I did a meme

 I spent a good forty minutes on this so I'm not going to let it sink below the waves forever on your social medias.  It will live in perpetuity here, shrouded in glory and the knowledge that the text is a bit too small.

 

(yes I know the plural of media is media)

 

My Top 10 Films of 2020

 Bit late.  Blame Brexit.

My Top 10 Albums of 2020

 Usually number 1 would be disqualified from the list due to being a collection of re-recorded (and sometimes re-arranged) old pieces rather than a new studio album.  But it was head and shoulders above everything else and 2020's been enough of a headache without worrying about rules I made up myself.

Addendum to the addendum

Well, I shoved "Into the Unknown" out of my head but it got replaced by "Show Yourself", which is still resident.  Progress...?

On a related note, if you have access to Disney+ I implore you to check out their new series Into the Unknown: Making Frozen II.  If you're a massive geek like what I am, heck, even if you're not, it's a delight.  I love a good making of and such things are traditionally thin on the ground with Disney disc releases, so a whole series - 6 episodes, about forty minutes each, a good four hours' worth of content - is an unalloyed joy.  Quite apart from reminding you how much effort goes into these things (and a riposte to the feeling, which I admit to having myself at times, that a CG animation is somehow less involved and requiring of craft than a hand-drawn or stop-motion feature), it's surprisingly enthralling.  A good chunk of the first three episodes centres around whether (yes) "Show Yourself" will even make it into the movie, and it's riveting and weirdly tense even though you know exactly what'll happen.

Addendum

I wasn't wrong in my last post about "Into the Unknown".  I've listened to it twice within the last hour in an attempt to dislodge it from my brain and it ain't budging.

Arendelle boogaloo

I think I enjoyed Frozen II more on a second watch?  Certainly some bits were clearer.  The "Show Yourself" sequence is gorgeous but a little confusing the first go-around.

Now that I've done that I guess I've got another week of "Into the Unknown" stuck in my head.

Album name

My latest bored-during-lockdown idea: SPELL YOUR NAME WITH ALBUMS WOO

My Top Ten Movies of 2019

Usual rules apply: stuff from 2018 that I saw in cinemas in 2019 may have snuck on, stuff from 2019 that I haven't seen yet may end up on next year's list.

Burn the witch

I mentioned back in August how prescient William Gibson's book Virtual Light was.  I'm now reading the sequel, Idoru.  I'm on page 28 and we've already had digital fingerprints and how they tie into algorithms, TMZ and deepfake porn.

Basically what I am saying is William Gibson, where is your time machine and can I borrow it please.

National Album Day

This was prepared in response to a friend's request for personal top ten albums on Facebook and it seems like I can't paste it there.  I hate Facebook.  But I like the thing I made so here it is.

(all decisions are subject to change within one minute, except Bleed American because I think that'll always be my favourite album)

The world of tomorrow

I finished reading William Gibson's Virtual Light the other day.  Originally published in 1993, it successfully predicted:

• augmented reality
• drones (armed drones, no less)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger's move into politics
• a black President of the U.S. (admittedly that one was a popular take in '90s sci-fi, but still)
• the rise of couriers and the gig economy, admittedly presented as more a messenger than a delivery service, but hey

Not bad for under three hundred pages.

My Top 10 Albums of 2018

Listing things makes you appreciate them more, probably.

EDIT 7/1/19: Updated due to the fact that like an absolute berk I'd forgotten the Decemberists had an album out that I liked last year.  Well done me.

My Top 10 Films of 2018

Movies!  That I saw!  That I liked!  In an order!

Further evidence

Seriously, look at her go!  Even if having a five-stringer is slightly cheating in my eyes.

Slappin'

Under recent evidence, I think Misa from Band-Maid may actually be the best bassist working in rock at the moment.  Observe.

Sinny ma

I think this month might be the most I've ever been to the cinema.

Week 1: 2 movies (Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Post)
Week 2: 1 movie (Mary and the Witch's Flower)
Week 3: 1 movie (Ready Player One)
Week 4: 2 movies (The Shape of Water and Rampage)

For the record, Three Billboards is the best.  Well, I'm actually seeing Rampage in an hour but I suspect it won't be as good.  Still, you never know...

