2011: an abridged list of highlights

* waking up on New Year's Day in Tokyo replete with heavy head and happy heart. Tom, Finch and I spent the first week of the year hopping on and off the shinkansen, supping our Kahlua Milks and biking it around Hiroshima. We also went to the Ghibli Museum! I'll never find another country as perfect as Japan, and that's fine by me. 

* wheezing my way to the top of Kilimanjaro. It wasn't easy but I always feel like a fraud when I say it was hard. I mean it was quite hard but perfectly doable so long as you're i) lucky, ii) stubborn and iii) mobile. Thankfully on this occasion I was armed with the lot and, for my trouble, rewarded with an onslaught of otherworldliness and the most laboriously lovely experience of my life. We stayed in Africa afterwards but while Tanzania's a very interesting country I confess I didn't do a whole lot. Lobster is nice, though. A bit salty.

* graduating. I don't actually consider graduation a highlight so much as a necessary evil. I guess it was quite a nice day though and my family enjoyed it and the list probably wouldn't be complete without it, so er, yeah.

* the last six months of Uni, which were spent almost entirely in the Lansdowne. That's not even an exaggeration. Stepping down from Film Soc presidency was a low, but Preet has done such an ace job as my, uh, successor, I can't stay sad. I think one of my New Year's Resolutions is to stop being so precious about something I no longer have anything to do with, but there is still a part of me that's desperate to vet out the douchebags, like some deluded overthrown dictator.
I probably shouldn't admit that.

* ATP. Oh God, ATP. If there's a formula for a perfect weekend then Barry Hogan knows it and this is what he's done with it. Animal Collective curated but the real stars were Gang Gang, Black Dice, real ale, Group Doueh, new friends, old bands, dancing, breakfast buns and Ariel Pink's 3-second Burger King gig. I would gurgle glass for the opportunity to do it all again.

* Saturday Reading was fun. The festival itself is not cool - I didn't realise it was possible for something that's theoretically quite arty to be so blandly corporate - but the bands made up for it. And by bands, I mostly just mean Pulp, who were and remain the bees knees. Incidentally, my new New Years Resolution is to find and marry Jarvis Cocker.

* the London "holiday", which consisted of seeing Katie, eating Nandos, pub times and wandering around Shoreditch, Soho and places I'm not cool enough for. It doesn't sound like much but it was actually one of the loveliest things I've done all year, though this could just be my unyielding boner for London talking.

* Gigs. I didn't go to as many as I'd have liked, but there were two which would have stuck out any year: Les Savy Fav at the Sound Bar and (deep breath) Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO at the Hare and Hounds. LSF were stunning; I don't know if Tim Harrington putting something on my head and giving me his Corona legitimately constitues a claim-to-fame, but it's certainly a claim-to-, er, ace. AMT were also ridiculously great: loud and crazy and holy shit, THE GUITAR'S ON FIIIIRE!
Aw man.

* while we're on the subject of music, it's been a good year! I was supposed to do a proper top 10 (as in I've spent the year thinking about it) but I left it too late and now I have no time to write it up, though it does exist. If you're interested (and I'm sure you are), you can just message me for it or something. My Gmail account should be able to handle the 12,000 emails I expect to receive.

* Getting some words in the Guardian! I know two people who've managed to write entire articles for the Graun, crushing my woefully inordinate ego somewhat, but I'm still a pleased little pea. Read my stupid pretentious waffle here.

* finally getting a job. I mean, work is not a highlight in anybody's life (unless they go by the name of Taka Imamura) but it's nice that there are people out there who can see that I am capable of doing stuff. Also good: having money again. So much wine.

Ultimately I think I'd describe 2011 as bittersweet. I've had some of the best experiences of my life - absolutely - but, contrary to the above, I've also dealt with what were easily some of the worst. On balance, I guess it's been a learning curve but time will only tell whether I retain anything (unlikely).

My only real resolutions for 2012 are to do "more": have more fun, see more films, hear more music, buy more dresses (wut), write more, smile more, do more, etc.

Oh, and to be living, er, more abroad by this time next year.

Happy 2012, guys!

