Toronto – Best-ofs are hard for me to write. Firstly because I don’t regularly acquaint myself with the newest-hottest @#X$ other than what’s on Gizmodo, ebaum, and ISI (if you know what the last one is you really know my pain!) Second, the inferiority complex is particularly heightened during the holidays (what not to wear, what not to give as gifts, what not to say during a hotpot dinner with friends so they will not call the police to report an improperly sedated schizophrenic Chinese dude). But in comes the voice of Wade the Eternally Surprised: “write what you know best”. So WHAT RANDOM STUFF do I know?
1. Best Movie: Micmacs. I haven’t been watching movies/documentaries as much this year. But of the few that I have seen, Micmacs is probably the easiest recommendation to make. See my review here. Other nominees: Mother (Joon-ho Bong; I saw this at TIFF), Invisible City (Hubert Davis; I saw this during the awesome and free Regent Park Film Festival).
2. Best Album: Treasury Library Canada, Woodpigeons. Cuz: Cuz I’m from Alberta. I cheated a little. This was technically minted in 2008. Unlike many 2nd albums, this one finds the Calgarians not trying to out-do themselves. I don’t have a problem with people trying to take on a challenge, but to demolish ground-works only because you need something new is a poor judgment call. If the new stuff hinges on fresh scent, it’d be sniffed up all too soon. The standoff-ish complex, if sometimes overdone, intros are still there for many of their tunes. The longing feeling shows through in much better contrast, since the melodies are more bright and buoyant this time around; ie. all the good stuff and none the bad. That said, I wished they had come up with a few new harmonies. If Funeral was 9 good tunes out of 10 songs, Treasury is 10/14. Not bad seeing how Neon Bible, somehow very well received, was 3/11 for me. Good ones: I live a lot of places, Now you like me how, City of Weather, The Hamilton Academicals.
3. Best iPod bottlenecks: Get going (Headlights); Harlem Sunrise (Rainbow Arabia); What I wouldn’t do (A Fine Frenzy); I am leaving (Blue Roses). Cuz: Cuz. Yeah these might not be very indie/hipster, and all are more sugary than a white-chocolate mocca. But I need happy music to get me through the drudgery of everyday. And to compensate for the fact that I didn’t get to see Headlights last year in Austin.
4. Best paper: “Strong-field control and spectroscopy of attosecond electron-hole dynamics in molecules“. PNAS, 106, 16556. Cuz: Forget about the whole invisibility-cloak scandal – we can kick any electron out from their cozy orbital home at will! Imagine if you can do this on a massive scale. And consecutively. And to complex molecules. And you thought mechanical nano- or optical-tweezers were cool. This is like, the toes of God. We might make anything with kitchen scraps (ok after we do some NMR on them first)! Foie gras, perhaps, which doesn’t look very different. The title might as well have said “molecular symphony”. Exciting stuff, even if it might not be applied on that scale for 100 yrs.
5. Best RPG: Dragon Age Origins. Cuz: Have you played Mass Effect? Well. That game sucks (in comparison). This year, the obvious contenders on the same scale are Batman Arkham Asylum, Borderlands, Risen, Resident Evil 5, and Demon Souls. Having finished all the others but Demon Souls, I will say that they all suck when compared to Dragon Age in some ways. Arkham is too linear, even in how you maneuver through the levels, and feels nothing like the unpredictability of the dark knight. Borderlands is another excuse (albeit an extremely fun one) to farm uber items and level grind (going up against something with 5+ lvl on you is actually scary because it’s like chewing an elephant when you’re the ant). Risen still has Gothic’s problems and graphics from 2005. And Resident Evil’s control is still firmly stuck in the dark ages (His buffness Chris Redfield can’t shoot while running/walking? I ended up hacking every one using the machete!) Dragon Age is Neverwinter Nights on steroids, without the calculation details of a D&D game (which is a bit of a let down). With 6 (though all rather short but all dramatic) origin stories that carry the pedigree of your chosen hero/heroine, 9 programmable henchmen that all have relationships to both story and the player, killing orcs (or darkspawns) and ogres have never been so much fun. You still have the power to pause and micromanage those mages that tends to freeze/fireball your entire party, the graphics looks sharp and refined, and the sheer number of enemies… you WILL feel like you’re fighting a horde. One map found me relieving an army of 30 darkspawn and 5 alphas of their existence – the entire battle literally took me 20 minutes of executive decisions. The strategies and positioning of your troop in the context of the environment is an important element a lot of games do not emphasize but shines in Dragon Age – makes taking on higher level critters that much more challenging. The only missing thing may be a flexible item system like Diablo (one that Borderlands takes after), and a larger backpack – 70 items is poultry when you have a hunting party of 4 versus 10,000 darkspawns. This still isn’t Fallout 3 – but then again IMO very few games will ever get this close (er… Mass Effect 2? Bioware please don’t limit the level environments!)
6. Best looking game: Machinarium. Cuz: Braid was the other choice, but its low pixel-resolution took its fighting chance. If you give Machinarium 5 seconds on an HDTV I guarantee that your face will melt along with your heart in Machinarium’s gorgeous designs. Controls are simple and the puzzles are a blast to go through. Too bad it’s very very short.
7. Best !!!: Nikon 70-200mm VRII. Cuz: I have been waiting for 8 years to get the original VR lens. It really was a surprise to hear that they are coming out with another that matches the performance of the 24-70mm – the Nikon holy trinity is going to have to change hands, I think. If the 24-70 is any indication, we’ll love the nano-coating: they really do let me avoid bringing up the contrast post-processing. Reviews floating about have been criticizing the large field of view (ie. loss of magnification) at close range of around 5-10 ft. Apparently it’s around 30% loss, making the lens a 165 mm or so at this distance. Personally, I have very bad working habits when I take my pictures, and so compositional complaints like this will probably not stop me from lusting over the new version. Although, I am still nowhere close to being able to afford the original, let alone this new darn thing.
8. Best App: Lexcycle Stanza OR the NPR app. Stanza is a simple reader for epub (among many others) formatted ebooks. Now, the best part is how this is natively linked up to Project Gutenberg. And seeing how Gutenberg is getting very large around the waist, finding classical literature such as Kipling, Confucius, and Laozi (in Chinese even!) has never been easier. Problem now is finding the time to actually go through them. I think I’m developing the reading bug again. The alternative is to get their audiobooks. Here’s the tie in to the NPR app – the US National Public Radio service’s app is convenient, and literally piles podcasts in your iphone like no tomorrow. I now turn this thing on for no apparent reason just to find out what the congress has not passed. Listening to deep South Republican senators’ accents is fun too. Both are FREE. Can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t get them.
9. Best wine I (nearly) had: 2005 Finca Sobreno crianza. According to everyone else, this one was so good that people were fighting for it – even drinking from my glass as I drifted off to la-la-land.
So there you have it. The various things that I have come to know in 2009. Touche, 2010. Touche.