My Top Ten Games of 2017

And with this, I've run out of ideas for lists.

10. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Tried all the Uncharteds except 4, never got what the fuss was.  This, on the other hand, is a delight.

9.  Horizon Zero Dawn
Not actually got as far in this as I probably should have, because I keep getting distracted by making pretty pictures in the photo mode.  Still great when I remember to play the actual game though.

8.  Persona 5
Not got that far in this either (I think I'm getting giant-game-fatigue), but what I have played tells me this is special.

7.  Resident Evil VII: Biohazard
Discussed this already.  tl;dr - it's a welcome return to Resi of old, made fresh by the first-person perspective.

6.  Sonic Mania
Several levels are too long, about half the bosses are shite and more new designs would have been welcome.  But my goodness it's wonderful to have a properly, indisputably brilliant new Sonic game.

5.  Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
The fact that - gasp! - all the minigames are both comprehensible and enjoyable means that gameplay-wise this is the best Danganronpa yet.  Plotting's as excellent as ever, to the point that not even learning who the evil mastermind was before I started playing it didn't ruin it for me.

4.  Prey
Not quite as good as it should have been, but it has moments of brilliance, superlative world-building and is filled with more original ideas than it knows what to do with.

3.  What Remains of Edith Finch
Aptly described by some matey on Twitter as "WarioWare, but emotional", this game never stops pulling you up short.  The cannery sequence will linger in my mind for years to come.

2.  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo give the open-world concept a whirl and of course they master it straight off.  The most innovative Zelda since the first one - maybe the best?

1.  Life is Strange: Before the Storm
A prequel to a game that didn't need one by a completely different development team with none of the original voice cast returning.  This should have been wretched.  But it's absolutely brilliant and brings out more subtleties in the original game.  The sequence where you act in a production of The Tempest is my gaming moment of the year.

My Top Ten Albums of 2017

Yes.

10. Concrete and Gold - Foo Fighters

9. The Amazons - The Amazons

8. Whiteout Conditions - The New Pornographers

7. Still Hungry - DJ Format & Abdominal

6. Everything Now - Arcade Fire

5. Hug of Thunder - Broken Social Scene

4. Just Bring It - Band-Maid

3. Migration - Bonobo

2. Music from Before the Storm - Daughter

1. Something to Tell You - Haim

(I should point out that Daughter track's probably the weakest on the album but the only one I could find in full on the YouTubes.)

My Top Ten Films of 2017

It's the most wonderful time of the year!  The time that I point out that this list includes films from 2016 that I saw in the cinema in 2017 so they totally count, and also there are a bunch I didn't get round to so don't complain about the lack of Get Out, The Florida Project, The Big Sick, It, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Wonder Woman etc.

Root Letter

Finished my first playthrough of Root Letter this evening.  It's...interesting.

The fact that said first playthrough took about eight hours but I've had the game since it came out last autumn indicates the game's quality.  The writing (and I'm not sure if it's the original script or the translation) is frequently terrible to the point of being a) hilarious, b) incomprehensible or c) both, and the gameplay is similar.  While presented as a typical visual novel, it tries to ape the peerless Ace Attorney with investigation sequences and bits where you quiz characters, but they're so poorly done that you frequently end up employing a trial-and-error approach.  And as for the bizarre "Max Mode" sections where you basically have to press X at the right time to shout at someone with precisely the right amount of vigour...well.

And yet, I'm planning to go back and get the other endings, and eventually the true ending.

The base script may be frequently awful (although it does have its moments), but the overall story is excellent, and the characterisation is spot-on.  It's essentially a meditation on growing up - the core plot is that your character is trying to track down his penpal from his teenage years by using her old correspondence to identify her former classmates.  It might help that all the characters are close to my own age, but at times it really resonated as these well-rounded individuals reflected on their teenage years and how near or far they've stuck to their childhood goals.

It's also almost comically pretty.  The game's set in Matsue, the capital city of Shimane prefecture, and was apparently developed with the aid of the city's tourist board and dammit, it worked.  I definitely want to visit Matsue now.  (The soundtrack and voice acting are both very good, too.)

Basically, it's kind of successful at what it does.  But what it really needs is a good anime adaptation so you can skip the whole "game" bit.  In the absence of same, back to my save file to see the other endings I go.