2024 Year in Review

Here’s a roundup of most of the things I’ve written this year: here on my site, for Rogerebert.com, for my newsletter, and for my new column at Liberties Journal. Every year it’s the same thing. I spend so much time feeling like I’m wasting my time or not working hard enough. Then I put together my year-end roundup and have to give myself a stern talking-to. Here’s what I wrote this year, with links out to the pieces, in case you’re interested.

 
 

My column at Liberties Journal

My new column launched at Liberties with an essay on my Actors Studio background and how that has informed my film criticism.

If you haven’t tried to act yourself, it might seem like it happens by magic. Hamlet wonders how a fictional situation can elicit real tears from an actor. A lot of the confusion about acting that I see in some of the commentary could be cleared up in one afternoon by attending a rehearsal for a community theater production of Our Town or The Crucible or … it doesn’t matter. What you will see is a bunch of people in a room, problem-solving, solution-finding, trying stuff, creating together. The same thing happens in film. The budgets are bigger, that’s all.

I adored writing about Carole Lombard. It was also so much fun re-watching all of her films in preparation.

The fastest screwball dialogue was probably in His Girl Friday, but Carole Lombard was the fastest thinker (and talker) of them all. She followed Shaw’s dictum as though born to it, tossing herself into silliness with such abandon she left everyone staggering in her dust. She is screwball’s pinnacle. Screwball is cathartic because we watch people trying to maintain their dignity as they fall in love. Lombard was different. She had no dignity to lose.

I interviewed author (and my old friend) Sean Abley about the anthology he co-edited, Queer Horror: A Film Guide.

“As queer people, we have different rules about the media we consume and how we archive it. It’s such a part of our history that to leave it out of the book felt negligent. It’s also just fun and titillating. It’s important to remember horror movies are fun. The fact that there’s a gay porn Exorcist homage … I laugh just saying it.”

One of the most long-overdue-pieces I’ve ever written. I saved it for my column: I wrote about my simultaneous discovery of John Cassavetes’ Opening Night and Tennessee Williams’ Two-Character Play.

Perhaps those who don’t spend their time rehearsing plays find Myrtle’s shenanigans incomprehensible. What is the big deal? Just say the lines. But it is a big deal. Cassavetes said once in an interview, “[The actors’] one goal is to communicate a precise thought in a way that can be clearly understood. It’s a very difficult job.” Actors always understand Opening Night. I didn’t find the film “surreal”. To me, it was like, “Oh yeah, that’s last Thursday night.”

I wrote this piece under terrible circumstances. It was a terrible late summer and early fall. But the piece flowed, because I’ve been wanting to write it for years: on Marion Keisker’s crucial role in “discovering” Elvis.

Keisker, though, sensed something. The boy had an inchoate quality: he was clearly unformed, but his presence was urgent — insistent, really — even with his awkwardness and noticeable stutter. She wanted to remember him, and asked his name (“Elvis Pressley,” she wrote). She started a file for him, adding a note: “Good ballad singer — hold.”

I interviewed film-maker Sinéad O’Shea about her documentary Blue Road — The Edna O’Brien Story.

“She wasn’t “old money. She wasn’t “new money” either. People didn’t know how to place her. She made them feel bad. She was very threatening to the prevailing social order of the time, which was so patriarchal, all about propping up the weak man, the father, a stupid violent alcoholic. So many women devoted their lives to preserving this mirage.”

It’s so nice to have my own perch at Liberties, where I can put up my own list. Here’s my Top 20 of 2024, with some runners-up.

I’ve put together an unranked list of the films I loved in 2024. Some of the films speak to How We Live Now. With others it’s not so obvious. All are unique visions. None are cookie-cutter projects made to order. We’re headed into dark times. We need art now more than ever.

For Rogerebert.com

I reviewed the extremely emotional and very well done Society of the Snow, about the 1972 crash in the Andes.

Luque approaches the landscape with a healthy respect for its ominous quality: “Human beings cannot survive here. Nothing can survive here.”

I reviewed Chilean director Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s extraordinary directorial debut, The Settlers.

Westerns have been Hollywood’s tentpole genre from the jump. For years, they were frank exercises in one-sided mythologizing (but even the one side wasn’t presented truthfully). Eventually, Westerns entered a necessary period of deconstruction, where the original mythologies were interrogated. In the ensuing decades, there has been a lot to interrogate.

