The Best Songs (and Albums) of 2011

Jeremy BeckFeatures

This past summer, I received bona fide praise regarding my year-end music recap from 2010. Did it come from a journalist at the New York Times? A critic from elitist indie snob-rag Pitchfork Media? My friend Cory, who kinda sorta felt obligated to say something nice to me when I asked him point-blank, “Did you like my post?” As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. The Manifesto has been lauded for its discerning musical taste; as such, I have no choice but to churn out another “Year in Music” recap for 2011. I owe it to my readers.

We’re switching things up a bit this year – my past analysis has been a little too song-heavy for my liking, so I’m appending a list of the Best Albums of the Year to the end of this post as well. By the same rationale, for each song, I’ll highlight an alternative track from the same album that’s worth checking out. I’ll also give an overall album grade for each listed song in a woefully deficient effort to provide some broader context about the listed artist’s work (e.g., “This song ruled, but the album was mediocre”).

Finally, I’ll be embedding videos wherever they exist (if they don’t, I’ll just provide a YouTube link to an audio version of the song so you can listen), and I’ll provide some brief commentary on those as well. That said, a plea from your earnest music enthusiast: Please, for the love of Moses, do not judge a song by its video. Some videos are spectacular, while others are spectacularly stupid, but it’s important to remember that they were all created after the song was written. They’re fun to watch – just don’t let them detract from the music. Read More

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The Top 10 TV Series on Netflix Streaming

Jeremy BeckFeatures

Over the past few months, Netflix has served as a paradigmatic case study in hapless corporate mismanagement. Between sudden price hikes, ill-conceived ideas (seriously, Qwikster?), and smarmy emails, no company has done more to alienate its customer base and squander an otherwise highly successful product. (You know, besides the NBA.) This is not, however, a post designed to excoriate Netflix. Rather, I’m extolling the service for its most valuable commodity: streaming TV series.

Look, streaming is the future. I confess that I maintain some elitist qualms regarding Netflix’s streaming service – the selection is pitiful, the audio/video quality is weaker compared to DVD (and dramatically pales versus Blu-ray), certain features such as subtitles are unavailable, the in-movie interface is pathetic – but for the most part, streaming gets the job done. That’s especially true in the Twitter-based Age of Instantania, where all we care about is doing whatever we want at the exact instant we want to do it. (That Twitter is gradually eroding the hallowed industry of journalism into a disgraceful, speed-obsessed circus is also a post for another day.) When people feel like watching something, whether it’s the latest Twilight movie or a classic episode of “Seinfeld”, they do not want to wait three days for the fucking disc to arrive in the mail – they want to watch it right away. Streaming is the future, and Netflix (and every other company of its ilk) knows it. Read More

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The Best Movies of 2010 (Part II)

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

If you missed Part I of this list, you can check it out here. Moving right along, here are the Manifesto’s Top 10 Movies of 2010:

10. Fair Game. As befits a film based on books by Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, Doug Liman’s political thriller is overtly partisan, bristling with outrage from its authors and scorn for the Bush White House. Politics aside, however, Fair Game is a canny, invigorating piece of muckraking cinema. Tightly plotted, crisply edited (remember, Liman made the first and best Bourne picture), and laden with verisimilitude, the movie swiftly and efficiently paints a portrait of both a country in turmoil and a marriage in crisis. Naomi Watts is typically sharp as outed CIA operative Plame, but it’s Sean Penn who provides the film’s real force. Bringing his considerable talent to bear, Penn portrays Wilson as part righteous firebrand, part weary husband, a confident, decent man lashing out at the institutions who have failed him. Fair Game may inspire heated reactions (perhaps if anyone actually saw it), but it’s a reminder that hushed conversations and shadowy figures can form the backdrop for a movie as gripping as any blockbuster. Read More

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The Best Movies of 2010 (Part I)

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists

Movie critics are supposed to publish year-end top 10 lists. It’s part of our job (and while I receive no income for holding this alleged “job”, I’m still labeling myself a critic and that’s that). Sure, you can grouse about how it’s morally objectionable to rank subjective works of art against one another or how 10 is an arbitrary figure (I particularly enjoyed New York Times critic Manohla Dargis seething that our habit of composing 10-item lists functions as tacit approval of the Ten Commandments), but readers have a ravenous appetite for easily digestible summaries of the year that was, and it’s our duty to oblige them.

Back in 2007, I defied this silent edict and published a list of the top fifteen movies of the year rather than my usual decathlon. My rationale was entirely laudatory – there were simply more stellar films than there was available space on a catalog of 10. And while I couldn’t quite label titles such as Charlie Wilson’s War or Juno as one 2007’s 10 best films, I couldn’t in good conscience exclude them from my commemoration of the year’s superlative features. I had no choice: I had to expand the list to 15. Read More

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The Manifesto’s Guide to March Madness 2011

Jeremy BeckUncategorized

In the 2004 remake of the movie Alfie, Jude Law plays a Manhattan playboy who casually sleeps with dozens of women but resists a real relationship, partly because he’s British and good-looking and just can’t pass up banging countless hot chicks, but more because he can’t be with a woman without seeing her flaws. “Hair on her arms,” he grumbles about one former fling, dismissing an otherwise knockout blonde due to an excess of follicles. He even throws away guaranteed happiness with a perfect 10 played by Marisa Tomei (still in her extended and perhaps infinite prime) just so he can maintain some nebulous sense of masculine freedom. It’s a classic character study of a commitment-phobe: Every time Alfie sees something good, he winds up running the other way.

Well, that’s exactly how I feel about college basketball this year. Every time I think about backing a potential NCAA tournament champion, all I can see are its flaws. The main difference between Alfie and me – well, other than the fact that he got laid six times a week, whereas I spent roughly four hours every day watching basketball for the past three months – is that Alfie was an idiot who couldn’t appreciate the beauty of what sat right in from of him. I, however, am not so deluded, as the objects of my affection – namely the 68 teams vying for this year’s NCAA title – are all more flawed than the characters in The Social Network. Read More

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