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2013 Highlights
2013 Highlights
As usual, all of these items are new to me, not necessarily new for 2013.
These are broken out into blog form with pretty pictures and such:
Movies/TV
This year I saw a number of great movies or shows for the first time.
Among the more literary are Barton Fink, Sleepwalk With Me,
Life of Pi, The Rum Diary, Drive, Into the Wild, and
Looper, with Pacific Rim, Dredd, and Alphas leading
the more genre-defined. Notes on all these and more are in my
2013 movies log.
I wouldn't actually say these are all "the best" in some more
objective sense, but these are the movies new to me in 2013 that I
most want to highlight:
- Downfall. This is a tough movie to get excited about, in
that it manages to bring out the humanity of absolute monsters.
Even just for that regard though it is an excellently accomplished
movie. Further, it does a good job of highlighting the banality and
cowardice of those monsters, and what would be their otherwise comic
flaws if it weren't so real. If you really want to go into this
with a lot of background of what's happening, I
strongly recommend Beevor's World War Two.
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Bear with me here. This
movie is, of course, totally over the top and ridiculous. It starts
moving out of B movie territory though with excellently
choreographed fight sequences. More seriously though, this is a
more credible movie about slavery, the South, and the Civil War than
any number of other movies ostensibly hitting on those topics. The
vampire allegory cuts much harder to the truth, and more
successfully conveys the true ramifications and scope---moral and
economic---than the vast number of efforts that effectively brush
slavery off as the south's "pecular institution" or the Civil War as
a battle over abstract "states' rights."
- Redemption. This is an awkward movie in many ways. If
you ever wanted to watch Jason Stratham get it on with a nun, well,
you've found your outlet. But it's a very solid, intriguing movie,
much deeper than almost all of Stratham's other movies. The
characters are complex and it doesn't resolve prettily, but there's
really no way it could have. Further, the moments that I find
particularly troubling---e.g., why does the Arab thug get the shit
kicked out of him much worse than his white compatriot???---make
sense on re-viewing more carefully, and literally put another shade
on Stratham's character, adding to depth even as it strips sympathy.
- Flight. A gripping movie, from the excellently done
opening crash sequence to the closing hearing. Denzel Washington
does a great job with a character simultaneously very sympathetic
and deeply flawed. The movie also never strays into melodrama or
pulls punches, at least until the very end. Further, it's stylsh
all along the way, with a soundtrack of classic rock staples backed
up by great looking suits and entrances that is admittedly all
fairly conventional, but feels great at first and then later brings
another layer as you question the presentation and show of these
characters' lives. I would have preferred that the movie
ended earlier, but it's excellent.
- Senna. An absolutely incredible documentary. Some of the
imagery and symbolism is beautiful, e.g., Senna gets his first real
F1 gig and there's a great shot of other cars pulling aside as he
comes through to the starting line. Similarly, he gets his first
taste of F1 politics and the film cuts to a view of him putting in
his earplugs. It keeps its punch going by having no modern-day
footage, using solely contemporary video with voiceovers for the
interviews. There are a lot of dramatic literary aspects to the
story as well---the dueling rivalry with Prost, Senna's doubts about
his own safety overcome by ambition and drive, the broken
friendships as he switches teams for better equipment. On top of
all this is an awesome soundtrack. Absolutely incredible film.
Music
This year was an absolutely fantastic one for music. I don't keep a music log, but if you've been at an ECCC race this year you've heard---and danced to!---many or all of these.
The New Old
First, some old stuff I just discovered:
- The Tragically Hip's Bobcaygeon
- I have to confess I haven't fully decipher all the meaning and references here, but I heard this first on a 3am drive through New England, and it's perfect for that.
- Archive: Bullets
- Storm Queen's Look Right Through
- Some college station in State College, PA was playing the full ~40 minute album mix collection of this while we were setting up bootleg camp way up near the firetower in Rothrock one night, incredible...
- Curxes' 1996 remix of Chvrches Recover
- I confess to being a bit behind the times with this one but it's really good.
