2014 Favorites

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (dir. Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez)
Big Hero 6 (dir. Don Hall and Chris Williams)
The Lego Movie (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (dir. Wes Anderson) 
The Unknown Known (dir. Errol Morris)
Muppets Most Wanted (dir. James Bobin)
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (dir. Nicholas D. Wrathall)
Maleficent (dir. Robert Stromberg)
Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (dir. Beth Aala and Mike Myers)
Burt’s Buzz (dir. Jody Shapiro)  

Albums:
Kasabian--48:13 (Harvest) 
Charli XCX--Sucker (Atlantic)
Horrors--Luminous (XL) 
New Pornographers--Brill Bruisers (Matador)
Johnny Marr--Playland (Sire)
Echo and the Bunnymen--Meteorites (429) 
Allah-Las--Worship the Sun (Innovative Leisure)  
Broken Bells--After the Disco (Columbia)
Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey--Going Back Home (Chess)
The Lego Movie: The Original Movie Soundtrack (WaterTower)    

Songs:
Johnny Marr--'Easy Money'
Tegan and Sara--'Everything Is Awesome'
John Newman--'Love Me Again'
Kasabian--'Stevie' 
Charli XCX--'Boom Clap' 
Echo and the Bunnymen--'Constantinople'
Becky G--'Shower'
Black Keys--'Fever'
New Pornographers--'Brill Bruisers'
Horrors--'So Now You Know'

December 2014 Acquisitions

Books:
Sheryl Berk and Carrie Berk, Icing on the Cake: The Cupcake Club, 2013.
Matteo Casali and Kristian Donaldson, 99 Days, 2011.
Alex de Campi et al, Grindhouse: Doors Open at Midnight Double Feature, Vol. 2, 2014.
Andy Cohen, The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year, 2014.
Holly George-Warren and Laura Levine, Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music, 2006.
Golden Books, Barbie and the Three Musketeers, 2011.
Golden Books, The Golden Children's Bible, 2006.
Will Hermes, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, 2012.
Bob Kane et al, Showcase Present Batman, Vol. 5, 2011.
Harvey Kurtzman (ed.), The Mad Reader, 1969.
Harvey Kurtzman (ed.), Utterly Mad, 1969.
John Layman et al, Batman: Detective Comics, Vol. 4--The Wrath, 2014.
Christopher Merritt and Domenic Priore, Pacific Ocean Park: The Rise and Fall of L.A.'s Space Age Nautical Pleasure Pier, 2014.
Peter Milligan et al, Legends of the Dark Knight, Vol. 3, 2014.
Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso, A Sickness in the Family, 2010.
Ann Nocenti et al, Catwoman, Vol. 5: Race of Thieves, 2014.
Simon Oliver and Jason Latour, Nocha Roja, 2011
Janet B. Pascal, Who Was Abraham Lincoln?, 2008.
Gary Philips and Brian Hurtt, Cowboys, 2011.
Jordan Quinn, The Kingdom of Wrenly: The Lost Stone, 2014.
Catherine Saunders, Lego Friends Character Encyclopedia, 2014.
Gail Simone et al, Batgirl, Vol. 4: Wanted, 2014.
Phil Stanford and Patric Reynolds, Crime Does Not Pay: City of Roses, 2014.
Raina Telgemeier, Drama, 2012.
Raina Telgemeier, Smile, 2010.
Joseph Tirella, Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World's Fair and the Transformation of America, 2014.
Peter J. Tomasi et al, Batman and Robin, Vol. 4: Requiem for Damian, 2014.
Philip Wilkinson, Lego Architecture: A Visual Guide, 2014.
Rob Williams and Simon Coleby, The Royals: Masters at War, 2014.


DVDs:
Barbie and the Diamond Castle, 2008.
The Internship, 2013.
It's a Wonderful Life, 1946.
Maleficent, 2014.
Mean Girls, 2004.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman, 2014.
Night at the Museum, 2006.
The Outsiders, 1983.
Skyfall, 2012.

"He Created the Hard-Drinking, Self-Deprecating Antihero in His Own Image"

"Where did Chandler come by the wry worldview that would become synonymous with Los Angeles noir? Mr. Day lets his subject answer that question in his own words by stringing together hundreds of excerpts from the author's correspondence, fiction and screenplays. He stretches Chandler's limber language like a skein across the skeleton of his life, knitting in the spaces in between with his own editorial commentary. The book follows a loose chronology, with the quotations Mr. Day has connected reading at times like an expanded Chandler section in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations."


Liesl Schillinger in The New York Times reviews Barry Day's The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words.

"A Nation That Treasures Its Middle Class, or One That Serves Only Its Wealthiest Citizens?"

In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik and David Lazarus discuss what can be done to help middle-class workers.

"A Generously Wide-Ranging Collection"

In The New York Times, William Dalrymple and Karen Armstrong review the two-volume Norton Anthology of World Religions.

"Nobody Knows It, but 2014 Was the Year of 'Yes, We Can'"

"The common theme here is that, over the past year, a U.S. government subjected to constant bad-mouthing, constantly accused of being ineffectual or worse, has, in fact, managed to accomplish a lot. On multiple fronts, government wasn't the problem; it was the solution."


Paul Krugman in The New York Times looks back at 2014.


In Vox, Ezra Klein interviews Krugman about the future.

Take Fifteen

The Village Voice publishes its 2014 film critics' poll results.

