Anyway, here are the things that I enjoyed watching/playing/listening to in 2017:
Music
I thought 2016 was terrible for music. Well, this year was worse. I added a whopping two new albums to my iPhone and didn't create any music of my own. So my top ten albums of the year are narrowed down to which of the two I liked more. Granted, I did not spend much time looking for music. I don't have a lot of occasions to listen to music any more and since we subscribed to Sirius XM, most car listening is to channels the play older music.- The Struts: Everybody Wants - Technically this came out in 2014 and released in US in 2016. I only found it this year. It's great Glam Rock throwback with touches of Queen. A new album is coming early in 2018.
- The Darkness: Pinewood Smile - The only new album from this year that I found. I still like their second album best. This doesn't depart much from their last two albums, which means more stripped down, straight-ahead rock songs. However, this one did provide quite a few ear-worms that wouldn't leave my head.
There were a few old songs that I found this year that I really enjoyed outside of full albums:
- S.O.L.: "Something For Beginners" - This is Stefan Zauner from Muenchener Freiheit who did a solo English album in the 90s under the name S.O.L. (Some Other Language.) Several of these became Freiheit songs. I'm still looking for the whole album, but I love this song:
- Lene Lovich: "New Toy" - Someone on Reddit posted this saying that Lene Lovich was the inspiration for Danny Elfman to change the sound of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo from weird experimental performance art to a new wave band in the early 80s. Listening to this song, I can definitely hear the similarities. This song was co-written by Thomas Dolby for added coolness.
I have no music predictions for 2018. Muse released a couple tracks last year for an upcoming album, maybe this year?
Movies
I continued to keep track of all the movies I watched this year. I watched a total of 340 movies. I watched 30 movies in the theater. I watched 74 new movies (released in 2016-17) at outside of the theater. I saw 164 new old movies (anything before 2016 that I'd never seen before). And I rewatched another 72 movies that I'd seen before.A lot of the movies I watch are usually in conjunction with podcasts I listen to. Especially ones like "How Did This Get Made" and "We Hate Movies" where they choose an old awful movie and pick it apart. So I will usually try to track down the movie to watch it in advance. There are also several other movie podcasts I listen to like Slashfilmcast or Empire Podcast that have lengthy spoiler discussions about new films so I try to get to the theater early to see the film to be able to listen to the discussion afterwards.
Here are my favorite films I saw this year:
Get Out - My least favorite theater experience, but my favorite film of the year. A guy came in late and brought his less than 10-year-old son to this film and then pulled out his phone while sitting right next to me. I normally yell at people to put their phone away, but not when they are immediately next to me. His son didn't want to be there and was covering his face the whole time. And then I finally noticed that the guy wasn't playing on his phone--he was asleep and had left it on. Eventually after about five minutes the phone timed out until a few minutes later when the guy adjusted himself and the phone came back on for another five minutes! I had to sit with my hand up next to my eyes to shield the light so I could concentrate on the movie. Despite all that, I really liked the film. I enjoyed the mix of humor and horror and mystery of it all.
Thor Ragnarok/Wonder Woman - I can't tell which of these I enjoyed more. Wonder Woman surprised me seeing as how awful all the other WB/DC films have been. But this one was actually featured a real hero doing heroic things. It was almost refreshing how basic it was. If only the ending were a little stronger. Thor was just crazy. I'm shocked that with three Marvel films this year (Spiderman/Guardians 2) that this was my favorite of the three. A Thor film. It reminded me of a more self-aware version of the 80s Flash Gordon movie with much more humor.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle/Central Intelligence - I'm surprised the last movie I saw in theaters this year was one of my favorites. It had the perfect construct of being based around an old video game that allowed it to be dumb, stupid, and illogical which added to the charm and fun. Plus I really enjoyed all the main characters including Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart from "Central Intelligence," a movie that came out last year, but I didn't see until this year. There's been a dearth of good comedies recently and these two films are definitely high up there.
Baby Driver - Edgar Wright's latest film. The only reason I saw it, because nothing about the trailer or story or awful title made me want to see it. I really, really liked it--despite the story. It was all about the style and the mix of music choreographing the action scenes. Otherwise, I'm not a fan of crime dramas, but Edgar Wright found a way to make me like this one.
It - Just a great horror movie. I re-watched the mini-series and this is definitely an improvement. It'll be interesting to see if they can make the sequel measure up to this one since the weakest part of the mini-series was the adult segments.
Coco - Best animated film of the year. A return to form for Pixar for now.
Happy Death Day - Groundhog Day meets Scream. I had a lot of fun with this one. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but I enjoyed how they played with the repeating day concept to find a murderer.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi/Guardians of the Galaxy 2/Spider-Man: Homecoming - These were all good. I enjoyed them.
A few non-theater movies that I liked: The Big Sick, The Babysitter, and Brigsby Bear.
Looking ahead to 2018, I'm most looking forward to Spielberg's "Ready Player One" adaptation. I'm just hoping it doesn't turn out like "Ender's Game" where a favorite book of mine is adapted into an OK movie and then completely forgotten about immediately afterwards! Also looking forward to "Avengers: Infinity War," "Incredibles 2," and "Mission Impossible 6,"
TV
The interesting thing about TV this year was I watched almost no network dramas or sitcoms this year. Most of it was cable or Netflix. Here are some of my favorites:Black Mirror/Stranger Things 2: These were both at the top of my list last year, and both are Netflix shows. Black Mirror squeaked into my list by Netflix releasing it just a few days ago. Stranger Things 2 wasn't as great as the first season, but still enjoyable.
