Monday, January 12

7:30am / 6:30am – IFC – The Seventh Seal
One of Ingmar Bergman’s better-known films, though I don’t like it as much as some of his others. I guess the image of a medieval knight playing chess with Death is an image that’s hard to get out of your head, though.
(repeats 12:35pm EST)

9:15am / 8:15am – IFC – American Splendor
Paul Giamatti burst on the scene with this film about unconventional comic book artist Harvey Pekar. It’s an appropriately offbeat, funny, cynical, and yet warm film.
(repeats 2:35pm EST)

Tuesday, January 13

2:00am / 1:00am (14th) – TCM – Annie Hall
TCM’s playing this, one of Woody Allen’s best, a lot lately, and that’s not a bad thing. Must See

Wednesday, January 14

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – The Apartment
Also a frequent TCM film, but always worth another look. Tonight it’s part of a Jack Lemmon-Billy Wilder marathon. Must See

10:15pm / 9:15pm – TCM – Some Like It Hot
But if you only see one Jack Lemmon-Billy Wilder film, see this one. If you only see one Marilyn Monroe film, see this one (or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but I digress). If you only see one Tony Curtis film…you get the idea. Must See

Thursday, January 15

12:30am / 11:30am – TCM – Double Indemnity
And if you only see one Billy Wilder film, see THIS one. :) Still one of the most iconic and definitive film noirs ever made (seriously, when people ask you “what is film noir, anyway,” you could almost just say Double Indemnity – almost). Also provides Barbara Stanwyck another chance to be AWESOME. Must See

2:30am / 1:30am (16th) – TCM – Shaft
The original black private eye who got all the ladies. There was a huge wave of African-American-centric films in the 1970s (so-called blaxploitation films), and Shaft is one of the first and one of the best.

4:15am / 3:15am (16th) – TCM – The Big Sleep
I think I’ve already highlighted this one a few times since I started this post series. I don’t care. This is one of my favorite movies, the best hard-boiled detective film ever made, one of Humphrey Bogart’s best roles, and the best pairing of Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It’s full of win any way you look at it. Must See

Friday, January 16

6:15am / 5:15am – TCM – Thousands Cheer
There’s nothing particularly special about Thousands Cheer, a fairly routine 1943 war-time musical, except that it ends with a spectacular revue of MGM stars including June Allyson, Frank Sinatra (both in probably their first or second screen appearance), Virginia O’Brien, pianist Jose Iturbi, Judy Garland, and the actual stars of the picture, Gene Kelly and Kathryn Grayson.

6:20am / 5:20am – IFC – Fanny and Alexander
One of Ingmar Bergman’s later films; I haven’t seen it yet, but hopefully this will be the time that my DVR decides not to randomly delete it before I watch it. I know it’s about a couple of kids, which is an unusual subject for Bergman, but I’ve heard so many good things about it I can’t wait.
(repeats 12:25pm EST)

8:30am / 7:30am – TCM – National Velvet
Being as how I grew up loving old movies AND horses, I probably don’t need to state that I pretty much wore out my tape of National Velvet. It’s one of the greatest kid-friendly films in existence, with a young Elizabeth Taylor and an exciting horse race. Ah, good times.

Saturday, January 17

4:00pm / 3:00pm – TCM – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Paul Newman and Robert Redford in one of those late 1960s revisionist westerns that managed to simultaneously revitalize a genre whose traditional values were out of step with the times and kill the genre for future filmmakers. Well, that aside, Butch Cassidy is a great film any way you cut it.

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
What do you do when you’re seven brothers in the backwoods and need wives? Why, go kidnap them of course! Patriarchal values aside, Seven Brides is one of the most entertaining movie musicals ever made, and I defy anyone to outdo the barn dance/raising scene.

