!Women Art Revolution (2010, Lynn Hershman Leeson, 83m) — This movie is kinda gonzo!

And so begins a new year of viewing. Let us start by cramming for the Cinema Eye Honors, as I refuse to vote in a category in which I haven’t seen every nominee (that should be a given but I fear that many folks don’t play by these rules). Based on said awards voting, I probably shouldn’t get too opinionated about the films I’m indexing here, but I likely will. Anyway, let’s get to it:

The Black Power Mixtape (2011, Goran Hugo Olsson, 93m) — This has nothing to do with my appreciation of the film itself, but I was surprised to find that the content didn’t correspond to what I thought it was actually about. My understanding was that the overriding purpose was to show music’s influence in the Black Power movement, when in fact this was more of a general history lesson as viewed through the prism of several Swedish television crews.

Hell And Back Again (2011, Danfung Dennis, 88m)

Slow Fade by Rudolph Wurlitzer (read by Will Oldham and D.V. DeVincentis) — The waning days of the year 2011 found me doing two rather momentous things for the first time: 1) I finally learned how to ski; and 2) I listened to my first audio book/CD while driving in a car. It made the purty drive from Western Maryland to Brooklyn seem quite breezy, in fact. Now I know why people speak highly of this concept. As for the novel itself, I found it to be quite well orchestrated—and finely performed by Mr. Oldham—as it shifted between the multi-character threaded present day, the actual past, and the screenplay-within-the-story. My hunch is that this jumping around would have been too self-conscious and distracting on screen, so I’m glad that I read—er, I mean listened to—the book instead of experiencing it as a motion picture.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979, John Irvin, 310m) — Based on my trusted cousin JT’s opinion that the new film doesn’t measure up to the BBC version starring Sir Alec Guinness, I decided to make it a priority to watch this version first. While I realize that I’m an idiot when it comes to these “ahead-of-the-game” spy movies—the best thing I can equate it to is the empty-headed confusion I felt during Chemistry class—I do have to confess that making my way through these three discs felt like homework. To further embarrass myself, I’ll compare the experience to seeing Army of Shadows for the first time, which left me completely befuddled. By the end, I found myself coming around (I first started it in early December), but I still can’t tell you who was who, what was what, or why was why. Shame on me, I know.

Truth be told, I didn’t listen to the record very much, and I had a same similar sense of deflation with the actual result, but I still think it belongs in this kinda/sorta “time capsule” of a list. For my money, the unqualified hip-hop album of the year is DJ Quik’s The Book of David. Notice that Drake and Kanye/Jay-Z didn’t even make my list.

For me, 2011 was a very good year when it came to music. I am not wasting time ordering my picks, so instead I’m going to rock thangs alphabetically and placing an asterisk by those titles that I especially dug.

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 2011

* Atlas Sound, Parallax

Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part 2

* Bill Callahan, Apocalypse

Bon Iver, Bon Iver

* Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Wolfroy Goes To Town

* Caitlin Rose, Own Side Now

* The Caretaker, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

* Cass McCombs, Humor Risk

* Cass McCombs, Wit’s End

David Lynch, Crazy Clown Time

* David Wingo, Take Shelter Soundtrack

* Destroyer, Kaputt

* DJ Quik, The Book of David

East River Pipe, We Live In Rented Rooms

* Explosions in the Sky, take care, take care, take care

Frank Ocean, nostalgia/ultra

* Fucked Up, David Comes To Life

* Gillian Welch, The Harrow and the Harvest

The Go! Team, Rolling Blackouts

Jonny, Jonny

* Kort, Kort

* Kurt Vile, Smoke Ring For My Halo

The Ladybug Transistor, Clutching Stems

Michael Montes, Septien: Motion Picture Soundtrack

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Lost in Translation

Olafur Arnalds, Living Room Songs

* PJ Harvey, Let England Shake

Radiohead, The King of Limbs

* Real Estate, Days

* The Roots, undun

* Shabazz Palaces, Black Up

Smith Westerns, Dye It Blonde

Tom Waits, Bad As Me

tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L

* Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread

Tyler The Creator, Goblin

* Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

* Vetiver, The Errant Charm

A Winged Victory For The Sullen, A Winged Victory For The Sullen

House of Pleasures (2011, Bertrand Bonello, 125m) — Some movies just pull you back in. The need to see this thing before it left the IFC Center once and forever proved too strong a compulsion. And while a second viewing of Margaret dragged me a bit more back to Earth, a second viewing of House of Pleasures floated me higher into the sky. I am happy enough to stand by the ordering in the Top 10 list I submitted to indieWIRE, but more than anything, I’m just happy I saw this movie before finalizing that list. Some of the most indelible images committed to the screen in 2011.

Letters To Emma Bowlcut by Bill Callahan — With each new album he releases, Bill Callahan seems to be getting more comfortable, more assured, and more excellent than ever. Released last year, I only recently got around to buying his first book, an epistolary novelette comprised of a series of letters written by a reclusive, lonely soul to a girl he met at a party. Here are just a few of the very many sentences that tickled me:

I learned that you can get bruises without external contact.

You are the reason I get out of bed. To tell you that I have gotten out of bed.

Sometimes I wish we were an eagle. (Hmm, I think I’ve heard that one before.)

When faced with everything sometimes the best course of action is nothing.

It’s not in my nature to think about the future until after it has happened.

I think fish became humans because they didn’t have any way to pistol whip each other.

If these types of zingers are up your alley, then you should certainly check out this book. And if you aren’t familiar with the music of Bill Callahan, you need to get to familiarizing immediately.

ROUGH CUT (77m)

This particular inventory list proves that it really is that time of the season. No, not Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa. More like the season that doesn’t have an official moniker so I will simply call it People Cramming To Finish Their Movies In Time For Various Spring Festival Deadlines. While it might seem kind of silly to document this type of viewing so vaguely, I want this site to be a capsule so that I can look back in a year and count just how many hours I spent (wasted?) watching moving images on some sort of screen.

ROUGH CUT (84m)

ROUGH CUT (84m)

ROUGH CUT (81m)

ROUGH CUT (16m)

ROUGH CUT (58m)

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart — Shame on me for hopping on board the Shteyngart train so embarrassingly late, but at this point, I’m just happy to have found a seat on it. Shteyngart’s relentlessly hilarious wordplay would be good enough on its own, but the fact that he also fills his novel with such genuine heart and brilliant satirical insight launches it into another stratosphere. Misha Vainberg is an Ignatius J. Reilly for the early 21st century. And Shteyngart is clearly one of our most exciting literary voices—I aim to reaffirm this assessment after diving straight into Super Sad True Love Story. [Similar reading suggestions: John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask and Homeland]

Hugo (2012, Martin Scorsese, 125m) — Leave it to Marty to deliver the first big-budget work of preservationist propaganda! Consider me a big fan, though let it be known that I think the script is a bit of a sprawling mess. But I’ll take a spirited mess over dull perfection any day of the week.