Happy new year - 2024 is here. I don’t know why, but typing 2024 seems really strange and futuristic to me, in a way no other year has for a very long time. I expect 2025 to be even stranger as we hit a quarter century down.
As usual, this round up is a series of things of things I imbibed and dug this past year. I offer them up as something I advocate for you to try, also.
Also as always, I did a poor job of keeping tabs on what I consumed this year, and there’s every chance I’ve missed something pivotal. I’m sometimes decent at this - my Letterboxd has been tip top this year, and my Story Graph is also up to date, but I am not tracking my tv at all. Plus, my comic reading went way way downhill. I don’t know why. With this in mind, here’s the stuff I remember really vibing in this year, 2023:
COMICS
Who knew two digital comics would be the winners on the horizon for 2023 for me.
FRIDAY
This comic from Marcos Martin & Ed Brubaker continues to excite and shake me every time a new chapter drops. The story winds from an old school YA teen investigator tale into some really interesting swerves and curveballs, and every twist only layers on more awesome and intrigue.
Then there is Martin’s illustrations, with Muntsa Vicente colours, that bring the world to life in this stylised way that feels so specific that the other day I saw a lamp and instantly thought “Oh, that looks like Martin drew it.” Stunning worldview stuff.
You can buy and read FRIDAY right now on Panel Syndicate
SPECTATORS
This massive graphic novel has been slowly serialised by Niko Henrichon and Brian K. Vaughan on their newsletter over the past 2 years. It’s a story about a ghost watching the world after a women died in a mass shooting. It’s nasty in its violence and open in its sexuality and ultimately fascinating in what it shows us about the world around us through the present and the future storylines.
It’s got about a year to go, but I have found myself absolutely loving every week when a few pages fall into place.
You can read everything they have so far here
I also really enjoyed the end of Chip Zdarsky’s run on Daredevil, and Phillips/brubaker dropped RECKLESS: FOLLOW ME DOWN in January which I loved, and their WHERE THE BODY WAS has landed, but I need to get my copy asap.
NOVELS
COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER by Michael Ondaatje
I got lost in this book. The story is interesting, as is the story behind the story. Michael Ondaatje reading about the history of jazz and coming across Buddy Bolden and how he went mad at a parade and then records on him did not cover much at the time.
From this, Ondaatje draws out a wild mostly fictional tale of Bolden and his life and it’s utterly fascinating. The musicality of Ondaatje’s writing, using repetition and polysyndeton in a pacing way above all concepts of syntax and context, is so well expressed. It had me absolutely falling for this book and feeling in each moment.
I’m slowly working my way through the works of Ondaatje, and each book I sample just makes me consider his mastery of language and emotion in complete awe. I would put this up there with In The Skin Of A Lion as one of my absolute favourites of his.
EMERALD CITY and other stories by Jennifer Egan
I picked this short story collection up the other day for $1 at a charity stall and it is short so I thought I would slot it in before the festive season began and I could then travel with a larger book. This is the first Egan I’ve read, and there were 3 stories in this book that are fascinatingly brilliant. I think there are 1-2 that didn’t land with me, and the rest are super solid.
Overall, that’s a win of a collection, but I’m also glad to have stumbled across those few that are truly dynamite. It’s also nice to expand my reading into some slice of life instead of the usual genre-heavy stuff I read [especially short stories].
Teaching Novels with ‘Salem’s Lot and The Catcher in the Rye
I unlocked a really interesting angle on Stephen King’s tale of small town vampires. This is his Great American Novel. Except, the way he sees it, America is no longer so great [if it ever was].
The keystone to this was the prologue - it’s set after the events of the novel and it robs a whole mess of the dramatic tension that horror novels normally rely upon. We know the two who live, we know nearly everyone else dies, and we know the vampires really messed things up. By taking this tension away from the reader, king is signifying that the book isn’t really a lascivious horror novel [which King knew he’d be typecast as by writing about vampires] and instead it’s about the town, about the people, about America.
He then proceeds to show us how terrible America is as everyone in the town feels trapped in their lot in life [pun probably intended] and most of them are truly horrible - the main offenders victims of systemic sexism, and capitalism.
With this in mind, I loved teaching this novel again this year.
Whereas with The Catcher in the Rye, the best moment was getting the students to consider Holden Caulfield once they were about halfway through the book. He’s wildly annoying and fairly horrible and pretty much the whole class hated him.
I then got them to unpack *why* he is this way, what has made him into this person. Everyone could understand he was sad and scared and he ultimately just deserves pity - but they can barely give it to him even with all that in mind.
It’s fascinating to see Salinger presenting this absolute masterpiece of a Terrible Person, and then trying to connect up why he’s done it. I don’t believe he’s punching down on The Youth. He’s showing how bloody hard it is, and how no one will care, not even your readers.
A brutal lesson, especially when you realise you’ve actually fallen into the camp/trap of hating him, too. Which, I’ll admit, my first reading as a Certified Youth left me disliking the book because I hated Holden, but now as an Aging Man of Minimal Erudition I just feel incredible depths of sorrow for Holden, and I think Salinger putting this small fella up on the page in the shadow of WWII where teenagers were suddenly a new [and scary] social concept was a stroke of genius [though I fear a lesson perhaps not always yielded].
