had at the beginning of his career. He creates a nightmarish hellscape, all dark blues and glowing yellows, for the night sequences and some of the action here, such as a couple of car chases, is as good as any action sequences of the decade. Cameron creates real menace and real fear and real thrills on a shoestring.



Yann Demange – ’71

In this gripping tale of a British soldier trapped behind enemy lines in Dublin in 1971, Demange creates an astounding world. The film takes place over a single night and Demange is as great at the shaky-cam, unbearably intense chase scenes/gunfights as he is as the ultra-quiet, unbearably taut sequences of hide and seek. A sequence in a block of flats is one of the most suspenseful scenes of the year.



Pete Doctor, Ronnie del Carmen – Inside Out

Directing has a lot to do with building a world and Inside Out builds a world that manages to outdo even the amazing worlds other Pixar films have built. It’s a constant visual feast and once the story moves into the memories, things just keep unfolding with some new concept executed brilliantly just around every corner. Not since Finding Nemo has a Pixar film been this visually stunning.



Ronit Elkabetz – Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

The entirety of this film takes place in a tiny white-walled room with three tables and several chairs or in the hallway right outside of it. But Elkabetz, besides writing and starring as the main character, a Jewish woman who spends years seeking a divorce from her husband, manages to make the film vivid and inventive. By keeping the claustrophobia cranked up, the film makes the woman’s plight real, but the camera is always glancing away, finding a new face to focus on for a moment. Two hours in one room never feels dull. What a feat.



James Kent – Testament of Youth

Kent has a really interesting eye for beauty and a sort of lazy reverie, not exactly the director you’d expect for a film about World War I, but it works. He’s able to capture the flight of a field hospital very well, but it’s in the tiny details of the film’s dreamier sections that he really takes, pausing to linger on a flower in a field or the ripples caused by a raindrop in a filthy puddle in the trenches of the War. Kent has a poet’s eye and poets captured the war as well as journalists, after all.



Mike Leigh – Mr. Turner

Leigh is one of those directors that knows how to lean back and let the performances of his actors unfold and he does that here and he has a series of great performances to show for it. But Leigh captures the world around J.M.W. Turner beautifully as well, crafting beautiful nature scapes to inspire Turner but also capturing brilliantly the abstraction that inspired Turner in the end.



Christian Petzold – Phoenix

In this post-WWII thriller, Petzold captures the world of film noir with the rhythms of Hitchcock. It’s a film of wet cobblestones, dark shadows and quiet, long takes. The film, like Hitchcock’s best, is packed with double meaning; it’s a story of doubles, with more than a passing debt to Vertigo and Petzold captures a luminous beauty in the dark story.



Damian Szifron – Wild Tales

Szifron managed to pull off a pitch perfect omnibus film with this nasty little series of stories about rage, revenge and violence. His camera and his style is as exhilarating as the dark twists of the stories. He doesn’t flinch from graphic violence, but he’s able to feel a quiet conversation with dread just as well as he’s able to make a gruesome stabbing visceral and gut-shaking. In the almost wordless third story, he tightens the screws impressively and in the final story, his camera is as unhinged as the main character, a bride losing her center on her wedding day. It’s an exciting, visceral, jaw-dropping film and Szifron never lets the visuals lose that insane energy.



Denis Villeneuve – Sicario

Sicario is perhaps less overtly directed than Villeneuve’s last two masterworks, Prisoners & Enemy, but the mastery of the camera is still here. Villeneuve knows how to crank up the tension, as in a brilliant slow-burn scene on a bridge, and how to get in close with his characters and let the performances get at the deep emotions of the scenes.

Worst Director



James Nguyen – Birdemic: Shock & Terror

It’s a bit of a struggle this one. Birdemic: Shock & Terror is, after all, one of those films that flips right round (baby baby right round) the cinematic bell curve and is so terrible that it’s great, so is Nguyen such a horrible director that he’s a great one? I dunno. I’ll just leave this here.

My Year in Art: 2015!

