Best of 2023
(a new year's resolution)
I’ve been keeping lists of things I enjoyed reading/watching/listening for about as long as I can remember. These days, those are spread out over more notebooks, Notes apps, Google docs, scrap paper and back-of-envelopes than I care to admit.
I do this to make sure I don’t forget about certain things I loved, to remind myself to read up on some author or director, or to later recommend something to someone. Watching movies, reading books and listening to records are essentially solitary activities, but talking about the pieces of art you loved or hated is a deeply social (and fun!) activity. PLUS I am an absolute sucker for the sub-genre of “here’s-what-this-famous-person-loves-reading-eating-drinking-watching” journalism and how they reveal people’s weird habits, preferences and neuroses (a few recent favorites: an incredibly giddy Willem Dafoe in the Criterion Closet. Annie Ernaux’s characteristically pithy By The Book installment. A very sybaritic GrubStreet diet by Dwight Garner).
But there’s little method to my own madness. So for 2024, I’ve challenged myself to write a Substack post every few weeks about some of the things I’ve been enjoying the most (articles, books, movies, shows, documentaries, records, etc). I hope this’ll be a good way to keep something of a (public) record of the things that’ve excited me, perhaps start a conversation here and there, OR help at least one desperately bored soul to decide what movie or TV show to watch next.
I know I am a little late here - but I figured the best way to kick off this little project was to keep up my annual tradition of sharing my “best of” list for the year - along with a few other random recommendations. Of course, please feel free to share your own lists/recommendations in the comments (or, if you prefer, start a fight because I forgot to include Past Lives or Barbie on this list)
2023 Movies
Killers of the Flower Moon
Fallen Leaves
Oppenheimer
Afire
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Showing Up
Passages
Eileen
Anatomy of a Fall
An incredible year at the movies! Much has been written about KOTFM by people much smarter than me (here are just two examples) - but I’ll just say that after watching it the first time, I immediately went to read the book to try and figure out how Scorsese had pulled this off. It is peak “late style” Scorsese, a beautiful crystallization of all his thematic concerns (…the complicity and violence undergirding the American dream) and visual and storytelling prowess (those big funeral and wedding scenes! ) I was very impressed by the way he switched the story from a straightforward true-crime narrative to an equally tightly plotted one, but with the mystery of the Burkharts’ marriage at its center. I also thought the much-debated ending was very touching, and a not-too-subtle coda to Scorsese’s own career and the end of the era of filmmaking he represents. Oppenheimer was the first Nolan movie I’ve really loved — the first time I thought his strengths and obsessions as a filmmaker perfectly matched the material. Seeing it in IMAX was a surreal experience. Fallen Leaves had such a huge beating heart. It’s the first Kaurismaki movie I’ve ever seen, and it made me want to see all of his movies right away. Very rare to encounter a film with such a distinct voice, style and sense of humor and grace.
I also very much enjoyed How To Blow Up A Pipeline, The Holdovers, Bottoms, and - to some extent - Asteroid City, Beau Is Afraid and Poor Things.
(I’ve not yet seen May December, Zone of Interest, or the Boy and the Heron)
2023 Records
(in no particular order, really)
The National - First Two Pages of Frankenstein
Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
Barry Can’t Swim - When Will We Land
Zach Bryan - Zach Bryan
Slow Pulp - Yard
Fenne Lily - Big Picture
Sofia Kourtesis - Madres
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - Weathervanes
Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez
Fred Again/Brian Eno - Secret Life
Country Westerns - Forgive The City
Julie Byrne - The Greater Wings
Joanna Sternberg - I’ve Got Me
ANOHNI - My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross
Lisa O’Neill - All Of This Is Chance
While I really loved these 15 records, there were very few stand-outs this year - and I don’t feel like I discovered a ton of new music. I can’t tell if it wasn’t a very exciting year in music or if I am getting old and my taste is continuing to grow stale and boring (or both!) Either way, below is a playlist with my favorite songs of the year - let me know what I missed!
BONUS RECOMMENDATIONS
My favorite podcast this year, by a mile, was A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs.
It’s probably the ultimate music nerd podcast - host Andrew Hickey is an expert guide with a truly dazzling, encyclopedic knowledge of rock history, but he knows how to tell a great story, ties together many unexpected strands and provides just enough historic / cultural context and anecdotes that this would be engaging for even very casual music listeners. The most recent episode (he’s about 171 in) about Hey Jude by The Beatles is a perfect example. The episode opens with a digression on transcendental meditation and doesn’t get to the actual song until about 3 hours in. In the meantime it covers an entire year in the life of the Fab Four, a little bit on British tax law, some asides on the avant-garde artists and radical politics of the era, Ornette Coleman introducing Yoko Ono to heroin, the first Apple record being a Frank Sinatra song (Ringo got him to record “The Lady Is A Tramp” as “The Lady Is A Champ” as a birthday gift to his wife) and a meditation retreat in India which changes the course of George’s life, while Ringo leaves early (stomach issues), Paul writes “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” (after spotting some monkeys copulate in the street) and John comes up with “Dear Prudence” (addressed to Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence, who became so obsessed with meditating she refused to leave her room). There’s many, many hours of this podcast available already (and many more to come) so if you’re curious, I’d suggest picking a random episode on a song you love (and don’t let the runtime of these episodes daunt you!)
My favorite playlist this year was the Kajitsu playlist. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who sadly passed away this year, put together some of his favorite contemporary ambient music for Kajitsu, a Japanese restaurant in NYC, because he loved their food but couldn’t stand the Brazilian pop music they’d play. It’s full of (mostly instrumental) music that’s incredibly beautiful, soothing and atmospheric. I listen to it all the time when I am reading, working or trying to fall asleep on a plane :)
And finally, I’d encourage everyone to read Man Called Fran, an incredible short story (or prose poem? personal essay? I am still not sure) about humans and plumbing and sewage smells that was unlike anything else I read this year.
Thanks for reading! Hope to see you in a couple of weeks!