Listgasm: 2011 Edition

To please the tyrannical overlord at Tativille, Michael J. Anderson, I hereby include another top ten films o' the year list. To keep from rehashing most of the same titles, this one will be of worldwide premieres in 2011, not U.S releases (hence the difference from my epoch-shaking list for Indiewire). Then, due to overwhelming internet demand (specifically, this guy), I will not-so-humbly unfurl my favorite albums of the year. Finally, this impossibly erotic post will end with some quotes from Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, because that's just what happens in these situations.

Films

1. The Tree of Life (Terence Malick)

2. This Is Not a Film (Mojtaba Mirtahmbasb and Jafar Panahi)

3. Words of Mercury (Jerome Hiler)

4. Dreileben (Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, and Christoph Hochhausler)

5. House of Pleasures (aka L'Apollonide, Bertrand Bonello)

6. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)

7. Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes)

8. The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne)

9. It's the Earth, Not the Moon (Goncalo Tocha)

10. The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)


Honorable Mentions: The Three Musketeers, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Two Years At Sea

The Best Acting by Milla Jovovich Award: Milla Jovovich in The Three Musketeers

Albums

1. Craig Taborn - Avenging Angel

2. Hayes Carll - KMAG YOYO

3. tUnEyArDs - w h o k i l l

4. Dave King Trucking Company - Good Old Light

5. Don Trip and Starlito - Step Brothers

6. Pistol Annies - Hell on Heels

7. Krallice - Diotima

8. Merle Haggard - Working in Tennessee

9. Mastodon - The Hunter

10. Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter One, Gens de Couleur Libres

Quotes From Pessoa's Book of Disquiet that made me nod in snobbish approval during 2011:

"Yes, talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial, and in them intelligence gleams like an image in a mirror" -Chapter 49

"Civilization consists in giving something a name that doesn't belong to it and then dreaming over the result" - Chapter 66, "With a Shrug"

"I'm so isolated I can feel the distance between me and my suit" - Chapter 83

"Only landscapes that don't exist and books I'll never read aren't tedious." -Chapter 122

"Good deeds are impositions; that's why I categorically abhor them." -Chapter 208

"To belong is synonymous with banality." -Chapter 236

"To be a retired major seems to me ideal. Too bad it's not possible to have eternally been nothing but a retired major" - Chapter 244