I guess it’s time for the yearly roundup, in which we all take a quick look back on the ups and downs of the year, and the most enjoyable material that I read or watched.
It hasn’t been a great year, what with Covid still plaguing our shores, though the truly frightening spectacle was that of fellow countrymen and women deciding that temporary safety measures put in place to protect everyone was too great a price to pay for their personal convenience. It’s truly frightening to see just how deranged some people can get and how easy it is for them to justify violence; imagining themselves as heroic freedom-fighters instead of just belligerent assholes.
Some cold comfort can be derived from the fact that many of them found out the hard way that the virus is in fact, very real, and suffered the worst effects of it without the vaccination – but I know plenty of people who have lost friends and are now estranged from family members because of the lies that have been spread.
Things are starting to calm down in public, but that underbelly of arrogant anti-intellectualism remains.
We also lost some great talent this year: Angela Lansbury, who I will remember most fondly for her role in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a movie I was completely obsessed with as a child. Forget Mary Poppins, Eglantine Price was the only stern but supernatural lady I needed in my life. She also voiced Mrs Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, one of the absolute pillars of my childhood, and I have some very fuzzy memories of playing in front of the television at my Nana’s place while Murder She Wrote was on (now that’s a show I have to binge-watch one of these days).
Nichelle Nichols passed after a difficult illness, but she was extremely cognizant of the huge impact she’d made by playing Uhura in the original Star Trek, and news of Sidney Poitier’s death made me realize I’ve never seen a single one of his films – hopefully I’ll get to rectify that in the new year.
I was too young for Cheers, but Kirstie Alley was a familiar presence in the Look Who’s Talking films, as was Olivia Newton John in Grease (which I was probably also too young for, but watched it religiously anyway). Robbie Coltrane’s lasting legacy to a generation of children will no doubt be as Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, while Kevin Conray will always be the definitive Batman/Bruce Wayne to me – that voice was imbued with so much clarity, strength and underlying kindness.
And of course, Christine McVie, who performed my favourite love song of all time.
It always feels a bit strange writing brief obituaries for celebrities – I’ve never met any of them, and their families are the ones that are going through the actual grieving process, but when someone’s talent touches your life, it’s worth saying something, however briefly.
In the wider world of media and entertainment, it was all a bit of a mess. Actors abruptly quit their projects, Netflix committed to cancelling all sorts of strong and interesting projects in favour of more shows that will in turn get cancelled before completion, and God only knows what’s going on with HBO and the DCU. Westworld is over despite having only one more season to complete its story, as is The Nevers, which never even got a chance to finish its first season. Batgirl got pulled despite being nearly finished, Patty Jenkins has left Wonder Woman III (which will probably never get made at this point) and after the big song-and-dance about Black Adam changing the face of the franchise and bringing back Henry Cavill as Superman, all that’s been canned as well.
It's so wearying. This obsession with “expanded universes” means that everything has to be interconnected with each other, crammed with Easter eggs and cameos and fanservice, and essentially operate as movie-length trailers to other upcoming projects. But when that’s the case, you don’t get a complete story – and if one thing fails, then everything does. I’m so tired of getting invested in something only to see it go off the rails or get cancelled before it can end properly.
Dialing back to my own blog, 2022 marks the least number of posts I’ve made in a year since starting it in 2014, which is one of the drawbacks to fulltime work. Looking over my stats, I’m surprised to realize I didn’t write any original meta this year, focusing instead on single-episode reviews (largely for Xena Warrior Princess and Legend of the Seeker) plus anything else I thought deserved an in-depth look.
I managed a long (almost exhaustive) review of the Fear Street trilogy, which still blows me away by how good it was, especially compared other franchises’ attempts to do similarly update properties, combine a nostalgia kick with contemporary issues, or even just tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. I replayed The Colonel’s Bequest and its sequel The Dagger of Amon Ra for the first time in ages, and wrote out a summary/review of The Adventures of Maid Marian, my favourite bad film of the year. I also played and wrote about the first King’s Quest game, and definitely plan to continue with the series in 2023.
Finally, I spent a Saturday watching pilot episodes, my rundown of which ended up being one of my most popular posts for the year. Now it’s just a matter of watching everything else on the list – though I’ll probably hold off on Wednesday until the Halloween season. Next up is The Sandman and Interview with the Vampire – and I’ll also finish my episodic reviews for the final season of His Dark Materials, which has already come out.
