TV Diary

Wednesday, October 07, 2026

 







HBO premiering a show called "War" on the first day of October is very U2-coded. This British miniseries is about the divorce of a power couple, and the casting is a little meta -- Sienna Miller became a tabloid fixture after Jude Law cheated on her, and Dominic West has played extremely divorced men in at least three other shows (West has been married for 16 years, but apparently there was a cheating scandal at some point which, again, fits his whole brand as an actor). The first episode was strong, I like the way they've pumped this up into the divorce of the century and there's all these different pressure points that are coming to the fore. 

I feel like a total philistine when I watch an adaptation of a famous novel without having read the book, but I'm really enjoying Zoe Kazan's Netflix miniseries of Steinbeck's East of Eden. Florence Pugh, Charlie Abbott, and Mike Faist are three of the best actors we've got these days and they're all just making a meal of their roles, especially Pugh.  

I guess this is going to be an anthology series where each season is about a different famous situation where someone took hostages, from "The Shield" creator Shawn Ryan. The first season is about a story I'd never heard of, an Indianapolis man who was struggling financially and took his mortgage broker hostage and kept calling into a local radio station. The stuff with Jon Hamm as the radio host is good, and there's a whole great ensemble cast including Mark McKinney from "Kids in the Hall," but the hostage taker is played by Giovanni Ribisi, who I've concluded is not really much of an actor at all. 

This new Freeform series about girls with supernatural powers going to a school for witches is pretty cute and entertaining. 

e) "A Different World" 
I remember when "Grown-ish" debuted and my first reaction was that they made an "A Different World" counterpart to "Black-ish," but now we've got a modern reboot of "A Different World" that reminds me more of "Grown-ish" than the original '80s show. I also noted that the show opens with a "created by" credit for the young showrunner and not the original's creator, which is unusual, but I guess it's understandable that they want to remake a show created by Bill Cosby without the optics of Cosby's name being at the beginning of every episode. I like this, the new cast is solid and it's fun to see some people from the old show (although seeing Kadeem Hardison and Method Man in the same Netflix show just reminds me how pissed I was that they canceled "Teenage Bounty Hunters"). It's not as much of a soap opera as "Bel-Air" but also I think "A Different World" is just a lot more suited to this kind of reboot than "Fresh Prince" was. 

f) "Bite Size Terror" 
I like horror anthologies in general, it's a good genre for short stories. Each episode of Tubi's "Bite Size Terror" is between 6 and 11 minutes long, which kind of feels like that's just too short -- some of them just come and go without leaving an impression, while I invariably wish the good ones were longer. Pretty good overall, though, and I like that half of the ten episodes were directed by women, I definitely want to see more women directing horror and would definitely watch a feature from Jasmine J Johnson, director of the episode "Floral Remains." 

g) "Line of Fire"
When Peter Krause's character got killed off in the 8th season of "9-1-1," I was optimistic that he'd finally get to go work on a different show more worthy of his talent. His new show on NBC is kind of a formulaic network show about a family where everyone works for a different law enforcement agency, but hey, it's definitely better than "9-1-1." His daughter is played by Kat Cunning, who also has a role in a few episodes of "American Hostage," and she's just gorgeous, suddenly a very big fan of hers. 

h) "Best Medicine" 
I'll never get a "Sports Night" reunion but I'll settle for Peter Krause and Josh Charles both having shows in primetime. "Best Medicine" is a very frothy, silly little show, but I like it, they're really finding their tone and what makes the characters funny. Charles is the kind of actor who can do drama or comedy equally well, and a show like this makes good use of his ability to deliver a line like "This was an obscene waste of condiments!" with a straight face. And Eliza Coupe's character doesn't seem like she'll be sticking around very long, but I'm enjoying what she brings to the show for the time being.  

i) "Animal Control"
I blinked and this show is in its 5th season, and for the first time FOX started airing it in the fall, on Sunday nights alongside three animated shows, so I guess they've deemed it enough of a 'live action cartoon' to be in between "The Simpsons" and "Universal Basic Guys." And I never get tired of Joel McHale having indulgent little "Community" cast reunions when Ken Jeong or Jim Rash pops up on "Animal Control." 

j) "Scrubs"
"Scrubs" is not for everyone and I don't really judge anyone who doesn't like it. But I would say anyone who enjoyed the original series should watch the new seasons, they've genuinely picked up where they left off more. And I'm glad there's been a bit more of Perry Cox in the last few episodes, he's still by far the best character on the show whenever he's on it. 

A Korean thriller on Netflix, not bad but at this point I'm tired of agoraphobia being a plot device to keep a person 'trapped' in their home, I have no idea if real agoraphobics think it's problematic but I find it tiresome. 

A Spanish series on Netflix about two roommates who start to figure out that they're in love with each other while on a road trip, which just feels very contrived, but whatever, it's reasonably charming. 

Very weird Thai show where a woman who owns land agrees to sell it to a company if the daughter of the company's president will marry her, and it's supposed to romantic with this blindingly bright pastel aesthetic. 

A Japanese show about a guy "trailing his childhood love from the shadows," which, I don't know, kind of sounds like stalking to me, but again, this is supposed to be romantic in the context of teh show. 

A pretty good Japanese show about a sex therapist at a clinic who has his own private intimacy problems. I think the title is stupid, though, I genuinely turned it on wondering what the S and the X stood for. 

I think more of Netflix's foreign shows should keep their original titles instead of being translated into English, "Blodsoffer" is a much cooler name for a Swedish crime drama. 

For this, one maybe they could've left "series" out of the title of the English version, but it's at least more memorable like this, a reasonably charming Thai show about a romance between two art school students. 

This Colombian show just premiered over the summer and already has over 60 episodes, I can never keep up with stuff like this. I enjoyed the first couple episodes, though, fun pulpy thing about a singer and the wife of a politician falling in love. 

A Netflix show about French MMA fighters, it really just has a powerful whiff of people I'd never want to be around in real life. 

A reality competition modeled after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is weird enough, but like having an AI deepfake of Gene Wilder's voice and one of the original Oompa Loompas talking about how nice it is to hear his voice again, all of this is just offputting and gross. 

Another Nat Geo nature doc miniseries, I love all of these, some amazingly beautiful views in the first episode. 

I actually didn't really follow the 2010 Chilean miner crisis that closely when it was happening, so I enjoyed this doc (my first kid was less than a year old at the time, everything from that era is a blur). It's a miniseries but Disney+ listed the episodes as "season 1," which to me implies that they could send the miners back down there for more streaming content. 

I don't like that Netflix has recently been acquiring a ton of audio or YouTube podcasts and just putting them on their platform as if they're tv shows. However, this true crime pod is hosted by a British woman with an absolutely entrancing accent, so I'm watching it. 

