Maybe one day the stuff I talk about on this site will be anything other than endlessly fascinating, but that day did not come in 2023 – even if the discussion flavouring this year came with a dark undertone.
In 2023 the economic realities of our favourite entertainment media avenues walked right up to our faces and screamed: an unprecedented dual-strike brought Hollywood to a standstill right after the most celebrated accidental double bill in history; the most promising K-Pop newcomers in ages rose meteorically from nothing until they were on the soundtrack of that very same Hollywood double bill, then crashed and burned months later; and the videogame industry suffered roughly seven times the layoffs of 2022, as years of irresponsible trend-chasing financial choices by publishing heads came back to bite both them and the overworked developers they used to employ.
And yet so many of the games, big and small, that were released in 2023 blew away expectations, flattened critics, and delighted fans. Multiple genres had all-time great years, and free time around the globe came under threat again and again. 2023 might just have hosted the greatest new videogame lineup of all time.
Movie releases – especially of the action variety – had a banner year, and the standard for well-crafted choreography has never been higher, nor has that high standard been hit as often. Several of the world’s greatest directors unleashed films unafraid of traditional runtime restrictions. Cinephiles ate shockingly well in 2023.
And as long as you’re not too precious about subgenre lines (I haven’t been for a while), the Korean tunes this year were smooooth.
Welcome to Vagrant Rant’s Best of 2023 series. We start tomorrow and go till 2024; join me if you fancy.
Vagrant Rant 