Favorites of 2016

Ed Ruscha at the de Young, Seonna Hong at Hashimoto Contemporary,
Yuri on Ice, All My Puny Sorrows, The Makropulos Case 

It's no secret that 2016 wasn't great. But here are the pieces of art and entertainment, from an ice skating anime to paintings in Milan, that I loved in this crazy year. 

Books

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews: One of my favorite books and one of my favorite movies this year are about suicide, but both in an oddly hopeful way. In All My Puny Sorrows, two middle-aged Mennonite sisters - struggling writer Yolandi and renowned pianist Elfreida - grapple with Elfreida's suicidal ideation and their family's long history of mental illness. This sounds like a dreary premise, but Toews's novel is full of warmth, humor, and fierce love. In a highlight, Yolandi furiously gives her sister the kind of defense most depressed people long for, but never get.

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood: As a The Tempest superfan, I was excited for Margaret Atwood's novel take on the Shakespeare play. The resulting work, Hag-Seed, is inventive and entertaining (if not terribly deep). When a smarmy board member removes egotistical but dedicated Felix from his role as artistic director of a theatre festival, Felix goes into hiding. But when he finds a job teaching Shakespeare to inmates at a local prison, he realizes how he could have his revenge.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray: Set seven-ish years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this eerily topical Star Wars novel captures, from Senator Leia Organa's point of view, the political tensions and escalating disasters that make way for the rise of the First Order.

Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie: A spaceship trapped in a human body teams up with a drug-addicted former colleague in a quest for revenge: this is the story Ann Leckie tells in three beautiful page-turners. The trilogy is a masterclass in world-building; a breath-taking tour of imaginary planets, space stations, and cultures. Characters like measured, compassionate, quietly determined Breq; the sometimes heroic, sometimes a hot mess Seivarden; and zany, endlessly curious Translator Zeiat become quick favorites.

After dutifully carrying out a devastating order she wishes she hadn't and then losing her omniscience in a betrayal, former spaceship artificial intelligence system Breq tirelessly plots a course that will take her to the evil leader of the empire she once served. Along the way she gains companions and rights various social justice wrongs. The vision Leckie presents of a compassionate, justice-focused way of governing is enticing and needed, but her didactic impulse can get distracting as the trilogy continues (even on the climactic brink of a potentially existence-ending war, a lot of time and energy is devoted to browbeating an emotionally unstable character over a microaggression, for example).

Older Books I Read or Re-Read

Grace Marks (L), the subject of Atwood's novel

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood: One of Atwood's finest, Alias Grace is based on real murders that happened near Toronto in 1843. Told by various narrators, newspaper clippings, and even some poetry, Atwood imagines the build-up to the crimes; the lengthy aftermath; and most importantly, the precarious and complicated lives of female servants.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: I revisited this classic on a whim, and got a little obsessed. (Bonus: on Halloween, I scored a reduced price ticket to San Francisco Ballet's forthcoming production of a ballet based on the novel!)

The Debacle (Le Debacle) by Emile Zola: Something I'm writing has required me to do a lot of research on the Franco-Prussian War, which lead to Zola's The Debacle. Because of this research I already knew the novel's ending, but I got so invested in the characters involved that I hoped I had misread it. I hadn't. :( The translation I read, by Leonard Tancock, was distracting (he makes the French peasants talk like English cockneys for some reason, like with them saying "tuppence" and everything), but the story of two Frances represented by two men who form an unlikely friendship on the battlefield is still powerful.

Zofloya by Charlotte Dacre and The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole: I read Zofloya for the Venetian setting when gearing up for a trip to Venice, and had no idea going in just how bonkers the 1806 Gothic novel would be. It is very bonkers, with murders, affairs, magic, kidnappings, and lovers clasping each other on top of a mountain while lightning flashes around them. But then I went back to what is considered the first Gothic novel, the 1764 The Castle of Otranto, which starts with a teenager getting killed on his wedding day by a giant flying helmet. That definitely takes the bonkers gold. Reading these made me better understand Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, her 1817 novel in which a teenage heroine who devours these types of books sees Gothic drama in everything around her.

