Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Andrew Osborne's 2009 Top Tens!

MOVIES
So, I recently contributed my picks for the best movies of the decade to a list on Nerve.com, and it was fun to reflect on the 21st century’s impressive cinematic yield to date, from Almost Famous (2000) to Young@Heart (2008), and especially the bumper crop years like 2001 (The Royal Tennenbaums, Ghost World, Mulholland Drive, etc.) and 2007 (There Will Be Blood, Juno, No Country For Old Men, etc.).

Tellingly, no films from the past year scored Best of Decade honors on the aforementioned list…which is not to say 2009 was a bad movie year, exactly. In fact, picking the following Top Ten was difficult because many of the films I saw in the last 365 days were pretty damn good (if not great) works of high-level craftsmanship from old reliables and talented newcomers.

Click Here for the Full Post!

Saturday, December 05, 2009

The Decade In Theme Songs

When I was young, I thought of my life as a movie.

Now, with the slow accumulation of minor incidents building to occasional Season Finales of suspense and drama, I think of my life as a long-running, low-rated HBO series with a small but dedicated cult following.



And, just as HBO promos often feature thematically evocative songs to hint at future seasons, I typically find some tune stuck in my head this time of year (which more often than not winds up fitting nicely with the drift of events in my life and the lives of those around me).

At the moment, Nelly Furtado's "Say It Right" seems to have nominated itself for my 2010 theme song, but the month is young so we'll see...



As for the rest of the decade's theme songs, they generally applied eerily well to the years they previewed, and if you buy me a beer sometime I'd be happy to recount the twists and turns of the past ten exciting seasons (though even without the recaps, you can probably guess the general gist of some of them based on the soundtrack below...)

And so, as the era of New Year's Eve glasses featuring funny OOs for eyes draws to a close, please to enjoy the following selections, courtesy of my psyche:

2009 SEASON: "Sex Changes" by the Dresden Dolls (which, I should note, had nothing to do with me actually getting a sex change operation...)



2008 SEASON: "No One" by Alicia Keyes



2007 SEASON: "Sad Little Fat Man" by David Bowie



2006 SEASON: "Make Your Own Kind of Music" by Mama Cass



2005 SEASON: "This Year" by The Mountain Goats



2004 SEASON: "Mr. Blue Sky" by E.L.O.



2003 SEASON: "Lose Yourself" by Eminem



2002 SEASON: "New England" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers



2001 SEASON: "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys



2000 SEASON: "Momentum" by Aimee Mann



Happy New Year!