Coraline

I love movies and I love making lists. The problem with making a “best of the year” list is that, unlike real film critics, we normal people have to catch up with most movies on DVD several months later. I feel like I can’t make an actual Top 10 list until I’ve seen all the movies from 2009 that I want to see, but it feels dumb to put out a list in June of the following year. So I’m going to put out my list now and call it a rough draft. Maybe I’ll give it an update in a few months when I’ve had a chance to catch up with films like A Serious Man, A Single Man, An Education, Moon, Extract, In the Loop, Passing Strange, Precious, Big Fan, The White Ribbon, 35 Shots of Rum, Where the Wild Things Are, and of course Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

Top 10 (for now)  

1. Up in the Air
2. Coraline
3. The Hurt Locker
4. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
5. Fantastic Mr Fox
6. District 9
7. The Informant!
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Duplicity
10. Avatar

Honorable Mention: Adventureland, Up, Star Trek, Watchmen, Crank 2, Drag Me to Hell, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Girlfriend Experience, Away We Go, World’s Greatest Dad, Observe and Report, The Hangover

Worst movies that I sat through this year: X-Men Wolverine, The Ugly Truth, GI Joe, Taken.

Biggest disappointment: Sherlock Holmes

Best album cover of the year

I don’t listen to enough new music to be able to declare the “ten best” or anything like that, but I love making year-end lists anyway. Here are my favorite albums of the year, in no particular order:

• The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock
• Neko Case  – Middle Cyclone 
• The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – It’s Blitz
• Regina Spektor – Far
• Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
• The Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
• Florence and the Machine – Lungs
• Tegan and Sara – Sainthood
• Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

No rap albums really spoke to me this year, although Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx pt 2 is still on my “to listen” list.

Here’s my favorite “orphaned singles” – songs I loved on albums I didn’t love:

• The Decemberists, “The Rake’s Song” and “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid”
• Animal Collective, “In the Flowers”
• Steve Earle, “Lungs”
• Muse, “Uprising”
• That one song on the Apple commercial where all the people are dancing in front of the iPod video cameras in different colors.

And finally, my favorite comedy albums of the year:

• Maria Bamford – Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome  (I can’t recommend this enough)
• Patton Oswalt – My Weakness is Strong
• Eugene Mirman – God is a Twelve Year Old Boy