I suppose I should do one of these, since I failed to participate in our book symposium.

FILM: There are a bunch of 2015 films that I still haven’t seen, some of which I suspect I will really like. But of the ones I have seen (and recusing myself from the two films I had a part in producing), I’d single out “Room,” (hey, I actually wrote about that one) “Felix & Meira,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Clouds of Sils Maria” and “White God” as having made particularly strong impressions. Of pre-2015 films that I saw for the first time in 2015 (and ignoring 2014 films that I saw in January, because that’d just be silly to talk about them), I’d single out “Talk to Her,” “Hunger,” “The Reader,” “The Man Who Fell To Earth” and “Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon” as particular highlights.

THEATER: Well, I saw Hamilton at the Public, and again on Broadway. That show’s kind of in its own category. Other highlights in New York: Fun Home, which I had seen in 2013 at the Public and saw again on Broadway; Hedwig and the Angry Inch with John Cameron Mitchell, which I was taken to by a friend who is a fanatical fan; The Iceman Cometh, which I had seen in Chicago and saw again at BAM; Skylight; Spring Awakening; A View From the Bridge; and, perhaps surprisingly, Songbird, a country musical adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull. And – although I should recuse myself as a member of the company’s board, I won’t – Red Bull Theater’s production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. At Stratford, the highlight for me was a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles done as a Dickensian fable, which was sheer magic.

Next year I’ll try to be more consistent about writing up things I liked.