Geek culture highlights of 2010
Happy New Year! The previous year is freshly dead, which means this list of 2010's highlights in the areas of genre TV, tech, movies, comics, and other geek/nerd realms can still be animated. Here we go:
10. The Social Network. In the year that social networking truly become part of the global lexicon, this movie was the Facebook item that Mark Zuckerberg would prefer you didn't Like. Jesse Eisenberg has earned many kudos (and probably an Oscar nomination) for his twitchy performance as Zuckerberg, with multiple-threat talent Justin Timberlake also getting raves as Napster co-founder Sean Parker.
9. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Many people didn't see this wild, fun, inventive movie during the summer, and that's a shame. Rent Edgar Wright's latest triumph today or I'll contact the Vegan Police. You won't regret it.
8. The time traveler in the Charlie Chaplin footage. The weird news item of the year. For a couple of days, the Interwebs were aflutter with hype over screen captures of a woman in rare 1923 footage of a Chaplin film - talking on a cell phone. Okay, this was very likely not the case, as people talking to themselves on the sidewalk are nothing new. But it was an amusing eyebrow-raiser.
7. 3-D movies. Yep, they're back in force. James Cameron's Avatar in the fall of 2009 was the first live-action (well, technically at least) blockbuster in 3-D, and many others quickly followed, hoping to cash in. However, a lot of these movies weren't filmed with 3-D in mind, and the cash-in-quick attitude showed plainly in the case of box-office disappointments like the Clash of the Titans remake. Nevertheless, there have been enough hits -- Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, to name two -- that we'll be seeing more things jumping at us for at least another year.
6. The Walking Dead. As mentioned back in the summer, zombies scare me. Yet as predicted, dammit, AMC's excellent adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comics/graphic novel series held me fast in its undead grip. The title refers not to the zombies (that word hasn't been mentioned once, by the way) as much as it does to the still-breathing people who have to make harrowing, occasionally soul-numbing choices as answers and resources become harder to find each day. Only six episodes?! ARRGH! The second season will be a more tasty 12 episodes.
5. The comics industry tries to endure a sales drought. It's been a bad year for the Big Two, DC and Marvel, and the poor sales can't be blamed solely on the recession. The two companies -- Marvel, in particular -- had taken heat for raising prices earlier in 2010. DC announced in October that it was lowering prices across the board to $2.99. (For those of you who don't follow comics: Yes, I'm afraid you read that correctly. The price was lowered to $2.99.) Marvel dithered for a bit, then lowered its price, too -- on a few titles. Things are sufficiently dire that Marvel, which had promised a moratorium on big, wallet-munching "event" crossovers following Siege, is about to kick off Fear Itself -- a big, wallet-munching "event" crossover.
4. Water on the Moon. NASA's showy event was a bit of a bust on the Today Show in October, but the actual data was all wet, which in this case was a remarkable thing. After seeing miles and miles of lunar desolation during the various moon missions of the '60s and '70s, this discovery could finally pave the way for the purple-haired staff of SHADO's Lunar HQ.
3. Doctor Who, "The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang Theory." This was the wild, crazy-ass, "I need to replay that scene AGAIN" two-part finale of Matt Smith's first stellar season as the Doctor. There had been a lot of speculation and trepidation leading up to that season, as Smith was succeeding arguably the most popular Doctor ever, David Tennant. With new showrunner Steven Moffat leading the way, however, the episodes were by and large spectacular -- so much so that I'll even agree to forget about the space whale in the second story. In this two-parter, though, the myriad mysteries that had plagued the Doctor all season long came to a head, resulting in a deliciously head-spinning, "timey wimey" sequence of events that Doctor Who fans had been itching to see for years, yet we never thought that someone could pull it off. Moffat gets it. (And to those fans: Who do you think Alex Kingston's River Song really is? Postulate here or in the previous post about the Doctor's companions.)
2. The end of Lost. Much has already been said on this blog about the last season and its controversial finale. I liked the ending then, and the farther I get from my preconceived notions of how I felt the series should end, the more I admire and even love it.
1. The iPad. The coolest invention of the past few years, hands down. Is it the most innovative? Naaah. Yet it collects all the whiz-bang tech developments in recent years -- wi-fi, touch screen, portability, cross-platform media -- and convinces them to work together on a cute, surprisingly lightweight tablet with a user interface that the crew of the Enterprise would envy. Do I want one? Oh yes. Will I get one? Oh no. Not yet. As with any big product from Apple (see: iPhone), you're better off waiting for the second-generation device: It'll be faster, better, significantly cheaper, and relatively bug-free. I'll wait. And then... MUAHAHAHA.