Lists
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts: The 5 Biggest Revelations of the Reunion Special
While Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts didn’t include any truly earth-shattering revelations, the reunion special now streaming on HBO Max did include plenty of details about what it was like to be a young person growing up in the Wizarding World. It’s a light and often charming look back at both the franchise and its impact — not on the world in general, though, but instead on the people whose lives were tangled up in it for years at a time. It is also an hour and 43 minutes long, so, if you don’t necessarily feel like committing to the full experience, here are some of the most surprising highlights of the special. The focus here is on the stories that might be totally brand new even to hardcore fans, because believe it or not, there are still some mysteries to be explor...
Every Harry Potter Movie Ranked From Worst to Best
This feature originally ran in November 2018. Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of the still-expanding Wizarding World cinematic universe. A viewer of a certain age will remember what the run-up to the release of 2000’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone felt like. Just a couple of years earlier, the Boy Who Lived arrived on American shores with a slightly altered first installment title and the many wonders of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world in tow. Potter phenomenon was already well underway, but the idea of being able to bring Hogwarts and its inhabitants to life set the exc...
Celebrate V of BTS’s Birthday With These 10 Songs
Today (December 30th) marks the birthday of V, one of the multi-hyphenate members of BTS. V, born Kim Taehyung, has spent the last eight and a half years working as a songwriter, dancer, and vocalist, and has become beloved for his rich baritone and artsy, quirky offstage persona alike. Bangtan birthdays are funny because they remind us that no one loves BTS like the members of BTS love each other, but we can do our best to add to the celebration anyway. We’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite songs spotlighting V (in no particular order), and would press them all into a vinyl record in his honor if we could. Listen below, and scroll to the end for a playlist of the eight tracks that are available on Spotify. BTS – “Singularity” Advertisement Is there any song that captures the essence of Kim ...
Paramore’s 10 Best Songs
When Paramore released their first album, 2005’s All We Know is Falling, Hayley Williams was 16. Inspired by ’90s hardcore, the Nashville teenagers wrote earnest, emphatic emo, and quickly rode the wave of pop punk nostalgia that swept the 2000s. Across five albums, however, they went from Warped Tour stages to the Grammys, from a five-piece to a trio, and from pop punk to something undefinable. How did we get here? Paramore have always been more than the genre label thrust upon them. A zippy, energetic band with a fiery, earnest frontwoman drew them initial attention, but a darkness always lurked underneath the band’s singalong, Hot Topic-ready melodies. Advertisement Distrust of authorities and relationship drama colored the band’s early albums, released when its members were still in hi...
Timothée Chalamet’s 10 Most Iconic Roles (So Far)
It might seem a bit premature to be doing a best roles tribute to Timothée Chalamet, given that he’s only just reached the age of 26 today (December 27th). But in his time working in both film and television, the actor has quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with, taking on complex and nuanced roles to which other younger actors might have only been able to give a surface-level performance. It of course takes a great director to draw out his best qualities, as seen with Wes Anderson in The French Dispatch, Denis Villeneuve in Dune, and Greta Gerwig in two of her films. But, even when playing a very small role in a large ensemble, Chalamet has a way of taking what he’s given and making the very most out of it — earning acclaim often by simply bringing a very mature approac...
Mining Metal: Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2021
Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence writers Joseph Schafer and Langdon Hickman. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts. For the December edition, Joseph and Langdon pick their Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2021. We thought this year was going to be the mother lode — and it was. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, we predicted that many bands working on albums would hold onto them for a year, expecting the global crisis to end in time for a celebratory 2021 album drop and profitable summer/fall tour. Obviously, some of those predictions fell though, though we did get big summer festivals like Psycho Las Vegas returning, and ...