Movies

Arrival

Swiss Army Man: This bizarre, gross-out indie about a depressed man and a corpse is also deeply affecting.

Moonlight: "That shit was perfect," announced a man behind me when the end credits started to roll. It's hard to argue with that assessment of Barry Jenkins's reflective portrait in three acts of a gay boy growing to manhood in Miami's mix of drugs, danger, and beauty.

Arrival: I was a bigger mess during this movie than in 50/50, The Fault in Our Stars, or Liz in September, and cancer wasn't even mentioned. I cried at the beginning of the movie. I cried in the middle of the movie. I cried at the end of the movie. This film about a linguist hired to communicate with recently landed, cephalopod-like aliens is based on the Ted Chiang short story, "The Story of Your Life," and I'd suggest avoiding spoilers.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople: New Zealand director Taika Waititi, unlike many people, presumably had a good 2016. Not only was he filming Thor: Ragnarok, a hopefully lighter addition to the increasingly bogged-down MCU, but his adventure-comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople was released. When it looks like Ricky - a city-raised foster kid who has finally found home at a rural farm - will be returned to the system, he and his cantankerous foster parent go on the run in the New Zealand bush.

Midnight Special: I am going to be totally honest and admit that I 100% saw this because Adam Driver is in it. He plays an awkward, studious government agent who is tracking down a boy, Alton, rumored to have strange powers. Also looking for the boy are representatives from the cult in which Alton was raised. Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst are Alton's parents, and chameleonic Joel Edgerton is a friend helping them flee. Like other artsy sci-fi films Arrival and Under the Skin, Midnight Special spends long moments lingering on its Earthen landscapes, in this case the American South at night. The shots of headlight-filled highways and glowing gas stations reminded me a lot of the Ed Ruscha show held at the de Young this year (below).

TV

Yuri on Ice: I'm not a big TV watcher, but I watched my usual stuff this year: South Park, Gotham, Drunk History, hours of HGTV in the background, etc. But what completely captured my heart (and judging my twitter feed, the hearts of girls from Japan to Mexico)? Ice skating anime Yuri on Ice.

Theater

Morfydd Clark and Janet McTeer in Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Les Liaisons Dangereuses - Donmar Warehouse: Josie Rourke and the Donmar Warehouse are British national treasures we're sometimes allowed access to via National Theatre Live. I loved Rourke's take on Coriolanus a few years back, and her production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel, was another stunner. (The show eventually made it to Broadway, but I saw it via telecast at the Lark Theater in Larkspur.) My favorite aspect of this production was how Rourke made use of what we know but the characters and Laclos did not: that in just a few years, the upper class's lives of luxurious boredom and bored excess would be upended by the French Revolution. As the play progresses, the sumptuous set is stripped bare, mirroring the protagonists' pretense and foretelling the storm to come. 

Much Ado About Nothing - Cal Shakes: This gender-bending, cater-waiter take on one of my favorite Shakespeare plays worked marvelously. 

King Lear - PacRep: I had no idea what to expect when my family decided to see some local theater while on a trip to Monterey, and was blown away by the caliber of acting and set design in this King Lear. 

The Makropulos Case - San Francisco Opera: The image of Nadja Michael in a Pierrot costume was enough to get me through the door for this 1926 Czech opera about a 300-year-old superstar looking to further extend her life. Michael's charisma makes the piece work, but I also truly touched by the story of the jaded diva and the everyday people who have been embroiled in a generations-long legal conflict partly of her making. 

Art

Detail from Seonna Hong's "Brotherhood of Men"

Musee Massena - Charlotte Salomon: Vie? Ou theatre?: The Musee Massena in Nice, France, celebrated the work of a young artist who once sought refuge nearby from Nazism.

