Products

Go to the archives

2015: The Best of the Best

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Dec 30, 2015
Category: Beyond Classification

THE AMAZON LINK: There are now two ways to get to Amazon and support this site. The old: Click on the “Buy it from Amazon” link on any review and go anywhere on Amazon to shop. New: CLICK HERE. Reminder: You need not limit your shopping to stuff featured here or on the site. Every single thing you buy on Amazon after you click from Head Butler helps keep the lights on.

Everybody does “10 Best” lists. Mine is… different. A song recorded in one take. A commercial. And, at the bottom, a consumer warning. But some of you asked, and it is the season, so….

THE BEST BOOKS

COOKBOOK
V Is for Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques for Home Cooks — from Artichokes to Zucchini, by Michael Anthony, with Dorothy Kalins

MEMOIR
All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness, by Sheila Hamilton

My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine, by Kate Betts

FICTION
Lillian on Life, by Alison Jean Lester
(Yes. I like this novel even more than I like my own.)

RACE
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

THRILLER
Night Life, by David C. Taylor

POETRY
Digest, by Greg Pardlo

CHILDREN
B.J. Novak, The Book With No Pictures

THE BEST MUSIC

Josh Ritter: Sermon on the Rocks

Don Henley: Cass County

THE BEST PRODUCTS
Unicorn Pepper Mill

TaoTronics Dimmable LED Desk Lamp

THE BEST VIDEOS

Lake Street Dive
Amazing song. More amazing: filmed and recorded in a single take.

Car Seat Headrest

Dear Brother
This is a Johnny Walker commercial. It was made for $9,000 by two German film students, Daniel Titz and Dorian Lebherz, then submitted to the company. Avi Dan has a good piece about it. Something happens early, but it was subtle, and I missed it the first time. At 1:09, I got it. “Dear Brother.” The words are hard to hear, so…

Walking the roads of our youth
Through the land of our childhood, our home, and our truth
Be near me, guide me, always stay beside me
So I can be free
Free
Let’s roam this place, familiar and vast
Our playground of green frames our past
We were wanderers
Never lost
Always home
When every place was fence-less
And time was endless
Our ways were always the same
Call my demons and walk with me, my brother
Until our roads lead us away from each other
And if your heart’s full of sorrow, keep walking
Don’t rest
And promise me from heart to chest to never let your memories die
Never
I will always be alive and by your side
In your mind
I’m free.

The Flyte video of Joni Mitchell’s “River”

Jason Isbell, “24 Frames,” from Something More Than Free

Hang Massive, “Once Again”

Broken Bells – Holding On For Life

Marion Williams

THE BEST MOVIES

45 Years

Two Days, One Night

Brooklyn

Spotlight

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

What Happened, Miss Simone?

CONSUMER WARNING: “CAROL”
These comments come from a Facebook conversation. I started it:

“Carol” got a standing ovation at Cannes. It has 5 Golden Globe nominations. The New York Film Critics named it the year’s best film. And yet…. I saw it right after the rave review in the Times. Most, if not all, of the audience at the Plaza Theater had read it. And so it was fascinating to watch the faces as the audience filed out. These smart, sophisticated New Yorkers didn’t like the film. But they weren’t saying that. Or anything. What they were doing is what I’ve seen too often in New York — they were invalidating what they thought and recalibrating their reaction so it fell within the boundaries of official opinion. Other critical successes that have produced similar responses: “The Goldfinch” and “All the Light We Cannot See.” Can you suggest others?

Michael Lindsay-Hogg, a legendary film and video director, and author of a memoir, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond, responded.

Whose idea was it for Cate Blanchett to channel Joan Crawford? If I was a same sex attracted girl working at Bloomingdale’s, I’d have run a mile from someone as obviously deranged as CB, especially since she seemed to be ‘voiced’ by Caitlyn Jenner. And why did all the egregiously stupid straight men wear their hats at such stupid angles? Was it a sign of some sort of particular doltishness, like their straightness? In 1955, when waiters delivered Eggs Benedict, they didn’t say ‘Enjoy,’ nor as CG did a moment later, ‘Bon appétit.’ The cars were super good and got the period right. And the obscurantist photography meant what — to indicate what was hidden or not to be fully seen I think they’d have been better off spending a little more time on lighting CB so she didn’t look like a prize fighter who’d taken too many shots to the right cheek. The Patricia Highsmith novel was seductive, pulling you in, pulling you in, with a powerful sense of erotic possibility and danger, impossible to deny. Very worth reading. And, perhaps, comparing.

I followed up:
“Carol” is The Emperor’s New Movie, the most over-praised film in years. The writer discarded the dialogue in the book so thoroughly that the most eloquent “conversation” is a longing look across a table — like that ever happens in Real Life. There’s a huge difference between great art direction and a great movie, but in this case, the art direction seems to be enough.

Angela Stimson polished the film off:
I felt that I have been a voice in the wildness about how much I loathed this movie on every level. The character of Carol was so predatory and the young girl was a complete milk sop. It was almost as if the director set all of this period mise-en-scène and then had these wooden actors floating about in it. Because it was Patricia Highsmith I kept waiting for the sinister intrigue — but that didn’t happen. In fact the only intrigue is how I managed to sit through the whole bloody thing.