8:00pm / 7:00pm – IFC – Raging Bull
It’s a huge black mark on my cinephile record that I haven’t seen Raging Bull, widely acclaimed as a high point (or maybe THE high point) in the careers of both Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Situation will hopefully soon be rectified.
(repeats 1:30am EST and 11:30am EST on the 18th)

Sunday, January 18

6:00am / 5:00am – TCM – Arsenic and Old Lace
The Brewster sisters are kindly old ladies – even if they are poisoning lonely old gentleman callers. As an act of kindness! Such is the premise of one of the screwiest of all comedies, which never lets up on the hilarity. Cary Grant turns in one of his most sustained comic performances, and even the usually quite serious Peter Lorre gets in on the fun.

10:15am / 9:15am – TCM – Notorious
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films (and if you know how I feel about Hitchcock, that’s saying a lot), and one of the greatest spy films ever. Spy Cary Grant recruits Ingrid Bergman because of her relationship with suspected enemy spy Claude Rains – but how far is she willing to go? Simply fantastic on every level. Must See

12:35am / 11:35am – TCM – The Cameraman
Buster Keaton works as a cameraman on a film to try to get closer to the attractive leading lady. I’ve seen this years ago, and remember enjoying it quite a lot. Plus, any chance to see Keaton is a chance worth taking.

directed by Baz Lurhmann
starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman
Australia/USA 2008; screened 29 November 2008 at AMC Theatres

I admit that I haven’t read many reviews of Australia in toto, but the snippets I have read and the general critical feeling indicates that most critics didn’t think it was very good. At all. And in fact, in many ways, they’re right. Australia is a mess. But it’s a gorgeous, sloppy, enjoyable mess.

Australia is not the great epic of the Australian people, or indeed, a great epic at all. It is not a particularly innovative piece of filmmaking. It is not indicative of a specifically Australian filmmaking sensibility, nor a very strong example of Baz Lurhmann’s own flamboyant filmmaking style. There’s a bit of a sense of failed ambition hanging about the film, because you can tell Lurhmann wanted at least some of those things to be true, especially the first one.

An English noblewoman travels to Australia to get her husband to sell his plantation there and return to England. Instead, her husband is killed and she stays on to run the plantation with the help of an Australian cowboy known only as Drover (because that’s what he is, a cattle drover). Meanwhile, she takes a young aboriginal boy under her protection. Lurhmann’s attempt to bring together a uniquely Australian family pulled from each of Australia’s roots (English, aboriginal, and outback drifters) is obvious to an extreme, which is part of why it fails as a national epic – it’s too calculated.

In addition to the overdetermined theme, the film suffers from tonal inconsistency. It can’t decide whether it’s a farce (the first half-hour is full of Luhrmann-esque quick close-ups and exaggerated facial expressions, as if he wanted to remind us that he’s the one who directed Moulin Rouge before settling into a much more staid style for the rest of the film), western, romance, war, family drama, elegy, social rights message picture, travel brochure or national epic. The western and war sections, especially, are so divisively separated that Lurhmann might have been better off making two films instead of one.

But even after that laundry list of defects, and I could think of more if I wanted to, I can’t get past how much I plain enjoyed watching the film, and I would go see it again in a heartbeat. It’s old-fashioned classic filmmaking in the Hollywood tradition. I hate to keep bringing up David Bordwell’s The Way Hollywood Tells It all the time as if it’s the only film theory book I’ve ever read, but it’s applicable here again – elements in the narrative are carefully placed so as to lead the audience to expect certain things to happen, and they do. So yes, it’s predictable, but satisfyingly so. Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman play their characters as larger-than-life mythic figures rather than real people, because that’s what they are. Kidman especially works in her role not because she turns in an outstanding acting performance (she’s done that far better in other films), but because she channels old Hollywood star quality so well when she lets herself.

I’ll grant you I’m a sucker for westerns, and I definitely loved that part the best – there’s nothing revisionist about it, and the first half of the film could easily have been made during the golden age of westerns, full of gorgeous vistas, sweeping music and laconic hero figures. Then, suddenly, World War II starts, and it’s almost a whole different movie, which I didn’t like quite as much as the western, though it’s not particularly bad.

So Australia is a mess, yes, trying to pack too many varied things into one film that never quite meshed into a cohesive whole. But it was a very comfortable-feeling mess, and I unabashedly loved watching it. As a compromise between knowing it’s nowhere near objectively good and my subjective love for it, I give it an Above Average.

