Not perfect, but still 100 times better than Sucker Punch.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: In 2016 I made 19 trips to the theater to see films made that same year (well, 20 to be honest — I saw one of them twice). In Part 1 we ranked the bottom nine. And now, the countdown concludes:
My absolute favorite moment in what was not the Year’s Worst Film.
Once again it’s National List Month, that only time of year when all of Hollywood buys “For Your Consideration” ads in newspapers to impress the AMPAS over-70 voting bloc. Meanwhile on the internet, where newspapers can’t touch us except when they’re spreading propaganda or puff pieces that their supporters have pre-approved, we dedicated theater-goers can overlook the stars’ campaigns, hash out our opinions free of influence, and vote with our bullet points. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
I saw twenty-two films in theaters in 2016, but three were Best Picture nominees released in 2015 and therefore disqualified from this list, because I’m an unreasonable stickler about dates. (Ranking those from Best to Least Best: Room, The Big Short, and The Revenant…though throughout the year I mentioned The Big Short in conversations more often than any other 2015 film.) Disqualified from inclusion are four 2016 releases I watched via Netflix, Redbox, or Black Friday Bluray (which are ranked in that entry), because I let convenience and budgetary concerns talk me out of a few extra theater trips.
Of the remaining 19 contenders that I saw in theaters, I saw nine sequels (five of which were super-hero universe expansion packs), one reboot, one would-be big-budget YA series launch, three Based on a True Story (none of which were grade-A), five animated films (two of which were not-great sequels included in said count), one original musical and one original science fiction film. To be honest, 19 may be the fewest films I’ve seen in theaters in any year so far this millennium. Here’s hoping 2017 tempts me out the front door a bit more often, time permitting and quality pending.
Links to past reviews and thoughts are provided for historical reference. And now, on with the lower half of the countdown:
Eight comics a week times 52 weeks, plus a few extras from conventions and Free Comic Book Day…
Comics collecting has been my primary geek interest since age 6, but I have a tough time writing about it with any regularity. My criteria can seem weird and unfair to other fans who don’t share them. I like discussing them if asked, which is rare, but I loathe debating them. It doesn’t help that I skip most crossovers and tend to gravitate toward titles with smaller audiences, which means whenever companies need to save a buck, my favorites are usually the first ones culled. I doubt many comics readers follow MCC anyway, so it’s the perfect place to talk about comics all to myself. Whee.
Anyway: time again for another set of lists with comics in them!
My ten personal favorites from the pile of 38, but not the only good ones in there.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Time again for the annual entry in which I remind myself how much I like reading things besides monthly comics, magazines, and tweets by self-promoters who pretended to care about anything I wrote exactly once each. Despite the lack of MCC entries about my reading matter, I’m always working on at least two books at a time in my ever-diminishing reading time. I refrain from full-on book reviews because nine times out of ten I’m finishing a given work decades after the rest of the world is already done and moved on from it. I don’t always care about site traffic, but when I do, it usually means leaving some extended thoughts and opinions unwritten due to irrelevance.
Presented over this entry and the next is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2016, mostly but not entirely in order of completion. As I whittle down the never-ending stack I’ve been stockpiling for literal decades, my long-term hope before I turn 70 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream.
New for this year: I expanded the list to a full capsule summary apiece, because logophilia. I’ve divided the list into a two-part miniseries to post on back-to-back evenings (like they used to do with the ’66 Batman TV show) in order to ease up on the word count for busier readers.
Once more: onward!
All 38 books on my list in order by size. For an explanation of the conscious lack of e-books in my literary diet, please enjoy this MCC treatise from 2013.
Time again for the annual entry in which I remind myself how much I like reading things besides monthly comics, magazines, and tweets by self-promoters who pretended to care about anything I wrote exactly once each. Despite the lack of MCC entries about my reading matter, I’m always working on at least two books at a time in my ever-diminishing reading time. I refrain from full-on book reviews because nine times out of ten I’m finishing a given work decades after the rest of the world is already done and moved on from it. I don’t always care about site traffic, but when I do, it usually means leaving some extended thoughts and opinions unwritten due to non-timeliness.