Peter Pan Goes Wrong: This special was broadcast at the end of last year in the UK and one of the first things I watched this year. It was hilarious. It's a spin-off of a broadway play call "The Play That Goes Wrong" about a murder mystery play that is riddled with technical issues, bad acting, and errors galore. I expect "Christmas Carol Gone Wrong" that played this year (and watched today so it doesn't count for 2017) may show up on this list again.
Mystery Science Theater: The Return: Another Netflix series. This revival was almost as good as the original. I still prefer most of the older cast, but many of the episodes here can stand along-side the original series.
Murder in Successville: A UK series I found this year where a celebrity is paired with a detective in a semi-improvised murder investigation/comedy. I just enjoyed the refreshingly original idea behind the series as well as the comedy.
The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special: A random character from an SNL sketch a few years ago by Tom Hanks got its own animated Halloween special. It makes no sense, and that is why I loved it.
Red Dwarf Series XII: I can't believe it's still running after nearly 30 years, but there were some good episodes this series.
Wrecked: This is a shipwrecked sitcom/Lost parody. Why is it on the air? I don't know, but after the episode where everyone went crazy because no one could remember the actor who played Rose's boyfriend on Titanic and no one had a phone with a signal to look it up, this show had me hooked.
Other shows I watched and enjoyed this year: SNL, Last Week Tonight, America/Britain's got Talent, Penn & Teller Fool Us, Angie Tribeca, Rick & Morty, Upstart Crow and the Simpsons.
Podcasts and Online
Here are some of my favorite podcasts/YouTube channels/online shows that I enjoyed this year:Movies: We Hate Movies, Red Letter Media (Half In the Bag/Best of the Worst/etc.), Screen Junkies (Movie Fights, News), Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider, How Did This Get Made, SlashFilmcast
Show/Subject specific: James Bonding, Star Trek: The Next Conversation, Monkey Tennis (Alan Partridge), Loose Cannons (A Cannon Film retrospective)
Video Games
Nintendo released a new console this year (the Switch) making the already dying Wii U obsolete. Luckily Santa brought us a new one at Christmas. So we currently have about five different devices to play games on in our living room: Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Switch, and Steam on our media PC. So TV possession can often be an issue if one wants to play games. I asked last year if Nintendo's new console could produce any new games, and the answer was YES! Anyway, here's what I liked the most this year.Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U) - Nintendo reinvented Zelda this year and made an absolutely amazing game. One that you can get lost in for days without doing anything to progress the story and still feel satisfied and have fun. I think I still prefer Ocarina of Time as my favorite Zelda game, but that has the added nostalgia built in. This is a close second and a nearly perfect game.
Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) - This one squeaks in at the end of the year since I've only had a week since Christmas to play it. It too has so much to do. Possessing other creatures with your sentient hat adds so much play variety. Nintendo genius.
Jackbox Party Pack 1-4/Drawful 2/Use Your Words (Steam/Xbox) - The first three Party Pack games were mentioned last year. We continued to play them regularly this year and added Party Pack 4, Drawful 2 and Use Your Words to the collection. Use Your Words is actually from a different company but uses the same concept of using your phone to answer questions in a party setting. We've played this so many times and it gets pulled out almost any time extra guests are in the house.
Cuphead (Xbox) - I've been waiting for this game since it was shown at E3 in 2014. It's a run-and-gun platformer done in an animated style of a 1930's cartoon. It's super hard, but the animated style makes it worth playing through. I made two crochet figures of the main characters of Cuphead and Mugman for Colin and Spencer as Christmas presents.
Yooka Laylee (Xbox) - Another game we've been waiting for a while. Many of the original developers from Banjo Kazooie Kickstarted this game a few years ago which we backed. It is a throwback to the N64-era mascot platformers that I really liked. It didn't quite live up to the original Banjo Kazooie, but I liked it better than any of its sequels.
Other games I enjoyed playing this year: (Xbox) Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Alien Isolation, (iOS) Simpsons Tapped Out, Rodeo Stampede, Angry Birds Pop, and Homescapes.
After wondering if Nintendo could get any good games for Switch last year, the same question goes for this year: Can they do it again? There's still not a great library of games for the Switch, but there are sure a few amazing titles to hold it over while it builds up.
Board Games
After adding this category last year, we didn't play as much this year. Part of that is my boys being very busy. Another part is Jackbox Games took over our playtime. However, here are a few games we enjoyed this year:- Red Flags - A game by the Superfight people where you make blind dates for people and then sabotage them. Colin lost my game at an activity that he took this to, but we managed to get a replacement.
- Escape The Room Games - I got several "Escape the Room"-style games in a box and played them a few times over the year. They're fun although you can really only play them once.
- T.I.M.E. Stories - An interesting concept. Essentially it's a choose your own adventure tabletop game played with decks of cards. Another one that can only be played a limited amount of times, but still an interesting concept.
Books
My goal was to read a book a month. I started strong but did not end that way. I ended up reading 3 books and two halves, so four altogether?- Magic 2.0 Series: Off to be a Wizard, Spell or High Water, and an Unwelcome Quest - These three books are based on a premise of people discovering a file on the Internet that contains all the data to life. They start to hack it and essentially gain "magical powers." It invariably causes them trouble and all independently end up in the middle ages in England where being a wizard isn't entirely looked down on. They form a group of wizards and have an interesting time when other would-be wizards start trying to abuse the file for evil purposes.
- Redshirts - I loved the premise of a group of random officers on a spaceship discovering they are actually cast members in a space show from the 20th century. It started out interesting, but jumped the shark halfway through and I gave up.
- I, Partridge - Started, but haven't finished yet. I am reading it to keep up with the Alan Partridge podcast "Monkey Tennis."
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