The Golden Brainie Culture Awards of 2023

A brief preamble: I am aware this is obscenely late. My pub date kept shifting, especially after I got Covid at the end of December, and then a bunch of other stuff happened. But I like to think the delay is actually helpful; god knows I was sick of year-end lists midway through December, so if you were in a similar situation, maybe you’ve had time to recover from the yearly onslaught in time for one last latecomer.

I will also not be discussing the Oscar nominations in this post—most of this was written way before those were revealed, and frankly, I just need to get this over the finish line without creating more work for myself.

Less lightly, you may be aware that Substack has come under fire for being a terrible platform run by idiots. As far as I can tell, Substack is not making any money off of The No-Brainer because I don’t use paid subscriptions. (If anything, I should be paying you for reading any of this.) Nevertheless, I am looking for an alternative option. This will likely mean very little for you, as I’ll be importing the archive and email list to the new platform1, but if you start seeing these emails coming from something other than Substack, that’s why.

Finally, this post will absolutely go over the email length limit. I advise you read this on the blog webpage instead of straight from your inbox—this will also be helpful for navigating the obscene number of footnotes I have in here. (Pro tip: if you’re on the web version, click on the number to go to the footnote, and then click on the number again to go back to the spot where you left off.)

Now, without further ado, please enjoy the second annual Golden Brainie Culture Awards of 2023… posted in 2024.

Honorable mentions:

Most musically gifted amphibian: Tchaifrogsky, The Last of Us

Bafflingest script: Foe2

Best license plate: maestro1, Maestro

Most needlessly ridiculous plot: Tie between Wonka and Carmen3

Newest addition to the “don’t trust Barry Keoghan” canon: Saltburn

Best performance from a non-human: Messi, Anatomy of a Fall

Most questionable creative liberties: The Great Gatsby at the Paper Mill Playhouse4

Most literal interpretation of “raising the roof”: Purlie Victorious

Most unexpected Will Ferrell producing credit: May December

Most unexpected breakthrough performance: Charles Melton, May December

Most unexpectedly delightful time at the movies: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves5

Most unexpectedly hilarious performance (after a string of flops that suggest he should REALLY fire his agent6): Nicholas Galitzine, Bottoms

Most expectedly hilarious performance: Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms

Funniest use of the Jets theme from West Side Story: Maestro

Most Schlurps: Saltburn

Most exciting introduction: Ncuti Gatwa, Doctor Who7

Most punchable lawyer: That one prosecutor, Anatomy of a Fall

Worst innuendo: Jordan referring to her tryst with Nick as Nick “sinking the putt,” The Great Gatsby at the Paper Mill Playhouse

Best vindication for people who have been Greta Lee stans since season 1 of Russian Doll: Past Lives

Best victory over the machinations of The Mouse: Nimona FINALLY happening!!

Least welcome intrusion: The mouse I saw in the theater, Killers of the Flower Moon

Second least welcome intrusion: Ernest Burkhart anywhere NEAR Mollie, Killers of the Flower Moon

Saddest goodbye for a TV show we did not deserve: Sex Education

Best riddance: Logan Roy FINALLY KICKING THE BUCKET, Succession

Most incessant cultural phenomenon: Barbie8

Lavishest production design for a play or musical: The Great Gatsby

Lavishest production design for a movie: Poor Things

Funniest review headline: Andrew Scott Plays Every Part in ‘Vanya.’ Why?, The New York Times9

Most meaningful workaround for the wall of text at the end of every other historical drama: Killers of the Flower Moon

Best tweet: The dealer with the straight gas, @sabatonfan69

Funniest last-minute drama: Paul Mescal apparently abandoning his hookups in the park(?!)

