30 December 2010

#2010

Hello to you, you person I likely know and who has been kind enough to humour me in my little ramblings of insanity. This is how I’ve viewed the year that’s nearly passed us by, purely in unimportant, media-y terms.

Film in 2010 was marked by the relentless behemoth of 3D marking its territory like an incontinent puppy, spoiling my love for the art form by reducing the viewing experience to a nausea-inducing gimmick. But that’s my view; here are some films that sort of made a splash, yeah?

Shutter Island came out in February, adapted from a 2003 novel I’ve never heard of, nor heard anyone talk about; Shutter Island was directed by Martin Scorsese and has quickly become one of my all-time favourite films. An absolutely gripping mystery fraught with uncertainty and self-doubt, everyone’s acting their arses off in it, even the sometimes-maligned Leonardo DiCaprio. Nail-biting stuff from beginning to end, the music’s amazing as well, making Hans Zimmer my joint favourite film composer.

In March we had Kick-Ass and ultimately flawed and tiring comic-book adaptation saved only by Nicolas Cage having the time of his life as ‘Big Daddy’. Incidentally I hate Aaron Johnson now; his acting makes me want to slit my own eyeballs open. The Film was ruined with over the top violence, I mean beyond ‘300’ levels of the stuff and completely unnecessary swearing (by which I mean it was put in purely for the shock factor and not because it is something the characters would say fuck-bugger shit-nipple) I hope that they never, ever make a sequel.

May was a mixed month for films; Robin Hood came out, proving that Ridley Scott might have just lost his magic, and that Russell Crowe is really touchy about how shit his accents are. Sex and the City 2 came out, showing us that television adaptations for the big screen don’t generally work the first time, let alone a second. It also let me know that I’ve achieved true equality in my hatred for people, I can (and do) wish harm on these women without it being about misogyny. And Four Lions was released, marking the arrival of Islamic Terrorism and suicide bombing as being fair game in humour. I, for one, am happy about this; religion shouldn’t be vaunted as an untouchable subject, fuck Mini Babybel!

In June Toy Story 3 was a spark of pure joy that reduced well-rounded and emotionally-mature audiences of all genders and ages to floods of tears at the touching depiction of the coming of maturity and death of childhood, another win for Pixar.

July, and your mind was the scene of the crime in Inception; the second entry for Leo DiCaprio and Hans Zimmer in my little list in Christopher Nolan’s ultra high-concept masterpiece of existential uncertainty and big CGI set pieces. Also in July; M. Night Shyamalan showed us why he hasn’t made a film that’s even passable since Unbreakable in 2000. M. Night Shyamatalan wrote and directed the adaptation to the cartoon ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and made a mockery (apparently) of it. He claimed that European audiences were the only ones to get him, but proved he didn’t get them when he kept inserting reference to ‘benders’ (people who can manipulate the elements) into his script. This means that M. Night Shyamarmalade’s film had some memorable scenes and lines such as one where a man is dragged away from his father’s throne room, but on recognising a potential assassin in the room yells “He’s a bender!”, or “I always knew you were a bender.” or my personal favourite, “There are some really powerful benders in the Northern Water Zone.” M. Night Shyamagnesium phosphate, you are an arse.

The Human Centipede disgusted and delighted people with a trailer alone. The tale of a mad German scientist who wants to join people from the mouth to the anus to create a ‘human centipede’ the trailer got everyone talking about the sheer disgusting nature of it all and ultimately showed them my viewpoint on the rest of ‘society’.

October inevitably arrived and with it, ‘The Social Network’ a more or less fictionalised account of the foundation of Facebook; the film marks the point at which social networking is cemented as a real cultural movement, an artefact of the first decade of this putrid century. I’m looking forward to Twitter: The Movie, which will likely consist of some nerds looking at Facebook saying “But I want money as well!” until shifting to show Stephen Fry tapping at a keyboard for 4 and a half hours.

