Sunday, January 13, 2008

2007, Yet Again -OR- Stop this Year in Review! I Want to Get Off!

Alright, a few odds n' ends I left off my last two lists:

Best Mini-Series: Annihilation Conquest: Starlord

Kicking off this year's Cosmic Event, Marvel once again rolled out a couple of mini-series (and a story arc in Nova) to set the stage. This is easily the best of the lot, mostly for one reason:


Anyway, for those of you who are not enthusiasts of the best anthropomophic raccoon ever created by Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola, the story is a very funny, very tense take on the Dirty Dozen in outer space. Thanks to Calvin Pitt for reminding me about it.

Best Movie I Saw This Year: Casino Royale

I was doubtful when I saw that they were re-booting this franchise, I had genuinely enjoyed Pierce Brosnan's work as Bond and thought he was very good at it. But I was just blown away by this movie. The commitment to making it down and dirty, but with still most of the hallmarks of Bond (hot women, hot cars, cool locales and giant set-pieces). Daniel Craig was just a revelation as Bond, making this the "realest" Bond we've ever seen. I'm really pissed I skipped the theater on this one, and I've probably watched it at least once a month since I got the DVD. Just great stuff.

Best Movie I Saw in a Theater All Year: Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Just beautiful, if you've never seen it before, shame on you, go buy the DVD. If you haven't seen it in a while, shame on you, go buy the DVD. If you don't have the DVD, shame on you, go buy the DVD. I just can't believe they took a 27 year old film and made it look like it was made yesterday, without any of the problems that crop up when you update such an old film. George Lucas should watch this and cry at the fact that it makes his tinkering with Star Wars look like he was hacking at his films with a machete. A rusty machete.

Allright, irregardless of anything else I might think of, that's it. 2007 is over and anything I forgot about will be mentioned in '08's YiR post. Now, let's get to some resolutions for 2008:

See more movies in the theater. I tell you, having kids really kills your ability to go to movies, but I'm going to make a commitment to get to at least on a month for all of 2008. There's alot of flicks coming out this summer I'm guaranteed to see (Iron Man, Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, etc.), but I want to try to get to more films that I'm not likely to see anyway.

Along with that, I need to stop Netflixing bad movies and start watching the good ones. I must have watched 4 bad action flicks in the month that Letters From Iwo Jima sat on my kitchen counter waiting for me to watch it. It turned out to be unquestionably one of the best movies that I had seen all year, but it's hard to work yourself up to something you know is going to be a tough movie, especially when you can tune out to Jet Li punching guys through walls. I will stop this, from now on, at least one of every two discs I get from Netflix must be a "good" film and I will watch it within a reasonable time-frame. Yes Rescue Dawn, I see you there on the counter and I will get to you within the next two days.

Annnnd, along with that, I need to start reading more "real" books. I've been doing pretty good over the last few weeks, I've read 3 books already since Christmas, so I have a feeling this shouldn't be to tough. Just to keep myself honest, I'm going to try to post monthly on what I've been reading.

Speaking of blogging, I'm going to make a commitment to posting at least once a week on both of my blogs, I'm going to try and get some recurring series going, mostly focusing on stuff that I've recently unearthed in my collection, stuff that, I feel, never got its due, or somethings that should not have in the first place. As ever, I try to keep my stuff positive, as the blog-o-dome tends to be such a soul-suckingly-negative place that I can't believe blogger doesn't have it's own anger-management hotline.

So thanks to you, my real and internet friends, for reading this, and all of my other blather. Let's look forward to a bright 2008.

2 comments:

lp said...

What three books, may I ask?

Jason said...

Oh crap, let's see, I've read The Subtle Knife (meh), Gentlemen of the Road & the Yiddish Policemen's Union, both by Michael Chabon. Both of the books by Chabon were very good, but the Yiddish Policemen's was by far the better of the two. Gentlemen of the Road was very short and very "light".