2009 on screen

I have blogged recently about how 2009 was not (in my own opinion) a particularly great year for music, but it was probably a much better year for movies and TV than several of the last few have been. In movies, I got to the cinema quite a bit, and enjoyed the following:

'Star Trek' - even as a fervent 'Wars-not-Trek' person I found this huge fun
'Terminator salvation' - I actually enjoyed, with pretty cool se4ttings and action, but not up to those that preceeded (even the third)
'The hurt locker' - hugely powerful, but perhaps not as overwhelmingly great as many critics said
'District 9' - very good but not in a huge rush to see it again (my review is here)
'In the loop' - favourite of the year, and much more below
'Up' - sweet, funny and really well done
'Avatar' - actually really liked it but for the Aliens-nostalgic scenes more than anything
'Public enemies' - very good but not as good as the book from parts of which it was taken
'Inglorious basterds' - liked quite a lot and reviewed it here

I did find 'Paranormal activity' very effective and scary and just different to the usual type of horror movie of recent years, and was a very good value use of the coffee budget on 'Avatar':

As usual, Mark Kermode's podcast guided me fairly well through the morass of movies to that which was worth the money, even if I ignored him sometimes. For example, I did find '2012' to be big bumb fun, because that, in some ways, are what movies are for - jaw-dropping moments where things are shown to you or thrown at you which are so far from everyday life that you cannot help but go 'wow', even as your inner brain knows it is crap; special effects can do stuff, and sometimes that stuff can be simultaneously incredibly stupid but yet gut-clecnchingly escapist, and that's got its place too, surely?

On DVD, the move of the year was 'In bruges', on which I will have a separate blog post soon. Other movie highlights were 'Doubt' (really surprised me as I was expecting worthy but dull and found it really intense and watchable), 'Fifty dead men walking' (a good thriller), 'Frost/Nixon' (liked a lot but not sure how badly I would want to see it again), 'Slumdog millionaire' (yes, yes, I know I should have seen it in the cinema), 'Gran torino' (that man is just class, let's face it) and 'State of play' (both the BBC original and the inferior but still decent remake). I watched 'Man on wire' on a flight to Australia and was just blown away by it, and rewatched on DVD.

Overall, though, the big moments of the year for me were actually made for the small screen, as I tackled several box sets. I did not make much progress on 'Weeds' or 'Jericho', but plan to return one day, and am most of the way through series 1 of 'The wire'; in that case, I can see what is great about it, but do find it occasionally slow and confusing, but will persist regardless. Hell, I had no idea what was going on in most episodes of 'The west wing' and it was still incredible! I also watched a lot of 'Battlestar galactica', which I really like, although I do really feel it got a little too abstract, dark and pretentious for me somewhere around the start of the third series.

However, the big discovery of the year was 'The thick of it' (all episodes, plus the specials, plus 'In the loop', and all several times over) which is quite simply brilliant. The writing and acting are just incredible, and Malcolm Tucker is one of the most intensely immense creations ever. It is amazing how few people know and appreciate it, but maybe that just makes it that little bit more special.

On-screen moment of the year (any screen, any programme) has to be episode 7 of series 2 of 'The thick of it' when Tucker is out-manoeuvered and fired, and suddenly the laughter fades and intensity threatens to burn a hole in the TV screen. The last 5 minutes of that show must be among the most incredible acted scenes I have ever seen, with so many details (Nicola's confusion and indecision at being there at the moment, the Sky news btreaking news ticker tape behind Tucker's back, his secretary's tears, his storming out of Downing Street) - truly astonishing stuff which simply sucked my breath away and left me in a state of shock, albeit without a single computer-generated special effect involved. Now that is class!