I reviewed the first of two films starring Daisy Ridley this year: I’m impressed. First up: the weird quiet Sometimes I Think About Dying.

She is believably abstracted, as though Fran can barely be dragged out of her death-wish fantasy life to actually converse with the person right in front of her. In Ridley’s hands, Fran is not a bundle of Awkward Lonely Girl cliches. She’s an enigma.

The Promised Land was very good, would be a good companion piece with The Settlers.

Mikkelsen’s performance is a marvel, really. Haughty at first to Johannes and Ann Barbara, and downright mean to the child, Mikkelsen suggests depths which Ludvig attempts to conceal. What is this man’s pain? What is he looking for? Or running from? At times, tiny flickers of human emotion appear at the corners of his eyes, or his mouth, softening him. These moments carry more weight because Ludvig is normally so inexpressive.

I really loved Bas Devos’ Here.

This philosophical standpoint sounds rather grandiose when written down, but it’s soothing and intriguing in Davos’ approach. “Here” is experiential rather than story-driven. The big things happen not in the words, but through gestures, physical and emotional. Gestures like showing someone something. Pointing at something you want them to see. Opening your hands to show someone what you are holding. Offerings, all.

Glitter & Doom is a movie made up of Indigo Girls songs.

The challenge for jukebox musicals is to create a script that could conceivably exist without the music. “Glitter & Doom” can’t quite manage it.

Club Zero is incredibly creepy and there should definitely be trigger warnings in re: eating disorders/anorexia/etc.

Presenting what it means to live in service of a single ideology could also be a “critique”, but Hausner’s approach leaves room for interpretation. Ideology creates monsters. The belief in Utopias also creates monsters. Is that what we’re seeing?

I was terrified by this two-hander, You’ll Never Find Me.

The pace is slow, and the sound design is oppressive: the howls of wind, the dripping, groaning pipes, floors and chairs creaking, all of which sometimes sound like human voices in agony.

I loved Wicked Little Letters. So much fun.

Bullying campaigns waged in the comments sections of Instagram and TikTok are not at all different from harassing letters sent through the postal service. A person may be perfectly pleasant “in real life”, and when hiding behind a pseudonym they are a demon. We know this. This is our world.

Scoop is a fascinating look at how the BBC got the interview with Prince Andrew. How on earth was he convinced to do such a thing? And why did nobody tell him not to do it?

What kind of a bubble do you have to live in to say things like “I don’t sweat” and “It was a convenient place to stay”, and think afterwards, “I really nailed that”? Well, we know what kind of bubble he lived in. The royal bubble is made of iron.

I guess it’s the year of the Indigo Girls. Too bad the documentary about them It’s Only Life After All isn’t good. But reviewing the film did give me a chance to write more about them, which was fun.

There’s a claustrophobia in the documentary’s approach, even a laziness. Ray and Saliers are the sole interview subjects.

Reviewed the pretty awful Jeanne du Barry.

At film’s end, the voiceover informs us Zamor did what he did “out of distress or spite.” “Spite”? This sounds suspiciously like “he bit the hand that fed him.” It is the “tell,” the giveaway of how the film wants us to view Jeanne.

I reviewed Ezra, starring Bobby Cannavale, with Robert De Niro in a smaller role. Not perfect, not awful, but it does a lot right.

The exploration of neurodivergence in cinema has a pretty spotty history, although most of these films have good intentions. “Hellbent on Boogie” points the way forward. So, too, does “Ezra,” directed by Tony Goldwyn, with a screenplay by Tony Spiridakis. The film loads itself down with two different plots, one cliched, one new and fresh. This makes “Ezra” a sometimes frustrating watch, but there’s a lot here to recommend.

Just the Two of Us was very effective. I love Virginia Efira.

Melodramas, then and now, have been dismissed as “soapy” or shallow, but melodrama is often the best vehicle for serious social and even political commentary.

Jennifer Connelly gives a great performance in Bad Behaviour (a not good movie), which is a little fascinating.

Three younger women interrogate her, and their dead eyes looking at her tell Lucy they have no interest in getting to know her, and they definitely don’t respect her as an “elder”. Her life experience means nothing to them. Lucy is a demanding role, and Connelly at times looks ravaged by the emotions tearing her up from the inside. Connelly outdoes herself.

I was totally mesmerized by Daddio.

The chemistry between two actors is a mysterious thing. Johnson and Penn’s chemistry is so compulsively watchable, which is fascinating because neither of them can move. For the most part, they are only looking at each other through the rear view mirror, but the back-and-forth is genuine.