- Anna Kendrick's Cups
- Alex Clare's Too Close
Honorable Mentions
Next, some newer honorable mentions included:
- Emeli Sande's Next To Me
- This is a great video, BTW.
- The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Subway
- Robert DeLong's Global Concepts and One And The Same
- Drake: Started From The Bottom
- The non-explicit version and without the weird non-music bits in the video is actually way better.
- Lana Del Rey: Summertime Sadness
- Imagine Dragons' Radioactive
- The video doesn't fit the song well in my mind, but it's interesting and well done. Pretty awesomely, and quite correctly, listeners on a local radio station voted these guys to the top of the station's 2013 "Best of" and "Should Give It A Rest" lists simultaneously.
The Best
Now the best of the best music for 2013:
- Leila Moss: Here's My Boy
- The backstory of this is actually fascinating: The song is from Beck's Song Reader collection of sheet music, from which many many people have posted a wide variety of interpretations of the different songs.
- Rihanna: Stay
- Despite ridiculous airtime I don't think this ever managed to get old.
- Break and Die: Slow Down
- This was released in 2010 but it just came across my radar and is incredible. Sadly there's no actual video as far as I can tell.
- Avicii: Wake Me Up
- C2C: Le Banquet, Down the Road, The Beat, Delta, and Happy
- These guys absolutely killed it with their late 2012 release Tetra. "Highlights" include all of the above, literally half the album.
- Kavinsky: First Blood, Protovision, Roadgame, and Nightcall
- Some of these songs have been out before, but the new collected album OutRun is amazing. Highlights include the above, but the overall concept and some of the songs like Pacific Coast Highway that work best within that framework are also noteworthy.
Books
Finally, for me 2013 was also a great one for reading. Notes on these
and many more books are in my
2013 reading log.
Short Stories
I generally read most of the short stories posted on Tor.com; some highlights from this year:
Non-fiction
History books had a surprisingly great year:
- The Second World War. Beevor.
This book is almost overwhelming, but in the end does a
comparatively comprehenisve, emotive job of
capturing what World War II meant on the ground, particularly
for women and civilians. It also gets credit for appropriately
shifting much of the focus away from the US and UK.
- What Hath God Wrought. Howe.
Almost certainly the best history book I've ever read. It captures
both the sweep and the telling details and personalities of the
period, while also being imminently relatable to the modern day.
Even setting aside its staging for the Civil War, Howe provides
tremendous background to understanding huge pieces of modern
America, such as the current Republican party and its policies.
Fiction Novels
Apparently I read a lot of science fiction... Notables for 2013!
- Mechanique. Valentine.
This is a beautiful steampunk story about a traveling circus.
Valentine's short story Terrain is actually on the list above as
well, and what they share is a real depth of characterization,
original elements, and being sci-fi/fantasy/steampunk without
forcing the issue. Mechanique takes it a step further be being
really impressive stylistically. I could see many people being
turned off by its poetic, lyrical style, extremely loose
storytelling, weird punctuation, and extended asides, but I thought
it was incredible in both presentation and characters.
- Betrayer. Dembski-Bowden.
You almost certainly need to be into Warhammer 40,000 in one way or
another to appreciate this novel. But within that milieu it's
excellent, probably
[[http://www.rocketshipgames.com/blogs/tjkopena/2013/11/book-review-betrayer/
| the best in the Horus Heresy series]], and that has a number of
good, somewhat deeper tales. Betrayer does an amazing job of
taking a historical plot with known outcomes, a bunch of previously
boring & flat characters, and making it all really compelling.
- Red Mars. Blue Mars. Green Mars.
Robinson.
This trilogy is hard to read. I almost put it down at a number of
points, and skipped massive swaths of pages. In general I am
definitely not on the Robinson hype train. Here he spends an insane amount
of time detailing the geological processes and features at work.
But the whole work is incredibly detailed, well thought out, and
does have serious characterizations that make it worthwhile.
Despite being literally and metaphorically being buried in rock in
both the story and text, a whole bunch of them still manage to stand
out brightly as people, with complex interactions and motivations.
