Wrapping up my week of personal Oscar nominations, today I’ll focus on the Best Director category. Then, over the next two weeks, I’ll count down my personal top ten movies of 2022.
I find this category the trickiest to evaluate. Given the importance of the director, one could argue that my five favorite movies of the year must also be the best directed. That’s definitely one way to go, though not the one I chose.
I don’t have much to say about today’s song of the day, a cut from the album universally considered the worst of Elvis Costello’s career.
Costello’s 1984 Goodbye Cruel World was sandwiched between Imperial Bedroom and Punch the Clock on one side and King of America and Blood and Chocolate on the other, so it’s hard to begrudge the man one misstep in the midst of such greatness.
I recently discovered Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast, in which the brilliant writer dives into episodes from history and draws out lessons that weren’t clear the first time around.
Sometimes Gladwell tackles serious issues such as war or politics; in other episodes it’s basketball or popular music. The stories, and his telling of them, are as fascinating as his essays and books.
Here’s a nice song culled from the bonus tracks of a reissue of Elvis Costello’s Goodbye Cruel World.
Costello is such a prolific songwriter that anytime I hear a new track I immediately assume it’s his own composition. But this song was actually written by Richard Thompson and has been performed by both him and his (one-time) wife Linda.
Elvis certainly does it justice here.
Elvis Costello called Goodbye Cruel World his “worst album” in one reissue, but in a future release he amended that sentiment to call it “the worst record that I could have made of a decent bunch of songs.”
The argument for that perspective is made by the inclusion of demo and alternate versions of almost all of the Goodbye Cruel World tracks in vastly different arrangements, and indeed the album that could have been is far better than the album that eventually was.
Meet Me In Montauk 