2015 by 4K and 720p

Ay caramba, that was quick.

Sicario poster.jpg
Sicario poster” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Enjoyed immensely on the big screen:

  • A Most Wanted Man
  • Top Five
  • Ant-Man
  • Love is Strange
  • Inside Out
  • Amy
  • Sicario
  • Exit Through the Gift Shop
  • Spotlight
  • Steve Jobs

Top Five poster.jpg
Top Five poster” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Honourable mentions to John Carpenter‘s remake of The Thing which was enjoyed with a bunch of millenials who were genuinely freaked out by Rob Bottin‘s 1980s-era SFX, Cartel LandThe Guest, and Warrior which I finally watched after years of ravings by the inestimable Mr Fyers.

Devoured with great pleasure on the small screen:

  • Justified S06
  • Transparent S01
  • The Americans S02
  • Game of Thrones S05
  • Mr Robot S01
  • Nurse Jackie S07
  • Catastrophe S01
  • The Good Wife S06
  • Arrow S02–03
  • The Flash S01–02

Catastrophe (2015 TV series) title.png
Catastrophe (2015 TV series) title” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Honourable mentions to the CW’s one-two combo of Arrow S03–04 and The Flash S01–02, the not particularly innovative crime-fixer show Ray Donovan S03 which is made compelling by Liev SchrieberEddie Marsan and Jon VoightHumans S01, and The Walking Dead S06E01–06.

MrRobot intertitle.png
MrRobot intertitle” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

So much good television and so little time…

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2014

Goodness gracious, that’s 2014 done already.

Boring stats first. My exercise diary is a little depressing: less than half the number of runs this year than I would/should have on average (see here for where it all began) — but if I add the number of brisk walks and bike rides, too… total mileage is only a third of my annual average. Goodness gracious me. Future selfies for the blog will be from the chest upwards only. (Update: 2014’s mileage was actually two-thirds annual average — human error in the spreadsheet formulae.)

On to what this post is really for: what I watched on big screen and small. 128 titles were watched, equating to just over 500 viewing hours — and here’s what stuck:

Features

  • Enough Said
  • Monsters, which made me want to see Godzilla (which did not disappoint)
  • a dead heat between 20 Feet from Stardom and Fire in Babylon
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • Ida
  • Wreck It Ralph, with runners up The Lego Movie and Despicable Me
  • The Rover
  • The Lunchbox
  • Guardians of the Galaxy, with runner up Edge of Tomorrow
  • The Dark Horse

Television

Happy New Year!

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2013 on Screen

2013 went by rather quickly, didn’t it?

Here’s my best–of, in no particular order.

Features

2013 was a year when, more often than not, the fifteen or so bucks I paid to watch a feature on the big screen felt like money well spent.

Zero Dark Thirty
Iron Man 3
The Big Year
Chronicle
The Guard
Utu Redux
Gravity
Unit 7
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Saving Mr Banks

Television

For Mr White and friends, it was the end of an era — long live the king. As life goes on, Florrick & Associates continues to pull strongly, the Houses of Stark, Lannister, et al, remain compulsive viewing, and Nurse Peyton prevails in her adventures with prescription medicines.

Arrow — Seasons 1–2
Secret State
Hannibal
— Season 1
Top of the Lake
The Americans
— Season 1
The Newsroom — Season 2
The Fall — Season 1
Run

In another box–heavy year, honourable mentions to Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Endeavour, Karen Sisco, Last Resort, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and The Fosters. Not perfect, some no longer with us, some not really my cuppa, but good, well–made telly.

Onwards, ho!

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2012 on Screen

I’ve seen more titles this year than in any other since official records began in 2003. I’d like to think the year’s expanded viewing-slash-research goes some way toward explaining why posts on this blog have tended towards commentary rather than craft.

Features

Drive
Tropa De Elite
(Elite Squad) and Tropa De Elite – O Inimigo Agora E Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Avengers
Safe
Never Let Me Go
Armadillo
The Angel’s Share
Dredd
This Must Be the Place
La Jetee
End of Watch

Yes, that’s more than ten for the year but those 2011-and-earlier titles were just so damned good that I had to name-drop them.

Television

Panama-hat-tips to The Good Wife, Mad Men, Justified, Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad for continuing to be must-see telly three or more seasons into their respective runs. It’s sad that Mad Men and Breaking Bad will finish in the coming year but all good things do come to an end.

Hung – Season 2
Justified – Season 3
The Good Wife – Seasons 3-4
Smith
Inside Men – Season 1
Dirk Gently – Season 1
Game of Thrones – Seasons 1-3
Mad Men – Season 5
Nurse Jackie – Season 4
Hounds
The Newsroom – Season 1
Hit & Miss
Longmire – Season 1
The Golden Hour
Breaking Bad – Season 5
The Bletchley Circle
Last Resort
Monroe – Season 2
Boardwalk Empire – Season 1
Vegas – Season 1
The Sopranos – Season 1

Late adopter excuse/s for ‘discovering’ Smith, Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos.

A great year for UK telly with The Bletchley Circle and Hit & Miss.

And sun-hat-tips to the excellent The Golden Hour that almost, almost, made me want to watch the Olympics, and the lamented Hounds.

Theatre

Leilani Unasa’s His Mother’s Son
P-Lab’s Hypothesis One
Louise Tu’u‘s Gaga: the unmentionable

Disclosure: All three pieces are by Banana Boat colleagues,

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Box Watch Update

With The Good Wife ending its first season just like it started (but OMG oh-so-different), the inhabitants of Fortress Mamea have been bracing themselves for the fact that this week is chocker with season finales of Nurse Jackie, Glee and (I’m on my own with this one) Justified. Winter 2010 threatens to be a bleak affair.

As if.

The second season of Fringe fell by the wayside earlier in the late last year but we can catch up with Dunham and co at our leisure now. Unless we’re already belatedly catching up with Dexter (about to start season three) and Burn Notice (couple of eps from the second season finale). Or (re)watching the first seasons of Scrubs and Green Wing.

It should only be for June and a bit of July: the fifth season of The Closer and the fourth season of Mad Men open next month.

Meantime The Goddess has Radar’s Patch to chuckle over while I have Treme all to myself.

We’ll get by.

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Vacuum

In the vacuum left by the season finale of Mad Men, the Fortress Mamea inhabitants have been at a bit of a loose end. We enjoyed a fling with Better Off Ted, had our injections with Nurse Jackie, but they too have gone the way of Mad Men.

I’m at a similar place with my slate. Having reached my writing objectives for the year, I’m now trying to raise my film and TV viewing stats (59 finishes and 33 walk-/turn-offs to date, compared to 2008’s 94 and 19, respectively), as well as my reading stats (there’s a gaping hole from July to September that I don’t think I can make up for). I’ve completed Delta Force: Black Hawk Down (snore) and Close Combat: First to Fight (grin)* but… surely I could be doing something more useful?

We’re chortling through Glee. The Banana Boat writing group is ending the year with a bit of a bash. Only 24 sleeps until Avatar.

And after a few weeks of staring at my development file for the next project and not being inspired… I’ve just had a brilliant idea for my next project, totally out of the blue**.

Suh-weet.

* Not that you asked, but I’m currently chugging through Aliens vs Predators 2 and finding it rather tedious – I think I might join Monty and the boys in their North African campaign sooner rather than later.

** “Out of the blue”. What a crock. It was a fortuitous intersection of: people I know and want to work with; an achievable production budget; and a perfick location.

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