"Last Trace" is overall a better podcast than "Outlore," but in this case the cute host doesn't also have an alluring accent, so I'm not watching as much of it. 

y) "Skip Intro with Krista Smith"
This is basically just interviews with stars of recent Netflix projects, which is an annoying advertorial kind of thing, like Jimmy Fallon doesn't only interview people from NBC shows, come on, be less shameless. That said, Krista Smith is a decent interviewer and she gets like 40+ minutes to talk to interesting people like Florence Pugh and Greta Lee about projects that I've watched. 

z) "Have I Got News For You"
Dave Foley was on the latest episode and was great, I feel like they do a pretty good job of booking guests. It always surprises me a little when they curse on a CNN show, but I'm pleased that in some way they get to be a little more frank and blunt about current events on this show than they often do on scripted topical comedy shows like "The Daily Show." 

11:29 AM

Monthly Report: August 2026 Albums

Monday, October 05, 2026




















1. Erykah Badu & The Alchemist - Before the Wind Blows
Erykah Badu's discography was damn near flawless before that weird 2015 mixtape with multiple features from a Drake impersonator. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Before the Wind Blows is awesome, but I guess I'd kinda given up on hearing another great record from her when her last proper album was 16 years ago. People have become really weird about The Alchemist in his super-prolific second (third? fourth?) wind, on the other hand, so maybe I also underestimated that he'd know know how to get on Badu's wavelength, but he really understood the assignment. This often reminds me of New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), which is a big personal favorite, a headphone record where it feels like Badu is singing in your ear over these gently psychedelic beats. I think my favorite track right now is "What the People Say (Apostle 1)." 

2. Dinosaur Jr. - There Near
I already added There Near to my recent ranking of Dinosaur Jr. albums, and ended up putting it dead in the middle, which is high praise for one of the more consistent discographies of the last 40-something years. I think right now "Take Me With You" is my favorite song and "Clam Along" has my favorite guitar solo, I love when J just hits the ground shredding right at the beginning of a song. I also highly recommend Grayson Haver Currin's recent Pitchfork piece, easily the best and most insightful profile in the history of Dinosaur Jr. 

3. Rapsody - God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops
The second single Rapsody released from God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops, and the first one I heard, was "Apple Juice," and she sings that entire song without any rapping, so I went into this album wondering if it was gonna be the melodic experiment that so many rappers do now. But that song's pretty much a one-off, she's still rapping rapping and this is probably my favorite thing she's released in the 9 years since the classic Laila's Wisdom, "Free Yo' Mind" and "Never Break" and "Black Love" with Malice are great. 

4. The Warning - Everything's Falling
In August, Reprise Records released two very different but very good albums by the Warning and the Linda Lindas, two all-female bands that went viral when they were just passionate kids in a band and have built on that early moment of fame to become touring major label bands with great original songs and mainstream radio hits. In fact, Everything's Falling closing track "Kerosene" recently became the first #1 by an all-female band on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. The Warning are a metal power trio featuring three sisters from northern Mexico and their sound just seems to get more powerful with each album, "Why Do You Like It When I Cry?" is a standout for me, Dany Villareal Velez gets to really sing and really scream at different points in the song. 

5. Sara Bareilles - Good Grief
I wish Sara Bareilles had an entire album that sounded like Good Grief's "Heartland," just her voice and piano. But I'm pretty happy with the relatively stripped-down sound of both this Aaron Dessner-album and 2019's Amidst the Chaos (turns out there's not really a whole lot of functional difference between T Bone Burnett production and Aaron Dessner production). Sara Bareilles is one of the few singer/songwriters who can actually make me cry, so I imagine the mortality-themed Good Grief may destroy me emotionally the next time I lose someone in my life. And "Salt Then Sour Then Sweet" totally lives up to the potential of a Bareilles/Brandi Carlile duet, their voices sound sublime together. 

6. Maggie Rose - Half Moon
I interviewed the Maryland-born and Nashville-based singer Maggie Rose two years ago, just before she got her first Grammy nomination for No One Gets Out Alive and was starting to write the follow-up. Her producer and co-writer for Half Moon is Daniel Tashian, who's done most of the Kacey Musgraves albums from Golden Hour onwards, and she's continuing to mine an earthy '70s sound that suits her voice really well. The first track "Used To It" hooks me right away, I love the way it just very quickly ramps up and gets pretty loud and intense. 

7. Busta Rhymes & J Dilla - Dillagence II
I don't know if you could call any of J Dilla's work underrated at this point, but I don't think his work with Busta Rhymes gets enough credit, the last 9 tracks of my Busta deep cuts playlist are all Dilla productions and they're all killer. Apparently Dilla gave Busta 300 unreleased beats before he died, and I guess he used some of them on the 2007 mixtape Dillagence but the tracks he used for the new sequel are largely unheard. So this album is a treasure trove just for the beats, but this is probably Busta's best work as an MC in decades, he really did a great job of curating a good variety of tracks and using his entire arsenal flows of voices. I especially the way he uses two beats to make one song on "Spazzz," the first part is crazy, and it's fun to hear Lil Wayne on a Dilla beat on "Talk Ya Shit." 

8. Carly Pearce - Honest Woman
Each Carly Pearce album has charted lower than the previous one, with her fifth album Honest Woman being her first to miss the Billboard 200. It's frustrating to see one of my favorite artists lose her footing in mainstream country, especially because I think they've underestimated the potential for "Daisy" or "You Can Have Him" to be radio singles. I don't like "Church Girl" because the chorus is structured so similarly to her 2020 hit "Next Girl," but there's a lot of great songs on here and Cary Pearce just has this visceral ache in her voice, sad songs aren't as important to country music as they used to be but she's one the best at them right now.  

9. E-40 - Turning My Money Over (Quadruple Album)
E-40 has slowed down his output over the years, Turning My Money Over is his second full-length solo project of the 2020s, but he loves to drop huge amounts of music at once. "Quadruple album" is a little deceptive since it runs less than 2 hours, he's actually released more music in one day a few times (including three albums totaling three and a half hours in 2012), but this is still just a bounty of great tracks in the classic late period post-hyphy E-40 tradition. If I had to pick a favorite of the four discs, I'd go with disc 2, "Blessed" and "Trunk Is Alive" go crazy. 

10. Ariel Marx - Furious (Original Score)
I've seen a bunch of things that Ariel Marx has scored, including Shiva Baby and the 2023 miniseries "A Small Light," which she won an Emmy for. But I really sat up and took notice of her music for the recent Hulu crime drama "Furious," which does not happen often with television scores, it's just so murky and otherworldly and enhances the story's dark, ominous mood, even the parts with jazz instrumentation has sort of an eerie '80s Tom Waits vibe. I was waiting weeks for the show's soundtrack to hit streaming services, and my only disappointment with it is that it's only 22 minutes long.

The Worst Album of the Month: Pat McAfee - The Diary of a Polarizing Figure
Pat McAfee became a sportscasting personality after retiring from the NFL almost a decade ago, and at this point he might be the only person that's on ESPN more than Stephen A Smith, but even Stephen A. never submitted us to a musical side quest. I was almost disappointed about how ordinary McAfee's wildly mocked debut album is, like a Jelly Roll record by someone with even less talent than Jelly Roll, but it becomes properly awful around that mid-album stretch of "Oops" ("I used to not have shit, now I got a bidet") and "Smokin" ("I be smokin', silence what they say/ I got a clear mind, yinz call it a haze"). 