 

BEST DIRECTING, TOP TEN



Brad Bird – The Iron Giant

I missed Bird’s animated masterpiece the last time it was on the big screen so the rerelease this year was a chance for me to finally see it, after loving it on the small screen, on the big screen. Bird has a masterful hand with visuals; the hand drawn animation is nothing short of beautiful and Bird is able to get compelling performances and beautiful atmospheres on screen.



Park Chan-wook – Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is another masterpiece from Korean auteur Chan-wook; his tale of vengeance is directed with a surprising amount of brio. This film is every bit as grim as Oldboy, if not more so, but visually it’s a beautiful and exuberant experience. Chan-wook pulls off magical realism and flashbacks with as much brilliance as they’ve ever been handled by anyone. And even as the subject matter gets darker and darker, the visuals retain their stunning beauty.



Alfonso Gomez-Rejon – Me & Earl & the Dying Girl

Gomez-Rejon infuses his tale of a dying girl and her newfound friendship with the narrator with humor, wit and beauty. Gomez-Rejon commits entirely to the meta nature of the film and the way the story unfolds as a narrated story is brilliant; speaking of magical realism, Gomez-Rejon does a great job with that here as well – you’ll never forget the superhero cameo. And when the film calls for transcendent beauty, Gomez-Rejon knows when to strip out the dialogue and let the visuals and music speak for themselves.



Akira Kurosawa – The Hidden Fortress

Kurosawa first used the widescreen format in this epic adventure from 1958, but he’s already a master. The action scenes are thrilling and exciting, particularly a magnificent duel with lances that is the perfect utilization of the widescreen. But opening up the field of the camera gives Kurosawa the chance to experiment with everything about framing. The visuals here are wonderful.



Justin Kurzel – Macbeth

Kurzel’s stripped down take on Macbeth could almost be a silent film, so adept is Kurzel at communicating the iconic story through visuals and music. It’s a film starkly beautiful and incredibly atmospheric. The film is more than just a filmed play; Kurzel has taken this play and planted it firmly in a gorgeous, terrifying and compelling world. It’s nothing less than a tour de force.



Bennett Miller – Foxcatcher

Miller’s minimal style works to perfection here. His camera rarely draws attention to itself, but his framing is magnificent and Miller finds the quiet stillnesses that really make the film work. It’s the shots with no words that you’ll remember, the shots that paint a frightening isolation. It’s a beautiful movie.



George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road

Well, whatever else can be said about George Miller, he’s no Bennett Miller. Minimal isn’t a word in his vocabulary. Miller’s insane vision for this film is a recipe for brilliance, if done right, and Miller does it absolutely right. The film is essentially a two hour chase sequence and Miller’s direction of the action here is nothing less than superb. He packs the film with visuals unlike anything the audience has ever seen before, strange, alien landscapes, towering storms, insane stunts, heart-pounding action and unsettling visions. When film snobs start rattling on pretentiously, remind them of this movie, the perfect marriage of auteur cinema and knock-out action flick.



David Robert Mitchell – It Follows

If the conceit of this film is going to work, it’s down to the director. A malevolent force stalks our heroine through the entire film (almost), a force that appears in various forms. It’s all in the way Mitchell portrays this evil entity. And he does so to perfection, with unsettlingly strange visuals and depictions. His camera roves constantly, keeping us aware of the danger that might come from any direction at any time. It’s a gripping horror experience for a lot of reasons; Mitchell’s sure direction is one of them.



Kornel Mundruczo – White God

In this astounding film about a girl and her lost dog searching for each other, Mundruczo has two serious feats: directing a young child and directing animals. But he does it perfectly, getting performances unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If the synopsis above seems tame, the film isn’t; it’s a gut-wrenching parade of cruelties and through them all, the main character is portrayed by two dogs. And I’ve never seen an animal performance like this. I’m unsure of what Mundruczo might have done to get the performance he gets out of these animals, but I’ll put it down to him as director. And his eye for visuals is equally strong; one need look no farther than the final shot (I suppose you can’t really go farther than the final shot, can you?), one of the most beautifully composed images I saw all year.



