The year in pop culture

I know I've said I don't like the "end one year/start another in winter" thing, but I have to admit that with everyone else taking stock of the past 12 months it's been hard for me not to, if just a little.

I've mentioned time and again that 2011 has not impressed me with film. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago when I saw Hugo that I had a film I would give a full four stars to (even if it is a bit twee). Then a week or two later I saw Tintin, which I haven't reviewed yet because I wanted to see it again but haven't made time for yet. My basic review is I loved it, four stars. It was a great adventure story that I'd put at the same level of Scrooge McDuck comics. But I was surprised at how much gun violence there was after the infamous editing of ET.

Anyway, there were a handful of not-quite four-star movies I really enjoyed and, perhaps, in time my opinion of them will grow. X-Men: First Class, Drive, Contagion, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Rise of the Planet of the Apes were all really great, but for whatever reason they didn't wow me completely.

At the same time, I have a Netflix account and I've been able to see a fair number of films I haven't beforehand. Among them I was most impressed by Return of the Living Dead, House of 1000 Corpses (despite The Devil's Rejects being more critically lauded), The Wicker Man (the original, of course), The Illusionist, and Master of the Flying Guillotine.

Netflix also allowed me to check out Avatar: The Last Airbender, and if there has been any piece of entertainment or art in the past year that I love, dare say cherish, above all others this is it. This series is awesome on all levels, even with the occasional dud episode (cough The Great Divide cough), and I am absolutely impressed something like this could be made and marketed towards children. I'm not as surprised to see that this was made as I was Samurai Jack, which was much more artistic and strove for something different, but it is a little amazing this was made with the level of craft and attention to detail as this had. If there's anything to look forward to in 2012 (besides The Dark Knight Rises), it's Legend of Korra.

And on the subject of The Last Airbender, there's music. SPOILERS (If you haven't seen the show, just close your eyes and listen)


I don't talk about music much because I so very rarely bring any cerebral view to it. I've always handled it in a lizard-brain fashion. I like this, I don't like that, this was OK. So there isn't much I can say about the music I really got into this year except to list them all. So there's Warriors, up above, and then there's Me and Mr. Wolf (along with the awesome video, which is actually how I found out about this song, when Cartoon Brew posted the video)


Then there were the soundtracks for Doctor Who - Series 6 and last year's Christmas Special. I Am The Doctor was easily the song I listened to the most early in the year, but over the past week, after I bought the OST for A Christmas Carol, Abigail's Song has been the one I keep going back to.


Also in constant rotation these last few days have been a couple tracks from the soundtrack to Millennium Actress, something I've long wanted to acquire but only recently (finally) found a way to download (since the only copies available for sale are on Amazon for $80 and there's no reason to suspect it'll suddenly become available at a reasonable price). There were two tracks in particular I wanted




And from the same musician, Susumu Hirasawa, from Satoshi Kon's series Paranoia Agent


Turning to books, I read quite a few I liked, such as Under the Dome, Lone Wolf and Cub, and Maria Holic, but I can't say many have really stuck with me after I finished them and there have been a couple disappointments (I'll talk about them later, but Pattern Recognition and Spook Country don't measure up to Gibson's earlier works).

A late arrival has been the first two volumes of the collection of Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse comics. I'll have more to say when I finish volume two and write them up properly, but I've gotten a kick out of seeing Mickey Mouse as a real character and not just a corporate mascot.

Speaking of which, I mentioned a couple days ago I've gotten a Wii, and Epic Mickey has been a blast. I don't consider myself a gamer, so I don't know if this has broken any new ground in the gaming industry (I doubt it), but as a Disney geek I just love how the entire storyline and setting and everything mines the nostalgia of the company so thoroughly. It's not just Oswald playing the anti-villain, but all the other forgotten characters and the off-skew version of Disneyland and the sidescrolling levels that mimic the old cartoons.

And since I brought up video games I guess I'll mention that this year I finally played Portal and Portal 2 and I've drunken the Kool-Aid. I'm not going to make any jokes about the cake being a lie (and if I do you have my permission to cut my balls off), but I have the soundtracks and eventually I'll probably buy the talking turret plushie and Companion Cube plushie.

And the last thing I'll mention is that while there haven't been a lot of movies I loved this year, I find that I can watch the Harry Plinkett reviews more times than I can most regular films, and I'm really enjoying Half in the Bag. The framing scenes are never terrible (some are really funny) and I do find their analysis insightful.

So there's 2011 and the media that made an impact on me.