Greg's Favorites of the Decade, 201x

At the prompting of my son who asked if I was going to do a blog post covering the entire decade, here it is.  I hadn't really considered it, but after his asking I started mentally trying to think what my favorites would be.  Then I started bemoaning the fact that I only started keeping a media diary since 2012 and that I'd lost two of the earliest years of the decade--only to be reminded when I came to make my end of year post, that I'd been doing an annual wrap-up for well over 10 years, so everything was already here for my reference!

So I'm going to step back through several of the various categories such as movies, music, games, etc. and pick through some of my favorites of the past ten years.  I did my best to make sure everything wasn't weighted towards the end of the decade with the items that are still freshest in mind.

Movies

I'm starting with movies for this list, because I've spent the most time thinking over my list of favorites films over any other category.  It's the easiest category because even if I didn't have my previous lists, I can pull up a list of movies from any year and find my favorites pretty quickly.  I can't say that about most other categories.

Looking across my lists from the past 10 years, it's interesting to see how many favorite movies of the year will not be listed here, but how many that were lower down the list or only briefly mentioned have made it here.  A lot of them boil down to how well they resonated.  Sure they may have been a great watch in the theater, but which have I returned to over the decade or have stuck in my mind?

Of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the biggest winner for me (and parent company Disney.)  There were only a few duds in the lot, and even the lesser movies all had a sense of fun that made them enjoyable.  Looking across my lists by year, 2015 seems to have been my best year for movies.  Making a first cut over each year and leaving only movies that have made a significant impression on me, most years had around 2-4 films that stood out, while 2015 had 13!  2014 and 2017 both had 8, and 2016 had 7.

Some brief thoughts on movie-going over the decade:  Some of the biggest changes were with subscriptions such as MoviePass and AMC A-List which made going to the movies much more common the past couple years from a few times a month to weekly.  Many theaters have upgraded to recliner seating and reserved seats with online or app ticketing, which makes choosing to see a movie much easier and more comfortable.

Here are my favorites of the decade:

1. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) - After JJ Abrams revived the series with Mission Impossible III, Brad Bird took over and made what is easily my favorite film of the decade.  The movie has so many amazing set pieces, coupled with humor and fun that made me love this film.  The opening prison break, the silent Kremlin heist, and the entire Dubai sequence (climbing the building, making the trade, chasing the bad guy in a sand storm) are all moments that have stayed in my head since the original watching.  I love this movie.

2. Cabin in the Woods (2012) - This random little horror film has such an amazing twist that it instantly became my favorite horror movie of the decade and of my favorites of all time.  It rewards people who are familiar with other horror movies with dozens of amazing easter eggs and references, and capitalizes on many of the genre's tropes, cliches, and stereotypes making it, like "Shaun of the Dead" last decade, a movie that is both an entry and parody of the genre.

3. Avenger's Endgame (2019) - I feel a little weird putting this here.  A movie that just came out this year.  It hasn't had the time to work itself into the list like the others.  And yet, it was my favorite film this year, one of the few I went back to see again, and it is such a roller-coast ride.  I laughed out loud, I cheered, I cried both tears of sadness and joy--in fact I cried 3 or 4 times during the movie!  I almost never cry in real life and this film kept me wiping my eyes every 30 minutes!  It was bold, killing off certain characters, putting others in new places, and going in directions that were unexpected, yet in the end found a way to make the entire journey feel worthwhile.  It is currently the biggest movie ever and I think it deserves the crown--until Avatar 2 somehow finds a way to take it back!

4. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) - This New Zealand vampire mockumentary was barely mentioned on my list in 2014, partly because it hadn't been officially released in the US, so I watched it online.  Regardless, this was my favorite comedy of the decade hands-down.  It introduced me to Taika Waititi as an actor and director (though I'd seen Flight of the Conchords and a few other things, but this was what brought him to my attention specifically.) I've rewatched this many times and is probably the film I've recommended most to people looking to find a new movie.  There have been two TV spinoffs, "Wellington Paranormal" and "What We Do In the Shadows (US)" and they both have the same dry humor of the original.

5. X-Men: Days of Future Passed (2014) - I've only liked  a few X-Men movies and I was only slightly okay with the reboot cast after "First Class."  Yet somehow this film finally made X-Men fun and extremely watchable.  The opening scene in the alternate future where X-Men are being hunted with the original cast was the first time we actually saw the X-Men using their powers like superheroes (limited budgets and technology from the original films really stand out now.)  I'm always a sucker for a good time-travel story, and the scene with Quicksilver running around the room during the prison break scene is up there for best scene of the decade for me.  Of course, the next two X-Men films (Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix) succeeded at ruining the X-Men yet again, but there was a moment in 2014 when I was excited about X-men for the first time.

