annual media roundup

(1 comment)
2014.01.04
My usual media roundup. Far fewer movies on video is the main change. I guess I watch more of those when I'm going steady for longer. Usually.

Better than expected stuff in red, All time favorite in bold, not so good stuff in grey.

So, "all time favorites": Gravity 3D, but in IMAX. It's a bit hokey, but the majestic expanse of Earth are half the key to placating my inner child astronaut.

Bookwise, "Cloud Atlas" was a stylistic tour de force, I love how it built and then deconstructed itself. "Spell of the Sensuous" talks about what we lost with the rise of phonetic alphabets and more. "Dirk Gently" is just amazing in how well it holds up, how fresh it still seems.

In Comics, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland is a beautiful tale of a city I love, James Sturm's America: God, Gold, and Golems includes "The Golem", maybe the best baseball story every told, The Infinite Wait is a great and very personal set of autobiographical tales by Jula Wertz

In video games, Saints Row IV was an astounding melange of super heroism and goofy action, and GTA: San Andreas on iPad was what I wanted GTAV to be more like.

Movies at the Cinema (14)
Oscar Shorts Nominations Live Action, Oscar Shorts Nominations Animated, Lincoln, Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, World War Z, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, The World's End, Riddick, Texts from Bennett, Gravity, Blue is the Warmest Color, Gravity
Movies on Video (26)
Chungking Express, Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, Melvin Goes to Dinner, Role Models, Porco Rosso, The Cabin in the Woods, Girls Season 2, Total Recall, Zero Dark Thirty, Wreck-It Ralph, The Big Lebowski, Good Will Hunting, The Fountainhead, Guilt Trip, A River Runs Through It, Safety Not Guaranteed, YPF, Scarface, Cloud Atlas, John Carter, Sick & Tired, Hangover 3, The Way, Way Back, Frances Ha, The To Do List, National Lampoon Christmas Vacation
TV Seasons (7)
Parks and Recreation Season 5, The Office Season 9, New Girl Season 2, Modern Family Season 4, Game of Thrones Season 3, The Mindy Project Season 1, Enterprise Season 4
Books (60)
Squirrel seeks Chipmunk, How Music Works, How to Think More About Sex, My Heart Is an Idiot, Seductive Interaction Design, Sacred Hoops, An Unexpected Twist, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, What French Women Know, Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, My Mother's Bible: A Son Discovers Clues to God, Star Wench, Love Is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life, Can a Robot be Human?, Rules for Virgins, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty, Life is Elsewhere, The Dude and the Zen Master, Off to Be the Wizard, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible, You, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Intuition Pumps, Higher Than The Hawk, Unmastered: A book on desire, most difficult to tell, Cloud Atlas, You're Not Doing It Right, Half-Life: Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck, And Baby Makes More, A Cynic's Guide to a Rich and Full Life, Consider Phlebas, Among Murderers: Life after Prison, Very Short Stories: 300 Bite-Size Works of Fiction, Into the Wild, The 7 Secrets of the Prolific, The Spell of the Sensuous, Faith of Cranes, Terrible Nerd, The Old Man and the Sea, Dry, Magical Thinking, Dreamcast Worlds: A Design History, Michrochondria, The Stench of Honolulu: A Tropical Adventure, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, Salmon of Doubt, Quarantine, Hardwiring Happiness, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, The Art of Loving, Oh Myy, MindSets, Collected Poems (Jack Gilbert), The Relaxation Response, The Art of Lying Down, The FastDiet, Dogfight, A Slow Year, EarthBound
Comics (26)
Tiny Art Director, Kiki de Montparnasse, Beg the Question, Kingdom Come, "Failure"@Boston Phoenix, Harvey Pekar's Cleveland, Wizzywig, Feyman, Habibi, Empire State, I Thought You'd Be Funnier, All Over the World and other stories, James Sturm's America: God, Gold, and Golems, An Elegy for Amelia Johnson, Be a man, Clumsy, Unlikely, Failure, Asterios Polyp, xkcd time, Siverbow's Basin, Mush: Sled Dogs with Issues, xkcd: time, Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me, The Infinite Wait and other stories, Tag and Blink Were Here
Video Games (11)
New Super Mario Bros U, GTA: Vice City, 400 Years, Driver, Gears of War: Judgement, Bioshock Infinite, Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, Saints Row IV, GTAV, Peggle Nights, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

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