What was ashamed to skip in 2016

The best films, TV shows, books, albums and games. Choosing "Medusa"

What was necessary to watch, listen and read in 2016? Medusa has collected the most interesting of what happened in mass culture over the past 12 months. 5 films, 4 series, 5 albums, 4 books and 2 games - if all this passed you, try to make up for the New Year holidays.

Movie

"Under the cover of the night"

Director Tom Ford, USA

“Under the cover of the night” with Amy Adams and Jake Jillenhale-the second in seven years the film of American designer Tom Ford and the best psychological thriller of 2016. This year - huge losses - taught us that culture should be preserved and played, and Tom Ford in this sense - an unexpected and important discovery (the second David Lynch). “Under the cover of the night” turns out to be an endless semantic nesting doll, which you want to disassemble and analyze the same as the paintings of Lynch and David Fincher. Tom Ford is the genius of the nuances, his films should be watched twice and even three times, peering into details. And joyfully noting that the green dress on the girl and the green car of villains are the links of one chain; However, like the dirty nails of the rapist and manicure of the heroine.

"Cubo: The Legend of Samurai"

Director Travis Knight, USA

Cartoon of the year. Although the main awards among themselves endlessly share Pixar and Disney (and the first is part of the second), the most intelligent cartoons of recent years are still removed by Laika Entertainment, the company of the co -founder of Nike Fila Knight. The studio began with gloomy fairy tales for Tim Berton (“The Bride's Corpse”) and Neil Gaiman (“Coraline in the country of nightmares”), and in the 12th year of life decided a serious conversation about death in the terrible and sad “Cubo: The Legend of the Samurai”. In general, all large cartoons of 2016 were good: Moana taught to follow the call of the heart; “In search of Dory” made her heroes of disabled fish; "ZeroPolis" recalled that in diversity - power. But Cubo is the most piercing project of the year and pure calligraphy.

"She"

Director Paul Verkhoven, France, Germany, Belgium

European film of the year. There are directors who know how to mix and scare at the same time; There are those whom the viewer feels and analyzes at the same time. But so that everything is at once - for this you need to be a floor of the supreme. He tried his career (let this word sound as rudely as his directorial method) many actresses - Sharon Stone (“Basic Instinct”, “Remember All”), Elizabeth Berkeley (“Showers”), Jennifer Jason Lee (“Flesh and Blood”). And only at the age of 78 he met a force capable of repulsing him, - fantastic Isabelle Jupper. Her game in this film is incredible - especially in contrast to quiet and modest work in the film “Souvenir”, which at the festival in Toronto went with “her” in the next room.

"La La Land"

Director Damien Shazell, USA

Despite the fact that La La Land enters the Russian rental only in January 2017, we could not include it in this list-this is the best that happened in the world cinema in 2016 (the world premiere took place in August).

Studying the box office of Russian films, you can come to unexpected discoveries. For example, to this: a musical film - a favorite cinema of Soviet spectators - actually died in a quarter of a century. Apparently, the fact is that dance and song, even on the screen, cannot be an intimate experience of the viewer. After all, such films turn the entire cinema into the dance floor and call for unity. The musical “La La Land” is a movie for very open people who are able to appreciate both moments of happiness and longing. And it is also very simple-in the spirit of Hollywood of the 1950s-the story with the modernist feint at the end. And these are the most beautiful songs in 2016. And these are bright costumes and funny dances. And this is Emma Stone and Ryan Gusling.

"Good boy"

Director Oksana Karas, Russia

Russian film of the year. “Good boy” is an example of exemplary harmony between adults and children; between the aesthetics of the Soviet school tragicomedy and the laws of American films of education; Between a round dance and Brake Dance, after all. Plus, this is the only domestic film of the year that you can simply watch with pleasure, and not to keep up and not be finished in your head. Brilliant, witty, delicate and very living cinema. Thank you.