6:36 AM

Friday, October 02, 2026

 




This week my Spin column Deep Cut Friday is about Michael Jackson's "Girl Don't Take Your Love From Me."  

1:59 PM

My Top 100 Country Singles of the 1970s

Thursday, October 01, 2026








I've been going back through musical history, one decade at a time and one genre at a time, and often country is the last one I cover. I finished up my '80s series with a country list just a few months ago, but I kind of got into a groove into that one and decided to start my '70s series with country. 

Here's every song on the list as a 5-hour Spotify playlist. 

1. Dolly Parton - "Jolene" (1974)
I am posting this just 5 weeks after we lost Dolly, but I don't have to tell you that this was already in my mind as my likely #1 long before that tragic loss. If there's any reason I wouldn't put it at the top of this list, it's only because it's beloved by so many people who don't like any other country song (the other day I saw someone sniff derisively that a current country hit "is no 'Jolene,'" because of course that's the only basis for comparison). But there it is, where it deserves to be. 

2. George Jones - "The Grand Tour" (1974)
Country's greatest singer and most famous alcoholic rose to fame singing about moonshine in the '60s, and my '80s country list was heavy on George Jones songs about drinking, but his '70s hit parade comprises mostly heartbreak songs and the occasional love song. The Possum was on his third marriage (out of four total) in 1974, so it makes sense that he could sing a tale of divorce like "The Grand Tour" with so much ache in his voice. 

3. Bobbie Gentry - "Fancy" (1970)
Bobbie Gentry released seven albums in four years from 1967 to 1971, writing her most famous material and even self-producing an album at a time when that was a serious rarity (for all recording artists, not just women or country singers). And then she dealt with some music industry bullshit, did the Vegas circuit for a while, and pretty much retired from public life and has lived the last 50 years or so out of the spotlight. The music she made, including "Fancy," was awesome, though, I'm sad that she didn't get to make records for decades like most of the people on this list. I will try to comport myself in this post but I'll just make the point once that some of the most beautiful women of all time were '70s country singers. 

4. Willie Nelson - "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" (1975)
In 1975, Willie Nelson was 42 years old and had written some of the biggest country songs of the '60s, including "Crazy" and "Funny How Time Slips Away," but his first 17 albums hadn't really made him a star. Then he made a sparse, quiet concept album, stringing mostly songs that had been written by other people years or decades earlier into a storyline about a murderous preacher, and it became a multi-platinum phenomenon. "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," a hit for Ray Acuff in 1947 that had been recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Conway Twitty, became the first of Nelson's many #1 country hits as a performer. 

5. Johnny Cash - "Man in Black" (1971)
Johnny Cash has such a unique presence, so much gravitas, I don't know if he's the only person that could have written "Man in Black" but is there anyone else who could have sung it and you would actually believe him and want to call him the man in black? 

6. Loretta Lynn – "Coal Miner’s Daughter" (1970)
Like "Man in Black," "Coal Miner's Daughter" is synonymous with its singer, practically their official title of nobility. They even made a biopic based on the song, and it was the 7th biggest box office hit of 1980! I feel like you really get all of Lynn's story and her essence in the three minutes of that song. 

7. The Charlie Daniels Band - "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" (1979)
I will be the first to admit that I didn't grow up steeped in country, and "The Devil Went Down To Georgia," may be the only song here that I had more than a passing familiarity with before I was 15 or so, and it really is just deliriously entertaining, I wish more mainstream country songs had ridiculous showboating fiddle solos. A few years ago, Charlie Daniels went away, just like Benghazi. 

8. Waylon Jennings - "Good Hearted Woman" (1971)
Waylon Jennings has such a fascinating story. He was a friend, protege, and sideman of Buddy Holly, playing bass in his band on the ill-fated 1959 tour when Holly died in a plane crash, and Jennings's guilt and trauma from that derailed his life and career for years. But he eventually found his footing, and his own sound and identity, and "Good Hearted Woman" was one of his biggest hits twice, first reaching #3 on the country as a solo track and then hitting #1 four years when he re-recorded it with Willie Nelson. 

9. Kenny Rogers - "The Gambler" (1978)
Another one of those songs I've loved from a pretty young age and just never got sick of. These days it surprises me a little just how gentle it sounds, how delicate Kenny Rogers's voice is, because in mind it's just this big gregarious anthemic song. 

10. Conway Twitty - "Hello Darlin'" (1970)
Harold "Conway Twitty" Jenkins started out in the '50s as a rock crooner who sounded like Elvis Presley (his first hit "It's Only Make Believe" was the sixth #1 ever on the Hot 100). He actually considered releasing country music as Harold Jenkins while continuing to make rock under his stage name, which sounds so strange to me now, Conway Twitty just seems like a quintessential country singer name to me now. 
































11. Charley Pride – “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’” (1971)
Ray Charles made best-selling country albums in the '60s but didn't actually get played on country radio until the '80s. So Charley Pride was really the trailblazer of Black country stars, with "Kiss An Angel Good Mornin'" being the biggest of his 29 #1's from 1969 to 1983. 

12. Dolly Parton – “Coat of Many Colors” (1971)
Dolly several times called the autobiographical "Coat of Many Colors" her favorite song that she ever wrote. Both Porter Wagoner's dry cleaning receipt that she wrote the lyrics on and a dress made by Parton's mother (though not the original that inspired the song) are both displayed in a museum at Dollywood. 

13. Sammi Smith - "Help Me Make It Through The Night" (1970)
Several men have recorded great versions of "Help Me Make It Through The Night," including the song's writer Kris Kristofferson, but I must admit I'd rather hear a woman sing "take the ribbon from my hair" than a man singing "take the ribbon from your hair," the Sammi Smith version is just sexy. 

14. George Jones - "These Days (I Barely Get By)" (1975)
Before the advent of hip-hop, no genre really explored the emotional effects of poverty and economic struggle like country music. And "These Days" has long been one of my favorite George Jones songs, it goes into a litany that almost feels like an over-the-top country cliche along the lines of "my wife left me, my dog died, my truck won't start," but instead Jones really keeps it in the realm of reality with the gravity of his vocal performance. 

15. Merle Haggard and the Strangers – “If We Make It Through December” (1973)
Another great song about struggling to make ends meet that can hit a little too hard if you're going through a rough patch. I unfortunately find "I don't mean to hate December, it's meant to be the happy time of year" very relatable, the stress of mounting adult responsibilities at the end of every year has really sapped me of most of my enjoyment of the Christmas season. 

16. Johnny Cash - "Oney" (1972)
Jerry Chestnut, a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, wrote at least three songs on this list, including "Oney," a comic but potent little song from the perspective of a retiring factory worker. I defy you to get to the end of "Oney" or Cash's similarly themed hit "One Piece At A Time" (which appears further down on this list) without laughing and/or yelling "fuck yeah!" 

17.Johnny Paycheck - "Take This Job And Shove It" (1977)
I was surprised to learn that Johnny Paycheck's stage name wasn't a humorous hat tip to Johnny Cash, there was actually a famous boxer named Johnny Paychek. In any case, you can't talk about country's odes to the working man without mentioning this song. 

