In preparation for a year-end movie wrap-up, I found a list of all movies released in 2004 and I went through it to see how many of them I’d seen. The result? 11.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t see many movies, because most movies aren’t any good. I value my time and money (especially the former) too much to waste either on Hollywood’s excrescence. I will happily wait for reviews and word of mouth before seeing something, letting everyone else beta-test movies for me. As a result, I see far fewer movies, but better ones. So here’s the eleven I saw this year (in alphabetical order):

Before Sunset
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Garden State
Hellboy
Intermission (on DVD)
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Shaun of the Dead (on DVD)
Sideways
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Spider-Man 2
The Incredibles

To pick my top ten movies of the year, all I’d have to do is drop one of these. There are two contenders, though, for which one that would be, and they’re the top two up there.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Before Sunset. Yes, gaze in awe at my iconoclastic dislike of Eternal Sunshine, done only, of course, to prove how “cool” I am by cracking on the movie everyone else loves.

If you liked ESOTSM, hey, more power to you. I didn’t. And, because of a horrible weakness of mine, the more I heard about how amazing and deep it was, the more I disliked it. I hated it for several reasons, some of which I admit are irrational, but a few of which aren’t. Firstly, I just didn’t like the characters. I started out simply not caring whether or not these two self-absorbed, obnoxious people eventually got together, but eventually hoped they would if only to spare others from having to suffer them. This is something I feel undermines a romance picture. Secondly, take away all the memory shenanigans and, at the core of it you get Hollywood’s same old decrepit, worm-ridden message: Love conquers all, and if you’re meant to be together, you’re meant to be together. For some reason, people seem to think this makes love majestic when in fact it trivializes it. In ESOTSM, we find that even if people are terrible for each other, as the two leads prove to be, it doesn’t matter, because Cupid has determined they’re meant for each other and that’s that. More “love defies all” than “love conquers all”.

And that’s what frustrates me the most about the movie. Give a plain old pre-Oscar Julia Roberts lovefest a lick of “weird”-colored paint and Jim Carrey “proving” his acting chops simply by not being irritating, and suddenly everyone acts like its an amazing revelation of filmmaking. By all means, find ESOTSM enjoyable, funny, romantic, whatever, but please quit telling me how cerebral it is.

The second movie there, Before Sunset makes similar love-related missteps, but since it didn’t have any CGI effects, no one saw it. I’m no expert on love or anything, I don’t want to make such claims. But this is a movie that starts off very promising by trying to treat the subject in a very adult manner. It starts off with a situation most movies hate: the two leads, once lovers, are now grown up a little, one is married with a child, one is in a long-term relationship. How will they be able to get together!? What have they learned in the last ten years? What does their past relationship mean in the present? This is stuff that really does promise to get to the heart, so to speak, of the issue. And yet…just as we get close to really examining the subject, it turns out the guy’s marriage isn’t that happy and she was gonna break up with the photographer anyway, so hooray! They can have sex!

I guess, as I am with “tea cozy” movies, romances just don’t much do it for me.

I can’t say much against the remaining nine. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say it’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I can’t remember the last time I saw a trailer, got excited by it, saw the movie, and had all of my expectations delivered on. I found it to be fun and exciting, and gorgeous to look at. It wasn’t perfect, but lord was it good.

It was an ideal geek movie — naturally, geeks rejected it. No idea why. Suddenly, the same people who paid to go see The Punisher and Riddick and the godawful Matrix sequels demanded only fully-realized three-dimensional characters and 100% hole-free plots. No idea what happened there. I eagerly await buying the DVD, and I don’t buy many DVDs.

Speaking of DVDs, the second category of movies I noted were things I wouldn’t mind seeing on DVD. That’s the advantage of not going to every damn move they make. I can always see something I skipped later, but I can never un-see The Fifth Element. The movies I may eventually see were:

Collateral
Good Bye, Lenin!
Hero
House of Flying Daggers
I Heart Huckabees
Team America: World Police
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Yes Men

To be honest, we’ll probably go see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in the theaters soon, so that doesn’t really count. I Heart Huckabees I’m pretty sure isn’t going to be very good, but I’m curious about it. This category is pretty iffy. I’m even less inclined to sit and watch movies at home than I am to go to the theater. I have to be in just the right mood to do that, and that mood doesn’t come often. I have a bootleg of Team America right now, and have had it for weeks, but just haven’t sat down to watch it.