[Weird side note - according to IMDb, the aspect ratio is 2.35:1, but I would've sworn I saw it in 1.85:1. Anyone else see it in the narrower ratio, or was I just on crack? I even made a note about it in my notebook at the time, that it seemed odd to shoot an epic in 1.85:1.]

You know, there’s no excuse for this lateness. I just need to write these earlier. It’s not like the networks don’t have their schedules up weeks in advance. Again, though, there was nothing on Monday worth noting anyway.

Tuesday, 6 January

9:45pm / 8:45pm – TCM – The Fallen Idol
A murder mystery unusually told through the eyes of a child. The “idol” of the title is a butler, highly regarded by his employer’s lonely young son. When the butler’s wife (generally a shrewish woman that neither the butler nor the son particularly like) meets an untimely end, the boy is certain she was murdered – but how badly may he have misconstrued what he’s seen? It’s a simple plot, but the point of view and how it changes the way we react to the events in question is astoundingly well done. Written by Graham Greene.

3:45am / 2:45am (7th) – TCM – The Third Man
Also written by Graham Greene, and much better known – in fact, most film buffs will place The Third Man among the best films ever made.

Wednesday, 7 January

9:45pm / 8:45pm – TCM – Mister Roberts
A comic sea drama, with a great cast including Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon, in the first film that got him noticed (his character Ensign Pulver even got an eponymous sequel).

9:45pm / 8:45pm – IFC – Miller’s Crossing
The Coen Brothers take on the gangster film, and do so very adeptly. As they do nearly everything adeptly. Not that I’m complaining.
(repeats 4:15am EST on the 8th)

Thursday, 8 January

7:50am / 6:50am – IFC – The Importance of Being Earnest
Whatever you may think of Oscar Wilde’s personal life, the man wrote some of the most hilarious and trenchant plays ever, and this 2002 version of his most famous is a worthy adaptation. Rupert Everett plays Algy with dripping sarcasm, while Colin Firth’s Jack is, well, earnest.
(repeats 2:45pm EST, and 5:05am EST on the 9th)

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – On the Town
Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin are sailors on leave in New York City; once they meet up with Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett, and Ann Miller, they’re in for one of the greatest movie musicals ever made. It’s also the first major musical shot on location, so there’s that for your historical tidbit archive.

9:45pm / 8:45pm – TCM – Anchors Aweigh
Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra made good sailors, apparently; before On the Town they weighed anchor in Anchors Aweigh. (*groan* I apologize for that.) It’s not quite the quality of the later film, but it’s fairly solid as MGM musicals go. Plus, Gene dances with Jerry the Mouse in an early live-action-animation combination.

Friday, 9 January

10:00am / 9:00am – Fox Movie Channel – My Darling Clementine
One of the best cinematic depictions of the Wyatt Earp-Doc Holliday saga that led to the OK Corral shootout (though Tombstone holds its own); it actually focuses more, as the title indicates, on Earp’s romantic relationships. In the hands of John Ford, however, this is better than it sounds. In fact, it’s pretty darn good.

4:00pm / 3:00pm – TCM – The Caine Mutiny
Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg is a piece of work, and by that I mean some of the best work Bogart has on film. He’s neurotic, paranoid, and generally mentally unstable. Or is he? That’s the question after first officer Van Johnson relieves him of duty as being unfit to serve and faces charges of mutiny.

6:15pm / 5:15pm – TCM – Key Largo
It’s bad enough to be stuck in the Florida Keys with a hurricane coming on, as Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Lionel Barrymore are in this film. But being threatened by gangster Edward G. Robinson at the same time? That’s just too much. Or, from the audience’s perspective, just the right amount.

Saturday, 10 January

7:30am / 6:30am – TCM – Little Caesar
Warner Bros. invented the gangster film in the early 1930s with a set of gritty, “torn from the headlines” films that usually ended with the gangster getting their comeuppance, but yet retaining the audience’s sympathy. Little Caesar established Edward G. Robinson as one of the major gangster actors; the other was James Cagney (see The Public Enemy below).

