Favorites of the 2010s

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
Django Unchained (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012)
Amazing Grace (dir. Sydney Pollack, 2019)
The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, 2017)
Toy Story 3 (dir. Lee Unkrich, 2010)
Young Adult (dir. Jason Reitman, 2011)
Greenberg (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2010)
Nightcrawler (dir. Dan Gilroy, 2014)
The Lego Movie (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014)
Incredibles 2 (dir. Brad Bird, 2018)
56 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 2013)

Albums:
Paul Weller--Saturns Pattern (Parlophone, 2015)
Vaccines--What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? (Columbia, 2011)
Katy Perry--Teenage Dream (Capitol, 2010)
Kasabian--For Crying Out Loud (Sony, 2017)
Best Coast--Crazy for You (Mexican Summer, 2010) 
Horrors--Skying (XL, 2011)
Lana Del Rey--Born to Die (Polydor, 2012)
Saint Etienne--Words and Music by Saint Etienne (Heavenly, 2012)
Parquet Courts--Wild Awaaaaake! (Rough Trade, 2018)
Brian Wilson--Reimagines Gershwin (Disney, 2010) 

Songs:
Paul Weller--'Long Time'
Palma Violets--'Best of Friends' 
Icona Pop--'I Don't Care'
Vaccines--'If You Wanna' 
Best Coast--'When I'm with You' 
Kasabian--'Bless This Acid House' 
Robyn--'Dancing on My Own'  
Stone Roses--'All for One' 
Carly Rae Jepsen--'Call Me Maybe' 
Babymetal--'Gimme Chocolate!!'

2019 Favorites

The Late Adopter selects...
Movies:
Amazing Grace (dir. Sydney Pollack)
Joker (dir. Todd Phillips)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (dir. Joe Talbot)
Blinded by the Light (dir. Gurinder Chadha)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Yesterday (dir. Danny Boyle)
Toy Story 4 (dir. Josh Cooley)
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (dir. Mike Mitchell)
Us (dir. Jordan Peele)
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (dir. J.J. Abrams)

Albums:
Ocean Blue--Kings and Queens/Knaves and Thieves (Korda)
Liam Gallagher--Why Me? Why Not. (Warner Bros.)
Post Malone--Hollywood’s Bleeding (Republic)
The Beat feat. Ranking Roger--Public Confidential (DMF)
Bob Mould--Sunshine Rock (Merge)
Yola--Walk Through Fire (Easy Eye Sound) 
The S.L.P.--The S.L.P. (Columbia)
Lana Del Rey--Norman Fucking Rockwell! (Interscope)
3x4: The Bangles, The Three O’Clock, The Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade (Yep Roc)
Paul Weller--Other Aspects: Live at the Royal Festival Hall (Parlophone)

Songs:
Michael Marshall--'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)'
Ocean Blue--'Kings and Queens'
Liam Gallagher--'One of Us'
Billie Eilish--'Bad Guy'
Post Malone--'Circles'
Lizzo--'Juice'  
Muffs--'That's for Me' 
Amyl and the Sniffers--'Some Mutts (Can't Be Muzzled)'
Fontaines D.C.--'Boys in the Better Land'
Dillon Francis--'Catchy Song'

December 2019 Acquisitions

Books:
Charles L. Black, Jr., and Philip Bobbitt, Impeachment: A Handbook, New Edition, 2018.
Howard Chaykin and Daniel Brereton, Batman: Thrillkiller, 2018.
Nathalia Holt, The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History, 2019.
Jonathan Kauffman, Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat, 2018.
Robert Kirkman et al, Battle Pope, Vol. 1: Genesis, 2009.
Grant Morrison et al, Secret Origins Featuring the JLA, 1999.
Matteo Pizzolo et al, Calexit, 2018.
Isha Sesay, Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram, 2019.
Steve Turner, A Hard Day's Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, 2009.
Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion, 2018.
How to Tie a Scarf: 33 Styles, 2013.

Movies:
Elevator to the Gallows, 1958.
Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003.
My Generation, 2017.

Music:
Billy Bragg, Best of Billy Bragg at the BBC 1983-2019, 2019.
Leonard Cohen, Thanks for the Dance, 2019.
Coldplay, X&Y, 2005.
Echo and the Bunnymen, The John Peel Sessions 1979-1983, 2019.
Electric Light Orchestra, Discovery, 1979.
Allison Moorer, Blood, 2019.
R.E.M., New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996.
Tyler the Creator, Igor, 2019.
Various, The Beat Generation, 1992.
Various, Hipsters' Holiday: Vocal Jazz & R&B Classics, 1989.

"The Decade That Forced American Politicians and Commentators to Confront the Limits of the Country's Own Mythology"

"Political elites in both parties had long shared the same conventional wisdom about the United States, grounded in ideas of exceptionalism and institutional perfection. But with the rise of Donald Trump and the return of a virulent politics of xenophobia and exclusion, it became increasingly difficult, even for many in the political establishment, to reproduce these past homilies. Today the US is truly at a crossroads. Are Americans willing to confront the failures that led to the present, or will the US remain trapped in the same cycles of crisis and popular disaffection?"

Aziz Rana at The Guardian looks the politics of the 2010s.

