Anomalisa vs. Inside Out: The Race for the Best Animated Film of 2015

Coming into 2015, Pixar Animation Studios was having a creative dry spell. Since 2010's Toy Story 3, Pixar released Cars 2, Brave, and Monsters University. While all of those films did make over $190 million, they were not as revered or in the same ballpark as Pixar's other classics such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles. 2015 changed things for Pixar- not only did it allow The Good Dinosaur to come and go, but it saw the release of Inside Out. Inside Out is a children's film, yet it's so thematically rich and unbelievably creative that it automatically vaults itself into the discussion for one of Pixar's all time best. The film helps explain complex concepts to children while not diminishing story or characters and still remains interesting and wonderful to adults. The movie also makes you cry at the death of imaginary pink elephant made out of cotton candy. I think Inside Out is a work of brilliance and you can easily see why it's the Oscar front runner for Best Animated Film.

Yet as good of a film as Inside Out is, I don't think it touches a candle to Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa. I have Inside Out as my 6th favorite film of 2014 at 3.5 stars, but Anomalisa is solidly in my top five at #3 with 4 stars and could very easily move up to #1 as the longer I think about it the more I love it. Inside Out is a great animated film, Anomalisa is a great film period.

How The Dark Knight Helped Mad Max: Fury Road's Oscar Hype

In 2008, the greatest American film of all time was released: The Dark Knight. It was a cinematic wonder. Not only was it an amazing achievement for the superhero and action genre, but it was an amazing achievement for film in general. Director Christopher Nolan pushed and changed the boundaries of what an action film can do and should look like. Further, at the time, it became the second highest grossing domestic movie ever behind Titanic. Yet when the Oscar nominations were announced, Christopher Nolan wasn't nominated for Best Director and the film did not receive a nomination for Best Picture. The film did receive five nominations and ended up with two wins which isn't nothing, but we all knew that The Dark Knight deserved more recognition than it received. The Academy knew it as well, and the next year it announced a rule change making up to ten films eligible for Best Picture as opposed to the hard and set rule of solely five films. The thinking was that if 8 - 10 films were eligible to be nominated for Best Picture in 2008, The Dark Knight would have earned a Best Picture nomination. To me that thinking is a bit silly because The Dark Knight should have been in the Top Five no matter what; however, this Oscar rule in the wake of The Dark Knight's snub has at minimum helped pushed the stodgy old white male thinking of what an Oscar movie should look like and has at maximum helped bring more prestigious exposure to films that were otherwise considered "genre films".

The 10 Best Singles of 2015

10) "Downtown" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

9) "Elastic Heart" by Sia

8) "Uma Thurman" by Fallout Boy

7) "Hello" by Adele

6) "Ex's and Oh's" by Elle King

5) "Hotline Bling" by Drake

4) "Here" by Alessia Cara

3) "Confident" by Demi Lovato 

2) "Can't Feel My Face / In The Night" by The Weeknd

1) "Style / Blank Space / Wildest Dreams" by Taylor Swift

My Top 20 Favorite Shows of 2015

20) Fargo (FX)
Season 2
Created By: Noah Hawley

Thoughts: I have no doubt that Season 2 of Fargo will end up being #1 on many people's year end list, but for me, the FX show almost didn't crack my Top 20. However, I started comparing it against other shows for this last spot (Catastrophe, You're The Worst, Community) and I realized no other show in competition with Fargo made me tune in every week to see what fascinating and exciting new adventure was awaiting me. I absolutely believe that season 1 of Fargo- as a result of better and more interesting characters (both main ones like the ones played by Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, and Allison Tolman, but also the minor characters like the ones played by Glenn Howerton and Kate Walsh)- is better than this current season, but that shouldn't take away from my enjoyment for what Noah Hawley and company created in 2015. Also, please give Bokeem Woodbine all the awards.

19) Mr. Robot (USA)
Season 1
Created By: Sam Esmail

Thoughts: When Fargo's Noah Hawley spoke with Andy Greenwald to promote his show, he never referred to his product as a "show"- he always referred to it as a movie. Television shows have become more serialized than ever nowadays that they basically are 10-13 hour long movies. This concept couldn't be more true than with Sam Esmail's great, of-the-times masterpiece Mr. Robot. Esmail starting writing a script for his new movie that was so long that he just decided to make it a television series. Season 1 of USA's amazing new show about a schizophrenic hacker trying to take down the fictional E-Corp was just Esmail's first act. If this is just beginning, then I can't wait to see what's in store for Seasons 2 and 3. Also, check out Sam Esmail's interview with Andy Greenwald, but only after you've been on the exhilarating roller coaster that was Season 1 of Mr. Robot.

