Friday 7 January 2011

Best of? Schmest of!

Top ten lists are deadly difficult, perhaps only possible with a healthy slug of retrospect. In my experience, the rush to find something definitive can mean choosing a credibly good, but impersonal work that ends up bugging the shit out of you (I'm looking at you, Disaster Year 2009 winner The Hurt Locker). Compilers are hamstrung by international release schedules for a start, who in the UK can reasonably be expected to put together a list containing the greatest feature films released in 2010 knowing that True Grit and Black Swan can be seen abroad, but not here? It's a complete dick kick. Are we to sit patiently on list drafts long into 2011 just to see if Summer Wars and Thirteen Assassins measure up against the rest of the year's best?

Sometimes, it's simply a lack of time available on the reviewers part. Video Games suffer most here. Having taken on the vast, frontier expanse of Red Dead Redemption, does anyone have enough spare time to fit in Mass Effect 2, or Super Mario Galaxy 2 as well? What if the list maker is so crack-addict obsessed with grinding through each and every Prestige level of Modern Warfare 2 that they barely play anything else? The ten games and films that follow, while not necessarily the absolute best things ever in 2010, represent works that I either enjoyed watching or tinkering around with. In short, my time was well spent. To follow: Ten Video Games 2010, and Ten Films 2010. Enjoy!

No comments: