Ah, the 2011 list. For a hack of a blogger like myself it’s my once-a-year bread and butter. This year instead of separating music, movies, and television I’ve decided to produce a comprehensive list and lump it all together. Hold onto your hats, and enjoy.

Favourite Films of 2011

I had a quick look around because I was curious and it seems like Tree of Life is topping everyone’s lists this year. We have it in the queue but haven’t got around to watching it yet. I’m curious now though and I wonder if it would change things if I were to watch it first.

The curious bit, however, about the two films that did make my list is that both feature the unmatched Paul Giamatti as the leading actor. This wasn’t intentional but when I looked at everything I’d watched this year and boiled it down to just a couple of my favourites… Do I have a particular bias towards anything that Paul Giamatti does? Perhaps. Is he undoubtedly the best actor working in Hollywood right now? Yes, sir.

Barney’s Version

Barney’s Version is a brilliant take on the novel by Canadian literary heavyweight Mordecai Richler. I remembering having to read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in my O.A.C. (Grade 13) English class. I probably only understood about a third of what I read at the time but I can certainly appreciate a heavily nuanced and deeply moving plot a lot more now that I’m older. Barney’s Version is a movie about love, marriage, family, and memory. It’s wonderfully-acted (duh), well-written (duh), and unfolds itself in a fantastically pleasing fashion distilling all the very best parts of a well-developed Woody Allen movie. Complicated, comedic, and charming sums it up pretty well too.

Win Win

Win Win follows in the same genre of comedy as another of my all-time favourite movies Lars and the Real Girl. I’ll sum it up like this: Small town, quirky characters, social conundrums, and the kind of plot that sometimes seems like something you couldn’t make up if you tried. Like Lars, we’re treated to ninety minutes of some truly great and wholly surreal story-telling about people, a place, and a number of situations we’d never even thought about before. In this film, Giamatti plays and small-time lawyer and high-school wrestling coach as if he were born for the role.

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New video series! Joining the likes of Best Live Tracks and Best New Music, this series will present what I think are some of the Best Covers Ever.

Credit where credit is due, my friend Brent linked to these guys and it’s only through him that I found them. Nonetheless, this husband and wife YouTube sensation do incredible covers of songs you wouldn’t expect to sound so good. And they just seem so gosh darn happy!

Karmin — Price Tag

Karmin — Lighters

It was my wonderful wife, Maria, who first tipped me off to The Civil Wars. It was Taylor Swift on Twitter—not that Maria follows Taylor Swift, I should hope not!—that apparently tweeted about the folksy duo and, via the power of having a million followers, launched them into atmospheric orbit.

The Civil Wars are just about a stripped down as you can guy. Joy Williams (yes, that Joy Williams) and John Paul White, a guitar, and the occasional percussion and piano. The focus though, in my opinion, isn’t so much on the instruments. What sets this band a bar above others is how well they use their voices, together. It just works, so well. White’s trembling tenor and Williams’s crisp vocal range play so well together, you have to hear it to understand.

When we saw them live in a tiny club in Toronto back in the Spring. Well, let me just say that this is one of those groups you need to see live. I’ll say that their recorded stuff, even the live recorded stuff, captures only about 40% of the power and perfection of a live performance. 40% folks.

Here are a couple of my favourite live tracks, and their single:

“Between the Bars” (Elliott Smith Cover)

“Disarm” (Smashing Pumpkins Cover)

“Barton Hollow”

If you’ve had your head in the sand this week then maybe you’ve missed the Internet’s newest sensation: Rebecca Black.

Earlier this week her music video, “Friday,” went viral. Big time.

The YouTube video quickly garnered 12 million views in the course of just a few days and now she’s doing the talk show circuit. But what differentiates Black from other YouTube sensations like Canada’s own heart throb Justin Bieber (I prefer Dwight from The Office’s “Justice Beaver”) is the reason why she’s become so popular.

Unlike The Bieb, Black’s video isn’t growing in popularity because she’s a great singer—an undiscovered musical gem from a tiny little town in Ontario—it’s her completely over-the-top cheeseball of a music video, and lack of any semblance of musical talent. When I first saw the video which features, at several points, Black trying to decide which car seat to sit in—the front seat or the back seat?!—I wondered if this wasn’t an SNL Digital Short. It was ridiculous, playing up all kinds of stereotypes, complete with Rebecca’s constantly auto-tuned voice and some of the worst lyrics imaginable.

But apparently it’s for reals.

Doing some digging I found out that Rebecca Black was recruited by Ark Music Factory, a record label that puts out casting calls looking for the next Justin Bieber. Ark Music Factory finds young people, gives them the songs to sing, and then produces high quality videos to stick up on YouTube hoping to make it viral. Whether the song Black was given to sing was an honest effort by some pretty minimally-talented songwriters or whether the joke was on her all along, it’s hard to say but the result is priceless.

The fallout, however, has been anything but kind. The success of the video is based on its terribleness. Black has been criticized and made fun of and given the kind of treatment that only the Internet is capable of. Her fame hasn’t come from her talent but out of what’s now become an embarrassment for her—her fame is at her expense.

And for me, this whole episode begs a pretty interesting question for me: Are we bullying Rebecca Black?

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Eliza Doolittle is a newcomer and a brief foray into her other music videos suggests that perhaps Pack Up is a one-off hit. Regardless, it’s a hit.

Pack Up, which grafts its chorus from an old WWI British marching song has such an eclectic and fun sound that you cannot not love it immediately upon hearing. You’ll love it, and if you say otherwise you’re a liar. Featuring UK-based gospel singer Lloyd Wade, this song packs one of the most infectious hooks I’ve heard in a long time. You will dance, if you possess the ability to stand and move around. Comparisons can be drawn, easily, to Gnarls Barkley’s jaw-dropping summer hit Crazy. Remember that song? It’s baaaaaaaaaaack. And this time it’s sung by someone who seems to have taken all the good bits of Amy Winehouse and left all the baggage behind. I like.

So I’m a huge fan of The Tragically Hip but somehow missed the release of frontman Gord Downie’s latest solo record, his third, this past summer. The first time I heard the album’s single on the radio was about a month ago, I immediately went home to do some further investigation.

The Grand Bounce sees Downie recording with some other pretty impressive Canadian musicians under the guise of Gord Downie & The County of Miracles. Joining Downie is, among other names, Canadian singer/songwriter Julie Doiron and Josh Finlayson of Toronto’s Skydiggers. Together, this Canadian ensemble manages to scrape together a rather impressive record and at least some songs that definitely deserves some time on your playlist, in my opinion.

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I’m a pretty big fan of The Decemberists ever since I stumbled upon a band that sounded, to my description, like “the American Belle & Sebastian.” That was around the time of the release of their first full-length, Castaways and Cutouts.

Since then, The Decemberists have produced a series of solid records roughly maintaining the party line as a band that sings about rifles, tall ships, and cobblestone. The 2009 release The Hazards of Love, a dark and foreboding concept disc, saw a pretty serious departure from this format though. The Hazards of Love was a complete story, told in dark, enchanted forests, and broken up into a series of acts with characters, plot, action, and the whole nine yards. Musically, it was vastly different from what we’d heard from The Decemberists up to that point. The Hazards of Love was dark, electric, and chaotic. When I initially reviewed it I found it very difficult to enjoy—very tough to get into—and even when I was recommended to give it a second try I had a very hard time getting comfortable with the band’s sound. Listened to in one sitting, as I think it was intended to be, proved to be an onerous task for me and so I gave up.

But early buzz surrounding 2011′s The King is Dead made it clear that The Decemberists were taking a very different tact from their previous release. Indeed, the rumours were true.

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