I listened to very little music that was actually released in 2022, but hands down the best album I heard was Beyoncé's Renaissance. More on that later. Overall, albums released in 2022 that I actually listened to:
- The Arcade Fire - WE
- Beach House - Once Twice Melody
- Beyoncé - Renaissance
- Cate Le Bon - Pompeii
- The Smile - A Light for Attracting Attention
- Nilüfer Yanya - Painless
Of the older albums that I listened to this year, a favorite was Halsey's If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power. Other stuff I listened to this year:
- 50 Foot Wave - Power + Light
- Walter Becker - Circus Money
- Bombino - Agadez
- Can - Tago Mago
- Chromatics - Kill For Love
- Cluster - Sowieso
- Crusaders - Street Life
- Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
- Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
- Grizzly Bear - Shields
- Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins
- Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
- Kare-Lis Coverdale - Grafts EP
- Rafael Anton Irisarri - Midnight Colours
- Mogwai - Central Belters
- Mogwai - Every Country's Sun
- Mogwai - 2018
- Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile: Deviations 1
- The Police - Ghost in the Machine
- Radiohead - The King of Limbs
- Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - Soul (soundtrack)
Unusually, I saw a lot of TV this year, more than I have ever seen in probably any year of my life. I don't normally watch that much TV, but for some reason managed to fit a lot of it in. There was also a lot of good TV, so there's that. This list at the bottom is all the shows I watched in alphabetical order, but my Top 10 shows would probably be:
1. Severance (Season 1)
2. Better Call Saul (Season 6)
3. Andor (Season 1)
4. Ms. Marvel (Season 1)
5. Fleishman is in Trouble
6. Peacemaker (Season 1)
7. White Lotus (Season 2)
8. The Boys (Season 3)
9. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (Season 1)
10. Moon Knight (Season 1)
Other stuff I watched, in alphabetical order:
- Black Bird
- The Book of Boba Fett (technically, 2021-22)
- For All Mankind (Season 3)
- House of the Dragon (Season 1)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Season 1)
This loneliness feels new. Partly because I don't think I've felt deeply lonely in many years. But this feels a bit isolating, like the absence of people manifests itself in a solid mass in your head. It's not just absence of things, it's also the presence of emptiness.
Anyway, I recently saw a bunch of movies, somewhat by accident. On planes and things like that. I've added them to my master list of stuff that I think I saw this year (see bottom of this post). At the top is my top 10.
1. Prey (d. Dan Trachtenberg)
2. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (d. Ryan Coogler)
3. Licorice Pizza (d. Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (d. Rian Johnson)
5. Barbarian (d. Zach Cregger)
6. Avatar: The Way of Water (d. James Cameron)
7. The Fabelmans (d. Steven Spielberg)
8. Nope (d. Jordan Peele)
9. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (d. Sam Saimi)
10. Fletch, Confess (d. Greg Mottola)
I think my favorite movie of the year was Fletch, Confess. I am only partly kidding. It's the most low-stakes and pointless movie I've seen in years. And yet it is totally internally consistent, and every single person in the movie is there for a reason and acts in a way that is logical. It's like if steak, mashed potatoes, and peas got together and made a movie. I so thoroughly inhabited its world, that for about 90 minutes I forgot that I existed. Also, it was genuinely witty and Jon Hamm was fantastic.
I think my number one could have been Licorice Pizza, which has the funniest scene ever put to celluloid when Bradley Cooper, playing the director Jon Peters, has an insane conversation with one of the younger characters, about his wife, his house, his life. I don't even know. Unfortunately the whole scene is not available on line, just a minute-long section of it, just before Cooper goes insane:
Other stuff I remember seeing:
- The Batman (d. Matt Reeves)
- Elvis (d. Baz Luhrmann)
- Emily the Criminal (d. John Patton Ford)
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (d. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)
- Maneater (d. Justin Lee)
- Thor: Love and Thunder (d. Taika Waititi)
- Top Gun: Maverick (d. Joseph Kosinski)
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (d. Tom Gormican)
- Werewolf By Night (d. Michael Giacchino)
Weirdly, I also liked every single other film on my list, except Maneater, which may be the worst movie I have seen in my life.
I'm going to try and write reviews of each of the top 10 movies in another post.
And then to TV and music of 2022. I'm just starting slow but I will get to it all. These early posts are like unpacking your suitcases after you get to your destination. There will be some sightseeing eventually.
Well, it's been a year since I posted anything here. I think.
But I just wanted the internet to know that I am still here. Many things have changed, but I am still here. And since no one reads this, this could actually become a useful forum for things.
Thinking of writing about general pop culture stuff.
