The Top 5 List Thread

[CiG]

Top 5 favourites from October:

1. Darkthrone - Astral Fortress
   
   
   
2. Absürd - Vanvett Och Dystopi
   
   
   
3. Atrocious Devastation - Nuclear Sword of Damocles
   
   
   
4. Imprecation - In nomine Diaboli
   
   
   
5. Persekutor - Brain Freeze
   

Bit of a skint month. Mostly the top 3 here are highlights to me. Absürd is my mate's new noisy gothy anarcho post-punk project, fucking rules and sounds like it could've been released in the late 70's or early 80's easy.

Also apparently the Persekutor EP title track is gonna feature in Christmas Bloody Christmas.

 

[no country for old wainds]

1982

1. The King of Comedy (dir. Martin Scorsese)
a candidate for the most skilfully pitched film in all of Hollywood, straddling the line between squirming discomfort, underdog sympathy and sick comedy until it's impossible to know how to feel in any given moment. De Niro's ability to harness this complex tone is incredible to me and i find his performance every bit as unsettling as Travis Bickle and perhaps even more skilful (splitting hairs, both amazing). its portrait of the American Dream is so committed and brutally cynical and above all prescient, understanding exactly where this obsession with celebrity was heading. for its faults, Joker was smart to remake this as an overt commentary on class.

2. The Thing (dir. John Carpenter)
one of my most watched movies ever, had it on VHS for as long as i can remember. the first time i ever remember really paying attention to the score of a movie, and one of the first times i remember considering the themes. it continues to play out in every political arena; which guy in the room is the commie? which voted trump? which will sexually harass you as soon as you're alone together? which one has AIDS? which didn't get the COVID jab? how should we go about identifying them? should we preemptively police them before they harm us? maybe do a blood test? despite being blatantly mechanical at times the monster is still a disgusting delight, but forget the monster; it's the tensest film about the unknowability of other people. and that's just one layer among many.

3. Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott)
everything about this film's aesthetic and worldbuilding is geared to express a conflict between humanity and, well, call it what you like: capital, totalitarianism, technological mediation, all of the many many dehumanising things modernity has in store for us. and so, by god, there's so much pathos in how it looks and sounds. for those who find it slow, detached, batty's way ahead of you and his whole arc is him trying and failing to restart this cold dead heart of a city, this tomb of a film. you want to know if deckard is a replicant? the answer is if that's what you leave the film contemplating, you're one yourself. shout out to my favourite line delivery of all time, courtesy of señor Edward James Olmos.

4. Fast-Walking (dir. James B. Harris)
God, I love it here, in this joint, you know that, Squeeze? I just fucking love it, there's no place like it in the whole damn world. There's nothing you can't do in here, if you got the balls. It's as simple as that, you just believe in yourself. Follow your star. It'll lead you right to opportunity, and here it has again. the ultimate James Woods vehicle. he's so fucking fantastically gross and trashy here lol, and Tim McIntyre maybe outdoes him as the villain. i think some people here have seen Harris' Cop, this shaggy prison break movie is arguably even better.

5. Moonlighting (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski)
Jeremy Irons is a Polish contractor running a housing rebuild project in the UK for some government official, ends up getting stuck there with his increasingly resentful men (none of whom speak english) due to troubles back home, trying to keep the peace and stealing shit to survive. it's a seriously incisive microcosm of capitalism with this alienated tone i've never really encountered in a movie before; actually, the closest parallel i can throw out is There Will Be Blood of all things, except if that film was punctuated by a bunch of other jarring shit such as bumbling slapstick-adjacent comedy. much like Deep End it's a unique experience.

1983

1. Sweet Bunch (dir. Nikos Nikolaidis)
Nikolaidis' masterpiece, and my favourite '...new wave' movie to date from any nation. one of the most emotionally textured films, with a soul that's by turns breathlessly young and achingly old. it feels like the best of Godard, Rivette, Peckinpah and Cassavetes all at the same time. he's just the coolest fucking director, everything from the posters to the website is so fucking awesome. i can't believe he can make a ruminative Tarkovsky-adjacent post-apocalyptic meta-sci fi like Morning Patrol, a Lanthimos level deadpan Laura riff full of piss sex like Singapore Sling, and this goddamn gem of a film. hero.

2. Smorgasbord (dir. Jerry Lewis)
categorically not for people who hear terms like "anti-comedy" and reach for the off switch, which may be why americans hated lewis and the french rescued his reputation. in any case, this is his most extreme commitment to a bit: he's unable to live, and unable to die. no real explanations are given for this; everything he touches turns to shit A Serious Man-style, including his numerous suicide attempts, and that's the movie. jokes are stretched beyond breaking point, some of them seem intentionally unfunny, there's very little in the way of plot progression, it's borderline avant-garde--obviously, as a Gremlins 2: The New Batch fanboy i eat that shit up. and yet it's very personal too, touching on a lot of autobiographical stuff (he attempted suicide himself, he had heart surgery himself, etc). it's exhausting and bewildering and hilarious and hilariously unhilarious. it's metaphysical, and pure in its understanding of comedy as merely the flipside of despair.

