Film

The Laurel Wreath Award for Annual Achievement in Film

There’s been a terrible glitch in the system. See, last year, i designated Avatar: The Way of Water — a film which by all possible standards was released in 2022 — as my favourite film of 2023. I figured that this was alright, since i had first seen it in January of ’23, during its original release, and it was unlikely to happen again in 2024.

It happened again in 2024.¹ Even more egregiously, it was, to my knowledge, long after the film in question’s original 2023 run; my local arthouse cinema just happened to be showing it. Alright then, i thought — i’ll make a new category for my favourite film of last last year, and give the actual award to the second place.

The second place was also a 2023 film — but, in my defence, one which didn’t see a British release until 2024. It’s not until you get to the bronze-medal spot that you get an undisputable, certifiable 2024 release.

As such, not wanting to deprive any of the three of recognition, i, acting in my role as the governor of the Satyrs’ Forest’s Board of Archons (est. time immemorial, number of members: 1), have elected to split the award three ways. Please try to enjoy each movie equally.

I caught up with Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall in late March, in what must have been a repertory showing at the Tyneside Cinema, and on paper, this should in no way be my film of the year. I’m a maximalist at heart: i think, generally, that more is more, and the best art is that which stops just short of total sensory abuse. So what’s this quiet legal drama² about an accident in the French Alps doing on here?

Autobiographical reasons, mostly. I worry about disclosing too much, but i saw so much of myself in the character of Daniel — a shy, mildly disabled kid torn between two cultures who has to deal with the sudden absence of his father — that by the end i was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and i didn’t even know why.

If you believe the hubbub, this is a mystery film. Who’s really responsible for the dad’s death? Was it Sandra Hüller? Did he kill himself? But Ms Triet has an answer, one that she’s sworn not to reveal for decades — and, if we all saw the same film, i think i know what it is. It was an accident. Always, we see these deliberate shots of the dog’s ball precariously on the stairs, or the son nearly slipping off of snowy ground. The prosecutor even says as much: accidents happen, but they don’t make for a flashy story. So, as humans, we make up intrigue where none exists — because it’s easier to accept evil than that the universe is sometimes a cruel and arbitrary thing.

Poor Things! Released in 2023 in the U.S., but took until January of 2024 to arrive on this side of the pond. Last year already had a whole awards cycle with it in contention, everyone knows about it, so i’ll be brief. This film would give the average puritanical zoomer a heart attack with the amount of fucking in it, the average puritanical boomer a heart attack at about the point where Emma Stone joins the communist party, and the average modern sadsack a heart attack with how wonderfully optimistic Ms Stone’s character is despite the dour circumstances of her creation. Quality flick.

Finally, we come to the only awardee unambiguously released in 2024, and the goopiest film of the year: The Substance. If last year Avatar was a warm bath for the senses, then this is a kick to the face. From the moment the pounding techno score kicks in, every little smack and crinkle of sound is perfectly calibrated to be disgusting in the best possible way, even if it’s just Dennis Quaid eating a bowl of shrimp. Every shot is cranked up to eleven, like you just guzzled down ten Potions of Swiftness and forgot to turn off Quake Pro. It’s fucking glorious.

At some point, you think, ah, okay, i’ve got a handle on the idea here. The movie then slaps you right on the cheek and reminds you that this is The Substance, bitch, and we are going to take this to its logical conclusion whether you like it or not. We’re making it even goopier. Even grosser. Even weirder. And you’re going to either like it or throw up in your popcorn bucket and we don’t care which.

The Zoetrope Award for Classic Cinema

I watched a lot of great old films for the first time last year. Some Like It Hot is a fantastic queer comedy that’s aged far more gracefully than it has any right to (a bit like Dick van Dyke). Schindler’s List³ is a masterpiece that should, by all rights, be this year’s recipient — but i’d be hard-pressed to say i “enjoyed” it, per se. That’s a one-and-done watch.

So, being the certified world #1 Gremlins 2 enjoyer that i am, it falls to 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors to take the crown. I just love this little slice of musical puppet madness. Steve Martin proves that the D in BDSM stands for “dentist”.

The Pebbledash Dildo Award for Cinematic Disappointment

Oh, Ryan Gosling. I put my trust in you, and this is how you repay me? The Fall Guy had everything teed up for a hole-in-one and whacked itself in the face with a golf club instead.

The problem is in the edit. Dialogue scenes go overlong. Every shot lingers just a second or so too long. The jokes (in this comedy film) are atrocious — but they could have been salvaged with a tighter edit! The setpieces are fun and Mr Gosling is as magnetic as always; the ingredients are there, but it’s just too scattershot to make it work.

The Megalopolis Award for Megalopolest Megalopolis

Megalopolis. Megalopolis megalopolis megalo polis — me galopolisme gal opolism egalopolis. Megalopolis! Mega10polis/Mega10polis.

Music

The Golden Lyre Award for Excellence in New Music

I am convinced that Charli XCX’s Brat, where hyperpop grows up and gets a job, is music from the future that only wound up back in 2024 via some horrible spatiotemporal accident that killed two scientists and irradiated the entire Australian Capital Territory. Best song: “Sympathy Is a Knife”.

The Hurdy-Gurdy Award for Enduring Musical Resonance

I found out about the Levellers after a Discord acquaintance put the lyrics to “Sell Out”, off the album Levelling the Land, as their status. I then off-handedly played said song to my mother at a family get-together, who, unbeknownst to me, was a Levellers super-fan in her youth, and informed me that they were going to be in Newcastle this summer and would you like a ticket?

