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Last month, for school I had to write a long research paper about 17th century Flemish flower paintings, which was a bit outside my comfort zone. So, I needed writing music and a lot of it. After listening a bit to Amazon Music's playlist "Big Band Christmas", I came across the song "Warm in December" by Julie London. It was a name I'd heard before, but I knew next to nothing about her. But the song was good enough to send me to Wikipedia, where I learned that London released 30 albums in the 14 years between 1955 and 1969. Most of the material she recorded was standards, the kind I spent most of 2020 listening to, so I decided that listening to London's entire discography (in order) would be perfect for writing my paper. Now, the paper's done ( I got an A), and I'm left with many, many thoughts about Julie London.  A film actress before releasing her first album, Julie is Her Name , in 1955, London had a mega-hit single with "Cry Me a River...

2020 was an odd year for movies. Many of the ones scheduled to come out in 2020 were delayed due to movie theaters closures brought on by the pandemic. And many of the ones that did actually come out were released digitally. In 2019, I saw 44 films in a movie theater. In 2020, I saw only 11, all during the first two and a half months of the year. While watching movies at home on my laptop or TV is far from the ideal cinematic experience, I still saw a number of great films. Here are 10 of them.  10. I'm Your Woman  It took a few days after watching this crime drama, directed by Julia Hart, for me to really appreciate the sly magic it worked. Starring Rachel Brosnahan as the wife of a criminal in the 1970s who, after her husband goes missing, learns more about the criminal world in which he lived. It finds a unique perspective on a generic story and upends the tropes of the genre by focusing on the moments that would happen offscreen in a typical crime drama. Available to watch...

As I mentioned in my list of the ten best shows of 2020 , there was a lot of great TV this year. So, I've decided to list some of the best episodes of the year, to spotlight some shows that perhaps weren't strong enough overall to make the other list, but that had a really good episode.  10. "In the Belly of the Whale" ( Hunters episode one of season one, Prime Video) This show premiered back in February, which feels like a lifetime ago. But I liked it! It definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea, but you'd know whether or not it is by watching the 90-minute first episode, which is probably the high point of the series (it gets very twisty toward the end). Al Pacino is in it! 9. "Elizabeth, Margaret, and Larry" ( Curb Your Enthusiasm season ten episode eight, HBO) Curb Your Enthusiasm has done ten seasons in twenty years, and when the latest premiered, I thought it was stale and out-of-touch, a poor imitation of its former self. But the back ...

Was 2020 an unusually great year for television, or did I just watch more things than I usually do? Probably the latter, but I had an exceptionally hard time choosing just ten shows to spotlight for this list. So, before I get into my picks, here are a few that I wish I could have included as well: I May Destroy You, A Teacher, The Great Pottery Throw Down, Dead to Me, Never Have I Ever, Love Victor, The Masked Singer, Love Life, B Positive  and Search Party.  10. The Undoing (HBO)/Big Sky (ABC) David E. Kelley has had a pretty busy fall, between miniseries The Undoing and his new drama Big Sky . I can't really say whether I find Big Sky to be a particularly good show, but I've seen every episode so far and haven't given up yet. The two shows are actually kind of inverses of each other; one a prestige premium cable miniseries with movie stars that turned out to be pretty pulpy, the other a lowly network show that's slowly letting more and more substance seep in. From...