The Year in Review. Again. Except different.
After Chris and Peter’s excellent and admirable best-of lists, I figured I’d put a word in for some good stuff I’ve discovered this year. Well, there were already shitloads of people who knew about all of this stuff, so ‘discovered’ in a Christopher Columbus sort of way. Except nobody got hurt.
First up is screenwriter John August. He maintains a site providing insider advice for aspiring writers, drawn from his own experiences. As soon as you get there, you can tell he’s got writing chops – his prose is simultaneously clear, eloquent and precise while being conversational and friendly. Being about as much an industry outsider as it’s possible to be, I can’t speak to the accuracy what he says, but with credits on high-profile stuff like Burton’s Wonka and Big Fish, uncredited work on the likes of Iron Man, a recent directorial debut with The Nines and being the writer of the excellent Go, he’s got the experience. Get your wise words at www.JohnAugust.com.
Second on my list is JJ Abrams. The first I heard of him was through friends raving about Alias, but the case they made for the show was pretty much identical to its belligerent marketing and unappealing premise, at the heart of which was the tired “She’s sexy and she kicks arse!”. Still sounds daft if you ask me, but I’ve been wrong before. So many times before… ohhh, the regret. Lost didn’t do much to help the case, with similarly aggressive marketing, but I gave that one a shot… and was fed so many red herrings that I switched off before season one was done. But MI:3 was the best action for years outside of Bourne… then in ’08 he spoke at TED, and it turns out that he’s an articulate, intelligent and charming chap with a great handle on his media and real vision. At some point, he’ll get a Guys Who Get It post, but for now, I’d really recommend JJ Abrams’ TED talk.
Third thing I discovered was Tina Fey. Sure, she’s been great in 30 Rock for a few years now, but nothing compares to her pitch-perfect, hilarious and contemptuous imitation of Sarah Palin. One might say that Palin is an easy target since she’s a world-class idiot, the simplest of all the forest’s creatures stumbled into the headlights of a world far beyond her ken… but when Thumper goes for the nuclear codes, you run the little bastard down. Which is what Tina did. Roadkill was never so sublime.
Okay, roadkill was never really sublime at all, but I wanted to see how far the metaphor would stretch for me. Not that far, apparently. Now I know for next time.
Fourth thing I found this past year is that Ben Stiller is always one movie away from finally being funny, and since that movie is probably called “Ben Stiller: A Life in Retrospect starring Actorbot 4″, there’s just no point waiting anymore. Zoolander wasn’t everyone’s sort of humour, but at least it was someone’s sort. Have you heard they’s making Night at the Museum 2? The man’s a lost cause. He’ll never get another dollar of my hard-earned… er, bandwidth. Begone with him.
Conversely, at number five, you have your Robert Downey Jr., a talented, charismatic chap who’s been waiting to be an A-list finest-actor-of-his-generation kinda guy and seems to actually be becoming one. We all know Iron Man kicked arse, directed by the also finally-arrived Jon Favreau, so I won’t belabor the point. Downey Jr. certainly needs to kick some goals over his next few films to really cement his position, and he’s started already by being the only good thing about Tropic Thunder… fingers crossed that Ritchie’s Holmes and Joe Wright’s Soloist keep the momentum going.
Number Six is sort of a posthumous mention for Jane Espenson. I hasten to add that Ms. Espenson is alive and well, however her excellent blog Jane in Progress has taken what seems likely to be a permanent hiatus. I credit her for writing the episode that turned me into a Firefly fanatic, Shindig. Okay, everyone credits her for writing it, but I credit her for kindling the kind of fanboy adulation that led me to purchase the DVD boxed set multiple times so I could give them as gifts to my friends, much as an annoying gentleman on your doorstep might give you the ‘gift’ of The Watchtower. Except that you don’t use Firefly as kindling on your next camping trip. Jane Espenson has written and produced on so many shows I won’t bother to go into all of them save to say she’s up there as geek royalty with a sizeable chunk of Battlestar Galactica and both writing and production credits on loads of Buffy. Her blog, which can still be read in archive, was informative, beautifully written and just generally cool. So – no new posts since late 08, but check it out at www.Janeespenson.com.
Finally, number seven! Speaking of things Whedon, this year saw the release of Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog. What can I say? It’s fun and funny and clever and original and genuinely heartbreaking and the songs are catchy. The first ep starts a little slow, but by the time the lyric “With my freeze ray I will stop / The pain” comes along you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be enamoured. Neil Patrick Harris rocks, outshining the redoubtable Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day is a perfect heroine, and various heroes and villains that pepper the background are just hilarious. Keep you Wall-E, this is the goods.
So, yeah. . Seven things that I ‘discovered’ in 2008. There were more things, but your efforts in reading my twisted prose this far have already been heroic, so I’ll leave it there. Happy 2009!
