Jonners' Canterbury Tales » Awards

Film of the Year

jonners99 — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:55:48 +0000

Maybe we are just getting that little bit older but 2010′s films did not particularly hold my attention. There were a few breakout films but the industry seems to be spending far too much time shovelling average products with spangly (and poor) 3d that the actual films themselves are being affected. As such I saw fewer films this year than for about 8 years. Below though are my wife and mines favourites from the year.

Beth:
10. Iron Man 2
9. Shrek Forever After
8. Eat Pray Love
7. The Lovely Bones
6. Knight and Day
5. Harry Potter
4. Death at a Funeral
3. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
2. Inception
1. Toy Story 3

Jonathan (a.k.a me)
5. Scott Pilgrim
4. The Lovely Bones
3. Toy Story 3
2. Kick Ass

And the winner…
1. Inception
Christopher Nolan does it again with this wonderful mindbending masterpiece. Nolan’s world makes the story convincing and the acting is superb. This decades Matrix? Hopefully so without the silly sequels.

from sheknows.com

My wife picked Toy Story 3 and I can see why, it was the end of a journey that started when we were 9 and it was a fitting end to the series that kept the style of the previous films. Worth it just for nostalgia and to feel like a kid again.

My intention had been to do a top 10 as my wife did but after coming to seven (Shrek and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo just missed out on the top 5) I fell into films which while ok were nothing particularly special. Iron Man 2 for example held so much promise and potential but other than great opening and closing 20 minutes was fairly dire. So heres hoping that 2011 offers more promise, from the outset it doesn’t look like it will, Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern hold little interest for me. Pirates is living on well past its sell by date, only Tintin has me interested at this point. We’ll see something might surprise me, 2012 though looks more promising immediately though with the next Batman installment and the possible appearance of the hobbit. Hold on in there folks, its gonna be a wait but it’ll be worth it.

Games of 2010

jonners99 — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 23:10:35 +0000

2010 was a good year for video games. So good that I haven’t had a chance to play them all. Fallout New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption were both games that I was looking forward to but I have yet to get to them. Their times will come but they miss out on this best of list.

5. Super Meat Boy – Xbox Live
Super Meat Boy is a good little downloadable game where you play as the titular Meat Boy trying to save your girlfriend Bandage Girl from the evil Dr Fetus. This is platform gaming at its best, but also at its most difficult. The best thing is when you spend twenty minutes trying to complete a level and finally do, the sense of achievement is great and the replay showing all your little meat boys trying to get to the end with just the one meat boy making it.

4. Alan Wake – Xbox 360
Alan Wake is a good game where you are attacked by the darkness, the game world is based on Washington state and includes some wonderful forest scenes. The game itself is pretty spooky as well and the controls and physics work wonderfully to help build the suspense.

3. Split/Second – Xbox 360
This game does what burnout did all those years ago when it first arrived. Its another racing game where anything goes. This game though employs strong rubber banding in its racing which makes it more difficult to dominate but also makes it more fun with a group of friends at different levels. The crunch to Split/Second is its power plays, build up your power bar and you can make things explode around/fall on other racers hence the name of the game. This game lives on its split screen multiplayer, when you narrowly avoid a girder thrust in your direction by your friend only for them to be taken out by it, that is what games are about. That it is made by Disney made me laugh but this game is the best of the racing bunch from 2010.

2. Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Wii
This game improves on everything the first game did, the controls are tighter, the graphics are even better, the music is still fantastic and Nintendo continues to prove that they are the masters of level design. The game is absolutely wonderful and an enjoyable experience throughout. Other improvements include a less annoying hub world where you can quickly get between levels or play around on a planetoid shaped on your face. Mario Galaxy the first narrowly missed out on my best game of the decade last year to the first Mass Effect game, annoyingly for Galaxy 2 it misses out to…

1. Mass Effect 2 – Xbox 360
Yup you guessed it. Mass Effect 2 came out early in the year but it blew me away. The story continues wonderfully from the first game and the characters and their back stories are fun to discover. The graphics have gotten better and then game has become slightly less of a hardcore RPG and has moved towards the mainstream. This is largely for the better as the controls are now much improved on consoles (the original was a pig). I need my fix of Mass Effect 3 but for that I must wait another 11 months…

I did play a lot of games this year but these five shone out above the others. F1 2010 was my most anticipated game of the year but then, I am like that. Unfortunately it let the side down in places with some sloppy coding but it set the stage for 2011 and it will hopefully make this list next year. Also good were Professor Layton and Super Scribblenauts both for Nintendo DS but they just missed out.

