It’s the end of the year, which means it’s Best Of the Year season. I don’t think I saw enough movies, discovered enough new music, read enough books, or watched enough TV shows this year to make a Top 5 list for any of those mediums. What’s more, some of culture that I most enjoyed this year wasn’t from this year. But I’m not a professional critic, so who needs those restrictions…
Fontaines D.C.
I first heard of this Dublin post-punk(?) band on an episode of Sound Opinions. They were described as a 21st century The Fall, a band I never quite got into. I listened to some of their singles anyway and was very quickly drawn to them. The music is great, but where they really shine is their lyrics, which have a wonderful rhythmic poetry to them but also speak to and of everyday life in a modern city, especially the everyday life of the working class. The frontman, Grian Chatten, is like a class conscious Shaun Ryder. I strongly recommend listening to their debut album Dogrel and seeing them live when they come to your town.
Lodge 49
It seems like the TV shows worth watching are either brutal tragedies centered on deeply-flawed anti-heroes (see Breaking Bad), or cartoonish comedies with heroes who either learn a lesson or are proved right every episode (see Parks & Recreation). A few shows, however, have cropped up that, although they have some of the trappings of these two genres, are something different altogether. Lodge 49 was* one of those shows**. It many ways it seems like a contradictory show: It’s wholesome and warm without being corny or trite; it’s mystical yet it quite accurately captures how it feels to be alive right now; it’s goofy and fun but surprisingly touching; it’s warm and friendly but pervaded with themes of loss, loneliness, and alienation. Others have written better about this show so I’ll just leave two of my observations:
- As far as I can tell, it’s the only TV show whose driving force is its characters’ search for meaning
- I’ve never encountered a show that so vividly depicts characters who are completely lost.
Plus, there’s a scene in which Paul Giamatti’s character engages in an impromptu dumpling-eating contest.
* Moments before I started writing this I learned that the cancelled Lodge 49 would not be resurrected. The show’s creator, Jim Gavin, announced the loss in a heartfelt twitter thread.
** Also in this non-genre genre for me is Deadwood and the oeuvre of David Simon for different reasons.
Push
As most renters in any city know, the global housing market is not working. Rents are rising, even as high-rise condos are constantly being built. More frustrating, at least for me, is that when we point out this incongruity, we’re met with either a shrug or prescriptions that are worse than the problem. The documentary Push probes the sources of the housing crisis* following the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing, Leilani Farha, as she investigates the crisis and advocates for a rights-based approach to housing. If you’re already pissed at your obscene rent, you’ll leave this documentary enraged, but with ideas for constructive ways to channel that rage.
* SPOILER: It’s a mix of investment bankers, tech bros, and traditional organized crime
Jerrold Katz
Non-linguists, you can skip this one.
I’d heard about Jerrold Katz before, but never delved into his work. When I did finally open up his book Semantic Theory, which I had quite low expectations for, I was pleasantly surprised to find a fresh-to-me approach to one of the most puzzling aspects of language: meaning. Beyond this book of his, I also read Cogitations—a philosophical study which argues that Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” has been consistently misanalyzed and underappreciated by modern philosophers—Sense Reference and Philosophy—a posthumously published book which sums up Katz’s theory of language and its relation to broader philosophical questions—and many of his papers. If you’re someone who’s interested in semantics but nonplussed by formal semantics, I recommend reading Katz.
Calvary & First Reformed
I was inspired to watch both of these movies after coming across a piece by Alissa Wilkinson in The Atlantic from 2015. The piece argues that if you want films that properly portray faith, then you should skip the bible movies and the overtly christian movies and go see an indie film. Specifically, she recommends John Michael McDonagh’s black comedy Calvary. I took her advice, and extrapolated from it to also check out the more recent First Reformed*. Both are not only brilliantly crafted films—Calvary is legitimately funny in that sad Irish way, while First Reformed has a quiet, intimate urgency to it, mixed with some alienation and magical realism—but they both depict men of the cloth struggling with and questioning their faith in God and humanity.
* I also watched First Reformed on the strength of it being on Priscilla Page’s best of 2018 list. Do yourself a favour, follow Page on Twitter, and listened to her movie recommendation. She’s never steered me wrong.
The Lighthouse
There may be some recency bias here, but I’ll just leave my single tweet review here: