2022 Media Review

2022 is come and gone now, and I wanted to take some time as I usually do to go over the best (and worst) of what I read and watched. All told, I made my goal of 52 books for the year. I watched 27 television shows in their entirety, and I watched 103 movies. I gave books an average rating of 7.74 and movies and television an average of 7.59, indicating I generally stop reading things I don’t like more than I stop watching stuff I don’t like. Those averages are honestly a bit on the high side, though at the same time, I generally only watch and read things that look like they’ll appeal to me, so maybe that makes a bit more sense.

With that stated, here are the highlights:

Books

I gave 6 books a perfect 10/10:

• Eye of the World: I know The Wheel of Time isn’t for everyone, but it is very much for me. I’ve reread this book more times than I can remember, and I still love it. I still remember seeing it for the first time on the library shelf, and how hooked I was as I started reading it. I waited for this series to be finished for years and years. So happy it ended well.
• The Gathering Storm: Brandon’s first Wheel of Time book was such a breath of fresh air. He managed to do what seemed impossible: seamlessly edge his way into a long standing series successfully. And for a series that had seemed for a long time to be wandering somewhat, he gave a real sense that this was going to have an end, and it was going to be a good one.
• Memory of Light: The final book of Wheel of Time. Absolutely fantastic. Big pay offs left and right for fans of the series, and a conclusion that felt right.
• The Princess Bride: Another reread, this time with Daniela. The book is fantastic. Right up my alley.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany: My second time through this one as well, meaning up until October, I hadn’t had a single new 10/10. Still, this is a lovely book. So well written, with such vivid characters. My friend Sue pointed me toward it back in college, and it still is wonderful.
• Lonesome Dove: The last book I read last year was a real doozy. Talk about a tour de force. I don’t care if you don’t like westerns, if you like literature, I have a hard time thinking you wouldn’t like this book. Great plot. Great characters. Great prose. Well worth your time.

I only gave one book a 9.5/10. Lord of Chaos, another Wheel of Time book. Go figure.

I gave 6 books a 9/10

• Fires of Heaven: Wheel of Time strikes again. It was a fun way to start the year off, let’s just say.
• Harriet the Spy: Finally got around to reading this one, and it was such a pleasant surprise. I knew nothing about it going in. I just assumed it would be about a young girl who’s a spy. I was wrong. 🙂
• Fifteen Lives of Henry August: This was a great surprise. A fantastic premise, and well-executed.
• The Godfather: It’s clear why it had such an influence on movies. Not a complicated read, but very visceral.
• Gwendy’s Button Box: Really more of a novella, but I still counted it. I’m always a sucker for Stephen King.
• Slade House: A very fun, creepy book. This was a fast read for me. I read it in a day.

What were the worst books I read? I usually hold back from naming them, but I’ll actually go public with one this time. Crossroads of Twilight got a 4/10 from me, despite being a Wheel of Time book. It seemed like an experiment to me: could Robert Jordan write a whole book that only tracks a few days in the lives of his characters? Yes, he could. No, it wasn’t interesting. It felt like a one-off TV episode. Blarg. Other than that, I gave two books a 5/10. One was the third book of a series that started off great, by an author I really enjoy, but it just couldn’t sustain itself. The other was a classic science fiction novel that I had a very hard time connecting with.

TV Seasons

Only two shows got a perfect score from me this year. Both fantastic.

• The U.S. and the Holocaust: There are few TV shows that I would recommend to watch just to become a better person. This is one.
• The English: Fantastic. Beautiful and brutal to watch. So well acted. I loved the whole thing.

I gave no seasons a 9.5/10.

I gave 7 seasons a 9/10:

• Gilded Age 1: Historical drama in time period that’s often overlooked, and just so happened to be in a time period close to one I’ve researched for writing. Very well done. American Downton Abbey, though more adult.
• Peacemaker 1: Over the top ridiculous. I watched it while I had COVID, and it made COVID that much more bearable. Definitely not for everyone, but I thought it was very funny. The opening sequence each episode was perfect.
• Severance 1: Great premise, lots of great mysteries, and a fair number of them explained in the first season instead of being kicked off for later seasons. I’m looking forward to the next season.
• Stranger Things 4: Did just what I wanted it to. I love this show.
• House of the Dragon 1: Does a great job extending the Game of Thrones universe while dialing way down on the fantasy elements.
• The Devil’s Hour 1: Intricately plotted, with a premise that only makes more sense the more you find out about it. Very worthwhile.
• Wednesday 1: I just blogged about this.