Presented over this entry and the next is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2016, mostly but not entirely in order of completion. As I whittle down the never-ending stack I’ve been stockpiling for literal decades, my long-term hope before I turn 70 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream.
New for this year: I expanded the list to a full capsule summary apiece, because logophilia. I’ve divided the list into a two-part miniseries to post on back-to-back evenings (like they used to do with the ’66 Batman TV show) in order to ease up on the word count for busier readers. Onward!
May: a rare selfie with my wife Anne on Monument Circle downtown on the day of the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade.
Hey-ho, reader! Welcome to the fifth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review. This unassuming site was launched on April 28, 2012, as a cathartic experiment in writing whatever came to mind without waiting for other people to start my conversations for me, and so far it’s been a fulfilling use of galleries and essays that might otherwise either languish unwritten in my head or collect endless rejection emails from every professional website ever. Sometime this spring we’ll be reaching our 1,500th entry, reflecting once more on the hundreds of man-hours expended to date on this self-expressive non-profit project, and rationalizing new excuses not to stop, even if by the time I die it’s just me and ad-bots posting harsh emojis at each other down inside the spam filter.
Right this way for our rundown of MCC’s best and worst of 2016!
After 37 years of collecting, 2015 was the year I first bought more than two Archie comics in a row. From the new Archie #1; art by Fiona Staples and Andre Szymanowicz.
Comics collecting has been my primary geek interest since age 6, but I have a tough time writing about it with any regularity. My criteria can seem weird and unfair to other fans who don’t share them. I like discussing them if asked, which is rare, but I loathe debating them. It doesn’t help that I skip most crossovers and tend to gravitate toward titles with smaller audiences, which means whenever companies need to save a buck, my favorites are usually the first ones culled. I doubt many comics readers follow MCC anyway, so it’s the perfect place to talk about comics all to myself. Whee.
Anyway: time again for another list of lists with comics in them!
I don’t get many musicians’ autographs, but when I do, it’s almost always in absentia. Alas.
It’s that time again! The annual entry where I look back at the previous year, marvel that I’m still buying new music at all, reaffirm my disinterest in digital, and boast how I’m one of twelve people nationwide still buying CDs. I don’t buy a lot of them, though. I rarely connect with the Top 40 acts that get all the social media attention. My favorite bands tend to be old and denied promotional push from their labels, assuming they still have a contract. I’m open to hearing new bands, but my styles of choice are narrowing over the years and I’m a lot less enamored nowadays of bratty whippersnappers who overestimate their own wisdom. Fortunately my finicky criteria don’t eliminate all musical acts.
The following list, then, comprises every CD I acquired in 2015 that was also released in 2015. On with the countdown, from least favorite to worthiest:
Ransom Riggs’ Library of Souls, one among a handful of 2015 books I actually read in 2015.
Presented below is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2015, mostly but not entirely in order of completion. As I whittle down the never-ending stack I’ve been stockpiling for literal decades, my long-term hope before I turn 70 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream
Arson investigator Ken Cosgrove searches for clues that will bring shady real estate baron Walter Bishop to justice. We’ve come a long way since the days of barrel-tossing apes.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as a kid, I frequented video arcades regularly. As a parent, my son and I spent a good decade playing games together on his various systems. When he graduated and moved away to college, he took all his systems with him, leaving me with only my old Nintendo that won’t play cartridges unless you keep the Game Genie firmly inserted, and an Atari Plug-‘n’-Play Controller I got for Christmas a few years ago that interested me for about two weeks. On Black Friday 2014, I decided I wanted back in the 21st century gaming mode and picked up a used PS3 for reasons already outlined in the post linked above.