And in November the first part of the adaptation of the final book of the Harry Potter series, otherwise known as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out, making otherwise rational people scream like banshees. The film features a bobble-headed version of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson’s eyebrows, expect the second part in July next year.

2010 was the endpoint for a number of big television dramas; some have been almost irresistibly touted for a big-screen outing like sponsored terrorism-a-thon ‘24’, while others are simply over, either sadly or with good reason.

Arguably the biggest TV death of the year was that of David Tennant, or rather his portrayal as the supremely popular tenth incarnation of The Doctor in Doctor Who. Child’s drawing of himself Matt Smith stepped into some ocean-sized shoes and was met with immediate hatred, by me at least. Of course by about the twelfth minute of his own debut adventure I had been won round, as had the legion fans that had gathered since the show’s return in 2005.

Ashes to Ashes ended in May, revealing that the world of Gene Hunt was actually a kind of pre-afterlife specifically for the police with Gene being some sort of modern-day Charon, ferrying dead coppers to the pub…that is literally what he does.

Exercise in headless chicken scriptwriting Lost ended in similar fashion also in May with what has been one of the most dissatisfying and unwelcome endings since the Sopranos ended mid-sen-

The Tudors ended 4 series of historical lies and mischaracterisation, oversimplification and downright ‘Hollyoaks-ifying’ of the reign of King Henry VIII. Good.

And just this month, no-one’s favourite show Medium was confirmed as cancelled, alright it ends in 2011, but the announcement was this year, what do you want from me!? Arsehole.

And now some shows you might not have watched/heard of:
Hamlet-inspired Californian-biker epic Sons of Anarchy continued into its third season following the last remaining storyline threads, which unfortunately meant the main character of Jax Teller (played by Geordie actor Charlie Hunnam) going to Northern Ireland with all his biker friends in pursuit of the Real IRA who have kidnapped his baby son. I say unfortunately because this prompted some of the most piss-poor Irish accents I’ve ever heard; fake ones I mean, this is meant to be Belfast and it sounds like they’re auditioning for the part of a cartoon leprechaun. It’s painful to hear, which is a shame as otherwise it’s a very good show, of note is this season’s stand-out guest star Paula Malcolmson, who is, as it happens actually from Belfast.

Lie to me* began its third season; not sure how well-known Lie to me* is, but it deserves more. It’s your standard investigative show, the distinctive feature of which is, apart from Tim Roth seemingly having the time of his life playing arrogant but somehow likeable genius Dr. Cal Lightman, that the investigation is done by a team of experts and experts-in-training that study ‘micro-expressions’ in the face and body language to tell when people are telling the truth or if they’re experiencing (and trying to conceal) specific emotions. It’s better than I’ve made it sound, honestly.

On to technology and the world’s most expensive dinner tray; the iPad was announced by recently reanimated corpse Steve Jobs in January, and the press conference alone was enough to make me want to fire jets of my own scorching pancreatic juices across the Atlantic Ocean to find him and scald his fingers off. Essentially a giant iPhone, but without the practical applications of the easy to use, compact gadget, the iPad’s greatest flaw, in my eyes, is that it somehow makes Apple whores feel smug without the usual qualification of having done something to feel smug about.

The world’s top brand showed it is utterly unfazed by complete failure when it rolled out Google Wave to the public, which it claimed was what “…email would look like if it were invented today.”. Essentially a sort of Frankenstein’s monster stitching together of  e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking, Google Wave proved too technical for normal human beings to use, being far better suited to some sort of mass intelligence housed in a computer the size of the sun. Development ended in August; try not to cry too much, robots.

Speaking of social networking; the world lost its mind this year when it was revealed that that personal information you so readily entered into a website run by people you don’t know might not have been so secure after all. Facebook’s privacy debacle hasn’t done much to stop new users signing up, nor indeed to cause a mass exodus, MySpace-style. I think I’d mind more if the private, personal information they garnered from my profile was of any use to them, but, as it seems, the personalised adverts that I get, the ones tailored to my social situation and are deemed relevant to me are for Orthodox Jewish dating…I’m not Jewish, Orthodox or otherwise. When they get scary good at pulling my information, then I’ll give a shit.