Films of the Year

Wankiness will ensue. Consider yourself warned.

5

I'll say one thing for Lars von Trier: he's never dull. His musing on the world's end is typically atypical, dotty and daft, but it's also genuinely heartfelt. A film of two halves, Melancholia is both a grim comedy of errors and a surreal exploration of misery and muliebrity. Inevitably it all occurs against the backdrop of, uh, Melancholia, a sinister sister planet-cum-aching great metaphor for human suffering. What's surprising is how real it all feels: after the grand-guignol theatricality of Antichrist, the honesty here is startling. The second hour is defined entirely by a sense of quiet resignation: the realisation that when it all ends, we won't be braving explosions, battling flames or shouting down suits at the bloody Pentagon; we'll be dealing with the relatives. It won't be heroic. It'll be pathetic. And in that, as von Trier illustrates here, really rather beautiful too.

4

This Korean revenge thriller seemed to slip under the radar a little, which is unfortunate because it's kind of brilliant. Byung-hun Lee plays the agent out to avenge his fiancee's murder; Min-sik Choi is the deliciously sadistic killer. It all sounds rather generic (for Korea) but what plays out is a thing of poetry - grim, but prettily and therefore palatably so. As much as I love the unabashedly badass way America does revenge in movies (see #1 and #2), there's something dignified, even honourable about it in Asian cinema and I Saw the Devil is no exception. The film glides by with near-Shakespearean elegance*, then it ends, and in the 2.5 hours between you witness something that is - if you'll excuse the pun - devilishly good.

* admittedly we're talking Titus Andronicus-Shakespearean "elegance", ie: pseudo-intellectual torture porn. But, y'know, amazing.

3

That this only comes in at third place says a lot for my Top 2. Just as its central couple cling to their relationship, Blue Valentine clung to my top spot for much of 2011. Franky I've never seen anything like it. Director Derek Cianfrance spent twelve years on the film and it shows. Honesty - real, documentary-like honesty - is like golddust in the movies, but Cianfrance, Michelle Williams and the perennially brilliant Ryan Gosling absolutely nail it. With the sole exception of Annie Hall (and perhaps Eternal Sunshine), I can't think of another film that captures the minutiae of relationships so well and so candidly. Blue Valentine is the kind of film that actually tells you things about yourself; some of them good, some of them insufferable, but what's great about it is that for all the years of hard graft and re-drafts, it doesn't even feel like it.

2

It's rare that a film will live up to the promise of a good trailer. It's just as rare that a guy as smart as David Fincher is given free rein to make a multi-million dollar blockbuster without compromising on something. But every now and again it happens, and as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo proves, when it does it's absolutely jaw-dropping.
For all the talk of violence - and there's quite a bit - it's actually the humanity of the story that penetrates. The relationship between Rooney Mara's (literal) cyber punk and Daniel Craig's grizzled journo is unexpectedly tender, and gives the film some much-needed heart. One thing I'm a sucker for is a bittersweet ending, and GWTDT delivers one where the punch is compounded by the incongruous sweetness of what went before.

As the eponymous Girl, Mara is excellent, but the world and its dog knows that. Craig though, seems to have been overlooked by almost everybody. Blomkvist isn't a particularly showy role, but Craig imbues him with such warmth and turns a potentially underwritten character into one you really root for. It's great. It's all great, and accordingly the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is pretty much the film of the year.
Well. Sort of.

1

Surprise! I actually think this film has popped up on every End of-Year list in existence. If they're harsh it resides somewhere in the bottom five; if they're kind (and therefore right) it's number 1, because it is, y'know, the best. I wrote about it here but it's worth all reiterating because it's so good. There's nothing else like it but everything is like it. It wears its influences on its silver satin sleeve, and yet it's influential. It's a derivative true original. It's John Hughes and Chan-wook Park. It's synthpop, smashed thighs, elevator kisses, elevator assasinations, silent longing and amateur dental surgery all wrapped up in a hot pink bundle. It's a mood flick with a car chase. It's absolutely ridiculous and absolutely sublime. It's Drive, it's ace and it's my film of the year.