This Year in Lumps
[2007]
A different attempt of a yearly summary than last years, which took way too long to put together. Here comes my highlights and memorable moments of the last 12 months, not everything was reviewed, but for more detailed reviews of those that I have included can be found by crawling back though the last years entries.
So I start with music:
Album of the Year
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Runner Up
Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts I–IV
“After pressing play, what follows is a deep and dark ride into the mind of one of the most naturally talented musicians and troubled minds of my generation. Bleak and barren may sound like harsh words to use, but it is meant in good faith; it’s an album that touches something you didn’t think NiN could do”
Honorable Mentions
REM – Accelerate
“This album is a big fat reminder that it’s still cool to like R.E.M., and anyone who lost faith in them at all this decade will need to buy this record, and pay it over and over until the hi-fi breaks, or until they are back in love with one of the finest rock and roll bands we’ll ever know”
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
Sigur Ros – Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
“A band that has the ability to make you so very happy and so very sad with the same song is a band that has to be recogised as one of the finest, purest, greatest bands currently in existence. This album is as tear jerking, heart-string squeezing, beautifully ambient as anything else they’ve released. Coldplay can only wish they were this good”
~
Film of the Year
The Dark Knight
“Watching Health Ledger on screen was mesmerizing, as he twitched and stumbled around Gotham with the faux innocence of Verbal Kint crossed with the obsession of John Doe from Se7en.”
“While someone, someday might make a better superhero movie, the bar has been set very, very high. ‘The Dark Knight’ isn’t just the best movie of the summer, it’s the best movie of the year so far, and everything else is going to have to try very, very hard to top it”
Runner Up
No Country for Old Men
“Some parts of the film are so heart-stoppingly tense and dramatic you wish more cinemas had mute buttons, or cushions to quickly duck behind. Maybe that’s me stretching the truth too far, because you can’t take your eyes away from this film for one second, no matter how much a toilet break is needed. Violent, thrilling but with a sense of patience, powerful, gripping yet poetic, and blackly funny, this film will stick in your head for many nights ahead”
Honorable Mentions
Son of Rambow
Iron Man
Be Kind, Rewind
Disappointing Films of the Year
Indy IV
Diary of the Dead
~
Computer Game of the Year
Little Big Planet
Runner Ups
Grand Theft Auto IV
Left 4 Dead
Disappointing Game of the Year
Spore
~
Tech Gadget of the Year
Google Chrome
“One of the selling points that caught my eye was Googles approach to ‘the occasional crashing website’. They admitted that, yes, websites can crash, but this shouldn’t hurt the whole browser, and they have designed Chrome so that if one tab is frozen, this shouldn’t drag the others down with it. I’m yet to experience this, it sounds like something that could really improve the whole browsing experience”
Runner Ups
iPhone 3G
“However the good points aren’t in shortage, in fact the whole ability of having email, Internet, phone and texts all available on such a small device is such a fabulous fabulous advancement in technology. Okay, so if you’ve owned a Blackberry before you may not be as bowled over, but Apple have marketed this phone at a worldwide audience, not just busy businessmen. Add to this GPS mapping, an iPod, an iTunes store to receive music for said iPod, a camera, and all the other little extras are such a fantastic addition, and although you may think you wouldn’t use them as often as you’d like, you may find that secretly, you actually will”
The Facebook redesign
“Love it or hate it, Facebook has been in dire need of a trim and tuck for a while, and I’m far from being the first to notice it, especially since the introduction of biting vampires, sheep throwing and all the other nonsense appeared last year. Despite being one of the most influential things for the youth of today, he layout hasn’t altered much from the days of being solely for skint, hungover students, and the recent application additions has magically turned it into some kind of technological Judy Finnegan – wonky, ill-fitting and not even remotely easy-on-the-eye”
Biggest Tech Let Down
Macbook Air
“Don’t get me wrong, It’s a very sexy piece of equipment. I fully expect the demand for this machine to be really strong; in fact, I’d be surprised by anything less. But was there ever a news item about the previous thinnest notebook? Highly unlikely. Apple have reached a stage where they can spin a great release with all the hype of a SuperBowl, and never fail to land on their feet. The truth is that the market will always be there: customers will always be interested in what they release, because of the companies great reputation, but stop and think for a minute, why do you need a really thin laptop? What benefits are you personally after that a slightly bigger (and more cost effective) laptop can’t provide? Are you really going to buy a 99p envelope and practise slipping it inside and then back out?
In fact, the only time you’ll be pushing it inside an envelope is when you’re mailing it in to them to replace the battery”
~
TV Show of the Year
Gavin and Stacey
Runner Ups
Top Gear
The Mighty Boosh
Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe
TV Surprise of the Year
X Factor
TV Disappointments of the Year
Heroes Series 2 … and 3
Mutual Friends
“It was half way through the 3rd episode that my interest really fell to the wayside, and my eagerness to do something else kicked in. It was also around this time of the show that I turned to my flatmate and announced “y’know, there’s absolutely no-one in this show I truly like, or want to like”, and that, sadly, is the shows main problem; In Friends, everyone was annoyingly likable in their own quirky, American way…
…The problem with Mutual Friends is that everyone is so horrible, self-centered, egotistical, over the top and, in the case of the men, thick, that they’ve gone from being a tad likable in the first episode to totally unbearable in the 3rd”
Britain from Above
“After a large dinner I’m ready to wind down in front of the TV with a nice, informative programme about Britain and what we can see from the sky. What I got instead was gritty Spooks-like stringed backing music playing behind a helicopter shot of Marr standing on a large building shouting down the camera something about “Britain as we very rarely see her”. He’s about as composed and welcoming as a sledgehammer to the kneecaps”
Last Choir Standing
Tonightly
Wogans Perfect Recall
So that’s that! Have a great 2009 everyone.
ttfn
x
