1 Movie I Hated in 2011

It would have been nice to round my list of 2011 movies off to 50, but I only saw 48. Slacker.

Like last year, I'm going to break them into categories by how much I enjoyed them, covering one category each day all week. Unlike last year, I'm not going to force 10 movies into each category, so some - like today - will only have one and some - like Wednesday - will have much more. Fortunately, I only really hated one movie this year.

48. Green Lantern



I try to find something I like in every movie and usually I succeed. And if I'm truthful with myself, there were things I liked in Green Lantern. I don't know that Ryan Reynolds is a great Hal Jordan, but I always like him, so having him in the movie is a good thing. Mark Strong made an awesome Sinestro and was probably the best thing about the movie.

The problem is that I didn't grow up with Green Lantern (probably because he wasn't on The Super Friends), so I don't have opinions about him now. The space police angle has a lot of potential, but I've never felt the ring and - perhaps unfairly - always picture Green Lantern using giant, green hands to do his dirty work for him. Frankly, I've always seen Green Lantern as sillier than most people see Aquaman. When I've read about him in Justice League comics, I've tended to re-imagine the effects of his ring so that it's less goofy. Mostly, I imagine it as a generator for a telekinetic force, because moving and manipulating things is how Green Lantern typically uses it.

Because of all this, I needed this movie to pull its own weight in turning me into a Green Lantern fan and it didn't do that. The flaws of the movie were so well-covered over the summer that I don't feel like anyone needs me to rehash them here, but this was always a movie that was going to start from behind for me and it never gave me a reason to change my mind about it or its main character.

The reason I hate it instead of just disliking it is because I want superhero movies to be awesome and there's no excuse for bad ones anymore. The makers of Green Lantern had every opportunity to observe what folks were doing with Batman and the Marvel films and create something that could at least get close to that bar. It ticks me off that they didn't even seem to try.

MLK

I don't want to let the day pass without stopping to remember and think about Martin Luther King, Jr. He may not have searched for lost treasure, discovered ancient civilizations, or killed aliens in outer space, but he was one of the bravest men this country's ever known.

And he did fight monsters.

I was less than a year old when he died, but I miss him.

Re-posted from January 2008

Top 10 Songs of 2011

10. "Indian Summer (Des Moines)" by Canon Blue



9. "Sutphin Boulevard" by Blood Orange



8. "You Were Never There" by Diego Garcia



7. "Helena Beat" by Foster the People



6. "We Sing in Time" by The Lonely Forest



5. "It's Real" by Real Estate



4. "Holdin' on to Black Metal" by My Morning Jacket



3. "Wetsuit" by The Vaccines



2. "Money" by The Drums



1. "Man or Muppet" by Jason Segal and Walter

The Goon Hates Cephalopods

By Skottie Young.

I'm struggling with my schedule a bit yesterday and today, but hopefully I'll be back on track tomorrow.

4 Best New Shows of 2011

4. 2 Broke Girls



Right away I need to explain why there are only four shows on this list and why one of them is 2 Broke Girls, an unfunny, racist sitcom. No...wait a minute. I can't explain that. Other than to say that I didn't give a lot of dramas a shot this year and most of the ones I tried (like Terra Nova and Ringer) weren't any good. I even gave up on Person of Interest, a show I expected to like a lot, but got bored by thanks to Jim Caviezel's deadpan performance.

So why am I still with 2 Broke Girls when it fails my one-and-only test for sitcoms: Make Me Laugh? It's all about the actresses. I just love Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs. I love their characters individually and as a team and I'm rooting for them like I would characters in a drama. It's weird, but while the show completely fails as a sitcom, I'm invested in the story of these two women whom life has taken a huge dump on and their quest to make things better. I just really wish I could laugh too, but hopefully Jennifer Coolidge's joining the show will help with that.

3. Suburgatory



This is far less a guilty pleasure. I started the show expecting a witty send-up of suburban life and that's what it is; just far less biting than I thought it would be. And that's good, because (and I say this as a city person) I generally don't like a lot of cynicism in my entertainment. The native suburbanites in the show are all weird, but they also have recognizable, human elements too; especially Dallas (Cheryl Hines), whose well-hidden loneliness is kind of heart-breaking.

The main characters, George (Jeremy Sisto) and Tess (Jane Levy) are also much less critical of their new environment than I imagined they'd be. I mean, they raise eyebrows and poke fun, but there's a nice balance between chuckling at the strangeness of suburban life and embracing the genuinely good things about it.

2. New Girl



I didn't even like Zooey Deschanel before this show (I'm the one), but her goofiness as Jess won me over. She really is adorkable. The guys in the cast are all awesome too, especially Max Greenfield as Schmidt (a douche who I thought would be my least-favorite character, but has quickly become my most-) and Lamorne Morris as Winston (who had an unenviable job in replacing the pilot's awesome Damon Wayans Jr, but - helped by some excellent writing - did so amazingly). I like Jake M Johnson too as Nick, but I'm already tired of the show's Will-They-Won't-They plot and he takes shrapnel from being involved in that. Even Hannah Simone's Cece is getting stuff to do and I've already got tickets on whatever the Schmidt/Cece 'ship is calling itself.

1. Revenge



Hands down the new show I look forward to more than any other. I probably look forward to it more than my old shows, even. At least until I get caught up with Justified. Emily Thorne (played by Emily VanCamp) is a female Batman. She's just as rich, just as smart, and just as driven; she just dresses a lot better and has a very specific group of bad guys she's looking to take down.

I hear people apologizing for the soap opera qualities of the show sometimes, but that's what makes it fun; especially Madeline Stowe as Victoria Grayson, the surprisingly sympathetic matriarch of the family that destroyed Emily's life.

So what are your favorite new shows of last year?

Hello, 2012

I didn’t have time to do my usual year-end retrospective and New Year planning posts this year. We took a trip to North Carolina to see some friends and visit as many Blackbeard sites as we could find. Pictures are coming, but it was a great trip and we saw roughly the spots where the Queen Anne’s Revenge went down and where Blackbeard was killed. We also visited where his men were imprisoned before hanging, the town where he settled down temporarily when he went “respectable,” and the museum that holds the QAR’s wreckage. We even found time for a trip to the Lost Colony on Roanoke.

All of that took planning and doing, so that’s why we went into Cephalopod mode for a couple of weeks. I’d still like to do some Best of 2011 lists though, so if it's not too late, I'll work on those the rest of this week and next. I'll probably do music and TV this week and spend all next week on movies.

Even though I'm not going to do a long, Looking Forward to 2012 post, I do have one resolution for the New Year. I want to be much more spontaneous about the books I read and things I watch. I’m extremely list-oriented and new things that come out usually get put at the bottom of the list. This year, I’m giving myself permission to bump interesting things to the top of the pile. This is largely inspired by The Hunger Games, which I’m ashamed has taken me so long to get to. I wolfed that book down in two days over vacation and the sequels are on their way to me as I type. I want more experiences like that.

It seems that men like women warriors

Soon:









Conan, how can you be so wise and such a dork at the same time?

Captain Trueno Hates Cephalopods

Special thanks to Adventureblog reader Jorge for this one. I love it when you guys send me this kind of stuff.

Atlanteans Hate Cephalopods

[Diversions of the Groovy Kind]

Wonder Woman Hates Cephalopods

By Cliff Chiang. [Robot 6]

Homer Hates Cephalopods

Special thanks to Adventureblog reader Artem for sending me this one.