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THE KRIEGER LIST: I ON THE ARTS' TOP 2020

So. 2020, am I right?
(Fort Wetherill State Park)
I didn't see a whole lot of new films or art exhibitions, and I didn't read as many books as I would have liked. So instead of a nice set of lists, like all of my previous year-end round-ups (2015 best; 2015 worst / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019), I'm going to share with you the media that I consumed for the first time, regardless of year, that helped me get through 2020, with my favorites at the top of each batch.

Favorite Movies:
Bisbee '17 (dir. Robert Greene, 2018) / available on Amazon Prime
Emma. (dir. Autumn de Wilde, 2020) / available on HBO Max
The Proposal (dir. Jill Magid, 2018)
The Half of It (dir. Alice Wu, 2020) / available on Netflix
The Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) / available on Kanopy
Unpregnant (dir. Rachel Lee Goldenberg, 2020) / available on HBO Max
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (dir. Cathy Yan, 2020) / available on HBO Max
African Violet (dir. Mona Zandi Haghighi, 2019)
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (dir. Jason Woliner, 2020) / available on Amazon Prime

Favorite Television Shows:
Fleabag, seasons 1-2 (Amazon Prime)
The Great Pottery Throw-Down, seasons 1-3 (BBC) / available on HBO Max 
Perry Mason (HBO)
Home Town, seasons 1-4 (HGTV) / season 1 available on Hulu, seasons 2-4 available on HGTV
The Boys, seasons 1-2 (Amazon Prime)
The Baby-Sitters Club (Netflix)
Succession season 2 (HBO)
The Queen's Gambit (Netflix)
Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu)
Selling Sunset, seasons 1-2 (Netflix)

Favorite Books:
(Yes, I read some of these for school. Ten points if you guess which ones!)
Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, Nikil Saval, 2014
Pornotopia: An Essay on Playboy’s Architecture and Biopolitics, Paul B. Preciado, 2014
Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, Seyward Darby, 2020
Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump, Asad Haider, 2020
Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Michael Sorkin, 2009
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond, 2016
Culture Warlords: My Journey into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, Talia Lavin, 2020
High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, Ben Austen, 2018

Favorite Music:
folklore, Taylor Swift, 2020
Manic, Halsey, 2020
"Walking on Broken Glass," Annie Lennox, 1992
"dorothea," "tis the damn season," "ivy," "marjorie," and "cowboy like me," from evermore, Taylor Swift, 2020
"Taking the Hard Way Home," Brandi Carlisle, 2012
"We Can Work it Out," Stevie Wonder (Beatles cover), 1974
"Blinding Lights," The Weeknd, 2019
"Adam's Song," Blink-182, 1999

Favorite Longform Articles:
Sara Fredman, "Mother/Russia," Longreads, May 2019 (spoilers for FX's The Americans!)
Talia Lavin, "To Dream of a Jewish President." The New Republic, February 13, 2020
Dvora Meyers, "The Endgame of the Olympics," Longreads, August 2020
Nicholas Thompson, "A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can't Crack," Wired, November 2, 2020
Adam Serwer, "The New Reconstruction," The Atlantic, October 2020

Favorite Art/Other Experiences:
Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish, seen on Broadway on January 18, 2020
Fort Wetherill State Park, Jamestown, RI, visited August 2020
(My art experiences in 2020 largely consisted of driving around Los Angeles and looking at historic architecture and other cool sites. I documented this journey on my Instagram--go to the highlight "Sights of LA.")

Favorite Performances:
Fatemah Motamed-Aria, Saeed Aghakhani, and Reza Babak, African Violet, 2019
Anya Taylor-Joy, Emma., 2020 and The Queen's Gambit, 2020
Juliet Rylance, Perry Mason, 2020
Kieran Culkin, Succession, 2020
Ibrahima Sane, in Camp de Thiaroye, dir. Ousmane Sembene and Thierno Faty Sow, 1988
Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 2020
Haley Lu Richardson and Barbie Ferreria, Unpregnant, 2020
Millie Bobby Brown, Enola Holmes, dir. Harry Bradbeer, 2020, available on Netflix

Writing I Published in 2020 (in chronological order):
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