Tag: lists
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Favorite Films of 2024
Though I usually do a Top 10 with some honorable mentions, once this year’s list of honorable mentions creeped past 10 movies I figured why not just do a full top 20? The more movies the merrier. Here are the 2024 dramas, documentaries, dystopias, debuts, and other delights I dug. (Check JustWatch to see if…
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Favorite Books of 2024
It would be more accurate to title this post merely “Books I Read in 2024” because man oh man did I slack on reading this year. Long gone is my 80+ per year pace (pre-kids, crucially), replaced by not even hitting double digits. There are various reasons for this, but suffice it to say I…
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2024 in review
See previous year in review posts. My view from the end of all things 2024: A red-tailed hawk plopped itself on our backyard power line this morning, making for a colorful breakfast companion on an otherwise gloomy New Year’s Eve. May we all seek to achieve its steady serenity in 2025. A few highlights from…
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Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century
I’m very proud to share this list of Cinema Sugar’s Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century, something the team has worked on for months in anticipation of celebrating our favorite films from the last quarter century. Please take a look (and share with other movie lovers!) for my short thoughts on Palm Springs, Lord…
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My favorite picture books
I’ve encountered a lot of board books and picture books in my nearly six years of parenting. Many of them are bad, with either poor writing or an off-putting illustration style or both. But several of them hit that sweet spot of beautiful design and quality storytelling. Here are some of those:
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Favorite Films of 1998
I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them. Hard to believe my last retrospective list in this series was almost two years ago. But I recently rewatched what ended up as my top two movies on this list and realized I hadn’t done this movie year yet, so here we are. I…
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Favorite Films of 2023
As with last year’s list, I decided to skip the usual pressure to make a top 10 by the end of the year without having seen a bunch of the eligible movies. Instead I took my time, waiting to watch titles as they hit streaming or Blu-ray so I’d have a better shot at a…
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Favorite Books of 2023
I read 15 books in 2023, which is the lowest number since I started keeping track in 2010. A few factors contributed to this, including having a second baby in May and opting more often to watch movies in my free time. So it goes. I’ll get back on the reading train in 2024. Until…
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2023 in review
See previous year in review posts. My view from the end of all things 2023: Here’s what this year looked like for me:
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A to-do menu
In the latest issue of his newsletter The Imperfectionist, Oliver Burkeman posits that we should treat our to-do lists more like menus: One great benefit of doing this more consciously, though – of facing the fact that lists are menus – is that it shifts the source of gratification. The reward of pleasure, or a…
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Favorite Films of 2022
Pretty much every year I’ve done this list (since 2007), I’ve published it soon after the beginning of the year to coincide with the bevy of other year-end lists. But every year I’d end up watching more movies after publishing that would have been eligible and affected my list. So I realized: what’s the rush?…
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Favorite TV Shows of 2022
I realized this year that I’ve pretty much stopped watching traditional TV, i.e. shows with 22-ish episodes per season and an undetermined end date. I’m much more interested in limited series and shows with short seasons—the key being intentional and self-contained ideas from the show and a predictable time commitment from me. Luckily that’s becoming…
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Favorite Books of 2022
Gotta be honest: 2022 wasn’t a great reading year for me. I read 22 books, which was much worse than 31 in 2021 and just barely better than the 18 in 2020. A lot of my potential reading opportunities were either taken up by movie watching, Cinema Sugar, or other leisure activities. Not a bad…
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2022 in review
See previous year in review posts. My view from the end of all things 2022: (Not visible: the buffalo plaid pocket square accompanying the bowtie.) The biggest thing that happened to my family this year was trying to have a second child. It was a long and demoralizing journey that ultimately ended successfully (due in late May),…
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My favorite Christmas albums
I’ve written a few times about the music I enjoy during Christmastime (see my Christmas music tag for all of them). This time I wanted to list all of the albums I keep in rotation, both to provide some suggestions for fellow Yuletide tune jockeys and see for myself just how much I listen to…
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Top 5 Christmas Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. It’s A Wonderful Life The once and future king of Christmas movies. I could praise a lot of things: the cinematography, the supporting cast, the dramatic depth of Jimmy Stewart’s first postwar performance. But its magic ultimately comes down to Harry’s closing line—“A toast to my big brother, George,…
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7 Hard-Boiled Lessons from Noir Films Old and New
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. These are dark times. It’s tempting to feel that it’s never been darker, that the weight of our modern struggles is unprecedented. But I take comfort in knowing that film noir—a genre that has existed for almost 100 years—has been there before. It’s seen some shit. To show this, I’ve…
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Top 5 Noir Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. Double Indemnity This isn’t the first major noir (fedora-tip to The Maltese Falcon) but damned if it isn’t the genre’s absolute peak: femme fatale, no-nonsense narration, crime gone wrong, investigator on the case. It’s hard to pick Billy Wilder’s best movie but this has to be near the top.…