THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE OO'S

Before we get into the list proper, a word about how I determined the order of the twenty albums below. In order to be as scientific as possible, I compiled three separate lists. For the first list, I determined the average number of plays per song on each album (since iTunes keeps track of the play count and I only ever listen to music on iPods, this was as simple as adding up the total number of plays per album and dividing it by the number of tracks). For the second list, I determined the overall rating of each album (adding together the number of stars (out of five) I’d given each track and dividing that by the total number of possible stars (the number of tracks times five)). The third list was simply a ranking of where I thought the albums would place if I was being unscientific.

I then took these three lists and averaged out the albums’ placement on all three to arrive at a final score. I arranged the albums according to that final score (with certain allowances for the fact that I didn’t have iTunes (and hence the ability to keep track of play counts) until late 2003) to arrive at the final list of the twenty best albums of the 2000s.

Why go to all that trouble? Well, without taking into account factors like the total number of plays per album, it would be easy to convince myself that albums I admired more than liked should place higher, that, say, Fennesz’s Endless Summer should place higher than The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow. But by being as scientific as possible, I was able to (hopefully) eliminate any bias I might have had.

All right, then, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the list.

FOOD, INC. - robert kenner - 6.0 / 10

Lately there’s been an increase in what you might call social commentary documentaries. Traditionally relegated to the back of the book store, these sorts of polemics (often liberal and always one-sided) have, since An Inconvenient Truth made $50 million and won an Oscar, more and more begun to morph into documentaries. In and of itself this isn’t cause for alarm. But when they aren’t filmed or edited with any particular grace or style, offer no real narrative throughline and clearly leave one side out of the debate, they can become quite tedious.

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF – chris columbus – 2.9 / 10

The director of such insipid middlebrow fare as Bicentennial Man, Mrs. Doubtfire and I Love You, Beth Cooper as well as the man responsible for almost killing the Harry Potter film franchise before it started (having directed the first two terrible entries before Alfonso Cuaron came in to save the series with the third film) returns with a mishmash of Greek mythology that possesses one of the oddest and most pernicious messages of any film I’ve ever seen aimed at kids.

CRAZY HEART – scott cooper – 2.5 / 10

Even before his celebrated turn in Crazy Heart, it was well established that Jeff Bridges was one of the best actors working today. He disappears so completely into every role that it seems as if he must, in real life, be exactly like the character he’s playing. When you watch The Big Lebowski, for instance, you believe that Bridges is exactly like The Dude, the aging hippie he plays in that film. Similarly, when you watch The Contender, you completely believe that he’s as thoughtful and confident in real life as the President he plays in that film is. Of course, since those characters are so different from each other, what that really means is that Bridges is just damn good. His work appears effortless. You can never catch him acting.