It’s rare I hate a movie. I hated Goldilocks and the Two Bears.

Instead, we have naked young women talking about stereotypically male-centric Boomer cultural references, like Henry Miller and the Three Stooges, while never being convincing they know about any of these things. These women are lip-synching to Lipsky. It would have been refreshing if Ivy were a happy bimbo.

National Anthem is a really interesting look at a nearly-invisible but vibrant sub-culture, queer rodeo riders.

These people are not just “survivors”. They are thriving. The rodeo is their world. They have created the world they want to live in.

Huge fan of Damian McCarthy’s films and he’s only made two so far. I reviewed Oddity.

McCarthy has patience as a filmmaker. He can wait. He doesn’t try to overwhelm with easy jump-scares. He allows the sense of uneasiness to build and build.

I really loved Kneecap, a loosely fictionalized movie about the real-life Irish-language-only hip hop trio from Belfast.

Kneecap was playing sold-out shows, where hundreds of kids were screaming lyrics in Irish. Shouldn’t the Irish language people welcome this development? Of course, they don’t!

Good One is so damn good. These little movies get lost in the shuffle of the entertainment hellscape we are currnetly living in. Please seek it out.

What starts off as a nice time (albeit chaotic with all the bickering) quickly becomes not so nice. In fact, there’s a feeling in the air, more and more distinct as the film goes on, that Sam is not safe with these two men she’s known all her life.

This was a tough one but it had to be done. I paid tribute to Gena Rowlands.

The man she’s with (Val Avery) asks her to “stop being silly”, and to just “be herself”. An abyss opens up. What does “being herself” even mean? Her beauty is part of the problem, and she knows it. She’s a “looker” but no one sees her.

The Wasp is a pretty wild two-hander: two very good performances, plus a couple of twists even I didn’t see coming.

“We’re so different,” Heather says to Carla. Carla squints at her, asking, “Are we?”

One of my favorite films of the year: Zia Anger’s My First Film.

We were 15 seconds in and I was already in tears.

I thought Sweetheart Deal was one of the best documentaries of the year and … no one saw it. See it.

There are many documentaries where real-life events swerve unpredictably, outside the original project’s scope, films like Gimme Shelter, Capturing The Friedmans, or Daughter From Danang. “Sweetheart Deal” shares much in common with these films. Watching it is like being trapped in a nightmare and finally wrenching yourself awake. The truth is almost too horrible to bear when it comes out, but it’s better than living in a lie.

Amber Alert! It’s not good!

Now, here we are, in 2024, with another movie with the same title and scenario. They’re basically the same film, although the recent one ditches the found footage approach. Kerry Bellessa directed both films. As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Daisy Ridley movie #2: Magpie.

Prehistoric man knew women needed protection in the vulnerable period after giving birth. Ben, a self-satisfied “modern” man, makes her fend for herself. She’s never forgiven him and has never been the same.

No Other Land is the documentary of the year. It’s harrowing. I will never watch it again.

Maintaining the ability to be shocked by heartless cruelty is what makes us human, and the only thing, at times, that keeps the flame of hope alive. If “doesn’t matter” is your response to a woman’s plea for her daughters’ lives, regardless of her politics/culture/religion/race, etc., then you have left the human circle entirely.

Small Things Like These is in my Top 10 and (in my opinion) Cillian Murphy gives the best male performance of the year.

This is a marvel of a performance, extremely expressive and yet deeply inward-looking. When the depths are stirred, you can’t see the bottom.

All We Imagine as Light is in my Top 10.

The film’s evocative title (Kapadia is gifted with those) actually describes the experience of watching it, how the nocturnal insomniac mood is sparked with distant colored lights, and how moving into the light requires “imagining.” Perhaps the light isn’t light, but it’s good enough if we imagine it so.

The End is Joshua Oppenheimer’s latest, a post-apocalyptic musical starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon.

We don’t have to like the result, but in an increasingly play-it-safe world, where the bottom line dominates, experiments like “The End” are a breath of fresh air.

For Ebert’s roundup of the best films of 2024, I wrote about All We Imagine as Light.

“All We Imagine as Light” is poetic and visually mesmerizing, the film filled with a sense of insomniac yearning.

Pamela Anderson’s performance in The Last Showgirl is one of the best of the year.