The third category of movies was “Stuff I Didn’t See Which For Some Reason Surprises People.” These are things I didn’t see, don’t particularly want to see, and make some people go “Whazuh? You didn’t see that?!?” They are:

Fahrenheit 9/11
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Ocean’s 12
Shrek 2
The Passion of the Christ
The Polar Express
The Village

Fahrenheit 9/11 I didn’t need to see, since I was already on top of those stories. The Passion of the Christ, I was told, I should see for some reason or other, I don’t know. I’m pretty secure in my lack of belief and don’t think a snuff film telling a story I already know is going to change anything. I didn’t much like Shrek, so Shrek 2 wasn’t a draw. Many of the others fell to bad reviews. As for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I can’t tell you why we haven’t seen it. We also haven’t gotten the latest HP book. We’re just not that wild about Harry, I guess. I mean, they’re fine enough, I have no complaints about them, we just haven’t felt like it’s something we need to keep up with.

Eleven movies is really surprising to me. That’s almost one a month. I know we saw a couple more on DVD that weren’t from 2004. Offhand I know we saw Love Actually and Big Fish, the latter of which I really disliked.

So there you have it. The year in movies from someone who doesn’t particularly like movies. Here’s an interesting bit of trivia, though: Did you know that the cost to make the reviled Catwoman was $100 million dollars, almost three times what we’re sending in aid to the victims of last week’s killer tsunami? And it brought in $40 million, also more than that aid package. Who knew? Got some cash you’d rather help people in need with instead of helping, say, Tom Hanks? Go here.

The server move is completed! Thanks go to the staff at Slithytoves, and to Matthew for being a temporary host for the site.

If you tried to get to my Elseworlds post while we were down (thanks for the link Laura!) you can find it two entries down or here . I’m kinda proud of it, actually.

Will be back later today with a longer entry about movies!

As you can see, I’ve been tinkering with the design of the site, learning me some CSS. Let me know what you think of the changes, and what other (design-related) changes you’d like to see.

The title of the blog hasn’t really changed (I don’t think). In a discussion elsewhere someone used the word “überflüssig” and defined it as a German word meaning “things the world doesn’t really need.” I thought that was a great name for a weblog. The font I used for the title doesn’t have umlauts, though.

We’ll be experiencing some downtime tomorrow (and possibly Thursday) as the server on which we’re hosted will be moving to its new home in St. Louis. This will hopefully solve the problem of frequent outages and slowness caused by problems with the ISP in Jackson.

I’m looking for a good set of weblog icons (that is, icons denoting entries on “books,” “movies,” “comics,” etc. Haven’t found many good ones yet. A third of my kingdom to whoever can secure me a good set. (They don’t HAVE to be literal. That is, the one for “books” doesn’t HAVE to be a book.)

Thanks for your continued participation.

Sometimes I have trouble getting to sleep at night, and while I lie there in the dark my mind wanders around all kinds of oddball areas. A few nights ago, for no reason I can fathom, I was thinking about DC’s “Elseworlds” comics. Specifically, I was thinking about the heroes who never seem to get them, like the Flash and Aquaman. I started to try to come up with ideas for the latter.

(Elseworlds, if you don’t know, are DC one-shots and miniseries in which the heroes are taken out of their usual roles and contexts and placed in other ones, like Superman’s rocket landing in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas, Batman in the middle ages, etc.)

Three of the ideas were just “okay” (though one shows promise, I think). They were:

Aquaman: Red Sea — What is now a dry, dying world was one covered with water. A’rtr K’rry is the guardian of Mars’ canals, King of the blue Martians, and friend to all manner of exotic, alien undersea beasts!