3. P. P. Rider (dir. Shinji Somai)
there were so many unhinged movies focused around children coming out of Japan in this era, not least from Somai who's best known for the divorce drama from a child's perspective Moving. this one's more like a Hark Tsui movie though (better, i would argue), amping the anarchy and absurdity up and up until it's teetering somewhere between euphoria and mental illness as these kids navigate a shitty world of uncaring deadbeat adults and yakuza. the climax is rhapsodic madness.

4. Local Hero (dir. Bill Forsyth)
there's nobody quite like Forsyth. there are so many red flags with this premise--smug oil rep goes to remote scottish village to buy up the land and ends up bonding with the locals--and he effortlessly sidesteps them and just allows the story to float along on waves of compassion, wonder and gentle humour. you don't realise how rare it is to find a sincerely humble, open and empathetic filmmaker until you watch a film like this, which outright ignores all of the many tempting opportunities to patronise, indict or martyr. it's sort of 'minor' by design but i can't hold that against it. also, yes, that is a young Peter Capaldi, although he won't be shoving anyone's ipod up their cock in this one.

5. Videodrome (dir. David Cronenberg)
you'll forgive me if i don't stay around to write about this. i just can't cope with the freaky stuff.

 

[CiG]

Smorgasbord

This sounds insane.

 

[CiG]

Top 5 favourites from November:

1. Wadge - Grindcore Penitentiary
   
   
   
2. Effluence - Liquefied
   
   
   
3. Impugner - Advent of the Wretched
   
   
   
4. 16 - Into Dust
   
   
   
5. Vomit Angel - Bucolic Nightmare
   

 

[no country for old wainds]

top 10 favourite footballers (vids included):
maradona - purely in terms of contributing to winning over a sustained period of time, i think there are better players than maradona, messi being one of them. peak for peak though, he'll always be the GOAT to me. most players pre-'00s wouldn't even be a top 50 player nowadays with all the athletic and tactical evolutions, but i think maradona would still potentially be the best player in the world nowadays even without modern training and diet etc. he was that special.

eric cantona - i'm lucky to have seen cantona play live many times when i was young, and i still consider him the greatest utd player of my lifetime. i roll my eyes most times footballers are called geniuses, but he was a genius who was also a warrior and what he did to single-handedly drag the club to success during his few years at the club will never happen again. he was also a madman of course, infamously kung fu kicking a dickhead fan during a game followed by the most iconic of press conferences, which just makes him more of a legend. he is not a man. he is cantona.

zinedine zidane - speaking of french genius madmen, zidane is one of my sporting ideals and was so great there's a feature-length film just devoted to watching him run around the pitch doing his thing. he was just as unhinged as cantona at times, with this straight up assault being his final act on a football field (in a world cup final no less), but he was even more brilliant.

thierry henry - sticking with the french theme, i've never been more frightened of an opposition player, he'd fucking destroy us every damn game. he is uncontroversially the best player ever to play in the premier league, a ridiculous mixture of athleticism, technique, inspiration and charisma.

ronaldinho - the most joyous, entertaining footballer who ever lived.

dimitar berbatov - the most pretentious player ever. fucking loved him. determined to do the most lazily beautiful thing possible at every moment, didn't give a shit. "you are not going to see me puffing around the pitch. we have a saying in bulgaria: great quality requires minimal effort."

nemanja vidic - my favourite defender ever. nightmare to play against, knew every trick in the book and would die for the team. got away with murder every game. broke his nose at least once per season. scored so many crucial headers for us too. absolute hero.

dennis bergkamp - the most intelligent footballer i've seen in the flesh. bit of an enigma, didn't go to european road games because he was scared of flying lol, if he absolutely had to go then he'd take a ferry. always seemed like such an arrogant prick but he backed it up with so many moments of insane brilliance.

andrea pirlo - the maestro. dude may as well have played in slippers smoking a pipe for how easily it came to him. just strolling around pinging perfect passes. crushed multiple england teams seemingly effortlessly, most people here were sick of the sight of him but i couldn't get enough. helps that he looks like a die hard villain.

juan roman riquelme - another guy who just seemed to run rings around everybody despite playing at half pace. nothing i love more than players doing magical things while looking like they just woke up from a long nap.

 

[CiG]

 

[Bloopy]

Artists I listened to the most in 2022 per Last.fm. I ran through the majority of the discography of a bunch of bands and NOFX is a bit out of place given their piles of short songs.

