The City Is Blinking

2017, in some ways, wasn't a great year for me. I lost my father eight months ago, and have had some personal shit that didn't work out so well.  Luckily the year in created things was pretty great. I have listed my favourite music, video games, movies and television shows below. I close with a look at the best created work of any medium or genre. MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR: Drake - More Life . Drake's best album, neck and neck with Take Care. A beautiful array of styles. Stunning production and hooks for days and days. He is the quintessential modern rapper/R&B artist. Flow into melody into flow with melody. More Life features some of Drake's best melodies in a career that has been full of them. Passionfruit is a highlight, as are Teenage Fever, Fake Love and Madiba Rhythm. Destroys Kendrick Lamar with a musical acumen that, for as good as Kendrick's lyrical chops are, Lamar just can't compete with. The best rapper alive today and one of the ver...

"All right, listen up. No reporters view the body. You photo men - finish taking your pictures now. Coroner's men - put a sheet on the body as soon as they are done. We set up a perimeter six feet back. Any reporter crosses it - arrest him. Now gentlemen, before this gets out of hand, let's put the kibosh on something. With publicity, you get confessions. With confessions, you get crazies, liars, and false leads. So, we keep some things quiet. The uh, ear to ear facial lacerations, disembowelment - you keep this information to yourselves. Not your wives, not your girlfriends, and no other officers, and I mean no... Bleichert, what the hell are you doing here? Where the hell's Blanchard?" "He's right here." The Black Dahlia directed by Brian DePalma and adapted from the novel by James Ellroy got a bum rap. It was reviewed very badly and was received poorly by the audience. When I first saw the movie, I found it disappointing, considering...

"Shadow, take me down Shadow, take me down with you For the last time For the last time For the last time For the last time You're in the water I'm standing on the shore Still thinking that I hear your voice Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? For the last time For the last time For the last time For the last time." David Lynch has always had a deep feeling for music in his work. Think of Blue Velvet and its prominent use of the title track and In Dreams by Roy Orbison. Or think of the use of Locomotion in INLAND EMPIRE. Twin Peaks The Return has, in every episode a performance by a band or artist that reflects the story that was told in that episode. This is usually concluding the episode, but a few have it earlier. This is such a good idea, echoing in many ways the way Saturday Night Live showcase new musical guests every week. The music every episode evokes the mystical and mystifying quality of Twin Peaks. I will discuss two of ...

 "Cast out this wicked dream that has seized my heart." INLAND EMPIRE was before Twin Peaks The Return, David Lynch's masterpiece. A three hour epic exploring the human condition through many different stories that all come together in the end, expressing something truly profound about how we deal with trauma and the transformative power of art. INLAND EMPIRE is not for the faint hearted. It is the most challenging, hypnotic and mesmerizing film of David Lynch's career. There is about an hour of (close to) normality and then the bottom drops out and you are consumed by the terror and horror of a world gone wrong. I am not going to attempt to put everything in a linear timeline here. I am just going to try to express why the film is so moving, so terrifying and so damn beautiful. Let's start with the basics. Laura Dern plays an actor named Nikki. She gets a part in a movie that is said to be her comeback role. The film has a strange history, as Jeremy Irons...

"The fire spread back and upward; the house became a giant sheet of flame. Buzz got in his car and drove away, red glow lighting up the windshield. He took back streets northbound until the glow disappeared and he heard sirens whirring in the opposite direction. When the noise died, he was climbing into the foothills, Los Angeles was just a neon smear in his rear-view mirror. He touched his future there on the seat: sawed-off, heroin, a hundred and fifty grand. It didn't feel right, so he turned on the radio and found a hillbilly station. The music was too soft and too sad, like a lament for a time when it all came cheap. He listened anyway. the songs made him think of himself and Mal and poor Danny Upshaw. Hardcases, rogue cops and Red chasers. Three dangerous men gone for parts unknown." The Big Nowhere is the second title in the L.A. Quartet. It is my second favourite after The Black Dahlia. It follows three characters, young Danny Upshaw a policeman with the Los ...

" I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day to enjoy it as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary life." About Time, released in 2013 and written and directed by Richard Curtis, is a beautiful bit of movie making. Curtis, who you will know from classic comedies like Blackadder and gorgeous comedy dramas like The Boat That Rocked, is someone who knows how to combine big laughs with moments that will just about make you cry. About Time is one such movie. About Time is a film about a man who discovers that he has the ability to travel back in time. Through using this ability he sets his life on the right track, as well as helping those closest to him get the lives they deserve. As you will know, I lost my father about eight months ago, and as much as I adored the love story between Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams, I hold this movie close to my heart for what it says about fathers and sons.  Bill Nighy's advice to ...

" This is where the fun begins." I unironically like the Star Wars prequels. I know this isn't a popular thing to say, but it's true nonetheless. I saw Episode I: The Phantom Menace when it was released in 1999 and I was immediately pulled into this fantastical world of evil robots and delicious light saber battles. I don't love The Phantom Menace anymore, but I do think it has a lot going for it, in spite of some terrible artistic choices. The pod-race is a brilliant and thrilling thing. The fight between Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi is probably the best of the entire series. Episode II similarly had some great moments. I particularly like the detective mission that Obi-Wan undertakes to discover the reasons for a clone army.  I am not going to bother getting into the flaws of Episodes I and II here, as this isn't a Why I Hate article. Sufficed to say however that there were many issues with the casting of the movies, as well as some...