I would love to continue to elaborate, but instead, I'll just list a few more of my favorites after my top 5 or this will take me the rest of the year to complete:

• Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015): Nearly as good as Ghost Protocol.
• Captain America: Civil War (2016): The airport battle was just amazing.
• Edge of Tomorrow (2014): Loved this sci-fi premise
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Better than any Star Wars movie this century
• Paranormal Activity 3 (2011): Paranormal Activity 1 was amazing, this prequel found some fun ways to keep it interesting
• Mad Max Fury Road (2015): This movie is practically one extended action scene.  It just doesn't stop.
• Thor Ragnarok (2018): Taika Waititi brought his humor and Flash Gordon to Marvel and it was hilarious.
• Get Out (2017): A great Twilight Zone horror movie with a great mystery premise.
• John Wick (2014): Missed this in theaters and completely forgot this film after the first home viewing, yet three watches later and it's a masterpiece.
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017): The best video game movie ever made.

Honorable Mentions:

The movie that I watched more than any other film this decade was:  Birdemic (Shock and Horror) (2010).  One of the worst movies ever made, I have shown this to sooooo many people and have delighted in just how jaw-droppingly bad this film is.  It's awful, but somehow in an actually entertaining way.

Fast Five (2011).  I completely ignored the Fast and Furious franchise until this film.  Suddenly it changed from illegal street racing to international spy and heist movies.  The final sequence of this film with the safe being dragged around the city is one of my favorite movie moments of the entire decade and has pulled me back into watching this franchise which just keeps getting bigger and dumber.  I both love and hate these films.

TV

I don't believe we had cable at all over the past decade, so our television watching habits significantly changed these past 10 years.  (My youngest son doesn't even understand watching TV that can't be paused or allow you to skip commercials!)  Appointment viewing has all but disappeared, but binge watching, particularly with Netflix, has become the norm.  There are only a handful of shows that I try to watch as soon as they air any more.  Saturday Night Live being one of the consistent few that I still look forward to.

Here are some of my favorite shows over the past decade (in no particular order):

• Biggest Loser - We discovered this show around 2009/2010 and it was inspiring! It was also about the last show that Maria and I watched consistently together.
• Community - As this show got stranger and stranger it became more and more fun.  Especially when the episodes starting becoming exercises in genre.  It fell apart the last couple seasons, but when it was on, it was amazing.
• Sherlock - The show that launched Benedict Cumberbatch.  The first three episodes were so fresh and interesting.  The second season had an amazing cliff hanger.  And then suddenly I realized that the show was more interested in itself than it was in any actual mysteries and my love for it eventually ran out.
• QI - I loved this British panel show with Stephen Fry and all the amazing facts that people don't know are actually wrong.  I have several books that emerged from the series and even listened to a companion podcast for a while ("There's No Such Thing as a Fish.")  Sadly I lost interest after Stephen left and haven't really watched the past few seasons.
• America's Got Talent - One of the few consistent shows I watched all decade (until this most recent season.)  I really love the variety show aspect, but get very frustrated when singers win!
• Studio C - The family really enjoyed this BYU-based sketch comedy show.  We even visited the actual Studio C a few years back when we were in Utah!
• Saturday Night Live - With the regularly rotating cast and hosts, and fresh commentary, I seem to be one of the few who thinks SNL is just as funny now as it was when "my cast" was there.  (Which is to say, 1 or 2 actually funny sketches per episode.)
• Face Off - This strange special effect make-up competition reality show helped me survive when I discovered it and binge-watched 6 or 7 seasons during the month when I had my gall bladder surgery and literally could not sleep.  I needed something to do to keep me occupied all night and this was it.
• Last Week Tonight - John Oliver with his humor found a way to get me interested and educated about topics that I normally could care less about (FIFA?  Brexit?)  Another one of the few shows I have to watch as soon as a new episodes is available.
• Black Mirror - An amazing and amazingly dark sci-fi Twilight-Zone series showing the potential horrors of technology and other near future concepts.  Though the last season (this year) was mostly forgettable, every season before has had at least one or two hauntingly memorable episodes.
• Stranger Things - This show came out of nowhere and blew me away.  It was such a perfect blend of Spielberg, Carpenter, Craven, and King along with seemingly every other 80s horror and adventure movie.  I wish they'd have stopped with one, or made every subsequent series an anthology with a new story and characters.  However, we got one amazing season that I still love.
• Penn & Teller Fool Us - This series that started as a British show then moved to the US is one of the few magic shows on TV that I consistently love.  Particularly since the magic is made to fool Penn & Teller, and not the TV audience.  That somehow makes the magic performances feel more authentic because you know it's not about camera tricks, it's about cleverness and practice.
• Derren Brown specials - My favorite magician, Derren Brown, puts out regular specials over the past decade from convincing a schlub that he can emergency land a commercial airplane with no flying lessons, to planning an art heist using retirees, to making someone commit (simulated) murder, and then someone else jump in front of a bullet for a stranger.  He's always got some concept that just seems impossible, but is always entertaining.  He also released many of his stage shows as well, which are always amazing.
• Mandalorian - Disney+ debuted at the end of 2019 and this was the best show on it and the best Star Wars show since the original trilogy.

