This week’s issue offers up some random things us Coast editors loved about 2006. Since I didn’t get to contribute to the best movies of the year — and missed a lot of the bigs, to be honest — and people in my own office were asking me what my top 10 records of the year were, despite my top 5 being printed back in November, here are some lists in case you give a damn.
Movies
I’m not a critic so I am under no obligation to go see anything, which is why you won’t see Borat or Babel here. (I suspect you wouldn’t have seen Borat here anyway.)
This year kind of sucked.
10. Cache9. Brothers of a Head8. United 937. Inside Man6. The Devil Wears Prada5. The Last King of Scotland4. Friends with Money3. Shut Up and Sing2. Stranger Than Fiction1. A Prairie Home Companion
Top five films I was stoked about but missed because they had “exclusive engagements” in the BLIP, conflicts at the film festival or just didn’t come here:
5. Neil Young: Heart of Gold4. Flannel Pajamas3. Half Nelson2. Fast Food Nation1. Come Early Morning
Don’t ask me about it if you don’t have half an hour: The Holiday
Surprise of the year: Jodie Foster expressing some humility and a bitchy streak as wide as a Manhattan city block, playing against type in a glorified cameo in Inside Man. Hello, nasty!
Robert De Niro should look to: Meryl Streep, who only gets more adventurous as she gets older, demonstrated handily by a pair of polar-opposite performances in The Devil Wears Prada and A Prairie Home Companion. She was probably dope as shit in that Brecht play she did in Central Park this summer, too.
Random thought generator: Instead of re-releasing Taking the Long Way with a half-hour of promo crap for a Christmas cash grab, Columbia should’ve included a disc of the beautiful, stripped-down versions of songs performed by the Dixie Chicks in Shut Up and Sing. DVD extra, anyone? Weinsteins?
Most welcome return: With an Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated turn in the PBS miniseries Bleak House and a sweaty cameo in the great The Last King of Scotland, you had to dig for her but the effort is always worth it for Gillian Anderson. Let’s hope this maternity leave was as short as her first, X-Files-era one (three days).
The Britney Spears’ Vagina Award for Most Overexposed: Take your lips and your ass and your smug attitude and ship it all to a far-flung location for six months, Scarlett Johannson, you overrated, vaguely talented, (un)sex bomb.
Music
10. The Decemberists, The Crane Wife9. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America8. Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell 37. Jill Barber, For All Time6. The Grates, Gravity Won’t Get You High5. In-Flight Safety, The Coast is Clear4. My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade3. Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way2. Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope1. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat
Television
Returning
5. Law and Order: SVU (Mariska eps only. Suck it, Dani Beck.)4. The Simpsons3. Entourage2. Weeds1. Grey’s Anatomy
New
5. Ugly Betty4. Friday Night Lights3. Brotherhood2. 30 Rock1. Big Love
This article appears in Dec 28, 2006 – Jan 3, 2007.