Series

"Young dad"

Director Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, Spain, France

We only do what we write about how the series ahead of other ways of telling stories in terms of dramaturgy, but a brighter example than a “young dad” has not yet been. Paolo Sorrentino combined all his (well, or ours) passions in a ten-part show: to Italian fashion, and to journalistic investigations, and to the Shakespearean theater, and to great American novels, and to European painting, and to rock music. There are neither humanoid robots nor aliens from other dimensions in the “Young Papa”, but there is an intrigue that suddenly became the most interesting issue of the year in pop culture. And it is no coincidence that the word “pop” is, because it is scary to understand: this is how the pontiff Lenny Belardo believes in God or not? (In addition, this is the best role in the career of Juda Low).

"World of the Wild West"

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, US

This series solves two important problems. Firstly, he saves HBO-in recent years, the channel has turned into the theater of one actor (“Game of Thrones”), which is about to retire. Now there are at least two actors. Secondly, the “world of the Wild West” recalls that we exist in the so-called party culture, where any creativity is imprisoned and belongs to fans, not creators. In 2016, millions of serialists received a show, as mysterious as “survived”. And they began to build theories, study every frame under a microscope and solve the plans of the creators. Alas, it was too successful: because of the activity of the Internet and vulnerabilities of the script, watching the final series was boring: everything that was written on Reddit came true.

"Very strange things"

Directors Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Sean Levy, USA

This series told the most touching story of the year - about how the three little musketeers went to rescue D` Aartagnan from the underworld and met a fantastic constitution. But what is more interesting (and more alarming): “Very strange things” proved that in the 21st century, you can already live with other people's memories without looking up from the computer. It is unlikely that one of the 20-year-old and 30-year-old Russians had the same childhood as described in the series. With an American suburbs, wooden panels on the sides of a dad's car, parties to the Dungeons & Dragons board games in the basement, stellar wars ships, Stephen King’s books on the shelf and films of Stephen Spielberg in a video recorder. But judging by the reaction of our social networks, this nostalgic story was not filmed for 40-year-old Americans, but directly specifically for us.

"Planet Earth II"

Director Justin Anderson, Great Britain

The main documentary series of the year. So close to animal people, it was not yet possible to get out. Removing many hours of poetic dedication to nature, the BBC used the entire arsenal of the most modern technologies-drones, the latest night vision cameras, some amazing taps and devices that allow you to consider in the smallest details and in the movement of rare birds, animals and insects. For each adult , "Planet Earth II" is a real journey to childhood. On the one hand, it seems that I got into a fairy tale about the brother of the raccoon and brother of the fox, that is, the creatures of cunning, noble, loving - in general, quite reasonable. On the other hand, you find in yourself the very enthusiasm that once accompanied the viewing of “in the world of animals” and “Odyssey Cousteau”. The main idea of ​​the series is quite simple: we can live in a much greater harmony with wildlife - and only on ourselves it depends whether it will happen or not. I really want to happen; In this sense, “Planet Earth II” is the best and most correct propaganda of 2016.

Music

David Bowie - Blackstar

Even if you forget that this is the last record of the great musician, Blackstar is still an outstanding record. Turning to the avant -garde jazz, David Bowie set a new standard; He showed how to handle him in pop music. Blackstar is very theatrical, which is especially noticeable in the song and by the clip Lazarus (it has become a source for the Bowie musical of the same name). The basis of the sound of the plate is the saxophone that Bowie used throughout his career to show the volume of music and add stresses to it. BlackStar is an example of Bowie’s successful experiment, it can be compared with the 1997 Earthling, with the only correction that this time the musician managed to most expressively imagine his ideas. What is only the Blackstar title song, which opens the album, is a ten -minute, complex composition of two parts with a broken rhythm, does not let go to the last seconds.

