The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Coen Brothers; Hail, Caesar!; Fargo at 20

The Coen Brothers have a new movie now playing in theaters everywhere! (At least for the moment.) Marisa, Jesse, Nathaniel, Sara, and Ben went out to see Hail, Caesar! (as we went out to see Inside Llewyn Davis back in 2013) and then got together for a chat about the new movie, our favorites (and least favorites) from the Coen filmography, the filmmakers’ pet themes, actors, and techniques, and the upcoming twentieth anniversary of Fargo — along with the FX TV series with which Jesse has some bones to pick. It’s a wide-ranging conversation, hitting Lebowski, A Serious Man, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn’t There and many more! It’s a must-listen for any and all Coens fans: it really ties the room together, you betcha. (You know: for kids.)

How To Listen

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The Top 32 Best David Bowie Songs of All Time

David Bowie is dead, at least in the traditional sense. It seems impossible, not just because he released a new album a few days before he died, but because he always carried with him an air of the otherworldly, even when he wasn’t dressed as a Goblin King. It’s probably a cliché to say so by this point, but it’s no less true: David Bowie seemed immortal, and because of that, and all of the great work he left behind, he actually is.

But the man himself is gone, and we’re still dealing with the surprising waves of grief. When he passed away early last week, it the founders of SportsAlcohol.com hard – and we soon found out from the outpouring of love and sadness on social media that we were far from alone. It should go without saying that Bowie amassed a great number of both devotees and casual fans during his time on this earth, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen such widespread appreciation of a musician who we were all so lucky to share a planet with, if only for a handful of decades.

If there’s a good thing about a beloved and galactically talented artist dying what seems like “before his time” (though Bowie’s 69 years surely counted for triple that in terms of accomplishments), it’s the feelings of both comfort and hurt that we can continue to take from his music. So: SportsAlcohol.com invited a bunch of Bowie fans to vote on the best of his many, many songs, with everyone submitting their votes via Top 20 lists. There was a surprising amount of consensus for a list like this. Maybe you can chalk that up to the hits – those inescapable, undeniable hits. But if many lists lacked a roster of fans-only deep cuts, maybe that’s because Bowie wrote and/or performed an unusual number of songs that are too universally beloved to be ignored. Consider also that many of these hits were not, as such, actual hits, at least not in the Hit Single sense. Many of their reputations grew with time, through their places on classic and endlessly replayable records; through transcendent moments in film; or just by being really fucking great.

In addition to your SportsAlcohol.com regulars Rob, Sabrina, Jesse, Marisa, Nathaniel, Sara, Jeremy, Craig, and Chris, we were lucky enough to secure participation from these fine people:

Megan Burns is a Queens-based painter. One time her mom begged her to stop talking about David Bowie.
Vikram Murthi writes film and TV criticism for the A.V. Club and elsewhere.
Bryan Nies and President Obama both have mothers. Their mothers were born in the same hospital. Ahem, credentials.
Dennis Perkins is a freelance film and TV writer for the A.V. Club and elsewhere, and lives in Portland, Maine.
Jeff Prisco is a robotics engineer (non-evil variety). When not dad-ing, he enjoys watching bad sci-fi (evil robot variety).
Ashley Strosnider is a writer and editor who lives in Nebraska.

Commencing countdown, engines on:
Continue reading The Top 32 Best David Bowie Songs of All Time

Best of 2015!

It was the blurst of years, and SportsAlcohol.com was there for every second of it. If you missed any of our end-of-2015 coverage, here’s what we’ll keep with us going forward.

Movies

List: Best Movies of 2015

Podcast: Best Movies of 2015

Plus: Special consideration is given to MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, our almost-consensus pick for best movie of the year (because Jesse is a jerk).

Music

List: Best Albums of 2015

Podcast: Best Music of 2015

Playlist: Best Music of 2015 on Spotify

Plus: We (meaning Sara) appreciates some of the best songs of the year, including “Downtown” by Majical Cloudz, “Bored in the USA” by Father John Misty, and “Sapokanikan” by Joanna Newsom.