18. Tanya Tucker - "Lizzie and the Rainman" (1975)
I didn't really know Tanya Tucker's '70s stuff before working on this list, I love the sound her voice had as a teenager on those early hits. Snuff Garrett's production on this song is remarkable, the screaming strings that enter at the top of the chorus, and those pummeling drum fills. 

19. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson - "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" (1978)
In 1978, Willie Nelson released three albums that each sold millions: Stardust, Willie and Family Live, and Willie & Waylon (beat that, Drake!). Arkansas singer-songwriter Ed Bruce's original recording of "Mamas" was a minor hit when he released it in 1975, but in country it often feels like a song really belongs to whoever was the biggest artist to record it. 

20. Linda Ronstadt - "When Will I Be Loved" (1975)
County and rock & roll had only been really diverging and going in opposite directions for a few years in the '60s when "country rock" became a niche genre and eventually a big business in the '70s. Linda Ronstadt and her frequent collaborators in the Eagles are probably the biggest stars of the country rock explosion, although she got more country radio play than they did (their only hit on the country charts, "Lyin' Eyes," is further down this list). Andrew Gold (the guy who wrote the "Golden Girls" theme song) went absolutely crazy with the guitars on Ronstadt's wonderful Everly Brothers cover. 




































21. Billy Swan - "I Can Help" (1974)
Depending how you categorize certain songs, somewhere between 15 and 20 country songs hit #1 on the Hot 100 in the 1970s, and for the next four decades that number was between zero and 5 (there have been 8 or 9 so far in the 2020s, so we're finally rebounding!). "I Can Help" is the first pop chart-topper to appear here, and I absolutely love the way it sounds coming out of "When Will I Be Loved" on my playlist, and those fun hyped-up false endings that Swan and his band go into. 

22. Freddy Fender - "Before The Next Teardrop Falls" (1975)
"Before the Next Teardrop Falls" was another #1, in fact one of six songs that topped both the country and pop charts in 1975, the peak of country's chart dominance. Four other recordings of "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" had charted since it was written in 1967, but Freddy Fender's version, with the second version sung in Spanish, was the one that just took off and became the one everybody remembers. 

23. Crystal Gayle - "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (1977)
Crystal Gayle was a coal miner's daughter, too, the youngest of Loretta Lynn's seven siblings, but she had a clearer, lighter voice and was a good match for the 'countrypolitan' sound that came into vogue in the '70s. 

24. Dolly Parton - "Joshua" (1971)
By 1971, Dolly Parton had had most of her commercial success with duets with her mentor Porter Wagoner, and it was a cover of "Mule Skinner Blues" that broke her through as a solo artist, with her self-penned follow-up "Joshua" becoming her first country #1 and her first Grammy nomination. 

25. Ronnie Milsap - "Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends" (1974) 
Bobby Bare was the first artist to record Kris Kristofferson's "Please Don't Tell me How the Story Ends," but Ronnie Mislap's version was the best and biggest hit, and he really owns it with those beautiful high notes on the second verse. 

26. George Jones and Tammy Wynette - "Golden Ring" (1976)
It's interesting to occasionally hear a country song that takes place somewhere like Chicago instead of the usual deep south geography, and I love this sad little tale of a wedding ring that winds up back in the same pawn shop where a young couple found it. George and Tammy were country's top power couple of the '70s, and the public fascination with them endured to the point that Epic kept releasing duets they'd recorded after they divorced in 1975, with 1976's Golden Ring becoming their biggest album together. 

27. Emmylou Harris - "One of These Days" (1976)
Country rock innovator Gram Parsons's "cosmic American music" hadn't really impacted country's mainstream by the time he died in 1973, but in the following years his frequent collaborator Emmylou Harris became a major hitmaker. I've worked on a couple of events where Emmylou Harris performed and I'm starstruck every time. 

28. Glen Campbell - "Southern Nights" (1977)
New Orleans rhythm and blues legend Allen Toussaint had been widely covered and had produced big hits for Labelle and Dr. John, but Glen Campbell's cover of the title track from his 1975 album Southern Nights took Toussaint to the top of the country and pop charts for the first and only time as a songwriter.

29. Tanya Tucker - "Delta Dawn" (1972)
I really had no idea until I looked it up just now that Tanya Tucker was only 13 when she recorded "Delta Dawn," has to be one of the most remarkable vocal performances by someone that age on a hit. Helen Reddy's similar recording of "Delta Dawn" got to #1 on the pop charts a year later but I like the Tucker version best. 

30. Willie Nelson - "Bloody Mary Morning" (1974)
Willie Nelson's 1974 masterpiece Phases & Stages was something of a precursor to Red Headed Stranger, and its fastest, most playful track was one of the hits that started to move his performing career up to a new level. Probably my favorite banjo playing of any song on this list. 

































31. Loretta Lynn - "The Pill" (1975)
Country music isn't a place where progressive politics often thrive, but it's usually the women who really push things forward, as when Lynn wrote a frank song about birth control that was as controversial as it was popular. 

32. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - "The Fightin' Side of Me" (1970)
Merle Haggard had a lot of crossover cachet as one of the few "outlaw country" stars who had actually done time in prison. And oddly, when he revealed a conservative side and sneered at libs and hippies on 1979's "Okie from Muskogee" and then the following year's "The Fightin' Side of Me," the libs and hippies just seemed to like him more. It's hard to imagine the hipsters suddenly getting into Toby Keith after "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" or Jason Aldean after "Try That in a Small Town." 

33. Waylon Jennings - "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand" (1978)
Waylon Jennings actually had a top 5 hit with this pretty funny commentary on the whole outlaw country phenomenon: "Was it singin' through my nose that got me busted by the man?" 

34. Jessi Colter - "I'm Not Lisa" (1975)
Waylon Jennings's wife became the most prominent woman in outlaw country with their string of hit duets and the platinum 1976 album Wanted! The Outlaws by Jennings, Colter, Willie Nelson, and Tompall Glaser. Her biggest solo hit, however, is a tearful little ballad. 

35. Vicki Lawrence - "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" (1973)
Success in both comedy and music (like, non-comedic music) is a pretty rare achievement, but Vicki Lawrence went to #1 with a whole murder ballad in the middle of "The Carol Burnett Show"'s decade-long run on CBS. I don't know who else you can even put in that category other than Eddie Murphy and Jamie Foxx. 

36. Johnny Cash - "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down (live)" (1970)
Johnny Cash also had a variety show on primetime TV in the early '70s. And his hit rendition of Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" was a live performance from "The Johnny Cash Show" that always fully sounds like a studio recording to me until you hear the audience at the very end. 

37. George Jones - "A Good Year For the Roses" (1970)
George Jones's prime can be easily divided into two main eras, the Pappy Daily productions of his '50s and '60s honky tonk work and the lush Billy Sherrill productions of the '70s and '80s. "A Good Year For the Roses" was produced by Bob Moore right in that brief period between those eras, and I love the way drummer Kenny Buttrey occasionally switches from a rim tap to a snare for these moments of surging strings and emotion flooding out of Jones's otherwise perfectly restrained and controlled performance. I was so surprised to realize after many years of listening to Elvis Costello that his version of "A Good Year For the Roses" was one of his biggest hits in the UK, where George Jones had absolutely no commercial profile. 

