#2

Podcast

Pop Culture Happy Hour (Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, Trey Graham, Glen Weldon)

PCHH is NPR's roundtable on all things pop culture. It sounds like a mostly good-natured conversation between friends with the occasional snark thrown in. I listen to quite a few podcasts of this sort but this one is by far my favorite. It combines a pleasant atmosphere with good humor, interesting and well-informed opinions on a wide variety of topics, trivia games, good production values and a general level of professionalism despite the obvious intimate friendships of the hosts. The recommendations at the end of the show are called 'What's making me happy this week.' They are exactly what the name implies and therefore are not always recommendations at all. It just adds to the overall sense of familiarity of the show. The whole thing usually comes in at a manageable length of around 40 minutes, long enough to be substantial, short enough not to drag.

TV Show

Homeland (Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon)

Homeland is the story of Sgt. Nicholas Brody, returned home after 8 eight years of being held POW by al-Quaeda and Carrie Mathison, the CIA analyst that believes that once missed something that could've prevented 9/11 and believes there's something wrong with him. The first season was a breakout success and almost universally critically acclaimed, eventually sweeping the big Emmy categories with Damien Lewis and Claire Danestaking Outstanding Leads in a Drama Series and the show itself unseating perpetual winner Mad Men, ending its four-year run as Outstanding Drama Series. Having set the bar incredibly high, the show ran into quite some criticism in its second season. The plot supposedly was full of holes. The show was moving at an incredible pace, which made such charges not unlikely. But it also kept it from dragging along and becoming boring. Add that to the excellent performances of two of my long-time favourite actors in Lewis and Danes, and I did not let Homeland episodes accumulate, which is an easy and reliable indicator of how much I enjoy a show.

Book

The Sorrows of an American (Siri Hustvedt)

Siri Hustvedt's fourth novel is the story of a Norwegian American family, with first-person narrator Erik Davidsen, a middle-aged psychiatrist living and working in New York, at the center of the narrative (no d'uh - he's a first-person narrator). The two primary plot strands revolve around Erik's Jamaican-born downstairs neighbor, her son and her stalker-photographer-boyfriend, and a family secret buried deep in the past. The novel is one of the few cases of 'serious literature' on my 2012 reading list. Serious literature sometimes is work to read, consequently isn't much fun or entertaining to read and leaves you thinking 'Hmm, what was that?' Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, the subsequent research and analysis can be very gratifying. The Sorrows of an American is not that. It is a pleasure to read, you feel with the characters and you put it down with a warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction. I was initially surprised I had it as high on this list as it is, but looking back on it it is well deserving of both this spot and a reader's time.

Movie

Looper (Rian Johnson)

Looper is a science fiction time travel story that pits Bruce Willis' Joe against his younger self played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Joe is a Looper that kills and disposes of people sent into the past by organized crime. Eventually, his older self appears on a mission to kill the master criminal he holds responsible for the death of the love of his life. If this doesn't say 'Terminator for our generation' I don't know what will.
I had been waiting for this film for quite a while as I had heard Johnson talk about it on the Slashfilmcast and it did not disappoint. Rian Johnson has produced a film that looks much better than its $ 30 mio budget would lead you to suspect and I felt he handled the inevitable time travel paradoxa well enough so they don't interfere with the story. And while it is an entry in the well-defined time travel genre, Looper is also that rare beast -  a successful, non-sequel, non-adaptation, original property, the only one in my Top 5. While that alone should earn it a spot high up on my list, the film deserves it on its own terms and can bear comparison with any other film I saw in 2012.