Tag: Justified

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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 Land, The 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 Schrieber, Eddie Marsan and Jon Voight, Humans 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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2015 by Dots per Inch

Whangarei Central Library

I actually read stuff this year — 91 titles as a matter of fact, seven of which I didn’t finish for various reasons. This compares very well with 2014’s measly 24 titles.

Highlights, in no particular order:

  • Justified pilot script by Graham Yost;
  • Transparent pilot script by Jill Soloway;
  • Steve Jobs 19 March 2015 draft script by Aaron Sorkin;
  • The Fade Out issues 1–12 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips;
  • Alex + Ada by Sarah Vaughan & Michael Luna;
  • Lazarus issues 1–20 by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark;
  • X-ed Out, The Hive, and Sugar Skull by Charles Burns;
  • Down Under by Bill Bryson;
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout;
  • No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy;
  • Cop Killer by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.

Honourable mentions to The Ballad of Halo Jones by Moore and Ian Gibson, The Walking Dead issues 136–149 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Stefano Gaudiano, and Cliff Rathburn, and Ms Marvel issues 1–5 by Sana Amanat, G Willow Wilson, and Adrian Alphona.

I feel like I should read more text-only books but I suspect that’s my easily triggered inferiority complex.

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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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2012 in Print

Yah, it’s the end of 2012 already so time for a quick blow-out.

Another average year in terms of quantity of reading. Texts, as you can see immediately below, were a bit on the thin side.

Books

Other People’s Wars – Nicky Hager
Road Dogs – Elmore Leonard

Comics

Ongoing titles Walking Dead, Powers and Scalped continue to rate with excellent storytelling. Castle Waiting, Dolltopia and RASL were very pleasant surprises.

RIP – Thomas Ott
Castle Waiting Volumes 1 and 2 – Linda Medley
Tamara Drewe – Posy Simmonds
Walking Dead Volume 15 – We Find Ourselves – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard
The Killer Volumes 1 and 3 – Matz and Luc Jacamon
Dolltopia – Abbi Densen
Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense: Being Human – Mike Mignola
Scalped Volume 7 – Rez Blues – Jason Aaron and R M Guera
RASL Volumes 1-3 – Jeff Smith
Powers Volume 14 – Gods – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

Scripts

This year’s overall slant towards television writing is represented below with the number of pilots listed.

3:10 to Yuma – Michael Brandt & Derek Haas
Analyze This – Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Kenneth Lonergan
Gilmore Girls – Pilot – Amy Sherman-Palladino
Arrested Development – Pilot – Mitchell Hurwitz
My Name is Gary Cooper – Victor Rodger
30 Rock – Pilot and S01E07 – Tina Fey
Groundhog Day – Danny Rubin & Harold Ramis
The West Wing S02E04 – Aaron Sorkin
Justified S01E08 – Benjamin Cavell
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino

I’m a little worried I might’ve spoiled things a bit by reading Django Unchained before its opening here in New Zild but I enjoyed the script heaps more than the script for Inglorious Basterds (the film of which I have yet to see in its entirety [and those bits I have chanced across have been intriguingly tasty]).

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2011 on Screen

These are straight from the viewing diary. Those that I remember with a smile get some link-love.

Features

  13 Assassins
  Animal Kingdom
  Another Year
  Born into Brothels
  Buck
  Chugyeogja
  Contagion
  Frozen River
  Get Low
  Leaves of Grass
  Please Give
  El secreto de sus ojos
  The Social Network
  The Women on the Sixth Floor

Television

  30 Rock: Season 1
  Go Girls: Season 2
  Breaking Bad: Season 4
  Downton Abbey: Season 1-2
  The Good Wife: Season 3
  Justified: Season 2
  Monroe: Season 1

There were some shows that were real… curate’s eggs that I wanted to try and be objective about but then I remembered that Sunday School chestnut about pointing fingers and the other three pointing right back at you. (Yeah, I chickened out.)

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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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