Can you believe it? My first blog post in five years! I'm back baby! I know it's been dead around here since 2020 but I've never stopped blogging--in my head. I've got years of stacked up posts--okay ideas for posts--stacked up and ready to go.
I'll lead off with the classic annual review of stuff consumed! My tracking for all consumption was in dire straits in 2022-2022, but I've got it all down from 2023 forward so maybe I'll move backwards. Nothing says "fresh" like years old recommendations! Let's gooooo!
Books
I’m almost too embarrassed by my lack of book reading to lead off with this subject. I technically logged about twenty books read but some of those were awfully short, some were semi-graphic novel, and some of them I’m just in the middle of them, but past the fifty percent mark.
Of those reads, I can only cite four as semi-recommends: 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore, Chokepoint Capitalism, Let’s Go Let’s Go, and The Vulnerables. Note, one of those is a children’s book—I like everything by Jenny Offill so far—and one of them is just a non-fiction book that I dip in and out of and still haven’t entirely finished.
With all my video game playing the past few years, I now think of everything in S-themed tier lists. I saw someone do theirs online and decided it was the way to go moving forward. So see the image attached for my books tier list.
Also, with a newfound dedication to making my life about books for 2025, I updated my long dormant Goodreads and will be tracking better as I go. My goal for 2025 is forty fiction books—discounting all the old “cheat” books that I would throw into fiftyfifty.me, including graphic novels, etc etc. That number will also disregard non-fiction books as well, as ingesting those is quite easy.
Also, I spent about a week reading about other people’s To Be Read system and despite some dalliances with more complicated systems, I’m just gonna go with a basic one: Throw up five books, finish them (or quit), before moving on to other titles. More about books on a different post. Let’s just move on…
Movies
With sixty-plus movies watched in 2024, there were only a handful worth recommending. In fact, maybe only four: Dune 2, Prospect, Wingwomen, and The Wild Robot. Dune 2 is self explanatory, it was great and can’t wait for the third one! We watched it again a few weeks later so I can assure you that it’s double great. Prospect is a 2018 sci-fi Western starring Sophie Thatcher and Pedro Pascal. With a minuscule four million dollar budget, Prospect manages to create a wonderful atmosphere and story about a father-daughter trapped on an alien planet.
Wingwoman, a French 2023 Netflix film directed by Mélanie Laurent—co-starring herself and Adèle Exarchopoulos—was a small budget action movie that delivered easy fun and laughs. Compared to most of the spectacle schlock I saw at the theaters this year, it was a gem. And then there was The Wild Robot, which was unexpectedly an absolute delight. While I didn’t enjoy the book (see below), the movie’s charming animation won me over immediately and in a shocker, I think The Wild Robot was the best movie I saw all year! Maybe not the “best” but definitely the most enjoyable.
Of course, I must also throw my heart at Wicked, but that is beyond biased as I’ve watched the Broadway show maybe a dozen times and was not going to be disheartened by any film adaptation. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were great—as was everyone else—and Wicked was definitely my favorite movie of the year, if not necessarily the best.
Some other notes: I decided I needed to pick a director to be a completionist and Wong Kar-wai was right there. His filmography isn’t that large—ten I believe—and I’ve seen most of it anyway but started again. Of the ones left to watch are As Tears Go By, Ashes of Time, and The Grandmaster (which I walked out on the time I watched it in the theater).
The Fall Guy was by no means great, or even good, but the Gosling and Blunt team up—my two favorite actor and actress basically—had to be seen and enjoyed. Gosling gets to Gosling and Blunt gets to be witty and fun. It was a blast! The last semi-recommend is Lady Snowblood, which Quentin Tarantino said directly influenced Kill Bill. Once you watch it you’ll see he just about lifted everything.
Television
It was a pretty great TV year actually, with nine series I’d wholeheartedly stand behind: Death and Other Details, Fallout, Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, Shogun, The English, Under Pressure, We Are Lady Parts S2, X-Men 97, and XG Xtra Xtra.
You’ll note that two of the above are documentaries following k-pop groups. Of the two, Pop Star Academy is the heavily produced, slicker version, but XG’s documentary series—available on YouTube—was better because it followed the group over a span of many years. You’ll marvel at not only how hard the trainees work, but at the vision of Simon, who is the superproducer behind XG.
