BEST of 2011

Here are my picks for best finds of 2011 in books, music, tv and cinema… and some fails

[Not all of them released in 2011]

WINS:

BOOKS:

A Monster in the Hollows (F) – Andrew Peterson
- If you or your kids are fans of the fiction of Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, Riordan, do yourself a favor and get this series now – you will not be disappointed!!

Erasing Hell (NF) – Francis Chan
- A well written rebuttal to Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”.  Having read both books, Chan makes a much more compelling, theologically faithfully sound and historically accurate case.

Imaginary Jesus (F/NF)– Matt Mikalatos
- captivating from page 1, but with a relatively weak ending, I liked it over all.

The Tehran Initiative (F) – Joel C. Rosenberg
- the latest in Rosenberg’s political thriller series once again predicts headlines before they happen.

SONG:

“Where the Streets Have No Name” (Acoustic Cover) – 30 Seconds to Mars and a gospel choir.
- do I even have to say another word?

FULL ALBUMS:

JOSH GARRELS – Love & War & the Sea in Between
- wow!  So, so , so good (and as of this writing still completely free online at his website)  Haunting, plaintive, worshipful with a dash of hip hop every now and then.  Think of a modern, artsy, Jesus-loving, Gordon Lightfoot

GUNGOR – Ghosts Upon the Earth
If you took Gungor, Sufjan Stevens, Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova and Enter the Worship Circle and threw them into a blender, you would get “Ghosts Upon the Earth.”  … and I love it!

ARADHNA – Namaste Sate
- Learned of this group just before our team went to India.  Great Indian music with Christ exalting lyrics

ANYA MARINA
- came across her EP on noisetrade.com and ended up buying her previous project.  Fun, quirky, infectious, emotive pop for date nights and long car trips.

DAFT PUNK -  TRON:Legacy
- There are many who saw this movie as nothing more than well executed eye candy, but if you’ve followed this blog, you know I whole-heartedly disagree with that.  One of the reasons being this soundtrack

ECHOING GREEN: In Scarlet & Vile
Big EG fan from way back.  Synth pop. This album hit me at just the right time I guess

YEASAYER – Odd Blood
- I have my friend Justin to thank for introducing me to this group.  Welcome back to the 80’s new wave.  There are moments where this feels like a lost Oingo Boingo album in all the best possible ways.

SHINY TOY GUNS – We Are Pilots
Not a new album.. but new to me.  This is the group who covered “Major Tom” for those car commercials.  Again, wonderfully 80’s… though  you should know there is both a ‘clean’ version and a version with a quiet, but strong profanity in one track

CHRISTMAS MUSIC:

ENFIELD – God of God
- A great refreshing take on standard carols and original songs.  My respect keeps climbing for Enfield

STEPHANIE SEEFELDT – Cradle & Cross
- when I learned my friend Stephanie was recording another (‘official’) Christmas project I was delighted.  When I heard it, I was so thankful for her gifts and skills once again.  Worshipful and tender.

VINEYARD UK – Christmas from the Vineyard
- great take on some standard carols and a some very cool arrangements of very old songs

CINEMA:

BOLLYWOOD
- pretty much as a whole.  The silly stories with their predictable formulas, punctuated with musical numbers that make you want to wobble your head and dance. 

Super 8
- I could have done without all the profanities, but this was such a hearkening back to movies I loved as a 12 year old – Goonies meets Close Encounters.  That magic I felt back in the dog days of summer, escaping the heat and reality by spending a few hours in the cinema?  That.  All over again.

Captain America: The First Avenger
- I was hoping I would like this movie and I was not disappointed.  From the camera work to the dialogue, it felt like a throwback to 40’s cinema – which works perfectly since that is the time period a majority of it is set in.  Great blend of action, humor and romance.

Rango
- We rented it and I laughed my head off


Battle:L.A.
Great, military-gritty, sci-fi film.  The honor of self-sacrifice on display time and time again.

