Wishing You the Bests

Just sitting here, remembering:

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The Best Book All Year

I waited most of the ‘90s for Thomas Harris to finally spit out “Hannibal,” a sequel to his best-selling “Silence of the Lambs” and the third literary appearance of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, man-eating psychiatrist. Harris writes so slowly he must type with his feet. Stephen King produces more words every day before breakfast than Harris does in 10 years.

Doesn’t matter. He finally finished “Hannibal,” which made my decade. It ain’t easy to turn pages with goose bumps crawling up your arm, let me tell you. Lecter’s nemesis in this book, man-without-a-face Mason Verger, is the creepiest character I’ve encountered in my life, not counting major league baseball players. And Lecter’s dinner party at book’s end will never be confused with a McDonald’s happy meal.

I have read complaints about FBI Agent Clarice Starling’s ultimate fate in this book being “untrue to her character.” I would like to accentuate a word to those complaining. That word is fiction. Starling’s character is whatever Thomas Harris wants it to be. He is her creator, not Jodie Foster. Personally, I thought his ending was absolutely perfect, even if she didn’t get eaten.

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The Best Performance All Year

I keep reading Hilary Swank here and Janet McTeer there and Julianne Moore this and Annette Bening that, and have no quarrel with any. If one of these fine actresses wins a Golden Globe, an Oscar or even the coveted Best Actress award of the Greater Wyoming Society of Film Critics (are there enough award things or what?), it will be OK by me. Bening, in “American Beauty,” was ideal as a real-estate saleswoman--an occupation nearly as scary as man-eating psychiatrist.

Many months after the fact, however, I am still smitten with a tremendously underrated performance by actress Reese Witherspoon in the tremendously underrated movie “Election,” which is already out on video. I know that Witherspoon has in fact received a few laurels, but it’s too bad more people aren’t aware of her performance as the most outrageous high school pupil since Ferris Bueller.

Awards are forever going to actors and actresses for playing characters with physical and mental disabilities. I’d be glad to see Witherspoon get one, just for playing a major pain in the butt.

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The Best TV Program All Year

“Geezer drama” is an objectionable term to older audiences and actors alike. I just adored Dick Van Dyke’s recent letter to the editor, taking two of my newspaper colleagues to task for gray-bashing, which included a great one-liner: “Let me say first that I am 74 years old and I think I can whip their collective asses.”

Diagnosis: Fat Lip, coming this fall on CBS!

I would like to say Dick Van Dyke can stay on TV until he’s 124, as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore, the best thing on the tube this season was a British masterpiece called “A Very English Marriage,” in which the decidedly not-young Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay were forced to cohabit while Finney was endeavoring to squire the absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley, an actress so good she ought to be in everything.

Meanwhile, I have seen many American-made programs this season, and the only one I’d give two cents for is “The West Wing,” featuring Martin Sheen as a president who doesn’t seem to spend enough time with his wife. (Yes, even in fiction.) My holiday wish is for the characters of this show to please stop walking when they’re talking. Stand still! These people go through corridors like rats in mazes looking for cheese.

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The Best Music CD All Year

My friend keeps assuring me that Tom Waits is the great musician of our generation, that his songs are epic and his lyrics divine. I keep demurring because, to me, Tom Waits has a voice like Louis Armstrong with a head cold. But my friend nags at me to stop expecting every singer to sound like Andrea bloody Bocelli.

So OK, I’d rather listen to Diana Krall or Norman Brown do a little jazz, and a certain 12-year-old girl who lives in my house would rather listen to Blink 182 or the Backstreet Boys as loudly as the human eardrum can stand. Different riffs for different folks.

With the Christmas and New Year season upon us, however, I would be remiss in not singling out the classic holiday CD that belongs on everybody’s shelf this year, right there alongside Bing Crosby’s crooning that “White Christmas” standard of his and Gene Autry warbling about that reindeer.

I am speaking, of course, about “James Brown’s Funky Christmas,” in which the Godfather of Soul offers some memorable renditions of his favorite carols. Some people must think James Brown and Christmas music go together like peanut butter and pickles, but not me. When it comes to hymns, I’ll take him.

Happy holidays to y’all.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail:

mike.downey@latimes.com.