Music

Music has sadly become less important to me for some strange reason over the decade, replaced mostly with listening to podcasts.  Partly is the work involved in finding new good music.  Most of the decade was me listening to newer releases from older bands I already knew, or occasionally searching music blogs to find a hidden gem I wasn't aware of.  Once in a while I would find a band through someone's recommendation like my brother, or more recently my son.  One or two might come from a random suggested video on YouTube, and finally this past year via recommendations from Spotify.  I'm really interested to see how Spotify changes my listening habits and new music finding ability in the future.  For now, it's still a new service to me.

The decade also started out with me putting out a lot of my own music, including my self-recorded album "Another Fine Mess" in 2011.  I finished another half an album's worth of material before hitting some creative roadblocks that have kept me from recording anything more for a few years.  I still have quite a few songs in me waiting to come out, so hopefully they'll emerge eventually.

Greg Whitehead - Another Fine Mess (album playlist)


My favorite song I recorded over the past decade and that I feel I've ever written is this one from 2013, "Again Tomorrow."  This was when I first got Garageband for my phone and my new Mac computer, and it added some extra technical orchestration abilities that I didn't have on my earlier songs.

Greg Whitehead - "Again Tomorrow"


The artist (outside myself) that I listened to the most this decade is most likely the band Muse.  They released 3 albums over the decade, with a 4th that was still new at the end of 2009 that I was likely listening to regularly in 2010.  Right next to Muse was the Darkness with another four albums over the decade.  Never my favorite band, or favorite album of the year, yet they remained fairly consistent with their sound.  Sadly they've never improved upon their second album "One Way Ticket" which is still my favorite of theirs.

Here are my favorite albums of the decade, in only slightly significant order:



Yes - Fly From Here - I had pretty much given up on expecting any more albums from Yes--or any classic rock band--to release an album in the 2010s that I would end up liking.  Maybe it's the magic of Trevor Horn returning to producer chair, or that technically these songs all originally came from the late 70s/early 80s, or that (*gasp*) Jon Anderson didn't sing on it.  Whatever the case, it was one of my favorite albums of the decade and probably my third favorite Yes album overall.  If only Trevor Rabin were also involved to really give it that 80s feel!  With the recent death of Chris Squire, I doubt there will ever be another great Yes album.  We'll see.




Michael Sherwood & Christian Nesmith - Groovy Lemon Pie - Two artists whose names I can never remember and only made this one collaboration that I am aware of, made an amazingly beautiful collection of pop songs merging Genesis-era Peter Gabriel-style vocals with haunting arrangements and catchy hooks and harmonies.  We took this album on a summer trip to Utah and Yellowstone Park and it will be forever connected to the gorgeous scenery we experienced on that trip. "Look Out Below" is a particular favorite.



Muse - The 2nd Law - This album starts off with Muse attempting to write a Bond theme (hoping to be used for "Skyfall" if the stories are true) which is better than any other Bond theme this century.  Then they go on to write an amazing song for the Olympics ("Survival.") This album has them playing with glam rock, funk, more Queen, and finally orchestral dubstep.  None of my most favorite Muse songs are on this album, but it's probably the one in total that I've listened to the most rather than just culling out a few of my favorite songs.