10:00am / 9:00am – IFC – Millions
Danny Boyle has a way of making very simple stories into something special, and this is no exception. A young British boy finds a bag with millions of pounds in it; the catch is that Britain is days away from switching to the euro, so the money will soon be worthless. The shifting ethical questions combined with a sometimes almost Pulp Fiction-esque style and a fascinating religious backdrop (I’m still not sure where he was going with that) at the very least means an intriguing couple of hours.
(repeats 3:00pm EST)

12:00pm / 11:00am – TCM – Dodge City
Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland made eight films together between 1935 and 1942. This is nowhere near the best. However. It has one of the best barroom brawl scenes in any film ever, and is a decent western outside of that scene. But I love me some barroom brawl scenes, so there you go.

8:00pm / 7:00pm – TCM – Dinner at Eight
The best example of a 1930s MGM ensemble drama is Grand Hotel. Dinner at Eight is the best example of a 1930s MGM ensemble comedy, and it’s held up far better than its overwrought cousin over the years. You got two Barrymores (Lionel and John), Jean Harlow (one of her top couple of roles), Wallace Beery (fresh off an Oscar win), Marie Dressler (forgotten now, but also just a recent Oscar winner at the time), and others converging for a dinner party. Sparkling dialogue is the real star here.

3:00am / 2:00am (11th) – TCM – The Public Enemy
Famous for the scene where James Cagney smashes a grapefruit into Mae Marsh’s face, it’s one of the gold standards of early gangster films, along with Little Caesar and Howard Hawks’s Scarface.

Sunday, 11 January

9:35am / 8:35am – IFC – Umberto D
Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic about an aging man struggling to live on his meager pension in post-war Rome. Doesn’t sound like a lot, and granted, not a lot happens. But by the end, you’ll have extraordinary sympathy for gentle Umberto and his dog. Oh, and a fantastic performance by non-actress Maria Pia Casillio – she offered to take acting lessons for the part but De Sica forbade her. Good choice.

10:00pm / 9:00pm – IFC – Amores Perros
I was really disappointed in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s latest film, Babel, and Amores Perros is a large part of the reason why. Because, see, Amores Perros is a perfect example of the multiple interlocking stories/themes filmmaking conceit. The stories are loosely tied together by the various protagonists’ relationships with dogs (the title roughly translates to “Love’s a Bitch”), and by a car crash. But the themes are handled subtly and have to be teased out, not like the anvil-thwaking that Inarritu reduced himself to in Babel. See this one instead, folks.

As per usual, I haven’t seen enough 2008 releases to be justified making a Best of 2008 list, so here is my much more egocentric list of my favorite movies that I saw during 2008, no matter when they were released. And I threw in books, music, and games, with the same caveat. The links go to my reviews, reactions, or other previous writings about them. The non-linked ones I, uh, didn’t write about. Because I am lazy. So I’ll throw in a line about them, but I may still write about the more in the future. Or not. Because I am lazy.

Oh, and also, don’t even think these are lists of bests. They’re lists of favorites, 100% subjective. And highly subject to change.

FILM

LOVED

Cleo from 5 to 7 (imdb) – A New Wave film from a female director (Agnes Varda). It’s an excellent combination.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Sunrise
Wall-E (imdb) – edit: I managed to forget this one upon publishing this post. BAD JANDY. A breathtakingly beautiful, heartwarming but not maudlin, and prescient sci-fi animated film. Virtually perfect in every way.
Divided We Fall
Easy Rider

The Fall (imdb) – A dazzlingly imaginative film set partly in war-torn Spain and partly in the story a dying soldier tells a young girl. Not as cohesive as Pan’s Labyrinth, but very much in the same vein.
Kicking and Screaming
All That Jazz
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Speed Racer (imdb) – One of the most criminally underrated films of the year. A visionary expression of sensory overload and invention. Plus, shiny!
I Walked With a Zombie
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Planet Terror