Steven Spielberg – Jaws

Rewatching this film on the big screen this year wasn’t revelatory exactly, but it was confirmatory. Still in his twenties, Spielberg creates a masterpiece of visual style. It’s cliché to talk about the way the shark is portrayed, but it’s still true. And then Spielberg is able to strand three characters on a single boat for almost an hour and keep it claustrophobic, thrilling and always visually interesting. But it’s even more than that; Spielberg has the sense to stage conversation scenes in striking ways. What another director might have put in an office, Spielberg puts on a ferry; he dares to let star Richard Dreyfuss bounce in and out of frame in a confrontation with Mayor Vaughan. It’s really quite unbelievable, now that I’m in my thirties to imagine a man in his late twenties being capable of creating this movie. But at something like twenty-eight, Spielberg wasn’t just a good filmmaker, he was a great director – at twenty-eight, he was already in the canon.

My Year in Art: 2015!

 

How.

How are you.

 

Puzzled bewilderment is a reaction I often get.

 

Rogue1-and-a-half -- I'm almost afraid to ask, but did you see Meadowland?

 

Love these lists. I've been looking for something new to read. And now I really want to see the dog movie.

Also, not to toot my own horn, because that would be very uncomfortable, but I just binge watched 4 seasons of Archer.

 

you're like one of the other two people who have even seen this!

<3

 

also, yay to foxcatcher.most of the rest i haven't seen. even the classics *sigh*

 

I did not. In fact, I haven't even heard of it. I just looked it up. Interesting cast. Did you see it?

It is an astounding movie, probably the most profound emotional experience I had at the movies all year. I wrestled for a while with whether or not I was glad I'd seen it however. It's very disturbing and haunting. As a work of art, I highly, highly recommend it, but be warned, it has some pretty raw scenes of cruelty to animals.

frared! Hey! It's been ages since I've seen you. Did Episode VII bring you out of the woodwork or have we just been traveling in different circles?

As to '71, I have no idea why it got such a limited theatrical release. I think people would have gone to see it if they'd known it existed. It's a really thrilling action movie with a lot of really compelling drama as well. I just think it would have been a success at the box office. I guess the distributor didn't have faith in it, but if they'd got it into some big theater chains I think people would have gone to see it based on the strength of the trailer, which is really great.

Now, on to the music and some of these categories are little short. For instance, I only had sixteen instrumentalists that I thought really worthy of being mentioned in a year in round up, so instead of ten honorable mentions and a top ten, I have six honorable mentions and a top ten. I could have rounded out the honorable mentions to ten, I suppose, but I don't want to put someone on a list just to fill up the list; I want it to be a genuinely great performance. So, only six honorable mentions.

MUSIC

BEST INSTRUMENTALIST, HONORABLE MENTIONS



Julian Casablancas – Random Access Memories

Julian Casablancas, formerly of The Strokes, currently of The Voidz, appears on only one track on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, but that track, Instant Crush, happens to be one of the very best on the album. Key to the track is Casablancas’ wonderful guitar work.



Al Kooper – Highway 61 Revisited

Kooper found himself on the organ for the Highway 61 Revisited sessions only because Mike Bloomfield was a better guitarist and then because the organist in the studio got moved to the piano, but that organ sound ends up defining the sound of the album, one of Dylan’s best, as much as anything. On Like a Rolling Stone, it’s the lead riff and it winds through the album in a really impressive way given that Kooper had only rarely played the organ before these sessions.



Charlie McCoy – John Wesley Harding

On John Wesley Harding, Dylan stripped back the huge sound of Highway 61 Revisited & Blonde on Blonde. The bulk of the album features only Dylan on vocal and acoustic guitar, Kenneth Buttrey on drums and a jaw droppingly great Charlie McCoy on the bass. With such sparse arrangements, the bass really pops off the tracks and the lines McCoy lays down on this record are as good as the lines laid down by a lot of more famous bass players on more famous albums. When people talk about how mediocre most studio musicians are, play this album for them.



