Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

Call it pathetic or determined, but here’s the list of the visual offerings I consumed during the 2010 calendar year.

Caveat 1: these are all movies which I viewed for the first time. This does not include the myraids of movies and TV shows that I re-watch on a regular basis.

Caveat 2: The television shows listed in the months are the ones I rented on DVD. A separate listing of television series watched regularly is at the bottom of the post

Caveat 3: movies recommended for all persons in bold & any reviews written are linked to.

rating system:
1 = the universe weeps that this was created
2 = the universe is vaguely upset, but would be more upset if you wasted your time to watch it
3 = the universe is indifferent. you may enjoy it.
4 = the universe is pleased
5 = the universe is escatic this exists

January

1. Avatar (*****)
2. 9 (*)
3. It Might Get Loud (***)
4. Extract (**)
5. Adam (****)
6. The Boys Are Back (***)
7. The Cove (Oscar) (*****)
8. The Hurt Locker (Oscar) (****)
9. When In Rome (***)
10. Joan of Arcadia: Season Two (*****)

February

11. My Sister’s Keeper (*** 1/2)
12. Dare (***)
13. More Than A Game (****)
14. Surrogates (**)
15. Coraline (***)
16. Bright Star (*****)
17. Love Happens (*****)
18. Amelia (**)
19. Invention of Lying (**)
20. I Hate Valentine’s Day (**)
21. A Serious Man (Oscar) (*****)
22. Death at a Funeral (****)
23. The September Issue (***)

March

24. Peter and Vandy (***)
25. New York, I Love You (***)
26. Alice in Wonderland (*****) (2010 version with Johnny Depp)
27. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (*)
28. A Love Divided (**)
29. Daniel Deronda (***) (2002 version with Hugh Dancy and Ramola Garai)
30. Jane Eyre(***) (1996 version with Anna Paquin and William Hurt)
31. Lorna Doone (****)
32. Wives and Daughters (****)
33. Time Travelers Wife (**)
34. The Damned United (****)
35. Army Wives: Season 3 (****)
36. Little Dorritt (*****)
37. Hunger (*****)
38. John Adams (*****)
39. Alice (Miniseries on Syfy: 2009) (**)
40. Men Who Stare At Goats (**)

April

41. The Godfather (****)
42. Shakespeare Retold (****)
43. Date Night (****)
44. Walt: The Man Behind the Myth (***)
45. We Live in Public (***)
46. Mondovino (**)
47. Beer Wars (****)
48. Pressure Cooker (***)
49. Gavin & Stacey: Season One (*****)
50. The Back-Up Plan (***)

May

51. Pirate Radio (**)
52. Black Gold: Story of the International Coffee Trade (****)
53. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (**)
54. Push (***)
55. Mistresses (BBC Miniseries) (***)
56. Good Hair (*****)
57. Iron Man 2 (*****)
58. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (****)
59. Nine (**)
60. The Land Before Time (***)
61. FernGully (***)
62. Dorian Gray (***)

June

63. How To Train Your Dragon (*****)
64. Tarzan (***)
65. Toy Story 3 (****)
66. Crimes of Fashion (***)

July

67. The Last Airbender (*)
68. Couples Retreat (***)
69. Instinct (****)
70. Extraordinary Measures (****)
71. The A-Team (*****)
72. The Good Guy (***)
73. Drop Dead Diva: Season One (*****)
74. Daria: The Complete Series (****)
75. The Green Zone (****)
76. Valentine’s Day (***)

August

77. SALT (***)
78. White Collar: Season One (****)
79. HathoRNe: Season One (***)
80. Dexter: Season Three (****)
81. Dexter: Season Four (****)
82. A Single Man (****)
83. The Kids Are Alright (****)
84. Kick-Ass (***)
85. The Ghost Writer (****)
86. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (**)
87. Hamlet (The BBC production with Patrick Stewart and David Tennant) (*****)
88. The Last Station
89. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (*)
90. In The Loop (****)

September

91. You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
92. The Vicious Kind
93. Pagent
94. The Dive From Clausen’s Pier
95. Creation (**)
96. Shutter Island (*****)
97. The Other Guys (*)
98. Less Than Perfect: Season One