Aquaman: Skull and Crossbones — Not much of an idea here. This would take place during the days of the Spanish Armada and would have the King of Spain enlisting the help of the Atlanteans against the English and Privateer pirates. Basically the gist would be that Atlantis is known by the world, but Spain is the first to attempt a treaty with its king, greatly shifting the
balance of power. It could even trace Atlantis’ rise to power as a force opposing the opium and slave trades over the seas.

Aquaman: Reclamation — One hundred years from now, global warming has taken its toll, and the world is being reclaimed by the seas. With humankind desperately trying to evolve, ironically, back to living in water, one hero must form a team to deal with the threats that face this strange new world, including one member whose strong suit will be dealing with threats ABOVE the surface of the sea. (Dave Thiel suggests Hawkman.)

The fourth idea started out as Aquaman but evolved the more I thought about it, and I think it’s pretty sweet.

It’s called 20,000 Leagues and it’s set in the Victorian era. Shipping tycoon Bruce Wayne is furious because his ships have been attacked. survivors of the attacks speak of a giant sea monster seemingly controlled by some nefarious person named ‘Captain Nemo.’ No one knows much about Nemo save that he seems to bear some grudge against surface-dwelling people. Wayne, however, didn’t get rich by avoiding problems, so he decides to take matters into his own hands, and assembles a team to go after Nemo.

The members of the team are Clark Kent, a mild-mannered reporter who has been covering the attacks, John Jones, a New York City detective known for his uncanny problem-solving abilities, and Barry Allen, a noted scientist. They sail out to where the attacks are taking place and then Wayne unveils his secret weapon, a submarine of his own devising. Piloting this experimental craft is an adventurer named Hal Jordan.

They descend into the depths and begin searching for Nemo. What they find is evidence of the lost city of Atlantis, still seemingly populated. They capture an Atlantean and discover that they are ruled by a king who has no love for men of the surface. At last their nemesis has a face!

However, before they can do anything with this knowledge, they are attacked by Nemo, who is not controlling a sea monster, but is actually piloting a fantastic vessel. Wayne’s submarine is destroyed, and the explorers prepare to drown in the ocean’s depths. But they don’t. They are rescued by the Atlanteans and they meet the King face to face, who it turns out, has no malice towards them or their people, and merely wishes to be left alone. Furthermore, he is not Nemo and doesn’t know anything about Nemo, save that the name means “No man,” and perhaps that is a clue?

Wayne sends another ship out, this time helmed by the brassy female Captain Etta Candy and an all-woman crew. Also on board is Kent’s rival reporter at the paper, Lois Lane. Nemo’s ship takes the bait but is oddly hesitant to harm the ship, instead firing warning shots to merely steer it away. Lois, in her traditionally risky manner, jumps overboard and forces Nemo to rescue her for a chance to meet the enigmatic Captain.

It turns out that Nemo is actually Diana, princess of an island of Amazon warriors. The Amazons, after centuries of peace and
isolation, have been threatened with the discovery of their hidden Paradise Island (previously they did not fear ships because the winds could be set against intruders, but these new steam-powered vessels resisted that method). Lane and Queen Mera
of Atlantis attempt to broker a peace agreement between Wayne and the Amazons, in which the Amazons will allow Wayne’s ships to pass unmolested if the secret is kept safe. But Diana realizes instead that she has been too rash and the plan would never work, so she agrees that the Amazons will reveal themselves and attempt to work with the world of man rather than hide from it. (An attempt to get the Atlanteans to do the same is rejected, as their king feels the surface world is not quite ready yet.)

THE END.

I still haven’t come up with ideas for a Flash Elseworlds, other than “Fastest Gun in the West”, which is more a title than an
idea.

Without further adieu, the first part of my personal picks for the Best of 2004.

Flower - Daffodil.

Number (less than 100) - 28.

Number (greater than 100) - 774.

Punctuation Mark - Tough call. I think I ultimately have to go with the ampersand (a personal favorite), but the caret is a very close second.

