12.20.06 6:00 AM CST
• After After Hours
• Jamie Malanowski
Let the other editors feel obliged to stick to a category. We’re going to wander. Here’s 10 things we liked about 2007.10. Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke, and Douglas Brinkley’s book The Great Deluge. One’s a film maker, the other a historian, but both got into the muck to show in fine detail the destruction of Katrina and its terrible aftermath.
9. The second-to-last episode of Rescue Me. All the poor dysfunctional slobs who occupy the fire house were contemplating an escape, and each lacked something—the brains, the balls, whatever—to get out. A false alarm puts them at the corner of Liberty and Greenwich Streets, in front of the 6-foot high, 7,000-pound bronze triptych memorial to the fire fighters who died on 9/11. Amid the spirits of their fallen brethren, they grudgingly admit their failures, and subltly rededicate themselves to one another, and their vocation. A rare moment of authentic, inchoate emotion on episodic TV.
8. Utterly Monkey, by Nick Laird. A jolly, boozy, sexy, nasty, sarcastic rebellious romp by a young Irish novelist. Laird’s inventive use of language shows his enormous gifts as a poet.
7. Big fat books by Serious Journalists, like Bob Woodward’s State of Denial, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower, and Thomas Ricks’ Fiasco laid bare the Bush’s administration’s pretentions, vanities, and willful ignorance. Anybody who thinks they can keep up with the news by reading Yahoo! headlines is a moron.
6. Middle age has been great to Alec Baldwin. Never quite large enough to be a convincing leading man, he has lowered his sights, and now manages to convey a wisdom and a heft that enables him to be our most convincing character actor. See him steal scenes (hilariously) in The Departed, The Good Shepherd and Running With Scissors (from Annette Bening!), while week after week being the best thing on 30 Rock. Maturity becomes him.
5. Meryl Streep. Might have made this list by virtue of her bravura summertime performance of Mother Courage in Central Park alone, but throw in her dark chocolate cookie of a performance in The Devil Wears Prada, and you see why she is unchallenged as our very greatest actress.
4. Flight 93. Paul Greengrass’s account of the 9/11 attacks, and, most especially, the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, honors all who were affected by sticking close to the facts.
3. The Sopranos. Part One of the Final Season meandered quite a bit, but where else would you see scenes like Johnny Sack’s breakdown after his daughter’s wedding, Christopher’s druggy evening at the Italian street fair, and most daring of all, the romance between the pathological, tortured Vito and his Johnny Cakes? Even when running on fumes, this remains an exciting, courageous series.
2. The Election Year. From Macaca to Mark Foley, this election year was as exciting and as improbable as any mini-series.
1. Bond. Back and better than ever. Is Daniel Craig the best Bond ever? Let’s put it this way: He’s the best actor who’s ever played Bond.
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Crap. All crap.