38. Skeeter Davis - "Bus Fare to Kentucky" (1971)
Producer Ronny Light penned "Bus Fare to Kentucky" for the Kentucky-born Skeeter Davis, who made a turn toward a twangier sound in the '70s after having some pop crossover success in the '60s. 

39. Moe Bandy – “I Just Started Hatin’ Cheatin’ Songs Today” (1974)
"I Just Started Hatin' Cheatin' Songs Today" was Moe Bandy's career-launching debut single, but he decided to negate the song's premise with a string of later hits with titles like "I Cheated Me Right Out of You," "It's a Cheatin' Situation," and "She Just Loved the Cheatin' Out of Me." 

40. The Amazing Rhythm Aces - "Third Rate Romance" (1975)
I think I'd kind of assumed that the Amazing Rhythm Aces were an R&B or jazz band or something with that name, but they were a Memphis country rock band, and I really enjoy their biggest hit, a droll little song about a one night stand. 


































41. Dolly Parton - "I Will Always Love You" (1974)
Dolly Parton famously wrote her two most enduring songs, "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You," on the same day. We should all hope for a day as good as that in our lives. Elvis Presley was interested in recording "I Will Always Love You," but Colonel Tom Parker would only allow it if Parton signed over half of the publishing rights. Parton made the difficult decision to say no, which turned out to be even smarter than anybody could have realized at the time when Whitney Houston's 1992 recording became one of the biggest hits of all time. 

42. Elvis Presley - "Way Down" (1977)
Of course, Elvis wasn't as successful in his later years as he'd been earlier in his career, but he was still Elvis. And like other early rock & rollers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Don Everly, Presley was a steady presence on the country charts in the '70s. "Way Down" was his most recent single when Presley died, and it only rose up a little bit on the charts after he passed, not a big posthumous smash like "(Just Like) Starting Over" or "Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay," but I really like it. Presley's last top 10 pop hit remains 1972's "Burning Love," which wasn't on the country charts but was penned by Nashville legend Dennis Linde. 

43. Jimmy Buffett - "Come Monday" (1974)
Jimmy Buffett toiled as a minor country star for years before "Margaritaville" made him a superstar, and "Come Monday" was one of the early singles that remained a cornerstone of his repertoire as a huge touring act. 

44. Willie Nelson - "Whiskey River (live)" (1979)
"Whiskey River" was a minor hit for Houston singer/songwriter Johnny Bush when he wrote it in 1972. But over the years it's become his friend Willie Nelson's signature song, first on 1974's Shotgun Willie and then the hit live version, and it's been Nelson's customary opening song for his concerts for decades now. 

45. Barbara Mandrell - "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed" (1978)
Country thrived commercially in the '70s partly because there was so little difference between soft rock and a lot of what was coming out Nashville, and this one in particular could practically be a Captain & Tenille song. 

46. John Denver - "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (1971)
Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff started writing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" while driving around the twisty roads of Montgomery County, Maryland, and I think about this song every time I'm driving around the rural parts of Maryland, even if they did add a shout out to West Virginia that's given the song a permanent association with another state.  

47. Johnny Cash - "The Lady Came From Baltimore" (1974)
If Maryland doesn't get a lot of mentions in country music, Baltimore gets even less, aside from Bobby Bare's '60s classic "Streets of Baltimore," so I was amused to find this charming Tim Hardin cover while trawling through Johnny Cash's discography. 

48. Anne Murray - "Snowbird" (1970)
Another song I'd never heard before putting together this list, love that string arrangement and Anne Murray was kind of a trailblazer for Canadian women in country music, from K.D. Lang and Shania Twain to Terri Clark and Lindsay Ell. 

49. George Jones - "Her Name Is" (1976)
One of my favorite George Jones albums is Alone Again, the despondent and self-pitying album he released after his divorce from Tammy Wynette. The album's only hit, however, is an atypically goofy little novelty song. Jones describes the woman he's in love with and then says "Her name is..." with Hargus Robbins's clavinet filling in the blanks with a 3-note melody symbolizing her name that descends from B to A to G (her name is BAG?). Her hair color is symbolized by an E, and so on. 

50. Tammy Wynette - "Til I Can Make It On My Own" (1976)
Tammy's big post-divorce hit is a bit more straightforward, and an absolute heartbreaker, her 15th #1 on the country charts. 



































51. Charlie Rich – “Behind Closed Doors” (1973)
52. Kenny Rogers - "Lucille" (1977)
53. Hank Williams Jr. - "Family Tradition" (1979)
54. Olivia Newton-John - "Let Me Be There" (1973)
55. Conway Twitty - "This Time I've Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me" (1975)
56. Willie Nelson - "Yesterday's Wine" (1971)
57. Lynn Anderson – “Rose Garden” (1970)
58. Johnny Cash - "One Piece At A Time" (1976)
59. The Bellamy Brothers - "Let Your Love Flow" (1976)
60. Tanya Tucker - "Blood Red and Goin' Down" (1973)
61. O.B. McClinton – “Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You” (1972)
62. Linda Martell - "Bad Case of the Blues" (1970)
63. . George Jones - "The Door" (1974)
64. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - "The Roots of My Raising" (1976)
65. Jerry Reed - "East Bound And Down" (1977)
66. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn - "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" (1973)
67. Faron Young - "It's Four in the Morning" (1971)
68. Willie Nelson - "If You've Got The Money I've Got The Time" (1976)
69. Johnny Cash - "Flesh and Blood" (1970)
70. Dolly Parton - "Baby I'm Burnin'" (1978)
71. Glen Campbell - "Rhinestone Cowboy" (1975)
72. Bobby Bare - "Come Sundown" (1970)
73. Gordon Lightfoot - "Sundown" (1974)
74. Emmylou Harris - "Two More Bottles of Wine" (1978)
75. Charley Pride - "Is Anybody Goin' To San Antone" (1970)
76. John Denver - "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" (1975)
77. B.W. Stevenson - "My Maria" (1973)
78. Olivia Newton-John - "Have You Never Been Mellow" (1975)
79. Don Williams - "Tulsa Time" (1978)
80. Kris Kristofferson - "Why Me" (1973)
81. Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton - "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" (1974)
82. Johnny Rodriguez - "Ridin' My Thumb To Mexico" (1973)
83. Willie Nelson - "I Still Can't Believe You're Gone" (1974)
84. Johnny Cash - "Any Old Wind That Blows" (1972)
85. Tanya Tucker - "The Jamestown Ferry" (1972)
86. George Jones - "Loving You Could Never Be Better" (1972)
87. Eric Weissberg - "Dueling Banjos" (1972)
88. Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty - "You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly" (1978)
89. C.W. McCall - "Convoy" (1975)
90. The Eagles - "Lyin' Eyes" (1975)
91. Mac Davis - "Stop and Smell the Roses" (1974)
92. Gary Stewart - "She's Actin' Single, I'm Drinkin' Doubles" (1975)
93. Alabama - "I Wanna Come Over" (1979)
94. Dolly Parton - "Here You Come Again" (1977)
95. Charley Pride - "I Ain't All Bad" (1975)
96. Reba McEntire - "Sweet Dreams" (1979)
97. Eddie Rabbit - "Rocky Mountain Music" (1976)
98. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings - "There Ain't No Good Chain Gang" (1978)
99. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - "Old Man from the Mountain" (1974)
100. Willie Nelson - "Remember Me (When the Candlelights Are Gleaming)" (1976)

