2006 Film

Between unemployment and a dvd rental scheme I've watched a lot of "I should see that, but I don't really want to" type films. Some were surprisingly good, others were disappointingly bad. I thought I was going to the cinema less (the ridiculous cost detering me from several films) but actually went 15 times, compared to 16 last year. Reviews can be found here.

12 Angry Men - 7/10
A Beautiful Mind - 7/10
A Clockwork Orange - 5/10
All About Eve - 8/10
Amelie - 7/10
American Dreamz - 7/10
Annie Hall - 7/10
Brick - 6/10
Brief Encounter - 6/10
Brokeback Mountain - 7/10
Buffalo Soldiers - 7/10
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 5/10
Cars - 7/10
Casablanca - 6/10
Casino Royale - 6/10
Chinatown - 4/10
Chocolat - 7/10
Citizen Kane - 8/10
Clerks - 6/10
Corpse Bride - 7/10
Doom - 6/10
Driving Miss Daisy - 5/10
El Laberinto del Fauno - 7/10
Elizabethtown - 7/10
Fight Club - 9/10
Finding Neverland - 8/10
Good Night, and Good Luck - 6/10
Gosford Park - 8/10
Gremlins - 7/10
Ice Age: The Meltdown - 7/10
Jarhead - 6/10
Jaws - 8/10
Kiki's Delivery Service - 7/10
Kind Hearts and Coronets - 4/10
Kramer vs Kramer - 7/10
La Vita è bella (Life is Beautiful) - 8/10
Lord of the Rings 1: Fellowship of the Ring - 9/10
Lord of the Rings 2: The Two Towers - 9/10
Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King - 8/10
Magnolia - 7/10
Manhattan - 5/10
Manhattan Murder Mystery - 5/10
Million Dollar Baby - 7/10
Mirrormask - 6/10
Mystic River - 6/10
Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind - 5/10
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - 7/10
Operation Petticoat - 6/10
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl - 9/10
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - 8/10
Poseidon - 8/10
Pride and Prejudice (2005) - 6/10
Prime - 5/10
Psycho - 7/10
Rear Window - 8/10
Rebecca - 9/10
Requiem for a Dream - 5/10
Romance and Cigarettes - 4/10
Saving Private Ryan - 9/10
Serenity - 7/10
Sin City - 7/10
Some Like it Hot - 7/10
Stand by Me - 7/10
Sunset Blvd. - 5/10
Thank You for Smoking - 8/10
The 39 Steps - 5/10
The African Queen - 5/10
The Apartment - 7/10
The Aviator - 5/10
The Brothers Grimm - 4/10
The Godfather - 7/10
The Graduate - 5/10
The Holiday - 6/10
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - 5/10
The Muppet Christmas Carol - 8/10
The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D - 7/10
The Perfect Storm - 4/10
The Right Stuff - 6/10
The Terminal - 5/10
The Usual Suspects - 6/10
This Is Spinal Tap - 7/10
Titanic - 5/10
War of the Worlds (2005) - 7/10
When Harry Met Sally - 6/10
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - 7/10
X-Men: The Last Stand - 7/10

This year's best films - technically only 13 films count as 2006 films, although a couple were not released in the UK until 2006. I've not really been blown away by any of the new films, maybe I've just not caught the right things. Thank You for Smoking and El Labertinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) are the standouts, because they used inovative and interesting ways of telling stories. Thank You for Smoking was a lot of fun to watch, while Pan's Labyrinth was almost painful to watch. I enjoyed Pirates 2 in the cinema but was actually somewhat bored when I re-watched it on dvd. I loved Cars, mostly 'cos it hit a couple of my interests - fast cars and americana. Poseidon was a brilliant example of the disaster movie genre.
Best overall film - two films stand out from the rest by a clear mile. People have been telling me Fight Club is superb for ages, but I was put off by the title and topic. They were right, I shouldn't listen to my brain. Saving Private Ryan has been on my shelf to watch for ages but was again put off by the topic, it was all the things I thought it would be, and it was absolutely superb.
Don't make me watch it again - A very very long list, including but not limited to Titanic, The Perfect Storm, The Brothers Grimm and Romance and Cigarettes.
Looking forward to - Bobby, Miss Potter, The Fountain, The Pursuit of Happiness, Dreamgirls, Hot Fuzz, 300, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pirates 3, Ocean's 13, Shrek 3, Transformers

