The flowers that make Chanel No 5

I pulled a 1,500-year-old sword out of a lake (“People on the internet are saying I am the queen of Sweden. I wouldn’t mind being queen for a day, but when I grow up I want to be a vet. Or an actor in Paris.”)

FILMS: Phantom Thread was 2018’s lushest costume drama, swooniest romance, most giffable comedy, most twisted psychological thriller, and best film. Other very good films this year, in approximate order: Lady Bird (“It’s the titular role!”), Beast, Cold War, First Reformed, A Fantastic Woman, Faces Places, Shoplifters | The best thing about moving to Leeds so far was the Leeds Internation Film Festival; my favourites there were Birds of Passage (like if The Godfather was set among the Wayuu people of north Colombia), Shoplifters again, Colette (underrated!), All Is Well (now on Netflix | The two best films I saw this year were the re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey (if we rank films purely on what cinema can do that other art forms can’t, this is perhaps the greatest film of all time) and the re-release of Vertigo (this was about my fourth or fifth time seeing it – first on the big screen – and I think I finally got it). Plus I saw at the Watershed in Bristol (which I miss) Do the Right Thing and The Battle of Algiers, which are both excellent. | I went to the cinema 89 times this year, which I’ve calculated is roughly 1000% more times than I went last year. General endorsements: Go to the cinema more often. Sit one row closer to the screen than you think you want to. | It’s not exactly a film, but I saw about four and a half hours of The Clock (Wikipedia, The New Yorker) at the Tate Modern, and it’s completely riveting in an unusual way | The most nail-biting short film of 2018 was this:

On printer jams and the people who try to solve them

Conflict theory vs. mistake theory | Grifters vs. grafters

TV: My two favourite series were deliciously good fun on the outside and, in different ways, kind of clever and important on the inside: Killing Eve and A Very English Scandal | I would recommend Stephen, the terrific and harrowing documentary about Stephen Lawrence, his murder, and what came after, but I don’t know any way to watch it legally | I know you thought Collateral was bad because it was preachy and obvious, and I don’t really have a good counterargument, but I just liked it (although it’s no State of Play) | Last Week Tonight

The White Darkness – David Grann writes about Henry Worsley’s solo track across the Antarctic

Lauren Collins on the royal family has more delightful sentences than anything else I read this year

In memoriam: Helen Rosner remembers Anthony Bourdain | Zadie Smith remembers Philip Roth

MUSIC: Best album by a French singer-songwriter: Chris by Christine and the Queens or Ne rien faire by Pauline Croze. Best album not in this category: 2012–2017 by Against All Logic or so sad so sexy by Lykke Li as runners-up | Best singles: Nobody by Mitski and Noid by Yves Tumor | Best video/song which I feel bad about recommending because it’s actually an advert: Spike Jonze x FKA twigs x Anderson .Paak [above] | Best film soundtracks: Phantom Thread by Jonny Greenwood, A Fantastic Woman by Matthew Herbert, You Were Never Really Here by Jonny Greenwood again, edited highlights from Suspiria by Thom Yorke, If Beale Street Could Talk by Nicholas Britell | My favourite music writing: Rob Sheffield on Radiohead live in New York | a playlist

“I Made the Pizza Cinnamon Rolls from Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter”

”I will admit that I am not well. That writing this, right now, I am not well. This will colour the writing. But it is part of why I want to write, because another part of the problem is that we write about it when we are out the other side, better. And I understand: it’s ugly up close; you can see right into the burst vessels of the thing. (Also, on a practical level, it is difficult to write when one is unwell.) But then what we end up with has the substance of secondary sources.”

Taffy on Goop

I found this essay by Junot Diaz incredibly moving, but I also believe the people quoted in this story | Asia Argento’s speech at Cannes was just one minute long and took my breath away, but there’s also this story

PODCASTS: Slate’s Culture Gabfest – for example, on the dad joke [36:15] | Adam Buxton interviewing Paul Thomas Anderson is very good because no one else would dare open with “The reason I liked There Will Be Blood so much is that Daniel Day Lewis used a funny voice” | This American Life: Five Women, on libraries | Unpopped on Come Dine With Me | The New Yorker Radio Hour: an hour on Phillip Roth, 15 minutes weeding with Parker Posey | The BBC radio adaptation of Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect with Jessie Buckley in it | Reply All: Negative Mount Pleasant | You don’t need me to tell you whether you want to listen to Stephen Fry on No Such Thing as a Fish or would rather gnaw your own arm off

Six Glimpses of the Past by Janet Malcolm (although perhaps you have to be a pre-existing Malcolm fan for this one)

SPORT: I took the day off work to watch Stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia, which turned out to be a good decision | It seems like another lifetime, but apparently England v Colombia in the World Cup was only six months ago

I have no idea if it’s fair, but this pan of Jill Soloway’s book by Andrea Long Chu is a dark delight

OLD THINGS I CAME ACROSS THIS YEAR: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is so good that it’s definitely in the top four Kate Bush albums | Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion, which I preferred to her more famous nonfiction | Consider the Weasel is, sadly, not the title of this Annie Dillard essay | The original pre-release version of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (Alex Ross, Spotify)

Fact-checking with Daniel Radcliffe

Previously: Things I liked in 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014