1:58 PM

Movie Diary

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

 






a) Splitsville
I put on Splitsville expecting the usual mid-budget dramedy about troubled marriages and got something much better than that, with a unique comic tone (including the longest, most violent fight scene I've ever seen in what was otherwise not at all an action movie) and a clever way of approaching its premise with both heart and a sort of absurdist sense of humor. Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino are...how do I say this? They could star in a Geico cavemen commercial without spending a long time in the makeup chair. And they wrote a movie (directed by the latter) where their characters sleep with Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, which may be the most over-the-top filmmaker wish fulfillment since Woody Allen's prime. But it's a great cast in a pretty memorable movie. 

b) Dust Bunny
Applying auteurism to television is usually misguided, but I consider Bryan Fuller as close to an auteur as TV's ever had, and I'm a huge fan of his colorful, imaginative, emotive approach, but I never really thought too much about whether I wanted him to transition into film. I don't know if he even wants to, Dust Bunny began life as a pitch for an Apple TV anthology series I never saw and just being its own thing. Really enjoyed it, Mads Mikkelsen and Sigourney Weaver and child star Sophie Sloan are all great in a creepy, surreal story of a girl with a monster under her bed. 

c) Best of the Best
A fun movie in the style of Pitch Perfect or Bring It On about college-level Bollywood dance competitions, written by Hasan Minhaj. Seeing Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in this reminds me how great she was in "Never Have I Ever," really someone who lights up the screen and has sharp comic timing, I hope her career soars. 

d) Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
I enjoyed "The Mandalorian" well enough but it really felt like they abandoned most of what was charming about the show in the pursuit to making movie feel like more than "3 or 4 episodes that you pay to see in a theater." Just no real storytelling rhythm, lots of eye-rolling new characters and barely any of the show's familiar supporting cast, and a bunch of clashing styles of visual effects that felt like they weren't even in the same movie. 

e) Unabomber
Didn't think much of this, the 2017 miniseries "Manhunt: The Unabomber" wasn't a masterpiece but it was more compelling than this, with Jacob Tremblay playing a young Ted Kaczynski and really doing nothing with what should be a pretty meaty role. 

f) The Breadwinner
Nate Bargatze manages the unlikely feat of being a clean Christian comic who does material about being a husband and dad but has enough of a dry wit that he's a decent "SNL" host and not the star of a CBS sitcom (yet). His first film vehicle is a dud, though, really corny outdated premise, overcooked execution, only a few scenes where Bargatze and Will Forte get to be genuinely funny. 

Part of what I really enjoyed about Ready Or Not is that it didn't really escalate and get surreal and over-the-top until the very end. So I worried that any sequel wouldn't be as good without being able to have that bit of surprise at the climax, but it's really fun, they just picked up right at the first movie's close and took off in a crazy sprint, continuing to keep the violent thrills coming with a great new supporting cast including Elijah Wood and Shawn Hatosy. Also all respect for them for using Here I Come as the subtitle of the second movie, it took the Now You See Me franchise until the third movie to use the title Now You Don't. 

h) The Kid Detective
I just watched this recently, just a couple days before the announcement that it's being adapted into a series. Really good movie, easily the best thing Adam Brody's ever been in, gets some comedic mileage out of the familiar failed-former-child-prodigy premise but takes it interesting places and gets surprisingly dark by the end. 

i) The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother Hillel
I really enjoyed this doc about the first decade of the Red Hot Chili Peppers story, focusing on the adolescent friendship, addictions, and tragedy of the Hillel Slovak era. Flea really lays things out there and is very painfully honest, I have a lot of respect for how vulnerable he is in this movie. Anthony's story of seeing Hillel's mother before she died and making amends is really beautiful, too. It's kind of refreshing to watch a music documentary that's completely about the band's first few albums, before they wrote any of their big famous hits -- as a fan of The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, it was cool to see that album get its due a little. I was a little annoyed that they had an AI deepfake Hillel voice reading his journals (like, there's no reason you can't just have an actor do that), and that they go to pains to make it the story of Hillel, Anthony, and Flea even though Jack Irons is right there in the interviews. It was also fun to see Michael Beinhorn on camera for the first time, he comes across just as intense as he does in all the stories of albums he's worked on.

A pretty good doc I watched recently while working on my Patti Smith discography piece. It was filmed on and off for about a decade after Smith's return to music in 1996. It's in black and white, and very early on Smith riffs about Dylan's Don't Look Back and how they should reenact some scenes from it, which is entertaining. 

11:28 AM

Friday, September 25, 2026

 





This week on Spin, I ranked Patti Smith's albums, and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Green Day's "Church on Sunday." 

10:07 AM

TV Diary

Wednesday, September 23, 2026


























a) "Youth"
There's nothing groundbreaking about Sharon Horgan's new HBO show, she plays a divorced woman in her 50s trying to have an active sex life, but the first two episodes were really good, sharp writing, a solid grown up comedy, and Aran Murphy is a standout as her troubled son. Damian Lewis had a really funny scene in the first episode, which became even funnier when I realized in the second episode that he was playing a ridiculous version of himself. 

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have been friends and frequent co-stars for decades, and at some point they raised the possibility that they might actually be half-brothers -- apparently McConaughey's mother had been intimate with Harrelson's father. And this Apple TV comedy is a scripted, fictionalized version of their friendship and their realization about their possible familial link. It's about as flimsy and low stakes as a streaming series headlined by two movie stars can be, but it's amiable and entertaining, McConaughey gets to poke fun at his own iffy political ambitions, Lisa Gilroy continues her recent run of scene-stealing guest appearances, and Natalie Martinez, playing McConaughey's wife, seems to become more outrageously beautiful with every passing year. 

I've seen a lot of books that take place in other countries get Americanized in adaptations, but this is one rare example of an American novel, The Dispatcher, turned into an Australian series. I've seen Patrick Brammall in comedy as much as drama, I feel like he's a little bland as a dramatic lead, but this show has a reasonably compelling story. 

I think this is at least the fourth British miniseries based on Agatha Christie books that I've watched and enjoyed, I should probably just read her books sometime. The source material is obviously modernized, in this iteration, Tommy and Tuppence used to date I guess in college, and they run into each other the night of a murder, and he's a writer and she's a true crime podcast listener, and they decide to investigate together, solve the crime, and become detectives together. Antonia Thomas and Josh Dylan are great and have real chemistry, good show. 