Television

List: The Best TV Shows of 2015

Plus: Sara discusses two of the best anti-heroes in this years’ prestige series, and Marisa argues for more stand-alone episodes, because nobody wants to watch 13-hour movies as much as showrunners want to create them.

Theater

Rob wrote about Hamilton, the best musical to hit Broadway in 2015 and probably many years hence.

See you at the end of 2016, suckers!

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Movies of 2015

Now that our list of the best movies of 2015 has been published, perhaps you’d like us to justify our choices — and address what didn’t make it? Well, you’re in luck, because on our Best Movies of 2015 podcast, Nathaniel, Sara, Marisa, and Jesse get into a lengthy, wide-ranging, and in-depth discussion of all of that

Find out:

–Which one of us failed to place Mad Max: Fury Road at #1 on his or her ballot
–What box office flop Nathaniel is particularly willing to stand up for
–Why Sara found Carol so moving
–Which of our collective picks baffled us as individuals
–What Marisa loved about Ex Machina
–What Jesse considers the most unexpected trend in sequels

In short, our Best Movies of 2015 podcast has something for everyone, so have a listen!

How To Listen

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

The Best Movie of 2015 is Mad Max: Fury Road

We saw it multiple times. We bought the DVD. We podcasted about it. So it’s probably not a huge shock to announce the official SportsAlcohol.com best movie of 2015, or that all four of our moviegoing voters were happy to talk about it some more. Check out the fourteen movies this one left in its wake and then let’s rev up our discussion of:

1. Mad Max: Fury Road by George Miller

Theron
Continue reading The Best Movie of 2015 is Mad Max: Fury Road

The Best Movies of 2015

2015 at the movies: There were no fewer than three excellent and satisfying part sevens. 70mm came back to multiplexes. The cast of Ex Machina was in everything, even Star Wars. Women talked about things other than men. The same guy made The Cobbler and Spotlight. There was a fourth movie about singing chipmunks.

It was a weird year, and not without its eclectic, sometimes unexpected pleasures. For our yearly poll, SportsAlcohol.com’s certified heavy moviegoers Nathaniel, Jesse, Marisa, and Sara voted with our ridiculous hearts and came up with fifteen of the year’s strongest achievements in cinema. We also talked about it in an upcoming podcast. But before you listen to us, read us waxing rhapsodic about some of the year’s best.

The 15 Best Movies of 2015

Continue reading The Best Movies of 2015

TRACK MARKS: Best of 2015 – “Downtown” by Majical Cloudz

Our Track Marks feature spotlights individual songs that SportsAlcohol.com contributors love. Looking back at the year, we’ve selected some of our favorite songs from albums that don’t appear on our Best Albums of 2015 list.

Adolescent yearning can be unbearable in real life but in art it’s often transcendent. Case in point is the music of Majical Cloudz, which has the intimate nakedness of an aural striptease. At times it’s like listening in on something you’re not meant to hear. As sad as it is romantic, “Downtown” from their sophomore album Are You Alone? (a title whose similarity to a late-night text can’t be accidental) is like a love song for a ghost, an impression bolstered by the starkness of the music video, which alternates between a black and white close-up of singer Devon Welsh, his gaze directed straight at the camera, and counterpart Matthew Otto spinning in what looks like the remnants of a bombed-out city. This ain’t the place Petulia Clark sang about.

Welsh’s voice has the same chameleonic qualities as Ian Curtis, timid one moment and adamant the next, and he puts it to good use here. The song opens with a shimmery electronic instrumental backed by a beat reminiscent of windshield wipers fighting a steady rain, a foggy, hypnotic melody that might float away if not for Welsh’s insistence on remaining in the moment, grasping for something that’s less a place than a state of mind. “Nothing you say will ever be wrong/Cause it feels good just being in your arms,” goes a typical sentiment. Yet the lyrics also look forward to a time when the intensity of these feelings will just be another memory. “If suddenly I die,” Welsh sings with a forthrightness that even those well beyond their teenage years will admire, “I hope they will say/That he was obsessed and it was okay.” Some things will naturally be outgrown and left behind but it only takes the right song at the right time to bring it all back again.