Movies

Five movies got a perfect score. Only one of them was a first time watch.

• Return of the King: Still a fantastic movie. The end.
• Groundhog Day: Yes, this will appear on my list every year. Kind of appropriate, and self-explanatory.
• Shawshank Redemption: Again, I don’t feel like this needs an explanation.
• Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: I watched it twice within a week. The second time wasn’t as amazing as the first, but I was still wowed by how they pulled off an entire plot around the ability to see two minutes into the future.
• Back to the Future: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is a perfect movie. Perfect cast. Perfect plot. Perfect soundtrack. Chef’s kiss.

I gave 2 movies a 9.5/10:

• Encanto: Delightful, and the soundtrack only got better with time.
• West Side Story: Spielberg’s new version was amazing. Different than the original, but in a very good way. It felt less like a musical, and more like a movie, if that makes sense.

I gave 17 movies a 9/10:

• The Two Towers: No explanation needed.
• The Party: This Peter Sellers movie is hilarious, but I have a hard time recommending it to people, because he does brownface the whole time, playing the role of an Indian for comedic effect. I would argue that he uses it to show a person who feels completely out of place, but it could have been done without the ethnicity change, and that’s disappointing.
• Free Guy: This had no right being as good as it was. It felt like it should have been a throw away video game movie, but it ended up being smart and tons of fun.
• Turning Red: A fun movie that got more people upset than I would expect, showing people will get upset about lots of things that are surprising these days. (I’m probably included in that statement, though this movie did not upset me.)
• Moneyball: Fun look at baseball, statistics, and human nature.
• The Breakfast Club: Not perfect, but still a great slice of life of high school, and still relevant today, even if there are pieces of it that haven’t aged well.
• Joe vs. the Volcano: My personal favorite Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan pairing.
• RRR: Jaw dropping action scenes. Musical numbers. Crazy plot. This one was a real experience.
• Fitzwilly: Dick Van Dyke as a thieving butler trying to make enough money to fund his boss’s charitable work? How can you not watch this?
• A Beautiful Mind: Yup. Still great.
• The Wedding Singer: It’s not highbrow cinema, but it’s still fun.
• The Map of Tiny Perfect Things: Time loop romantic-comedy? How can it go wrong with me?
• Everything Everywhere All at Once: I think this one suffered from being too hyped up before I watched it. I still really enjoyed it, but I wasn’t left amazed. But definitely should be watched.
• Shop Around the Corner: Classic.
• Dunkirk: I liked it more the second time than I did the first, when the timey-wimey didn’t completely make sense to me.
• The Hudsucker Proxy: I love the Coen Bros. This is an oft-forgotten gem.
• Glass Onion: People keep comparing it to Knives Out, saying it’s worse. I really enjoyed it, and I liked it even more once I realized that the entire answer to the mystery really had been on screen the whole time. No sneaky cuts to not show things. If you’d been paying attention all along, there was no mystery at all.

How about the worst things I watched?

• On Stranger Tides got a 5/10. It was a Pirate’s movie too far.
• Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows also got a 5/10. A Sherlock movie too far.
• Wayne’s World got a 5/10. Not nearly as good as I remembered
• Christmas Story Christmas was another 5/10. Should have been better. Wasn’t.
• The King’s Man got a 4/10. Unnecessary and stupid prequel to an action series, though it had a few good sequences.
• Mortal Kombat (the new one) was another 4/10. Just plain stupid, even if it had some good effects.
• Obi Wan Kenobi 1 got a 4/10. It was the chosen one. It was said that it would destroy the doubters, not encourage them. Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness. Lies. All lies.
• Alone 8 was a 4/10. I’ve never seen the struggle to survive seem so boring.
• The Eagle got a 3/10. Historical action movie about Roman soldiers. Avoid.
• The live action Pinocchio got a 3/10. Waste of time.
• Under the Banner of Heaven got a 1/10. Awful awful awful, and worse because they kept trying to insist it was an accurate portrayal of what happened.

All told, it was a good year. I like looking back and seeing the highlights like this. Anything stand out to you (good or bad) from what you read or watched last year?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Movie Marathon: Mission Impossible

It took me a while to figure out which movie series we should binge this holiday season. We’d done Lord of the Rings (and the Hobbit) twice, and Star Wars once, and those had all gone swimmingly. Harry Potter was a fiasco, mainly because the movies just get worse and worse after about the fourth. My family has never really gotten into Star Trek, so that seemed a bit of a stretch. What else was there?