A nice Canadian YA show on Netflix about a teenage girl who joins the boys' rowing team, pretty charming, I can see why it's already been renewed. 

"Snowfall" was a pretty solid show, I felt like they stuck the landing with that last season, but it didn't occur to me that they could tell more stories in the crack era Los Angeles cinematic universe. The first episode was decent, but it's hard to tell fictional stories about the music industry or aspiring musicians, for a lot of reasons, especially when you're putting fictional people/music in a very revered time and place in musical history.

"Reacher" is the kind of show that is so focused on the title character's roaming adventures that it doesn't seem like an obvious launching pad for spinoffs, as popular as it is. But Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) is literally the only character besides Jack Reacher who's been in more than half the episodes of the show, so it makes sense that the spinoff would be about her. The first episode that I watched seemed promising, although it felt like deja vu that it, like the most recent season of "Reacher," opens with a sibling of a law enforcement type person dying of an apparent suicide involving mass transit under suspicious circumstances. 

Tommy Davidson's such a talented guy, I always thought he could've had a career like Jamie Foxx's with the skills and the range he has. Varnell Hill is a talk show host character that Davidson played on two episodes of "Martin" 30 years ago, kind of random for him to get a spinoff now. I actually like the parts that are more or less like Davidson hosting a talk show more than the kind of lazy sitcom parts. 

I don't know why I keep watching new Ryan Murphy shows thinking maybe this will be a good one and then they just seem even cheaper and more slapdash than usual, he's really the white Tyler Perry. This one feels like a waste of Rebecca Hall and Vicky Krieps, like the way the first episode opened with a flash-forward to a bloody murder instead of building to that climax felt so thirsty and hacky. 

A show with Jennifer Connelly and Jimmi Simpson in it can probably count on me watching every episode they ever make. I'm not super into the second season so far, though, I mostly think about how "Counterpart" did this parallel universe thing with a lot more style and I wish it hadn't been canceled. 

Apparently Golden Axe was a Sega arcade game back in the late '80s, but I have no memory of it from my arcade days. But everything is IP so there's a animated show based on it on Paramount+, and as 'adult animated sitcoms' go, it's actually pretty good, Matthew Rhys and Danny Pudi in the voice cast and the writing made me laugh a little. 

I wrote a lot about Jay-Z's catalog just this year, in addition to following all the excitement of his return to performing this year, but this docuseries of Jay just listening to songs from his catalog with Rick Rubin is just a treasure trove for Jay-Z fans, I'm enjoying it so much. Rubin gets a lot of (somewhat deserved) skepticism these days for his politics and his working methods as a producer, but the series that he did in this style with Paul McCartney a few years ago "McCartney 3, 2, 1" was really enjoyable and this one is even better. Just a lot of interesting jewels for fans, like that "Encore" was almost The Black Album's lead single but Kevin Liles and Young Guru were unenthusiastic so he went with "Change Clothes," or how Biggie's last line on "Brooklyn's Finest" was "most hated in California" but Jay took it off trying to stay out of the east coast/west coast stuff. 

We're now getting true crime shows about true crime buffs becoming obsessed with cold cases and trying to overturn verdicts. In this case, a couple was convinced that a woman convicted of killing her ex-husband was actually innocent, but when her case was retried, she wound up evicted again. I actually feel bad for the documentarians who made this not knowing how it would end and probably thinking it would be a more exciting ending with the true crime nerds vindicated. 

A decent nature docuseries on Disney+, but it's just funny to think of species like lions or pandas as "iconic," such a funny lens. 

Khloe Kardashian exec produced this "Keeping Up with the Kardashians"-style reality show about Kardashian-adjacent influencer ladies, it's kind of hilarious that they have a B-team. 

I used to watch "The People's Court" in the Judge Wapner era as a kid because I liked the theme music, but the modern proliferation of courtroom shows is really a plague upon daytime TV, I loathe them. I kept catching this one while channel surfing recently and I'm just fascinated by how stupid it is to have a war tribunal-style trial with three judges for the usual landlord disputes and small theft claims. 

Maybe I was a fool for thinking Kevin Hart interviewing athletes while they both sit in an ice bath wouldn't be a gratingly obnoxious show, but his "Hart to Heart" interviews could be good sometimes.  These were all taped in front of a live audience during Fanatics Fest in July, so there's just a lot of Hart yelling and working the crowd and each episode is only 10-15 minutes, it's just a pretty annoying little piece of content. 

"Soar High!" is a Korean drama with 15-minute episodes, which is a context where that can be kind of refreshing, since sometimes Korean shows I see on Netflix can have really long feature-length episodes. But they also made over 120 episodes of this in just six months, which seems kind of crazy, but it's called a "morning drama series" so maybe teenagers watched it before school? Decent show about gender disparity in aviation. 

Another show with very short episodes, a Mexican thriller, which made for an interesting format, but I didn't really get into it. 

This K-drama's title sounds vaguely kinky but it's a 50 First Dates-type premise with a woman suffering from memory loss and using sticky notes to remind herself of things. I kind of wish it was just a straightforward romcom without a whole crime drama element, though. 

Moria Casan is apparently a big pop culture icon of Argentina, both an insult comic and a sex symbol, I'm not sure we really have a figure like that here. I enjoyed the show, Sofia Gala Castiglione is gorgeous. 

A Thai romcom on Netflix about a teenager who aspires to be an indie rock star, which is just kind of an amusing premise to me. 

This Indian series is one of the best imports I've seen on Netflix recently, well written dialogue and engaging characters. 

A Korean horror comedy about a hotel heiress who can see ghosts, pretty cute show. 

A very dour Japanese drama, didn't really stick with it long enough to see what the point of it all was. 

A French action show about a tactical police unit, didn't care for it, pretty low production values. 

11:27 AM

Friday, September 18, 2026

 




This week I wrote about 4,000 words about every Stevie Wonder album for Spin, and I wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Soundgarden's "Head Down." 

10:13 AM

Movie Diary

Wednesday, September 16, 2026


 



























Playwright Aleshea Harris made the jump to directing features because she didn't want to take chances with letting someone else adapt her play Is God Is. And I'm glad she did, it's so darkly funny and original and violent, great performances from Kara Young and Mallori Johnson and Sterling K. Brown, not for everyone but nonetheless highly recommended. 

b) Miss You, Love You
Jim Rash won an Oscar for the screenplay for The Descendants, and his work as Dean Pelton on "Community" is one of the funniest sitcom performances of the last couple decades, but I don't know if people really appreciate how talented Rash is. Miss You, Love You, Rash's first solo effort as a writer/director after previous collaborations with Nat Faxon, essentially has three principle characters, but only two of them are actually in the movie. Diane (Allison Janney) is mourning her second husband, Tyler (offscreen) is her son from her first marriage who's too busy with work to come see her (he's some kind of famous important journalist who's also gay, so I pictured Anderson Cooper), and Jamie (Andrew Rannells) is Tyler's assistant Jamie who comes and helps Diane plan the funeral. And the whole thing is really compelling for a movie that's almost entirely two people talking, slowly unveiling all these emotional fault lines. 