Video games this year continued their trend as the most lucrative media launches of all-time, that’s in monetary terms you understand, try and talk about video games in company outside the age range of 11-29 and you’re likely to be sneered at with the kind of derision usually reserved for people who start sentences with “I’m not a racist, but…” Here are some developments I’m not happy about:

Sony and Microsoft, both eyeing Nintendo’s causal gamer audience with bizarre envy, launch their competing add-ons to their consoles. Kinect for XBOX360 and PlayStation Move are both attempts at the player using their own bodily movements to play games, sounds good to the kind of twat who thinks all entertainment should take place on a treadmill, i.e. no one. But what it serves to do is make every twat-head who uses it look like Louie Spence without the modicum of likeability or talent. Ah, feels good to get that out of my system, now, onto some titles.

Red Dead Redemption came out in May after a few years heavy speculation and proved to be one of the best things ever made out of 1’s and 0’s. The story is set in the waning days of the American Old West where you, as John Marston, are blackmailed into taking down your old gang members by a couple of ruthless federal agents, taking John from the prairie to the Mexican revolution and on to the modern society at odds with gun slinging outlaws, RDR proved to be a wonderful looking, fun, thoughtful and downright moving game that will be looked on fondly for years to come.

Halo: Reach unsurprisingly was a huge success, despite the fact that all titles in the series after the original 2001 outing ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ have been accurately judged as self-important, stagnant crap by any gamers with more than two neurons to rub together. Halo: Reach serves as a prequel to the rest of the series, taking place on the colony of Reach, which players of previous games will know, was a massive military defeat for the human forces of the UNSC against a multi-species army known as the Covenant. Now the fact that it takes place in such a doomed scenario means that you’re playing the game with the full knowledge, especially if you’ve ever seen any war film EVER, that you, your team-mates the supporting cast that don’t appear in the main series, are all going to die…probably. Having criticised the series as a whole, Reach does sit as the bright spark in the family, a much better game than previous entries with a story that doesn’t bore you at any turn despite its collection of clichés. It’ll live on as a multiplayer relic for years, which angers me greatly, but it is a good game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, the biggest, most over hyped of all games released ever that didn’t involve Peter Molyneux, was released in November and morons everywhere would have kicked children over walls to get a copy. The jealous younger brother series of the actually good Call of Duty games, Black Ops was developed by Treyarch, who also previously made the World at War entry. Black Ops’ campaign surprisingly consists of a series of ‘Black Ops’ taking place in various situations of the Cold War, and that’s about it really. It’s the multiplayer aspect, which I’ve never played, that is most definitely the main reason for about 98% of all purchases of the title, which in my opinion, should be seen as ridiculous as buying a DVD you’ve never seen before, melting down the film and only keeping the ‘special features’ disc.

If you want games to be taken seriously then multiplayer has to be a fun aside, not the main feature of the game.

And finally, Heavy Rain was released in February, and deserves mention here as the realisation of something promised to people my age years ago. Alright so the plot sounds like a rejected proposal for a B-movie knock-off of Se7en, but Heavy Rain, a game about a serial killer who drowns children in rain water, was presented in a compelling, new way, playing out entirely as a narrative, the player, as one of four characters throughout the game, interacts with scenes by pressing the appropriate button at the correct moment in order to progress the scene, failing to press the right button will still push the plot along, but in a slightly different way and always in a cinematic and believable way. Now, those of you in the know will know that that means it’s a game made entirely of quick-time events, but that’s not the point. The point is that Heavy Rain plays like a film, with real dialogue and proper camera-work. It is what people in the nineties used to say to older generations when trying to explain what video games were, an ‘interactive movie’.

And that was the year in media for me. Whether you agree or disagree, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than have an argument about it.

1 comment:

  1. firstly,
    Twitter: the movie...
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=putQn89TQzc

    secondly, who is hans zimmer joint with?

    ReplyDelete