1. Björk
2. Battle Beast
3. NOFX
4. Ripship
5. Pentagram

Top 5 words I use that aren't on Wiktionary:

overponder
gilguy
querafancible
maltuned
diagraphephobia

I worked out that last one with the help of a Greek friend and it's been funny seeing it develop a life of its own online, as usually nothing I ever come up with takes off at all. Someone even used it in a RapPad battle.

Never thought diagraphephobia would be the one on the list to appear on Wiktionary first, but someone used it as a song title in a video game mod and now the word's all over the place. My one useful contribution to humanity.

 

[CiG]

Top 5 tracks from Devo's Duty Now for the Future:
1. Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA (one of the band's best in general)
2. Swelling Itching Brain
3. Clockout
4. Strange Pursuit
5. Secret Agent Man

 

[Bloopy]

My all-time top 5 fav albums that aren't on Spotify (excluding cases of a cruddy remaster or all tracks at least being available on a compilation). Just out of curiosity... I don't need them to be there:

Budgie - Never Turn Your Back on a Friend (surprised about this one)
Wall of Silents - Looking Through Cadaver Eyes
English Dogs - Where Legend Began (just mildly surprising given their other thrash album Forward Into Battle is on there)
Creeping - Order of Snakes
The House of Capricorn - In the Devil's Days


5 responses to a 2009 Xmas party dietary question from a work database table I was deleting:

 

[CiG]

Top 5 recent performances by actresses that impressed me, or something:


1. Rhea Seehorn
Her portrayal of Kim Wexler was incredible. Once in a lifetime kind of stuff. No spoilers but the bus scene in the final season of BCS. Just wow. In a lot of ways she stole the show.


2. Zendaya
Euphoria, of course! But also Malcolm & Marie and Dune. I went from hating her in Spider-Man: Homecoming to thinking she was a true great.


3. Mia Goth
I mean... this is a pretty obvious one. I loved X, and while I thought less of Pearl her performance was intense. Her role in The Survivalist seemed to go under the radar, that was my introduction to her, as well as High Life. Can't wait to see her in Infinity Pool.


4. Kelly Reilly
Yellowstone is pretty much nothing but morally ambiguous characters, but Kelly's Beth Dutton manages to stand out and shine in spite of all that competition. Also a more underrated role she killed it in was True Detective season 2.


5. Taylour Paige
One of my favourite rising stars. I loved her in Zola (my favourite movie of 2021) and she was one of the few redeeming qualities of White Boy Rick. She's got so much crazy shit coming in the future, for example Tony Kaye's next film, and the Toxic Avenger reboot.

 

[Bloopy]

Albums that are the point in an artist's discography where I say nope, switching this off and just pretending they called it quits beforehand:

• Julie London - The End of the World (it'd be 6 albums earlier with Around Midnight if Latin in a Satin Mood didn't exist)
• The Offspring - Days Go By
• Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown (American Idiot is quite good in my books, but some things will never work twice)
• Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier
• Radiohead - Kid A

 

[CiG]

Top 5 releases of January 2023:


1. Hemorrhoid - Demo '23
Like Nekro Drunkz but faster and darker. It's over so fast!

Spoiler

2. Ahab - The Coral Tombs
First great album of the year. Totally zoned out and got engulfed while reading a book. Greg Chandler from Esoteric does guest vocals on the closing track.


3. Praying - True Hellman
Brand new discovery. Their BC page says it better than I can:
"...steeped in far out alternative sounds from the 90's, with a wide range of influences from Eyehategod to Iron Monkey, while incorporating elements of early grooving Electric Wizard, with a smashing dose of Nirvana, Melvins and more."


4. Space Camp - Gold Star
Another new discovery even though this duo seems to have been around for awhile. Extremely tortured art punk/noise rock with a lot of sludgy appeal and interesting digital hardcore elements. The singer is seriously strained and deranged.

Spoiler

5. SG Lewis - AudioLust & HigherLove
First great pop album of the year. It's a bit of an epic too. The low and high moments are a bit turbulent but there are so many gems on here. Good fun and beautifully produced.

Spoiler

 

[CiG]

I've got a bunch of lists...

Top 5 releases of February:

1. Pussies - Pussies
Albert Witchfinder & Hail Conjurer make nasty music approaching 70's proto-punk meets 80's noise rock.

2. Junkyard Choir - Wild Ones Never Die
70's Tom Waits with a rock & roll, soul, blues backing band, out of London of all places. Great female backing singers too.