Monsters
- Not the Pixar “Monsters, Inc.”,  the film by Gareth Edwards.  A GREAT low-budget indie sci-fi film where the alien invasion element takes a backseat to the characters dealing with the situation and their story arcs.   Not just Special FX  or high paced action.
(Six years after aliens invaded Earth, a security force maintains tenuous control in the Infected Zone straddling the U.S.-Mexican border. Andrew, a photo journalist, is documenting this war-torn area when he's interrupted by an unexpected rescue mission. Sam, the daughter of a media mogul who just happens to be his boss, needs an escort home, and Andrew reluctantly takes on the job.)

The Muppets
- just saw it today…  it got a 97% “fresh” rating on Rottentomatoes.com…and I laughed quite a bit,  but I’d put this Muppet installment at about #5 of all the Muppet movies.  I’m just going to say I love that the Muppets are back and I hope it’s for more than just this movie.

Where were Rizzo & Pepe? *sigh*

TELEVISION:

To be honest, this was the year we mostly moved away from network TV and just began watching shows via Netflix… there’s just so much poor quality stuff on TV… and I don’t just mean content .

DOCTOR WHO!!!!!!
This was such a huge find that the good Doctor has replaced the Star Wars saga for me.  That’s right – I’m posting my SW collection on eBay.  Don’t need it.  Why the change?  It has to do with storytelling.  Are there silly aliens mixed with the scary like in SW?  yes.  But Dr. Who (while much more professional today in its FX work than say the 80’s) does not rely on FX for its stories.  Star Wars started great, but has become a palette for Lucas to do FX experiments.  Trade routes?  Yawn. Gungans? Bother!  Lightsaber overkill? Ugh.
I’ll take a Doctor with a blue flashlight that we’re convinced is a sonic screwdriver that can fix most things simply by shining it’s light and making the wzwzwzwzw sound.  Dr. Tennant & Rose captured my heart. 

Don’t. Blink.

And I think I will pass on the Adipose, thankyouverymuch.

So 2011 – was  great year for entertainment… but there also were some disappointments…

tvb – TSOOL.
I love this band and artist so much that I can’t even bring myself to list the band name or album title.  I was so excited for this project… and then what I heard was so unlike everything I loved about the band.  I guess maybe I could listen again… maybe.

X-Men: First Class
- gather your stones now… I was totally unimpressed.  As an X-Men comics fan, there was so much continuity that was just thrown out the window it was like having someone hand you a McDonalds breakfast burrito and calling it a Taco Bell chalupa

FAILS

Skyline
- GREAT trailer.  Awful, awful movie.  Seriously so bad that one reviewer said, “When other films are critiqued in the future, they will be able to say, ‘at least it’s ending wasn’t as bad as Skyline’”  Yep – it was that laughably bad.

Star Wars on Blu Ray
I’ll try to say this kindly:  Epic. Colossial. Fail.
Having placed a pre-order the day these went up for sale, I promptly cancelled it when I learned of the changes Lucas made.  With the above mentioned Gungans, bad storytelling, overuse of CGI & lightsabers and increasing potty humor, I had started to drift away from SW – not even the (slowly degenerating) Clone Wars cartoon is of interest anymore.

Here was the promised “own every moment” in 1080p.  But wait.  Some of those moments have changed – for the worse.  (Krayt dragon call? Wha? Moving rocks? Noooooooooo!) Some of the promised fixes to rotoscoping sabers correctly, better color correction, etc. never happened.  And now all the bonus deleted scenes are on Youtube, which themselves are pretty ho-hum.

Angels & Airwaves – Love part II & film
I liked AvA’s I-Empire album a LOT. So it was natural to get Love:Part I when they made it available online… and hey… FREE!  Similar music, and the anticipation of a film that was to come.  An artsy film looking at the existence of God… hmmmm.  Once Love:Part II leaked online, I was able to peruse the album lyrics.  I guess Tom DeLong has concluded that the God Christians know and follow is a big lie that we’ve made up.
Well, there’s more money I can save.  I do still plan to rent the film because it does look interesting.

Here’s to a great 2012!  And, no – the world will not be ending in Dec. of 2012.

LOST finale = The Phantom Menace

LOST finale = The Phantom Menace OR Why the LOST finale is an epic, colossal fail.

Long post…buckle in.