Anderson’s accomplishment here defies easy comparison. It’s not a comeback. It’s a beginning.

For Ebert’s Great Performances of 2024 compilation, I wrote about Ralph Fiennes in Conclave.

What Fiennes is doing is harder than it looks; it takes great control, a control mastered over a decades-long career.

It’s a mistake to call Babygirl an “erotic thriller”.

When characters have metaphor-heavy jobs, you know there’s trouble in paradise.

Newsletter

I wrote about nuclear winter movies.

If you were a tail-end-of-Cold-War Gen X kid, you came into a world of saber-rattling anxious adults. You were subjected to the movies/television made by these anxious adults. Even though you didn’t vote yet and maybe had only a vague idea of what the old men on TV were fighting about, you knew you were at the mercy of adults who might decide to “push the button”. Dystopia wasn’t an interesting thought experiment in the early ‘80s. It felt imminent.

I wrote about my favorite film of the year, Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

Jude knows all the counter-arguments to the theses he presents and gives them space in talk-heavy scripts. I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn are, essentially, long arguments where all sides are presented, albeit not in orderly debate-club fashion. Liberal pieties are lampooned alongside right-wing idiocy. Jude, though, does not obscure his point of view. You always know where a caricaturist stands. A caricaturist always picks sides.

I interviewed screenwriter Bonnie Gross (her script Lady Parts won a special jury award at the Florida Film Festival. I was on that jury. We adored her script, based on her own experiences with vaginismus). Fascinating project.

“I am an AP English nerd, and you can’t have comedy without tragedy and you can’t have tragedy without comedy. I feel like humor was really important for the script, especially if we wanted it to sit with people who maybe don’t have a vaginal pain issue. It needed to resonate on a human connection level.”

Wrote about All I’ve Got & Then Some, winner of the Best Narrative Feature at Florida Film Festival. Adore this film. (It’s streaming now on Amazon and Tubi).

They shot it in seven days, after a prep period of just three days. Friends in real life, Dean and Stephens called their people in, quickly gathered a team, and charged out into the Los Angeles sun to make what was in their heads. They already had their source material: Stephens’ own story of his early years in Los Angeles pursuing stand-up comedy while living out of his car.

I wrote a little tribute to Dabney Coleman.

Coleman often played limited men, who seethed with barely controlled rage about losing their spot, what we would call “privilege” now (even though the word is so over-used it probably should be retired. It’s what Robert Lifton called a “thought-terminating cliche”.) Coleman understood men like this. He embodied resentful men who couldn’t stand the new era, hostile men who couldn’t hide their hostility.

I had to go long on Glen Powell, I just had to, because the way people were talking about him was so irritating.

The whole “what’s up with all the rodent-looking guys” discourse is gross and a commentary on how THE SAME actors look now. Even nerds have six packs. Once upon a time, Jill Clayburgh was a star. Once upon a time, Richard Dreyfuss was a leading man. Donald Sutherland #RIP was a sexy leading man.) Whether or not you understand “the point” of Glen Powell, he is here, and it might be interesting to talk about why.

I wrote a tribute to dear wonderful Shelley Duvall.

Shelley Duvall was brilliant in that she was able to be as unself-conscious, as raw, as HERSELF, when the camera was rolling as she was in her real life. There was no difference for her. It’s like she roller-skated into the frame from offscreen and there was no boundary between the two sides. Something happens to people – even very very good actors – when they hear “action”. You go from being a real person to an actor playing a scene. There’s a little interior “click” that happens. Shelley Duvall didn’t experience that click.

One of my favorite reading experiences this year was Liz Riggs’ debut novel Lo Fi.

What would it be like if Past You could leap forward “authoritatively” into the future and get a glimpse of what it all will look like? Of course we can’t do that. But a novelist like Liz Riggs can.

I wrote some more about Gena Rowlands. Too much to say in one lifetime.

Generations will continue to discover their work – and also the work she did in projects not directed by him. She had a lengthy career after he died, and one of her best performances was in a film NOT directed by John Cassavetes. Her career still needs to be grappled with critically.

Alain Delon passed away the same week as Gena Rowlands.

His was not an inviting kind of beauty. He was aware of what he looked like, and his awareness was certainly in operation in his performances, but he was not self-conscious about it. He was beyond that. Somehow. It’s mysterious.

I paid tribute to the gentle gritty masculinity of Kris Kristofferson.