So much to do, but here are my personal favourites of 2022...
Estranged and The Changeling King by Ethan M. Aldridge
I read plenty of graphic novels this year, but the standout was this two-part story by writer/artist Ethan Alridge, about a changeling child whose faerie home is overthrown by an evil sorceress and seeks out help from the boy who took his place in the mortal world.
Naturally there’s tension between the two – they’ve both essentially stolen the other one’s life – but you won’t be surprised to hear they’re soon working together to win back the kingdom. As good as the writing is, the real drawcard are the incredible illustrations: we’ve got witches with bird hands, elaborate carriages drawn by warthogs, glimmering crystal caves, a manservant with a candle for a head... you could pore over these images for hours.
The Dawn of Yangchen by F.C. Yee
We’re gearing up for a new influx of stories in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, but it was nice to learn more about one of Aang’s predecessors in the Avatar line, especially a former airbender who was only ever briefly glimpsed in the original show.
Yee was open about the fact it was difficult to think of obstacles for Yangchen to overcome given her overwhelming power and pacifist nature, and deserves credit for shaping a story around that difficulty, instead of just throwing in a lazy “kryptonite” MacGuffin to level the playing field. As such, Yangchen’s main foe in this book are corrupt merchants exploiting their workers, making this an espionage story that requires the Avatar to handle a network of spies and information gathering.
There’s some great worldbuilding and character work done here, so my appetite is whetted for the next Yangchen novel.
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
This year marked the third time I’ve read this book in my lifetime, and it’s certainly not to be the last as it’s one of my absolute favourites. A perfect puzzle-box or a ticking time-piece of a book, in which every plot-point, every idiosyncrasy, every “huh, that’s weird” moment is eventually woven into a beautiful whole that yanks the rug out from under you in the best possible way. Set in “an ancient China that never was,” it’s a fairy tale and a satire and a love story all at once (though not the kind you may think). I love it, and I’m looking forward to reading it a dozen more times.
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
What could aptly be called the Bible of Middle Earth is often considered extremely difficult to read, though I don’t really feel that’s the case? I flew through the pages, fascinated by the sheer scope of imagination and love that is poured into this world: the history, the geography, the poetry, the mystery, the religious awe...
But it was this quote in a review for The Rings of Power that really captured the meaning of the story for me, and how it elevates The Lord of the Rings:
If you understand the foundation on which [LOTR] rests, which is one of tragedy, hubris, and failure, the heroics of the more successful novel are given an entirely different flavour. These are people snatching the last possible victory out of the jaws of millennia of defeat.
Forgive this comparison, but The Silmarillion does for The Lord of the Rings what Andor and Rogue One does for A New Hope: demonstrates just how much was sacrificed to achieve victory, and how close they all came to utter annihilation. The highest commendation I can give it is that after reading a thousand or so pages that cover hundreds of thousands of years, I was still left wanting more.
Larklight, Stormcross and Mothlight by Philip Reeve
Philip Reeve is unquestionably one of my favourite authors, and I was happy to finally get to the Larklight trilogy this year. It’s more comedic and skewed towards a young audience than Mortal Engines, his most famous work, but it’s matched perfectly with the illustrations of David Wyatt.
To use the language of the pulp adventure comics of yesteryear, this trilogy is a rip-roaring romp through space (and occasionally time) that involves plucky heroines, Victorian space-stations, sentient plantlife and mind-controlling hats, all wrapped up in a sly critique of the British Empire. It has funny nods to other sci-fi stories, gorgeous illustrations that occasionally subvert the narrative voice, and footnotes that elaborate on some of the more obscure references in the text.
Reeves’s imagination knows no bounds, and he writes with prose that can make the most outlandish concept seem extraordinarily tangible. I don’t know how he does it, but I’ve got more of his books coming up fast in my TBR pile.
The Secret Circle trilogy by L.J. Smith
I love me a good old-fashioned eighties pulp horror YA schlock-fest, and The Secret Circle is certainly that. L.J. Smith was one of the first writers of what we might called supernatural romance for teens, and this checks all the boxes you’d expect from the genre: supernatural drama, love triangles with two hot boys, a stunningly gorgeous Alpha Bitch, questionable fashion choices, a heroine who slowly grows into her power, and an underlying Friendship is Magic theme. I love this nonsense. I just love it.
