MUSIC

CBC's 50 Best Songs (in order):

Imagine - John Lennon
In my life - The Beatles
Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
With or Without You - U2
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Over the Rainbow - judy garland
Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
In the Mood - Glenn Miller and his orchestra
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
One Love/People get ready - Bob Marley
Day in the Life - The Beatles
London Calling - The Clash
This Land is Your Land - Woody Guthrie
Born to be Wild - Steppenwolf
Mr. Tambourine Man - The Byrds
Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys
Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
Born to run - Bruce Springsteen
Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
Star Dust - Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra
Your Cheatin’ Heart - Hank Williams
Heroes - David Bowie
Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols
Stayin' Alive - Beegees
How High the Moon - Ella Fitzgerald
Paranoid Android - Radiohead
Rock around the Clock - Bill Haley and the Comets
You oughta know - Alanis Morissette
What’d I Say - Ray Charles
Brother can you spare a dime? - Recorded by Bing Crosby
My Girl - The Temptations
Moritat Vom Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife) - Harald Paulsen
When Doves Cry - Performed by: Prince
Fight The Power - Public Enemy
St Louis Blues - Bessie Smith
Walk On The Wild Side - Lou Reed
Maple Leaf Rag - Scott Joplin
Misty - Sarah Vaughan
I believe I’ll Dust My Broom - Robert Johnson
Nature Boy - Nat King Cole with Frank Devol and his Orchestra
That’s Alright Mama - Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup
Stop in the Name of Love - The Supremes
Potato Head Blues - Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven
Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
Message - Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five
Blue Yodel #1 (T is for Texas) - Jimmie Rodgers
Saturday Night Fish Fry - Louis Jordan and his Timpany Five
Real Love (Mark Morales and Mark Rooney) - Mary J. Blige


FILM

What I would call, perhaps, the top 10 best movies of 2004:

10. FINDING NEVERLAND

9. FEUX ROUGES

8. CLOSER

Mike Nichols has been through the gender wars before, in films like "Carnal Knowledge" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Those films, especially "Woolf," were about people who knew and understood each other with a fearsome intimacy and knew all the right buttons to push. What is unique about "Closer," making it seem right for these insincere times, is that the characters do not understand each other, or themselves. They know how to go through the motions of pushing the right buttons, and how to pretend their buttons have been pushed, but do they truly experience anything at all except their own pleasure?

7. FAHRENHEIT 9/11

Whether or not Michael Moore skewed reality a bit in this scorching indictment of the Bush administration's actions surrounding the events of September 11th is practically irrelevant. What stands here is a pleading love letter from the blue state heart urging a once-great nation to take action and save itself. Love him or hate him, Moore has secured his place in history as a cinematic revolutionary with this one, and possibly helped rouse countless lapsed patriots from their indifferent sleepwalk. A hundred years from now, when high schoolers are studying American history at the turn of the millenium and wondering what the hell was wrong with us, I hope this is part of the curriculum. I want proof that not all of us were driven by greed, self-interest, fear or ignorance. I want proof that some of us really, really, really cared.

6. THE AVIATOR

5. KILL BILL Vol. 2

From a critical standpoint, both volumes of Kill Bill were either reverent homages to the originators of kung fu films, or exemplary plagiarisms. Whereas Vol. 1 drenched audiences in sensuous black and white bloodbaths with epigrammatic narration, Vol. 2 saw The Bride’s amnesia cured, and her vengeful wishes fulfilled in a strangely Freudian denouement, with nods to Romero, Suzuki, and Fujita throughout. Kill Bill Vol. 2 decanted an epic revenge tale commemorating Tarantino’s diverse tutelage as a video store clerk, and introduced a new generation to familiar faces from kung fu action and yakuza style while reminding us that popcorn fare always prevails.

4. SIDEWAYS

With a keen ability to find pummeling existential dread in the most mundane of circumstances, writer-director Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt) takes on the road-trip buddy comedy in Sideways. Two friends set off on a week long tour of California wine country and find themselves face to face with half a life of regret, fear and disappointment. They also get laid. Paul Giamatti is heartbreaking as an effete wine snob and failed novelist, and Thomas Haden Church gives a revelatory performance as his skirt-chasing friend. Comedy and sadness (mostly sadness) ensues. So thanks to Payne’s continuously powerful work, we’ve learned to 1) never become a teacher, 2) never get old and now 3) never drive anywhere in a car.