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Best Music of 2015

Another year of music has gone by, with all of the ups and downs that entails. In conjunction with our recent list of the best albums of 2015, SportsAlcohol.com rock and rollers Rob, Sara, Marisa, and Jesse got together to talk about the best music of 2015 — not just the best albums, but our favorite songs, each other’s idiosyncratic tastes, thoughts on Top 40 pop, and some gripes about the worst the music industry has to offer. Listen to our best music of 2015 podcast to find out:

–How we felt about this year’s high-profile band reunions
–Why we all like Belle & Sebastian so damn much
–Who among us is the biggest Carly Rae Jepsen fan
–Why Rob is glad he didn’t have social media as a kid
–What songs or albums we’d strike from the 2015 record, if we could
–What our moms think

It’s one of our widest-ranging discussions, and you don’t need to be some kind of music snob to enjoy it! So go enjoy it!

How To Listen

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

You can also listen to some of the music we talk about in this Spotify playlist.

The Top Six Best Albums of 2015

Last year, we kept it concise to bring you the top five records of 2014. Not 50, not 25, not even 10. Top 5, just like High Fidelity. Well, it’s been a productive year here at SportsAlcohol.com, so our music-voting core of Marisa, Sara, Rob, and Jesse decided we’d earned an extra spot. Maybe we can work our way up to a Top 10 over the next bunch of years, and achieve full Rolling Stone bloat by the time we’re, appropriately enough, in our seventies. In the meantime, here are the six records from 2015 that we most agreed on, full of brilliant women and unexpectedly wonderful reunions. We’ll discuss all of this and more on our podcast later this week; in the meantime, enjoy our top six.
Continue reading The Top Six Best Albums of 2015

TRACK MARKS: Best of 2015 – “Bored in the USA” by Father John Misty

Our Track Marks feature spotlights individual songs that SportsAlcohol.com contributors love. Looking back at the year, we’ve selected some of our favorite songs from albums that don’t appear on our Best Albums of 2015 list.

Artists have been looking back for as long as there have been others before them but few blur the line between past and present with as much flair (and controversy) as Father John Misty, the stage persona of ex-Fleet Fox-er Josh Tillman, which is equal parts Mick Jagger swagger and Harry Nilsson self-loathing. Like any good persona it’s a pliable one, noxiously hostile on one track and swooningly romantic on the next; the best songs on his second record I Love You, Honeybear often sound like a battle between the two, a hardened cynic trying on a pair of rose-colored glasses.

Tillman, you see, got married while he was working on Honeybear and the album is rife with the anxieties that come with making big life choices and devoting oneself to someone else’s happiness. “Bored in the U.S.A.” at first seems like an outlier, a Springsteen-referencing goof in the midst of tormented love songs that turns its gaze within rather than toward another. There’s more than a little of Randy Newman’s D.N.A. in its composition, from the deceptive simplicity of its piano line to the winking irony of the lyrics. (“Save me white Jesus,” he cries at one point.) But it’s of a piece with Tillman’s larger aim, which is to kick up enough dust that you won’t notice the real tears in his eyes.

Like “Born in the U.S.A.” it’s the sort of openhearted satire that invites misconstruing. Lazy listeners of that classic (several of them presidential candidates) heard only the patriotic fervor in Springsteen’s lyrics, ignoring the harder truths they underscored. Here too Tillman seems to be sarcastically calling out the lie of the American dream with such lines as “They gave me a useless education/And a subprime loan/on a Craftsman home.” But as the studio audience laughter begins trickling into the audio the hollow core of his cleverness sinks in. It’s not the U.S.A. that’s the problem but the privileged men who proclaim to be bored with it and believe that alone makes them interesting. It seems a bit counterintuitive for an artistic persona to shill for the rewards of being real. But in the year of the so-called “affluenza teen” it may be too bitter a pill to be swallowed straight.