Image Credit: Mario Perez/ABC‘Tis the season for picking favorites — for taking stock of the year that was and expressing ourselves with lists. Like every pop culture junkie, I have a list for everything — movies, TV, books, music, comics, videogames. But I’m also a big geek, with a fancy for what the industry and more sophisticated nerds call “genre entertainment” — superhero, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy stuff, worlds of wild and weird wonder marked by extraordinary creativity and mind-stretching ideas that can inspire intense engagement, deep discussion with friends, and in some instances, multiple 6,000 word essays each week exploring every nook and cranny, real and imagined, of an entertainment experience — especially ones that involve smoke monsters. Here were my favorite Geek-Outs of 2010, and beginning with (no surprise)…
1. Lost
Some people will love me for putting this Number 1; others will hate me. I love that Lost was capable of producing such polarizing responses. Everyone had his or her own intense, personal relationship to the show. I am not here to validate or critique your perspective, whatever end of the spectrum you occupy. That was your experience. This was mine: The most stimulating pop culture experience of my adult life came to a conclusion this past year with a season to savor for years to come. Yes, I do mean savor: The more I think about the Sideways world, the Man In Black, and the center of The Island, the more richness I find — to the point that I’ve recently been re-thinking many of my initial interpretations. (As much as I enjoyed producing those 6,000 word recaps, I really wish I had more time to process and crunch each episode before committing my thoughts to digital paper.) For example, in my write-ups on “The End,” I called the Sideways world “Purgatory” and deemed it a wholly spiritual construct. I am no longer convinced. I find myself tilting toward an idea, suggested by other critics and bloggers, that the Sideways realm should be thought of as a psychological construct; I think you can accept that without negating the spiritual message of the show. That said, in recent months, I’ve been reassessing “The End” through a more agnostic filter, and as I do, provocative and challenging new meanings emerge — about the Man In Black, about what it means to be The Island’s guardian, about the season’s strangest character. What do I mean by all this? And who was the season’s strangest character? I’ll tell you in my long-promised, long-delayed last Lost column, which will post before the end of the year. Oh, and one more thing? Still cry when I watch this. One of the most beautifully heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen on TV. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Niko TaverniseSo yesterday I got a funny voicemail from my sister, at the end of which she mentioned off-hand that she and my mom were en route to see Black Swan. I loved Black Swan, and I said as much multiple times over Christmas, in front of my mom. In fact, I actively encouraged her to go see it. But the moment I heard that voicemail, a good hour after my sister had left it, I realized I had made a monumental mistake. My intuition was confirmed when my mom subsequently called me after the movie to inform me that she found the movie “deeply, deeply disturbing.”
