jumping on the bandwagon...

Here are my entertainment favorites from 2007...

1. So You Think You Can Dance -- hands down my favorite reality tv show, EVER.
2. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows -- yay for closure!
3. How I Met Your Mother -- quickly becoming one of my FAVORITE tv shows. My favorite episode of Season 3: "Spoiler Alert"
4. The re-release of My So-Called Life on DVD!
5. Internet broadcasting of TV shows -- special thanks to ABC (Pushing Daisies, Samantha Who), CBS (How I Met Your Mother) and The CW (Gossip Girl). My DVR is already working overtime and I can't record all the shows I want to watch along with all the shows Russ wants to watch, so it helps to be able to catch the shows on the computer. :)

Honorary Mentions: Pushing Daisies (favorite new tv show of the 2007-8 season), Twilight/New Moon/Eclipse (favorite new series), the writer's strike (gives me a chance to catch up on tv)

My favorites of 2007

Pretty much everyone who blogs about anything entertainment related likes to make "Best of" lists at the end of the year, but I don't think I'm really qualified to do that. I mean, I've probably only watched a total of less than 10 movies in theaters this year, I haven't been keeping up with new music very much as I would have liked, and the truth is that with the exception of TV, I'm just not a very immediate consumer of media. So these are my "favorites" and not "bests" of 2007.

TV
1. Friday Night Lights (season 1)
2. Gossip Girl
3. So You Think You Can Dance
4. 30 Rock (just caught up and realized how much it RULES)
5. Mad Men and Damages (tie)

Movies
1. Once
2. The Namesake
....aaaand I didn't see anything else that I found worth mentioning

Songs (released in 2007)
1. Blonde Redhead - 23
2. Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
3. Radiohead - All I Need
4. Tegan and Sara - The Con
5. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends

Songs (released before 2007 because most things get to me late)
1. Lavender Diamond - You Broke My Heart
2. Mates of State - For the Actor
3. Midlake - Roscoe
4. The Album Leaf - Always for You
5. Bright Eyes - I Will Be Grateful for this Day

Books (read in 2007, not necessarily released in 2007)
1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
3. Encylopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krause Rosenthal
4. Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
5. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Misc.
1. North & South on DVD
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 comics
3. Wonderfalls on DVD
4. Jane Eyre on Masterpiece Theatre
5. All things Anthony Bourdain

enchanted

So cute.
So good.
A very, very happy movie.

I wanna buy it when it comes out on DVD. :)

golden compass

The first mistake I made was re-reading the book *right* before the movie came out. I should've known better than to do that -- it didn't work with Harry Potter, it definitely wasn't going to work with this. But oh well, it's too late now.

The second mistake was expecting it to be good. Seriously, I was NOT a fan of this movie at all. Maybe I'm in the minority, (Rotten Tomatoes has it at 45%, so apparently reviews are split) but I really did not enjoy The Golden Compass AT ALL.

But here's the good: The actors/actresses were excellent and well-represented the characters as I imagined them. The daemons were created extremely well and I loved how they put to screen something I could barely grasp in my imagination. The world created was beautifully and fantastically created.

But the bad: The storyline strayed far from the book too often for my liking. And, in my opinion, the plot development was poorly done. Okay, I understand there's a lot in this book, too much for a 118 minute film, but seriously -- there were a lot of things that could've been left out and a lot of things that simply could've been included instead. PLUS, the movie wasn't even complete! It just ends of in the MIDDLE of the story! (Okay, not really, but I was still angry.) I know that this is an issue with trilogies in general -- that the story will inevitably be halted almost abruptly, but at the very least finish the journey of the golden compass! ::sigh::

Seriously, not a fan. (I asked my friends who I went with and the ones who hadn't read the book(s) felt the story was choppy, but the one who had read it a long time ago enjoyed it as is.)

Side note on the religious aspects of this film: Seriously, not all that present. The religious themes are a lot stronger in Books 2 and 3 of the series anyway, and I really think that the little in Book 1 was toned down A LOT in this movie.

Friday Night Lights leaving me a bit cold...

I know that every December is a hiatus month but with the strike and all it's been making me kind of extra sad hearing all the "[insert show here] will return with new episodes in the new year" announcements after shows...