REALLY LIKED

I’m Not There
Rachel Getting Married (imdb) – Fantastic acting and script. Just misses being in the “Loved” section because I could strangle Jonathan Demme for misusing the shakicam.
The Savages
Orpheus
Werckmeister Harmonies (imdb) – Director Bela Tarr is known for using reaaaallllly long takes, and he does. But the slow pacing soon becomes mesmerizing and stunningly beautiful.
Iron Man
The Dark Knight (imdb) – I’m sorry, but I have to say I think The Dark Knight is a little overrated. Ledger is fantastic, and the Joker is the best villain the movies have seen in a long time. But I pretty much can’t remember ANY of the scenes without him.
Go
All the President’s Men
Repulsion

Burn After Reading (imdb) – The black humor Coens return in force (and farce) here. It’s nothing like No Country, but it’s an over-the-top great time.
The Innocents (imdb) – This should’ve been in my Month of Horror post; don’t know how I forgot it. Very well-done quiet (maybe) evil kid horror film based on The Turn of the Screw.
Them!
Let the Right One In
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (imdb) – Perhaps a movie about hipsters running around New York City in search of an elusive band is just made for me. Granted, it’s slight, but it’s really enjoyable.
Australia (imdb) – There are admittedly a lot of tonal problems with Australia, but I enjoyed watching every second of it.
Tell No One (imdb) – A man’s wife is murdered…or is she? When he starts seeing her and hearing from her years later, it quickly becomes clear there’s much more going on in this twisty French thriller.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Transsiberian (imdb) – A couple travels from China via the Transsiberian Railway, but gets pulled into trouble by a couple of young drifters. A solid thriller with a good twist or two.
Shaft (1971) (imdb) – I saw Samuel L. Jackson’s remake a few years ago. As cool as Sam Jackson is, he WISHES he were as cool as Richard Roundtree, the original iconoclastic black private eye facing off with Harlem and Italian gangsters and the NYPD.
Night of the Living Dead

Saawariya (imdb) – This fairy-tale Bollywood film is extremely stylized and imaginative – one of the more interesting Indian films I’ve seen so far. They’re always visually sumptuous, but this one takes it to a whole new level.
The Flower of My Secret (imdb) – Pedro Almodovar film similar to All About My Mother in tone. Not as good, but still very worthwhile.
Synecdoche, New York (imdb) – I can’t do this one justice in a few sentences. I’m still working out in my head what I think about it. The best quote I’ve seen about it, though, is from Roger Ebert: “a film that should never be seen unless you’ve already seen it at least once.”
Les bonnes femmes
Atonement
Village of the Damned (imdb) – Evil alien children take over a rural English town. It’s way better than it sounds, a classic old-school British horror flick.
My Blueberry Nights (imdb) – Wong Kar-Wai’s first English-language film is a visually beautiful odyssey following a girl as she tries to find out what she wants. I’m excited to see his other films now, which I’ve heard are better.
Sunshine
Metropolitan
Some Came Running (imdb) – Frank Sinatra gets to prove his acting chops again as a cynical soldier returning to his small-town home. Shirley MacLaine is a revelation, and Dean Martin gets probably his best role, as well.
Lars and the Real Girl

Ace in the Hole (imdb) – Reporter Kirk Douglas will do anything to get a good story, even keeping a trapped miner trapped as long as he can to increase the media frenzy. It’s Billy Wilder, so you know it’s going to be solid, and it is.
Two-Lane Blacktop
The Body Snatcher
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Isle of the Dead
Do You Like Hitchcock (imdb) – This Dario Argento film has a film student getting involved with a murder that bears a close resemblance to Strangers on a Train; the overall film also had plenty of Rear Window and I like to think a little Vertigo in there.
Be Kind, Rewind
Leatherheads
Shadows (imdb) – John Cassavetes’ first film, and often hailed as the beginning of American independent film. Touches on show business, youth, and sibling rivalry, but the tough look at 1960s racial issues is the most interesting aspect.
In Bruges (imdb) – I expected a comic action film, and it is that sometimes, but it’s also got a huge dose of thoughtful philosophy in there, as two hitmen go to Bruges (read: Purgatory) to wait out a botched job.