Beyonce - Lemonade

The album of Beyoncé Nowls is completely devoted to treason and forgiveness: the singer is extremely frank (it is obvious that Beyoncé and Jay-Ji happened), then he envelops her personal life with a secret (we never found out who this is “Becky with good hair”). Beyoncé has always been an example of a strong woman in pop music, who is firmly knowing what she wants. But on Lemonade everything is different: first it is crushed, then in anger (even ruins cars in the video on Hold Up), then he realizes the whole situation - and in the end comes forgiveness. However, Lemonade not only tells the history of relations, this is another of the best statements about the problems of African -Americans (see Formation song). In 2016, many musicians produced visual albums-records accompanied by a video sector, but only Beyonca's visual album turned out to be meaningful-the picture really complemented the songs.

Anohni - Hopelessness

The singer anohni, in the past, known as Anthony Hegarty, is a musician with an outstanding sense of style. In Hopelessness, she transferred the focus from the internal world to the external - and with him, with this world, everything was wrong. A song on behalf of a girl who dies from an air strike from a drone, an angry rebuke to Baracu Obama, a song about global warming, a song about general surveillance - this is only a part of the topics covered by ANOHNI on Hopelessness. It seems that none of the musicians this year expressed their dissatisfaction with the world around the world so powerfully and concentrated - in one record. The singer abandoned the usual string in favor of the arrangements of two relevant producers of Hudson Mohawke and Daniel Lopatin (Onehthix Point Never)-in the end it turned out to be not a chamber pop, as was the case of Antony and the Johns, but something completely futuristic, while she simplified the songs to the limit.

Megapolis - Zerolines

The group of Oleg Nesterov finally turned into the main experimenters of Russia. The new Zerolines project is, according to the leader of the Megapolis, intuitive music without shape and structure, invented according to the covenants of the avant-garde composers of the 1950s. The main part of the project was created more than ten years ago, even before the Megapolis triumphantly returned with Superango; It is all the more amazing that the album sounds as relevant as possible. There are only six tracks on Zerolines without verses and refinements, which a little reminiscent of Tortoise or the Niels Fram Nonkeen project. The best song is the eight -minute “is” to the verses of Guillaume Apolliner. To create the effect of detachment and coldness, Nesterov missed his vote through the wokoder; If you need to choose only one Russian -speaking song of the year, then it will be “eat” with Zerolines.

Moon "Mag-ni-you" / "Sad Dance"

The participant of the Kyiv Creative Association "Lace" Kristina Bardash in a few months turned from a regular assistant of colleagues in the workshop into a full -fledged heroine of the first plan. Her first album brilliantly performed a simple, but necessary operation-subtly combined the language of a new club culture with the aesthetics of the very pop 90s (in the range from the “guests from the future” to Angelica Varum), which finally deservedly turned from the reason for shame in reason for pride. Under the songs of the Moon, the proletariat and the precariat are equally selflessly dancing - which is confirmed by Russian concerts of Bardash (the hall sings all the songs aloud from beginning to end). Important addition: the bard takes the local pop music for a family contract-her husband (and the creator of the “lace”) Yuri Bardash Verkhokhhi leads hip-hop-banda “Mushrooms”, who boldly turned the Russian rap into dance music for the masses, earned a respect from the president of the Russian Federation Navalny and, from the first attempt, gathered on one of the most of large Moscow sites. There is no bazaar: flashes are brighter than these two here for a long time.

Books

Alexey Ivanov. Pitchfork. M.: AST: Editor Elena Shubina, 2016

Non-fiction of the year. The book of Alexei Ivanov is, in fact, the first from the time of Pushkin and in the Ivanovo large-scale attempt to look at the Pugachevsky uprising widely and comprehensively, and not within the framework of a set of dull binary oppositions, triumphing that before the revolution, in Soviet times. Ivanova’s “pitchfork” is a large-budget attraction in the space from the Caspian to the Urals (the author traveled all the places in one way or another associated with the Pugachevshchina), dozens of human fate and mighty breathing of history-but not in the format of the novel, but in the form of a good and factologically impeccable documentary prose. Exciting reading, an abyss of unexpected information and a truly new interpretation of famous events.

