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LISTS
January 1st, 2023
Apocalypse Wrapped: 2022
Happy New Year! Jesus, another one! It's still going! Put on a goddamn mask and be kind!
BOOKS: The City & the City - China Miéville
Ya girl didn't get much reading done this year, but the few books I did read pretty routinely bowled me over (affectionate). The City & the City kicked off the year with a cerebral and trippy detective story set in two fictional Eastern European metropolises located, not next to each other, but one on top of the other. Miéville's prose is weighty and mercurial, the punch of old typewriter keys or a broken pen scattering ink across the notebook as it writes. I stand by an earlier description: The Chosen and the Beautiful is for people who listen to My Brightest Diamond; The City & the City is for people who listen to Molchat Doma. Five stars.
Honorable Mentions:
Siren Queen - Nghi Vo
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Beneath the Rising - Premee Mohamed
MUSIC: Multitude - Stromae
Happy to have him back. Multitude gets my favorite of the year slot not for being the album I listened to most (that would be Son Lux), but for being the freshest of all the musical breaths of fresh air we got in 2022. I'm not sure anyone does heavier topics to dancier melodies right now. (And that 32nd note delay on Santé!)
Honorable Mentions:
Lucifer on the Sofa - Spoon
RENAISSANCE - Beyoncé
Cool It Down - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Everything Everywhere All at Once - Son Lux
Breaking the Thermometer - Leyla McCalla
Fossora - Björk
TELEVISION: Station Eleven (2021-2022)
I'm not sure if I missed the conversation around Station Eleven when it came out, or if it never really happened - but the series is both my favorite of 2022 and my nomination for Most Underappreciated Series of recent memory. It was prescient before we were living through a pandemic, and it remains so now. Maybe that's obvious. I don't really care. Anything that holds your hand while telling you that you're right to be afraid, and does it without making your teeth hurt (or bashing them in altogether, I'm looking at you, The Last of Us Part II), has my whole heart. Give Danielle Deadwyler some kind of award, asap.
Honorable Mentions:
The Bear
A League of Their Own
Russian Doll (season two)
MOVIES: Everything Everywhere All at Once
SPEAKING OF WHICH.
There's nothing for me to really say here that adds anything to the conversation. I don't care about the Discourse(tm), or if people think it's overrated, or whatever. It's my favorite.
Honorable Mentions:
Language Lessons (2021)
Titane (2021)
Nina Wu (2019)
Rose Plays Julie (2019)
RRR
Turning Red
GAMES: Immortality
But this one I'll talk about!
God, this game is so smart. Immortality is the third game helmed by Sam Barlow, also one of the creative forces behind Her Story and Telling Lies, and really does feel like both of those experiences dialed up to eleven. The premise is fairly simple: you have gained access to the lost film archive of now-missing actress Marissa Marcel, whose three features - one in the 60s, one in the 70s, one in the 90s - were never released. You'll spend the game scrubbing through limited footage of said films, unlocking new clips through match cuts of people and objects in each scene. Starting from only one clip of a talk show interview, you'll gradually uncover more footage and more insight into Marissa's life.
It gets weird.
It's incredibly easy to call this groundbreaking. I love a detective game that operates without rails, putting you in the driver's seat to follow different threads as you see fit, and Immortality does this in the hyper immersive form of, essentially, film editing. Give the player control not just of the cut, but let them go frame by frame, and follow whichever part of the story they find most interesting. It's an instant rec for anyone who wants more Her Story, speedran the Return of the Obra Dinn, or owns a subscription to the Criterion Channel.
Avoid spoilers - but if you're like me and instantly invite a friend to play along with you, know you're about to watch a lot of nudity.
Honorable Mentions:
Inscryption
Hades (2020)
Potionomics
Coral Island
Trombone Champ
Au revoir, 2022.
Sucked
Into
A baaaaaagel.
🪨 Char
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