So things I liked about our last new FNL for 2007:
- Everything with Jason. I'd been kind of unsure of where the writers were going with him, but I love him when he's around Herc, his scene with Lyla was really nice, and his date was hilarious. I'm glad he's moving out of his parents' house...and I'm glad that his parents are evidently supporting that decision.
- Everything with Riggins. That gymnastics scene cracked me up. Tim's one of those people who seems like they wouldn't care about anything except drinking but the way he lets himself really get into stuff like football and Powderpuff and girls' gymnastics is so funny. Also glad that the writers remembered that Coach Taylor is now the school's athletic coordinator.
- Everything with Buddy Garrity and Santiago. This storyline seems much more Season 1 to me because it's very football-centered, and about how football kind of has that power. I feel like we've really been missing that elsewhere.

And now for the things that I kind of hated:
- The wrap-up of the Landry/Tyra murder plot nightmare. I don't know, in a way I'm relieved that it's over, but the resolution was just...blah. The charges being dropped because of self-defense? I don't know a lot of about law but that doesn't seem exactly applicable. They filmed it in a way that made it seem kind of questionable and I don't know how Landry could have gotten off that easy. Plus what about his dad destroying evidence? I think this storyline has allowed the actors involved to give some really outstanding performances but I still hated it. I want funny Landry back. I want sassy, confident Tyra back.
- The Gracie christening storyline. I really liked that Coach and Mrs. Taylor were such smart parents last year, to both Julie and the other kids in school. But I feel there's been almost none of that this season...I get that the writers want to shake things up and all but Tami's been pretty annoying and Coach has been kind of a doormat. I didn't think that the family getting back to normal was all that convincing but I hope that it's true.
- Matt and Carlotta. Ugh. I hate when shows portray couples as being cute THAT AREN'T CUTE.

You know, I think I've finally realized what it is about this season that just seems off to me. Dillon doesn't feel like a small town anymore. I thought during the first season they did a pretty excellent job keeping all the storylines and characters tied together...a lot of times through football. But this season it seems like a lot of the characters are just sitting in their own little worlds. I was reading through the thread for this episode on TWOP and one of the posts really hit the nail on the head. Like, why does no one else in the town seem to know or care about Landry and the murder? Why hasn't Billy come looking for Tim? Why wouldn't Tim at least talk to Jason or Lyla about his housing situation? Why hasn't Lyla been continuing to help Santiago? Why haven't we seen the town react at all to the fact that the Panthers' defense has been apparently been sucking?

FNL has always been really good about packing a lot into an hour, but I feel like I'd be totally okay with them scaling back a little if they could make the episodes a little more cohesive. I know there are a lot of characters to deal with, but there were no less than 6 separate storylines going on in this episode, with hardly any crossover...

Gossip Girl: Chuck or Nate?

So I guess I should never start complaining about how TV hasn't been compelling right before November sweeps.

Up until recently Gossip Girl has kind of just been a fun guilty pleasure but now it's totally sucking me in. And interestingly, it's not at all the Dan and Serena storyline that's hooked me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think Dan is completely awesome and I would have loved to have had a boyfriend like him when I was in high school (or college...or now...?) but I find him and Serena to be kind of boring as a couple. And all the parallels with them and their parents is just...weird. And now with Rufus basically admitting that he's not really over Lily? I don't know, I liked the idea of Allison coming home and having one functional family on the show but so far I've been underwhelmed by her. But I can't really root for Rufus and Lily either...oy.

Anyway, what's really sucked me in is Blair. Leighton Meester is totally killing in this role. She started off being a little too queen-bee-bitchy but she's quickly become probably the most interesting character on the show. Along with Chuck. And in that way, it's totally fun and crazy and kind of perfect that they ended up hooking up. But as an actual relationship? Like...in public? That just seems a bit...wrong. Especially since Chuck's, uh, predatory past still creeps me out. Not that Nate's really right for Blair either. But for some reason I do kind of have a soft spot for Nate, even though we've really never seen him be in all that into Blair until this episode really...he's been perpetually preoccupied with Serena and his dad and all that. But after the Thanksgiving episode I now believe at some point that they were really good together. Generally I'm kind of meh on love triangles but this one kind of intrigues me because really not a single one of them knows what they want. It's all messy and confusing and unpredictable, which makes for some pretty great TV.

Oh, and I KNOW that I'm way past high school but hearing that Blair wants to be a member of Yale's class of 2013 make me feel really old...