Happy Friday! The end of 2020 is in sight! Christmas is almost here! Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and occasionally badly-PhotoShopped dog photos.
And welcome to the Second Annual Hamilton Awards. As I did last year, instead of doing a typical Top 10 list for movies or music or books, I decided to do something a little different for 2020. I still have yet to see a lot of this year’s highly-regarded movies (if you want my rankings of everything I’ve seen so far this year, click here) and I’ve reached the age where my music taste isn’t exactly “new.”
So the following list is a Top 10 blanket grouping of some of my favorite things all year. Each group kind of blends into the next one, kind of like how every moment just blended into the next this year.
Enjoy, and email me back with your favorite pop culture moments of 2020.
My 10 Favorite Things of 2020
“Ted Lasso” and the return of comfort watches
“Ted Lasso” was my biggest surprise of the year. Who would have thought that a streaming TV show starring Jason Sudeikis based on a series of years-old fake NBC soccer ads would end up being a thoughtful, mature, kind, hopeful and redemptive story about flawed people learning to be better? I love this show, and I’m so happy it already got picked up for two more seasons. It’s been my go-to recommendation to everyone since I started watching it. It’s well worth the AppleTV+ subscription.
Seriously, watch this clip for a great example of this show’s ethos:
Speaking of “Ted Lasso,” I watched a lot of what I would call “comfort TV” this year. Taylor and I finally finished “Schitt’s Creek,” another kind show that never goes for the easy joke. I started re-watching “New Girl” right before Election Day as a way to turn my brain off and that helped a lot (a compliment to “New Girl”; breezy comedy is hard to pull off). “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Legend of Korra” were also great comfort watches this year. I also rewatched a lot of old favorite movies in 2020— check out a list of my favorites here.
“Lovecraft Country”
There were times I was more into the ambition and the scope of what this HBO show was trying to do than I was into the execution of said ambition, but I always appreciate stuff that takes a big swing. “Lovecraft Country” is an explosive reclaiming of horror, sci-fi, fantasy and genre storytelling that centers Black perspectives. The Lovecraft in the title is indeed a reference to H.P. Lovecraft, noted father of the weird fiction genre and noted racist. The show’s name itself is a reclaiming; the show expands on that to show what a more diverse genre storytelling climate can look like. It’s got a killer soundtrack, too.
Two films about life
Like I said, I haven’t seen a lot of the movies driving a lot of conversation this year. But my favorite two films so far are some that I haven’t heard a lot of talk about.
“The Way Back” is basically “Hoosiers” if it were told from Shooter’s perspective. Ben Affleck stars as Jack Cunningham, an alcoholic who’s tasked with coaching his high school alma mater’s basketball team. The movie is called “The Way Back,” but it’s not about Jack going back to anything — it’s about him moving forward with his life and forgiving himself and finding redemption.
Much like “Gone Girl,” the shrewd Affleck casting here is what truly makes this movie. If we were in an alternate 2020 where awards contenders were being talked about right now, Affleck would be in the running for Best Actor. The man has never seemed so huge and bloated, yet so small and vulnerable as he is here. This was filmed shortly after Affleck did a stint of his own in rehab for alcoholism, and this film clearly acts as a mea culpa of sorts. The ending is as cathartic as they come.
Available to stream on HBO Max.
“Driveways” is a smaller indie film that features the final performance of Brian Dennehy (“Tommy Boy”). It’s about 8-year-old boy Cody (Lucas Jaye) who strikes up a friendship with his new next-door neighbor Del (Dennehy). Cody and Del’s friendship isn’t the first “cute kid meets old dude” friendship on film, but it’s understated and knowing. The film is light on conflict, but speaks volumes about people. Watching the two of them communicate across generations is a beautiful thing to behold. Del looks and talks like my maternal grandfather and acts like my paternal grandfather. I think that was the reason why I was consciously stopping myself from tearing up until that final scene.
What a pleasant celebration of life, both lived and unfolding. Please check it out — it’s streaming on Hoopla or Kanopy if you have a library card that supports those services, and it’s available for rental on other services.
The return of Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen and David Byrne
Again, most of my music tastes aren’t new. But 2020 saw new releases from the Boss, my favorite band Pearl Jam, and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. “Letter To You” is Springsteen’s first album recorded with the full E Street Band in six years, and it’s a great look back at that relationship as well as a great look forward for Springsteen’s career.