3. Parasitario - Everything Belongs to Death
Killer mixture of Swedish and Dutch death metal, from Japan.

4. Corpse Eater - World of Doom
Relentlessly bulldozing/puking one-man deathgrind from Germany.


5. E.T.D. - Nefarious Means
Awesome old school 80's style grindy death metal shit from Texas.

Top 5 releases of March:

1. Nuovo Testamento - Love Lines
Great catchy pop music.

2. Massacred - Lunatic Massacre
Best current Mortician worship. Fluids? Never heard of her.

3. Protrusion - Protrusion demo
Revival of proto-brutal death metal?

4. Death Reich - Disharmony
Vader worship from Sweden!

5. Expunged - Visions of Agony
Canadian Swedeath with chainsaw Hellhammer riffs.

Top 5 action flicks of 2022:


1. Top Gun: Maverick dir. Joseph Kosinski


2. Ambulance dir. Michael Bay


3. The Lair dir. Neil Marshall


4. Black Crab dir. Adam Berg


5. Lost Bullet 2 dir. Guillaume Pierret

 

[EspaDa]

Top 5 tracks by Plavi Orkestar (right now)

1. Sava tiho teče
2. Ljubi se istok i zapad
3. Lovac i košuta
4. Bolje biti pijan nego star
5. Soldatski bal

 

[no country for old wainds]

carrying on my '80s movie rankings from last page...

1984

1. Blood Simple (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
my favourite debut and my ultimate comfort movie, a deadpan masterpiece on slugs slithering along streams of sweat all the way to damnation. i watch it every year.

2. Repo Man (dir. Alex Cox)
best goddamned car in the yard! as a disaffected suburban male who dreams of sticking it to the man by uhh repossessing cars and fighting aliens, i naturally have the poster on my wall.

3. Stranger Than Paradise (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
another droll film about grumpy go-nowhere do-nothing american kids yearning to escape their concrete prisons during the reagan years. there's something profound in these yawningly empty images, although the characters aren't in on it.

4. Blonde Death (dir. James Robert Baker)
same theme again, this time applied to the lovers-on-the-run genre. sunny SoV scuzz with a feverishly literary mind and a vulgar trashy heart, written and directed by "the angriest gay man in the world".

5. Love Streams (dir. John Cassavetes)
cassavetes ruled the '70s, but his final film is just as great. no other filmmaker ever looked so closely at people and their neuroses.

1985

1. After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese)
top 3 scorsese, top 3 city at night movie, honestly might be my favourite screenplay of all time.

2. Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa)
not only the best shakespeare adaptation and the best use of colour, but the original and best version of no country for old men.

3. A Zed & Two Noughts (dir. Peter Greenaway)
the original and best dead ringers, or wes anderson with all hints of twee replaced by disgust and decay.

4. Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami)
life-affirming culinary western overflowing with love for food and movies. another one i might just start watching every year.

5. Typhoon Club (dir. Shinji Somai)
buncha kids trapped in school after hours during a typhoon and finding/losing themselves (through, yknow, rape and suicide and stuff).

 

[CiG]

Don't think I've ever heard of Blonde Death.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Don't think I've ever heard of Blonde Death.

"the next week passed like a montage of sheer and total romantic bliss. when we weren’t sunbathing in the backyard, sharing intimate secrets and laughing joyfully over sweet nothings, we were going for long and windswept drives through the vast mediocre expanses of orange county, drenched with a poignant mutual enthrallment that was almost too much for our mere physical bodies to contain. i suppose we packed a lifetime into that single week, with more joy and laughter, more bliss and euphoria, and more good clean honest heavy-duty fucking than most timid couples know in 20 or 30 years. by the fourth day, burt was starting to stink pretty bad, but we even turned disposing of his body into a fun-packed afternoon.

i believe even clorette saw how in love we were. behind that gag i sensed a soft-headed gaze of bemused approval, i guess she couldn't help seeing what all people no matter how foul or deranged have always seen: the world truly belongs to young lovers. still, the problem of exactly what to do about clorette continued to nag. knowing as i did now that vern had caused my real mother's death, i had abandoned my plan to simply keep clorette alive long enough to confess. instead, between hot kisses and hotter still bouts of ecstatic sex, i pictured both vern and clorette strung up in the garage like rancid sides of beef, link and me shoving clutch hooks up their asses and yanking hard til everything slipped out like a pinata full of guts. of course, i kept these visions to myself, not wanting to disturb our perfect bliss, and perfect it was."

 

[CiG]

Jesus that's pretty unhinged.

 

[Bloopy]

Top 5 caterpillars by species:

1. Uraba lugens (gum-leaf skeletoniser)
2. Kunugia divaricata (the other skull-faced caterpillar)
3. Acharia stimulea (saddleback caterpillar)
4. Calpodes ethlius (Brazilian skipper)
5. Papilio troilus (spicebush swallowtail)

Spoiler

 

[no country for old wainds]

nice! remind me to do a moth one later. will be UK ones only, mind