RECOMMENDED

Hannah Takes the Stairs
Lacombe, Lucien (imdb) – A young German boy falls into working with the Nazis during WWII, but finds his loyalties divided when he befriends a Jewish family – and falls in love with the family’s daughter. It’s a big tough at first to relate to the implacable boy, but there’s more here than meets the eye.
The Seventh Victim (imdb) – Val Lewton, occultism, missing sisters, overall creepiness – what more do you want?

Made in USA
The Blue Angel
Lola Montes (imdb) – Max Ophuls’ only widescreen, color feature about the rise and fall of a the title character in the courts of Europe is sumptuous, but a little distancing. Perhaps purposefully.
Paprika
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Lantana
Mickey One
Michael Clayton
The Cool World (imdb) – Another early independent film, this is the story of a young Harlem boy who thinks everything in his life would be better if he just had a gun, and thus some power and authority. Hard to see due to rights issues, so if you get the chance, jump on it.
I Am Legend
Papillon
Bottle Rocket
Ghost Ship

BOOKS

LOVED

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James – First thing I’ve read by James, and I was highly impressed. His mastery of depicting the interior life is a great foreshadowing of Modernism.
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons – Proof that graphic novels can be just as complex and well-written as traditional novels.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – The basis for my current revaluation of Hemingway, who I used to not like. But this one is great.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – A Victorian mystery, and with my general dislike of Victorian lit, I was shocked at how much I liked it. It’s perfectly written, and so much more than *just* a mystery.
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers – Similarly here, as this is technically a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, but the mystery is almost secondary to Sayers’ exploration of life at an Oxford women’s college, with side notes on feminism, class, and academia.

LIKED

Good Night Mr. Holmes by Carol Nelson Douglas – Douglas rewrites Sherlock Holmes from a woman’s point of view, making Irene Adler, the only person to outwit Holmes (in A Scandal in Bohemia), the heroine.
Alias Grace Margaret Atwood – Grace is a convicted murderess, shuttled between prison and mental institution; she tells her story to a sympathetic doctor who hopes to absolve her. But the truth of the matter is elusive, even to the reader.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Ichebe – A leader in an African tribe struggles with pride and the conflict between tribal customs and the incoming Christian missionaries. Achebe is known for being among the first to bring a truly African voice into English-language literature, and his minimalist style suits the story perfectly.
Spook Country by William Gibson

MUSIC

With music it’s more “these are what I’ve been listening to the most in 2008.” Although I think I did acquire all of these albums in 2008, even though several of them are from earlier. All 2006-2008, though, I think. I linked Music Monday or concert coverage posts where I had them; otherwise tacked on a MySpace link so you can hear them yourself.

LOVED

Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
The Submarines – Honeysuckle Weeks
Babyshambles – Shotters Nation (MySpace)
Mates of State – Rearrange Us
Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We are Doomed / Hold On Now, Youngster
Metric – Live It Out (MySpace)
Army Navy – Army Navy
Silversun Pickups – Carnavas
The Apples in Stereo – New Magnetic Wonder (MySpace)
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (MySpace)

REALLY LIKE

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes (MySpace)
We are Scientists – Brain Thrust Mastery (MySpace)
She & Him – Volume One (MySpace)
I’m From Barcelona – Who Killed Harry Houdini / Let Me Introduce My Friends (MySpace)
The Rosebuds – Life Like
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
The Fratellis – Here We Stand

GAMES

LOVE

Mass Effect
Bioshock – One of the most amazing stories and art direction in any game ever.
Bully – Like GTA, but at a boarding school. :) Not particularly innovative, but a blast to play.
Portal – The only problem with Portal is it’s too short! Fantastic puzzle game with a fun story to boot.
Fallout 3 – I’ve only played a few hours of this, but I can already tell it’s headed to the “loved” category. Looks fantastic and plays like Oblivion (aka, my fave game of all time).
Rock Band 2 – Not much different than Rock Band, but don’t fix what ain’t broken, and the improvements made are good. I just keeping coming back for more.