Film of the decade

jonners99 — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:36:12 +0000

The votes are in. Four of the nine shortlisted films failed to garner a single vote, these were:

Juno
Atonement
Wall-E
In Brugges

The Dark Knight and The Bourne Trilogy were next receiving just 9.5% of the vote each. This leaves the top 3 films of the ‘noughties’ as voted for by you.

We have a tie for second place:

Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar each received 24% of the votes to get an equal second place in the standings. Pirates received a lot of late votes. The Pirates film in question was Curse of the Black Pearl which would almost certainly not have been as popular or received as many votes had it not contained Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. With the often flat Orlando Bloom and the pouty Keira Knightley Johnny stole the show and made this franchise what it was. Meanwhile Avatar coming out at the end of the decade showed the true power of modern 3d techniques by using the technology constantly but subtly to create a masterpiece. Certainly the story could not have been better but there wasn’t a moment during the two and a half hour running time where the viewer got bored. Also at no time in the running did something obviously designed to get an audience response take place ie nothing came flying at the screen to show off. Both of these films are very enjoyable and deserve their places here.

And the winner is…

The Lord of the Rings was one heck of an ambitious project for Peter Jackson to take on as his first big budget movie. When he largely filled the cast with a bunch of small time actors there were doubts about how good the trilogy would be. These doubts turned out to be daft when the films came out though and the story and dynamic shone through the screen. The three films grossed almost $3 billion worldwide at box office which needless to say is more than any other trilogy. These are films which will not easily become dated and will be enjoyed for years to come. They are the jonners.org and talote.com films of the decade voted for by you lot and they truly deserve their title.

It wouldn’t be my analysis without a chart…

the proportions of votes received for each film are displayed in the chart.

Thank you folks. This blog will hopefully be seeing more action this year and I hope that you visit again soon.

Best of the decade – Films

jonners99 — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:22 +0000

This last decade saw us grow up, when it started I was 12, this means my memories of the previous decade are slim, the ‘noughties’ then will be the decade that film took over my life. The last ten years saw Cathy and I doing degrees in the subject, neither of us are now working with anything to do with the industry but we both still have a love for the medium. Certainly the overblown special effects that have come in this decade have often come at the expense of plot but that is not to say that there have not been some great films. Film is an entertainment medium and the fact that 8 of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time came out in this decade shows that audiences have been entertained. Our lists are not ordered by preference but chronologically. My wife could not pick 10 and so has 11 instead and the nominees for film of the decade will be voted for by you from that shortlist.

Jonathan’s list:
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03)
Bourne Trilogy (2002-07)
The Incredibles (2004)
Downfall (2004)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
Juno (2007)
Atonement (2007)
In Bruges (2008)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Wall-E (2008)

Cathy’s list:
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-03)
The Bourne Trilogy (2002-07)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Atonement (2007)
The Dark Knight (2008)
In Bruges (2008)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Avatar (2009)

Beth’s list:
Lord of the Rings (2001-03)
Spiderman (2002)
Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Napolean Dynamite (2004)
Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Lady in the water (2006)
Juno (2007)
Mamma Mia (2008)
Wall-e (2008)
Avatar (2009)

So now we come to the films which received more than a vote from us:
Lord of the Rings (2001-03)
The Bourne Trilogy (2002-07)
Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Juno (2007)
Atonement (2007)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Wall-e (2008)
In Bruges (2008)
Avatar (2009)

Which one of these 9 is the film of the decade though?

You decide, comment either on facebook, twitter or this blog by Friday 15 January, votes will then be tallied and the winner announced on Saturday 16 January!

Votes not for one of these 9 films will be ignored

Sporting achievements of the decade

jonners99 — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:38:32 +0000

So to the list of sporting achievements of the decade. Again by Trefor Little and again in no particular order here are the athletes who shone in their chosen fields.

Tiger Woods (USA – 12 Majors, 56 Other PGA Event wins)
Roger Federer (Switzerland – 15 Grand Slams)
Ricky Ponting (Australia – 9,458 Test Runs (including 32 centuries) at an average of 58.4)
Michael Schumacher (5 world titles in the noughties)
Joe Calzaghe (19 Defences of the World Super Middleweight Title – All won)

Jonathan:
If I were to pick I would obviously go for Michael Schumacher. Ross Brawn has probably been the brains behind that success and also led Brawn to both titles last year but chubby genisuses do not tend to get sporting awards.