Best of 2007

As the days of December dwindle, drawing the year 2007 to its Christmassy conclusion, I thought perhaps it might be constructive to elbow my way into the year's congregation of mass entertainment products and retrieve from that inchoate mob what appears to me to be the best of an inevitably bad bunch. Naturally, since almost all contemporary entertainment is completely worthless, my choices are simply current re-issues of books and movies from previous decades, sometimes with new cover designs and sometimes not.
For example, my favorite book this year was the Overlook Press republication of John Cowper Powys' massive 1951  novel, Porius, which the pseudo-Welsh old goat believed to be his best work. Since Porius was initially slashed to pieces when first published, this version is a sort of "director's cut," and Overlook's editors apparently believe that the book is now presented in the manner Powys intended. In hardcover, Porius could probably stun an ox if dropped on the animal's head. It is, after all, what they used to call "a weighty tome." Still, it is well worth spending your deep mid-winter engrossed in Powys' story of Romanized Welsh comings and goings.
Musically, 2007 was worse than ever. I haven't purchased music by a new artiste since I don't know when. Fortunately, however, Roy Harper's ambitious 1971 album Stormcock was released, re-mastered and repackaged, so I could buy that. The stormcock, as all ornithologists know, will even sing its song into the heart of a gale, something Roy Harper has been doing ever since he escaped from the lunatic asylum in the 1960s. This is probably Harper's best album and it wipes the floor with Devendra Banhart or any of those people.
I went to the movies several times in 2007, but I didn't like anything I saw there. Luckily, Patrice Leconte's 1989 film Monsieur Hire was released on DVD. Starring Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, the film is based on Georges Simenon's novel Les Fiançailles de M. Hire, and, as Roger Ebert observed, is about "conversations that never are held, desires that never are expressed, fantasies that never are realized, and murder." If it is any help, I thought of this movie a lot while watching The Lives of Others, the only good film I can think of from the last few years.

Comments

[OutOfContext]

I have never been able to take Roger Ebert seriously since I heard that Johnny Rotten called him an "attack hamster". Carry on.

[Carter]

Powys once astral-projected himself into Theodore Drieser's living room.

On your recommendation I may attempt to overcome my laziness and read Porius.

[stephenesque]

I remember reading that in J. K. Wilson-Knight's book. Or is it K. J. Wilson Knight? Or maybe there is no K at all ... I don't remember.