It had been a while since I’d seen any of the Mission Impossible movies, so I thought that might be a good option. We dove in, and it’s gone well for the most part. The movies do a great job with action pieces, and they’re certainly thrilling. However, one thing that we’ve noticed as we’ve been working our way through them is that they’re pretty much awful when it comes to story. It’s not that the plots themselves are bad. They make sense for the most part (or for as much as they need to). But we’ve now watched five of the six movies in the past two weeks, and I can’t for the life of me remember what happens in which movie.

Tom Cruise gets in trouble. He needs a team to get out of it. There are gadgets and double crosses. Face swaps aplenty. He’s got a girlfriend, then a wife, then no wife, then just kidding actually a wife, then no wife that we mention. So that turns into the James Bond revolving door of women, more or less. Which naturally leads to the realization that the MI movies are just James Bond with a team.

Is that a problem?

Not really, though it’s not the best for a movie marathon. One of the great things about the Lord of the Rings movies is that they build on each other, so that by the time you’re done with all of them, you really feel like you’ve been on a journey. In that way, they’re almost more like longform television than they are like movies. You would think Harry Potter would do the same thing, but those movies are just too episodic to really work (even if they’d been done better). If they’re a TV show, they’re a flavor of the week show, more like the Mission Impossible movies. (Which makes sense, since those started as flavor of the week TV shows.)

Let’s just say that I’m not adding “Fast and the Furious” to my list of potential future marathons.

All told, it’s been better than HP, but nowhere near LOTR. Next year I’m going to have to come up with something different. I’ve been thinking about ditching movies for a bit and picking a television show.

Any suggestions out there for future marathons?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this DON’T GO TO SLEEP Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A (Brief) Update on the Memory Thief Movie

Longtime readers might recall that more than five(!) years ago, there was a big announcement about The Memory Thief getting made into a movie and getting a sequel. And then four years ago, I announced who I’d found out the screenwriters were. Since then, you’ve heard . . . nothing. And today, that’s not going to change that much, but there is *something* to tell you, and so I thought I’d let you in.

The book was originally optioned by 21 Laps and Fox, back in the days before Fox was bought by Disney. Before that sale went through, things were actually looking promising. They’d finished a screenplay that people liked, and they had the attention of a director who wanted to do it. Then the big mouse stepped in and bought the fox, and even then, things looked okay. Disney was letting Fox movies do their thing.

Until X-Men Apocalypse. This was a Fox-produced movie that did so poorly at the box office that Disney pressed the big “stop” button on all Fox movie projects, essentially canceling them all unless exceptions were made. The good news? The Memory Thief adaptation even made it past that.

While all of that was going on, my publisher for The Memory Thief was bought out by a new company that wasn’t all that keen on doing books. They’re more focused on movies. It’s hard to publish a sequel without a publisher, and so the sequel has been thrown into limbo. I have the rights back for both books, but no publisher at the moment. If a movie were ever made, I’m sure that would help the books come back to life.

And as for the movie? Well, it’s still . . . somewhere. At least, the option has been renewed multiple times I know this, because I’ve cashed the check and spent the money. So somebody somewhere still likes the project enough to be shelling out a bit of cash to keeping it alive. The latest check just came through, so it is definitely still not dead. Where is it in the greater scheme of things? All I know is they’re working on the screenplay. I don’t know if they’re revising it, or tweaking it, or scrapping it and starting over.

And you now know everything I know about the movie. Maybe five years from now, I’ll be able to give another update.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Revisiting The Matrix

The trailer for the fourth Matrix movie dropped yesterday, and it’s pretty impressive. (Love the use of White Rabbit, even though it’s the most obvious soundtrack choice for a Matrix movie ever.) Coincidentally, I just rewatched the original for the first time in well over a decade. There was much of it I still loved: the science fiction what-if elements, the twists and turns of the plot, and the climax where Neo faces Agent Smith is still incredible.

One of the most famous parts of the movie, however, now goes over like a brick with me.

When I first watched the movie, the lobby scene seemed fantastic. Excellent fight choreography, great special effects, and cool ninja moves? What wasn’t to like? In so many ways, that scene moved action scenes forward, influencing how we see fights ever since. However, in the 22 years since the movie came out, mass shootings have gotten more and more common place, and if there’s one thing that lobby scene does very very poorly, it’s establishing why all that violence was necessary in the first place.

