What are the classics of the 21st century thus far?

tbf Celebrity Love Island was probly better than Franzen

guys EVERYTHING EVER is better than franzen

there, we can move on now

the anal contention of strongo

i mean don't get me wrong i'm always in favor of franzen-bashing in any form

that whole opening graf from the corrections reads like what a broken computer might spit out if you fed it a cormac mccarthy novel and a nicholas sparks novel

It's a mild Saturday afternoon, I'm trying to avoid the Anita Brookner novel on my table scowling at me, and I'd like some antifranzenation on this thread.

i have like a stack of books to get through that's almost as tall as i am, and instead i am seriously thing self-abusing thoughts like going to the library and trying to read freedom again

wait, don't get confused, franzen's nasal thing was a leaf blower. fizzles made it into a clothes dryer.

fizzles reimagining of franzen so much better. i really wish he would do the whole book. the re-corrections according to fizzles.

man Scott that first graf is just dire. How did this book become famous? It was entirely due to Oprah, right?

_Think I'm probably with Scott tho - people will maybe point to the great US TV from the last decade and a bit. They certainly should - it seems to have the same grand ambitions and energy to achieve them of much that tends to be put in the masterpiece category. Easily outranks film in that respect._

Even if I like what I've seen I find that kind of talk insufferable really.

really? that surprises me slightly. wait, if I meant "film from the same period" (which is what I meant) is that any different?

Thought you meant film from the same period in the first place as you're talking about US TV "from the last decade and a bit".

I think I've had about a dozen or so really awesome experiences at the cinema, mostly foreign*. Its challenging not just in what it talks about, but the way it does in narrative terms. HBO or whatever still restricts that, it needs something seemingly comprehensible and immediate. Also because of censorship a lot is said about how cable shows can show whatever but they often revel in this to the extent of overdoing it.

For TV this is all great, but I don't know I still think the audience knowing who the killer is before Columbo gets to him...its all in that line as much as a break with the past into a more advanced future.

Know this doesn't equate to 60 hours but the quality is def there.

* Charlie's Angels (can't remember which exact one, been years) had so much energy and fun and excitement, record needs to be set straight on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

Iirc there was a lot of pre-publication hype about the Corrections because Franzen, an "experimental" writer, had written an essay in Harpers arguing for a return of the age of the big social canvas realistic novel. Turned out that tv did that kind of thing better than he could.

and he had no idea what social realism meant either

david foster wallace is the stone temple pilots to franzen's yo la tengo.

don't worry that doesn't make sense.

i just think of grunge and alt-rock when i think of these guys.

chabon the only one out of the imaginary group of people that i always lump together that i have really enjoyed. and he came first. really dug mysteries of pittsburgh and the short story collection. at the time they came out anyway.

so okay anyway you got lynch, malick, japanese animator dude, pixar, and the cloud atlas. what about genius painters? where did they all go? remember art galleries? i vote for betsey peyton cuz i used to get stoned with her when i was a kid.

oh and music-wise, i could make a long list of metal albums and experimental/electronic/electroacoustic/noise albums that i think are works of art and masterpiece-y upon request.

Let's not forget that "classic" actually means "5% of people have read/seen/whatever it, everyone knows how to make jokes about the famous bits". All submissions to include an apposite knock-knock joke from the year 2150, please.

lots of south park episodes

Let's not forget that "classic" actually means "5% of people have read/seen/whatever it, everyone knows how to make jokes about the famous bits".

you know any Mayor of Casterbridge jokes?

amanda palmer's mini-ukulele-opera got MORE to the core point of connection and crowdfunding and money and energy and art and love than jonathan franzen

cue the slate piece about how kickstarter has not yet funded a "classic" anything

Kickstarter funded the comic book Satan Is Alive! A Tribute to Mercyful Fate. It's a stone cold instant classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9KMgg7T_sg

http://www.metrojolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011Kaputt.jpg

I think we'll be alot more cool about videogames in the future, and some stuff will be regarded as classics that laid the ground for whatever futuristic entertainment we do end up with.

Everything Katamari has made the world a more beautiful place.

Tom McCarthy's Remainder, as mentioned above, leaps to mind as "destined for classic" status.

There Will Be Blood too.

Safe choices there.

Jaime Hernandez's current work will probably stand as a whole, the patch of Ghost Of Hoppers thru The Love Bunglers - that's another safe conservative bet, but Jaime is one of the greatest artists (in every sense) alive, a genuine monument.

WRT Chris Ware - "Lint" and that sci-fi story, both in the "Rusty Brown" cycle, are contenders. "Lint" will leave you breathless.

21th-C Classics:

Half-Life 2
Saints Row 3
GTA: San Andreas
Red Dead Redemption
Fez
Rez
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Journey
the Walking Dead
Civilization 4

i agree w/ exactly one of those

barcelona under guardiola

Wanted to float Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell out there as a potential candidate.

hahaha what, that thing is so forgettable

I have forgotten essentially every detail about that book

you won't forget it when I drop it on yr head

adventure time
la mala educacion
scott pilgrim (film)
film socialisme
inland empire

i didnt really like pulphead but its v possible i was literally stoned everytime i tried to read it. theres some piece abt him going 2 a churchy bonaroo or s.thing? it's really not good iirc

omg i almost suggested scott pilgrim

y'all like some terrible shit

solitary etc.

y'all like some terrible shit

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad

srsly, i mean david lynch, still, really?

sex house

The Road

Oh god yes to Sex House. Yet another wonderful comedy artifact that I can't seem to get anyone to take seriously and watch because of its medium.

More broadly, I'd love to think that things like The Onion and The Soup, while very of their time, will stand the test of time by virtue of a critical position that exists outside of their time. Like, anything that so perfectly captures the horrific absurdity of a particular period should be revered ad infinitum.

Know this doesn't equate to 60 hours but the quality is def there.

* Charlie's Angels (can't remember which exact one, been years) had so much energy and fun and excitement, record needs to be set straight on that.

agreed a masterpiece doesn't need to be 60hrs long.

Charlie's Angels II was weird and quite interesting (and v different from the first which I remember enjoying, hence going to the second). It was purely driven by costume and striking settings to what felt like quite an extreme degree.

It felt like something that was present particularly in the third Bourne movie and Quantum of Solace, but in a less obvious, slightly duplicitous way. The mechanics were just "how can we get these characters from this scenic place to this other scenic place".

it's a style where there is only plot (where characters go) and no story (why they go there). It might be argued that a LOT of films are like this, but actually there does tend to be at least some notional sense of motive and rational, and where I felt CA-II-FT was a pack leader was the complete absence of why, not even notional, or so absurd as to cast mocking doubt upon the whole notion of "why". <-- esp the case in QoS iirc. Impressionistic/loosely associated Last Year in Marienbads of tourism brochures (Bond) or pop videos (CAIIFT).

If this becomes a dominant, dream-like mechanism in Hollywood film, then maybe Full Throttle will be seen as a masterpiece.

if people are still wearing vote for Pedro tshirts in 2201 then Napoleon dynamite will have secured its place in canon.

I absolutely think NapDyn is a 21st C. classic (my theoretical kids will love it), but I'm not gonna reopen that can of worms.