Kristofferson had to break free of his family to become himself. This gave him some grit. He had to consciously choose his life. He arrived on the scene fully grown. Music called to him but familial pressures delayed it a bit. He was an athlete, a Rhodes scholar, an Army Ranger, helicopter pilot, a writer, too. A career in the military was expected. Kristofferson was proud of being a veteran. He said once it was possible to love the warrior and hate the war. To him, this wasn’t a contradiction.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point was in my Top 10 of the year.

What you sense is that what you are looking at is not in-real-time at all. The film itself is a memory, and a collective one.

Hundreds of Beavers is on my Top 10 of the year.

I laughed because the repetition was satisfying. It’s Charlie Chaplin working on the assembly line. It’s I Love Lucy, where Lucy comes up with a cockamamie plan and you just know it’s all going to go to hell. I was in the hands of great schtick-makers, and I LOVE well-done schtick.

On my site 2020 roundup

For my own enjoyment, I decided to write about a lot of the rock ‘n roll pioneers this year. I worked on it throughout the year. I need to write for pleasure too. Of course I’ve written a ton about Sam Phillips in connection to Elvis (and others) but it was fun to focus on just him.

Phillips was a very complicated man. A storyteller. A weaver of tales. He had a couple of pretty major breakdowns and submitted to electric shock therapy multiple times. He had a Messianic belief in what he saw in his own head. The equipment he put together for the recording service was so rudimentary you can’t even believe it WORKED. He trusted the sound of the room, and this was one of his main contributions. The room was small. There are no frills. It looks like an office. But the room had feel.

I wrote about Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ruth Brown.

Things moved fast. Brown had hit after hit after hit, so much so that Atlantic was referred to as The House that Ruth Built. She toured a lot, made television appearances, appeared on variety shows. Her numbers are impressive: she sold millions, the songs all charted.

I wrote about one of my favorite voices ever, Etta James.

She was in the foster care system, she never knew her dad. She had an early gift for singing, which she trained and cultivated. She was a very small woman with a GIGANTIC voice. One of the great voices of rock ‘n roll. You get glimpses of her in other people’s biographies and memoirs and you always want to know more. You can feel the roughness of her upbringing in her singing: every single note is filled with ALL of her.

This one’s for my mother, who loved him and shared with me her stories of seeing him back in the day: Josh White.

It’s one thing to be a protest singer in the middle of the Vietnam War, when basically everyone was protesting. It’s quite another thing to come out with a song called “Uncle Sam Says”, criticizing segregation in the armed forces, in 1941.

Gene Vincent wasn’t around forever, but he inspired so many people, especially the British Invasion people.

Gene Vincent was a HUGE figure in the first wave of rockabilly, and he was extremely important in influencing the next wave – the boys coming up right behind, particularly the British invasion boys, who were stunned by him. Everyone was stunned by Elvis, but Elvis was a little bit otherworldly. His rise was so unprecedented you couldn’t even really ASPIRE to it. But Vincent’s level seemed much more achievable.

I wrote about Fats Domino, the man Elvis called “the REAL King of Rock and Roll”. It’s actually nice to read a story about someone who didn’t die in obscurity, who didn’t have to wait for the flowers to come to him, who achieved massive success while he was here.

“Fat Man” was his first monster hit, and it was a monster hit the likes of which the world had never really seen up until that point, or at least with the new technology of recording/radio/distribution. All of these were relatively recent developments in music. It sold millions. Domino got rich. He could have gotten rich just off that. But he kept going. He was second only to Elvis in sales in the ’50s. Think about that. He recorded hit after hit, dominating the 1950s – when it was a very HARD decade to dominate in, due to the Elvis factor.

Rufus Thomas was so important to creating the environment of Beale Street, of Memphis music in general.

Thomas’ other children were also successful, soul singer Vaneese Thomas and keyboardist Marvell Thomas. They were an institution as a family. Thomas was the son of sharecroppers – they all were in those early years of Memphis music – including Sam Phillips. Thomas got his start in vaudeville, so his entertainment roots went deep. He wasn’t “just” a singer. He was the whole package. He was a personality!

Dubravka Ugrešić died in 2023. Her writing is very important to me.

Her punishment was swift and severe. She pointed out that much of this was an illusion: she was Yugoslavian, not “Croatian” – she had no relationship to “Croatia”, she had no nostalgia for a country that didn’t exist when she was born. She couldn’t just swap identities because she was told to. She was Enemy #1, and it was even worse because she was a woman. The worst possible shit was said about her. The death threats were constant. She was shunned from literary magazines and publishing houses. Nobody would touch her. She literally fled for her life.