The Others (2001)
It was great revisiting The Others after such a long hiatus, and the film still holds all its power. A single mother living with her two photosensitive children in an isolated manor on Jersey island is already a premise fraught with possibilities, but when Grace gradually becomes convinced that something else is in the house with them, the tension starts ratcheting up to almost an unbearable breaking point.
A tiny cast of only six major characters, impeccable set design and cinematography, one of Nicole Kidman’s best performances, and a third act twist that means you can watch it over and over again, finding some new insight or detail every time, makes this one of my absolute favourites.
Spirited Away (2001)
To watch this movie is to be hypnotized: any moment can grab your attention and make you drop everything to see what happens next. I’m not sure if I can say it’s Miyazaki’s most beloved film (though it’s up there) or his most iconic (though again, it’s up there) but it’s definitely the one that finally caught the attention of Western audiences – and the rest is history.
It was the first of his films that I ever saw, and was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Heck, it’s still like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s an Alice in Wonderland-esque adventure, in which a young girl is thrown into a world where the rules are inscrutable and the people are baffling, where she’s forced to find her feet and work her way from the ground up to regain some semblance of control.
And the animation – it’s just extraordinary. Somehow the twining coils of a beautiful white-and-turquoise dragon is no more or less fascinating than a girl picking her way down a long staircase. I don’t know how Miyazaki does it, but what a strange, enticing gift he gave us.
It: Chapter One and Two (2017 – 2019)
Six kids versus an evil clown – that’s a winning hook right there. Director Andrés Muschietti and his collaborators came up with some downright ingenious innovations in adapting what might be Stephen King’s most famous novel: dividing the story into two movies so equal attention could be given to the characters as both children and then adults, updating it so the first film takes place in the eighties instead of the fifties, and tweaking some of Pennywise’s transformations for maximum scares (the woman in the painting - *shudder*).
Packing it full of fantastic actors who vibe incredibly well with their older/younger counterparts. Adding a few more twists and tragedies. Cutting out some of the extraneous padding (we didn’t really need Beverley’s violent husband running around Derry). Taking its time with the introduction of the setting, the characters and their dynamic, so the audience feels truly immersed in this time and place.
It is a scary movie that isn’t too cruel, where the bonds of friendship really do feel like a bolster against the horrors of the world, one that’s just as much about first love and grief and growing up as it is fighting an evil extra-terrestrial clown. It was a two-part movie that felt like an Event, which is a very rare thing these days.
The Adventures of Maid Marian (2022)
Hahaha, damn right this is on the list. There was no other movie I was looking more forward to this year than The Adventures of Maid Marian, a flic with a budget of six dollars starring one of my all-time favourite heroines. It is complete nonsense, with actors who feel like they’ve been pulled off the side of the road, a script written in about a day, and more lazy anachronisms than you can shake a stick at. I loved every second of it.
Prey (2022)
If you had asked me before this year what the Predator franchise involved, I would have said Arnold Schwarzenegger and an alien – that’s it. But I kept hearing good things about this latest instalment in the ongoing series, and the buzz turned out to be correct. Young Comanche wannabe-hunter Naru notices things that others don’t, which means she’s on the frontlines of a battle when an extra-terrestrial hunter arrives on earth and begins his hunt.
Prey proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that a pared-down story, in which the stakes are nothing more than a fight for survival against the odds, can be just as exciting, suspenseful, engrossing and sweat-inducing – if not more so – than any number of large-scale fights for the future of the galaxy (in fact, the film’s best scene doesn’t even feature the Predator at all – it’s just a prolonged sequence in which Naru tries to extract herself from a bog with her tomahawk).
This is just one girl and her dog against the Predator, and it’s awesome.
Glass Onion (2022)
Rian Johnson’s follow-up to 2017’s Knives Out drags Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc into a brand-new mystery, complete with another inherently lovable sidekick who eventually steals the show. Billionaire Miles Bron invites his friends, collectively known as “the disruptors” to his private island mansion to enjoy a reprieve from the pandemic. Along with them come two unexpected guests: our Benoit Blanc and Cassandra “Andi” Brand, Bron’s ex-business partner who was cheated out of her share in the company and clearly has an axe to grind. And then of course... murder happens.
As in Knives Out, you can never be sure of what’s unfolding in front of your eyes, but it all leads to one hell of a cathartic conclusion.
North and South (2004)
If you believe the internet chatter, then this is one of those rare television adaptations that actually improves on the source material (though I have to say that as one who has never read Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel). Returning to it after many years, I was impressed by how well it holds up: strong characterization, careful attention to period details, well-structured plotting, a deep interest in Gaskell’s social commentary, and excellent casting across the board.