“Gigaton,” Pearl Jam’s first album in seven years, shows the most life the band has displayed since the ‘90s, and I appreciated its more thoughtful and measured take on the state of the world. I also loved “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” a very Talking Heads-sounding first single, which leads me to…
“David Byrne’s American Utopia,” a Broadway concert show performed by Byrne and filmed by Spike Lee. I started listening to Talking Heads this year after hearing the comparisons to “Clairvoyants” and then watched the Talking Heads concert documentary “Stop Making Sense,” which is a joy, and then found “American Utopia” when it hit HBO Max. The film is a celebration of our capacity to change, and our ability to make life better with other people. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year so far.
The below video is from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and not from the live Broadway performance, but it gets the spirit of the show across:
Surprise album drops
If, like me, you like folk-ish music or bluegrass music, 2020 was a good year. Not only did we get two surprise Taylor Swift albums, “folklore” and “evermore,” we also got two surprise Sturgill Simpson bluegrass albums (“Cuttin’ Grass,” Vols. 1 and 2) and a surprise, mostly-instrumental bluegrass album from Tyler Childers in “Long, Violent History.”
On top of that, The Wonder Years released two new songs written in the style of their early music. All of the above were welcome surprises in a year full of bad surprises.
Horror films
I took a lot of comfort this year in horror films. In a year full of unknowns and bad news, horror films gave me the ability to be scared in a controlled environment. Most horror doesn’t scare me too badly, anyway; I’m more terrified of horrific real-life situations (“Prisoners” is my go-to example). But horror films new and old helped me fall asleep many nights earlier this year when we were stressed about our living situation on top of the pandemic. Some of my favorites:
The 2020 version of “The Invisible Man”
“Relic”
“Freaky”
“The Wolf of Snow Hollow”
“Matinee,” which is a family film about horror films — starring John Goodman!
“Color Out of Space”
“Scare Package”
“The Beach House”
“Silver Bullet”
“The Hunt”
“The Fog”
“Candyman”
“Scream, Queen!: My Nightmare on Elm Street”
“Ganja & Hess”
“Host”
“The Rental”
“Psycho II”
“Poltergeist”
“The Haunting of Bly Manor”
“Lot: Stories,” by Bryan Washington
I read a lot of short story and essay/poetry collections again this year, but the most affecting one was by Houston writer Bryan Washington. His short story collection “Lot” weaves in its main coming-of-age story with other stories about other characters in different neighborhoods throughout Houston. It’s not quite a happy group of stories, but it’s a compelling and knowing collection. I’m excited to read his full novel “Memorial” next.
Other favorite books this year:
“The World Doesn’t Require You,” by Rion Amilcar Scott
“Sorry For Your Troubles,” by Padraig O'Tuama
“The Only Good Indians,” by Stephen Graham Jones
“Mexican Gothic,” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“We Were All Someone Else Yesterday, by Omar Holmon
“After I’m Gone,” by Laura Lippman
“My Sister, The Serial Killer,” by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Remastered
Sure, there were bigger games that I played this year (The Last of Us Part II is a masterpiece), and there are more inventive games that I’m enjoying playing right now (Hades is absolutely fantastic), and I did play a lot of puzzle games to decompress after work (Baba Is You, Hidden Folks, Gorogoa, Donut County), but the game that I logged the most hours on this year was without a doubt Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Remastered.
Replaying it is like getting back in touch with an old friend. I love it. And if you want to see me talk more about why I love it, I shot an episode of The Heyzeus Show all about the game.
Halfway Books
Earlier this year, Shea Serrano commissioned five people to write about iconic hip-hop albums. The result was Halfway Books, a short series of longform pieces about albums like Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” and The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Life After Death.” Each book is short, insightful, and a ton of fun to read. You can find them all on Gumroad.
Lost Notes 1980
Writer, critic, essayist and poet Hanif Abdurraqib can now add podcaster to his multihyphenate. Lost Notes 1980 is a podcast series all about the impact of some of the music that came out in 1980. Abdurraqib wrote, produced and narrated each episode, and his voice and love for the material shines through on each episode. My favorite is the Stevie Wonder episode, but the Sugarhill Gang one is also interesting. There’s no order to the episodes (they were dropped all at once), so you can listen to whichever episode you want first. Available wherever you download podcasts or at this link.
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