Carl Perkins is another one I’ve written a lot about but usually in the context of someone else (ahem). So I decided to just focus on him which was fun.

There are stories about how Carl Perkins, who spent his youth picking cotton, learned to play guitar on a broom handle, and once he actually got a guitar, he could not afford new strings, so he would tie them and knot them if they broke. His distinct guitar styling was a result of him bending around the strings order to avoid the knot. The people who came after – who imitated Perkins – could buy as many guitar strings as they wanted. But they wanted that bendy awesome sound, a sound borne from poverty.

I wrote about James Brown and his performance on the T.A.M.I. Show.

Keith Richards said that deciding to do The T.A.M.I. Show was the worst career decision the Stones ever made. The ultimate compliment. Nobody follows James Brown. And if anyone does, they’ll be sorry. Forever.

I loved writing about the Teen Idol himself, Ricky Nelson.

This is just speculation but I think Nelson – even with his talent and his outrageous good looks – even being famous – seemed fairly regular. A kid who went to high school. Played high school football. Had two recognizable parents. Middle-class vibe (even though they were rich). Elvis was exotic. Elvis was Southern. Elvis grew up poor. Elvis was remote, by comparison. He was from the Great Depression. Nelson was strictly post-WWII. Nelson was “one of us”, but with a California gleam. He was a peer. And the teenage girls went absolutely BANANAS.

Wrote about the very important Big Joe Turner.

Big Joe Turner was a blues shouter from Kansas City, and also one of the many – many – building blocks in what eventually would be called “rock ‘n roll”. His career spanned from jazz clubs in the 1920s to touring the world up until his death in 1985. He stood on stages with and collaborated with them all: Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, boogie-woogie maestro Albert Ammons, pianist Pete Johnson.

It’s about time I wrote a little something about Djuna Barnes.

Barnes’ life was not easy. She was an alcoholic. She lived in obscurity for decades, almost baffled by the young gay women who sought her out to tell her how much Nightwood meant to them. She had no concept of what she had done. Or maybe she did, but she lost interest in it, or couldn’t relate it to the newer generations.

How does one even begin to talk about Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

If a Martian arrived on earth, and the first thing you showed him was a clip of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins performing “I Put a Spell on You” the Martian might get the totally wrong impression of what pop culture was on this alien planet. They’d think it was normal. It was never normal.

I watched my friend Meredith rescue a freaked-out osprey from a net over her rabbit yard.

When Meredith and I sat next together in 8th grade Math, not knowing one another at all, but bonding through our constant clowning of what we considered to be our extremely ridiculous teacher, I had no idea we would become lifelong friends – we were 13, what did we know.

I wrote about going to see James Burton back in the day, but decided to do more of an overview of his extraordinary career (which is still going).

“Susie Q” didn’t take Dale Hawkins to the top, although the song is now recognized as one of the most important and influential tracks of the 1950s … mostly because of James Burton’s guitar lick. James Burton was 17 years old. It was the first time he ever recorded anything.

James Burton and Dale Hawkins were teenagers when they recorded “Suzie Q”.

But the whole thing is legendary. The cowbell in the opening. There’s something nasty about all of it. It’s dirrrrrty. Dirtier than a lot of the “rockabilly” stuff going on at the time, geared towards the sock hop crowd. Genres are imprecise. This isn’t “rockabilly” although history tries to loop him into it. Dale Hawkins was a harbinger of the future.

Wynonie Harris was a wild man. And very influential!

Harris was a thrilling performer, he used everything he had, a real blues shouter, full-body performance (someone once said Elvis’ shenanigans were mild compared to Harris).

I wrote about my little pilgrimage to visit the Elvis Shakespeare bookshop in Edinburgh.

I said, “So I’d love to buy an Elvis record. I’m not picky. What do you have right now?” He said, “Will you be here next week? Someone’s donating 4,000 Elvis records.” “What??”

I wrote a tribute to the legendary Judith Jamison.

I took classes there during Jamison’s time as Artistic Director, so I would sometimes get a glimpse of her in the hallways, surrounded by people, talking/listening seriously, and she was imposing and beautiful, sometimes with a long silk scarf draped around her neck and shoulders falling down her back – her posture so erect and graceful, something only years of dance training could create.

