I am an obsessive list maker when it comes to my musical and film tastes, so I thought I would use this page to post some of my lists of favorites. Still to come: Best Noir Films, and Favorite Jazz Albums of all time.
First up. I am a fan of what is called free jazz or improvised music. This is essentially the most far-out or avant-garde form of jazz. Here is my list of Top 20 free jazz albums of 2021. All of these albums are available to listen to on Bandcamp. Check them out and let me know what you think! My list of all-time favorite free jazz albums is still to come.
1-Anthony Braxton: 12 Comp (ZIM) 2017
2-Pat Thomas & The Locals: Play the Music of Anthony Braxton
3-fluke-mogul / Liberatore / Mattrey / Mendoza: Death In the Gilded Age
4-Edwards / Lisle / Serries / Webster: Peck and Fleet
5-Almeida / Gibson / Melo Alves / Trilla / Vicente: Dog Star
6-Brice / Golding / Kaiser / Moore / Prévost: The Secret Handshake with Danger, vol. one
7-Maneri / Kalmanovitch / Jacobson / Osgood: Variations on No Particular Theme, Pt. 1
8-Rosaly / Warelis / Lumley / Dikeman: Sunday at De Ruimte
9-Abrahams / Thomas / Thomas: Words Fail
10-Fail Better!: The Fall
11-Carneiro / Zingaro: Elogio das Sombras
12-Camila Nebbia: Corre el río de la memoria sobre la tierra que arrastra trazos, …
13-Garcia / Pitsiokos: Uanmortaim
14-Adoct: Ouvre-Glace
15-Satoko Fujii: Moon On The Lake
16-Martínez / Fernández / Guy: Bosque de niebla
17-Combat Astronomy: Shamanic Insurgency
18-Castrillón / Castrillón / Muruaga: Ärnär
19-Jazz from the Underground Nightclubs of Aotearoa
20-Parkins / Rasmussen / Sawyer: The Glass Triangle
Here are my all-time favorite punk albums:
1-Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols
2-Ramonesmania
3-The Clash-London Calling
4-Nirvana-Nevermind
5-Dead Kennedys-Plastic Surgery Disasters
6-The Stooges-Raw Power
7-Husker Du-Candy Apple Grey
8-X-Under The Big Black Sun
9-Minutemen-Double Nickels On The Dime
10-Misfits-Walk Among Us
11-Black Flag-Damaged
12-Bad Brains
13-Fugazi-Repeater
Here are my 27 favorite Western Films of all time.
1-The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
2-McCabe And Mrs Miller
3-The Wild Bunch
4-A Fistful Of Dollars
5-Django Unchained
6-The Outlaw Josey Wales
7-Once Upon A Time In The West
8-The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
9-The Great Silence
10-My Darling Clementine
11-Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid
12-Dead Man
13-The Tall T
14-Django
15-Rio Bravo
16-The Ox-Bow Incident
17-True Grit (1969)
18-Tombstone
19-Winchester ‘73
20-The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
21-Ride in the Whirlwind
22-The Shooting
23-Death Rides A Horse
24-No Country For Old Men
25-The Big Gundown
26-Ride Lonesome
27-Blazing Saddles
Here is my list of 55 greatest Horror Films of all time. I cheated and counted Alien and Aliens as one film. I decided that the David Lynch films, Eraserhead and Inland Empire, even though I love them both, are not horror movies. I also decided not to include any of the Japanese kaiju movies. They deserve a separate list.
1-Alien/Aliens
2-Psycho (1960)
3-The Thing (1982)
4-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
5-The Exorcist
6-The Shining (1980)
7-Hereditary
8-Jaws
9-The Ring (2002)
10-Halloween (1978)
11-The Cabin In The Woods
12-Silence Of The Lambs
13-Dracula (1931)
14-Frankenstein (1931)
15-Get Out
16-Suspiria (1977)
17-Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
18-Audition
19-Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)
20-Near Dark
21-Re-Animator
22-Pulse (2001)
23-Carrie (1976)
24-Sinister
25-The Fly (1986)
26-Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
27-The Loved Ones
28-The Evil Dead (1981)
29-Dario Argento’s Inferno (1980)
30-Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
31-Kwaidan
32-28 Days Later
33-Prince Of Darkness
34-Wicker Man
35-Train To Busan
36-The Mist
37-Poltergeist (1981)
38-The Birds
39-Hellraiser
40-The Wolf Man (1941)
41-Let Me In
42-Ugetsu
43-[rec]
44-A Quiet Place
45-The Descent
46-Bird Box
47-The Night House
48-Black Sunday (1960)
49-Nosferatu, The Vampyre (1979)
50-It Follows
51-Night Of The Demon
52-In The Mouth Of Madness
53-The Host
54-Masque Of The Red Death
Honorable Mention: The TV Series Hannibal and the miniseries Haunting Of Hill House were both amazing, and if they were movies would have been high on this list.
Special Honorable Mention: Sharknado, because Sharknado.
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