HTML tag - I don’t think I need to tell you that 2004 was the year of closing off italics. </i> was just unstoppable.

Angle - 76 degrees.

Music - Lo, how the mighty have fallen. Two years ago, B-flat was the seemingly unstoppable king. Where are they now? Hopefully this year’s clear winner, G, will stick around a little longer.

Word that Doesn’t Rhyme With ‘Monkey’ - Spelunker. You think it’s gonna, then pow! It doesn’t!

Egyptian Pharaoh - Shebitku (702 - 690 BCE).

Weight - A lot of people are going to go with 12 pounds this year, and truth be told, maybe they’ll be right in the long run. But I just can’t help but go with 104 pounds.

Airplane Seat - 12B. No contest.

Street Sign - I don’t care what they’re saying on the newsgroups, message boards, and weblogs, the clear choice is “NO U TURN”. I’ve argued about this for months and I’m sick of restating what should be obvious points.

Insect - Katydid.

Molecule - Cyclooctene.

Flavor of Granola Bars - Apple Crisp.

Eating Utensil - The spoon. I know, I know, but it’s a classic.

Vegetable - Broccoli.

That’s it for part one. I know people are going to have problems with some of these choices, but you know, that’s what opinions are all about. If you disagree, let’s see your choices.

In part two I’ll talking about things like, I dunno, pop culture stuff.

We received this…er…festive decoration in the mail from Dave and Vicky, who say this about it on the enclosed note:

We were shopping at Prairie Gardens and spotted this charming holiday decoration. We felt that it belonged in a state such as Massachusetts, where the activity it depicts is fully endorsed by the legal system. We hope that it adds a festive touch to your home.

And that it does! I should point out, though, that the legal system of the Commonwealth doesn’t recognize “married couples” consisting of three people, nor does it allow for any (or all) of the individuals to be snowmen. However, we all know that it’s just a matter of time.

I don’t know how Becky and I can ever return the favor of this lovely gift.

But we will.

Oh yes. We will.

What did Becky and I do for Christmas? Heck, what didn’t we do?¹ We actually took it pretty easy. We watched the extended Fellowship of the Ring, played some PS2 (Dan loaned up an old PS1 game called Mr. Driller and we’ve been playing it non-stop, plus I started Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy), read some comics, baked some cookies. Christmas eve I gave Becky her big present, which was a 35mm SLR camera (she’s been wanting to take up photography.) Many thanks go to Chris and April for helping me pick that one out. Christmas day was more gifts - a lot of books (including a book on drawing from Becky), CDs, and games. We then had dinner with TJ and Mary (and Mary’s mom) which was really nice. Yesterday we were going to go see The Life Aquatic, but the movie times didn’t work out for us, so we may be going tonight. We capped off the holiday weekend with Dan and Jen, playing some boardgames.

We got a lot of games this Christmas, actually. Dan and Jen got us St. Petersburg and Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. TJ and Mary got us Mystery of the Abbey. Becky got me Squint. We haven’t played the LOTR one yet, but the others are a lot of fun, and I’ll talk more about them in an upcoming post.

No White Christmas for us…Wednesday afternoon and evening it warmed up and poured rain and that got rid of the snow from the previous weekend. Then last night we got about two inches.

We’ll be visiting our families in a couple weeks and continue some Christmasing then, but so far it’s been pretty low-key and relaxing.

Now I’m back at work for a short but possibly busy week, and then get Friday off for New Years. We haven’t figured out our plans for that yet.

—
¹ - Play polo, write the definitive biography of Gustave Flaubert, build an aqueduct, clean the bathrooms, bake a quiche, discuss the neo-Classical movement in art, wear matching scarves, convert to Zoroastrianism, land an airplane when the pilot became unexpectedly incapacitated, give a commencement speech, discover a previously unknown Platonic solid, learn Cantonese, surf, perform life-saving heart surgery, record and produce a concept album, wallpaper a room, construct a scale replica of the Sears Tower with popsicle sticks, perform an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, run for Congress…actually, I guess there’s quite a lot we didn’t do.