"It's Not Like Facebook Friends Replaced Real-Life Friends"

"It's not that streaming platforms aren't being curated—it's who's doing the curating. 'What’s passively happening, whether people realize it or not, is that corporations are deciding what we should watch,' adds Barr. 'The thing that made VHS catch on in the '80s was this great sense of emancipation; prior to that, the only way you were seeing a movie was just by going to a theater. With streaming we are regressing a little bit, because once again the sacrifice we are making in order to have the ease of streaming is that we are putting that decision-making process in the hands of Netflix, Amazon, or whatever service.' And more often than not, those decisions are financially motivated—which is fine for the company's coffers, but can also lead to that all-too-familiar fatigue that comes with scrolling past endless straight-to-video schlock and movies you've already seen but keep getting recommendations for."


Jennifer M. Wood in Wired visits surviving video stores, like Vidiots in Santa Monica.

"It's Been a Gateway for Girls"

"Toys R Us is seeing more fathers buy building playthings for their daughters, said Richard Barry, the company's chief merchandising officer.
"'There is absolutely a pattern of dads buying and building Legos with their daughters,' he said. 'It introduces a play pattern that maybe girls would like.'"


Shan Li in the Los Angeles Times explores the growing popularity of construction toys for girls.

"Should Obama Pardon Bush?"

"ACLU director Anthony Romero offered a different approach: instead of prosecuting, Obama could pardon a highly visible group of Bush administration officials - including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Bush and Cheney themselves. Romero mentions three important instances of 'preemptive pardoning,' when presidents have issued pardons in order to heal a national division: Lincoln and Andrew Johnson's pardons of Confederate soldiers, Ford's pardon of Nixon, and Carter's pardon of Vietnam draft-dodgers. The latter two are widely seen as having been politically costly, and Ford's pardon of Nixon even as a serious lapse in executive accountability. Writing last year about the political use of pardons, Leon Neyfakh suggests that a number of twentieth century presidents have used pardons to signal disagreement with existing policies."


Julia Azari at The Washington Monthly explores the question.

"The Story as I See It"

"The Aretha Franklin who emerges from 'Respect' is not someone you want to spend time with. Reading about how Franklin insisted on turning down Mavis Staples's voice so that it was barely audible in a recording of their gospel duets, I was reminded of Otis Redding's response to Aretha’s version of 'Respect.' Ritz quotes Jerry Wexler's account: 'He broke out into this wide smile, and said, "The girl has taken that song from me. Ain't no longer my song. From now on, it belongs to her."' Franklin does not display that kind of generosity."


Elsa Dixler in The New York Times reviews David Ritz's Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin.

"My Only Hope Now Is That One Day This Vital American Institution Can Be Rebuilt"

"I expect the circumstances surrounding TNR's transformation will be framed as a matter of modernity versus tradition. There is certainly an element of this. At the magazine's 100th anniversary gala two weeks ago, where Hughes, Foer, Wieseltier, and Hughes’s new CEO, Guy Vidra, all spoke, the speeches took a sharply, awkwardly divergent tone. Foer and Weiseltier gave soaring paeans to the magazine’s immense role in shaping American liberal thought. Hughes and Vidra used words like brand and boasted about page views, giving no sense of appreciation at all for the magazine's place in American life. In a comic moment, Vidra mispronounced Foer's name. I happened to run into Wieseltier a few days after the gala, and when he asked me what I thought, I told him he and Foer won the debate."


In New York, Jonathan Chait writes a "Eulogy for The New Republic."


As does David Greenberg in Slate.


But Charles Pierce at Esquire says good riddance.

"Puncturing the Impunity Requires Breaking the Link"

"Instituting systems like this in cities across the country wouldn't amount to a frontal assault on the vast racial disparities in communities like Ferguson. But it's a concrete goal—one that would give at least some vulnerable communities greater confidence that police wrongdoing will be investigated in an unbiased way. And it would put police on notice that their conduct will be subject to review by representatives of their communities who don't work hand in glove with them."


Brian Beutler in The New Republic recommends special prosecutors instead of local ones when investigating police violence.

"CIA Admits Role In 1985 Coup To Oust David Lee Roth"

"'Had we not moved when we did, there's no telling what kind of detrimental effect Roth would have had on the band's move into more mainstream pop territory and the state of rock music as a whole. We saw the opportunity to remove this uncontrollable megalomaniac from power while safeguarding the American people from his potent influence, and we seized it.'
"'The last thing we wanted was to have another "Panama" on our hands,' he added."


From The Onion.

The Fabric of Our Lives

"If there is an ancestral home for the Industrial Revolution, it's Manchester, England, where the first factories were built. Cotton propelled the factory's emergence, created after British inventors found a way to spin slave-grown cotton into yarn more swiftly. The man who invented the mechanized cotton mill at the center of these new factories was Samuel Greg, the prototypical genius-inventor of capitalist lore. By tying Greg’s success to slave-grown cotton and the ghastly conditions of factory workers, Beckert recasts him in a garish new light. Women and children comprised the vast majority of these first factory workers, all of them expected to work 14-hour days and huddled into barracks at night. If we celebrate Greg as a genius, Beckert implies, we must also accept that he was utterly dependent on the most coercive labor systems imaginable."


Eric Herschthal in Slate reviews Sven Berkett's Empire of Cotton: A Global History.

"White People Were Crazy. Now They're Not as Crazy"

"So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. There's been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship's improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, 'Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.' It's not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner's relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn't. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people."


Frank Rich in New York interviews Chris Rock.