…is it December already? Best do some manner of summary-post, I suppose. It's been an odd year, both inside and outside of the cinema. Movies I'd been looking forward to left me a little meh (X-Men), while some that I thought I was going hate every second of turned out to be pretty fantastic (Eddie The Eagle). Speaking of which, True Story™ cinema kept bobbing to the surface, as if the real-world wasn't worrisome enough, some of which worked far, far better than others. Personally, I'm in favour of a moratorium on fact-based filmmaking until the world learns how to behave itself...
In more stat-based news, I managed to up my viewing-total this year, even though that wasn't intended and I didn't think I'd do it anyway. 2016 saw me going to the flicks 158*1 times (up an entire 1on last year). That figure includes repeat showings of course (Star Wars, Marvel movies and what have you), but the overall number of different movies this year was 141, down on last year's 142.
But it's not all about the totals, it's the quality which counts, right? And there have been some absolute stinkers this year. Seriously. While I only scored one movie with the bottom-marks of 1/7, there were far more 2s and 3s than I'd have liked. But movies like High Rise, Hail, Caesar! and Tale of Tales at least kept things profoundly interesting at the other (better) end of the scale, too.
Here's the breakdown:
There have been many, many others of course, notable for a variety of reasons. A list of reviews for the year can be found right here. All that remains is for me to thank Cineworld, as always, for their card that made the vast majority of this possible. In 2017 I'll have had my Unlimited card for ten years, so I eagerly anticipate being showered in gifts and praise by my favourite cinema-group ;)
And what for 2017? Well, a bit moreStar Wars, a lot more Marvel and we'll see what else comes along in the meanwhile.
It's been an odd year…
*1 Hmm? You want a breakdown of that, too? Go on, then…
Honestly, you lot...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Oh, you didn't think you were going to get clean away into 2016 without any facts and figures, did you? You've had the good list and the bad list, but what's a load of old opinion without a few hard statistics to back it up? Where's the bloody fun in going to the cinema 157 times in a year if you don't have a spreadsheet to keep track of it all, eh? Don't worry, you're not going to get all the analysis (although full source-data is available upon request), just the front-end of the year we've had.
Most of them are utterly meaningless, obviously, but it keeps me sane ordering data like this.
It's hand-drawn as well. Yeah, look impressed...
This was 2015.
These were the highs, those were the lows.
Here are the stats…
So, yeah. My overall-viewing-total is at a record high. I'd set myself a target of 150 for 2015, and if I'm being honest, it almost broke me. It's only three flicks a week, but when your local has just five screens (with overlapping screenings of the big movies), that means you'll be watching a fair amount of filler (or worse still travelling to see it). And if you've been around these parts for a while, you'll know I've seen a lot of filler this year.
And what's next? Well, it's going to get a little quieter, for one thing. Obviously setting another (ie higher) target isn't feasible given that this year will be the cinematic hangover from 2015's big-hitters. It's also fucking exhausting. I'll still be watching most of what's on offer at my local, and taking regular excursions to the capital to catch the more niche movies, but the numbers will be whatever the numbers will be. And I'll just take this moment to point out that most of my viewing is made possible by Cineworld's Unlimited Card. If you love watching films on a big screen and there's a branch near you, it's a complete no-brainer. The Unlimited card costs less per month than two standard cinema tickets. Not everyone uses their as much as I do of course, but as you can tell from this post, I'm not entirely normal. And no, Cineworld haven't asked/paid/bribed me to say this (although in the interests of full disclosure, they have been really good to me this year - but that's for another series of posts).
I'll also use this post to say thank you for putting up with my 'I Can't Believe I Haven't Seen…' reviews. The original idea was to do one old movie a week for 52 weeks, but because I'm terrible at putting aside time to watch anything that's not in a cinema, it's fallen behind a little (plus IRL has been a pain in the arse this year, to be frank). With that in mind, the series will continue, but I'll go further back and just keep on until I run out of unseen classics to watch.
And other than that, thank you for reading this drivel. Not just this drivel, but all of my drivel that you read. I do this blog for fun and to stave off boredom, and if you weren't there clicking on the posts, I wouldn't have got this far. You're all really very special.
The full list of WoB reviews for this year is right here.
Here's to 2016!
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
And here we are! The top-up order from Topps has arrived, completing the remaining 20 pages and the album itself. I won't lie, it's just as marvellous a feeling to complete a sticker album as an adult as it was as a child. Possibly moreso, since you carry the weight of an obscene amount of duplicate stickers all the more heavily when it's your money which has been paying for them. Geekish collector that I am, I now have a completed Star Wars Rebels album on my bookshelf, along with an empty one. Because that's what I'm like.
So at the end of it all, you may be leafing through the bog-standard, not-entirely-robust sticker book and thinking to yourself "Hang on, it's cost me (approximately) £40 (that's $62) to complete this project. I mean, I love Star Wars as much as the next geek, but I can probably buy two whacking great coffee-table type books off of Amazon for that price, and all I'm left with here is a lightweight 44-page softcover book with all of its slightly repetitive pictures taken from one 40-minute episode of a TV show. Does that really represent great value for money?"Of course it bloody doesn't. Collecting anything doesn't represent good value for money. Unless you're one of those comic-book-guy mercenaries who buys objects solely for their projected value in the future secondary market (in which case you really need to take a long hard look at yourself and move into fine art or wine, or frankly anything else apart from mass-produced pop-culture merchandising).
I haven't reverse-engineered a formula (which is remiss of me, I know, but shut up), but bearing in mind that the simulated model predicted between 88 and 96 packs to take us to the 88% line before we could order the rest, and bearing in mind it actually took us 86, I don't think it's too far wide of the mark.
Will all of this stop me collecting stickers in the future? Of course it bloody won't. I've got a 2012 Saga Album and a 2008 Clone Wars Album on the shelf already in their empty and completed forms (and truth be told, I tracked the 2012 collection with a spreadsheet just as I did with the Rebels one; I just didn't inflict it on the readers of this blog).
The rest, dear reader, is silence. Well, until The Force Awakens picks up steam around November of 2015 and a new Topps album his the shelves. And I'll be the first in line, but you knew that already...