I wrote about LaVern Baker, whose influence artistically was huge (amazing career), and also left a powerful legacy behind.

There were many many people who were crucial in developing the new sound populating the air waves, the raucous sexually adventurous must-be-danced-to sound: the desire “out there” for something DIFFERENT being reflected by the smart performers who felt the need. So there were people like Fats Domino, Sam Phillips, Wynonie Harris, Ahmet Ertegun, Little Richard, Carl Perkins … I mean, these people were all over the place, geographically and culturally, but they all felt the same restless desire to CHANGE. To open the damn windows and let in something NEW. LaVern Baker felt it too.

I wrote a tribute to Paula Chapman, a beloved commenter in the Supernatural community here. She passed away this summer.

She was a Sam Winchester Whisperer. She was hurt by what was done to the character in later seasons (I think we all sensed this, that nobody “over there” understood Sam or knew how to write him), and was eloquent in her explanations as to what was wrong, what was missing. She stuck up for Sam, she had his entire life in her head at all times.

I wrote about the tiny woman with the huge voice, the chart-busting phenom Brenda Lee. Who is not sorry, not sorry at all.

Brenda Lee moved on to superstardom, selling millions and millions of records. And millions. She dominated the 1960s and her career was basically forgotten by the generation directly following. Still: she was on the heels of The Beatles – the freakin’ Beatles – in terms of how many records she sold. She beat the Beach Boys. She was huge.

Charlie Rich has a voice like no other. It makes me melt.

Nobody was really putting jazz and country together. And it still isn’t really done. But he did it.

Look who’s come to live with me. His name is Frankie. He is cuddly and sweet, as well as demonic and mischievous. The whole package. It is so good having him here.

I feel settled for the first time since 2020. And so I felt a little bit more comfortable considering bringing a cat into my life. I couldn’t when I was living with someone, and I couldn’t, in general, when my own living situation was so clearly temporary, etc. It’s a big commitment. I missed the comfort of knowing Hope was there, lying on the couch, looking at me, following me around.

R.I.P.

Flaco the owl
Steve Albini
Dabney Coleman
Shelley Duvall
Edna O’Brien
Gena Rowlands
Gena Rowlands
Alain Delon
Maggie Smith
Kris Kristofferson
Judith Jamison

 
 
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5 Responses to 2024 Year in Review

  1. Just a quick thought on Glen Powell (who I have liked a great deal in the things I’ve seen him in): It’s always interesting to me to consider stars like him, who just work and work and work for years before finally achieving a degree of stardom (like the Ryans Gosling and Reynolds). There’s always weird Big Discussion about them and their stardom and why they’re in so much stuff, and in nearly every case you’ll read about them and see one sentence someplace along the lines of “Directors love the guy, he always shows up on time and is never a pain in the ass on set.” Maybe THAT’s why: the guy’s just a pro, and we should like it pros get rewarded for their work, right?

    Anyway, it also amazes me how I think I follow you and your writing obsessively and yet I somehow missed quite a lot of what’s linked here! I’ll have to start summing up my own stuff this weekend….

    • sheila says:

      // and in nearly every case you’ll read about them and see one sentence someplace along the lines of “Directors love the guy, he always shows up on time and is never a pain in the ass on set.” //

      Kelly, yeah I think theres something to this. He just does his work, seems to be grateful for it, and people just like having him around.

      Having watched his whole career while prepping for that piece – it’s amazing to see how he really needed someone to set him free. iMO it was Everybody Wants Some – Linklater’s approach allowed him a lot of room to just do what he does. All of the roles in that film could be played by anyone – but it’s hard to picture anyone else playing his role. It’s certainly when I sat up and took notice of him.

      It’s cool when someone you “clock” as cool then goes on and becomes this big old-fashioned movie star. Curious to see what he does next!

    • sheila says:

      You are as hard to keep up with, writing-wise, as I am. I read what I can, when I can! I will check out your roundup too!

      Look at us. Still going after two decades. More than two decades. it seems kind of amazing.

  2. Ian says:

    I heard “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in a store in early December, and I was thinking how I didn’t know anything about Brenda Lee. You published your great piece a few days later. Thanks for the serendipity! I loved the piece about your cats, too.

    • sheila says:

      Ian – cool!! Brenda Lee! I love it when that happens – you ask a question to yourself and then randomly some person on the internet answers it. It’s so interesting to me – how huge she was and then how much she was eclipsed by the British invasion. she wasn’t the only one!

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