I mentioned at the time of watching that I felt it strange neither Richard Armitage or Daniela Denby-Ashe became bigger stars after this miniseries, as they feel like the quintessential takes on Mr Thornton and Margaret Hale, capturing their foibles, their awkward courtship, and their growing understanding of each other to perfection. There’s a reason nobody has since tried to readapt this work, and it’s because there’s no way to improve on this version.
The Woman in White (2018)
No one seemed to talk about this miniseries when it first aired, which is probably why I put off watching it for so long, but it ends up being a great adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ sensationalist Victorian novel. There’s mist-strewn countryside, twisted cobbled streets, gloomy old mansions crawling with secrets, and of course: the titular woman in white. If anything seems contrived or clichéd, that’s because Collins codified most of the Gothic tropes found in this story, and in the hands of a strong cast surrounded by high production values, it becomes something fresh and suspenseful.
As with North and South, there’s something to be said for a limited series that simply knows what it wants to do (adapt a classic novel) and does that thing well.
Derry Girls (2018 – 2022)
I always find it near-impossible to talk about comedies, because what else can you say beyond: “it’s really funny.” In this case, it goes a bit deeper than that – this was a show about a specific time and place (Ireland in the eighties/nineties) and a very specific type of teenager – the realistic one. Sure, said teenagers were played by women well into their twenties, but in a world that portrays teens as little adults in everything from Dawson’s Creek to Euphoria, it was a breath of fresh air to watch Derry Girls remember that teenagers are actually extremely stupid creatures. And I say that fondly. Their schemes are transparent, their game is non-existent, their self-importance is blown out of all proportion... but they feel things so deeply and strive for things with so much passion that it’s impossible not to cheer them on. And what a final episode! That kids, is how you stick a landing.
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2022)
The best stories are the ones that take you by surprise: you have no preconceptions going in, and so the story is at complete liberty to surprise you. Penned by Hugh Laurie, this fresh take on the Agatha Christie mystery is brimming with clever lines and quirky characters. Laurie elevates what is a fairly convoluted mystery with his own wry commentary, and everyone involved seems to be having a grand old time, with plenty of “old chaps” and “wot, wots” and “jolly goods.” Will Poulter and Lucy Boynton are delightful as the leads, and at only three episodes long, it’s a great choice for a rainy day or a windy night.
Arcane: Season 1 (2022)
I don’t think anyone saw this one coming. An animated Netflix series based on a video game I’d never heard of that ended up being... really, really good? I was determined to watch this again before the year was out, though naturally ran out of time. Still, between the incredible world-building, the fraught character dynamics, the array of great female characters, and the astonishingly unique animation, it’s something that catches the imagination, and is far better than it has any right to be.
Andor: Season 1 (2022)
Just when we were all about to give up on Disney’s Star Wars, they go and pull something like Andor out of the bag (though perhaps a tad too late judging by its viewing figures). On the one hand, this show elevates everything that comes before and after it, while on the other, it’s so good that it makes everything else in the franchise – including the original trilogy – look embarrassingly juvenile. To think, THIS is the level of content we could have been enjoying the whole time, instead of “somehow, Palpatine has returned.”
It's a story about how fascism infects lives, about how terrifying it is to stand up against it, about what it takes to radicalize people, about the true cost of fighting against a greater power – while at the same time providing fascinating characters, gripping action sequences, and sharp, intelligent dialogue. Take a bow Tony Gilroy, you might just have single-handedly saved Disney’s Star Wars.
The Colonel’s Bequest (1989)
Why not spend an evening as a 1920s ingénue, wandering around a grand but dilapidated Louisiana mansion in the middle of a swamp as murder victims start to pile up around you? Look, here’s the link to a free (and legal) download – you can play it right now and then tell me what you think! (To start the game, click on the fingerprint belonging to Celie).
This game has clearly dated in a lot of ways, but that’s to ignore the fact it’s all about the atmosphere. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that was made after 2000, simply because I cannot drag myself away from the beauty and charm of pixelated art, and The Colonel’s Bequest is a minor masterpiece in that respect. The colours, the movements, the sound effects – sure, I’m talking from a place of fond nostalgia, but the aesthetic captured here is impeccable. Even despite all the dead bodies, I’d love to dive through my monitor and visit this place for real.
No comments:
Post a Comment