BOTTOM LINE:  As my wife remarked…”If you are writing any sort of mystery novel/TV show/movie – you need to know the end first”… not get there 2/3rds of the way in.  Cuse and Lindelof painted themselves into a corner and chose an easy “out” rather than a satisfying (and just as easy) ending.

As the credits rolled on the LOST series finale, I felt the same way I did after seeing The Phantom Menace the first time: Shocked in a disappointing way.  It had been overhyped, deflating and extremely disappointing.

My wife and I came late to LOST.  It was nearing it’s 3^rd season and I had heard it was an odd series that you had to see from the beginning to follow the story.   We decided to borrow some friends’ DVDs of Seasons 1 & 2 and dive in.  We were hooked and spent every spare moment trying to get caught up to the weekly episodes, which we did.

The story was a blend of science fiction, action and mystery with philosophical  subplots about the relationship of electromagnetism, time travel, fate, destiny and free will.  It was complicated, but very enjoyable… like a difficult puzzle you are trying to work out without aid of the box top.

Each new episode brought revelations and new questions.  Each season ended with the introduction of a whole new “group” of people:  The Tailies, the Others, Dharma, etc.  All with the allure that one day the questions would be answered. 

About season 4 my wife became disinterested and stopped watching.  Too many characters, too confusing.

Theories and huge online discussion groups popped up.  Interviewers asked Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof whether it all would be a Dallas-like dream or whether it was merely metaphorical for death, hell or purgatory – all of which they emphatically denied.

So six seasons in with a huge, hooked audience, LOST was coming to an end.  TV promos asserted that we would have our questions answered and ABC was devoting four and a half hours to a recap and the finale.  (It should be noted that the finale included more commercials that the super bowl)

Season 6 stumbled at first with the mythos taking a huge turn.  The sole focus seemed to be on two characters introduced formally at the end of the Season 5 finale. Jacob and the Man in Black, whom we would learn to be his twin brother.  Jacob dressed in white, MIB in black.  Jacob whose touch protects the castaways from MIBs schemes.  MIB who impersonates the dead, pulling heartstrings to achieve his ‘nefarious’ goal. Good and evil?  Right and wrong?  Too obvious?

We would learn late in the season that roughly 2000 years ago their shipwrecked mother gave birth to them on the island.  She was then quickly killed by another woman who raised the boys as her own, granting them some sort of immortality and the inability to kill each other directly.  The feud growing up boiled down to this:  Jacob wanted to live on and protect the island from harm/destruction.  MIB merely wanted to leave the island.  Jacob stopped him, MIB was enraged that his murderous step-mother wouldn’t allow them to leave and killed her.  Jacob gets mad at MIB and throws him into the heart of the island where he dies/changes into the smoke monster that has hunted the castaways for 6 seasons.  The castaways came to the island because Jacob who also wanted to leave the island needed to find a replacement ‘protector’ of the island.  So he had previous left the island to ‘touch’ them to protect them from harm by MIB… hey… wait a minute… did you catch that?  Jacob who wants to leave the island but cannot, LEAVES the island to ‘tap’  candidates to replace him.

Who was watching the light cave then?  You see where this is going, right?

It seems the only thing Jacob needed to protect was the heart of the island so that his brother, MIB, couldn’t destroy the island to get off the island.  Yep – the very same brother who just wanted to leave.  No harm, no foul.  So Jacob himself has created the very reason he has to protect the island.  Prior to that the only reason to protect the island was … what?  Remember according to the recap show this is 2000 years ago.  Even in the late 1960's - 70's all the Dharma folks wanted to do was research the island as a possible means for energy.

Oh.. and time travel apparently, but they dropped that subplot.

Or perhaps teleportation….(Ben Linus in the desert anyone? Polar bears?) Which they neither explained or resolved.

Deep breath… not to worry… the finale will cover all that, right?

Everything seemed to be rather on track for a fantastic ending and I had renewed hope. About an hour in I thought, “This is really cool in seeing the cast reunited in the ‘flash-sideways’ story, but they’re not really answering any questions.  This seems to be more of an emotional pull than closure to the story.”

