This is probably the first time I’ve posted more than one post in the same day. Although, the other one was pretty short, and I think that this one will be too. There are just some random things that I want to talk about, I guess. And I like to procrastinate.
Since the end of 2009 is in sight, lots of sites are putting up their lists of the best movies/books/albums/music videos/whatever of the decade. I’ve done a little bit of that with my Best Performances of the Decade series (be sure to check it out!) Pitchfork amassed their crazy 200 Best Albums list. Pitchfork is one of those things that I love to hate. And the weird thing is, Pitchfork covers most of the music that I like. There’s not too much reason for me to hate them. Except maybe their pretention. But I can be pretentious, too, so I guess I’m a hypocrite now, on top of everything else. Anyways, they chose Kid A and Funeral as their top 2 albums. That is so predictable. Maybe I just like being contrary, but I think those two albums are two of the most overrated albums around. I love Radiohead and the Arcade Fire. But both of them have released other albums that I like a thousand times more this decade. Kid A and Funeral are good, but I guess I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Conversely, Paste magazine is doing a purge of their “best of the decade” lists of everything imagineable. I’ve started working my way through their best movies list. It seems like they’re making interesting choices, and I want to read all of their comments. In the first ten, it’s a nice mix of more obvious choices (High Fidelity), slightly more unexpected choices (Hotel Rwanda, which was a pretty amazing film), and stuff that I’ve never heard of. I’m interested to see what albums they’ll choose. I bet it won’t be Funeral or Kid A (now watch me be wrong). I respect Paste’s opinion a lot more, even if they can be pretentious sometimes, too. On top of being a pretty decent magazine, they have a really good blog/website thing going, which is nice.
To switch to something totally different, my prof told us today that we’ll be watching David Lynch’s Lost Highway in our cinema studies class next week. I’ve been kind of baffled by some of his choices so far (Winchester ’73, Tuff Turf), but David Lynch seems to make a bit more sense, I suppose. I’ve never seen any of his films, so I guess I can’t really say, but he just seems arty and weird enough, from what I gather. I don’t really know anything about this film, since I usually hear Mullholland Drive or Blue Velvet when I hear people talk about him. But I looked it up on IMDB, and Henry Rollins is in it. So that should be interesting.
So yeah. I don’t have too much else to say. I’ve been working on my own best albums of the decade list, so hopefully that’ll be up before too long. When does the decade end, anyways? Because it seems like 2009 would be the last year, but then some people are saying that 2010 is part of this decade? Oh well. I’m counting it as 2000-2009.
Times Like Those 