"Konnichiwa. Konnichiwa. It means what's up. So what the fuck's up?"

Yes.

2008. Numbers you shouldn't be seeing on the front of your diary, Girls Aloud Calendar or bus pass. It's in the bank. On the shelf. Done and done. Hell, even the Chinese have moved on. We're well into the future.

I hope I'm good to 2009. I did it's older brother a disservice and moped around a great chunk of it, running myself right up until the final hours and thinking there was a lot of sadness there. But I was wrong. The year sure started off sour, but it ended up being incredible. Probably the most monumental year of my adult life. It kinda is where my adult life began. I accomplished almost everything I set out to do and I met a bunch of awesome people along the way. And yeah, the love thing never got fixed and I still think there's nothing more important to a person's life. But hey, I will gladly accept where I am right now for second place.

Love can wait. Hollyoaks can't.

So thanks to everyone who rolled around in 2008 with me.

I know I worked hard getting here, which will account for the lack of blog and probably accounts for why I only saw about twenty films this year. So you are about to read my favourite 50% of movies released in 2008 what I saw. It won't inspire, but there's YouTube embeds, and they're always fun.

Monsterwork's Favourite 50% of Movies Released in 2008 what He Saw.

10. Cloverfield.
A fascinating experiment. A YouTube Godzilla. United 93 if it was about the cast of Gossip Girl trying to escape a Lovecraftian doom. I did feel a bit betrayed by it. The dedication to the 'real' felt fudged by an obvious narrative, certain formulaic tricks. There shouldn't have been a money shot. The monster should have been glimpsed and too big to ever fathom. More than that, I felt there was an end I could buy, a cruel, unresolved end - and then the camera got picked up again and something close to resolution played out. That felt like a compromise to me. Nevertheless it was a pretty rollercoaster and there was no disputing the effectiveness of certain scenes - namely the news footage watched by the looters and the first rumble. I love first rumbles. If I made a film I think I'd start with five minutes of black and a bass hum. Then I might show a chessboard, with the pieces shaking. I love me one of those shots.







9. Street Kings.
Ayers and Ellroy. That's good. We had Harsh Times on the list however long ago. That dirty testosterone feel Ayers is perfecting, married with the blunt trauma Ellroy plotting (minus the trademarks cinema always struggles with - the period element, for better or worse, and the psycho-sexual hang-ups. See DePalma's fumble on Black Dahlia.) Keanu surprises as a meaty, sleazy cop in the Lloyd Hopkins/Dave Klein vein, kicking off the film with casual racism and hardcore violence. It builds, like a lot of Ellroy to an almost superhuman contest between one man and the growing conspiracy. It was a refreshing bit of raw pulp.








8. Quantum of Solace.
The only film I saw twice this year. Largely because I took a girl the first time and she started talking about ice cream at the start, but also because of the pace of it, I really wanted to go back and take more in, now I knew what to expect. From the unconventional opening (I was thrown by the lack of gunbarrel, but now I absolutely love that build from edit and score to the point where the action goes action) and the rest of the stylistic choices (the opera, the location titles) it is certainly the most interesting Bond to look at. I suppose my only regret was it had been sold as a sort of revenge story, but it wasn't. Bond isn't really after Greene (to be fair there is a line in the trailer saying he using him to get to someone else) he's just after the first lead that can take him to Vesper's mysterious Algerian boyfriend. After all he went through for Felix Leiter's leg you'd expect mayhem for the supposed love of his life. The dish served cold doesn't really happen, but the action is there and in spades and little time is wasted. If anything they could have done with a bit more time, Giancarlo Giannini is wasted and there's a bit with two policemen and a trunk that's very 'what?...why did?...I don't get it.' And I realise I'm going to get nothing but Olga-this hooting from the back, but Gemma Arterton is stunning, absolutely beautiful.








7. Iron Man
You know what I liked best about the first Spider-Man movie? All the bits without superheroics in it. All the stuff about his friends and the emo bullshit that a lot of people didn't have the patience for. Iron Man's got great action in it, don't get me wrong, but the dialogue is stellar. Downey Jr.'s chemistry with everyone and everything - he's got rapport with a hydraulic arm, even - is what sells this movie. The climax is weak, it's got that against it. But not by much. There's a lot of detail to enjoy. His HUD and the virtual design tech was all very comic-book cool. It's all out fun, and for the month or so before Incredible Hulk came out, made me think an Avengers movie could be as good as I want it to be (give it to JJ Abrams, please).







