I lived through this year the same as you, so I guess that makes me qualified to talk about all the things that made me glad I survived it.
First the obvious categories to be followed by the ones no one will care about but me. Who am I kidding? I’m the only one who cares about any of this.
Best Movie – Give me a second here to work in a rant about seeing movies in Austin. When I moved here I was thinking it wouldn’t be that different from LA. I understood that platform releases wouldn’t open here, but I thought we’d at least be in the second tier, and then I assumed that they’d have countless places to play. But here we are still waiting for Juno while it’s been playing in Dallas for a week. Further, for all it’s greatness, Alamo doesn’t put indie films in it’s theaters unless there’s some way for you to sing along with them. If you want the lineup you’d find at a Magnolia or an Arclight in other cities you can either drive way up (I try not to go north of 6th street) to the arboretum to catch Paris Je t’aime in a failed first run theater or in one of the dungeons under the Dobie. Poor showing for such a slick city, and we’ll blame that for why I haven’t yet seem many of the movies on everyone else’s list. Check with me in a couple weeks and this is likely to change, but for now-
Michael Clayton. Thought about going with Knocked Up, and it’s certainly worthy, as was Rattitouille, but I don’t know, this one stuck. I could write a book about the ones that were supposed to contend but didn’t (No Country) but let’s keep this positive.
Best Book – This was hard, because I didn’t really read anything fictionwise that knocked me over. Again, my reading list usually gets set by everyone else’s best of list, so the best thing I read in any given year is usually something from the last year. That said I’ll jump on the -
Tree Of Smoke bandwagon. I think I might have enjoyed This Book Will Save Your Life a little more, but there’s parts or Tree of Smoke I won’t forget.
Best Album - I ran this one two ways. I took all the albums I bought (and by bought I mostly mean stole), and then saw which ones ended up with the most songs that I starred 3 and above in iTunes. That produced an interesting result with Arcade Fire, Feist, The National, and Matt Mays all getting into the mix. But then you realize that some of those have a lot more songs that others, and that many of those ratings are only 3s as opposed to a bunch of 5s. In then end it comes down to two that I have trouble separating. Show Your Bones from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the winner
Neon Bible / Arcade Fire which makes it clear that this is not a music blog or I’d have gone with something with more indie cred, but if you ask me what I’ve listened to more and enjoyed each time during this whole year, well, that’s what you get.
Best Song - This one’s nearly impossible. This year I gave up on whole albums and started getting singles again so I have tons and tons of top quality songs that went into the pile this year and they’re all top rated and hard to distinguish between. If you go by the top rated one I listened to the most you get Mates of States cover of California, but that’s probably because it’s a damn good cover and I got it early in the year. If you go with the one I listened to so much I probably can’t hear it again you get You Say Party We Say Die’s Downtown Mayor Goodnight. In the end I had to choose between the last 45 seconds of Let Up by Now It’s Overhead, Without Love by Elvis Perkins or
Knife by Grizzly Bear. Again, ten different songs could have gone here, but for whatever reason when the wheel stopped spinning I went with this one. It’s kind of like being asked which is your favorite kid, unless you have kids, in which case it’s probably not like that at all.
Best Concert – I’d like to say it was an intimate show somewhere, but honestly the best things I saw were at ACL, which shouldn’t be surprising given their ability to attract huge talent. That said, given my best album it also shouldn’t be a surprise that
Arcade Fire was the best performance I saw. Incredible energy, an innovative and completely worthy set of arena style effects, and an incredible album to be touring in support of all added up to pretty much make my ticket worth it in one shot. That said, I was genuinely floored by Gotan Project and would love to see them again, especially somewhere I could sit down.
Best TV Show – This is just a 3 horse race and as good as 30 Rock is it’s not in league with the other two. Honestly I can’t choose between them. Both touched brilliance several times and never made a misstep along the way. I’ll go with
Mad Men just for coming out of nowhere while acknowledging that The Wire is one of the only shows I could watch back to back to back without sleeping or eating. For all the horror that television can produce (I’m looking at you The Hills and America’s Next Top Model) these are two shows that seem worthy of the amazing fact that you enjoy them by watching electrons dance on a sheet of plastic.
More manana.
