TV / KATHRYN VANARENDONK
DO YOU REMEMBER when Parasite won those Oscars, and the whole world went into lockdown, and George Floyd was killed? Do you remember the presidential election, and what it felt like to spend a lot of time on Zoom, and the most recent season of The Crown? Great! You are all caught up and have no need to watch Netflix’s end-of-the-year comedy special, Death to 2020. If the special, which was produced by Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, had taken greater advantage of its many celebrity participants or added a new perspective to its observational humor—or even just pushed its juvenility a little further—it might have been more appealing. As it is, though, Death to 2020 is a limp, unimaginative recap of a year surely few viewers will need help remembering.
DEATH TO 2020 NETFLIX.
The special is filmed in mockumentary format, intercutting a series of talking-head expert characters with real footage from the year and voice-over from an authoritative narrator (Laurence Fishburne). The first clue to Death to 2020’s sense of humor is the names it gives to its characters. Samuel L. Jackson plays Dash Bracket, a journalist for a publication called the New Yorkerly News. Kumail Nanjiani is an ethics-free tech CEO named Bark Multiverse. Joe Keery, whose character is identified onscreen as “Gig Economy Millennial,” gets the name Duke Goolies. A scientist played by Samson Kayo is stuck with the name Pyrex Flask.
Esta historia es de la edición January 4-17, 2021 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 4-17, 2021 de New York magazine.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
