TV 2013: Disappointments

I'm just not feelin' it this year.  Meaning, I don't feel like doing a big roundup of anything from last year like I usually do.  It would help if I did the whole year-end wrap-up stuff earlier.  Well, maybe next time.  Anyway, here's a quick hit of some disappointing shows from last year so I can keep clearing out the Drafts folder.

THE BIGGIE:
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
I soooooo wanted this show to be good.  I waited.  And waited.  And made excuses.  And ya know?  It's just not good.  It's made enough improvement that unless the quality goes backward, I'll probably keep watching the rest of the season, but I dunno.  I don't look forward to it and it mostly makes me sad.  It should look like and BE a high quality show, but instead it's not much better than a crappy SyFy original.  Don't get me wrong: SyFy has a few quality shows, but the crappy ones are quite crappy.  And a show with this much money behind it should LOOK like it has a big budget.

Downton Abbey
It was mostly fine until that car crash.  SO BAD.  Such a bitchy and sad way to remove a character who decided he was ready for the Big Time in Hollywood.  (Dan...Somebody...)

Community
The 4th season just wasn't...right.  Let's move on.

Cougar Town
Despite a stoopid title, I gave this show a try and it turned into a fun little show about a bunch of weirdos hanging out together.  And I loved it.  And then it moved to TBS, and it was ... okay.  I won't blame that on TBS because I just don't know if that's why I started falling out of love with the show, but it went from being something I watched on the DVR the next evening, right away, to something I got behind on.  And I "flew to Florida" for the newest season, but have yet to watch any and I suspect I won't.  I guess it just couldn't last forever.

The Tomorrow People
I wanted to like this show so much.  Pretty people, interesting concept...CW...I was THERE.  And I quite liked the pilot.  But I dunno, I just...lost interest.  The characters weren't interesting enough.  It didn't feel like it was going anywhere.  And I just stopped watching, and I likely won't go back.

TV 2013: Odds and Ends

SHOWS THAT ENDED
30 Rock
Breaking Bad
Eastbound and Down
Fringe
Spartacus

SHOWS I GAVE UP ON 
Awkward
DaVinci's Demons
Family Tree
The Following
Graceland
The Heart, She Holler
Homeland
Legit
Low Winter Sun
The Mindy Project
Parenthood
Under the Dome
Raising Hope
Ray Donovan
Suburgatory

SHOWS I GAVE UP ON  BUT MAY CATCH UP TO VIA NETFLIX INSTANT
Lost Girl
Switched at Birth

TV 2013: Favorite Shows

I did this up and it came to 11, so I have a top 11 list.  No one's paying me to write this, so I can make my own rules.

American Horror Story: Asylum

The Americans

Archer

Arrow

Boardwalk Empire

Bob's Burgers

Breaking Bad

The Good Wife

Key and Peele

Justified

Mad Men

Favorite New Shows

Almost Human

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Hannibal

Masters of Sex

Orange is the New Black

Orphan Black

Rectify

Witches of East End

Pilot Watch: Chozen / Rick and Morty

Quick thoughts on a few new shows I watched last night.  I'm lumping them together since they're both animated.  Beyond that, there's not too many similarities.

Chozen is on FX, paired with Archer, so I thought it might be up my alley since I LOVE Archer.  It's basically about a gay white rapper (one might use the politically incorrect term "wigga" since he says thinks like "errrybody" even though he's very white) voiced by Bobby Moynihan, who I like a lot.  Unfortunately, the character is just annoying and I dunno, even though it's about a gay rapper and no one seems to really notice, comment or care that he's gay, its humor seems more aimed at the kind of guys who like Eastbound and Down and think Kenny Powers is actually someone to emulate.  I loved Eastbound and Down because it took an unlikable character and made him sympathetic.  And I know I only watched one episode of Chozen and as Linda Holmes from NPR always says, "comedies take time."  So I may go back to this one at some point and see if it gets better.  But for now, there's just too much to watch and there wasn't enough in this one to make me want to watch it again.

Rick and Morty, on the other hand, I LOVED.  I think it's up to three episodes and I only watched the pilot, but I will definitely watch more.  It's an Adult Swim show created by Dan Harmon and it is FUNNY.  It's basically about a kid named Morty whose uncle Rick takes him on weird adventures in different worlds and I dunno how else to explain it.  It's WEIRD and delightful and the voice work is really good.  I no longer have a DVR, but if I did, I'd set a series recording for it.