Naturally I started off a generation behind the rest of the civilized world, but I didn’t care. After fifteen months without, holding a controller felt abnormal and rusty for the first few weeks. Once I got used to it again and figured out how to disable the “Digital Clear Motion Plus” feature on my TV, I could shake the dust off my trigger fingers, choose the games I wanted to play, sprint or meander through them at whatever pace I saw fit, and try some different universes beyond Final Fantasy and our other longtime mainstays. The following is a rundown of my first year’s worth of solo PS3 adventures, sorted not by preference but by my mostly lackluster Trophy percentages, best to worst. Y’know, for fun, as games are wont to be. Consider this my personal PS3 report card.
2015’s movie theme: The Year of Trying to Bury Your Father.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Once again it’s National List Month, when all of Hollywood runs down to Hallmark and buys “For Your Consideration” cards to mail out to their fifty thousand closest friends. Meanwhile on the internet, where no one sends us free stuff to buy our love, we dedicated theater-goers are forced to make up our own minds, revisit our opinions, and vote with our bullet points. I saw twenty-six films in theaters in 2015, but five were Best Picture nominees released in 2014 and therefore disqualified from this list, even though two of them amazed me, because I’m an unreasonable stickler about dates…
And now, on with the countdown:
Jai Courtney comin’ up on loot at the thrift shop while waiting for a call back from the producers of Lethal Weapon 5.
Once again it’s National List Month, when all of Hollywood runs down to Hallmark and buys “For Your Consideration” cards to mail out to their fifty thousand closest friends. Meanwhile on the internet, where no one sends us free stuff to buy our love, we dedicated theater-goers are forced to make up our own minds, revisit our opinions, and vote with our bullet points. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
I saw twenty-six films in theaters in 2015, but five were Best Picture nominees released in 2014 and therefore disqualified from this list, even though two of them amazed me, because I’m an unreasonable stickler about dates. Also disqualified are a few 2015 indie releases I watched via the graces of Netflix as well as one recent sci-fi film I caught on Blu-ray last night. Of the remaining 21 contenders, one was a reboot, ten were sequels or continuations of long-running series, and one was arguably both depending on how you feel about time travel consequences. Call it a “bootquel”, I guess.
Happy New Year, internet! Here’s hoping everyone’s 2016 is a vast improvement over the unbelievably tragicomic 2015, just like the genetically superior Star Wars: The Force Awakens helped everyone put Revenge of the Sith behind them for good.
As in years past, those all-knowing stats overseers at WordPress.com have compiled an automated 2015 Annual Report for each and every blogger on their roster, complete with vaguely art-deco New Year’s fireworks that you can use for Twitter Profile wallpaper or whatever.
In addition to revealing the 148 countries that visited us last year, as well as the identities of MCC’s five greatest commenters of the year who deserve cash awards, there’s also this sample statistic that you can use for comparing where we stand against millions of other, actually popular sites:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 49,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report! It’s short and they made pictures an’ stuff.
But wait! There’s more!
Right this way for a rundown of MCC’s memorable 2015 moments that you may have missed!
The most intimidating command issued to me all year: General Leia Organa Solo yelling, “COME HERE, PHOTOGRAPHER.” What happened next was one of my most memorable moments of 2015.
Hey-hey, folks! Welcome to the fourth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review! This modest site was launched on April 28, 2012, as a cathartic experiment in writing whatever came to mind without waiting for other people to start my conversations for me, and so far it’s successfully kept me busy enough to avoid 98% of all toxic social media hubs. Sometime this winter we’ll reach our 1,200th entry, look back on these hundreds of thousands of words generated to date, and thank the Lord my fingers and brain haven’t gone numb yet.
Right this way for our rundown of MCC’s best and worst of 2015!
…or How Netflix Won My 2015.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I came up with a recurring feature that was meant to be me jotting down capsule-sized notes about Stuff I Recently Watched on our own TV. And then I spent the last several months accumulating a backlog while finding plenty of other topics to explore instead. With 2016 a handful of hours away, I’m taking this moment to play superficial catch-up and clear the slate in case I decide to call do-over on this next year.