2005 Books

This year's aim was to read more classic books, both classic sf and 'proper' books and I'm quite pleased that I did that, but it has taught me that a lot of them are just plain dull. Old sf for the most part ages very well, but the non-sf stuff moves at a much slower rate than modern books focussing more on the descriptions and just slow everything down. It's good to see where a lot of references and staple ideas come from, but often they suffer because they've (unsurprisingly) been done better on the 20th attempt. My other plan was to read more non-fiction. This didn't really happen. Reviews can be found here

55 fiction books:
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Emma - Jane Austen
Consider Phlebus - Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
Jhereg - Steven Brust
Yendi - Steven Brust
Teckla - Steven Brust
Taltos - Steven Brust
Phoenix - Steven Brust
Athyra - Steven Brust
Orca - Steven Brust
Dragon - Steven Brust
Issola - Steven Brust
Dzur - Steven Brust
Downbelow Station - C.J. Cherryh
Sunstorm - Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident - Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code - Eoin Colfer
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Christmas Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Five Quarters of the Orange - Joanne Harris
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Things Can Only Get Better - John O'Farrell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Big U - Neal Stephenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder - Evelyn Waugh
Astonishing X-Men V1: Gifted TPB - Joss Whedon
Astonishing X-Men V2: Dangerous TPB - Joss Whedon

Best Books - I think my top pick of the year is The Time Traveller's Wife, it was a little slow to get going but absolutely took my breath away once I got into it.
Honourable mentions - Life of Pi was only narrowly edged into second place, a great novel that's also fun to read. Runner up positions go to The Lovely Bones and Flowers for Algernon.
Most enjoyable books - Gateway and Ubik are a couple of 'classic' sf books that I was delighted to find were really fun to read. I enjoyed the Artemis Fowl books a lot and also the first bundle of Josh Whedon's Astonishing X-Men.
Disappointments - I thought the idea behind Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was going to be a winner, but I was disappointed with the realisation of it which was jumbled and let down by poor characters and mystery. The Foundation series fell into the same problem of great concept, but poor writing. A lot of books this year I read because I felt I should, rather than with any real hope that I'd like them, so I'm not really going to count them as disappointments. Similarly I can't really describe them as 'bad' because they're important historically and what-not, just not necessarily rivetting to read.

Non-fiction - 11 this year, which is actually a lot better than last year's 7.
Building Strong Brands - David A. Aaker
The Book of Nothing - John D. Barrow
Working the Wheel - Martin Brundle and Maurice Hamilton
Letter from America - Alistair Cooke
C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too... - John Diamond
Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell
Free Prize Inside: The Next Big Marketing Idea - Seth Godin
Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth - Andrew Smith
Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements - Paul Strathern
Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
Talk to the Hand - Lynne Truss

It's almost impossible to compare these books, they're all so different. The only thing I'm sure about is that The Book of Nothing was dreadful. Eats Shoots and Leaves was fun to read and offered very clear guidance at the same time, although her second book was a bit depressing and negative. C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too made me cry and laugh and is an amazingly powerful, but very depressing book.

2007 - I can't believe I didn't read a Pratchett book this year! That's got to be the first time in probably 15 years that's happened, so I'm looking forward to his next proper Discworld (I don't like the Tiffany Aching books for some reason). There's finally a new Dalziel and Pascoe book on the way and I guess I should be at least vaguely interested in the new Harry Potter. I'm going to try to keep reading 'classics' but maybe throwing in a larger percentage of actually interesting books as well!

Television

Usually at this point there'd be a list of telvision series I've seen, but to be honest I didn't track my viewings very well. Quick summary - Lost sucks, Battlestar is still great, Heroes got off to an amazing start and while I thought Studio 60 was pretty good, I seem to be in the minority.