Close enough anyway - and this is a Sunday post that just took a long time to compose. It will take me at least the next three days to put it in perspective. Anyway, Sunday night calls for lists and lots of them. To begin, let's have a look at the best albums of the year. There's been a vast amount of great material pumped out in 2008 but this is the cream for me:
1. NICKELBACK - DARK HORSE
2. ATTACK! ATTACK! - ATTACK! ATTACK!
3. HINDER - TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT
4. FALL OUT BOY - FOLIE A DEUX
5. FINGER ELEVEN - THEM VS YOU VS ME
6. SHINEDOWN - THE SOUND OF MADNESS
7. ALICE COOPER - ALONG CAME A SPIDER
8. GUNS N ROSES - CHINESE DEMOCRACY
9. DEAR SUPERSTAR - HEARTLESS
10. BLACKSTONE CHERRY - FOLKLORE AND SUPERSTITION
The more observant among you will see that a lot of these come from the latter half of the year. I looked long and hard at this theory, dived into the collection of possibilities and left it as it stands. It's a solid list - and for all those of you shaking their heads at Nickelback in the top spot, screw you. There's far too much elitism around these days. Name an album that's rocks harder or slicker and I'll consider your opinion... but it had better be good because for me, after 2006 and 2007 being years in which I had to carve everything up looking for deeper opinions than were necessary, '08 came as a welcome relief in which I could sit back and rip it up.
On the movie front, maybe I didn't go as often as I should - there's a lot I haven't seen either but let's dive in anyway:
1. IRON MAN
2. THE ORPHANAGE
3. TAKEN
4. THE MIST
5. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
6. WANTED
7. VANTAGE POINT
8. THE DARK KNIGHT
9. HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY
10. MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN
There were absolutely stacks of others - including the inimitable Zombie Strippers - that did the job at the time, but again, I've been through this list and it holds up for sure. Go on, tell me that Iron Man isn't the best movie you've seen in the last three years...
This one is REALLY hard. For ever album or movie that I run into, there are at least three books to match it, so choosing ten is going to hurt... bad. The first three are easy - after that I'm not so sure:
1. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK - NEIL GAIMAN
2. DOCTOR WHO: THE WRITER'S TALE - RUSSELL T DAVIS
3. THE REAPERS - JOHN CONNOLLY
4. HOLD TIGHT - HARLAN COBEN
5. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE - CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
6. THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY - WAY/JA
7.
8.
9.
10.
Hmm. See how hard this is? I just can't kill that list off - if you're interested at all, come back and check out this edited post (whereupon, this sentence will magically disappear). As a point of interest, as much as I dearly love Gaiman, why did nobody point out that the 'adult' version of this book cover is one of the shittiest ever designed. Coming from where it did, I'm shocked...
That's quite enough lists for one day. Rustled up the skeleton outline of the next two chapters of Turn the Lamp Down Low this morning and also started roughing out the final scenes on Too Hot For Dogs so that I can work backwards for a little while (otherwise I don't think it will ever end). More wrapping up of a year tomorrow...
