{"id":3977,"date":"2024-12-26T13:15:38","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T21:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3977"},"modified":"2025-02-23T09:23:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T17:23:32","slug":"gene-seymours-favorite-things-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/?p=3977","title":{"rendered":"Gene Seymour’s Favorite Things in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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Once again, as was the case eight years ago<\/a>, I find this year’s list to be leaning heavily on women. This time, however, I didn\u2019t plan it that way. It\u2019s just how it happened to work out. I suppose that\u2019s where I\u2019ve invested whatever hope I have for the future, long or short-term.

Nothing else to add, at least for now, except that I couldn\u2019t get to as much out there as I would have liked.

Oh and, as always, these are in no particular order:<\/p>\r\n

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Colored Television<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 Percival Everett\u2019s James<\/em> was the Novel of the Year<\/a> on most lists and, at this writing, it\u2019s nestling in the upper tier of the New York Times Best-Seller List. It deserves every accolade it\u2019s gotten. But so does the latest novel by Everett\u2019s equally accomplished wife, Danzy Senna, who has built her own impressive reputation for acerbic comedies-of-manners as they evolve \u2013 or don\u2019t \u2013 in the expanding new world of multiracial diversity in the USA. The protagonist of her latest novel is, like its author, a mixed-race novelist and college professor. Her name is Jane Gibson who, with her bohemian artist husband Lenny and their two children, ekes out a life on relatively meagre resources by inhabiting borrowed homes in fashionable SoCal neighborhoods. She puts all her faith and ambition in what she is certain is the Great American Mulatto Novel. (Yes, she prefers \u201cmulatto\u201d to any other term. \u201c\u2019Biracial\u2019 could be any old thing. Korean and Panamanian or Chinese and Egyptian. But a mulatto is always specifically a mulatto.\u201d) When this sprawling tome is spurned by publishers, Jane decides she\u2019s been wasting her energies on literature and, as was the case with generations of writers before her, dives into the gauzy maelstrom of Hollywood screenwriting, specifically by finding space at a writers\u2019 table developing a TV \u201cprestige\u201d sitcom about the \u201cmulatto\u201d experience. The narrative twists, however clever and trenchant, aren\u2019t what keep your head in the game; it\u2019s the streams of zingers, aphorisms, and socio-cultural observations, whether its Jane\u2019s withering assessment of her students\u2019 reading tastes to the mores of hosting her daughter\u2019s birthday party among the L.A. hoi polloi. As a bonus, Senna\u2019s book also serves as a guide not just to navigating one\u2019s way through a multi-culti life, but to writing itself. And, for that matter, teaching writing. (\u201cYou couldn\u2019t teach a student by assigning Toni Morrison, it would only create bad imitations.\u201d) Laugh, and learn.<\/p>\r\n

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Sally Jenkins<\/strong> \u2013 So many of my friends dropped their Washington Post subscriptions after Jeff Bezos\u2019s non-endorsement for president. While understanding the impulse, I insisted that, however exasperating the Post\u2019s direction on this and other matters, there were still people working there who needed and merited our abiding support. Without the Post, for instance, you\u2019d deprive yourself of beholding a great American sportswriter in the midst of a ferocious hot streak. Jenkins has over decades sustained a level of performance as awe-inspiring as any of the superstar athletes she writes about, whether she\u2019s unspooling long-form pieces like the panoramic, vividly rendered account of legendary bull rider J.B. Mauney\u2019s decelerated-but-still-engaged life after a broken neck<\/a> or firing column after column taking dead solid aim at Received Wisdom wherever it\u2019s stinking up the joint. She places the blame for the hot mess college athletics have become on the institutions that forget or ignore their educational missions. She was laser-like in deconstructing police overreaction to a pregame traffic infraction by Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill<\/a> (\u201c\u2026a needless escalation not because of Hill\u2019s conduct, but that of those chesty cops, their belts jingling with tools of submission and voices that demanded bootlicks\u2026\u201d). While the Tom Brady roast delighted millions, Jenkins was decidedly not amused by the \u201chammy punchlines that fell like refrigerators hitting sidewalks.\u201d<\/a> And she was, as usual, smarter than almost everybody else in her field when assessing Bill Belichick\u2019s decision to forsake the klieg-light glare of the NFL for the NCAA<\/a>: \u201cBelichick\u2019s longtime permafrost barrier is less about aloofness than about his suspicion of the corrosive effects of popularity.\u201d Jenkins has been a perennial finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and I thought her engrossing, deeply moving 2023 takeout on the bond between Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova should have finally put her over the top. Then again, she doesn\u2019t need anybody\u2019s prizes to certify her preeminence \u2013 not as much as you need to pay more attention to her day-to-day output.