3. BEFORE SUNSET

Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s 1995 ode to youthful romantic longing, has to rank as one of the better intelligent romantic comedies of the 90s, even if it at times it becomes a tad too precious for its own good. But the passions and foibles of Jesse and Celine were too interesting not to revisit (and really, was the ending of Before Sunrise not one of the greatest cliffhangers of all time? Rich, you sneaky bastard...), and Linklater finally returns with Before Sunset, the more careworn, complex, and perhaps emotionally honest of the two films. Played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy with the same familiar comfort you get from slipping on a pair of old shoes, Jesse and Celine as life-scarred thirthysomethings prove even more fascinating and, ultimately, lovable than they did as starry-eyed post-graduates. Neurotic, unsure, and slightly more cynical, the couple’s idyllic sojourn along the Left Bank of Paris rekindles the kind of idealistic love both suspected they might no longer be capable of. And when the two inevitably do admit their feelings for each other, the moment is all the more heart-tugging for the hard roads the characters took to get there. And it’s worth nothing, Secretary Rumsfeld, that Sunrise was shot in Vienna and Sunset in Paris. Maybe Old Europe isn’t so bad after all...

2. TOUCHING THE VOID

This film is an unforgettable experience, directed by Kevin Macdonald (who made "One Day in September," the Oscar-winner about the 1972 Olympiad) with a kind of brutal directness and simplicity that never tries to add suspense or drama (none is needed!) but simply tells the story, as we look on in disbelief.

1. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

Thematically, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is pretty straightforward, dramatizing the age-old axiom that it’s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all. That’s where the film’s conventionality ends. To stage real-time memory erasure, music-video whiz Michel Gondry constructs an ornate metaphysical labyrinth in which the introverted Joel has all traces of ex-girlfriend Clementine literally extracted from his subconscious, only to realize in the process that he’d rather hold on to the memories, thorns and all. With a Charlie Kaufman script that is at equal turns hilarious, provocative and devastating, Eternal Sunshine also is notable in that it contains, dare I say it, Jim Carrey’s best performance since “Batman Forever.” The film’s structure demands repeated viewing and its emotional textures reward it. Sadly, Eternal Sunshine was released probably too early in the year to secure the awards-season attention it so richly deserves. I write this prior to the announcement of the Golden Globe nominations, so prove me wrong, people!

MUSIC

Nick Hornby's 31 songs

1. Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
2. Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place That I Come From
3. Nelly Furtado - I'm Like a Bird
4. Led Zeppelin - Heartbreaker
5. Rufus Wainwright - One Man Guy
6. Santana - Samba Pa Ti
7. Rod Stewart - Mama Been on My Mind
8. Bob Dylan - Can You Please Crawl Out of Your Window?
9. The Beatles - Rain
10. Ani DiFranco - You Had Time
11. Aimee Mann - I've Had It
12. Paul Westerberg - Born For Me
13. Suicide - Frankie Teardrop
14. Teenage Fanclub - Ain't That Enough
15. J. Geils Band - First I Look at the Purse
16. Ben Folds Five - Smoke
17. Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
18. The Bible - Glorybound
19. Van Morrison -Caravan
20. Butch Hancock & Marce LaCouture - So I'll Run
21. Gregory Isaacs - Puff the Magic Dragon
22. Ian Dury & the Blockheads - Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3
23. Richard and Linda Thompson - The Calvary Cross
24. Jackson Brownee - Late For the Sky
25. Mark Mulcahy - Hey Self-Defeater
26. The Velvelettes - Needle in a Haystack
27. O.V. Wright - Let's Straighten it Out
28. Royksopp - Royksopp's Night Out
29. The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
30. Soulwax - No Fun/Push It
31. Patti Smith Group - Pissing in a River

My 31 Songs

1. R.E.M. - Find the River
2. Neil Young - Down by the River
3. Beck - The Golden Age
4. U2 - Kite
5. The Beach Boys - Don't Worry Baby
6. The Beastie Boys - Sure Shot
7. Bob Dylan - Abandoned Love
8. The Verve - History
9. Vic Chesnutt - Where were you?
10. Tom Waits - Jersey Girl
11. Teenage Fanclub - Start Again
12. The Strokes - Under Control
13. Stevie Wonder - I Believe (when I fall in love with you it will be forever)
14. Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin - Je t'aime moi non plus
15. Liz Phair - Friend of mine
16. PJ Harvey - Is this desire?
17. Sarah Harmer - Room with a Sir John A. View
18. Ron Sexsmith - Foolproof
19. Rolling Stones - Winter
20. Beatles - We can work it out
21. Red House Painters - All mixed up
22. Pavement - Summer Babe
23. Oasis - Live Forever
24. Nina Simone - Just in time
25. Nick Drake - Summer sun
26. Marvin Gaye - What's going on?
27. Lucinda Williams - Blue
28. Joni Mitchell - All I Want
29. Gordon Lightfoot - If you could read my mind
30. Tupac - California Love
31. Flaming Lips - Do you Realize?

and
Iron & Wine - Such great heights
Elliott Smith - Between the bars
Bruce Springsteen - The river
Coldplay - Sparks
Bjork - Joga
Blur - Sweet song
Bill Withers - Ain't no Sunshine
Belle & Sebastian - Seymour Stein
Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost
Radiohead - Let down
Stone Roses - Sugar Spun Sister
Tragically Hip - Bobcaygeon
Wilco - Misunderstood
White Stripes - Hotel Yorba