2006 was, as always with the arts, an interesting year.
In music there were highly-publicised releases from the likes of The Beatles, The Killers, Bob Dylan, Nas, Beyonce, Justin, Christina, My Chemical Romance and Tom Waits, as well as fervent championing of a number of lesser-known acts such as Belle & Sebastian, Liars, The Knife, Joanna Newsom, Ghostface, TV on the Radio (proving the old adage that one single does not a good album make) and more. We saw Hope of the States split up after disastrous sales of their sophomore album, Left, and the effective demise of The Futureheads as they too experienced second album difficulties - News & Tributes shifted a measly 32,000 copies and the band were subsequently dropped from their label, 679 Recordings.
Movie-wise, we witnessed "the end of Western civilisation as we know it" (Mark Kermode) as Gore Verbinski's bloated Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became one of the highest grossing movies ever made, while a number of foreign language films broke through into the mainstream, most notably Requiem and Pan's Labyrinth. We had a new Bond (yay), Borat's debut (nay) and everyone's favourite slightly disturbing celebrity (no, not Michael Jackson) return in Mission Impossible: III (hmm). Just when you thought it wasn't possible to continue raping the cash cow that is 1970s horror movies, along came Jonathan Liebesman's horrific (in a bad way) prequel to the remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. At least we had Saw 3, eh?
2006 brought a sad end to the decade-old era of gameplay with the arrival of next-gen tomfoolery; Gears of War scooping countless awards for being shiny, despite lacking original narrative, setting, characters or gameplay comes to mind. At least Monsieur Sea Bass Takatsuka finally perfected his world-beating footie franchise with the colossal Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (this time it can't get any better, it just can't damn it!) and we saw a slight return to story-based gaming on the PC with Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death and the welcome return of Sam & Max. Artsy gaming continued to suffer as the big names trumped the independent studios, culminating in the lamentable demise of Clover Studios, creators of the (apparently) masterful Okami. The Nintendo DS outfought the PSP, though as long as portable games remain laughably overpriced that fails to be of particular concern.
And, without further ado, here is my rundown of the best of this year's releases in music, movies and games.
Top 10 Singles:
01. The Spinto Band - "Oh Mandy"
02. The Wombats - "Moving to New York"
03. The Pipettes - "Pull Shapes"
04. CSS - "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above"
05. Justice vs. Simian - "We Are Your Friends"
06. Christina Aguilera - "Ain't No Other Man"
07. Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"
08. TV on the Radio - "Wolf Like Me"
09. Peter Bjorn & John - "Young Folks"
10. Belle & Sebastian - "Funny Little Frog"
Top 10 Album Tracks:
01. Belle & Sebastian - "Another Sunny Day"
02. Liars - "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack"
03. Squarepusher - "The Modern Bass Guitar"
04. Hope of the States - "This is A Question"
05. Clipse - Dirty Money
06. The Long Blondes - "Swallow Tattoo"
07. The Pipettes - "It Hurts to See You Dance So Well"
08. The Knife - "Silent Shout"
09. Thom Yorke - "Cymbal Rush"
10. Guillemots -"Sao Paulo"
Top 10 Albums:
01. Liars - Drum's Not Dead*
02. Joanna Newsom - Ys*
03. Guillemots - Through the Window Pane*
04. The Knife - Silent Shout
05. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
06. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
07. Squarepusher - Hello Everything
08. Ghostface - Fishscale
09. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
10. Howling Bells - Howling Bells
Top 5 Movies:
01. Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro)*
02. Grbavica (Zbanic)
03. The Departed (Scorsese)
04. Inside Man (Lee)
05. Requiem (Schmid)
Top 5 Games:
01. Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (KCET)*
02. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda)*
03. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (Funcom)
04. Medieval 2: Total War (Sega)
05. Half-Life 2: Episode One (Valve)
* denotes 90+ rating
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