2020 ADDENDUM: THE LISTS

Okay, a two-week holiday in far-off Perth has been achieved, complete with hoovering up Lego and graphic novels, meeting my new granddaughter, hoovering up books, Christmas, seeing our adult kids, hoovering up as many kebabs as my body could stand, hoovering up as many piece of pop culture shite as I could get my hands on, playing with my grandkids, and generally just slobbing about like Dave Lister if Red Dwarf was Australian and remotely worth watching any more.

All of which means, I’m in a much better place than when I last posted. To whit, let’s talk about the TV, films, books, and graphic novels I couldn’t bring myself to list when I posted my end of year review!

THE FILMS!

Movie watching habits were all over the place this year, as befits an isolated country town with a theatre-cum-cinema that shows a limited selection of movies once, weeks after they hit the major cities, that basically sealed up and showed nothing for months due to COVID. What resulted was a combination of comfort films, introducing Lord 15 to some old favourites, and a very few newbies.

Highlight of the year was probably Tenet, an intelligent and impeccably-crafted science fictional thriller that continued Christopher Nolan’s obsession with chronology and points of view, with a performance of stunning menace by Kenneth Branagh . I’m at a loss to fathom the criticism this film has attracted– as far as I can tell, it boils down to “If I can’t understand it, it must be the film that’s slightly dim…”. JoJo Rabbit was another superb entry, with similar criticisms: I guess that’s what happens when you let the herd take over the role of critique. Spies in Disguise and Bill and Ted Face The Music were both pleasant surprises, movies I went into with zero expectations that managed enough smiles to make the effort worthwhile.

Low points were probably the bloated mess that was Star Wars: The Rise of Sywalker, a self-important, dithering blancmange of content-free fanwank that should have been smothered at birth; Mission Impossible: Fallout, a giant bag of stupid so stupid even the teenage students I showed it were MST-ing it within half an hour; and Yellowbeard, a movie I hadn’t watched since I was a teenager and which proved that my memory is better than I thought it was, because it actually was as bad as I remembered. The Chris Chibnall Award for Somehow Fucking Up a Near-Impossible to Fuck Up Beloved Franchise goes to the single worst thing I saw all year– Shin Godzilla, a movie that asks you to believe that the reason you you sat down to watch two hours of a giant monster stepping on things was to see a never-ending series of people having meetings in interchangeable boardrooms. You made a Godzilla movie boring, fellas. I didn’t think you could do that without booking computing time at CERN. Here’s your award. Now fuck off.

Anyway, here’s the full list, for your edification:

Orgazmo
The Running Man
Gremlins
War Games
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Gotham by Gaslight
JoJo Rabbit
Red
Brave
Red 2
Batman: Hush
Reign of the Supermen
Zodiac
American Psycho
Seven Psychopaths
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Police Academy
Weekend at Bernie’s
Memento
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Stan and Ollie
Deadpool
Deadpool 2
Mission Impossible: Fallout
Vampire Hunter D
Shin Godzilla
Fletch
LA Confidential
Fight Club
Yellowbeard
Spies in Disguise
Coco
Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup
Tenet
Bill and Ted Face the Music
Terminator 2
Speed

TELEVISION!

A pandemic, forced working from home, coping with our son’s death… there were a lot of reasons to spend our time lying on our bed, flaked out in front of the TV, and we took advantage of them. Apart from Luscious’ addiction to a bunch of ham-radio level Youtubers doing their makeup while they talk about crime, or religion, or whatever they can do five minutes of Google research about, we did manage to get in a few quality shows. True Crime threw some incredible efforts our way– we were treated to the lunacy of Don’t F*ck with Cats on the Internet, a classic nerds-track-loony-using-the-power-of-social-interwebbernetz journey of nutiness; The Confession Killer; treatises on Ted Bundy, Aaron Hernandez, and the Mafia, and of course the show that came to define 2020, the needs-to-be-watched-to-be-believed genius that is The Tiger King. The Mandalorian proved that Star Wars can be done well, as long you don’t do, well, Star Wars. Umbrella Academy, Upstart Crow, and Simon Anstell gave us laughs when we needed them. And after four seasons of the best TV I’ve seen in several years, The Good Place gave us that ending, just to prove that perfect shows can be perfect until the final moment.

At the other end of the spectrum, The Witcher proved that you can do a fantasy show really well and it will still be laughable shit. And Good Omens managed to take almost everything that was Terry Pratchett about the original book and give us… whatever you get when Neil Gaiman tries to be Terry Pratchett. But, honestly, these were mild disappointments rather than the car crashes you like to complain about– if nothing was exactly GoT Season whatever the last one was, than perhaps that was just because whatever was going on outside the house was so much worse.

