Best of 2020

FILMS

01. Moving On (Yoon)
02. There Is No Evil (Rasoulof)
03. Twilight's Kiss (Yeung)

04. First Cow (Reichardt) 

05. Da 5 Bloods (Lee) 

06. Soul (Docter) 

07. Servants (Ostrochovsky)

08. Emma (De Wilde) 

09. My Rembrandt (Hoogendijk)

10. Days (Tsai)

PERFORMANCES

01. Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods

02. Pierfrancesco Favino, The Traitor

03. Paula Beer, Undine

04. Imogen Kogge, Merkel – Anatomy of a Crisis

05. Pierfrancesco Favino, Hammamet 

06. Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, and Gary Oldman, Mank

07. Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

08. Choi Jung-woon, Moving On

09. Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Rylance, The Trial of the Chicago 7

10. Lee Kang-sheng, Days

ALBUMS
01. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters
02. Morrissey, I am Not a Dog on a Chain
03. The Microphones in 2020

04. Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

05. Chloe x Halle, Ungodly Hour

06. Kathleen Edwards, Total Freedom

07. Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated Side B

08. Jessie Ware, What's Your Pleasure? 

09. Soccer Mommy, Color Theory

10. Selena Gomez, Rare

SINGLES 

01. Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion, "WAP"
02. Dua Lipa, "Levitating" 

03. Morrissey feat. Thelma Houston, "Bobby, Don't You Think They Know?"
04. Megan Thee Stallion, "Girls in the Hood"

05. Chloe x Halle, "Forgive Me" 

06. Dua Lipa, "Love Again" 

07. Phoebe Bridgers, "Kyoto"

08. Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyoncé, "Savage Remix"

09. Stephen Malkmus, "Xian man" 

10. Dua Lipa, "Don't Start Now" 

We just watched this –– a perennial childhood favourite of mine –– and, I'm not gonna lie, it legitimately gave me goosebumps at times. 

Grace Jones! k.d. lang! Magic Johnson! Little Richard! Oprah! Charo! The Marine choir! 

(Thank god, he didn't invite a certain Manhattan real-estate developer...) 

Where the music don't stop for life

She was terrific on SNL last weekend, but this is better still. I also prefer these versions of Future Nostalgia's four best songs to their album forms. 

 A rebel without a clue

I am completely and totally enamoured of this song. 

You must got me fucked up


We saw Chloe x Halle open for Beyoncé and Jay-Z a few years ago. They were good. But I more or less forgot about them. Now, I can't stop listening to their album, Ungodly Hour. In certain respects, it reminds me of Destiny's Child crossed with En Vogue, but the production and some of the unusual melodies are really quite different from both. "Forgive Me," the first track after the intro, for instance, is the closest Chloe x Halle come to a "Don't Let Go," yet it ultimately sounds unlike anything I've heard before – somehow portentous and funereal and sleekly sexy at the same time. The closer, "ROYL," evokes FKA twigs, but with Southern gospel inflections, evincing their Atlanta roots. This dynamic of familiarity and strangeness is one they totally sustain across the ten tracks in between. And they sing the shit out of all of it.

    Home viewing

Having recently revisited some old favourites for the first time in many years, I decided to revise my 100 movies list.