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Beyonce, Cowboy Carter<\/em> (Parkwood\/Columbia)<\/strong> \u2013 So who needs the CMA anyway? Those are for country-&-western albums, and this was the kind of pure pop product that took in too many multitudes to be contained by any genre. More than anything, as many others pointed out, Beyonce herself was, and is, her own genre. And whatever this album\u2019s head-swiveling popularity and impact on the marketplace and its multiple platforms, I don\u2019t think enough was made of Ms. Knowles\u2019s valiant determination to declare that she, too, sings America \u2013 as if the opening track, \u201cAmerican Requiem\u201d didn\u2019t forcefully assert such intention. Nothing about this Mother of All Crossover Projects felt strained or overstuffed \u2013 except, maybe, for the Texas radio station motif that almost wore out its welcome. Overall, it\u2019s a cordial, enthusiastic house party with an eclectic guest list (Miley Cyrus, Shaboozey, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Tanner Adell, Rhiannon Giddens, Willie Nelson, Jon Baptiste, Linda Martell, among others) and a generosity of spirit that makes the album\u2019s nay-sayers seem even pettier — and more bewildering. The election results have too many convinced that the country\u2019s regressing deeper into the swamps of polarization. But I think Cowboy Carter<\/em>\u2019s arrival is the clearest indication we have this year that the wider, more diverse world the reactionaries are so afraid of has already arrived \u2013 and isn\u2019t going anywhere anytime soon.

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Hacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 Somehow you knew that the perverse bond between Vegas standup comedy institution Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her on-and-off-again muse-for-hire Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) was going to need more than just two seasons to evolve. And the third and best season of this series raised the stakes in bringing this oddest of odd couples back together after Deborah cut Ava loose (supposedly) for the latter\u2019s own sake. And it seems, for a time, to have worked out, with Deborah riding a wave of popularity with newer younger audiences who\u2019ve seen her unexpected Netflix hit and Ava scoring a dream gig writing for a satiric news digest. But when the late-night hosting job of Deborah\u2019s long-deferred dreams suddenly becomes attainable, she decides that only Ava\u2019s writing can deliver her to the finish line. So, for better and worse, they reconnect with their respective insecurities and unruly yearnings entwined once again in a fitful tango of codependence and ambition. The sometimes-sordid things they do along the way to get what they want smacks around our sympathies. But there are too damn many things in the culture that pander to simplistic good\/evil dualities. Ava\u2019s moments of insight and compassion may not always arrive in a timely manner, but when they do, you wish you could hire her for some odd jobs around the office. And it\u2019s hard to stay mad at Deborah when she makes this rationale for her heat-seeking campaign: \u201cAnything I want to do I have to do it now. Or else I\u2019ll never do it. That\u2019s the worst part about getting older.\u201d No pathos here. Just another shot of raw, aching truth that\u2019ll keep us coming back to these fascinating, damaged women.