Neo and Trinity need to break Morpheus free from the clutches of the Agents, and it’s true that in the Matrix, the Agents can take control of literally anyone. However, when the duo show up in the building lobby, they’re greeted not by agents, but by regular rent-a-cops. People who really aren’t that intimidating at all, despite the security measures in the lobby. And Neo and Trinity both just open up fire on all of them, killing them in cold blood.

Those cops are then supported by what seems to be an elite level of security. Tons of guns and body armor for Neo to fight against. But in the confines of the movie, we know these are just regular people who are convinced they’re doing the right thing by Agents. They aren’t villains. Those deaths all feel much more disturbing to me now than they did before.

Some of that is no doubt because I’ve changed. But some of it is also likely because when the movie came out in 1999 (months before Columbine), random shootings just didn’t seem like that big of a concern. That lobby scene was designed to be cool, not realistic. But when mass shootings are a regular occurrence, it’s impossible for any informed audience not to see similarities in the real.

Yes, we’ve had plenty of other violent movies. The John Wick series (another Keanu Reeves vehicle) is an obvious comparison. But I can’t think of any that don’t at least try to establish why the “bad guys” deserve what’s coming to them. And if there are innocents who are affected, then they’re side casualties. In the lobby scene, the heroes show up to shoot the bystanders, and there isn’t even a hint of concern of what they’re doing to those people.

It’ll be interesting to see how the fourth movie handles it. I’ve seen the second and third movies just once each, and I’ll probably watch them again, even though I remember not particularly loving them. I still like the original movie a lot. It’s influential both in action and science fiction genres, and I love the attention to detail that was given to each individual scene. The special effects have also stood up remarkably well. Crazy to think that a movie that’s still fairly recent (in my head), turns out to be more than twenty years old.

But even movies that are products of their time can’t help but be evaluated from a modern point of view, and that once scene is far less appealing now than it once was.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking this PERFECT PLACE TO DIE Amazon link. It will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

A Tribute to Richard Donner

Richard Donner passed away yesterday. I realize there are many who won’t recognize his name, but he did a whole lot for fantasy in film, and I wanted to take a minute to appreciate that. When the Christopher Reeve Superman came out in 1978, it was the first time a studio had really thrown money at a superhero film. As we all know (or should know, at any rate), simply throwing money at film isn’t a formula for guaranteed success. (Waterworld, anyone?) It would have been very easy to have this first superhero effort go seriously wrong.

Warner Bros. picked Richard Donner to helm the film. What had he done before that? He’d directed The Omen, a small budget ($3 million) horror movie that grossed $60 million. He’d also directed a whole slew of television episodes, ranging from Perry Mason to Get Smart to The Twilight Zone. Superman had a budget of $55 million, so much bigger expectations. Donner took the movie and made it a huge success. ($300 million. That might not seem too impressive, until you realize that would be $1.2 billion today.)

In many ways, Donner set the stage for the future superhero movies to come. The mixture of comedy and action. Special effects but retaining a focus on character as well. (Though of course, the biggest contribution was proving a superhero movie could make a whole lot of money. That’s the biggest thing a movie can do to ensure other movies like it will be made.) I loved that movie, and spent many hours pretending I was Superman, even though I’d never cracked open a page of the comics.

If Superman were the only movie Donner had done, he would have still been very influential on the genre. But he went on to direct a slew of great films: Ladyhawke (straight up fantasy with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer), The Goonies(!), Lethal Weapon, Scrooged (one of the cooler (and more bizarre) Christmas Carol adaptations, with Bill Murray), and Maverick (comic Western with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster).

The Goonies is flat out incredible, and I’d argue it played a role in the development of YA as a genre. Entirely kid-centric, with no parents barging in to solve the problems. Fast paced and snappy, but still recognizing the kids as real people with real wants and concerns. I’m not saying the whole genre stems from the movie (that’s clearly wrong), but rather that its acceptance and growth were helped along by the success of The Goonies. At least for yours truly, that movie defined in many ways what I want to get out of a YA adventure. (Plus, the movie gave us Sean Astin . . .)

These are all movies I grew up with, and which I’ve watched multiple times. To have them all come from the same director speaks to his ability to really make films that resonated with me. Were all his movies great? Well, no. Let’s not talk about The Toy or Timeline. But still, he had a great track record of success. If you haven’t seen some of these, I encourage you go and check them out. I just might have to fire up The Goonies tonight in his honor.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.