TV watched in 2013

30 Rock
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Almost Human
Alphas
American Horror Story
The Americans
Archer
Arrow
Awkward
Banshee
Bates Motel
The Blacklist
Boardwalk Empire
Bob's Burgers
Breaking Bad
The Bridge
Broadchurch
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Children's Hospital
The Colbert Report
Community
Cougar Town
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Dallas
DaVinci's Demons
Defiance
Downton Abbey
Dr. Who
Eagleheart
Eastbound and Down
Elementary
Enlightened
The Eric Andre Show
The Fades
The Fall
Family Tree
The Following
Fringe
Game of Thrones
Girls
The Good Wife
Graceland
Grimm
Hannibal
Happy Endings
The Heart, She Holler
Hemlock Grove
Homeland
In the Flesh (mini-series)
Inside Amy Schumer
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Justified
Key and Peele
The League
Legit
Lost Girl
Low Winter Sun
Luther
Mad Men
Maron
Masters of Sex
The Mindy Project
Misfits
New Girl
Nikki and Sara Live
NTSF:SD:SUV::
Orange is the New Black
The Originals
Orphan Black
Parenthood
Parks and Recreation
Peep Show
Raising Hope
Ray Donovan
Rectify
Revenge
RuPaul's Drag Race
Scandal
Shameless
Sherlock
Sons of Anarchy
The Soup
South Park
Spartacus
Strike Back
Suburgatory
Suits
Supernatural
Switched at Birth
Teen Wolf
The Tomorrow People
Top of the Lake (mini-series)
Treme
Under the Dome
The Vampire Diaries
Veep
Wilfred
Witches of East End

TV I caught up with this year

Kroll Show (2 episodes) Will continue in 2014
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (1 episode) Will continue in 2014
Black Mirror (2 episodes) Will continue in 2014
The Peter Serafinowicz Show (2 episodes) Will continue in 2014
The In-Betweeners (series 1, about 4 episodes) Will continue in 2014
Southland (season 2) (disc 1)
Southland (season 1)
The O.C. (season 2) (through disc 3)
The Thick of It (season 4)
The O.C. (season 1)
Breaking Bad re-watch
Teen Wolf (season 1-2)
Elementary (season 1)
Arrested Development re-watch (season 1, about 3 episodes)
Banshee (season 1)
Suits (season 2)
Suits (season 1)

Book Read 2013

Here's a list of all the books I read in 2013.  100 in total, 6 I'd read before.  And 2 I only read about half of, so maybe that should be 99 books?  Meh.

Favorites:
And the Mountains Echoed / Khaled Hosseini
Beautiful Chaos / Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Creatures / Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Darkness / Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Redemption / Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
City of Ashes / Cassandra Clare
City of Bones / Cassandra Clare
City of Fallen Angels / Cassandra Clare
City of Glass / Cassandra Clare
Curtsies and Conspiracies / Gail Carriger
Double Feature / Owen King
Etiquette and Espionage / Gail Carriger
Fangirl / Rainbow Rowell
Let's Pretend This Never Happened / Jenny Lawson
Paddle Your Own Canoe: one man's fundamentals for delicious living / Nick Offerman
The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever / Alan Sepinwall
Save Yourself / Kelly Braffet

Disappointments:
The Demonologist / Andrew Pyper
Reviver / Seth Patrick (Didn't live up to the intriguing premise)
The Woods are Dark / Richard Laymon (In the top 5 of the most unpleasant books I've ever read)

Didn't finish:
The Flamethrowers / Rachel Kushner (read about half)
Tenth of December / George Saunders (about half)