October

99. Elvis and Annabelle (****)
100. The Mentalist: Season One
101. The Mentalist: Season Two
102. The Social Network (*****)
103. Red (****)
104. Letters to Juliet (**)
105. The Least Among You (***)
106. Bernard and Doris(***)
107. Me and Orson Wells(****)
108. Who Is Clark Rockafeller?(***)
109. Amish Grace(**)

November

110. Boy A (****)
111. Easy A(*****)
112. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One (*****)
113. Burlesque (****)
114. MI:5 Season One (****)
115. MI-5 Season Two (****)
116. MI-5 Season Three (****)
117. MI-5 Season Four (****)
118. Seven Years in Tibet (***)
119. Sorority Wars (*)
120. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Sweedish Version) (*****)
121. Maneater (****)
122. Clatterford: Season One (****)
123. Clatterford: Season Two (****)
124. Clatterford: Season Three (****)
125. Before You Say “I Do” (***)
126. Coach Carter (****)
127. 8: The Mormon Proposition (*****)
128. Stomp the Yard: Homecoming (*)
129. Heartlands (***)
130. Sherlock: Season One (*****)
131. Princess Kuliani (**)

December

132. Frontline: The Vaccine Debate (*****)
133. Sex and the City: 2 (*****)
134. The Lottery (*****)
135. The Town (****)
136. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (***)
137. La Sierra (*****)
138. Outrage (*****)
139. Cemetery Junction (***)
140. Being Human: Season 1 (****)
141. Being Human: Season 2 (****)
142. Ramona and Beezus (****)
143. Charlie St. Cloud (**)
144. First Saturday in May (***)
145. Street Fight (*****)
146. The Business of Being Born (****)
147. Mame (***)
148. Hello, Dolly! (***)
149. Iron Jawed Angels (*****)
150. The Special Relationship (*****)

Television Shows

1. How I Met Your Mother
2. Big Bang Theory
3. Chuck
4. Life Unexpected
5. Make It or Break It
6. Greek
7. Secret Life of the American Teenager
8. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
9. The Colbert Report
10. Secret Diary of a Call Girl
11. Nurse Jackie
12. United States of Tara
13. LOST
14. The Good Wife
15. Parenthood
16. Modern Family
17. Cougar Town
18. FlashForward
19. Bones
20. Grey’s Anatomy
21. Burn Notice
22. Project Runway
23. The Office
24. Parks and Recreation
25. Community
26. 30 Rock
27. Supernatural
28. Vampire Diaries
29. Party Down
30. 10 Things I Hate About You
31. The Pacific
32. Drop Dead Diva
33. Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
34. Top Chef: Masters
35. Glee
36. Army Wives
37. White Collar
38. Huge
39. Pillars of the Earth
40. Boardwalk Empire

I love year-end retrospectives. I know it’s a little nerdy, but I love remembering and recalling. Everyone is posting “top ten” blogs at the moment, so I thought I’d offer mine. Now, these are my favorites – not necessarily items which demanded critical acclaim or ones which will change history. They’re just my favorites. Instead of inundating you with separate entries, I offer my lists all in one. If you agree (or disagree!) let me know.

Movies (note: all of these released in the year)

1. The Social Network: Aaron Sorkin remains my favorite wordsmith and I loved how the movie offered no clear answers. Even if it’s largely fictional (which I’m sure Zuckerberg would love if we believed), it’s a marvelous examination of friendship, betrayal, ownership and what exactly it means to “friend” someone.

2. Tangled: “You broke my smolder.” Witty, charming, enlightening, sappy – all the things a good cartoon should be. It also happens to be a rare example of a female disney character actually acting like an empowered female. Love. This. Movie.

3. Easy A: Hilarious. Someone wrote it was the 10 Things I Hate About You for this generation and I have to agree.

4. Inception: It all comes down to one question – did the top fall?

5. Burlesque: Fun choreography. Completely predictable plot. Cristina’s voice. Stanley Tucci. Clearly, I’m in.

6. The Town: So well done. Caught this one at the dollar theater and am so glad I did. It was just as raw as the reviews said it was. It also makes me want to study the history of Charlestown.