I was tracking fans’ responses on the Official LOST fan page on Facebook.  When the credits rolled, people fell into three distinct camps:

1.     I cried the whole way through – thanks LOST!

2.     Huh?  I don’t get it (aka I am still LOST)

3.     EXPLETIVES in all caps and extreme anger and a feeling of betrayal

As a friend on Facebook would comment when it was all over: “emotionally stirring, intellectually failing.”

I was really disappointed… but it’s just a TV show.

These are the reasons I explained to my wife why I thought it was a terrible finale:

1.     The ‘resolution’ mainly tied into season 6… and not really the other seasons

2.     Unanswered story questions… and there are a LOT.

a.     If Dharma was shut down in the 80’s who did the food drops to the Oceanic survivors in 2004?  What type of aircraft did they have access to?

b.     Where did the polar bears come from in Season 1?

c.      Did it really take Jacob roughly 1900 years to come up with, or make this plan work?  Um – Ben Linus sure wanted the job of being Protector of the Island – just let him!  None of the other Dharma folks, or Others qualified?

d.     How can the Dharma folks come and go to this ‘un-find-able’ island whenever they want?

e.     Why can’t women get pregnant on the island?

f.      Why was Walt so ‘psychically special’ that the Others wanted him off the island pronto?  What ever happened to him?

g.     Why and how could certain Others leave the island whenever they wanted but it was anathama for MIB to even want to leave?  If MIB was just a human wanting live a normal life OFF the island WHO CARES if he leaves???  Why will his leaving destroy the world??  If he is really Satan, or the embodiment of ALL evil in the universe, you need to tell us plainly.  We are left thinking that Jacob was just lying.

h.     Why were the children abducted?  What happened to them?

i.       Who built the massive Egyptian god idol?

j.       Why was there a temple?  Who built it?  Why?

k.     How did the “others” in roughly 20s-30s AD know they could harness the power of the glowing core of the island?

l.       If Jacob really looks like this: 

http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Charles/lost-jacob.jpg

Then who was this guy in the cabin http://interlost.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/jacob.jpg
identified as Jacob and why was he asking Locke to help him?

A bunch more are listed here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2010/05/23/2010-05-23_abcs_unanswered_lost_questions_from_the_end_finale_to_be_resolved_in_season_six_.html

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Unanswered_question

The good news here though is that Cuse and Lindelof claim that anything unanswered at the series finale will be answered on the Season 6 DVDs.
Marketing genius.  Storytelling extortion.

I’m not even going to mention rabbit trail plotlines that seemed to be of major significance, but really just helped fill episodes for the bulk of a season.

3.     The Season 6 sideways story:  Turns out in this storyline they were all dead and created their own ‘purgatory’ like reality until they could all find each other again, remember what they experienced and then ‘move on’ to heaven? 

WHAT?! Give me a break!
This is the EASY out:  They all died, waited for one another in limbo and then once reconciled to each other they all went to heaven.

That would be like if Star Wars said one of it’s main protagonists was born of a virgin… oh wait… nevermind.

It’s just too easy for the writers… and what about all those assurances they gave us?  So everything that happened on the island was real – but the sideways story – there it’s OK to cheat?

Even if that’s the case – where are Walt, Michael and Ecko?  You know – Ecko – the major character who embodied a genuine faith and a soul that repented of a previous life of evil.  The guy who wanted to build a church on the island, baptized some characters and was gracious, strong and self-sacrificing?  He doesn’t get to go to heaven in the LOST universe? Major characters don’t get to ‘move on’ too?  But minor ‘fan faves’ like Shannon & Boone do?  What about Nikki & Paolo????  Why is Rose the only African American cast member that gets to “move on”?

Why did Walt and Michael still make miraculous appearances on the island after they left?

The whole “all faiths” church was unnecessary.  If you’re going to be that pluralistic, don’t use a church.

Here’s an idea:  What about – Jack sacrifices himself in the “glowing cave” heart of the island by putting the stone back which causes a massive EMP destroying the island.  A time shift is caused by this event which allows the characters to land safely this time at LAX (the sideways story) and go on with life.  Once Desmond ‘remembers’ he starts the quest to find each member  of the Oceanic flight so they can all remember their time on the island and finally reconciled.  They then move ahead in life, fully aware of their time on the island and have now been given a second chance at life, and the island is destroyed.  Or don’t destroy the island – but don’t kill off your entire cast and make us sit through some New Age mumbo jumbo, cast party ending.

