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There are big entertainments and small personal films, but to grapple with weighty ideas on a large canvas?
Alison Willmore
.The 17 Best Film Performances of 2024
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Maybe its an actor or actress youd previously dismissed, surpassing what had once seemed like their limitations.
Maybe its a veteran movie starrediscovering their fastball.
Maybe its someone completely new to you announcing their presence in spectacular fashion.
Here they are my ten best.
See them and suffer … joyously.
EvenBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, more fantasy comedy than horror, has aharrowing birth scene.
And yet it was surprising how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era.
Every performance on this list did this to a delightful degree.
Three of 2024s very best shows ran simultaneously with a bevy of lavishly animated and deeply considered high-fantasy series.
That was only the beginning of some lovely bits of synchronicity.
Next came several historical dramas playing with the real past and fictional alike.
To look at your growth and strengths and weaknesses and how they all played out.
To do some self-assessment, honestly, and think of ways to use this knowledge to improve going forward.
It is also a time for lists.
Bests, worsts, all of it.
Thats what were all doing right now.
Reflecting and making lists.Mostly just making lists, actually.
Need a righteously intense anthem?
Motorhead and Rage Against the Machine are ready to go!
Want to sob your eyes out?
Bronski Beat and Kris Kristofferson have you covered.
And if laughters on your list of the best things in life, go straight to No.
Sophie Brookover
.The Best TV Valleys of 2024
Some years, TV climbs new pinnacles.
It reaches for new heights.
Words likepeakandsummitandprecipiceget thrown around.
I speak, of course, of valleys.
For every peak there is a valley, and the TV of 2024 is full of them.
2024 may have been a year of valleys on television, but that doesnt have to be a negative.
Pop music turned inward and looked backward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses.
Craig Jenkins
The Best Songs of 2024A staggering amount of good music went mainstream this year.
Even ourpop-star flopsfelt like tentpole events.
Kathryn VanArendonk
.The Best Comedy Books of 2024
Comedy isnt jokes.
And it isnt humor, either.
As a result, podcasting has been fully reinvigorated as a cultural force.
But its also never been more muddled in terms of what it actuallyis.
It remains to be seen how Ill approach this list at the end of 2025.
A strange thing happened with podcasts in 2024.
Before 2015, the average person wouldnt be caught dead using internet slang.
To be fair, back then slang was LOLcopter and epic fail.
Its not that phrases like Show me.
The most important part of an internet word, however, is that it comes from the people.
If you give a shot to impose a word top down, it doesnt work, Aleksic says.
In an ever-changing, media-saturated landscape, press tours have become increasingly unpredictable, joyous, and strange.
Are the celebs nailing this new reality?
Who is wearing referential florals on the red carpet?
Why is Demi Moores dog Pilaf at every single event?
Its been a long year of short clips and big outfits and bizarre responses to easy questions.
Lets look back and hand out some end-of-year gold to the years most deserving press runs.
Dakota Johnson didtwopress tours forMadame WebandLoser Baby!
Katt Williams aired it all out in an interview!
Justin Timberlake got arrested in Sag Harbor!
With all the celebrities working overtime, we actually lost track of Kate Middleton for a little bit.
With a lack of major console exclusives, 2024 presented an opportunity for multiplatform games to assert themselves.
In November, Sothebys made history when it sold a painting made by artificial intelligence for a million bucks.
Still, Sothebys described the sale as a new frontier in the global art market.
Jerry Saltz
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