Palazzo Reale - Simbolismo: When my sister and I stopped in Milan for the night on our way from Nice to Venice, we didn't do much research beforehand and didn't know what to expect. Along with the Duomo and finding the perfect duck umbrella, this exhibition of the beauty, weirdness, and sometimes gaudiness of the Symbolism movement was a highlight.

Fine Arts Museums San Francisco - Ed Ruscha and the Great American West & Wild West: Plains to the Pacific: The de Young's Ruscha show focused on the artist's work capturing both the sprawl and emptiness of the American Southwest. Its sister exhibition at the Legion of Honor was a clear-eyed survey of the West through many artists.

Hashimoto Contemporary - Seonna Hong, In Our Nature: I was immediately taken by Hong's intriguing images of youths exploring minimalist landscapes in pinks, greens, and grays. I even ended up buying a 2.5 x 2.5" painting - an addition to my tiny collection of tiny original art.

Ancillary Mercy, Swiss Army Man, Bloodline,
Moonlight, Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Previous Favorites:
Favorites of 2015
Favorites of 2014


Images:
Header and footer collages made in LiveCollage
Grace Marks: Murderpedia 
Les Liaisons Dangereuses: photo by Johann Persson
Seonna Hong: my photo of Hong's painting "Brotherhood of Men"

Tales Told of GOB and Michael: Favorite Fictional Siblings

The Bluth brothers' battles produce considerably less structural damage.

I finally saw The Avengers a few weekends ago and became an obsessed fangirl, so I had to watch Thor. In Thor, Loki, already dealing with Scar/Mufasa jealousy issues with his brother, is even more shaken by the revelation that he's adopted, which basically goes like this: "Your birth father is our lifelong enemy and I actually stole you as a baby in case I needed you for diplomatic reasons in the future. You probably have some questions, but I'm going into comatose state now." Loki handles this news really, really badly (scheming to win his adopted father's love by killing his birth father and also genocide, attempting suicide, getting in way over his head with brutal alien species the Chitari, trying to subjugate all of humanity, etc) but despite everything, you kinda hope brothers-turned-enemies Thor and Loki can work it out. Maybe they can have a sit-down with King Arthur and Sir Kay, although Loki reeeeeally does not seem interested in the Sir Kay "know what I'll just ride on my adopted brother's coattails and provide comic relief" route right now.

Really this is just an excuse for me to ramble about my favorite fake siblings, from the inseparable to the murderous.

Arrested Development - the Bluth children

GOB, Michael, Lindsay, and Buster.

He may be the patriarch of a douchey Orange County family and not the king of Asgard, but George Bluth, Sr. definitely one-ups Odin. Not only does he encourage sibling rivalry between enthusiastic but not terribly bright or adored firstborn George Bluth, Jr. (a.k.a. GOB) and perennially exasperated, sole competent sibling Michael, but he turns their forced childhood fights into a successful line of underground videos. The lone sister is vain, shallow Lindsay, who, just like Margot Tenenbaum of The Royal Tenenbaums, is blonde, adopted (spoiler), and marries a much older crunchy doctor-type to rebel (I guess that's just what you do when you're the blonde only daughter of a dysfunctional wealthy family). Youngest child Buster is the indulged baby of the family, despite being well into his thirties. Even with all their differences and clashes involving telenovela stars and loose seals, they share a bond that can only be forged by the shared childhood terror of your father repeatedly throwing a prosthetic arm at you. 

Pride and Prejudice - Jane and Elizabeth Bennet

Keira Knightley & Rosamund Pike in the 2005 film.

Poor Michael Bluth has no confidant for dealing with his crazy siblings, but at least eldest Bennet sisters Elizabeth and Jane have each other to help weather the storm that is their frantic, marriage-obsessed household. They're the responsible, intelligent counterpart to their two youngest sisters: the boy-crazy, impulsive Lydia and Kitty. (No1curr about middle child Mary.) Although Jane is the eldest, her kindness and shyness make her vulnerable, and Elizabeth is just as protective of her as Mr. Darcy is of his guileless BFF Mr. Bingley. Darcy's and Elizabeth's desires to protect their own halves of the adorable baby bunny coupling that is Bingley and Jane end up putting them even more at odds than they were before. Fortunately, after some pride/prejudice/oops-forgot-to-tell-you-that-one-guy's-a-pederast stumbles, Darcy and Elizabeth come to an understanding, the BFFs become brothers-in-law, and the eldest Misses Bennet get to leave crazytown.

