Best of the Year: The Web

This was the year I said goodbye to a number of sites that became so advertising laden they took forever to load on my browser. But that's the worst of the web, isn't it?

I'm not sure why the best of everything is coming in twos this year, but today is another twofer. And the award for the best of the year in World Wide Web activity goes to Lifehacker and Andrew's Blog.

I've been a casual visitor to Lifehacker for sometime. But 2008 was the year it topped my rss reader. Perhaps I became afraid that without checking it everyday I'd be overwhelmed by the number of posts. No, that's not it. What I discovered was that there is something useful every single day, and I don't want to miss it!

Lifehacker bills itself as "tips and downloads for getting things done." That's about as dead-on a description as I can provide. While technology is a major factor in what Lifehacker provides--and this is a particularly Mac-friendly site--the information goes well beyond the technical. The site is filled with information on do-it-yourself projects, on how-to's. The information on computers is also amazingly useful.

In this year, I downloaded a free program to protect my passwords and private information, learned what supplies needed to go into a basic cleaning kit, how to repurpose my old iPod, essential and discounted apps for my iPhone and so much more. Lifehacker became the essential site for finding cool things that would help me out and would make me cool because I would share them.

And now for something completely different....

Something is happening in the University of Michigan's Musical Theater program. The MT program has a fine reputation and has produced some of our finest actors working in New York. Lately, some of the more recent grads from the program have taken things to the Web. Besides a few random videos I came across on YouTube, my first in-depth contact was with the fantastic Web series The Battery's Down, the musical story of a struggling actor in New York. You can see all of season one's episodes online, and season two starts March 1, 2009.

One of the Battery's Down regulars is Andrew Keenan-Bolger, a UMich graduate with long career for a 23 year old. He was Jojo in Seussical, along with a bunch of other New York credits prior to his UMich days. He's currently in The Grinch in its Boston engagement. Keenan-Bolger maintains Andrew's Blog, a compelling video blog that provides an intimate look into the life of a young musical theater actor.



Andrew's Blog is part video blog, part performance art, part performance capture, lots of camp and a whole lot of fun. Keenan-Bolger is charismatic and open. His vlog is a little offbeat, which makes it more interesting. I love the fact that you're never sure whether it's Andrew Keenan-Bolger or Andrew Keenan-Bolger playing the role of Andrew Keenan-Bolger. Here's a sample of Andrew's Blog from his visit to Rosie's Cruise last April.



Keenan-Bolger has a well-defined web presence. From the inspired URL of his blog: http://keenanblogger.blogspot.com/ to his creative, if a little busy, MySpace page and the UMichMT YouTube Channel, Keenan-Bolger is fearless in getting his life onto the Web.

For a well-rounded virtual life, Keenan-Bolger provides a varied presence rich in both content and form. And for that, he gets my vote for the best of the year.

Best of the Year: Theater

My opportunities to see theater this year were a bit more limited than in other years. Still, I'm not disappointed. I had the opportunity to see stirring revivals, like Sunday in the Park with George, Equus and Gypsy, and big, new productions, like Billy Elliot and In the Heights. This was the year I finally got to see Blue Man Group, Laurie Anderson (Homeland) and Groovelily, longstanding gaps in my theatergoing education.

But this was mostly the year that I was reminded of the extraordinary power of theater to change your existance--and it happened not once but twice. There are those extraordinarily rare moments sitting in the theater where the audience becomes so engaged, so riveted, that people collectively forget to breathe. If I have two of those moments in a decade, it makes all the bad theater worth it. To have two such moments in a year is nothing short of thrilling, as both of these plays were. So, the best of the year in theater in 2008 is an unbreakable tie: August: Osage County and Passing Strange.

Traci Letts' drama topped most people's 2007 list and won five Tony Awards. My chance to see it came shortly after many in the Steppenwolf cast departed and Estelle Parsons stepped into the lead role of Violet Weston. Parsons gives an incredible performance, and she's a standout among a cast of incredible performances. But the true accomplishment is Letts beautiful words. Nearly four hours and not a single word is wasted. Every moment is raw and honest. And every person who sees the show leaves somehow different.

I hadn't expected to have a best play and a best musical, but that's how it turns out in 2008. Passing Strange was stunning in so many ways. I've rarely had such an intellectual night at a musical, with discussions of identity and race put to a rocking score. Daniel Breaker as Youth and Stew as, well, Stew were flawed, engaging human beings searching for meaning. The music was fantastic.

