Best of 2018
Cold War
Film:
Vice
Cold War
Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody
Last year: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Florida Project
Foreign-Language Film:
The Square
Cold War
Last year: The Square (Sweden)
Documentary:
Faces Places
Three Identical Strangers, RBG, Bombshell, The Ballymurphy Precedent
Male Lead:
Rami Malek – Bohemian Rhapsody
Christian Bale – Vice
Viggo Mortensen – Green Book, Robert Redford – The Old Man & The Gun, Steve Coogan – Stan & Ollie
Last year: Daniel Day-Lewis – Phantom Thread, Steve Carell – Battle of the Sexes
Female Lead:
Olivia Coleman – The Favourite
Joanna Kulig – Cold War
Last year: Frances McDormand – Three Billboards
Male Support:
Terry Notary – The Square
Steve Carell – Vice, Sam Rockwell – Vice
Last year: Woody Harrelson – Three Billboards, Sam Rockwell – Three Billboards
Female Support:
Amy Adams – Vice
Sissy Spacek – The Old Man & The Gun, Rachel Weisz – The Favourite, Emma Stone – The Favourite, Nina Arianda – Stan & Ollie
Last year: Brooklyn Prince – Florida Project, Mary J Blige – Mudbound
Director:
Adam McKay – Vice
Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards
Writer:
Adam McKay – Vice
Last year: Martin McDonagh – Three Billboards
Editing:
Vice
Last year: Dunkirk
Cinematography:
Lukasz Zal – Cold War
Last year: Roger Deakins – Blade Runner 2049 (went on to pick up his 1st Oscar for this, after numerous nominations)
Film Music:
Bohemian Rhapsody
Cold War
Last year: Three Billboards
Single/Song:
I Want You (Sam Reid & Claudia Jolly – The Girl from the North Country)
Last year: Willie Nelson – God’s Problem Child
Album:
The Girl from the North Country (London cast)
The Prophet Speaks (Van)
Last year: undecided
Gig:
David Byrne – Hammersmith Odeon
The Midnight Special – White Album anniversary; Tom Robinson – Shepherds Bush Empire; Hothouse Flowers/Hot Press anniversary – Nells; Donal Lunny & Andy Irvine – Barbican
Last year: Hothouse Flowers – Electric Ballroom, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Millennium Dome, Avishai Cohen – Barbican
Play:
Girl from the North Country [2nd viewing]
Last year: Girl from the North Country, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Art Exhibition:
Picasso: 1932 (Tate Modern)
Collections Privees (Musee Marmottan)
Last year: Basquiat (Barbican)
Book:
The Leithen Stories – John Buchan
Last year: Everybody Lies – Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
TV:
Mrs Wilson (BBC)
13 Reasons Why (Netflix), Maltese (More 4)
Last year: Stranger Things S1
Sport:
Ireland beating the All-Blacks
The demeanour of the England team at the World Cup in Russia
Event:
50th anniversary of The Beatles’ White Album
Dearly departed:
- Amos Oz
- Philip Roth
- Aretha Franklin
- William Goldman
- Chas (Hodges)
- Burt Reynolds
- Eric Bristow
- Stephen Hawking
- Ken Dodd
- Roger Bannister
- Dennis Edwards
- Peter Wyngarde
- Dolores O’Riordan
![[Nov] Ireland beat world champions New Zealand for the first time ever on home soil - Jacob Stockdale scores the only try](https://aarkangel.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/ire-all-blacks.jpeg?w=480)
[Nov] Ireland beat world champions New Zealand for the first time ever on home soil – Jacob Stockdale scores the only try of the match
Simple Pleasures part 4 
Mine on the way (Cold War will be in there!).
Music: ‘Bay of Rainbows’ – Jakob Bro; ‘Masana Temples’ – Kikagaku Moyo; ‘Con Todo De Mayor’ – Khruangbin; ‘Kingdoms in Colour’ – Maribou State; ‘Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino’ – Arctic Monkeys; ‘Sea at Night’ – Glue Trip; ‘Your Queen is a Reptile’ – Sons Of Kemet; ‘For Ever’ – Jungle; ‘Point Blank’ – Tony Kofi and the Organisation; ‘Negro Swan’ – Blood Orange; ‘Lucent Waters’ – Florian Weber. COMPILATIONS – ‘Dur-Dur of Somalia’ (ANALOG AFRICA) and ‘Two Niles to Sing a Melody’ (Ostinato Records). RE-RELEASES – ‘Scenery’ – Ryo Fukui. I thought the Coltrane ‘discovery’ was overrated.
Film: ‘Cold War’ and ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’. Watching ‘Mandy’ this Sunday which I suspect will also be on the list.
Sport: The darts (I love this!); Cook’s retirement; Brighton’s survival. The occasionally good game of rugby only highlights the fact that the game has become a collision sport rather than a contact sport. Missed Test Match Special over the winter.
Loss: music – Arethra, Nancy Wilson, Sonny Fortune (plays on several of my jazz favourites), Tomasz Stanko (who I once saw ‘live’ and I was the only person in the audience), Dennis Edwards, Eddy Amoo (‘you to me are everything’!), Danny Kirwan (when Fleetwood Mac were good), Hugh Masakela. Sport: Roger Bannister (sport and other things I don’t quite understand) and Eric Bristow.
Live: A lean year for me: Kamasi, Seun Kuti and Chilean band The HolyDrug Couple. All were great. Making amends in 2019.
Books: ‘Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket’ (Kynaston and Fay); Modernists and Mavericks’ (Martin Gayford). Max Hastings’ ‘Vietnam’ and Julian Jackson’s biography of Charles De Gaulle (which should be weighed) are both about to be read and I am sure will deserve inclusion. And a second cricket book Simon Wilde’s ‘Biography of England’ is a masterwork by the best current cricket writer – he leaves out all the old stories everyone knows and has written a brilliant piece of social/sporting history.
Country: visited 20 last year. Enjoyed the energy of The Philippines, the vulgarity/stunning modern architecture of Baku (take your pick) and warmth of the Kyrgyz people. A first experience of West Africa too (Ghana).
The year that England (rather than Britain) lost its ‘soul’.
Thanks, TLH – absorbing all this…
Surprised you had ‘Vice’ on your list. Was it a lean year? Went to see it last Friday and although it was good and watchable I wouldn’t place it higher than that. Helen Lewis in The New Statesman said it was about as subtle as having a hard brick smashed in your face. I also thought the narrator ‘weave’ into the story was completely naff. But Christian Bale was excellent and some of the other characters strong too.
It was a very lean year. I’m a bit torn between Vice and Cold War – did you see that? Vice is largely for the performances – Cheyney, Rumsfeld, Bush and Mrs Cheyney
Living in the backwoods of Southern Catalunya where all movies are dubbed into Catalan, a language that I have far from mastered, does not put me in a position to make any judgement. However I will say that the idea of watching a film about Queen fills me with horror!
I saw Cold War and loved it. It took me back to a period of my life when I absorbed loads of European cinema – late ’80’s up to late ’90’s. I have always struggled with American cinema. Don’t know why. Perhaps too bombastic or something. Agree with the performances in Vice but I thought Amy Adams was moderate. I don’t think she got Lynne Cheney right.
And concur with CatalanBrian on the Queen film. Were they really anything more than a band with a couple of skilled albums (their first two) a bombastic piece of overblown nonsense (BR) and a load of 1980’s trash (Radio Gaga anyone?).
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