As does Annie Lowrey at The Atlantic, regarding the economy.

And Politico asks historians to write a paragraph about the decade for a future textbook.

I Have Always Thought in the Back of My Mind

"From 1973 onwards his musical director was John Altman, who said: 'He really was a very talented guy. When you heard his songs for the Rutles, you'd think "This is as good as the Beatles." George Harrison became a huge fan and was always in the studio when we were recording.' He famously said he that he liked The Rutles better than he did the Beatles.'"

Chris Welch at The Guardian writes an obituary for Neil Innes.

"Unmoored and Meandering"

"Streaming seems less active, a steady state that turns music into a utility, something on tap–like water. Where obsessive accumulation of solid-form music or immaterial files involved passion and even an element of pathology, streaming breaks with the hunter-collector psychology. It's like radio, except there's little or no public dimension. Occasionally, your streaming selection will coincide with large numbers of other people–the waning flickers of the monoculture drawing you all to the same spot. But mostly your journeys through the library of sound are solitary and asocial."

Simon Reynolds at The Guardian calls the 2010s "the decade that broke popular culture."

"The Central Question of Our Time Is What Comes Next"

"In 1982, as the neoliberal curtain was rising, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm remarked that 'the cutting edge of the Democratic Party is to recognize that the world of the 1930s has changed and that a new set of public policy responses is appropriate.' Today, people around the world have recognized that the world of the 1980s has changed and that it is time for a new approach to politics."

The New Republic runs an excerpt from Ganesh Sitaraman's The Great Democracy on "The Collapse of Neoliberalism."

"The Bohemian-Proletarian Coalition Is Dead"

"All across the world, left-wing parties can—and should—win elections on the promise to fix capitalism by standing up for the interests of working people. And all across the world, they can—and should—fight for an inclusive patriotism that promises solidarity to all citizens, irrespective of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, or their religion. It remains possible for the left to build a broad coalition on a principled message. But to do so, it first needs to recognize that its old political strategy has become obsolete—and that an exclusive focus on mobilizing voters who already have all the 'right' views is unlikely to compensate for the loss of its historic base."

Yascha Mounk at Democracy argues that in "most developed democracies, social and cultural issues have, over the past decades, displaced economic ones as the principal political cleavage."

"Invariably Compete with Each Other Because They Are So Intertwined"

"If they fail to address the problem of growing inequality, liberal meritocratic capitalist systems risk journeying down another path—not toward socialism but toward a convergence with political capitalism. The economic elite in the West will become more insulated, wielding more untrammeled power over ostensibly democratic societies, much in the same way that the political elite in China lords over that country. The more that economic and political power in liberal capitalist systems become fused together, the more liberal capitalism will become plutocratic, taking on some features of political capitalism. In the latter model, politics is the way to win economic benefits; in plutocratic—formerly liberal meritocratic—capitalism, economic power will conquer politics. The endpoint of the two systems will be the same: the closing ranks of a privileged few and the reproduction of that elite indefinitely into the future."

Branko Milanovic at Foreign Affairs explains the "Clash of Capitalisms."

"In Trying to Keep Both Its Remain and Leave Voters Happy, It Has Pleased Almost No One"

"This had been less of an election and more of an unpopularity contest. Boris and Corbyn were widely disliked and mistrusted throughout the country. All that had been at stake was which leader was hated the least. And the exit polls had indicated that Boris had won. No one expected him to deliver on the promises he had made but they were less worried about that than the promises on which Labour might deliver. So we were heading for a Tory government and a Brexit that would continue to divide the country. Hell, it was odds-on that not even a majority of leavers would like the Brexit deal Boris ended up with. And in the meantime, Corbyn would soon be eased out. Written out of Labour's history. A bad dream that had cost the country dear."

John Crace at The Guardian discusses the worst election loss for the Labour Party since, perhaps, 1935

Phillip Blond at First Things adds an analysis.

As does Owen Jones, also at The Guardian, along with Alex Niven.

Ok, Boomers?

"Age ‬doesn't just divide Republicans and Democrats from each other, in other words; age divides young leftists from both Republicans and Democrats. Democrats under 30 have almost no measurable interest in the party's front-runner. Democrats over 65 have almost no measurable interest in the favored candidate of the younger generation. ‬This is not a picture of Democrats smoothly transforming into the 'party of the young.' It's evidence that age—perhaps even more than class or race—is now the most important fault line within the Democratic Party."

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic argues that the "young left has become a sort of third party."

For the People

"What doomed Harris wasn't just the Democratic Party's leftward shift on racial and criminal-justice issues. It was the party's lack of sympathy for the very different political environment Harris faced just a few years ago, when women and black candidates faced intense pressure to show that they were tough on crime.
"This is among the strangest twists of the 2020 presidential campaign. For good reason, Democrats have grown less tolerant of racism in the criminal-justice system. Yet that very intolerance—combined with insufficient recognition of the particular burdens that black women candidates face—has helped push the only black woman running for president from the race."

Peter Beinart at The Atlantic writes that had Sen. Kamala Harris "been the crusading criminal-justice reformer that Democrats now want to see, she would likely never have been in a position to run for president in the first place."