Showing posts with label best of the year 2017. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best of the year 2017. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Best of the decade 2010-2019 (film)

Here's my list of about 10 movies which were great in the past decade. Mind you, I haven't seen everything in 2019 (or previous) years, but I've seen a ton of comic book films and obviously Denis Villenueve and Christopher Nolan stuff.

Quite clearly for me, Mad Max was the best thing I saw. I think everyone would agree that it's the most transcendent/iconic for filmmaking in the 2010s.
  • Inception (2010)
  • The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
  • Prisoners (2013)
  • The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
  • Gravity (2013)
  • Gone Girl (2014)
  • ⭐ Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
  • Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
  • Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
  • Tie: Black Panther (2018) or Deadpool (2016) or X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
As I finish this list, I'm going to see Star Wars: Skywalker in a few hours ...It has nothing to do with the list above... Wish me luck!

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Best of the Year 2017: Movie

I wait until about March to send this out, because January-February are times of low quality and I can catch up. There's no real way to be totally ready to say "the best film of the year is ____" without a few years buffer. But here's what I think.

Get Out
Dir: Jordan Peele

Wonder Woman
Dir: Patty Jenkins

Good Time
Dir: Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie

Blade Runner 2049
Dir: Denis Villeneuve

Spider-Man Homecoming
Dir: Jon Watts

For the record, my money is on Phantom Thread to win the Oscars. I haven't seen it, but that's my educated guess.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Best of the Year 2017: New TV

The average intake of a human and a TV screen is increasing. But, hell... I can't remember what I watched. So, I've only got two stand-out TV shows that I know were new in 2017:
  • The Young Pope
  • Taboo
Older shows watched in '17, ranked:
  1. Game of Thrones
  2. Curb Your Enthusiasm*
  3. Walking Dead
  4. Twin Peaks*
  5. Leftovers
  6. Penny Dreadful
  7. Life's Too Short
  8. Mike Tyson Mysteries
  9. The Moaning of Life
  10. Toast of London
  11. The Detectorists
  12. Girls
  13. Departures
  14. Silicon Valley
  15. Documentary Now!
  16. The Simpsons
  17. Neon Joe Werewolf Hunter
  18. MST3K: The Return*
  19. Halt and Catch Fire
  20. Stranger Things
  21. Trek: TNG***
* = Revivals
*** = Reruns (off the air for quite a while)


Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Best of the Year 2017: Music album


Is This the Life We Really Want?
Roger Waters

Ignore all controversies over the man and focus on the artwork. From an angry Brit ex-pat comes a symbol to the American condition. It's The Wall updated for a 21st century angst. This is the timely protest album you want.


DAMN.
Kendrick Lamar

I rarely have patience for rap/R&B, but this album caught my attention. Check out "Element", "Humble", and "Fear" now.


Heaven Upside Down
Marilyn Manson

Hyped as SAY10 and delayed for quite awhile, this album delivers with songs like "Saturnine" (read the lyrics) the pseudo-title track ("Say10"). "We Know Where You Fucking Live" shows Manson hasn't lost his anger.


Whiteout Conditions
The New Pornographers

Never really liked this band until I heard this album. "This is the World of the Theater" and "Second Sleep" are good starters. More like White House Conditions, am I right???


Honorable Mentions

Patriots Day
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Vietnam War
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Creep EP
No Joy

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The Last American Jedi

Has Star Wars always been painted into a corner? Has the 1977 action classic doomed it with an unavoidable fate?

With a title like Last Jedi, any cinemaphile should roll their eyes. The "last" of something is so silly because nothing really ever dies or ends in our culture. Last of the Mohicans, Last Man Standing, Last Action Hero, Last Days, Last Waltz, Last Picture Show, etc etc etc. This isn't Freddy vs. Pinhead vs. Jason vs. Pumpkinhead: the Last Nightmare we're talking about here--this is holy Star Wars! Putting "the Last [...]" or "American [...]" in your movie title is quite unoriginal. Why are humans so interested in starting over?

The theme of the film is "failing is the best way to learn". Going in, I was expecting an Empire Strikes Back "downer". Instead I got something... unpredictable. I'm still not sure if I love it or hate it (probably something in between). I recall many corny jokes (they won't age well, trust me).

Poe is an interesting character, but nothing really happened to him. Nothing really dramatic happened to anyone except the expendable characters. "Come, children, gather 'round to hear the story of the daring rise of Poe Dameron and his trials and tribulations." That might make for a great story. What doesn't make for a great character arc is everyone else in the film.

The Harry Potter-esque space horses were distracting, as were the stupid crystal foxes. Those moments were definitely not Star Wars (and bad CGI).

It was weird seeing Yoda, which most people revere as a divine character in all of cinema. He was giggling a lot, which I don't remember happening during Luke's training sequence (after the first meeting). Anyway, I'm OK with Force Ghost Yoda. Thank god he wasn't CGI. And I'm OK with all of it--burning it all down; doing the opposite of everything expected.

But, I know that Disney will look at the numbers and want something more safe for the next episode. This is probably one reason that JJ Abrams is coming back. I don't want that.

Let's do a thought experiment for an Alternate Reality. What if Star Wars Episode XIII was a predictable sequel? Storyline: Rey is trained by Luke; Luke and Rey fight Snoke, killing Luke; Snoke reigns terror, causing Ben Solo to turn to the light side. Rey joins forces with Ben with a possible romantic undertone. Finn & Poe help out a lot, but the First Order still threatens in the end.

Would that satisfy? In this Age of Fan Service, does anything? The answer depends on the execution: cinematography, sound, acting, and editing all can make or break a film. The story isn't as important as you think.

Is the mark of a good film one that makes you excited for what happens next?