Many of these were made possible by the power of Netflix, for which we finally signed up in 2015 and learned to super-like. Others came from assorted sources, but many sort neatly into categories. These, then, are the films I watched at home within the past 365 days that weren’t in the last five Scorecard summaries. I’ve added notes only to those titles that spark the sharpest, most immediate memories and reactions.
Right this way for another list in the imitable MCC fashion!
The Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways was far from my favorite album, but its eight-city metropolitan hodgepodge was definitely my favorite album cover.
(For more about that segment, I refer you to my thoughts on U2’s free Songs of Innocence, as previously discussed.)
The following list, then, comprises every CD I acquired in 2014 that was also released in 2014. Back-catalog materials are forbidden from inclusion, though for what it’s worth Mike Doughty’s 2011 album Yes and Also Yes deserved to be bought much sooner.
“…so then I said to the bull, ‘Take the long way, huh? Thank you, Cyrus.’ So I turned my Mercury around and just kept going and going and…next thing you know, here I am.”
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Once again January is National List Month, that left-brained time of year when everyone’s last twelve months of existence must be removed from their mental filing cabinets, reexamined, and refiled in specific pecking order from Greatest to Most Grating. The final tabulations reveal I saw 19 films in theaters in 2014 and four via On Demand while they were still in limited release…
And now, on with the countdown:
Right this way for the Year’s Best Films according to some guy!
Harry was pretty sure he’d gone terribly wrong somewhere on his Defense Against the Dark Arts homework.
Once again January is National List Month, that left-brained time of year when everyone’s last twelve months of existence must be removed from their mental filing cabinets, reexamined, and refiled in specific pecking order from Greatest to Most Grating. Here on Midlife Crisis Crossover, we enjoy our annual tradition of spending at least two posts looking back at our year in movies, trying to remember what we thought about them at the time and ultimately deciding which films can beat up which other films. When I reach that realization that my opinions sometimes change over time upon further reflection or second viewings, that’s when the process turns messy and I end up hating my own list. But internet bylaws insist it must be done. And I like lists more than I like internet bylaws.
The final tabulations reveal I saw 19 films in theaters in 2014 (tying with 2007 and 2010 as worst moviegoing years ever) and four via On Demand while they were still in limited release. This count doesn’t include seven 2013 films I attended in 2014 for Oscar-chasing purposes, or any films I watched on home video long after their theatrical run. As one sad example, this harsh rule of mine disqualifies Boyhood from the list since I just watched it via Redbox rental two nights ago. If I’d gotten out of the house for a three-hour theater visit just one more time last summer, it would’ve made my Top 3. Consider this paragraph my version of a Very Honorable Mention.
Links to past reviews and thoughts are provided for historical reference. On with the reverse countdown, then:
Ransom Riggs’ Hollow City, one of a precious few 2014 books I actually read in 2014.
Presented below is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2014, in order of completion. Three were part of a 3-in-1 Sci-Fi Book Club edition and made sense to read back-to-back, but consequently took up more reading weeks than I expected. A few other items were pure catch-up of books that had been sitting on the unread shelf for far too long and were technically irrelevant by the time I got around to them. As I whittle down the never-ending stack that’s bothered me for decades, my long-term hope before I turn 60 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream
Happy New Year, internet! Here’s hoping 2015 personally comes to your house, pushes 2014 down a staircase, pushes a piano down the stairs after it, blames it on 2013, and works double overtime to be a vastly better year for you. I won’t tell on 2015 if you won’t.
As in years past, those all-knowing stats overseers at WordPress.com have compiled an automated 2014 Annual Report for each and every blogger on their roster, complete with New Year’s fireworks that you can pretend is a handy screensaver by leaving your computer on and your browser open 24/7.
Right this way for the link to the report, and a rundown of unique MCC entries you may have missed!
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 