The lists for best films, TV shows, and music of the decade have already begun, but what about paratexts? What have been the best extratextuals of the 00s?
In no particular order, here are 14 of my top 20. I’m banking on having forgotten some biggies, so I’m hoping my readers will jolt my memory, and I’ll fill in the remaining 6 based on those. After the fold …
Somehow I went a full year without seeing many films, so the competition wasn’t all that steep, though I’m still relatively happy with most of my top picks. Remember that they count if I saw them in 2008, hence some of the 2007 entries.
Movies
10. Enchanted. Silly but fun, and ideal for the second 9 hour leg of a trip to Malawi.
9. Sweeney Todd. I like Tim Burton’s aesthetic. Odd, dark, kinda cool.
8. The Bourne Ultimatum. If only I could move and fight like Bourne, my subway commute would be so much less of a hassle.
7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Admittedly, in other years, the movie that gifted the phrase “nuking the fridge” to movie criticism wouldn’t make the list, but it was fun, and it was great to see Harrison back in action. I spent a lot of playtime trying to be him as a kid, so he has a long leash.
6. Quantum of Solace. Not quite Casino Royale, but I’m intrigued by the decision to serialize the Bond films, and Daniel Craig is still easily the best Bond.
5. There Will Be Blood. By the time Daniel Day Lewis was drinking from the other dude’s milkshake, I was a little tired, since I also saw this on the way to Malawi, but it was gripping stuff. I wish I could’ve seen it on the big screen.
4. Cloverfield. A great ride. My sense is that New Yorkers liked this film more than others. I loved it. Wouldn’t want to own it or see it without a full theatre, but I really liked it.
3. No Country for Old Men. I have a real weak spot for totally dark, badass villains, so this movie hit all the right chords with me. And I love the Coen Bros. stuff.
2. Iron Man. Like Batman Begins, Iron Man has a brilliant first two acts, then falls quite flat. But its first two acts were really fun.
1. The Dark Knight. I know I’m not supposed to like it, because hype is bad, right? Well, much of Dark Knight’s hype was really bad (a Gotham pepperoni pizza from Domino’s? Come on!). I think much of its marketing sucked. To the point that I was ready to dislike the film, and especially Heath Ledger’s performance. Instead, I really liked it. The IMAX screen helped, no doubt. But it was great fun. Let the haters hate, but I won’t. I’m even one of the only people I know who actually likes Christian Bale’s Batman voice.
Now for movie posters after the fold. Yes, I get to the extratextuals eventually …
Continuing with my Best Of 2008:
Web Video
10. “Too Drunk to Fuck.” I had my vid watching orgy in late 2007, but one of Luminosity’s 2008 offerings helps explain visually why Family Guy will never rival The Simpsons: Lisa and Marge are just so much better than FG’s women.
9. “Talk to Your Parents About Voting Republican.” I’ve already posted about this, in the context of its political message, but I’m also a fan of its parodic attack on the earnestness of Talk to Your Kids videos that assume older people know better.
8. “Piece of Me.” Obsessive24’s vid about Britney Spears is excellent, and a 3m21 essay on celebrity exploitation and obsession.
7. Fox News Calls Ohio. I saw this after the fact, but it’s a sweet moment, as Brit Hume and Karl Rove see the writing on the wall, and Lurch delivers the news to the bald master of evil.
6. “Yes We Can.” Will.i.am’s video defined viral, and though I still laugh at its inclusion of some pretty C rate celebs (“hey look, there’s Ashley from Fresh Prince of Bel Air!”), it laid down a gauntlet to Obama’s contenders that they’d have to deliver online. They didn’t, and they lost.
More after the fold …
awards, lists, music, vids, viral videos
Inspired by Mike Newman’s fantastic and highly recommend Faves, 2008 list, and as a pale imitation, here are some media highlights from 2008, in installments.
First, though, a word on categorization – if I saw it in 2008, it’s on this list, even if it came out earlier; and if I saw it on the Internet, it’s web video not television.
Television
10. Chuck. The show is infinitely silly, but that’s the point. Like Pushing Daisies, it kept me sane in hard times. Adam Baldwin, Awesome, Lester – fun stuff.
9. Food Network in HD. I knew when I got my HDTV that I’d love travel shows all the more, and nature shows. But I didn’t count on how much food porn I could stomach on a daily basis, and how that threshold would increase with HD.
(First, note the new design and look. On Thanksgiving, let us all give thanks to the “silent” member of The Extratextuals, Ivan Askwith, who makes the whole thing possible and recently updated our Word Press. Thanks Ivan)
Caught up in a fervor of alphabetical list making, I decided to follow up on the Alphabet Meme with a list of best television shows. There’s a slight bit of cheating involved at S/Z (ooo — very Barthesian, no?), but I couldn’t bring myself either to nominate Zoey 101 as the only Z show I know, or to choose between the two best shows in TV history, both of which inconveniently begin with S. I also went only for series or continuing shows, not one-offs (sorry, 28 Up). Without further ado:
The Amazing Race
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
ER
Freaks and Geeks
Goodness Gracious Me
Hockey Night in Canada
Iron Chef America
Jack & Bobby (neat idea, not super, but the J’s give little competition)
The Kingdom (the Danish one, not the American atrocity)
Lost
The Muppet Show
Northern Exposure
The Office (I’ll go with the American one, though Brit one gets a gold star too)
Pushing Daisies
Quantum Leap
Roseanne
The Simpsons
The Twilight Zone
Ulysses 31 (old school cartoon. Still have the theme song in my head)
V Graham Norton
The Wire (sorry, West Wing. You picked a bad letter to begin with)
The X-Files
Yes, Minister
Zesame Street
I love lists. Love seeing other people’s lists, and love making my own. So Bob Rehak’s circulation of “The Alphabet Meme” grabbed my attention, and I had to play.
Follow the second link there for the full rules, but the basic point is to list your best/favorite film of each letter of the alphabet. I’m breaking the original rules a bit to get Star Wars and Lord of the Rings into only one competition each, but, hey, we play fast and loose over here at The Extratextuals. Also, as with all these lists, this is what I feel at this moment in time; ask me next week, and I’d likely give different answers. So don’t add Of All Time to the list. I feel particularly conflicted right now about leaving out Breakfast Club, Citizen Kane, Exotica, Fargo, Hoop Dreams, and Heat). That said, appropriately the list begins with a legitimate Of All Time favorite:
After Life
Batman Begins
Cinema Paradiso
Donnie Darko
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The Godfather II
Hook
The Insider
Jacob’s Ladder
Kagemusha
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Manchurian Candidate (Sinatra, not Denzel)
Naked
Once Upon a Time in the West
Pleasantville
Quiz Show (hey, Q’s are hard)
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Star Wars trilogy (first one, not the Jar-Jar one)
Trainspotting
Unbreakable
The Vanishing (the Dutch/French original)
Wonderland (by Michael Winterbottom, not the American one)
X-Men 2
Young Guns
Zelig
List fever continues, as I now try to sort through the best characters in television history. Inevitably, some make the cut because of superb writing, some need the actor to do all the work, while others find a more perfect union. The complete list after the fold, this time in reverse order, from 50 to 1.
Via Ken Levine’s neat blog, I see that AOL came up with a Top 50 TV Comedies, Ever list. Their top 10 — The Simpsons, Seinfeld, All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, M*A*S*H, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, I Love Lucy, and Friends — are all quite deserving in their own ways. But from there on, there are some seriously dodgy choices. Namely:
For further grumbling about the rankings, go to Levine’s blog and read the comments.
I decided, though, to take things into my own hands, and make my own list. More after the fold
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