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Saturday, January 01, 2005
Still More Best of 2004
Hey! Happy New Year. This'll be the last Best Of entry before I move on to the here-and-now. Promise.
Best TV Show of 2004 - My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss
It's a shameless, lowbrow choice... and I was prepared to ignore the show, until the first episode reeled me in and had me hooked week after week (at least, every week they played it - I think the series has been cancelled mid-season). It delighted me to no end seeing the premise of The Apprentice (another show I also enjoyed greatly this year) turned upside-down, playing out the worst instincts of late capitalist culture with a literalist savage glee. The extremes of degradation was justified - perhaps even demanded - by the ability of the contestants to fool themselves into thinking there were fortunes to be made and lessons to be learned. It's not that I'm opposed to capitalism, mind you - I just like to see its excesses treated like farce instead of tragedy, and this farce was over-the-top enough to make it enjoyable and educational. Special kudos, by the way, to the man who played the closet-case CFO to the obnoxious boss CEO: he was able to turn sexual harassment in the workplace into an equal opportunity affair (of course women are sometimes treated as sex objects in corporate culture, but to see men have to suffer the same humiliation was hilarious) without making the humor homophobic.
Best Movie of 2004 - Collateral
I didn't see as many movies as I'd like, but the one that left me glowing was definitely this Michael Mann thriller. A beautifully filmed movie - it almost makes me like Los Angeles (but not quite) - with an incredible cast and a sufficiently twisty plot (but let's face it, we all knew midway who the last intended victim would be). I love that Tom Cruise played evil instead of over-playing it, and Jamie Foxx gave a bravura performance that made his everyman role something special and unique. The scene where he assumes the killer's identity and suddenly becomes a badass of mythic proportions is riveting, funny, dramatically powerful... It's everything you should go to see a movie for.
Best Book of 2004 - The Plot Against America
It's pretty clear in my memory since I just read it a couple months back, which perhaps gives it an unfair edge. That said, this book struck me as a return to favorite haunts for one of my favorite authors. I love Roth and all the identity games he used to play in the seventies and eighties - so the historical what-if he poses in this novel is made all the more riveting by the metafictive shell-game of using his own personal history as the prism to refract the story's events. His writing is clearer and more accessible here than it has been since Operation Shylock - as much as his nineties novels shine for their portrayal of the latter half of the twentieth century, there was a density to the narratives that made them a bit distant. Here, Roth seems to be back in a snappier, more colloquial mood - still measured and cautiously thoughtful, but more eager to reach out to the reader because, dammit, this could have been his life if Lindbergh was voted president. Right? And special thanks to Stephen King for pointing out in his Entertainment Weekly column that speculative histories are nothing new by mentioning the best and brightest of that category, Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle (a novel that should be read alongside Roth's with neither suffering from the comparison).
Best TV Show of 2004 - My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss
It's a shameless, lowbrow choice... and I was prepared to ignore the show, until the first episode reeled me in and had me hooked week after week (at least, every week they played it - I think the series has been cancelled mid-season). It delighted me to no end seeing the premise of The Apprentice (another show I also enjoyed greatly this year) turned upside-down, playing out the worst instincts of late capitalist culture with a literalist savage glee. The extremes of degradation was justified - perhaps even demanded - by the ability of the contestants to fool themselves into thinking there were fortunes to be made and lessons to be learned. It's not that I'm opposed to capitalism, mind you - I just like to see its excesses treated like farce instead of tragedy, and this farce was over-the-top enough to make it enjoyable and educational. Special kudos, by the way, to the man who played the closet-case CFO to the obnoxious boss CEO: he was able to turn sexual harassment in the workplace into an equal opportunity affair (of course women are sometimes treated as sex objects in corporate culture, but to see men have to suffer the same humiliation was hilarious) without making the humor homophobic.
Best Movie of 2004 - Collateral
I didn't see as many movies as I'd like, but the one that left me glowing was definitely this Michael Mann thriller. A beautifully filmed movie - it almost makes me like Los Angeles (but not quite) - with an incredible cast and a sufficiently twisty plot (but let's face it, we all knew midway who the last intended victim would be). I love that Tom Cruise played evil instead of over-playing it, and Jamie Foxx gave a bravura performance that made his everyman role something special and unique. The scene where he assumes the killer's identity and suddenly becomes a badass of mythic proportions is riveting, funny, dramatically powerful... It's everything you should go to see a movie for.
Best Book of 2004 - The Plot Against America
It's pretty clear in my memory since I just read it a couple months back, which perhaps gives it an unfair edge. That said, this book struck me as a return to favorite haunts for one of my favorite authors. I love Roth and all the identity games he used to play in the seventies and eighties - so the historical what-if he poses in this novel is made all the more riveting by the metafictive shell-game of using his own personal history as the prism to refract the story's events. His writing is clearer and more accessible here than it has been since Operation Shylock - as much as his nineties novels shine for their portrayal of the latter half of the twentieth century, there was a density to the narratives that made them a bit distant. Here, Roth seems to be back in a snappier, more colloquial mood - still measured and cautiously thoughtful, but more eager to reach out to the reader because, dammit, this could have been his life if Lindbergh was voted president. Right? And special thanks to Stephen King for pointing out in his Entertainment Weekly column that speculative histories are nothing new by mentioning the best and brightest of that category, Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle (a novel that should be read alongside Roth's with neither suffering from the comparison).