The Bronco Henry award for best memes about an awardsy movie: Maestro10

The inaugural award for hag excellence and achievement: Donna Noble, Doctor Who (Runner up: Holga, Dungeons & Dragons)

Nicest box office employees: Tie between the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Paper Mill Playhouse

The Golden Brainie Theater Award: Merrily We Roll Along

The reason that Merrily We Roll Along stands head and shoulders above the rest of the (admittedly few) shows I saw this year is a selfish one. Put simply, Merrily understood how I felt for so much of this year.

I spent months of this year in what felt like a crossroads—I had landed a job in my chosen field, but one that asked me to make the same kinds of compromises Frank Shepard rationalizes as “being flexible / bending with the road.” It’s probably bad praxis to empathize this much with the closest thing to a villain this show has, and in my defense, I wasn’t leaving my friends behind while I had an affair and sold my soul to Hollywood. Nonetheless, my job was asking me to compromise some of my own values in the hopes it would pay off later, which helped me empathize a little bit with how Frank was willing to compromise his music career in exchange for fame and fortune and rationalize it by asserting it’s what he needs to do to survive in the arts at all. Is all this gambling just part of growing up, or is it a slippery slope excused by a false promise?

Thankfully, I was able to leave my job well before I reached the ruinous depths Frank eventually reaches in the play, and I still talk to all my friends, without whom I would never have made it through those months. But I’m not done growing up yet, and the next time I reach a similar crossroads, at least Merrily will be there to assure me that someone, sometime, somewhere understood what that’s like.

Honorable mentions: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Jes Tom’s Less Lonely

Didn’t see, might have been bangers (this is going to be a long list): The Tempest (Shakespeare in the Park), Infinite Life, Flex, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, All the Devils are Here

The Golden Brainie Television Award: The Last of Us

In fairness to everyone else, I did not watch a lot of TV this year, so The Last of Us being my favorite show of the year was about as forgone a conclusion as Sasha Colby winning Drag Race. But in unfairness to everyone else, this show threw down the gauntlet early in the year. In fact, I started this post back in February when I was pretty sure this would be my favorite TV show of 2023, and while Succession gave The Last of Us a solid fight, that opinion hasn’t really changed since then. So here’s some of what I wrote months ago: 

At the risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, I just don’t see how anything this year is going to top this.

Co-helmed by Craig Mazin (whose last big project was the best miniseries in the history of the medium11) and Neil Druckmann (the creator of what many consider to be one of the best video games of its decade), backed by a network synonymous with prestige television, it’s tempting to say that TLOU was destined for greatness. 

To do so would be a mistake. There absolutely is a world where the story’s power was diluted by serialization and plagued by adaptation sickness, culminating in a hollow retread of what was fresh a decade ago. Thankfully, TLOU revels in the freedom that comes from adaptation—the freedom to take what works about the source material and expand on it, and the freedom to change things where changes are merited. Episode 3 spins television gold from tiny fibers provided by the game, and unimpeachable performances from the likes of Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, Bella Ramsey, and yes, Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, make a fantastical apocalypse feel real and immediate. So much money, talent, and reputation was staked on this thing being phenomenal, yet TLOU feels like it has absolutely nothing to prove.

The Golden Brainie Film Award: Oppenheimer

Every time I have to laud a Christopher Nolan movie, I wonder if I have any right to call myself a feminist. Well, I’m sorry women, but Oppenheimer was my favorite movie of the year.

I was expecting to be blown away by seeing 70mm IMAX in the flesh, and reserving my ticket a month in advance (and having to cut my trip home short) was totally worth it. We were truly so spoiled this season at the movies, but being in that room with an audience practically vibrating from shared excitement is an experience I’ll likely never relive. 

