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Best of 2012

Music

The 10 Best Dark and Weird Electronic Albums of 2012

By Russ Marshalek on

We’re not ones for preemptively compiling “best of the year” lists, particularly in music. There’s always one or two records or, as is coming increasingly more common, a small flurry of mixtapes that drop at the tail end of December that cause us obsessive, neurotic critics to compulsively rearrange our lists (see: last year, and The Weeknd’s Echoes of Silence, his surprisingly perfect ending to a trilogy that most thought lagged a bit in the center). That said, we’re ready to put a lock down on 2012 as it relates to the year’s releases in the brilliantly flourishing “weird” dark electronic scene. We’re living in a post-witch house landscape now, where the pop music landscape is slurring and blurring into a weird, dark hybrid of what we used to know… and that’s an awesome thing. It allows for the likes of Charli XCX’s Super Ultra tape to rub against the epic void of releases from Blackest Ever Black. So, in this festive time of year, let’s get dark. … Read More

Film

The 30 Best Movie Posters of 2012

By Alison Nastasi on

Before we close another chapter in cinema history, take a look at some of our favorite film posters from 2012. We kept our inner movie critic in check and focused on the retro, minimal, satirical, and striking artwork representing this year’s slate of incredible (and yes, terrible) movies. These designs did what every successful movie poster should: pique our curiosity, grab our attention, invite us to explore the story deeper, and give us great style. Do the best posters of 2012 meet your design-savvy expectations? Check out our selections after the jump. … Read More

Books

The 10 Best Debut Novels of 2012

By Emily Temple on

This year, all are agreed, was a pretty great one for books — but it was a particularly good one for debut novelists, which impressed us over and over again with their ingenuity, seriousness, and talent. This year’s debuts ran the gamut from sci-fi masterpieces to realistic war novels, with several magic-tinged worlds floating around in between. Looks like the novel/this insufferably ironic generation/reading itself isn’t a lost cause after all. Read on for our favorite debut novels of the year, and since we already had to tearfully eliminate quite a few from our list of loves, feel free to add them back on for us in the comments. … Read More

Books

Stereotyping You by Your Favorite Book of 2012

By Emily Temple on

It’s December, and you know what that means: it’s time for everyone — from your mom to your coworkers to every media outlet under the sun — to tell you what their favorite book was this year. There’s no escaping it, but at least you can use the information to totally stereotype whoever’s talking to you (or turn the lens on yourself). Click through to read our (tongue-in-cheek, mind you) breakdown of what your favorite book of the year says about you, and in case you were wondering, our pick is on here too, and hey, we can cop to it. … Read More

Film

What Are John Waters’ Favorite Films of 2012?

By Judy Berman on

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Various individual critics and critics’ circles. These are the people the American public trusts to pick the best movies of the year. But here at Flavorpill, there’s one cinephile whose taste we value over all others: John Waters. So it’s… Read More

Books

The Best Books of 2012 According to Goodreads

By Emily Temple on

The winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards have just been announced, and the results are a little surprising. As Shelf Life points out, the Goodreads Choice Awards are the closest thing the literary world has to the People’s Choice Awards, with 1,156,852 votes cast by readers for their favorite books in 20 categories, including Fiction, Memoir, Poetry and YA. So we could expect that the winners would skew commercial — no snooty critic here to put in her two cents. That said, we were still rather amazed that J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy was voted as the best work of fiction of the year. Surely, the name recognition isn’t enough — nothing against Rowling, but there were so many better books in 2012. That said, other picks — like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl for Best Mystery, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars for Best Young Adult, and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild for Best Memoir — we’re totally on board with. See the complete list of winners after the jump, and let us know what you think in the comments. … Read More