The MCU’s Marvelous Year of Representation: How 2021 Amplified New Voices and Told New Stories
With each passing year, the Marvel Cinematic Universe expands its domination over pop culture, and in 2021, the franchise made some huge new strides. Not only did Marvel start taking full advantage of both theaters and Disney+ as platforms for storytelling, delivering five new TV series in addition to four films, but there was a whole new sense of inclusion both on screen and behind the camera. With nearly every release, the MCU amplified representation of different genders, races, sexualities, and abilities like never before. To be clear, there is still a lot of progress to be made across all these categories. But the dominant force in pop culture (at least, if box office receipts are any measurement) put serious focus on ensuring that a larger contingent of the global audience feels seen...
Staff Picks: The Albums and Songs We Loved in 2021
The late, great Lester Bangs once wrote that we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. And he was basically right until Lil Nas X came sliding down the stripper-pole to Hell. Oh, 2021. You rocked us like a damn sociopath. What an insanely exciting, emotional, and reinvigorating year for music. President Biden took office and made Olivia Rodrigo an ambassador. We had Hot Vax Summer and Sad Girl Fall (Taylor’s Version.) Live music came back and Dave Grohl never left. Noobs ruled songwriting. Doja Cat ruled the planet. We brought back the electric guitar (all the rumors are true, baby), 2000s pop-punk, and Adele. We freed Britney. Halsey freed the nipple. And we all somehow found out about a Baltimore rock quintet called Turnstile. It’s all in SPIN‘s lists for Best Songs of...
Winter Blunderland: The All-Time Most Useless Christmas Albums
A browse through any thrift store music section shows that some genres of music are definitely more disposable than others. Nobody wants classical compilations, generic folk, mediocre gospel, any kind of polka, and, especially, Christmas music. It shouldn’t come as a surprise; it’s listened to roughly 17% of the year. The other 300-some days, it’s pretty much useless. While keepers do exist — Bing, Nat King, Mariah and Garth — certain types of Christmas albums, ridiculous novelty titles bought on impulse in Walmart, are among some of the most unwanted things on the planet, with more copies to be found in donation bins than wrapping paper in landfills. Christmas Songs / Various Dogs, Cats and Babies Quite possibly Guantanamo Bay torture music, here are three albums of every Christmas melody...
Paul Rudd’s Best Saturday Night Live Sketches (So Far)
Paul Rudd joins the Five-Timers Club this Saturday as host of Saturday Night Live, and he’s sure to add some new fan-favorite skits to his resume. Still, the fact is that he appeared in enough all-time-great sketches during his previous four appearances that it’s tough to narrow down a list of his greatest hits. While Rudd’s greatest comedic achievement remains his decades-long tradition of setting up the wrong clip for Conan O’Brien, his versatility as a character actor, combined with classic leading man good looks and the apparent willingness to do literally anything presented to him by the writers, has made him one of the best modern SNL hosts. Below are eight of his best SNL sketches, arranged chronologically — a list that by Sunday morning we’re sure will end up being much longer. — L...
Top 30 Metal & Hard Rock Songs of 2021
The 2021 edition of our Annual Report continues with our list of the Top 30 Metal & Hard Rock Songs of 2021. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021. You can find it all in one place here. Another heavy year deserves another heavy soundtrack of standout songs. While we still find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic, our favorite acts continue to churn out tunes that stir inspiration, hope, anger, rage, sadness, and all the emotions that go with the uncertain world in which we live. Music serves as an escape we need during difficult times, briefly diverting our attention from the daily grind or reminding us that there is still beauty in the world, no matter the circumstances. In 2021, we were once again blessed ...
The Greatest Christmas Movies of All Time (According to a Jew)
Let me first say that I didn’t grow up watching Christmas movies. The headline should have given that away. I did dabble in the viewing of Frosty the Snowman as a child and I knew all the Christmas songs because I went to a public school. But classic movies like Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol were never viewed in the Stahl household. We were too busy enjoying our eight crazy nights of Hanukkah getting fried on latkes and gambling for chocolate coins in hotly contested games of dreidel. I still love movies, have seen plenty (quote too many), and many are about Christmas – and I consider some of them my favorite movies of all time, regardless of subject matter. Which brings us to my list: the greatest Christmas movies. In order to create such a list, I...