6. The Mist.
You know I have a friend who switched The Mist off just after the spiders. Said it was boring. They didn't watch to the end. THEY DIDN'T WATCH TO THE END. I'm not saying or showing anything here about the movie. Trust the pedigree. Trust me. It's good.







5. The Dark Knight
It felt like a violent dream. I came out feeling like I'd survived it. I'm not sure what else I can compare it to. The tension just builds and builds, aided by that dissonant siren in the soundtrack. Ledger is rarely funny, always unsettling. The whole thing came with an ambiguity - was he totally in control, super-sane as it were, and just dedicated to a nihilist ideal? Or was he a dog barking at cars? A bleak, brave film, that still found time to squeeze in a bit of Seventies Secret Agent Batman in the skies above Hong Kong.







4. El Orfanato
Another horror, so I'm reluctant to say much in case it tips expectations the wrong way. It starts off a bit same-old with creaky houses and a spooky mask. Then the heartbreak kicks in and then, then, then...the proper scares. The poop. In the theatre, when I saw it, the audience looked around at one another in disbelief, stopping short of 'Is this film shitting you up as much as it is me?'
I'm not even going to show the trailer (The U.S. market one sucks anyway..."Therrre arrrre childrrrennnn...") Here, watch this safari clip, if you've never seen it before. It's mad.







3. There Will Be Blood
Read something someone educated has to say about this film. Don't look to me. I want to say 'elemental' but I'm sure that's a word I got from The Guardian. At the time I saw it I thought there was a lot of me in Daniel Plainview, and it troubled me. He sits and stares like a dog, full contempt for other people. He also drinks your milkshake.







2. No Country for Old Men

As good as the novel? It just is the novel. Astonishingly so. Looking back at my diary for that day, I wrote 'flawless'. The Coens nailed the humour, the suspense, the violence, the poetry, the visceral impact of the story. It was astonishing. I guess I've got to go back to Cormac and process how a story that you could say is as genre as a David Morrell paperback, with Michael Myers leading the manhunt, is somehow elegant, moving and real.







1.


is....



...not Wall*E. I didn't see it. Didn't see Transporter 3, either...







Pineapple Express is the shit. It's a movie where I kept wanting to go back and see that bit again. I laughed til I choked the whole time. It made me miss my friends, made me miss pot, made me smile from start to finish and it had a big Joel Silver shootout at the end. You want it to magically turn into a dude at the end so you can go hang out some more. I anticipate, much like School of Rock, it will stand up to infinite repeats. Pineapple Express, it's boss lid.


The misfires...well, aside from all that business with the fridge, I thought Indiana Jones' big flaw this year is he didn't really stop anything from happening, y'know? The russkies set out to find something, and although they were pretty thin in number by the time Dr. Jones had tussled, they still found the thing. It just turned out the thing was mental. There wasn't much iconic about it. The narrative was all over the place and John Hurt and Ray Winstone didn't bring any of the richness you got from John Rhys Davis or Denholm Elliot. It was entertaining, and some of the set pieces were good. I imagine I would have liked it more if the lady next to me hadn't just gone 'Uhhhhhh' regardless of whether a moment was funny, exciting or scary.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army was the biggest let down for me. It's odd, given Mignola's involvement and Del Toro's fanboy stance how they could fudge it. It's just not the Hellboy character. Not as I read him anyway. He a morose, kinda lonely guy (he goes drinking with ghosts) who has no problem with the spirit world, he just doesn't like evil. I felt the Perlman version was a bit of a brash bully. It lacked the sadness, and Victorian spookiness I enjoy about the books.


Music.

Crap. Now I've got to think if I bought five albums that came out this year.

Yes. I did.

Kinda.



Monsterwork's Top Five Albums he bought that came out in 2008. Kinda.

5. Justice - Cross

Yes. I know. It came out in 2007. Well I wasn't cool enough for 2007. I had to wait until March or something before I knew. Before I caught up with this. And it's ace. It's only at number five because it's a cheat. It's the best record I heard this year, but like I said, I've arrived late. It might even be the best dance album I've heard, if we call Entroducing a hiphop record. If Fat of the Land had sounded like this, the future would have arrived much sooner.