Of all the shows I watched this year though, it was The English that stole my heart, and I’ve watched it twice already. Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer—of Twilight fame—star in this revisionist Western that was basically perfection. I tried to watch The English when it came out two years ago but kind of overlooked because of a slow beginning. This time around, I powered through the first twenty minutes and then was hooked for the next five and a half hours. Aside from the outstanding acting performances and breathtaking cinematography, Hugo Blick’s miniseries also (easily) takes the trophy for best woman-led Western. As I told my fellow Blunt enthusiast, “This is Blunt at her Blunt-iest, and being the best!”
A quick note about Death and Other Details, which stars Violett Beane and Mandy Patinkin as a detective duo. After suffering through quite a few not so good detective shows, this little seen Hulu show was the one that finally caught our attention. I tried to like Only Murders in the Building, I really did, but it didn’t scratch the right detective-y itch.
With 2023 in the rearview, I need to catch up on Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and Arcane S2 asap…
Games
I’ll separate these out as digital / video and board game. Of course, there’s a crossover here as Dune Imperium, which started life as a physical game but then transitioned to digital, which is how I play it. Fired up by Dune 2, we got into Imperium heavy and even though I’m still getting good at it, I loved it very much. The Rise of Ix expansion is out now too, so that’ll be exciting.
Successfully avoiding Balatro for most of the year, I made my friend download it for a weekend and he got so addicted he subsequently had to delete it. Nearly everyone says how addictive Balatro is so despite owning it on two platforms, I’ve yet to actually dig in much. But I can recommend it for sure.
A part of my summer was spent playing Call of Duty Cold War Zombie mode, upon the insistence of my friend. Many a night we stayed up late just trying to escape from zombie apocalypse. Then I got us into Cuphead and learned what frustration—and addiction—really was. Both of us were determined to beat the levels and had to set timers to limit ourselves for game play each night. Needless to say, with the game’s legendary difficulty, we are still not done with the game. One game that was a nice refresher between zombie and cups was Cat’s Quest 3. I’d played the two previous versions before and they were both a delight, but CQ3 was the best of them all. High high recommend for a fun time and cuteness overload.
Also a nice shoutout for Disney Illusion Island, which is a simple platformer that was perfect for playing with my nieces. They have mechanics to help the players falling behind—namely throwing ropes down ledges—and that was helpful all around. Plus the art and animation are exactly as you’d want a Mickey and Donald game to be.
For real board games, we got into Detective Portal, upon the recommendation of an employee at Geeky Teas & Games in Glendale. It filled the niche of missing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective nicely and it was fun to play a game where we could rely on any digital source.
Follow ups to previous games we loved: Suspects Case 2 and Blowback, the second part of Enigma Emporium’s Predator or Prey series. These are postcard games that include puzzles of all types and while Blowback wasn’t as good as Wish You Were Here, we are certainly gonna stick around to do Parabola to finish out the arc.
And lastly, we quite enjoyed MicroMacro: Crime City, which is tiny characters moving around a huge map. I got us bigger magnifying glasses to use for the game and those magnifying glasses have come in good use for other games as well. MicroMacro’s series of hidden object crime solvers seem like consistent good fun, and playable for all ages!
The Quit List 🚫
The TV quit list was True Detective S4, Monsieur Spade, Mr and Mrs Smith, Grisse, and countless half episodes of stuff—many from Apple TV.
As for movies, I quit twenty-plus of them, with many being ones that were very highly regarded, so much so that I’ve lost all faith in reviewers and am now looking to go back to my old old system—following a single reviewer, and then calibrating off their taste.
Among those mega disappointments were American Fiction, Emilia Perez, I Saw the TV Glow, Shortcomings, and The Killer, which was not really a quit but we only suffered through it because we had already left one previous theater to watch it. See below for a new “which movies do I watch in theaters” strategy.
Also, as usual, I rewatch a ton of stuff unmentioned here—including a whole run of Robin Hood movies—but in mid-December we tried to rewatch Breakfast at Tiffany’s and it was putrid. Even accounting for Oriental Mickey Rooney, this classic film is pretty unwatchable. Prove me wrong…
For books, the quit criteria was similar to before: if I read over fifty percent, I could call it a “quit,” which we established back in the day of fiftyfifty.me, although that number has now been dialed down to twenty-five percent. Basically if I’ve gone past a quarter of a book, it can count as a “quit.” Among those were, again, a few critically acclaimed books that just flat out bombed for me: Ministry of Time, Chain-Gang All Stars, Incendiaries, Rejection (although I did enjoy some of it), Project Hail Mary, all of Sally Rooney, and The Wild Robot (loved the movie, but the book was too simple, which is not a fault but too childish for me). As I’m rededicating myself to reading in 2025, I hope to have a very full book section next year!