Click here to read my thoughts on how Goodfellas influenced Mr. Robot's voice over

18) Other Space (Yahoo!)
Season 1
Created By: Paul Feig

Thoughts: I originally came to Other Space thanks to Yahoo! airing the sixth (and hopefully final) season of Community, but I stayed thanks to Paul Feig's (you know, the guy that brought us Freaks and Geeks and Bridesmaids) simple yet hilarious new show. While I don't expect Yahoo! to air a second season of Other Space thanks to the massive amount of money they lost trying to get into the television game, I still enjoyed the 8 episode first and final season. The premise of the show is straight-forward, a small group of 20-something's in a Star Trek -esque Star Fleet Academy get lost in space and attempt to get back home; however, the success was in the execution. The humor works thanks to the relationships the show was able to give us from the get go, and it turns out those actors you see in commercials are actually great when given a larger opportunity.

My Top 10 Favorite TV Episodes of 2015

Alan Sepinwall from Hitfix.com wrote an excellent article a few weeks ago defending the seemingly now lost art of the singular episode. While it was not the inspiration for this article as I've done the best television episodes in a given year before, it is a great read (like almost all of Alan Sepinwall's pieces are) and an excellent introduction into this article.

Since I will be discussing the specific episodes as well as the specific season of the show, obviously each blurb will contain lots of spoilers.

10) "One Last Ride"
Parks and Recreation (NBC)
Episodes 12 & 13, Season 7
Written By: Michael Schur & Amy Poehler / Directed By: Michael Schur

Thoughts: Ever since the first episode of the show's second season, Parks and Recreation has been one of the best comedies on television. The show has been so consistent and operating on a higher plane than almost everything else on TV. That's what makes choosing a single episode from the show to make this list so difficult. However, with Parks and Recreation's final season, I had to go with the two-part series finale. The show has always been optimistically hopeful, and held the belief that when you do good, good will come back to you. That's what made the finale so satisfying. We got a chance to glimpse into the future of all of the major characters we care about and see the greatness that awaited for them throughout their lives.

9) "Rhinoceros"
Fargo (FX)
Episode 6, Season 2
Written By: Noah Hawley / Directed By: Jeffrey Reiner

Thoughts: I hadn't much cared for Season 2 of Fargo until they aired "Rhinoceros" aka Assault on Precinct Minnesota. While the classic trope of outlaws staging a coup on a small town police force to rescue 'one of their own' who's been imprisoned could have sunk the show for me, it was Noah Hawley's execution and Nick Offerman's silver tongue that turned a cliche into a classic. Part of what made Season 1 so great were the secondary and tertiary characters that you loved and cared about, and Season 2 of Fargo didn't have that until Offerman's Karl Weathers had to drunkenly protect his friends using only his vocal chords, charisma, and power of persuasion. The highs of Season 2 (which is essentially this episode) haven't lived up to the highs of the first season IMO, but I'll still enjoy a great episode when I see it.

The Death of Network Sitcoms

Seinfeld is not only the greatest sitcom ever made in the history of television, but it might be the greatest show of all time. The show ran for nine seasons, and still holds up remarkably well 15+ years after it went off of the air. Despite the fact that multiple stations (and now Hulu) run Seinfeld multiple times a day and we've all seen every episode at least 50 times, the show is still hysterical. And yet Seinfeld almost didn't happen. The pilot episode of the former NBC show (at the time it was called The Seinfeld Chronicles) was so bad (and it is bad) that it almost never made it to air. Luckily, there were executives at NBC who believed in the show and kept it around, and Seinfeld went on to become a mega-smash hit.

Unfortunately, we might never see another Seinfeld again. We live in an Era of Too Much Good TV. There are many benefits to Peak TV, but one of the major downsides is that you need to be good immediately. There are just too many other good shows to exist, that if your show if just mediocre, people will bail and watch something else. That creates a problem for sitcoms, as they're rarely great (or even good) right away. Seinfeld deserved its bad ratings and negative test focus reviews, but it also deserved to stay on the air and get the benefit of the doubt from NBC. Comedies almost always get better, and just because you're bad now doesn't mean you can't be great later.

Marvel's Small World Creative Success with Daredevil and Jessica Jones

In 2015, Netflix released two Marvel produced television shows- Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Both shows are excellent and will earn a spot in my end-of-year Top 20 list. There are many reasons why both of these shows are so good, but the main reason they work is because their stories are simple and their world is very small. Both of these stories take place in a small section of New York City (Hell's Kitchen) and tell a straightforward hero vs. villain story. Despite the fact that Daredevil and Jessica Jones will eventually team up and form The Defenders (along with Luke Cage and Iron Fist who will eventually get their own stand alone shows), their stories are self-contained.

Daredevil is an origin story telling defense attorney Matt Murdock's (Charlie Cox) rise becoming the superhero vigilante Daredevil in Hell's Kitchen. Early on, Daredevil discovers a crime syndicate run by Wilson Fisk (a.k.a Kingpin) played by Vincent D'Onfrio. Kingpin runs his gang mainly within Hell's Kitchen, and Daredevil spends 13 episodes finding and fighting Kingpin. Daredevil spends the first act discovering a sex traffic ring, the second act figuring out that Kingpin is the head of that ring (among many other criminal activities), and the third act bringing him down. It follows traditional superhero tropes (albeit the execution is darker and more effective that most), but its story follows one hero and his journey.