Yearly Archives: 2014

The 10 Best Movies of 2014

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Mmmm…ketchup. Image via Film School Rejects

“Movies are dead,” the crowd shouted, “long live TV!”

“All art forms can co-exist,” the pseudo-intellectual blogger shouted back.

As I have said before, it was a great year for television, and it was almost just as good of a year for film. In fact, there are very few years I can point out as weak years for film (maybe 2005 and 2008, but that is it). This year also happened to be the year where a handful of smart, mature dramas turned a huge profit at the box office while a blockbuster starring a talking raccoon and an untested star was king.

I will admit, this was the year I finally saw some of the shortcomings of being a modern movie lover. For instance, all of the most amazing television shows are available at the click of a button. Yet, if you want to see a truly great film, you might have to travel a few hundred miles or wait a few weeks like a goon. We live in an age where everything is readily available and nobody has any patience anymore, so film distribution now seems a bit backwards. Because of this, I learned my limitations and I admit that there were a lot of films that came out in 2014 that I unfortunately missed. I hope Hollywood eventually gets the hint that there are smart people who want to watch smart things in places not called New York or Los Angeles.

Year end lists are tricky. Opinions change over the years. My top pick of 2011 was War Horse, and I have never lived it down. In retrospect, the best film of that year was Young Adult. It might be self-defeating to admit that a lot of these numbers are irrelevant. The top five probably matters the most. But let’s live in the moment and not think about ten years down the road, because by then, we will probably be working for robot overlords while two second bits of sponsored content gets zapped into our brains with clickable clickbait headlines.

So without further adieu, here are my top ten films of 2014:

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Analog This: The Best TV Episodes of 2014

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Let us gingerly touch our tips! Image via Huffington Post

So, I have ranked all of the best TV shows of 2014, but now let’s look at them through an even smaller lens.

Most shows today are being watched in one long sitting and with that, we lose the value of the episode. Not that they aren’t important, but after watching five or six episodes of Homeland in a row (if you are crazy enough to still be watching that show), everything becomes a blur. We might not watch shows week by week anymore, but the individual episode still deserves to be celebrated.

Without further adieu, here are the the 10 best television episodes of 2014:

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The Five Best Podcasts of 2014

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Image via Serial

All it took was one little girl to mispronounce the word chimp and suddenly podcasts were all anybody can talk about.

Honestly, I live in a such a bubble that I forgot that most people don’t listen to podcasts, let alone have even heard of one. Then, Serial rolled around and it became the new form of small talk. Thanks to that, people were now going and listening to other podcasts. Finally, I could talk a lot of my friends about Marc Maron! All was well in podcast land.

This is the first year I will be sharing a list of podcasts. This is not the first year that I have listened to enough podcasts to compile a best of list, but it is the first year where I actually think I understand podcasts and have gotten a taste of the wide variety out there. Before this year, I mainly listened to comedy podcasts. In 2014, I opened my heart to a single one about business. What a world.

Without much further adieu, here is my list of the five best podcasts of 2014, not including my own because I’m not that much of an ass:

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Movie Review: The Interview

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Image via New York Post

So, where do you even start a review of a movie that stopped world news and got the attention of the President of the United States? Just focus on the movie, that’s the mantra. Just focus on the movie. Let’s see how far that gets us.

The Interview, the second film directed by writing duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, has caused a huge a stir (Damn! Broke it already!). When you see what all the fuss is about, you might realize that people are really good at getting offended before getting the full story. Political satire has been around since humans were grunting at each other in caves, so making a movie poking fun at Kim Jong-Un shouldn’t feel that radical. 

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Movie Review: Inherent Vice

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“The doctor is busy.” “He didn’t look busy.” “…he’s thinking.” Image via YouTube

After watching Inherent Vice, I asked myself two very different questions:

1) Why would I watch this?

2) Why wouldn’t I watch this?

Sometimes, I found myself asking both questions at the exact same time.

With Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson uses his well-earned creative freedom to go down some very strange paths. But with the overlapping stories, Los Angeles setting, and 1970s fashion, Paul Thomas Anderson has never been more at home than he is in Inherent Vice.

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The Biggest Movies of the Holiday Season 2014 According to Your Grandparents

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PICTURED: Where your grandparents live

Every time one season ends and a new season begins, there is a tendency to compile a list of which upcoming films will probably be the best. This is fun to do, but the biggest flaw in doing so is that, in the end, it is tough to write about films that you have not seen.

In response to this, I decided to devise a more fun way to talk about what is coming out in the months ahead. Everybody knows that nobody comes up with more creative, albeit wrong, titles for movies than your grandparents. I did it in the summer, and I did it in the fall, and now I am going to try it out again. If I decided to take a trip down to Florida and survey everybody who was playing a game of shuffleboard, this is what they would say are the biggest movies coming out this fall:

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Eight Nights of Hanukkah, Eight Jewish Characters: Night #8

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Behind every great goy, is a Jew writing all of their best one-liners.

Jews make up about 0.2% of the world’s population yet they have always been a loud (emphasis on the loud) and prominent voice in film, television, music, and comedy. 

The next eight days are Hanukkah, which is not the most important Jewish holiday, but we do get presents. For each night of Hanukkah, I will share one Jewish character who is important and represents some important aspect of Judaism and Jewish culture. For the eighth and final night of Hanukkah, let’s talk about the ambiguous, honorary Jews:

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The Reel Deal Podcast

The Golden Age of Golden Ages

Happy Hanukkah! Here’s an episode I recorded back in November that never made it to air until now. I discuss why we should stop talking about Golden Ages, check in with the cast of Happy Endings, and review Zach Braff’s very Jewish, very irritating, Wish I Was Here.

Eight Nights of Hanukkah, Eight Jewish Characters: Night #5

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Behind every great goy, is a Jew writing all of their best one-liners.

Jews make up about 0.2% of the world’s population yet they have always been a loud (emphasis on the loud) and prominent voice in film, television, music, and comedy. 

The next eight days are Hanukkah, which is not the most important Jewish holiday, but we do get presents. For each night of Hanukkah, I will share one Jewish character who is important and represents some important aspect of Judaism and Jewish culture. For the fifth night of Hanukkah, let’s talk about Ben Stone of Knocked Up:

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Eight Nights of Hanukkah, Eight Jewish Characters: Night #4

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Behind every great goy, is a Jew writing all of their best one-liners.

Jews make up about 0.2% of the world’s population yet they have always been a loud (emphasis on the loud) and prominent voice in film, television, music, and comedy. 

The next eight days are Hanukkah, which is not the most important Jewish holiday, but we do get presents. For each night of Hanukkah, I will share one Jewish character who is important and represents some important aspect of Judaism and Jewish culture. For the fourth night of Hanukkah, let’s talk about The Pickles Family of Rugrats:

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