REALLY LIKE

Fable 2 – Does a nice job of improving on the first Fable, which was already good. The difficulty’s not perfect, though – I found I got through the whole main quest with very little leveling.
Guitar Hero: World Tour – The first Guitar Hero game that remotely gives Rock Band any competition, to my mind. I actually think the gameplay is a bit better, but the overall experience was less enjoyable.
Assassin’s Creed – Climbing up every building in town and running over rooftops never got old. The gameplay here is spectacular, but it’s not one I’d ever play again. Looking forward to seeing what the sequels do with the story, though.
Mirror’s Edge – Again, groundbreaking gameplay, once you get the hang of it. But I’m about halfway through and I’m already bored with the story and missions. Still, paves the way for potentially stupendous games in the future.
Lost Odyssey

I’m really proud to announce this new site design. It’s pretty huge. To me, anyway. This is the first one I’ve done completely from the ground up, not mashing together other themes or designs. That means that it’s pretty simple, but that’s okay. My main goal was simplicity and cleanness, with a header I can easily swap out as the whim strikes.

The most major thing is that the blog is now part of a larger site, instead of the blog BEING the site. So the blog is still at www.the-frame.com/blog, and you won’t have to update your links or RSS subscriptions or anything, but now if you go to www.the-frame.com you actually get a working site that matches the blog instead of a parked URL, which is basically what it was before. (Someday I may actually change the URL to jandysmeanderings or something, but I don’t feel like messing with domain names and everything right now.)

So, a tour.

• The home page has an excerpt from the blog, an excerpt from my tumblr (more on that in a sec), the featured video, a quote which I expect to change every now and again, my last few flickr photos, my Friendfeed feed, a music player with some current favorite songs, and my current reads/watches/games. It basically does what my old sidebar did, but less…vertically spread out.
• The blog is what it always has been, just with less gunk in the sidebar, because that gunk is on the front page. :)
• Tumblr is a great media-blogging/sharing platform that I’ve used sporadically for quite a while. I’ve always wanted to use it more because its media integration is great, and it’s perfect for sharing those little random things I’m always finding on the internet but don’t want to write a bunch about. But after various unsatisfying attempts at integrating it into blog sidebars, etc, I decided to just put it on my site – separate from my blog, but still integrated with the larger site. Generally, I’ll post stuff on Tumblr that I want to mention briefly or share but don’t want to write a whole blog post about.
• To subscribe to the blog, click here. To subscribe to the tumblr, click here. To subscribe to a combined feed of both, click here.
• The portfolio page will list the work I’ve done. So far it’s just a couple of personal blog designs and basic coding projects I did recently at work, but hopefully that will increase as time goes on.
• The about page talks about me. Me me me! Seriously, it’s pretty boring, but I hear people like sites with human beings behind them, so that’s my “I’m a human being” page.
• The contact page has a few ways to contact me through social networking sites, as well as a super-shiny ajax contact form! I’m so excited I got an ajax contact form to work that everyone should go contact me through it right now. I’m kidding. Don’t everybody do that. I mean, if you want to. But yeah, I didn’t write it because I don’t even know javascript, much less ajax, but I did style it some and GOT IT TO WORK. I felt accomplished, anyway.
• The Reviews & Articles and Wiki links lead to two of my other sites, one where I keep the academic articles I’ve written as well as archive the reviews I’ve written, the other a wiki I dabble with focused on (what else?) movies and books.
• The first banner for the site is, of course, the lovely Anna Karina – actress, muse, and some-time wife of Jean-Luc Godard. As my friend put it when she saw who I’d picked for the banner, “duh, you even name your gaming avatars after her.” And she’s not making that up.

So for anyone who might have noticed the sporadic questions on FriendFeed or other forums wondering how to do programming things or complaining about CSS not behaving right, this is what it was for, and I got almost everything to do what I wanted, aside from having to use a widget for the Tumblr excerpt on the front page because I’m not smart enough to tap into their API. Yet. :)

And if you notice something not working or behaving funky, please let me know. I did code this from ground up and I’m sure I did some stupid things, since I haven’t done that before. I did notice that the front page crashes Opera (the other pages seem to work), so if anyone has any idea why that is, please tell me! I don’t get much Opera traffic, but it’d be nice if it worked.