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Rebel Ridge<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 I started watching this on Netflix after several people I trust urged me to do so. When it began with an innocent, unarmed Black man on a bicycle getting rousted and harassed by small-town white men in uniform, I thought: Do I really need to go through this mess again (especially this year, or this decade?) But it didn\u2019t take long for Jeremy Saulnier\u2019s contemporary western to pull me all the way in. Which says a lot, given how totally done I\u2019ve become with this kind of drama (especially in real life). The movie is not only smart about orchestrating its martial arts sequences and chase montages, but also about the jujitsu of legal procedure and the pressure points that won\u2019t always, or easily, submit to the bully-bro tactics of overentitled cops. One more thing: Aaron Pierre, as the unstoppable marine vet kicking ass for justice, is a bona fide star and I hope the Green Lantern franchise, such as it is, treats him much better than it did Ryan Reynolds.<\/p>\r\n


The Paris Olympics<\/strong> \u2013 They had me, literally, at hello with Celine Dion\u2019s spectral performance of \u201cHymne a L\u2019Amour\u201d<\/a> climaxing a moist, stirring opening ceremony. Dion\u2019s spellbinding resolve was sustained in the steely \u201cI\u2019m Baaack!\u201d sang-froid of Simone Biles throughout the women\u2019s gymnastics competition, whether dispatching the competition or supporting her teammates. The men\u2019s basketball competition honored the elder generation of superstars like LeBron James and Stephan Curry while also acting as a showcase for NextGen stars like France\u2019s Victor Wembanyana and Japan\u2019s Kawamura Yuki. Much was made of Katey Ledecky\u2019s four-pack of swimming medals, and even more was made by the pool of local hero \u201cKing\u201d (or is it \u201cRoi\u201d?) Leon Marchand. But as always, I was especially riveted to track-and-field, especially the American women sprinters. If there\u2019s one YouTube clip that I never get tired of watching from the games, it\u2019s of Sha \u2018Carri Richardson\u2019s come-from-behind anchor leg of the 4X100-meter relay<\/a>. That millisecond before she breaks the tape is the best victory glance at the competition since Secretariat\u2019s jockey Ron Turcotte sneaked an over-the-shoulder look at how far ahead they were in the 1973 Belmont Stakes.


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Desi Lydic<\/strong> \u2013 The big story with The Daily Show this year was Jon Stewart\u2019s return to the anchor desk, albeit in a more limited role. With characteristic generosity, Stewart\u2019s still ceding lots of space to the show\u2019s rotating anchors who have been doing just fine without him. They\u2019re all great, but I think Lydic, who joined the franchise back in 2015, has become one of its stealth weapons. And it\u2019s not just because she had the season\u2019s single best zinger, aimed in Tucker Carlson\u2019s direction the day he was dismissed from Fox News.<\/a> I\u2019m thinking of a relatively routine night for the show, when she surgically took apart what was supposed to be a major policy address by the once-and-future-president on health care and laid out its sloppy, threadbare components for all to see and hear. I turned on the radio and television the morning after waiting for somebody, anybody else to apply even a little of Lydic\u2019s scorched-earth skepticism and deconstruction to this speech. Crickets. At least, that\u2019s all I\u2019d heard. This, by default, made her my favorite broadcast journalist of the 2024 campaign with no one else even close. I\u2019m not expecting the next couple years (at least) to be fun. But I\u2019m at least encouraged that Lydic will still be ready to apply the scythe and flares to Trump\u2019s foggier rhetoric — if \u201crhetoric\u201d is what you can call it.<\/p>\r\n