If you want to read an in-depth historical account of the
colonization of Mars and the fascinating people involved, decades
before it might even begin to happen, these are your books.
- Cloud Atlas. Mitchell.
Perhaps due to being a programmer, I was not as blown away as many
reviewers by the simple recursive structure of the text, but it is
an elegantly constructed piece of art. The handoffs are subtle and
work nicely. More importantly, several of the six sections are
incredible, and the rest are solid. The early 20th century Belgian
components are amazing in terms of feel and characterization. The
Sonmi sections are very excellent as well, really capturing a near
future with a completely different though very plausable world, and
a great character and their development. Highly recommended. Don't
watch the movie first; I watched it afterward and was not only
disappointed, but feel it would ruin much of the suspense.
- King Rat. Perdido Street Station.
The Scar. Railsea.
The City and the City. Miéville.
Having only read two of his books previously, I went on a serious
Miéville tear this summer. All of these are excellent. ''The
Scar and Perdido Street Station'' are related but don't really
depend on each other. The latter gets all the press and has a
stronger morality quandary as a closing central thread, but I
thought the former a better story, and definitely more taut.
They're both equally as deep though and have as strong characters.
Scar carries a classic south seas nautical pirate adventure feel
with fantastical elements, while Perdido brings those elements
to European continental political revolution intrigue.
Railsea is essentially what you get if you take Moby Dick,
cut out all the rampant unnecessary bloat, and place it into a
completely landlocked steampunk world. The ending's a bit weak and
overt, but the opening sections introducing the world and characters
are just plain fun storytelling. Great young adult adventure tale.
The City and the City was particularly meaningful for me having
spent last summer in Prague. It is essentially a modern fantasy
novelization of a personification of the Eastern Europe/Western
Europe border, and has a great noir feel with fantastical elements.
King Rat is an earlier effort and that shows the comparatively
somewhat short length and relative simplicity, but neither is by any
means a bad thing. The book's been overshadowed by his later
successes, but King Rat is a standout in the somewhat crowded
modern-fantasy-London genre. As with many of Miéville's book, the
styling and language is unique and excellent.
- Altered Carbon. Broken Angels.
Woken Furies. Thirteen.
Market Forces. Morgan.
These are all related, and should be read in chronological order of
publication (as listed here).
The first three of these are explicitly a trilogy. Altered Carbon is incredibly good cyber-bio-noir that pokes at some really
good, serious ideas about the future. Broken Angels and Woken Furies aren't quite as strong, but they're both very good science
fiction featuring some great settings. More importantly, especially
toward the end they start to develop more refinement to the Takeshi
Kovacs lead character, lending some introspection to the
body-swapping ultimate mercenary-slash-detective. It's almost
offputting that there are major revelations made which seemingly
have no later effect, but that actually makes sense and puts another
light onto both the character and the world: As he and many other
people slip through the decades, what does it really matter?
The other two books Morgan denies as being follow-ups, but they're
much better off interpreted as set in the far past of the Carbon
trilogy's 26th century. Thirteen, titled Black Man in
Europe, is set somewhere in a future just slightly distant from us
and is just strong through and through: Great plot, settings,
mystery, sci-fi, and characters. It opens with a classic but well
done sci fi spaceship horror mystery and rolls on from there. The
commingling of Martian and South American exploitation is excellent
and thought provoking. Beyond that, the alternate UK and US titles
are no coincidence and quite telling; the story gets pretty hard at
racism, exclusion, and genetic modification.
Market Forces is the most uneven of this whole sequence. Set in
the very near future it has a basically ridiculous premise straight
out of some '80s SEGA game: Lawyers and businessmen compete for
contracts in highly ritualized vehicular freeway combat... I almost
had to put it down. Once you get past that though, it's actually a
great profile of the descent of a character, and by the end doesn't
actually seem as outrageous as when it started. There's a lot here
about violence, economics, and the thin difference between.
All these are worth it, but if you had to pick two, go for Altered Carbon and Thirteen.
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