Next week, we run some of our favorite interviews from 2011. [Some of my favorites: Maurice Sendak, Jess Goodell, Tina Fey, Marie Howe, Jose Antonio Vargas, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Dan Savage, Joan Didion, Richard Engel, …]

David Edelstein’s 10 Best Films (in Alphabetical Order)

The Adventures of Tintin

Beginners

Coriolanus

The Descendants

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

Hell and Back Again

Into the Abyss

Margin Call

Mysteries of Lisbon

War Horse

Walter White: Hello?

David Bianculli: I’ve just named Breaking Bad my favorite show of 2011.

Walter White: Never mind that. We need a distributor now. Do you know anyone like that? 

David Bianculli: Um…no?

I just cannot tell you how despicable this show is. It makes me want to shower.

— David Bianculli reveals his list for the best and worst shows of 2011. 

Also tomorrow: Fresh Air’s music critic Ken Tucker picks his favorite tunes/albums of 2011. [His complete archive]

This is all hipster music. I guess it’s okay for hipsters, but I’m not enough of a hipster to like hipster picks like this. Too bad I’m not hipster enough. Maybe I’d like it better if I were more of a hipster.

— from “The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet in the Comment Section of Year-End Lists”

Maureen Corrigan’s 10 Favorite Novels of 2011

‘Occupy:’ Geoff Nunberg’s 2011 Word Of The Year

What books have you read this year that have stuck with you?

keithwj:

Klezmatics @ NPR Tiny Desk Concert

#445: Ten Years In

aviamon:

This American Life

In this show, we return to people who’ve been on This American Life in the last ten years, whose lives were drastically altered by 9/11, including Hyder Akbar, an Afghan-American teen who moved to Afghanistan after his father was tapped to become governor of Kunar province there.

This American Life’s Sept 11 show.

Intern Edition, Spring 2011 is now live. Check out what NPR’s 25 interns have been up to this spring. (Particular thanks to Chris, Amelia and Sara — who are interning on the Arts Desk and have done a really amazing job.)

Inside NPR’s Music Library (and other tales from the 2011 edition of Intern Edition) Enjoy!

Okay. Might as well tell everyone here. This is the gift I got my secret-gift recipient. It’s a calendar. (It’s based on the fact that our guest host and TV critic, David Bianculli, wears a Hawaiian shirt every Friday when he comes in.) So….she’ll have a calendar of Biancullis to look at for all of 2011. More shots tomorrow (as well as all of the other gifts!)