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The Sympathizer<\/strong> <\/em>\u2013 The culture-at-large is in love with international intrigue to a degree that it hasn\u2019t been since the mid-20th century days of Counterinsurgency, Sean Connery\u2019s 007, and Mutually Assured Destruction. A partial, up-to-date list of global duplicity to be found on streams includes Black Doves, The Agency, Day of the Jackal, The Diplomat, Lioness<\/em>, and Slow Horses<\/em>, the latter of which I am so devoted to that I inhale the Mick Herron novels so I can stay out in front of whatever happens to its motley crew of misfits after each of the series\u2019 four seasons. But even that show hasn\u2019t messed with my head like the HBO adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen\u2019s award-winning novel, set during and after the Vietnam War, about the perilous destiny of a double agent (a most excellent Hoa Xuande) spying for the communist North while serving as an officer with the South\u2019s army. The novel claims both Ralph Ellison and John Le Carr\u00e9 as its guiding spirits and the series is more faithful to Nguyen\u2019s dark seriocomic narrative than the agent, known only as The Captain, is to either of his warring masters. He carries his divided soul with him after the Fall of Saigon to late-1970s Los Angeles where the war goes on among his fellow refugees, notably his onetime general (Toan Le), now a liquor-store owner still dreaming of somehow reversing the war\u2019s outcome. Robert Downey Jr., one of the show\u2019s executive producers, plays (riotously) multiple roles as white men with undue, malign influence on The Captain\u2019s life, including a sybaritic CIA cowboy, a doltish California congressman, and a megalomaniacal filmmaker using the Captain for technical advice on a Vietnam War epic. Some viewers complained about the story\u2019s multiple time-shifts and how the narrative didn\u2019t always play fair with the Captain\u2019s motivations \u2013 and everybody else\u2019s. All of which, of course, was what I liked most about it.<\/p>\r\n

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When The Clock Broke<\/strong><\/em> \u2013John Ganz\u2019s account of the 1992 presidential campaign was published three days before Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and declared support for his vice president Kamala Harris. The convergence now seems like ages ago, especially when one remembers how suddenly plausible it seemed at that moment that the election results would signal the end \u2014 or at least the beginning of the end \u2013 of the dismal era that Ganz contends was set in motion by the tempest of reactionary resentment and populist rage abetted by such luminaries of the era as Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Daryl Gates, Rudy Giuliani, Rush Limbaugh, and others. So omnipresent was this force that even the election\u2019s eventual winner Bill Clinton pandered to it by hanging Black rapper-activist Sister Souljah out to dry in public. Ganz\u2019s mordant, thorough account spares no one in complicity and even brings in John \u201cThe Dapper Don\u201d Gotti as a tabloid paradigm of the mob capo as authoritarian ideal. As I wrote this past summer,<\/a> you\u2019ll find just about everything there is to say about how we ended up in this perilous time for our democratic republic; everything, that is, except a clearly marked exit.<\/p>\r\n

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Zoe Saldana<\/strong> \u2013 As more than one of my friends insist, there\u2019s nobody better than Saldana at evoking the state of being sick-and-tired-of-everybody-else\u2019s-bullshit, especially when, as the CIA commando in Lioness<\/em> known as Joe McNamara, she has to be Tough Mommy to her daughters in split-level Virginia and to the grimy, smart-alecky roughnecks she leads into morally ambiguous dark-ops missions. Her character in Emilia Perez<\/em> is scarcely under less pressure than Joe; she\u2019s a Mexico City lawyer recruited by a notorious drug cartel leader to help navigate his safe passage to a new life as a woman. In both cases, Saldana is a flash point, barely keeping rage and hysteria at bay. She not always at the center of things, but nothing consequential happens, good or bad, without her. While I yearn for the cooler, drier archetype of existential heroism I grew up with, Saldana\u2019s mercurial, intense variation somehow feels closer to where our heads should be now: doing whatever it takes to get through whatever perils get dumped in our pathway<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                    Once again, as was the case eight years ago, I find this year’s list to be leaning heavily on women. This time, however, I didn\u2019t plan it that way. It\u2019s just how it happened to work out. I suppose that\u2019s where I\u2019ve invested whatever hope […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,185,368],"tags":[857,1247,926,1242,1244,1243,1245,1230,1241,1246,236],"class_list":["post-3977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-on-writing-lit-and-unlit","category-tv-reviews","tag-beyonce","tag-celine-dion","tag-danzy-senna","tag-desi-lydic","tag-hannah-einbinder","tag-jean-smart","tag-john-ganz","tag-robert-downey-jr","tag-sally-jenkins","tag-shacarri-richardson","tag-zoe-saldana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3977"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4066,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions\/4066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geneseymour.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}