Gotye - Making Mirrors - This is the first time in the decades that I've watched SNL that a musical guest intrigued me enough to go find out more about them.  Gotye came out of seemingly nowhere in 2012 with this album and then seemed to have returned to wherever it was he was originally hiding because he's never made a follow up, despite a massive hit with "Somebody that I Used to Know."  Still this album and his prior album and a few other songs ended up playing on repeat in our car for quite some time becoming a family favorite.



OK Go - Hungry Ghosts - Not my favorite band or album musically, though I do enjoy this for the most part.  However, the videos these guys make elevate every song from good to amazing.  Once in a while a great video can improve a song but these guys make it a regular habit.  Plus the videos are always amazing.

A few more favorites albums from the decade:

• Hoosiers - Illusion of Safety - one of the few last surviving Britpop bands
• Tally Hall - Good & Evil - forever associated with our family trip to Aspen Grove in 2011
• Chateau Marmont - The Maze
• Rob Cantor - Not a Trampoline
• Beck - Colors
• Roger Joseph Manning Jr - Glamping - had a wonderful experience meeting Roger with my brother Jeffrey and doing a deep dive on each of the songs on this EP at the end of 2018

Thinking about favorite individual songs of the decade, that's quite a bit more difficult to figure out and narrow down, but there are a few that spring to mind so I'll add few here:


Jukebox the Ghost - "Jumpstarted" - First listen to this song hurt my head because of all the constant changes, but once it clicked---Wow!  I loved it.  Very Queen-esque, but since this band worships Queen, I'm okay with that.


The Producers (Trevor Horn Band) - "Freeway" - One of those songs that I can just listen to on repeat.  The harmonies are beautiful, and the song builds and builds to euphoria.  I instantly loved this from first listen.


The 1975 - Love Me - The odd funky retro 80s mix of David Bowie ("Let's Dance" -- oddly, just before he passed,) Peter Garbriel ("Sledgehammer,") and Scritti Politti ("Perfect Way,") came out of nowhere in the middle of the decade, and it immediately became one of my favorite songs that year in spite of me not really caring much for anything else the band did.


Tally Hall - Out in the Twilight - This song starts as a regular pop song.  Catchy, but nothing special.  I'm not sure what happens, but at 2 minutes into this great little song everything just comes together and it suddenly soars like a long lost 80s Yes song.


Honorable mention: Stefan Zauner (as S.O.L.) - "Something for Beginners" - this came out in 1995, but I just found it recently and I love it.  Took me forever to track down the full album on CD which is amazing in a digital world.  Nothing is quite as good as this, but I'm happy to have found it nonetheless.

Games

When the decade started out we had the Wii and XBox 360.  The Wii U came and went, and then we moved on to the Switch and XBox One.  We also went through quite a lot of versions of portable DS's as a family.  Most of my casual gaming has been taken over by the iPhone where it has pretty much remained.  I'm still primarily a Nintendo fan, while my son Colin pretty much lives on the XBox.

Here are the games that I liked best this past decade:

Portal 2 - This is almost a perfect game.  It takes the crazy Portal transport idea from the almost mini-game of the original and fleshes it out into a full game, with a crazy story and new crazier mechanics, full of humor and surprises.  The miracle of this game is that it presents you with a new puzzle that makes no sense and after experimenting for a while you suddenly feel like a genius when you solve it.  I'm sad that Valve has seemingly moved away from this and Half Life story games that were all so amazing.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This game is beautiful, epic, and wonderful. I'm struggling to decide

whether this or Ocarina of Time is the superior Zelda game.  Ocarina of Time took a 2D franchise into 3D and found a way to reimagine the game into an amazing fully realized world.  Breath of the Wild finds a way to completely reimagine the Zelda game from the ground up while keeping enough elements that it still feels familiar.  Both are groundbreaking and feel like entirely new, fresh experiences.  I think the nostalgia factor has the edge on this last Zelda game, but the fact that it stands next to that game while containing many elements that are demonstrably superior says something.

Batman Arkham Series (Asylum, City, Origins, Knight) - With the exception of Origins which felt like it was rehashing the formula a bit too much, this entire series, with Arkham City being my favorite, is just excellent.  I've played no other game that makes me just enjoy wandering around like this series.  Having a full city to explore with hundreds of secrets and riddles to discover alongside the overall story and being able to grapple up into the sky and glide around is so much fun.  I was never a comic book fan nor particularly interested in Batman, but this game changed that and educated me on Batman's lore while allowing me to have fun being a superhero detective.

