Ok, we’re almost done with our multi-month long onslaught of lists. While making my list, it became apparent that my list is not going to be that exciting because I seem to have the taste in movies of your average unadventurous film critic. Still, every single movie on my list does have some sort of special significance for me, even if a lot of them were critical consensus favorites when they were released. I was hoping to rewatch all of the movies on my list before constructing my top 10, but didn’t quite get there. I’m sure my list will not be the same a few years from now, especially considering the most recent year was such a good year for movies that I’m having a hard time contextualizing it in the grand scheme of the decade. Anyways, on to some movies I guess… Continue reading →

Something about making top 10 movie lists feels more serious than the other three. I guess it’s partly because it feels like it’s the medium where John, Colin, and I are closest to being on a level playing field. Like, there’s only so much music and TV all three of us have in common, and we don’t really talk about video games at all. But film, I mean, we have a whole weekly podcast dedicated to that! I think this phenomenon is even bigger than this blog, as tough as that might be to believe. The Oscars feel more important than the Grammys, you know? I guess it might have to do with how big theatrical releases are about as close as we get to shared culture these days. I wonder how that will change in the next 10 years?

Anyway, I made my list free of any pretension. I didn’t look at any critic’s top movies of the decade lists, and since I’m going first, I don’t even know what John and Colin are going to include on their lists. This is just me sorting through the movies I love the most right now. So know this: I could easily do a top 100 as there’s a helluva lot of great movies I would rate highly that didn’t make this list. Similarly, I have a shitload of movies in my backlog I still need to catch up with that could very well change this top 10 if I were to do it again. Which, hopefully, I will get the chance to do someday. I’d hate to have to try to defend this these picks for the rest of my life.

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Of all the media that we’re covering in these best of the decade lists, TV shows possibly changed the most this past decade. Back in 2009, the zeitgeist still was driven by network TV, and to some extent basic cable. I’d argue premium networks like HBO and Showtime were still niche, it seemed like plenty of people caught up with shows like The Sopranos and Dexter by waiting for the DVDs. Obviously streaming has changed all that, and the industry is still figuring out how this new normal is going to work.

The other thing about TV is that it’s the most time-sensitive of all the media we’ll be writing about, in that historically, it’s been pretty uncommon for people to go back and catch up with shows that are off the air. That’s changing too, but it has the funny effect on making everything on my list make me nostalgic for the times in my life I was watching them. Certain shows are college shows, grad school shows, new career shows. Which makes me realize that I don’t have big set milestones for this next decade like I have had in the past, which is scary… Let’s not get existential, let’s just do this list.

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I am so tired of lists. It’s god damn February! Here’s a TV list. My only rule was every was show had to have debuted in 2010 or later. I don’t like any of these sloppy “Part of it was in this decade” bullshit. That’s not how I ride. I ride like the wind.

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Making my best of the decade list for TV was both very frustrating and very easy. Frustrating because unlike an album or a movie, you can’t easily rewatch a whole TV series in the name of research. So instead of spending hundreds of hours rewatching these shows, I’m doing this all from how well I remember them. Which, of course made things all very easy, considering the lack of research and reassessment involved in writing this. So… let’s just hope these shows are still as good as I remember. Continue reading →

The 2010s were a complicated decade for me, musically speaking. It was the first decade where I felt like I was more or less in touch with new music for the entirety of the decade, and yet it was also the first time that I truly felt old while discovering new artists that were younger than me. It was a decade that saw countless albums that I loved, and also in many ways felt like a decade where two of my favorite things — albums and rock music — seemed to decrease noticeably in cultural relevance. It was the decade where I eventually took over as “the music guy” at Mildly Pleased, and thus spent a lot of time writing about the kinds of albums that’ll be appearing on my list. Well, let’s take one last gander at them. Continue reading →