TV
???
I don’t know if I watched anything truly boss in the realm of television this year. I watched FARGO S4 and it was good, but there was something that didn’t land for me. I kept feeling like Schwartzman was out of place somehow. The overall Miller’s Crossing vibes and winding and intertwining plots kept me going until the end, but it didn’t feel as classic as the other seasons.
I didn’t yet catch the new season of THE BEAR or ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. I did really really enjoy THE AFTER PARTY [was that this year?]. I’m also keen to watch MONARCH. Oh, and I finished BARRY S4 this year [I also think that was this year]; it was very bloody good.
MOVIES
This year had a whole mess of movies, I nearly hit 200 flicks for the year [I’ll try harder next year]. My trick to so many films was two-fold: have my kids discover quality cinema and constantly want to work in a film and one I’d want to watch with them; watch movies while I exercise. I got through a bunch, but I’ll separate into the new stuff, and some old classics [some of which I finally saw for the first time].
My absolute favourite film of the year was:
THE FABELMANS
Hot damn, this film scratched an itch within me. To see the creative birth of Steven Spielberg on the screen was one thing, but to have him do it in such a captivating way was a whole other level. I was captivated from the start to the end, everyone is acting at their peak, and it genuinely made me cry. A real cinematic experience [I only wish I’d gotten the chance to watch it on the big screen].
Other contenders from the year that was were:
ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE
Now there’s just so much pressure for them to stick the landing on the third one to have the very best trilogy of all time.
This film pops just as much as the first, which is saying something huge, and seeing the Spot get the props they deserve on the big screen was wild. I also didn’t know this was going to break and roll straight into the next flick, so when I felt like we were nearing run time and there was no way the story could be resolved it was quite the internal shock in the cinema.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Ah, what a true joy. The film just oozes charm and laughs and thrills effortlessly. That they captured the spirit and mechanics of a good session of D&D is wild. I really hope more comes of this - and I agree, having a whole new party in a whole new adventure is probably the way to go, with call backs to some of these characters along the way.
BARBIE
Insanely well put together. The ludicrous and the sublime somehow intersect in ways that almost shouldn’t work, and yet the result is one of the most thoughtful and also hilarious films of the year. It’s very Message First, but that doesn’t get in the way of the actors getting to crush it, the laughs landing, or the overall feeling of the film getting to land. Also: feels like this will be highly rewatchable.
CONFESS, FLETCH
Does what it says on the tin. Captures the charm of the book/character, gives Hamm room to breathe, and is a bloody good time from soup to nuts.
BARBARIAN
Bonkers. And 85% of this flick is perfect. The ending is a bit of a mudslide, but it doesn’t negate the quality. I’m glad I went in very very blind to this one, made it all the better.
TALK TO ME
This is good stuff. Low key Aussie horror, very well shot, and the nasty moments really pop. I just love that teens find a ghost communicating hand and use it to enliven their parties and this logically actually makes complete sense.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS
It’s strange and unhinged and wandering, but once the narrative truly gets into gear the film clips along and has something interesting to say.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
This has a decent kick to it. I think I wanted it to be drastically better than the book, and it is, in parts, but not in some. The acting is wildly top shelf across the board, and some of the moments are stunning cinema. It is very good, but there was a little something missing that I still cannot define that just held this back for me. I’m keen to watch it again and see how I feel about this brilliant story unfolding.
And some of the oldies I discovered and loved:
SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
I’d never seen all of this in one go. The songs are so catchy, but the whole thing is beautiful and brilliant.
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
Had somehow never seen this in one sitting. It holds up so well and it’s riveting from opening to close. This exploration of the pointless nature of war is so well put together.
SORCERER
Finally [FINALLY!] found a copy on Blu-Ray. It’s a good flick that sits alongside plenty of these older flicks as needing one thing to also think about: consider the context and technology of the time in which it was made. Much like rewatching 2001 this year, you have to unpack just how difficult or groundbreaking these things were and see it through the eyes of this spectacle.
METROPOLIS
And talking about trying to watch it through the prism of its time - this film is interesting. We watched the extended cut with the lost extra parts put back in, and it makes for a bloated film, but there’s some real shine underneath/within it all. Definitely worth our time, though I cannot see me revisiting all that often.
SUNSET BOULEVARD
Not only had I never seen this, but I completely had it mis-genred. I think I thought this was some kind of old Hollywood drama, about an aging screen queen, and that was maybe as deep as it went. In short: I’m an idiot who gets blinkers on sometimes.
This flick is a pulp delight that’s weirder than I’d have imagined, and completely captivating.
PODCASTS
HOW OTHER DADS DAD with Hamish Blake
This show continues to be phenomenal as Hamish chats with dads and they discuss modern parenting in a way that always has me laughing, but more so has me thinking.
Good fuel for moving forward in life.
Here’s to what 2024 brings - I’m planning on reading more and maybe hitting 200 films. Big goals!