The a v club

The 50 best special effects in all of cinema. Contemporary feminism explored through Claws and Handmaid’s Tale. A retrospective about working on The Jerry Springer Show. Sixty minutes of K-pop. Movies where Matt Damon makes a friend. 2018 was a tumultuous year, but The A.V. Club’s commitment to pop culture, and those who love it, remains consistent no matter what. Below are 19 of the pieces The A.V. Club staff is proudest of this year. The 50 greatest special effects movies of all time “Consider this a chronological cataloguing of the movies that still dazzle and amaze and disgust us; whether achieved through purely physical/organic means, through the digital magic available at a mouse click, or through something as simple as a cut, the effects within them hold a monopoly on our imaginations.” —by The A.V. Club The 25 best set pieces of Steven Spielberg’s career “Broadly defined, a set piece is a thriller within a film, a … [Read more...] about The A.V. Club’s favorite pieces from 2018

Each new “best albums” list published seems to confirm: We couldn’t agree on much this year. And it’s extremely exciting. The music industry at large continued to decentralize, with our biggest stars and returning veterans sharing airtime with newcomers and indie upstarts. Really the only constant seemed to be in hip-hop—its domination of the charts, its relentless pace of releases, its public beefs. To that end, if you want to explore a wider scope of releases by genre, we recommend checking out our top 10s in metal, punk/hardcore, film soundtracks, country, electronic, hip-hop, pop/R&B, and indie/rock. As for the top 20 overall below, our music critics’ ballots reflect very different means of getting there, but our final list shows we were all looking for a similar experience. Overwhelmingly, we turned to artists seeking new horizons, deconstructed or genreless landscapes where we might find more honest connections and creative visions of the … [Read more...] about The A.V. Club’s 20 best albums of 2018

Podcasts simply couldn’t contain themselves in 2018. Beyond setting multiple records (the third season of Serial was its biggest to date, and with a historically large advertising deal), this ever-growing audio medium also saw some of its most acclaimed series leap to television, with Dirty John on Bravo and Homecoming on Amazon Prime. Steal The Stars became a novel, and podcasters hit the stage in droves for live events and multi-day festivals. This proliferation was perhaps inevitable in a year that also saw the rise of scripted audio fiction podcasts (Bubble; The Horror Of Dolores Roach), set new watermarks for investigative reporting (Last Seen; Dr. Death; The Dream), and found shiny new packaging for the stories we thought we already knew (Slow Burn; Trump, Inc.). If the parentheticals didn’t make it clear, there are so many shows we wish we could highlight in our 2018 Podmass Superlatives and simply didn’t have room for. Below is our list of the most noteworthy … [Read more...] about The A.V. Club’s 2018 podcast superlatives

Gameological hasn’t traditionally structured its year-end round-up with some authoritative ranking, choosing instead to look back at the myriad experiences we had in games over the year and sorting for the ones we really, truly liked. The result is a list that’s as true to our writers and their own predilections as it is to the year that was. There isn’t a clean-cut narrative to the games that stuck with us in 2018—which span massive superhero extravaganzas, elliptical horror experiments, and psychedelic VR rhythm games—which is, truly, proof of how rich and exciting games can be. As always, you’re invited to write your own retrospectives in the comments, following the rubric laid out here. Feel free to overlap with our own picks; we’re interested to hear why you liked these games, too! We’ll collect some of our favorite responses for our annual Games You Liked round-up on Wednesday. Beat Saber I liked Beat Saber because it actually … [Read more...] about The A.V. Club’s favorite games of 2018

What Artists Do + other books by Leonard Koren For the past three decades, Leonard Koren has been quietly publishing elegant, thoughtful books wherein he writes simply and directly about the often complex subjects of art and aesthetics. He designs his own books, including the typeface, and they’re special objects in and of themselves. What Artists Do, Koren’s latest project, examines why and how artists create their art, using the work of six seminal conceptual artists—including Donald Judd, John Cage, and Christo and Jeanne Claude—to illustrate his ideas. It’s a slim, focused volume, perfect for those looking to think more intentionally about an artist’s vision and the execution thereof. Like Koren’s other volumes, there’s something calming in the book’s clean design, gentle prose, and warm wit. For a fuller package, pair What Artists Do with some of Koren’s other publications like Making WET: The Magazine Of Gourmet … [Read more...] about Unconventional pop-culture presents: The A.V. Club’s 2018 gift guide