The Virgin Suicides - the Lisbon sisters

The sisters in the Sophia Coppola film.

The doomed, dreamy Lisbon sisters linger in the minds of their unnamed admirers long after their deaths (spoiler alert?), just as they linger in the minds of readers of Jeffrey Eugenides's debut novel long after the book is finished. Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia are all different in temperament and interests, but form one sisterly mass. While the girls' bond comes in part from the shared social isolation imposed by their awkward, conservative parents, even when out of the house the sisters show little desire to separate themselves. Among the upheaval of the 70s and the repression of their home life, the sisters have created their own little world.

After Dark - Mari and Eri Asai

Younger sister Mari is the serious student. Older sister Eri is the beautiful model. But now Eri, depressed and addicted to pills, has fallen into a stupor and rarely leaves her bed. To escape the stifling atmosphere at home, Mari spends her nights drinking coffee and reading at a Tokyo Denny's. On one of these nights, she encounters an acquaintance from her and her sister's past, and is soon pulled into an all-night adventure involving a retired female wrestler and a human trafficking ring. But the most difficult thing Mari has to do is get past the years of resentment and her reflexive withdrawal to remember and reconnect with a big sister who would protect her in darkness.

Geek Love - the Binewski siblings

The Lisbon siblings' isolation has nothing on the Binewskis'. The children of this family are children, yes, but they're also products: bred specifically for the freak show at their parents' traveling carnival. They don't attend school, and besides a few carnival employees, they have no companions other than each other. The siblings are charismatic and flippered Arty, conjoined twins Electra and Iphigenia, hunchbacked albino dwarf Oly, and powerfully psychic but gentle Chick. Their sequestered lives continue without change until Arty stumbles upon a business venture far more lucrative than a carnival: a cult. As Arty's megalomaniac tendencies run further out of control, the siblings' close-knit bonds turn to tragedies of passion and jealousy. 

Firefly - Simon and River Tam

Sean Maher as Simon and Summer Glau as River.

Sure, River Tam might be deadly and prone to erratic fits and will spy on you having sex, but she's still a way less annoying Joss Whedon younger sibling than Dawn Summers. Hell, Avengers' Loki's a less annoying Joss Whedon younger sibling than Dawn Summers, and he killed Agent Coulson and kept the Avengers so busy that Thor didn't even have time to bang Natalie Portman on his return trip to Earth. In cult classic series Firefly, young doctor Simon Tam boards spaceship Serenity with a strange box - which turns out to hold the naked body of a young woman in stasis. The young woman is his sister, River, who has had her brain torn apart by the government to make her into a psychic assassin. Extremely (extremely extremely) devoted Simon has risked everything to rescue her, and now the brother and sister are on the run, hiding out on Serenity. By turns endearing, terrifying, and kick-ass ("I can kill you with my brain"), River is eventually embraced by the rest of the crew.

Finnegans Wake - Shem and Shaun

Signed cover page of a published excerpt. Joyce sucks at J's.

Can you really call them - or anyone in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake - characters? They're more...concepts...and the figures mostly known as Shem and Shaun are the ultimate concept of the two brothers: forever opposites and forever united. The sons of two other figures in the book, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and Anna Livia Plurabelle, Shaun is the "good" conformist brother and Shem is the screw-up troublemaker. They are a seemingly endless list of opposing but eternally connected brothers: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, and alcoholic writer James Joyce and his own straighter arrow brother Stanislaus. Michael Bluth and Thor are definitely Shauns, and GOB and Loki are definitely Shems. Which are you?