Sergey Kuznetsov. Kaleidoscope: Consumables. AST: Editorial Elena Shubina, 2016

The best Russian novel of the year, which has not received a single literary award in an early manner. The history of the long twentieth century (from the mid-1880s to the beginning of the 2010s), Sergei Kuznetsov tells how no one before it-both in form and in fact. In the form of “kaleidoscope” is a bizarre and delightful mycelium of multi -gang (from horror to detective and household sketching) stories. Some of them are interconnected by repeating motives, some are heroes and plots, some - and so, and some - in no way. In fact, Roman Kuznetsov is an absolutely European style of prose, smart, subtle and paradoxical, which skillfully works out many nodal points of modern worldview - from the idea of ​​the notorious Russian “especially” to each generation of naive faith in the fact that it was he who had to live “at the breakdown of eras”.

Hanya Yanagihar. Little life. M.: AST: Corpus. Translation by A. Borisenko, A. Zavozova, V. Sonkin

The transfer novel of the year. 700-page story of four friends-an artist, architect, actor and lawyer-, upon closer examination, turns into a natural spot of Rorshah: everyone reads something in it. And this turns out to be extremely important, painful, intimate, and sometimes, on the contrary, burdened. Someone read a “little life” as a depressive novel about injury, and someone as an optimistic story about its overcoming; For some, this is a book about love and friendship (and that there is no clear border between them), for someone an excursion into the world of contemporary art or just a fairy tale from the series “The rich also cry”. The passions boiling in Russia around the novel by Khany Yanagikhara have long gone beyond the scope of a purely literary discussion, and this is already a “little life” by a truly unprecedented event. But besides, it’s just very good - original, fascinating and not like anything - a novel that is extremely worthy of reader attention.

Anya Desnitskaya, Alexander Litvina. The story of an old apartment. M.: Scooter, 2016

The children's book of the year. “History of the old apartment” of those books that are noticeably more inside than outside. A deceptively small book, consisting of two -thirds of the pictures, in practice is fraught with a whole world - the world of a large Moscow communal apartment, covering a hundred years, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the beginning of the 20th century. Family stories and life, NEP, Stalinist repressions and war, thaw, Brezhnev era, perestroika, events of the 90s. “The history of the old apartment” is immediately a family saga, the history of material culture, and the most complete encyclopedia of Soviet life as a whole. Informative, perfectly designed and very friendly to the reader, the book of Ani Desnitskaya and Alexandra Litvina is a real Mast Reid and Likbez for all people under thirty years old; And for those who are older, is the opportunity to truly deeply touch our own past and past of our country in all its touching, nostalgic and repulsive diversity.

Games

Battlefield 1

Battlefield 1-14th in a row the game from this series of shooters, but you need to play it, even if you have not seen any of the previous 13. Battlefield 1 transfers a player to the battlefields of the First World War - this is simultaneously an exciting and terrible sight. Not least due to excellent graphics and special effects: the weather and the surrounding conditions in the game are constantly and dramatically changing, the buildings collapse, huge airships burn in the sky. And you would have seen these explosions!

As before, Battlefield 1 is, first of all, the perfect multiplayer shooter. But unlike the predecessors, it is finally interesting to play one thing-to think about the meaninglessness of the war and the fate of the soldiers. One small detail: every time your hero is killed (there are several of them in the game), the years of his life are displayed on the screen. And it often turns out that the murdered was slightly over 20.

Doom

The old doom actually laid the foundation for the 3D shutters genre-the new one, which was released this year, did not produce any revolution, but turned out to be almost the perfect game in every way. Минимальный сюжет, много красивых пушек, система добивания врагов, которая по делу должна надоесть через 15 минут — но не надоедает до самого конца. DOOM не похож на современные «серьезные» шутеры: он невероятно быстрый и ритмичный, монстры в нем нестрашные, Ад и другие локации — практически мультяшные. В игре хватает юмора, но она не смешит, а всеми силами развлекает — и делает это невероятно успешно. В DOOM просто очень приятно играть — и 15-20 минут после трудного рабочего дня, и часами напролет в мультиплеере.

Egor Moskvitin

Pavel Borisov

Galina Yuzefovich

Alexander Gorbachev