Not that the title of this article shows this to be the best year for entertainment, but there's something in the past few months for everyone to love, including the furious conservatives shocked at Obama's election, good times. This post would've been done later but the reason behind this is i'll be doing a new feature counting down the best since the dawn of the new millennia. I've done my fair share of ranting on this decade for entertainment, but this year wasn't entirely half assed, this year sparked the return of a fair amount of music artists, some great film making (outside of 2012), and then some. And sorry Obama, you'll find a safe haven in a politics blog.

Music:

   Well maybe i'll get it out of the way, even if Lady GaGaa and the Jo Bros are topping the itunes charts, this year was up to snuff in other ways, I can't deny it. Last year new albums by (the late) Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Oasis, and Metallica, but this year spawns an arguably better set list of returning acts. Even if not all the albums by U2, Eminem, Jay-Z, and Green Day, just to name a few, were great, but the amount here is nice to see. Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown might have had the cheesy Know Your Enemy, but it was a good attempt at recreating American Idiot's punk rock anthem's formula, though it won't reach the status as a classic that it's predecessor was. Other great rock returns included Wolfmother, Rammstein, Pearl Jam, and even though the album was a disappointment, the song The Resistance by Muse was fantastic. One very interesting thing to note were two supergroups that released albums roughly a month in between each other. Tom Morello and Boots Riley started Street Sweeper Social Club, and more historical, Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and Chad Smith formed Chickenfoot, both bands I cant take the names of seriously. New Tom Morello material and this truly uber supergroup truly had me excited, but they sort of fell on their heads, Tom Morello seemed to have ran out of ideas for noise, and Chickenfoot turned Joe into a riff guitarist, and Sammy Hagar didn't entirely fit the album, and certainly not the decade, though the ideas were great thoughts, and i'll be waiting patiently for another Rage reunion tour.

   Those are great in their own right, but the best new studio albums of this year were Mastodon's Crack The Skye, and Dream Theater's Black Clouds & Silver Linings, both of which broke each band's individual sales records. I found Crack The Sky to be a little unwieldily at first, but the amazing vocals and individual instrumentals eventually clicked and provide something mysterious and occasionally masterful. Black Clouds is similarly great, on top of being the top charted album in the twenty year long career, the dark tone is similar to Train of Thought, but the recent style of their instrumentals come through clear. This proves progressive of any form  dominate today's popular music, sort of. Yeah, thats all well and good, but guess what, every Beatles studio album has been remastered, and a famous Nirvana performance is no longer a myth to be remastered and officially released.

Movies:

   This year started with a bang in Defiance, some might have found the concept of a Jewish community running from the Nazis is been there done that, even if it hasn't been done much before, yet its excellently paced and shows the scary truths the survivors faced in the woods they were hiding in. The acting from Daniel Craig and others is great and the inevitable action sequence at the end literally breathtaking and doesn't feel derivative in the challenges faced. Even if Lil' Kim took it the wrong way, Notorious was a great take on the reality of the east coast/ west coast rap rivalry. Even if it wasn't about the music, it was a fair balance between rap drama and biopic, anyone claiming to dislike gangsta rap should check it out and at the very least respect the struggle between Biggie and 2Pac. GI Joe was uninteresting, but the summer in movies was more or less above average, even if there wasn't another Dark Knight. Star Trek had the balls to twist the original series' story, but it was worth it and the twist brought an impressively diverse cast, with acting that is to be expected. Captain Kirk might seemed cheesy to me as a non trekky, but even the cheesiest characters on paper had above average and believable cast, rarely do sci-fi films achieve this. Im definitely a fan of the original two Terminator films, and the even with the absence of Ahnold, Salvation completely makes up for the third film, there may be a cliff-hanger, but watching the post nuclear war against the machines was quite satisfying. You know what, I enjoyed Up, nothing makes a teenager feel like a kid again like a Pixar film.