The rest:
99 Percent Perspiration / Jef Mallett
A Fistful of Charms / Kim Harrison
A Game of Thrones / George R.R. Martin (re-read)
Angel and Faith, vol. 2
Astonishing X-Men, vol. 1-4 / Joss Whedon
Buffy TVS, season 9, Vol. 2
Cold Days / Jim Butcher
Crap Kingdom / DC Pierson
Dead Ever After / Charlaine Harris
Dead Witch Walking / Kim Harrison
DeadSet / Richard Kadrey
Dexter's Final Cut / Jeff Lindsay
Die Trying / Lee Child
Divergent / Veronica Roth
Doctor Sleep / Stephen King
Every Which Way But Dead / Kim Harrison
Evil at Heart / Chelsea Cain
The Fault in Our Stars / John Green
The Girl Next Door / Jack Ketchum
The God Engines / John Scalzi
The Good, the Bad, and the Undead / Kim Harrison
Hater / David Moody
Heartsick / Chelsea Cain
House of Mystery, vol. 1 / Matthew Sturges
The Howling / Gary Brandner (re-read)
The Howling 2 / Gary Brandner (re-read)
The Howling 3 / Gary Brandner (re-read)
I Can Barely Take Care of Myself / Jen Kirkman
In the Woods / Tana French
Joyland / Stephen King
Kill You Twice / Chelsea Cain
Kinsey and Me / Sue Grafton
Let Me Go / Chelsea Cain
The Likeness / Tana French
The Madness Underneath / Maureen Johnson
Messy / Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
The Morels / Christopher Hacker
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore / Robin Sloan
The Name of the Star / Maureen Johnson
The Night Season / Chelsea Cain
NOS4A2 / Joe Hill
Night Film / Marisha Pessl
The Ocean at the End of the Land / Neil Gaiman
The Passage / Justin Cronin (re-read)
Planetary vol. 4 / Warren Elllis
Ship of Magic / Robin Hobb
Sweetheart / Chelsea Cain
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made / Stephan Pastis
Transmetropolitan, vol. 3-10 / Warren Ellis
The Twelve / Justin Cronin
Unbreakable / Kami Garcia
The Unwritten, vol. 1-2 / Mike Carey
W is for Wasted / Sue Grafton
The Waking Dark / Robin Wasserman
Walkers / Gary Brandner (re-read)
Walkers / Graham Masterton
Wanted / Mark Millar
Witches of East End / Melissa De La Cruz
Y the Last Man, vol. 1-10 / Brian K Vaughan

Movies 2013

Movies I watched in 2013

I watched 114 movies in 2013.  Holy Crapola.  I only watched 25 last year.  Movies in bold with asterisks are the ones I saw in the theater.  YES.  I only saw 5 movies in the theater.  And one was Admission.  IT WAS HUBBIE'S CHOICE.  (And it was cute.  Forgettable, but cute.  Not worth spending 20 bucks on, but cute.)

5 stars
M

4 1/2 stars
It Happened One Night
Pitch Perfect

4 stars
A Face in the Crowd
Argo
Behind the Candelabra
Dial M For Murder
Django Unchained
Epitaph
Gilda
Higher Ground
The Innkeepers
*Iron Man 3
Magic Mike
Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Road House
The Sessions
Skyfall
Stoker
The Third Man
*Thor: The Dark World
*The Wolverine
*The World's End
You're Next

3 1/2 stars
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 
Castle Freak
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
The Fury
John Hodgman: Ragnarok
Killer Joe
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Men in Black 3
Paranorman
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) 
Pusher
Pusher 2: With Blood on My Hands
Red Riding: 1983
Scanners
Source Code
Tango and Cash
Valhalla Rising
Videodrome
The Woman in Black

3 stars
21 Jump Street
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
*Admission 
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
The Apartment
The Campaign
Child's Play 2
Chronicle
Cold Prey 2
The Dark Knight Rises
Dead and Buried
Demons
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)
Dredd
Empire Records
Final Destination 5
Hard Target
Horrible Bosses
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
Lockout
Magnum Force
Mama
Maniac Cop
The Manitou 
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Moonrise Kingdom
Night of the Demons
Opera
Parnormal Activity 4
Premium Rush
Rabid
Red 2
Red Riding: 1974
Red Riding: 1980
Return of the Living Dead 3
Rob Delaney: Live at the Bowery Ballroom
Safety Not Guaranteed
Seven Psychopaths
Shadow of a Doubt
Singin' in the Rain
Ted
This is the End
We Need to Talk About Kevin
While You Were Sleeping
White House Down
Zoltan ... Hound of Dracula


2 1/2 stars
Beyond the Door
Demons 2
Don't Torture a Duckling
The Gate
The Lady EveLes Miserables
Looper
Maria, Full of Grace
National Treasure
Sharknado
Star Trek Into Darkness
Tommy Boy

2 stars
The Beyond 
Child's Play 3
Curse of Chucky
The Dark Crystal
Frozen(2010)
Killing Them Softly
Puppetmaster
The Raid: Redemption 
Real Steel
Side Effects

1 star
House of 1,000 Corpses

1/2 stars
Sleepaway Camp 2

Pilot Watch: Reign

As has been mentioned here before, I like most CW shows.  I don't care if they're full of insanely unrealistic pretty people, I don't care if they're silly; I just likes them.  And what's wrong with silly pretty people if it's well-written and entertaining?  Nothing, that's what I says.  So why did I wait for five episodes to pile up before I decided to give Reign a try?  Well, it looked stoopid.  Too stoopid for me.  I had also heard not-good things about it.  But, with the pilot episode about to expire from Hulu, I decided to go ahead and give it a go.

