« Screening Gotham: Jan. 6-8, 2006 | Main | Proud Miller, Lusty Doyle and Others Celebrate New York Film Critics Circle Awards »
January 07, 2006
Top 10 Top 10: The Meta Strikes Back
For those of you who found The Reeler's Top 10 of Top 10 Lists of 2005 distasteful or worse, Jim Emerson offers sort of a pleasing antidote over on RogerEbert.com. Mostly a paean to The Voice's Take That Poll, Emerson's note also tips a hat to MCN and the Web's neurotic capital of listmania, Critics Top 10. So that is nice.
And for all zero of you for whom the jury is is still out, Kelefa Sanneh chimed in on a semi-related, fully-backhanded note in yesterday's Times. "(N)o doubt some blog has already posted a 10-best list of 10-best lists," Sanneh wrote about the glut of lists afflicting the music press at year's end, nevertheless adding:
Lists are often presented as a way for consumers to evaluate the past year's music, but it seems unlikely that record stores are overwhelmed with excited readers, lists clutched in sweaty hands, eager to own some magazine's entire Top 20. More often, lists are a way for consumers to evaluate whoever made them, a handy way to pass judgment on the people who pass judgment for a living. (Really? Someone thinks Foo Fighters' latest album is better than Mariah Carey's?)
That is not as "apples and oranges" as it sounds, either--everybody knows Trapped in the Closet Vol. 1-12 is a crossover "Best of" must for any critic worth a damn.
Posted by stvanairsdale at January 7, 2006 08:53 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.mcnblogs.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/728