Tangentials:

What is the name of the next Episode? Ideas:

  • Return of the Republic
  • Knights of the New Republic
  • Dawn of the New Republic
  • Rise of the Rebels
  • The Force Uprising
  • The Wrath of Yoda
  • The Second Order
  • Dual of the Forces

~~~

I also want to take a moment to stress that the original Star Wars trilogy is NOT sci-fi. It's an action movie, for one. Sci-fi is usually slow and deals in physics and hard science. The Force is magic; the Jedi is spiritual--two things right there that disqualify it. Star Wars is fantasy--implausible in the real world. Yes, many of the characters are considered "human", but they aren't from Earth. And, Jesus Christ, Leia flying through space was pure fantasy.

~~~

I just learned that the shitloads of old Star Wars books from the 90s were declared non-canon and replaced with canonical Disney books. I never consider franchise books part of canon, especially if they are spawned from films. Oh well, I've never read any of `em!


Sunday, December 24, 2017

Best of the Year 2017: Song

"ELEMENT."
Kendrick Lamar

I know that "HUMBLE." gets all the attention, but "ELEMENT." is just as good and the music video is underrated.




"Hellhole"
No Joy

The dreamscape of No Joy's Creep EP are wonderful. You should check them out.


"Saturnalia"
Marilyn Manson

I overlooked this lyrical monster on the first few listens of Heaven Upside Down, but then I realized the sound and texture made it the best on the album.


"Second Sleep"
The New Pornographers

This is a glimpse of the future (listen to it with headphones).


"Creature Comfort"
Arcade Fire

A simple song about the vanity of suicide, but so sonically optimistic.


***


Honorable Mention: "Love and Sex"
Prince and the Revolution

Though not recorded anywhere near 2017 (even though the beat seems new), this song finally saw the remastered release it deserved. What a jam!


Honorable Mention: "Other Ways to Get to the Same Place"
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Though lyricless, this masterful score moment for Ken Burns' Vietnam War draws a bleak landscape of mind and conflict. Man, that sentence sounded pretentious...

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Edge of Human (Blade Running Blues)

[Semi-spoiler-free review of Blade Runner 2049]
  • Replicants are bioengineered humans, designed by Tyrell corporation for use off-world. Their enhanced strength made them ideal slave labor.
  • After a series of violent rebellions, their manufacture became prohibited and Tyrell corp went bankrupt.
  • The collapse of ecosystems in the mid 2020s led to the rise of the industrialist Niander Wallace, whose mastery of synthetic farming averted famine.
  • Wallace acquired the remains of Tyrell corp and created a new line of replicants who obey.
  • Many older model replicants - Nexus 8s with open-ended lifespans - survived. They are hunted down and 'retired'.
  • Those that hunt them still go by the name... Blade Runner

It’s a very quiet movie. The score is used sparingly and there are long pauses in dialog. The theater (surprisingly packed) is filled with occasional coughs. Loud coughs, small coughs, short coughs from the front, from behind, from the side. I imagine a plague, a superflu that starts slowly. The human race is always weak against slow builds--they never forsee a creeping doom.

I thoroughly enjoy seeing a movie spoiler-free. I do watch much-awaited movie trailers, but not too close to the release date. I loathe early reviews... those critics and starving writers wanting their opinion to be the first.

I remember 1998’s fated Godzilla big budget blockbuster. The early movie trailers avoided showing the monster’s full face and figure. Eventually, as summer came and the movie premiered, the face and body were no longer a spoiler. I remember feeling spoiled when I saw the full lizard, because I didn’t see the movie until it was on VHS. Now, I shield my eyes from TV teasers, so I can go in pure, unfettered. I’m thinking, “maybe I can outguess the director and discover the plot using my Holmesian powers”. Usually, I am surprised and pleased to see a movie unfold different from my dreams. And this happened for Blade Runner 2049.

A few days before I saw BR49, I went to the Wikipedia article on it to look up a character name. For some reason, I had to know what Ryan Gosling was doing in this film. And, to my dismay, I thought I had seen too much. The next morning in bed, I woke up with an epiphany to the plot. I knew the director (Denis Villeneuve) had a penchant for plot twists, and I believed we were going to get a “twin” event. If you’ve ever seen his Enemy, you’ll know where my head was:

I dreamed up a movie where Ryan Gosling was playing both a replicant and a human. Each scene with a Gosling would jump between the human and the copy character. They looked and sounded the same, but one was real and the other was manufactured. We wouldn’t find out until the end that there were two characters on the clock. It seemed very Villeneuvien to me, so I went with it. But, to my joy I was totally wrong. That dream-movie would make a great sequel to what I witnessed in 2049.

The Harrison Ford and “Rachel” scenes were the least interesting in the film. But I guess there were old fans to placate. A CGI Sean Young seemed tacked-on. What I’m impressed by is new sci-fi ideas. Novel ideas thrown onto the screen like:
  • A portable hologram girlfriend that can be erased forever (just like a real one)
  • Farming synthetically (replicant animals that humans eat?)
  • A terrorist attack, deleting all cloud data
  • Memory fabrication
  • Nuclear Vegas
If it were to be compared to the 1992 or even 1982 version of the original, I would say ‘49 has 90% less Asian influence with 80% more detective work.

I remember bleak silence. Silence (with no coughing plague).

The only thing I distinctly remember from the PKD novel (Androids/Sleep) is the ending. I was on a plane to somewhere, reading in my seat. At the end of the book, Decker is outside of the city and he finds a toad. He believes it is the real thing and it uplifts him immensely. He goes on thinking that for several pages, but in the end, it turns out to be synthetic.

Moving some posts to Medium and elsewhere

There may be some video game or gardening posts here, but many of my blog and non-blog posts will be visible elsewhere, mostly likely my per...