And people...it wasn't good.  It made me giggle in places that I don't think were meant to be funny.  It's like...if you've seen good productions of historical dramas, you know what they're supposed to look like.  And this show is about Mary Queen of Scots, and there's a mental image you get when you think about shows about royalty.  Mostly I think of Downton Abbey, full of production values and ACTORS and good writing.  And I know DA isn't about royalty, per se, but it is about posh people wearing posh clothes and getting dressed for dinner and worrying about heirs and marrying for political purposes and not for love.

And Reign?  Is full of pretty people playing dress-up.  None of them look or act like they live in a different time period.  The writing is silly, the acting is silly, and sometimes it's so silly it's giggle-inducing.  For instance, this guy?  The French dude Mary is supposed to marry?

Made me giggle SO HARD.  There's just something so weird about his facial hair and his acting and I dunno, I just giggled at him.  Not sexy AT ALL.

And then there's Hunky Nostradamus*.  I guess at this point in time, Nostradamus was actually around 50, or 70, I dunno, but he was OLD.  He definitely wasn't 20, which is what he looks like on this show.  Which is just, well, silly.  They could have hired someone venerable and made it interesting, but instead we get another generic stud who will be more believable as a romantic possibility for someone later on. 

*I believe this term originated with Dan Feinberg from hitfix.com; at least that's where I first heard it.

If I graded such things, I'd probably give this one a C-.  It wasn't terrible, but it sure wasn't good.  However, I didn't immediately delete the rest of the episodes from my Hulu queue, so it's likely I'll give it a second episode. 

Review: Curse of Chucky

Well, Child's Play 3 can revel in the fact that it is no longer the worst in the Child's Play series.  That honor can now go to Curse of Chucky.  I'm just glad I waited to get the disc from Netflix instead of renting it from Amazon instant over the weekend.  After my Chucky marathon on Saturday, I really wanted to watch Curse, but I knew I had the disc coming, so I decided to wait.  I would have been pissed if I'd wasted $5 on this piece of crapola.

First of all, the movie is only 90 minutes, and yet I kept looking at the time, waiting for it to be over.  Seed of Chucky, which is kind of the weirdest entry in the Chucky oeuvre, at least isn't boring.  It's kinda weird and stooped and the doll kid was named Glen, but Tiffany wanted him to be a girl so she called him Glenda, and then he didn't know what he wanted to be so they called him Glen or Glenda, haha, wink, get it???  Just too much.  On the other hand, it had even more Tilly than in Bride, and that's always a good thing.  Point is, not boring.  Not looking at the clock going, holy baby jeebus, make this end!

Also, the attempt at MORE backstory.  Now, I love some good mythology.  I was stoopid enough to watch Halloween Resurrection even though I knew they'd ruin the great ending to H20, because I wanted to know how he wasn't dead.  I've gone back and filled in all the Fridays I hadn't watched because I wanted to know how he got killed at the end and then got brought back for the next one.  I like that kind of shit.  But you don't need to go overboard.  We already know that Charles Lee Ray was some kind of strangler before he was gunned down in the toy shop before he transferred his soul to the Good Guy doll.  We don't really need any more back story than that.  And when you have flashbacks to poor Brad Dourif looking about 50 years older than he did in the first one?  Just sad. 

The only thing I can say I kinda liked was the post-credits sequence.  It makes no sense, but I dunno, I still kinda dug it.  (And yes.  I will watch another one if they make it.  I love my horror movies.)

Halloween Quickies, pt. 2

Okay, so after Sleepaway Camp 2, I watched:

The Innkeepers:  Talk about a tonal shift.  SL2 was loud, obnoxious and incredibly stoopid.  The Inkeepers was more thoughtful and slow.  UNTIL IT WASN'T.  I was a big fan of Ti West's  earlier movie The House of the Devil because it was really atmospheric and full of tension.  The Innkeepers has the same kind of vibe.  And unlike SL2, it had characters who I was interested in.  I liked them.  The basic plot is that this old hotel, The Yankee Pedlar Inn, is closing and this is the last weekend that it's open.  There are only a few people in residence so there are only two employees working, who are also attempting to document the existence of a ghost.  I really, really liked this movie.  It was funny and it was also genuinely scary.  There were things that a jaded horror movie watcher SHOULD have seen coming, but I didn't and I actually yelled once.  There's a scene towards the end where the tension was so unbearable I almost wanted to turn off the teevee.  Very good flick.

