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We're not going to lie: Our personal perception of Barack Obama's tradition of releasing regular lists of his favorite books, films, and songs has shifted a bit in recent years, going from "Ah, here's what our hip young President is into!" into something more like "Best to keep tabs...

With another year in the books, Barack Obama has some new recommendations for his fellow cinephiles.

On Friday, the former president of the United States shared his annual list of top 10 movies, which featured a papal thriller, a sex worker’s romantic-dramedy and a Timothée Chalamet double billing.

“Here are a few movies I’d recommend checking out this year,” he wrote on Instagram with the list.

Obama’s list included All We Imagine as Light, Conclave, The Piano Lesson, The Promised Land, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Dune: Part Two, Anora, Dìdi (弟弟), Sugarcane and A Complete Unknown.

His comments section was partially flooded with fans accusing him of snubbing titles like Wicked, Challengers, Sing Sing and I’m Still Here.

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While sharing last year’s list, Obama commended the WGA and SAG-AFTRA for going “on strike...

Barack Obama dropped his highly anticipated best of 2024 lists, including his favorite movies, songs and books of the year.

“I always look forward to sharing my annual list of favorite books, movies, and music,” the former president wrote on his social media accounts. “Today I’ll start by sharing some of the books that have stuck with me long after I finished reading them.” He also invited his followers to check out the books he shared, preferably at an independent bookstore or library.

His favorite books included Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride, Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension and Alexei Navalny’s Patriot.

Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, Aysegul Savas’ The Anthropologists, Daniel Susskind’s Growth, Dinaw Mengetsu’s Someone Like Us and Adam Moss’ The Work of Art round out the list.

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Keeping with his yearly tradition, Barack Obama has once again started the rollout for his favorite movies, books, and songs of the year, dropping the lists on the former two categories on Friday.

As he usually does, on the film front, the former president shared an eclectic mix of blockbusters and critical darlings, singling out 10 films for 2024. Timothée Chalamet stars in two of them: Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown, the latter of which comes out on Christmas. The rest of his list included All We Imagine as Light,...

A deluge of J. Cole tracks took over the latest Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart: Following the release of The Off-Season, the rapper scored eight of the ten most popular tracks in the country.

The leader was “My.Life” with 21 Savage and Morray, which earned 36.4 million streams. (Cole and 21 Savage also earned a major hit with “A Lot” in 2019.) The Off-Season track “Amari” landed at Number Three with 32.8 million streams, followed by “Pride.Is.the.Devil” with Lil Baby (Number Four, 31.5 million) and album opener “95.South” (Number 5, 30 million streams...

Donovan Woods has announced plans for his new album, Without People. The Canadian singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2018’s Both Ways, the full-length project will be released November 6th.

Recorded remotely by Woods and backing musicians during quarantine, Without People shows Woods exploring various aspects of human connection. The first release, “Grew Apart,” is a looser, funkier number that depicts someone struggling to hide his real feelings about a breakup, while the more recent “Clean Slate” describes the sensation of falling in love and wishing the past could be wiped away.

No, the movie star Ingrid Bergman was never a starlet with a seven-year contract, and her stellar career didn’t begin opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. It all happened in Sweden, where she turned herself into a screen sensation in just a couple of years. Eclipse’s six-disc set shows the immediate success of the daring Bergman, but also her acting range — her sterling qualities seem fully formed even in her first features.

Ingrid Bergman’s Swedish Years: Eclipse Series 46

The Count of the Old Town, Walpurgis Night, Intermezzo, Dollar, A Woman’s Face, June Night

DVD

1935-1940 / B&W / 1:37 full frame / 82, 79, 92, 77, 100, 89 min. / Street Date April 10, 2018 / available through The Criterion Collection / 55.96

Starring: Ingrid Bergman

Directed by Edvin Adolphson & Sigurd Wallén; Gustaf Edgren; Gustaf Molander; Gustaf Molander; Gustaf Molander; Per Lindberg

With the example of Greta Garbo preceding her by a decade, Ingrid Bergman decided early on that Sweden would...

My sixth birthday was celebrated in August 1939, five days before the outbreak of war. By that time, I'd begun to make weekly visit to the pictures and embarked on what was to be a lifelong obsession with the cinema. I'd also committed to memory all 50 of that year's Wills series of 50 Great Film Stars cigarette cards (God knows how many packets of cigarettes my father smoked to complete my collection) and so could reel off the names and birth places of the leading movie actors and actresses of the English-speaking world.

On my birthday I'd seen Shirley Temple's first Technicolor film, The Little Princess, and that same week I saw my first Technicolor western, Jesse James, both equally unforgettable. I'd also recently seen and loved two earlier films that were still on release, Alfred Hitchcock's two greatest British pictures, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, which I have...

Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata Ingrid Bergman‘s best on-screen performance, as Liv Ullmann‘s painfully self-centered mother in Ingmar Bergman‘s Autumn Sonata, can be appreciated on Friday, August 6 — Ingrid Bergman Day — on Turner Classic Movies. TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" film series continues with twelve Bergman movies, including more "esoteric" entries such as the aforementioned Autumn Sonata — actually one of director Bergman’s most accessible efforts — and Roberto Rossellini‘s psychological drama Europa ’51. The other scheduled Bergman vehicles, with the possible exceptions of Rossellini’s Stromboli and Guy Green‘s A Walk in the Spring Rain, have been shown a number of times on TCM. Among those are Intermezzo, which introduced the Swedish actress to American audiences in 1939; Casablanca, which won the 1943 Best Picture Oscar and turned Bergman into a superstar; and George Cukor‘s 1944 psychological thriller Gaslight, which earned Bergman the first of her two...