Ten Things, 2022-48

still from Fire of Love

Here are ten things.

  1. My friends and I made our triumphant return to pub trivia last Sunday. We won two of ours drinks each, placed second (our prize: a like-new copy of Clue Carnival), and concluded the evening at McDonald's getting silly on chicken nuggets and recommending our favourite media featuring drug dealers (The Wire, High Maintenance, Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper).
  2. The championship match of the 1989 Movie Bowl pitted Kiki's Delivery Service against Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in a closely-matched contest. The Ghibli juggernaut triumphed, claiming its third Movie Bowl win for the studio, but one of the vanquished parties was gracious in defeat.
  3. Sight & Sound just published the results of their decennial Greatest Films of All Time poll, and we have a new champion: Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Funny enough, the only four movies to ever be #1 on this list are all in the top four. Tons of stuff here to shore up your watchlist.
  4. Two great documentaries to recommend: Elvis Mitchell's Is That Black Enough for You?!? (an engrossing, clear-eyed and funny history of Black people in the movies, with a focus on the fecund period between 1968 and 1978) and Sara Dosa's Fire of Love (rock-star volcanologists in love, built mostly from astonishing footage pulled from the subjects' archives).
  5. Another week, another batch of albums I listened to for EOY purposes, and none knocked me on my ass more than the third album by the Beths, Expert in a Dying Field. The title track and “Knees Deep” is as good a one-two opening punch of strong, bittersweet indie pop as I've heard all year. Hot take: Jonathan Pearce is secretly a hot-shit guitar player.
  6. Another high-water mark this week in terms of 2022 albums was Everything Was Beautiful, the latest from space-rock revivalists Spiritualized. “Crazy” is pedal steel-kissed devastation at its finest.
  7. My friend Alex recently DJed an all-vinyl set of yacht rock, City Pop, and assorted smooth music. All five hours of that set are available here for your listening pleasure.
  8. Between Fire of Love and the recent volcanic activity in Hawaii, the word of the week is “vog.”
  9. RIP Christine McVie. Put on “Little Lies” and pour one out.
  10. Another poem from Wikipedia Haiku:
    He is seemingly
    assassinated, but heals
    a short time later

#tenthings