The last movie I watched was:
Epitaph: After watching all five of the Child's Play movies, I wanted something scary.  So I picked this Korean movie, hoping for something creepy like Ju-On or Ringu.  Instead, I got a quite lovely psychological ghost story of sorts.  It took me a while to actually get into the movie.  In fact, I was ready to turn it off after 30 minutes, but for some reason I kept watching.  The plot seems kind of crazy because it's highly complex and you think you're missing something and then realize maybe you weren't.  It's one that I'd like to go back to at some point and see if it makes more sense after having seen it once.  I'd recommend it if you don't mind a slow-paced atmospheric movie.  And when I say quite lovely, I really mean that.  I'm not good at the ol' film jargon, so I'll just say it was pretty to look at and was actually about something.

Anyhoo.  I watched that one on Saturday night, and I was all prepared to make another day of it on Sunday afternoon.  But even though the Child's Play franchise isn't even as half as graphic or bloody as the Friday the 13th movies (and there are only 5; well, plus the new one I haven't seen yet), somehow I felt all horror movie-d out and ended up catching up on some of my teevee shows.  So I guess I have a horror movie limit after all.  I even got really grossed out watching last week's American Horror Story.  Like flinching at blood and stuff.  Totally not like me.

But all in all I had a good weekend of drinking and sitting on my butt on the couch, watching silly movies and annoying my blind kitty.  I mean, by moving around so much on the couch she calls her bed.  Maybe by next October, I'll be writing more regularly and have gotten better at it, and maybe I'll actually plan something out.  One can hope! 

Halloween Quickies, pt. 1

So, my Halloween movie marathon didn't exactly go as planned.   I only watched movies on Saturday and instead of watching a random assortment of movies, I went killer doll crazy and watched all of the Child's Play movies.  In some ways, it's a better franchise than some of the others because they're mostly pretty good.  Pretty good in a silly horror movie way, that is.  I mean, I've seen all of the Nightmare on Elm Streets and Halloweens and Friday the 13ths, but mostly, there are maybe three good ones in the mix and the rest are shit.  I'd say all but Child's Play 3 are pretty darn watchable.  And I haven't seen Curse of Chucky yet, so I don't know how that one will pan out.  Child's Play 3 was the only one where I was looking at the clock, waiting for it to be over. 

Anyhoo, I watched some other things besides Chucky movies.  Here they are:

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: I guess this was a remake, but I'd never seen or heard of the original, so I have nothing to say about that.  This was a pretty decent movie, but I had one major problem with it.  There's a little girl in the movie who, either because of the writing or the performance, seemed to be fairly intelligent.  She's being stalked by little demony fairy things in her new house and at some point discovers they don't like light.  And she does a few smart things in that regard.  BUT, later in the movie, she's taking a bath and they come in and somehow turn off the light.  She gets out of the tub and runs to the door but then just kinda stands there while I'm yelling "turn on the light, stoopid!!!"  And she never turns on the light, despite knowing it will make them scatter.  DUMB.  I mean, if she had, it wouldn't have suddenly turned the movie into a modern masterpiece or anything, but I would have thought much better of it.  As it was, it was all right, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers: Um, yeah.  Sleepaway Camp is a terrible movie.  TERRIBLE.  But I had heard some people kinda liked the sequels, so I thought, why not?  I'll give most anything on Netflix Instant a try.  OMG.  Sleepaway Camp 2 is WORSE than the original.  Just horrible.  From about five minutes in, I just wanted all of those stoopid campers dead.  And you watch a movie like this and you remember that not everyone could afford the services of someone like Tom Savini.  So instead, when Angela cuts out someone's tongue at the beginning, rather than actually seeing any kind of simulation of such a thing, Angela just puts her hand over the girl's mouth, then moves a knife around like she's cutting off her lips, and then it cuts to her throwing a tongue on the ground.  I mean, her mouth wasn't even open.  Just ... inept. 

Stay tuned for part 2!!