7. Shutter Island: Oh gracious, this had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Excellent

8. How To Train Your Dragon: Thank you, Cathay Pacific, for having this on all of your flights I was on this summer. Not only is it precious and entertaining (I love Toothless!) but it’s an excellent movie about approaching “the other”.

9. The Lottery: This may be my favorite documentary I’ve seen in a while. Since I didn’t get a chance to see Waiting for ‘Superman’, I can’t comment on which one is better. This one is about the lottery to get into a charter school in Harlem. It had me in tears one minute and screaming at the television in anger the next.

10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One: You can pretty much cement Part Two on my list for next year because it’s going to be unspeakably epic. I think this adaption was the truest one to the books – capturing both the intricacies of the plot and the emotions behind the story. Love, love.

*note: I haven’t seen Black Swan, True Grit, Waiting for Superman or Love and Other Drugs.

Books Published in 2010

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson
2. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
3. Earth: The Book by Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team
4. One Day by David Nichols
5. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Books Not Published but Read in 2010

1. Huger Games Series by Suzanne Collins
2. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
3. Strength in What Remains by Tracey Kidder
4. The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark
5. The Myth of Religious Violence by William Cavanaugh

Television

1. Modern Family
2. Community
3. True Blood
4. Dexter
5. Grey’s Anatomy
6. Good Wife
7. Parenthood
8. Chuck
9. 30 Rock
10. Mad Men

Honorable Mentions for TV: Cougar Town, Boardwalk Empire, Nurse Jackie, United States of Tara, SYTYCD, Greek, White Collar, Top Chef, Glee. Glee, for the record, will stay on an honorable mention list until it remembers how to be decent television. Second season has been baaaad.

start the clip at 8:48

I love the worlds that Aaron Sorkin creates and the one of Sports Night is certainly no exception. There are a lot of beautiful themes of reconciliation and forgiveness that are woven throughout this entire episode that only serve to deeply highlight the meanings of the holiday – but you would have to know the metanarrative to understand them and I don’t want to bore anyone.

While this is one of the few cinematic showings of Passover, this is still my favorite. I love how they, as a community, re-tell the story in their own vernacular: contextualizing it, as it were. I love that they celebrate the holiness as a family and as a people. For truly, the echoes of Passover is the creation of a people and it therefore must be celebrated in community. The seder is a group event and echoes a group event. It is some of that spirit that the CSC family emulates in this clip.

And it must be said : if you haven’t seen Sports Night do so immediately. I’m not kidding.

Kids, this movie in INTENSE. It bills itself specifically about Bobby Sands and the hunger strike in Maze Prison in N. Ireland in 1981. However, it’s more acurately three films in one.

The first is mostly about the conditions in the Maze – and specifically H-Block – during the blanket strike. This was when the arrested IRA men demanded to be granted political prisoner status and be allowed to wear their own clothes. When Prime Minister Thatcher continually denied them that right – referring to the men as terrorists only in her national speeches – they decided that nakedness was better than degrading themselves and donning the clothing of criminals. This section is hard to watch because it makes no apologies. The prisoners smeared their excrement on the walls to show defiance : that is shown in the movie. A common act was to smuggle letters in and out through body cavities : that is shown, as well as the procedure used by the guards to retrieve the smuggled items. Like I said, rough and intense.

The second part is my favorite of the sections. A 20 minute conversation between Sands and his priest, the section largely deals with the nuances of the movement around this time. The priest questions the wisdom of the hunger strike; is it protest or suicide? Is martyrdom respectable if it won’t change anything and leaves families decimated? How does an oppressed people seek recognition and respect in the midst of an empire that would like nothing more than for them to go away? What role does faith play in the midst of the movement? I will not articulate the conversation here, but know that it is brilliant.

The third section is essentially watching Sands starve himself to death. Kudos to the make-up department and to the actor himself, because I literally felt nauseous at times as we watched this character slip towards his death.

My only complaint is that the movie did not explore the political aspects of the strike really at all. Sands was elected as an MP while he was on strike and both that event and the strike itself were formative in the arrival of Sinn Fein on the national political scene. I wish the film would have dealt with those aspects.

However, that being said, it is an incredibly well done movie and deserves all the accolades it received. Not recommended, however, for persons with weak stomachs or for those who need happy endings.

trailer embedded below