Best of 2024

My favourite film, novel, album, board game, and play of the year

Dec 07, 2024

After last week’s tour through the year’s personal projects, I want to share about my year’s favourites in film, fiction, music and more. Most of these categories feature something that actually appeared for the first time in the past year, but as you will see, not all.

We are also mid-way into our end-of-year subscriber drive. A very warm welcome to all of you who are new! Please share this post with your friends and family. When you do, use the special referral link available through the button below to unlock some thank-you incentives like downloads of some of my new music.

(Updated: December 9, 2024 — after seeing Joel Plasket play the night after publishing this post, it was necessary to revisit the list. See below!)

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Film: Civil War by Alex Garland

When I sat down to watch Civil War I was anticipating a somewhat shallow parade of partisan anxieties about what will happen if we let “them” get away with “it”. In the end, of course, writer and director Alex Garland did what he always does: social and political concerns are not the end but the beginning, and the path leads not to a tidy (and inadequate) moralizing, but into the rich darkness of our inmost selves. Civil War has the same narrative structure as some of my favourites of Alex Garland’s science fiction movies (Sunshine and Annihilation). A team (in this case, war journalists) set out in pursuit of some end (in this case, one last interview with the President in an embattled Washington D.C.). My favourite part of these films is that the closer we get to the conclusion, the more realism breaks down and the idea at the heart of the film grows to fill its entire vision. In Civil War, our way into this ecstatic moment is through a growing meditation on the meaning of the journalist’s camera. It captures images of the world, but to do so must be empty. So too, the war photographer must empty herself to see. But what do we see when we turn and look into the emptiness itself?

Book: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Dora Spenlow and David Copperfield, by Frank Reynolds

Okay, so this is obviously not a 2024 novel, but we did read it in 2024. Actually, we started it last year and the book is so long and at times so slow and frustrating that it took well over a year of after-supper family reading sessions to get all the way through. This was my first experience with a Dickens novel, and it had me shifting back and forth from awe at his literary art to impatience and incredulity. All who have read this novel know. I won’t try to say more. But the novel’s central theme is beautiful. As Agnes—the novel’s paragon of grace, virtue and goodness—summarizes about halfway through, “I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.” In David Copperfield, this hope is not a passive or facile optimism, it is a way of seeing and engaging the world that enacts and participates in the goodness hoped for. And maybe that’s also a more generous way to describe our experience with the novel. Its slow and meandering way forward imitates life, and, at the novel’s end, I am glad to have caught some of its vision.

Music: SUNSHEEP, by Kurtis Eugene

SUNSHEEP is one of the most beautiful and complete albums I’ve heard in a long time. Kurtis lives just across the harbour from us over in Dartmouth. I’ve admired his songwriting for some time, and in recent years he’s been growing in his powers as a producer, working with local acts like The Dusty Halos and the McMillan’s Camp Boys.

What I find most astonishing about this album are the arrangements. The album has a rich sonic palette that draws together (beyond Kurtis’ own multi-instramental contributions) performances on the violin and viola by Rachel Bruch, cello by India Gailey, and saxophone by James Shaw. And these layers are not mere adornments, they have been gathered into what I can only call a sculptural unity. The songs take surprising left turns, and in these moments Kurtis directs the ensemble with vision and precision. It is a wonderful example of what you might call “the recording studio as instrument”. Kurtis has also released a lovely series of videos that accompanies the album.

Board Game: Arcs: Combat and Collapse in the Reach

Arcs is a seriously cool boardgame. It is the latest by Cole Wherle and the folks at Leder Games (known best, probably, for Cole’s 2018 game, Root). I really like playing Cole’s games, and I like reading his design diaries almost as much. Cole has a PhD in History, and the way he describes the creative process really speaks to me. His recent games have explored the question of how histories are written and remembered. Arcs is a space game of diplomacy, war, and strategy, and what makes it special is its three-session campaign mode. The conclusion of the first game sets the stage for beginning the second. You might start game one as the war-hungry hand of the emperor, only to suffer messy defeat and emerge in game two as a prophet gathering disciples in deep space. Arcs is also celebrated for its action economy (i.e. “how you take turns and do stuff”) which is structured around trick-taking mechanics. It’s been wonderful fun getting to know this game.

Play: King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild

King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild made its way from Toronto to Halifax this fall as a part of the Prismatic Arts Festival. The one-act play is both a retelling and a reliving of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest extant works of world-literature from ancient Mesopotamia. We teach Gilgamesh in the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College, and it’s become one of my favourite texts to teach and study.

I confess that I was skeptical going into the play—how (I thought) could a modern homage capture the energy and magic of the original? Well, it did. The play’s two actors and co-writers, Ahmed Moneka (an Afro-Iranian Muslim), Jesse Lavercombe (an American Jew) play characters based on their own biographies. They also play Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the central characters of the Epic. The action shifts back and forth between modern day Toronto and ancient Mesopotamia culminating finally in a transcendental meditation on life, death, and friendship.

It’s also a musical. The play is accompanied throughout by Ahmed Moneka’s band who specialize in fusion arrangements of Afro-Sufi traditional music. You can hear a lot of the music that appeared in the play on the band’s latest album, Kanzafula, which is exquisite.

Concert: Joel Plaskett, One Real Reveal on Wheels Tour, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

(Updated: December 9, 2024)
The night after I published this “Best of” post, Amy and I went to see Joel Plaskett perform at the Sanctuary in Dartmouth. At the end of the show, Amy leaned over and whispered to me, “I think this was the best concert I’ve ever been too.” The evening more than required this addendum.

We were present for the second of two sold out home-coming shows towards the end of Joel’s longest tour in many years. The tour has been in support of Joel’s album, One Real Reveal, which was a close runner up for the distinction bestowed on Kurtis Eugene above. It’s a beautiful album recorded to tape with no more than four tracks per song. It features a rag-tag collection of strummed instruments, spoken word poetry, and delicate performances of songs that mingle inwardness and good-humour. My joke has been that it seems Joel has gone mystical in his old age.

There was a kind of mystical focus that shaped the concert too, one that arises from deep and urgent attention to locality. The concert was a celebration of the cities Halifax and Dartmouth, and a celebration of Canada, but not (crucially) as abstractions. The love that is consubstantial with attention does not deal in the ideal and schematized. It’s about particulars. The evening was a celebration of place—about the people that shape places and the places that shape people (to paraphrase something Joel said). It was fitting then that at the concert Joel invited us in to a space. The stage was arranged like a living room, Joel sat in his red swivel chair between two projection screens styled like windows. Joel shared photos, songs, and memories. There was easily as much story telling as singing. We left full of folk music and a renewed love for our city, and I can’t wait to write some new songs.

What were your favourites of this year?

Film?

Book?

Music?

Board Game?

Play?

Matthew Joel Vanderkwaak

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