Roger Ebert's review for "the Village" is appropriate for the LOST finale:

"To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets."

I think I hear the Dallas theme playing.

V – the 2009 reboot

I’m gonna be shameless here – I was totally enthralled by the original 80’s mini-series “V”.  It broke during the heyday of Return of the Jedi, Buck Rogers on TV and the space shuttle’s inauguration; an era when space stuff was very cool to a lot of us adolescent boys.

The suspense was great and the revelations stunning (a bit cheesy at times looking back – but stunning nonetheless) – I won’t spoil them here.

So when I heard that ABC was re-booting the series I wasn’t sure if they could pull it off… but I think they are on the right track so far.

The pilot was good – a bit bumpy with some bad dialogue (“Down on one knee is a classic”, “You rock”…seriously?) and wooden acting in a few scenes – but overall good.

Sadly they jumped the gun on the reptilian reveal – even the brief glance was too quick. 

This pilot should have been a 2-hour premier event that stretched out the suspense and built us toward something amiss – not the reveal that quick.  Same can be said for Erica’s partner.  Too quick.

My predictions for future Visitor reveals – the old priest and Brandon (Tyler’s friend).  They’re just set up way to good not to be.

I think it is interesting that planned or not, we meet attractive, charismatic, pseudo-saviors who arise on the scene when the world needs them most.  They like total control over the media and come promising universal health care.  Yet they are not what they appear.

Am I saying this bears any resemblance to current politics? 

I’m just sayin’ is all.

"We are of Peace. Always."

(All they are saying is give peace a chance.) ;)

In essence they are saying 'we are here to provide for you and make life better, we are coming in peace and that is always our M.O. - so trust us'   But behind closed doors they are about domination, they are about control.

I'm just sayin' is all.

I was chatting with a friend Jeff recently about alien themed media.  We had seen the movie “Knowing” together and he was telling me about the movie “The 4^th Kind”, which based on his comments I now want to see.  Those coupled with “V” present a common consistent message:  The Bible and Christ specifically are not to be trusted – the notion of panspermia, and that our possible only ‘hope’ lies in the benevolence of Visitors from beyond.  In fact much of "The 4th Kind" looks suspiciously like a movie about demon exorcism.  A growing number of UFOlogists say they are no longer convinced that these beings are from across the galaxy, but from are inter-dimensional beings.  IF vast distances are no longer the issue - then intent is.

I love that fact that one of V’s main characters in this reboot is a priest struggling to come to terms with how V’s fit in with Scripture. (For the sake of avoiding comments and dissertations on Ezekiel’s wheel – let me remind us all that Ezekiel’s vision was about the supremacy of God – not what the wheel looked like or whether it was a UFO – it wasn’t.) Finally, a person of faith who is not portrayed as a complete dunce! And I thought the artistic choice to show the crucifix falling and shattering to pieces was a perfect visual of the V’s intent – they have come as savior’s to displace any other savior – yet their plan is domination and decimation.  And in the first episode we literally see people on their knees with arms raised in worship to the 'motherships' above the city.

And the questions people of faith are asking on the show…?

“I’ve been doubting God”

“Are the V’s angels or demons?”

“Is everything I believed a lie?”

It is interesting to note that UFOlogists also indicate this is a consistent message of those who have been ‘contacted’ by ‘aliens’.  Odd that it is never Mohammed, or Buddha, or the Upanishads – only Jesus.

“The thief comes only to kill and steal and destroy,” Jesus said.  I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

In context of the show…. fitting.

I can’t wait to see how the rest of the series plays out.  How the resistance is built and how the defector V’s fit in. And you know that the alien baby subplot has to come back – it will be interesting to see that reveal along with a full reptilian head. I’m bummed that we have just one more episode in 2009 and have to wait until spring for more.

And until then… the Fifth (V) Column says ‘hello...’