4. Last of the Shadow Puppets - Age of the Understatement.

I've gone on before about giving Indie rock a wide berth. This might have been an easy sell. It's sort of the Artic Monkeys, sure, but with all the boisterousness taken out and replaced with sixties strings and melody, by way of Scott Walker and John Barry. I don't have to worry about the sweaty fringe and youthful bopping. It's more in keeping with the cardigan comfort I look for.










3. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV.

One of two, cheap download albums released by NIN this year, the other being The Slip, Ghosts I-IV collects four EPs of instrumental doodles from Trent Reznor's brainpan. They're a mix of Mogwai-ish piano-y fuzzspells, Brian Eno-style ambient wanders and the angry bleeps and beats you've come to expect in the recent Halo## catalogue. At 36 tracks it's a big record and there's a lot of invention and action in there. And it kinda doesn't have to cost you much (unless you like to hold what you own in your hands, like me. But then if you're like me you might tear the sleeve trying to get the inlay card out.)













You can download/order the whole thing here

2. NEON NEON - Stainless Style.

I think this is the album Mike Patton's Peeping Tom project should have been. The alternative pop album. It's fun as fuck, silly but respectful. 'I Lust U' just kills, how did it not exist before? Because the cosmos wasn't ready. A concept album about John DeLorean. A. Concept. Album. About. John. DeLorean.










1. Do I even have to tell you?

I'll admit, I have an advantage here, in that I paid attention. I'd seen them twice during this record's gestation period, so I'd heard some stuff well in advance. I knew we weren't looking towards Appetite with this record. We knew that back in 1991 when for every AFD-sounding Dust N' Bones or Don't Damn Me, there was a bloated Axl indulgence like Estranged or Civil War. This was always where he was headed. And I love it. My favourite Gn'R song is Coma. I love the Axl Rose show. He's one of those fat, nut-job control freak geniuses that I think makes art a bit more interesting. And this isn't a knee-jerk automatic response. I really do like listening to this record. I love 'I.R.S.', 'There Was a Time', 'Better'...the album is tinged with this weird regret/stubborness, Axl knows a great melody, he really does, and the shredding on some of the tracks is ace. The record could have done with more Buckethead and less of the dozen other guys. 'Sorry' sucks outright, but even with one 'never-listening-to-that-again' track in the mix, I still give it my fullest. If only it had come out in 2002 when I first heard most of this stuff...







And I'm going to throw that Buckethead Night Train solo in again because I love it.





Books is where I'll struggle now. I don't think, oh no wait, I read one book printed in 2008 - Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow, an excellent Surf Noir about a private eye on the California coast. It contains the mantra 'Everything tastes better in a tortilla' - the most true truism ever. I did have a bookshelf where all the titles I read this year were lined up but when I moved that running order got messed up, and now I'm not sure. Best opening line goes to David Goodis' Black Friday:

"January cold came in from two rivers, formed four walls around Hart and closed in on him."

That's hard-boiled. You put an egg in a kettle and leave it going for two weeks, and you still won't come close

As I'd paired down on comics early in the year, I missed out on the big x-overs and whatnots. Just realised I missed a Fantastic Four last month even. Getting sloppy. FF has been ace. Ennis' goodbye on The Punisher was a bold move, almost half of it was text, a semi-fictional examination of the Vietnam War with its bitter eyes locked firmly on W. Bush era. Not sure what else set me on edge...Brubaker's Criminal's been strong...uh...wow, I really cut back on comics. What the hell do I read?

Anything else? Best food product? That Rochester Ginger Drink they do in Holland and Barratt. Best item of clothing? My Plastic Man T-shirt from Pull and Bear. Christ, I dunno. You ask, I'll answer.

Damn. I just re-read all this post. It's lame. Where's the wit? Or originality? I guess writing all day for a living really sucks it out of you. I didn't really discover anything. I took albums from the chart wall and went to my multiplex. Gee...what was I up to?

I got my name on the telly. How ace is that? My name was on the telly today. Stuff I did was on the telly today. My ideas. On your telly. Today. Tomorrow. The next day. Fucking mad/amazing.

So, to the year that's begun; Hello. How do you do?
If I can keep my job and keep my friends for another 12 months, I think I'll feel pretty damn rich come two-thousand-ten, Odyssey 2. If I can start 'Ponies Are Not Horses', get words in mouths, and hit up a beach, I'll be an emotional millionaire. If I can make you smile, then golly-gosh, I'll take a bow.