Robert Mercurio – We Love ‘Em Tonight: Live at Tipitina’s

Another bass player, of a very different kind, makes the list. New Orleans based band Galactic played Tipitina’s, one of the most famous and beloved New Orleans venues, on this live album. The entire band really cooks and the mixture of jazz, psychedelic, funk, blues and rock really comes alive. Mercurio handles the various genres with aplomb, particularly excelling in the jazzier moments, and absolutely raising the roof with his funk riffs. This album is good for many reasons; Mercurio’s bass is one of the biggest.

Stanton Moore – We Love ‘Em Tonight: Live at Tipitina’s

One of the other reasons? Stanton Moore’s brilliant performance on the drums. Playing with a band like Galactic is a challenge for a drummer. It’s necessary to be able to function at a high level of precision, but also be able to bring the raw energy the drums need. Moore does both. There are moments here of amazing precision; but then when the time comes to just tear off a ridiculous fill, he’s there with bells on.



Zurn – A Beautiful Glow

Rock N Roll Worship Circus paved a new and exciting direction for Christian music with its heady blend of sixties-style pop & rock; unfortunately no-one followed that road and worship music stagnated a good ten years ago. But this album remains a tonic and drummer Zurn lays down the beat and sets the grooves to perfection, whether he’s blamming out a Bo-Diddley-esque beat, grinding a slow riff-driven rock tune or bringing the Middle Eastern flair on a sitar drenched epic.

My Year in Art: 2015!

 

Low hanging fruit: I rented "It Follows." Loved it. Lots of fun.

 

I did not, I was just curious your thoughts as I grew up with the director during summers.

 

ugh, @Rogue1-and-a-half ... i have totally fallen for this new thing and now need to compensate for lack of additional story. but it's nice to see some familiar faces

i think the distributor had faith, as far as i can tell. i mean, it is a pretty specific film in a pretty niche area and all that.they toured festivals and such.

in the UK, where you'd think it would have had the audience, it was such a minor release, but then i think most british film got a very minor release. i think especially in the UK. people are very squeamish about the topic, though, and a lot of hard feelings are still left. but i'm glad it got some recognition. i'm curious to see what jack o'connell is going to do next, i don't think unbroken was very interesting at all.

and did you notice the music? this is what soundtracks should be made of.

 

Dear Rogue1-and-a-half

The 12 year old and I watched White God last night. tough going in parts, but possibly our favorite movie of the first nine days of 2016.

Thank you for the recommendation. You are awesome.

Sincerely,

Ken and the 12 year old

 

I have Tangerines on the Netflix queue coming soon. I've heard good things. Have you seen Diary of a Teenage Girl yet Rogue? So damn good.

 

I was really disappointed with Unbroken, particularly because I think the book is nothing short of astonishingly great. Really poor adaptation, though O'Connell was good. Did you see Starred Up? That movie never made it over here to the U.S., but I heard a lot of really great buzz about it; he plays a psycho prisoner in that one, I hear, and is super good.

And people ask me why I do threads like this. This is why. If even one 12-year-old is forever scarred by watching White God, it's all been worth it.

No, seriously, the movies that I love that other people haven't seen . . . this is the ideal outcome for me. I'm so glad you enjoyed (?) it. Really powerful.

Oh, no, I haven't. I keep forgetting that one. I need to check it out soon.

MUSIC

BEST INSTRUMENTALIST, TOP TEN



Mike Bloomfield – Highway 61 Revisited

All things considered, it isn’t just that his arrival sent Al Kooper to the organ for the Highway 61 sessions; it’s that Bloomfield is the perfect guitarist for Dylan’s sensibilities on this raucous rock album. Bloomfield has a gift for piercing leads and his guitar tone is perfect here. When Dylan called Highway 61 that “wild thin mercury sound,” I think he meant Bloomfield’s guitar as much as he meant anything.



