A little late due to sickness and life. But here is my final Top 10 list for 2018 focusing on my favorite films. I’m still behind in reviews, so haven’t added Paddington 2, Aquaman, Bumblebee, Roma and a couple others, but only one of them made the list. BUT WHICH ONE?
It’s been a great year for television, evidenced mostly by having too many good shows I can’t even catch (I will get to the Americans when I get to it). Pioneers like Netflix and Hulu continued streaming’s dominance by putting focus on writing and character. There may be tiny spoilers in the descriptions but nothing too major.
10. The Runaways
With the rest of Marvel’s TV series faltering this year (Inhumans and Iron Fist tanked, Agents of Shield is tired, Defenders and Punisher were okay but pale in comparison to the heights achieved by Jessica Jones and Daredevil), leave it to this mashup of the OC and the Avengers to bring a new twist on super heroic teen angst. While the comic was one of my favorites, the TV series has done a great job of broadening the scope beyond the basic premise of group of teens discover their parents are evil. Honestly, while the TV show has pretty awesome and faithful adaptations of the kids, it has done an amazing job of making the parents infinitely more interesting and adding a dose of mystery to keep things interesting.
10. Dan Wilson – Re-Covered
The songwriter behind some of the biggest hits and/or best tunes of the past decade or two, Dan Wilson presents stripped down guitar-focused versions originally done by artists as varied as Adele (“Someone Like You”), Dixie Chicks (“Not Ready to Make Nice”), John Legend (“You and I”), and his own band Semisonic (“Closing Time”).
10. The Disaster Artist
While ostensibly about the making of The Room, aka the worst period movie period ever exclamation point, The Disaster Artist is actually more about the strength of friendship. Dave and James Franco both do a wonderful job of taking characters that could’ve been punchlines, and presenting them as thoughtful, three dimensional creatures.
With FXX doing their EVERY EPISODE EVER marathon, I’ve been seeing a lot about The Simpsons lately. I started watching the show when I just a little older than Bart. Now, I’m just a little older than Homer. I actually gave up on the show a few years ago, but for many years it was one of my favorites. I’d rather keep the joy I get from those early years (and we’re talking more than a decade here) than have the show continually tarnished by lackluster episodes. I still catch it every so often, but the lack of regularity has softened the pain that it is no longer at the heights it once was.
The heights were high though and because I love lists and reasons to critique things, I offer my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. There were so many more I wanted to include – Lisa the Iconoclast, Bart’s Girlfriend, Mr. Plow – but the following are some of the best the show has to offer.
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When I was a kid I was always super excited at the thought of going to the convenience store down the street (Bushy John’s – for real), to pick up new comic books. On special occasions, my father would drive me across town to the comic book store – Dragon’s Lair (named after and including the arcade game) where I could go to town on obliterating my allowance. I grew up wanting to be a super-hero, someone like Hawkeye, because I knew that I probably wasn’t actually going to develop super powers (although a part of me still holds out hope). As I grew up, I took a hiatus from comics when I discovered girls, and my entertainment outlet shifted to movies and TV. About a decade later, I came across a Wizard magazine where I learned that one of my favorite artists as a kid (George Perez) was drawing one of my favorite childhood comics (the Avengers). I’ve been buying comics every week since.
I always dreamt of going to Comic-Con as a kid. Back then it was just comics, but now it is a pop culture touchstone and covers more non-superhero entertainment than it does the spandex set. It’s the perfect representation of my problem. One of the more difficult things for me to reconcile, as a massive devourer of all things entertainment, is trying to serve the comic book fan in me while also serving the movie fan in me. This is not as easy as you would think, as a fair number of comic book movies are crap.
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excellent awkward 