Some months later, and i can comfortably say that yes, they may all be geriatric now, but by the Gods, can they still play. (I’m very glad i found a nice balcony to stand on, because the pit looked like an earthquake was hitting it!) It was a much younger crowd than i’d anticipated, too — lots of old crusty punks, but a decent number of teens and twentysomethings, so the kids (i’m including myself in this) are all right. Best song: “Sell Out”.

Artes electronicæ

The Bedroom Coder Award for Interactive Entertainment

Well it can hardly be anything other than the game that got me off my arse to make a whole dedicated page for it, no? Sonic Robo Blast 2, the longest-developed and most storied Sonic fan game in a community positively choked with them, successfully reactivated the dormant fan neurons in my brain that hadn’t been used since i was twelve. (#SilvazeForLife.)

The controls take some getting used to (if you’re a mouse-and-keyboard type of guy, i suggest in the strongest of terms that you should go into the options and set the control scheme to “Manual”) if you’re used to how other 3D Sonic games control, but you can hardly blame them given that when they started making it Adventure wasn’t even out yet in North America. Once that wee hurdle’s over with, you’re in for a proper joyous adventure.

Oh, and since it’s open source, the modding support is excellent to boot, with tonnes of level packs, tweaks, and nearly every playable character⁴ from the games you could care to name. So what are you waiting for? Go and download it today!

The Broken Link Award for Best Use of Hypertext

“Fake news” was the defining term of the twenty-tens, and the introduction of easily accessible generative machine-learning tools has only sped up the slop production line. It’s a rough landscape out there — as they say, the truth is paywalled, but the lies are free.

This year’s winner turns the whole tripe-conomy on its head by going more retro than you could possibly imagine. Enter Tidings.potato.horse ­— a self-described “mediæval content farm”, where four robot bards sum up the week’s news in absurd lyrical form. I’m always on the hunt for people doing interesting things with generative ML, so much of it being just plain tacky or a cheap imitation of humanity, and this hits the spot, because no human except a proper mark would ever put in the effort to do this. (Moreover, a human would probably raise some ethical qualms at around the fourth stanza on mass slaughter in Gaza.) So come on up, ye bards, and grasp your award with all six-and-a-half fingers.

The Fred Figglehorn Memorial Award for Online Video

As a card-carrying transhumanist, i long for the day when we defeat aging — and though we’re not there quite yet, the field of longevity is abuzz with both scientists doing their best, and… uh… other people. Ordinary Things’ “How to Live Forever” takes an empathetic look at the other people, like the meme-infamous Bryan Johnson, and sees what they’re all about, from clinics on private Caribbean islands to limited-edition paperback manifestos.

Real life

The Blinking Sam Award for Word of the Year

Language generally trends in the direction of politeness and euphemism. We replace the impolite with something less direct, which then becomes generally accepted, which then becomes impolite, and the cycle starts all over. This is how we got from idiot to mentally retarded to special needs to SEND.

Every so often, though, something opposite will happen: a magical dysphemism, where, the realm of polite speech not being enough, someone will reach into the taboo for description. Such is the case with 2024’s word of the year:

rawdog

verb. To have sex without a condom, or, latterly, to undertake something without the usual comforts and conveniences.

The most prominent new usage of rawdog has been in the case of rawdogging flights: no books, no films, no games; just you, the window, and the back of the seat. One might also rawdog an illness by forgoing medication, or rawdog a hike by going ultra-light. It’s a tremendously useful addition to English vocabulary, and one i expect will stick around for many years to come.

The Spruce Panflute Award for Outdoor Splendour

I recently moved from Northumberland to County Durham, and, in the process, had to reload my mental map of all the nice places and interesting things to do, to which Birkheads Secret Gardens has been a most wonderful addition. After decades of mining and intensive farming, two gardeners bought this wee plot of land and have transformed it into fourteen luscious themed gardens overlooking the Durham countryside. I never got around to writing a full post on the place (my procrastination having got the better of me), but i hope this award is hearty enough a recommendation to make up for it.

The Hubert J. Farnsworth Award for Good News, Everyone!

Though things, as always, kept on ticking in the background, 2024 lacked big bombastic breakthroughs in science like 2022’s fusion ignition or 2023’s semaglutide revolution. The good news of the year was quieter, overtaken by the political shouting of the busiest electoral calendar in world history.

One item on the docket that slipped under the global radar was an important milestone on Britain’s route to net zero. With coal already dipping to a mere intermittent blip on the National Grid’s supply, it was time for the last supplier to close, and in late September, Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station officially shut its doors, ending 142 years of coal power in the UK. We still have a ways to go, but slowly, surely, this green and pleasant land is getting greener.

In summary…

Category	2022	2023	2024
Best New Film	The Northman	Avatar: The Way of Water	Anatomy of a Fall / Poor Things / The Substance
Best Old Film	Cloud Atlas	Syn­ec­do­che, New York	Little Shop of Horrors
Most Dis­ap­point­ing Film	Nope	The Congress	The Fall Guy
Best New Music	The 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language	Young Fathers’ Heavy Heavy	Charli XCX’s Brat
Best Old Music	XTC’s Apple Venus Volume One	—	Levellers’ Levelling the Land
Best Game	Return of the Obra Dinn	—	Sonic Robo Blast 2
Best Hypertext	Corru.observer	Atlas Altera	Tidings.potato.horse
Best Video	“Who Took the First Selfie?”	“How Not to Travel America”	“How to Live Forever”
Word of the Year	special mili­tary oper­a­tion	rizz	rawdog
Best Outdoor Thing	The Ouseburn	—	Birkheads Secret Gardens
Best News	NIF fusion breakthrough	Sema­glu­tide revolution	End of coal power