Rex Brown – Official Live: 101 Proof

I listened to a lot of live albums this year and, let’s face it, when you listen to live Pantera, it’s going to dominate your end of the year lists. Brown is kind of the overlooked member of Pantera, but he’s a massive talent on the bass.

Dimebag Darrell – Official Live: 101 Proof

Case in point for Pantera’s dominance of this list. There’s always a raw intensity to Darrell’s playing and while it may not have the precision of studio work, his live performance here is even more so than usual. Whether its riffs or solos, you can find what you need in Dimebag.



Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan

Dylan’s talents as an instrumentalist are always getting pushed to a distant third after his talents as a writer and a vocalist and that’s correct, I’d say. But on his early acoustic albums, Dylan showed a surprising mastery of the acoustic guitar. On this, his second album, he leans back into an easy groove and his playing is simple, but memorable.



Bob Dylan – The Times They Are a-Changin’

Dylan’s playing is harsher here than on his previous album; this album is dark and grinding and Dylan’s acoustic guitar work is the perfect dark background for his often angry voice.



John Entwistle – Live at Leeds

And when you listen to an epic four disc set of The Who live at the peak of their powers . . . well, what can you do. Entwistle is, if I was forced to make this call, my pick for best bass player ever. He’s relentless and restless, keeping up a barrage of sound that allows even an often overlooked instrument like the bass to become integral and central to the sound of even a band as unhinged and raucous as The Who. For my money, no one has ever dominated the bass guitar this way. No one.

Keith Moon – Live at Leeds

Speaking of dominance and The Who, Keith Moon surely remains one of the most intense and extreme drummers of all time; he’s without question in the top three drummers of all time and perhaps the very best. Hearing him live in concerts that lasted two hours you can’t help but be blown away all over again by the sheer energy, the unceasing thunder and the unflagging stamina.



Kellindo Parker – The Electric Lady

Parker assays lead guitar duties on quite a few songs on Janelle Monae’s latest epic and he can do whatever the song calls for, whether its retro or modern, riffs or solos, grooves or screams. His solo on Prime Time is probably the most emotive guitar work of 2013.

Vinnie Paul – Official Live: 101 Proof

A drummer it is and one last stop at Pantera’s live show. I feel like I’m running out of superlatives for drummers, but Paul is just unstoppable on this album, a force of nature.

Pete Townshend – Live at Leeds

And we’ll wrap up with another hit from The Who; Townshend is a brilliant, game-changing guitarist. His mastery of riffs, solos and the sheer intensifying roar of feedback holds up. The sheer viscerality and physicality of Townshend’s guitar work remains breathtaking. There were certainly many more technically skilled guitarists of the day, but when it came to making an unholy racket, Pete Townshend was your guy.

My Year in Art: 2015!

I know Ender Sai doesn't totally get the whole deal with me including things from other years in my year-end round ups, but I think he might find something to love in this post. You know, that one album that takes up thirty percent of the list because it includes, the bass, drums and guitar from one band.

 

Other ones you need to check out if you haven't, The End of the Tour and The Stanford Prison Experiment. Fantastic films.

 

i did see starred up. (i had to!)

the film is interesting. there is some background material somewhere that i can dig up for you if you like. the screenwriter used his own experience as a counsellor (i guess) in prisons. his own story is fascinating as well. o'connell doesn't play psycho, ... he learns to deal with humiliation and with being in a relationship. i haven't seen it in a while so i might get this all wrong. essentially the method of the group sessions is to confront the impulse to violence without, you know, acting out. it's like they have a safe space to be able to feel the threat of humiliation without having to act on it. something like that. prison is a very macho world. i continue to be fascinated by macho culture.

o'connell kept saying it was an easy ride for him, this is what he's mostly played, someone on the verge of violence. '71 has him do very different things, i love the bit with him hiding in an outhouse and bursting into tears. i've never seen that in a chase movie. it was such a well-observed gesture.

unbroken was ... yeah. disappointed in the whole thing. it's like jolie didn't understand it herself, very weird.

but o'connell will go on and do other things, i'm sure.