Anyhoo, here’s the full list of what we flaked in front of all year:

Don’t F*ck With Cats on the Internet
Strong
Tell Me Who I Am
Bikram
Gotham S1-3
Simon Amstell: Set Free
The Mandalorian S1
The Witcher S1
Cheer
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez
Taxi S1-5
The Good Place S4
The Confession Killer
Ted Bundy: Falling For a Killer
To Catch a Killer S1-2
Fred Dinenage Murder Casebook S1-2
True Nordic Crimes
The Tiger King
The Last Dance
Australia: a Time Traveller’s Guide
The Twilight Zone S1-3
Umbrella Academy S1-2
Last Chance U S5
Cowboy Bebop
8 out of 10 Cats random episodes
Upstart Crow S1-3
The Man in the High Castle a bit of S1
Dr Who: Genesis of the Daleks
The Perfect Crime
Carmel: Who Killed Maria Mata?
City of Fear: New York vs the Mafia
Good Omens

BOOKY WOOKS!

It took me a long time to get reading this year. After Blake’s death, I simply didn’t have the energy or concentration to devote to an extended text, and then, of course, COVID hit and whatever energy I did have was expended trying to teach both in the classroom and from home. Eventually, I headed for the comfort shelves, where the genius of Joseph Heller and Terry Pratchett helped me rediscover some measure of equilibrium. Of previously unread works, biographies loomed large. Seduction: Sex, Lies and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood, by Karina Longworth, was jaw-droppingly fascinating, as was Walter Yetnikoff’s autobiography, Howling at the Moon, for wildly different reasons. Phillip Roope and Kevin Meagher’s Shark Arm represented the best of true crime, taking an odd and obscure criminal moment in time and unravelling every thread until a rivetting and revealing story was laid out in front of the reader. Best of all were two books detailing the relationship between the Vatican and the evil regimes who they helped empower: The Ratline, by Philippe Sands was a real-life thriller tracking the escape and mysterious death of a Nazi war criminal in the days of the crumbling Reich, and David I Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini is a forensic examination of the petty evil that Il Duce and Pius XI fostered, competed with, and eventually, were surpassed by.

Biggest disappointments were, sad to day, an Alice Cooper autobiography that devolved into golf equipment hucksterism and pulpit thumping, and My Appetite for Destruction by Steven Adler, a drug-addled Guns & Roses sorta-autobiography that was little more than delusion and self-aggrandisement.

The full list:

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, by Eric Idle
The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains, by Jon Morris
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden
Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, by TJ English
Shark Arm, by Phillip Roope and Kevin Meagher
Eavesdropping on Evil, by Wayne Howell
Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore
Guns, Cash, and Rock n Roll: The Managers, by Steve Overbury
Picture This, by Joseph Heller
The Taxi Book, by Jeff Sorensen
Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood, by Karina Longworth
Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, by Anita Loos
Howling at The Moon: Confessions of a Music Mogul in an Age of Excess, by Walter Yetnikoff
Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock’n’Roller’s Life and 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict, by Alice Cooper
I Hate Myself and Want to Die, by Tom Robinson
The Simple Art or Not Giving a F**k, by Mark Mason
The Ratline, by Philippe Sands
Jingo, by Terry Pratchett
Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett
Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett
Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett
Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett
My Appetite for Destruction, by Steven Adler
Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett
The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett
Thud, by Terry Pratchett
Snuff, by Terry Pratchett
The Truth, by Terry Pratchett
Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
The Pope and Mussolini, by David I. Kertzer
SS-GB, by Len Deighton

GRAPHIC NOVELS!

I started the year trying to keep up with my mini-review schedule, and slowly, and surely, like everything else, my graphic novel reading fell by the wayside. Never mind: I’ve picked up a fat bunch of new volumes during my Perth holiday, and we’ll strap on the feedbag and get back to work again this year. In the meantime, I picked a few gems to cover in 2020, from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, to my continuing odyssey to collect all things Suicide Squad, to the ongoing brilliance of Monstress.

Low points were Darth Maul, a by-the-numbers caper that could have been staged anywhere with anybody –In a series that gave us the brilliant Darth Vader series, this was a genuine disappointment; a Barry Sonnenfeld attempt to take the two coolest things in the world– dinosaurs and aliens– and make them both unbelievably tedious; and Troll Bridge, a self-indulgent Neil Gaiman thing that served only to remind that he’s really given us nothing worth reading in this genre in a very long time.

Here be the list: