…Too Much, Let Me Sum Up

2012 is almost over, and for my last post of the year, I'm going to recap some of the highlights of my year in blogging and the some of the highs and lows in movies and television that I've written about.

First, there was a trio of posts that attracted more attention than anything else I wrote this year. Please note that I had to disqualify a couple of content-light posts that were targeted by bots and a review of "We Need to Talk About Kevin," that was only grabbing hits because people were misremembering the title. In third place, My Top 10 Episodes of "Community." It's been a rough year for the NBC sitcom, but it has a lot of loyal fans out there. In second, Piling on Rex Reed, evaluating the backlash against film critic Rex Reed after the publication of his embarrassing, error-filled dismissal of "Cabin in the Woods" back in April. However, the clear winner this year was How to Fix the MPAA Ratings System, where I laid out a couple of broad suggestions for how to improve the problematic American film rating system, using comparisons to systems in other countries.

However, I should note that none of the hit totals for these posts comes remotely close to the traffic still being generated by my Guys Like "My Little Pony," and That's Okay post from last year. I don’t understand the fascination, honestly, but if people are still getting something out of it, I'm not one to complain.

To date, there are still around fifty films on my "to watch" list, mostly foreign and independent films. Also, I haven't been making it out to the theaters these past few weeks as much as I'd have liked – I haven't even seen "The Hobbit" yet. However, from what I've seen so far, my favorite films of the year so far are Lincoln, The Master, "Amour," Cabin in the Woods, The Life of Pi, Bernie, Pitch Perfect, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Damsels in Distress, and "Your Sister's Sister." Though I'm a little behind on recent movies at the moment, I've been able to go out to theaters more regularly than I have in a long time, as often as once a week during some months.

2012 has been a strong year for movies, and the upcoming awards season is going to be very exciting and probably infuriating. However, the most pleasant surprise I had this year was Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, which was not only better than the first two "Madagascar" movies, but DreamWorks Animation's best feature since "How to Train Your Dragon." On the other side of the coin, all I wanted out of "Premium Rush" was a fun, silly action movie, but what I got was a downright incompetent mess that made a pair of my favorite actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon, look like a pair of twits. And then there was Dark Shadows, the result of Tim Burton's latest collaboration with Johnny Depp. It was a film of so many good intentions and such terrible, terrible results. Fortunately, "Frankenweenie" showed enough of Burton's old spark to suggest he's not totally done for as a director.

Television this year was an odd experience, because there's so little that I'm watching live anymore, and I'm at least a season behind on many shows I fully intend to watch eventually. I didn't make much of an effort to stay current with the television of 2012 aside from reviewing the new pilots. The returning shows that I did keep up with and enjoyed included Mad Men, Community, Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, and Alphas. At the top of the list of promising newcomers I'll be watching once they hit DVD are HBO's Girls and Veep. As for disappointments, I have to say that the second season of Game of Thrones was well below expectations, and really labored under the strain of its multiple storylines and ever-expanding cast. However, easily the worst television I watched this year was NBC's Coverage of the London Olympics, which was so aggravating that I don't know if I'll bother watching any of the future games while NBC has the rights to them.

Finally, I leave you with some of my favorite analysis posts that I wrote this year. These weren't the most popular or the most topical pieces, but they were the ones that I thought came out the best, and that I enjoyed researching and putting together the most.

China v. Television
Where Are the Female Directors? In Television!
Trailers! Trailers! The Vintage Edition
The Death of Internet Authorship
Where in Hollywood's History Are We?
Playing the Top Ten Game
To Ray Bradbury
Tales From Development Hell
Filing Off the Serial Numbers
Measuring up Music Videos

Thanks for reading. See you next year.
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