Top 7 Movies of 2009 I Haven't Seen Yet (I Swear There are Only Two or Three More Movie Ones)
7. Fantastic Mr. Fox - Typically I can't stand Wes Anderson films, but I'll admit that the trailers for this one charmed me. Hearing how little actual directing Anderson did only made me more interested in this one.
6. World's Greatest Dad - I love a good dark comedy, and Robin Williams playing the failed author father of a kid who died of autoerotic asphyxiation and then forging a suicide note for him, which becomes famous, forcing him to forge an entire diary to finally find success as a writer sounds like an absolute winner to me.
5. Dead Snow - As Much as I love zombies, I'll admit that I'm growing tired of them. There are only so many things you can do to them, really. However, "undead frozen Nazis thawed out and angry" is something I haven't seen before and very much want to.
4. Moon - I almost saw this instead of "The Hurt Locker," but it was already out of theaters. It's been called the best sci-fi movie in a decade, but in a year with "District 9" and "Avatar," I question it. There's no way this year was this good for science fiction, but I have to see for myself.
3. Sita Sings the Blues - I can't resist small movies, and this one's so small it went straight-to-download. Due to some copyright issues with the music, this homemade animated Indian story could not be released for any profit, so it's free. All anyone needs to do to see it is find it online, which I've yet to do for some reason.
2. Avatar - I find it hard to believe that this turned out good. Go back and watch the first clips and trailers. It's a busy, cliche mess with goofy-looking cg cat people. Somehow it worked out, though, and evidently it's super impressive in theaters. I just need to shell out the cash for IMAX 3D, or whatever the closes approximation Evansville has is.
1. Up in the Air - I honestly don't know a whole lot about this one other than it's directed by Jason Reitman and is supposedly one of the best movies this year, and I prefer to keep it that way until I see it. It's not often I can enter a film with so few preconceived notions thanks to the internet and word of mouth, but I've avoided the former and heard none of the latter for this one, so I'm ready to see it with entirely fresh eyes.
Top 6 Comics I Read in 2009
6. Deadpool - Not the best written, most provocative, or nicest looking comic I read this year, and not nearly the best Deadpool series to be written, but Daniel Way has had a fairly decent success rate with his stories. Just about every other storyline so far has been reliably enjoyable. I don't quite like some of the things he's done to Deadpool, but the worst is fading as the best stays strong. I continue to have high hopes for this one.
5. The Walking Dead vol. 8 - As finishing "Y: The Last Man" became my top TPB priority, I lost track of "Dead" for a while. For shame. This collection is super brutal and bleak, featuring the first real shift in the story since volume four or so. The cast was becoming comfortable, and there's no room for that in a zombie story, as much as I the reader wanted it to be so.
4. Fables vols. 1&2 - I picked this up on a whim once at Alter Ego Comics in Muncie when they didn't have what I was looking for, and was not disappointed. This is what would happen if "Shrek" were awesome and had more murder and political intrigue. Basically, fairy tale characters have been driven out of their world and into New York, where they struggle to remain unnoticed. Hilarity ensues as the animal characters, forced to remain in one remote plot of land, plan a violent revolt, led by a militaristic Goldilocks and two of the Three Little Pigs. It's just as cool as it sounds.
3. Batman and Robin - Bruce Wayne can stay dead for all I care, Dick Grayson makes a damn fine Batman. It's been a long time since anything new's been done to the Dark Knight, so as lame as killing characters off and bringing them back is, for this brief time things are really interesting. The first Robin is now Batman, and Batman's illegitimate half-ninja son is Robin. It's the opposite of the typical brooding bat and silly bird pairing, with Grayson's crusader being decidedly lighter and Damien Wayne being a cold badass. Also, I'm surprised as to how well bringing Robin 2, Jason Todd, back to life has been going. I like his Red Hood character.
2. Scott Pilgrim (series) - A very last-minute addition to my list, having just started reading it early December and just finishing it earlier tonight. It's hard for me to describe how much goodness is crammed into these little books. Think of every romantic comedy you've seen where the guy's plain and useless and the girl's super unique and interesting, put the relationship in a realistic light, and then throw it in a world full of SNES-era video game elements and occasional unreliable superpowers and you get "Pilgrim." I'd be concerned about the movie if it weren't being handled by Edgar "Shaun of the Dead" Wright.
1. Y: The Last Man (most of series) - I finally finished this epic series recently. By the way, please note that I'm using the word "epic" properly. It isn't a complete sentence and it can't be used to describe just anything. If I had things my way, the words "epic," "fail," "win," "own" and any combination of them would be outlawed. It's not clever, it's not funny and it isn't an accurate use of the word nine times out of 10. Can we please retire "epic" and find a new word to abuse? The same goes for using "awesome" as a noun or verb or some other unusual manner, like "King of Awesome," "Dr. Awesome" or "Awesome-fu." Anyway, yeah, go read "Y," I can't do it justice here.
Top 5 Video Games of 2009
5. Scribblenauts (DS) - No, the final product was not very good, but I think "Scribblenauts" deserves a place here because it tried something new. It set out with a very ambitious goal, to create a game where you could make virtually any object, which would then function as you'd expect it to, and it succeeded in that. Unfortunately, they never set the goal of creating a game you could control. It's a fun toy, and a good timewaster to return to now and again, but the final product was pretty underwhelming.
4. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) - Four-player Mario works just as well as you'd expect it to. Remember every difficult jump you failed to make in previous Mario games? This time there are three other people making the same jump at the same time, and if they hit you you bounce off of them like a rubber ball. The physics aren't always perfect, but the bubble feature relieves some of that. Overall it's a solid game for a group to goof off with.
3. DJ Hero (360) - Apparently I'm the only one who liked this, but boy, did I ever like this. I've always enjoyed the "Hero" and "Rock Band" games, mostly because of the choice of music. Pressing the right sequence of buttons in time in and of itself is not a lot of fun, but it's something to do while a good song is playing, and DJ Hero excels at this. What makes it great is the fact that the music is all new, coming from mash-ups of two popular songs. Most of the songs used are things I'd never listen to on their own, but they become something cool and catchy when played together with a few good record scratches. I also find the controls to "DJ Hero" to be a lot more logical than its instrument counterparts. You screw up on a guitar, you can go right back to playing and not hear much in the track. You miss something with the turntable and half of the song goes silent for a few seconds. It's embarrassing and very noticeable, so you feel like you're in control of the music. I didn't mean for this to turn into a mini-review, but it's hard to succinctly explain my appreciation for the game.
2. Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (DS) - The "Mario and Luigi" titles are always great, and the ability to play as Bowser is novel. A few other games have done this, but for the most part they've made Bowser just a bigger, heavier Mario in doing so. This is the closest I've seen to making Bowser feel like Bowser when you play as him. Other than that, it's the same game you know and love. Nothing better, nothing worse.
1. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (DS) - A British gentleman in a top hat travels the globe using his uncanny knack for solving brain teasers to piece together greater mysteries. I love this game series to death and wish it didn't take so damn long to translate them. Japan's already on the fourth one, with number five just announced. Lucky.
Part three soon because Holy Crap I am up late.
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