Simpsons Tapped Out - This is a game with no gameplay.  The "gameplay" involves waiting for your
game.  This makes no sense and surely can't be fun.  Yet the whole concept of building your own Springfield piece by piece by earning characters and landmarks and random walls, chairs, and other accessories was so enticing to me and my obsessive collector personality that I played this for years.  From the seaside, to the giant mall, to Mr. Burns expansive property, to the particularly spooky haunted Halloween areas, I had a fully fleshed out, thriving city of my own.  Then I reached the tipping point where I had so much stuff I was just stashing it into corners until the day I decided to reorganize everything.  The sheer size of all the items waiting my careful creative decisions frustrated me to the point that I finally had to stop playing the game.  But that was after 4 years.  I can't think of any single game that has had me playing that long.

Jackbox Series/Use Your Words - My brother introduced me to the Jackbox party game series a few years ago and it was an instant hit in our house.  The game plays by having all the players use their phones as input devices while you play various quiz, trivia, fill-in-the-blank, and other variety games.  A new set of games comes out every year and we have them all.  My sons regularly invite people over to the house for Jackbox parties and they always have a good time.  Not every game is a hit, but every year there are at least 1 or 2 worthy games that require returning to regularly.  The concept of playing with your phones was so great that another game "Use Your Words" came out with the same mechanic and is every bit as fun as the best of Jackbox.

Super Mario Galaxy 2/Odyssey - Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out at the beginning of the decade

and Odyssey came out near the end.  Because it's been 10 years, I don't remember much about Galaxy, other than really liking it and that it would regularly introduce new gameplay ideas and mechanics that any other company would build a whole game around it.  Super Mario Odyssey continues Nintendo's knack of finding new, innovative, and most importantly, fun ways of using their iconic mascot.

Angry Birds (Seasons, Rio, Friends, Space, Star Wars, Bad Piggies, etc.) - It's 2020, aren't we over Angry Birds yet?  Yes.  Yes we are.  However, at the beginning of the decade this game and game series were huge.  It was a huge part of defining and evolving smartphone/portable gaming.  And for that alone, I must acknowledge this series as being hugely influential to gaming as a whole in the past ten years.  I also played every single entry in the game for at least five years.


Unfinished Swan - I purchased the PS3 after the PS4 released and everyone

was getting rid of their old consoles.  This beautiful gem of a game made the purchase almost single-handedly worth it.  You start the game with just a white screen.  No instructions.  You push some buttons and suddenly a glob of blank ink shoots out and hits something.  Surprised, you push the button a few times, and paint the wall black in front of you.  You turn your stick to spread out your painting and suddenly realize you are in a completely white room and based on where the ink has hit you can start to make out corners and a hallway.  I won't spoil things beyond that, but this single mechanic of discovering a completely white world by throwing paint is both incredibly simple and mind-blowingly innovative.

Other things

I had a few other topics I normally list such as podcasts, board games, books, etc.  However, I've been working on this post for a week now--something I thought I'd knock out in an afternoon!--and it's exhausting me.

So I'll just give a few quick shout outs:

Board Games favorites of the decade:

• Mysterium
• Betrayal at House on the Hill
• Munchkin
• Superfight!
• Legendary deck builders (James Bond, Buffy, Aliens, Predator)
• Dice Throne

Podcasts I listened to the most over the decade:

• Slashfilmcast
• Nerdist
• Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider
• How Did this Get Made
• Now Playing
• We Hate Movies
• Empire
• James Bonding

Books I loved the most:

• Ready Player One
• World War Z
• Hunger Games

All in all, it's been an eventful decade.  One would hope, right?  I did start and end this decade in the same place with the same home and same job.  Biggest difference: we added one more new member of the family who is half a year away from being a decade old himself--and the other two boys who were near his age in 2010 are graduated or graduating.  Maria created her own occupation as an editor which has been both amazing and really helpful in getting on top of things financially.

Some personal highlights: I recorded an album, dabbled in app building, continued to do magic tricks, took up crocheting and amigurumi, and finally became obsessed with board games and met a lot of new friends.  I discovered Escape Rooms this decade as well as those pay-by-the-ounce yogurt shops.  I met my keyboard hero, Roger Joseph Manning Jr, and saw my first in-real-life Python, John Cleese. I traveled the world by going on multiple trips to UK and Italy along with many other trips within and around this country.  I traveled to famous sites such as Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, the Space Needle, the Colosseum, and Stonehenge. 

I can't wait to see where the next ten years will take us!