Passing Strange operates on a variety of levels. On one level it is the simple story of a boy and him mom. But it is also a profound meditation on the middle class African-American experience. It's an exploration of art and life--and which is, in fact, more real.

But what strikes me as most important about Passing Strange and a significant reason to lament its premature demise is the audience it attracted. This was the most age and racially diverse audience I've ever had the honor to sit in.

Passing Strange had the wonderful misfortune to be so complex and so finely integrated that it couldn't be marketed. Nothing I've seen--the commercials, the appearances on The View or The Tony Awards, the cast recording--did justice to the show. Had I not seen the show, none of these things would have attracted me to it.

Spike Lee's documentation of the final weekend of performances plays at Sundance next month. Will it finally do justice to the show that played the Belasco? I can only hope. But short of that, it will certainly provide a triptych to one of the most thrilling theatrical pieces in my lifetime.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is stunning filmmaking. It had me on an emotional edge for much of its rather lengthy 2:48. It ponders significant philosophical questions within a technological marvel of such subtlety it's easy to forget that the film is special effects laden.

Brad Pitt (Benjamin) and Cate Blanchette (Daisy)--through the wonders of digitization--each play their characters from mid-teen to death. Or in Pitt's case from 80-ish to his mid-teens. This adds a poignancy that is critical to the film's success and makes for an even more curious case.

Benjamin ages backwards in a world moving forward. He's born in a crippled, arthritic body and dies in a child's body confused by dimentia. Daisy is Benjamin's enduring love, but they can only consummate that love as their ages converge for a few short years. There's a sadness, then, that runs throughout The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but there's also such beauty in the lives of Benjamin, his family and his love.

The acting is fantastic, with Pitt and Blanchette doing great work. The moment Benjamin first lays eyes on Daisy you see this wide-eyed young man peering out of this septuagenarian body. For Benjamin, what you see is never what is inside his body--except for middle age. Pitt, though sometimes too detached, is exactly right. Blanchette is the fire and emotion in the film. Tilda Swinton also gives a stunning, brief performance. Her reappearance late in the film via television sets the final act of the film in motion stunningly.

It's odd to be writing words like "stunning" or "fire" in a film that succeeds because it is so subtle. But it is a truly fine film--one of the best of the year--and frequently breathtaking.

An Allegory for Our Times

I'm always a little suspicious when your first thought about a movie is that someone set out to create a allegory for our times. I'm all for allegory, but it needs to flow naturally from the story rather than sublimate the story.

That's what happens with The Day the Earth Stood Still, the remake starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly. The story lumbers along as we learn whether humankind can be trusted to save the environment. Klaatu (Reeves) says no, so he's prepared to wipe people off the earth. Can Klaatu be convinced that we can be responsible protectors of our planet before he destroys it?

The only interesting question to ponder is whether Klaatu is a good guy or a bad guy. Ultimately, that's not enough to make the film interesting.

The story is never particularly engaging and the special effects never quite thrilling. The acting is leaden. Reeves justifies a deadpan persona as part of his alien in America characterization. Connelly and Kathy Bates, as the secretary of defense, are just plain weak.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a mediocre film. Not a horrible way to spend a snowy afternoon, but nothing memorable after an hour. Story first, message later folks.

An Early Holiday Present...and a Lump of Coal

Those who know me know that Wonderfalls ranks as my favorite television show ever. EVAH! Wonderfalls, you say? Yes! It was a short-lived Fox program in 2004. It aired for four episodes in about four different time slots. All of the season previews ranked it as the best of the year, but Fox didn't know what to do with it.

Last year, the creator of Wonderfalls brought us another charming, quirky, gorgeous show, Pushing Daisies. It's an adult fairy tale that is brilliantly conceived. Alas, the lump of coal is that ABC announced that it would be cancelled after its 13th episode this season. That means we're down to our last three episodes in January.

But earlier in the week, as I was catching up on the episodes I missed during my recent travels, I experienced the kind of creativity and gift to one's fans that made my heart leap. Ned the Piemaker of Pushing Daisies entered a baking contest. To my glorious delight, one of his competitors was Beth Grant, proprietor of Muffin Buffalo. One of the great Wonderfalls episodes centered on Grant's secret muffin recipe, which she parlayed into the bakery, Muffin Buffalo. It was a great opportunity to reference a great, almost lost, show. Thanks, Bryan!