c) The Last House
Being trapped or confined is a pretty elemental horror trope, but so many 2020s horror movies about people being stuck in their houses have, whether intentionally or accidentally, felt like COVID lockdown allegories. So I kind of rolled my eyes when I started watching The Last House, a movie where suddenly every door in the world is mysteriously sealed shut and nobody can get out of their house. The premise takes a pretty big turn in the second half, and it appears from the reviews that pretty much everyone hated it, but I found it a relief that it wasn't entirely what I expected. Greta Lee and Wagner Moura are definitely way overqualified to lead a movie like this, though. 

d) Immaculate
I think Sydney Sweeney could probably be a good scream queen, given that her best performances in "Euphoria" usually involved her character responding social or romantic situations with mortal terror. I didn't think much of Immaculate, though, just kind of a loud, clumsy movie without much atmosphere or tension. Director Michael Mohan made a decent Lizzy Caplan/Alison Brie dramedy Save the Date over a decade ago, I don't think he really has a feel for horror. 

e) The Whisper Man
There are some wonderfully disturbing supporting performances in The Whisper Man by Hamish Linklater, Michael Keaton, and Owen Teague. But I don't feel like the stars, Robert De Niro and Adam Scott, were given a whole lot to work with in their roles, a lot of it felt like a third generation Silence of the Lambs knockoff. 

f) A Private Life
Speaking of Silence of the Lambs, a pretty good thriller starring Jodie Foster, although a totally different kind of story. 

g) The Devil Wears Prada 2
So much of the promotional rollout for The Devil Wears Prada 2 just centered on the four stars being friends and being excited to work together again, which made it kind of jarring, in a fun way, to put on the movie and be reminded that, oh yeah, these characters are not besties and would not be back in each other's lives under happy, nostalgic conditions. I think there's probably no kind of sequel that's harder to pull off than following up a beloved comedy more than a decade or two later. I thought this was perfectly fine and they came up with a better story than I expected with a few fun moments, but I imagine I'll kind of forget it ever existed as I continue to watch the first movie again and again. 

h) A Dog's Journey
My wife and I watched A Dog's Purpose years and years ago and found it to be a reasonably charming little emotionally manipulative family film. More recently my 11-year-old son watched it as well as the sequel, and I thought it was sweet how much he got wrapped up in the sentimentality of the story. I also got way more interested in the sequel than I expected because Betty Gilpin plays a negligent mother, just casually being one of the best actors of our time even something she's kind of too good for. 

i) Drive
While putting together my recent lists of 2010 and 2011 movies, I caught up on some stuff from that era that I missed at the time, and this is kind of a big canonical one I felt like I had to finally see. I'm a lot less skeptical of Ryan Gosling now than I was when this came out, he's done some really good work. I didn't really think he had the right screen presence for a character with no name who says few words, though, and the direction and music that people found so incredibly stylish and fresh at the time already seems a little stale and dated to me, or maybe that's just because it was influential? In any case, it was better than I thought it would be, even if it didn't totally in me over, if that makes sense. 

j) Margaret
Margaret came out in 2011, but it was actually filmed in 2005 and underwent a whole protracted battle over Kenneth Lonergan getting a final cut he was happy with and getting the studio to release it. That results in a funny moment where Anna Paquin, playing a high school student, makes a derogatory reference to "the current president" in a scene that was filmed during the George W. Bush administration and released during the Barack Obama administration. Pretty great ensemble cast, including Kieran Culkin and J. Smith-Cameron years before "Succession," some very memorable scenes, but I don't know, a very strange premise in some ways and I don't know if Lonergan captured what he was going for after all that time. 

Rabbit Hole, like Margaret, is a movie about grief where the story is set in motion by a tragic auto accident. This was Miles Teller's first film role, in his early twenties playing a teenager, and I actually didn't even recognize him when he first showed up onscreen, I was like "Who is that guy? He looks familiar." 

l) Weekend
A pretty moving little slice-of-life British film about two guys who hook up and spend the weekend together right before one of them is about to move out of the country. 

m) Warrior
I think it's funny that I unintentionally watched movies called Weekend and Warrior on consecutive nights. Tom Hardy playing an MMA fighter? Sure, I can buy it. Joel Edgerton also playing an MMA fighter? Not so much. 

n) The Fighter
I was happy when Melissa Leo from "Homicide: Life on the Street" won an Oscar for The Fighter, but in retrospect it doesn't really feel like it had much impact on her career or the quality of roles she's gotten since then. Okay movie, Leo and Christian Bale definitely earned their Oscars, but it definitely seems like the moment when David O. Russell went from being a unique filmmaker whose work was unlike anyone else's to a guy who more often than not just directs whatever a studio wants him to direct. 

o) The Artist 
Another movie that feels like a semi-forgotten relic of awards season hype. Do you remember that a French black-and-white silent film won Best Picture in 2012? I did like it, especially Berenice Bejo's performance, but I kind of wish they hadn't packed recognizable American actors in the supporting cast, every time I felt really immersed in and feeling like I was actually watching a movie made in 1927, John Goodman or James Cromwell would show up and puncture that bubble. 

p) Hugo
Another memory holed Oscar movie. Martin Scorsese directed a family-friendly film, shot in 3D, with a 12-year-old boy protagonist living in a Paris train station! It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards! Will this get mentioned in a single obituary when Scorsese dies? Not bad, but definitely kind of an odd little outlier in his filmography. 

Going through the three Tron movies this year because I've never really watched them, I liked this more than I expected, just visually they managed to modernize the original's aesthetic while still looking really cool. 

r) Somewhere
When I was looking for 2010 films to watch, I learned that Sofia Coppola directed a movie I'd never heard of in the seven years between Marie Antoinette and The Bling Ring. Stephen Dorff plays a movie star, but one ten times more famous than Dorff ever was, living a sort of debauched, drunken, promiscuous life while his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) stays with him. I don't think this movie was as deep or as funny as it thought it was and probably would've been a lot better with DiCaprio, who apparently considered the role, but it's probably for the best that he didn't waste his time with it. 

s) Meek's Cutoff
A pretty good Kelly Reichardt movie about survival and death on the Oregon Trail. 

t) Secretariat
A biopic of a famous animal, told through the lens of the humans who owned, trained and rode him is a weird idea, when you think about it. I enjoyed it, though, Diane Lane and John Malkovich's performances really make it watchable, and after I wrote about horse racing for the first time this year, it was an interesting window into that world. 

u) Super 8
As one of the few non-franchise J.J. Abrams movies, I was curious to see this, but it really didn't add up to much, and he really is fucking ridiculous with that lens flare. 

v) Tamara Drewe
One thing I like about early 2010s movies is that Gemma Arterton was in a lot of them. Very odd movie, though, like it starts out feeling like this very straightforward thing about a woman moving returning to her hometown, and then the plot takes so many weird and often very stupid turns. 

w) Curly Sue
This was the one John Hughes movie I had never really seen at all before when I ranked Hughes movies a few weeks ago, and I don't think anyone had any problem with me putting it in last place. 

11:26 AM