And the IMAX wasn’t just a gimmick to get butts in seats or to underscore the most thrilling moments. One of the moments that comes back to me the most is when Oppenheimer and Einstein are on a walk and they leave Einstein’s nemophilist friend Kurt Gödel behind for a second to talk about if the bomb will ignite the entire atmosphere. We cut back to Kurt just for a second, admiring the trees around him in gorgeous, full-frame 70mm IMAX, innocent from the cataclysm that’s being discussed maybe 100 meters from him. In a movie full of explosive, boiling-point drama, this moment of quiet is just as powerful.12 

But while I was expecting the dazzling visuals, I was not expecting to love the dialogue even more. Those scenes with Oppenheimer and Strauss testifying were just as electrifying as the Trinity test, and Strauss’s breakdown realizing he’s lost his coveted position (after one of cinema’s greatest get-his-ass moments of recent memory) held just as much fire and fury as Oppenheimer’s visions of the future he’s made possible. This movie annihilated my preconceived notions about Nolan as a writer13, and while this is probably the only courtroom thriller Nolan will ever do, I hope I’m wrong.

Runners up: Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, May December, The Zone of Interest

Also great: Anatomy of a Fall14, Across the Spiderverse, Past Lives15, Nimona16, All of Us Strangers17, The Iron Claw, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Didn’t get to, might have made the list: Asteroid City, The Holdovers, Ferrari, The Boy and the Heron, Fallen Leaves, You Hurt My Feelings, Theater Camp

Best movies I saw for the first time that didn’t come out this year: Zodiac, Amadeus, Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World18

The Golden Brainie Music Award: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek

I’m going to have to pull a Somerton and plagiarize a bit from Todd in the Shadows here: sometimes, you have strong feelings about an album but you don’t necessarily have strong thoughts. 

That’s not to say there aren’t strong thoughts to be had about this album, I just didn’t originally have them. If you want smart people writing smart things about great music, I’d point you to Pitchfork’s19 review that emphasizes how Polachek shapes the concept of desire as a powerful driver that can make a crowded subway car feel inches away from paradise, or Mic the Snare’s review arguing that consistency isn’t just an innate trait an artist can have, but an active statement that an artist makes time and time again.

My own thoughts all but begin and end with the fact that Desire is just a really fucking good album. But when it comes to my feelings: when those first notes of Sunset cascade from my earbuds while I’m walking through the trash-lined streets, I feel like the sun is baking my skin in Sevilla as I laugh around a table with friends drinking sangria—and I don’t even like sangria. Or the sun.

This album makes me feel like I’m not even in a different place, but like I’m in a different body too; one that doesn’t worry about skin cancer or one that doesn’t even worry at all.

Other great albums:

• Javelin - Sufjan Stevens

• Fountain Baby - Amaarae

• The Loveliest Time - Carly Rae Jepsen

Other great songs:

• Speed Drive - Charli XCX20

• Borderline - Tove Lo

• MY HOUSE - Beyoncé

• Silent Assassin - Tkay Maidza

• Big Hammer, Tell Me, and Loading - James Blake

• Talk To Me Nice, Treason - Tinashe

• Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl, Femininomenon - Chappell Roan

• On My Mama - Victoria Monét

• ICU remix - Coco Jones, Justin Timberlake

• Cobra - Megan Thee Stallion

• Padam Padam - Kylie Minogue

• Bury me - PinkPantheress & Kelela

Great album art:

Sometimes I’ll check out an album just because I like the cover art—that’s how I came across Caroline Polachek in the first place with Pang. The albums I wouldn’t normally listen to but did because of the art are marked with an asterisk.

• Fountain Baby - Amaarae*

• Voir Dire - Earl Sweatshirt, The Alchemist*

  • The album itself wasn’t really for me, but I love how the art plays with scale, and how graphic and deceptively simple it is. (This was the album art that inspired this category!)

• Playing Robots Into Heaven - James Blake*

• 1989 (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift

  • I think Taylor’s really been nailing the album art for these re-releases (though I worry about Reputation). They’re instantly recognizable as that specific era while still differentiating themselves, and 1989 is definitely my favorite so far. Even the handwriting of “1989” on the cover feels more mature and grown up. Too bad the album itself didn’t live up to expectations.

• the record - boygenius