By James Furbush | November 6th, 2009 | 6:59 am PST
Largehearted Boy has a roundup of lists of best music of the 2000s. I don’t think I can write about all these lists as they come out and to be sure just about every publication will have one, irregardless if the decade actually ends in 2010 and began in 2001.
Posted in: Music
Tags: 2000s, best of, lists |
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By James Furbush | June 5th, 2009 | 11:57 am PDT
Anthony Bourdain, chef and author of Kitchen Confidential, jots down some notes on the 13 restaurants you should eat at before dying. Some expected and not so expected choices on his list.
Bourdain acknowledges that as “any seasoned traveler can tell you, the ‘best’ meals on the planet are the result of an ephemeral confluence of circumstances,” and makes convincing arguments for each of his picks, which also include Kansas City, Kan.’s Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue, Tokyo’s Sukiyabashi Jiro and London’s St. John.
Others making the list include: ElBulli, The French Laundry and Per Se (both owned by Thomas Keller), Salumi (Mario Batali’s parent’s sandwich shop in Seattle), Russ & Daughters, Katz’s Deli, St. John’s in London, Sin Huat Eating House in Singapore, Le Bernardin in NYC, Etxebarri in Axpe, Spain, and finally, Hot Doug’s in Chicago.
Posted in: Food & Drink
Tags: Anthony Bourdain, best of, El Bulli, restaurants |
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By James Furbush | June 5th, 2009 | 7:59 am PDT
Variety polled members of the Television Critics Association for their picks for the best TV of the past decade. Here are their choices for drama series and comedy series:
Drama: Friday Night Lights, Lost, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire.
Comedy: 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Daily Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Office.
One thing that strikes me about both lists are not only the obviousness of them (exception being Everybody Loves Raymond), but how even in television polling there’s a heightened dose of recentism. Did I just make up that word?
I suppose I expect that with the sitcoms. Only in the past five years have the sitcom as an artform come back into it’s own, after perhaps 30 years of slumber. Networks are pushing the possibilities of what a sitcom can be — moving beyond the sexy housewife as nagging entity to the schlubby and affable working class husband.
But the past decade has been a golden age for the televised drama. There have been more good dramas on television than ever before. I’m surprised that Six Feet Under didn’t make the cut or even Battlestar Galactica, despite it’s turgid final few seasons.
And that’s not even beginning to scratch the surface of dramas that should and could have made the list. Any others?
Posted in: Television
Tags: 2000s, best of, best television, lists, Television Critics Association |
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