50/50 Challenge - 50 Books & 50 Movies in One Year

[allegate]

@lloyd_dhr - what did you think about "Do I Come Here Often?"

26/50 Books

• Son of Retro Pulp Tales by Joe R. Lansdale
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
• The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
• A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
• Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Null States by Malka Ann Older
• Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Red Dwarf #1) by Grant Naylor
• Better than Life (Red Dwarf #2) by Grant Naylor
• Backwards (Red Dwarf #4) by Rob Grant
• Last Human (Red Dwarf #3) by Doug Naylor
• Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia
• Shadow Moon (Chronicles of the Shadow War #1) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• Who Could That Be at This Hour? (All the Wrong Questions #1) by Lemony Snicket
• You're Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words--and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras
• Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! by Polly Horvath
• When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions #2) by Lemony Snicket
• Lord and Lady Bunny--Almost Royalty! by Polly Horvath
• File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents (All the Wrong Questions, #2.5) by Lemony Snicket
• Shadow Dawn (Chronicles of the Shadow War #2) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Moone Boy: The Blunder Years by Chris O'Dowd
• Dragonslayer by Wayland Drew
• Willow (Chronicles of the Shadow War) by Wayland Drew

25/50 Movies

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
• The Dark Tower (2017)
• Kong: Skull Island (2017)
• Justice League (2017)
• Geostorm (2017)
• The Book of Henry (2017)
• Black Panther (2018)
• Being Canadian (2015)
• Willow (1988)
• Justice League Dark (2017)
• Despicable Me 3 (2017)
• Journey Through the Past (1974)
• Coco (2017)
• The Music of Strangers (2015)
• The Big Sick (2017)
• Chronicle (2012)
• Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
• Darkest Hour (2017)
• The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Ready Player One (2018)
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
• Peter Rabbit (2018)
• Paddington 2 (2017)

The Bunny books are great fun to read out loud and if you (or your audience) aren't giggling then you're doing something wrong.

I actually read two Snicket books that make up the 2.5 book (confusing, I know) but for the sake of the contest I'm doing the combined version. If you like Encyclopedia Brown, these are way too easy for you. None of them were challenging, and one even stretched the boundaries of that a mystery actually is. Though if you like the characters from the Question series then you might like this too.

Shadow Dawn was a lot better than the previous book, but still too much description. It's like Claremont feels restricted by comic book borders and decided to take on the lot.

1984 is a gut punch, but the post script is heartening.

Jumanji was a better film than it had any right to be. I'm not OK that they're making a 3rd one with the same cast (Rock, etc) because wtf could the movie be about? They are video game characters so they shouldn't remember anything, just be avatars for someone else. Not much of a continuation, really. Maybe they'll surprise again.

[lloyd_dhr]

@allegate - I enjoyed it, but found his ranting to be a bit annoying, which I put down to me being twenty years older since the last time I approached his written work!

[allegate]

58/50 Books

• Son of Retro Pulp Tales by Joe R. Lansdale
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
• The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
• A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
• Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Null States by Malka Ann Older
• Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Red Dwarf #1) by Grant Naylor
• Better than Life (Red Dwarf #2) by Grant Naylor
• Backwards (Red Dwarf #4) by Rob Grant
• Last Human (Red Dwarf #3) by Doug Naylor
• Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia
• Shadow Moon (Chronicles of the Shadow War #1) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• Who Could That Be at This Hour? (All the Wrong Questions #1) by Lemony Snicket
• You're Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words--and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras
• Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! by Polly Horvath
• When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions #2) by Lemony Snicket
• Lord and Lady Bunny--Almost Royalty! by Polly Horvath
• File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents (All the Wrong Questions, #2.5) by Lemony Snicket
• Shadow Dawn (Chronicles of the Shadow War #2) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Moone Boy: The Blunder Years by Chris O'Dowd
• Dragonslayer by Wayland Drew
• Willow (Chronicles of the Shadow War) by Wayland Drew
• Moone Boy: The Fish Detective by Chris O'Dowd
• The Last Jedi by Jason Fry (AB)
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (AB)
• All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells (AB)
• The Smartest Book in the World by Greg Proops (AB)
• Only Human (Themis Files #3) by Sylvain Neuvel (AB)
• Shadow Star (Chronicles of the Shadow War #3) by Chris Claremont
• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (AB)
• Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
• Shouldn't You Be in School? (All the Wrong Questions #3) by Lemony Snicket
• Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Blake Crouch
• Wayward (Wayward Pines #2) by Blake Crouch
• Horns by Joe Hill (AB)
• The Last Town (Wayward Pines #3) by Blake Crouch
• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• Mustache Shenanigans: Making Super Troopers and Other Adventures in Comedy by Jay Chandrasekhar
• Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? (All the Wrong Questions #4) by Lemony Snicket
• Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka
• FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
• The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer
• Savage Season (Hap and Leonard #1) by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne #1) by Mark Hodder
• Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk
• False Idols (The Dragon Lords #2) by Jon Hollins
• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
• Night Shift by Stephen King
• Blindsight (Firefall #1) by Peter Watts
• The Blade Itself (The First Law #1) by Joe Abercrombie
• Gideon's Sword (Gideon Crew #1) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• Gideon's Corpse (Gideon Crew #2) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• The Hatching (The Hatching #1) by Ezekiel Boone
• The Lost Island (Gideon Crew #3) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• Beyond the Ice Limit (Gideon Crew #4) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

If you've seen the Moone Boy television series you have an idea of what the books are about. The first one is basically an extended version of the first episode whereas the second one combines episodes 2 and 3 with another 'extended' story.

The Last Jedi was a good addendum to the film.

Adjustment Day is a mid-tier book from Chuck. I liked the book, I just thought that there were too many stories that were largely ignored near the end. Oh and the cover is a huge problem for me: It says twice (once by the person who 'wrote' the book-within-the-book) that it's the left ear. What's on the cover? Right ears! Lazy art. (view spoiler)

This book certainly is an exercise in radicalization. There were many times where I was thinking to myself, "This guy's saying what we're all thinking" and then I realized that he was a crazy person and I was agreeing with a crazy person. That's how it starts: you hear some of the arguments that sound like they were tailor made for you and it can make you disregard the other parts that don't and then suddenly you're driving a Dodge Charger in Charlottesville.

False Idols was alright but you could probably cut 15% of the book out if you just had some characters talk to each other instead of doing the usual trope of "no, not my problem yet so I'm going to ignore it for now until it is my problem". Some funny bits though and the third one is out next month.

Challenger Deep is hard to review because it's a product of time for me as the last two months or so have seen me hitting the deepest (hence the title) parts of my depression ever so reading this was like reading a book someone wrote to me. (I'm not schizophrenic though so that part missed me by).

The part that stood out for me the most is where Caden realizes that while his mental illness is affecting him, it is also affecting his family. It's certainly possible to lose yourself in your illness to the point where you forget about what it's doing to the people around you. It's hard to force yourself to see outside of what is happening to you to see what is happening to them.

I'm purchasing the hardcover so I can highlight parts and write in the margins.

Summertime means shit books, right? Hence my re-read of the first four Gideon Crew books. They are not good, in case you're wondering.

The Hatching was a pretty enjoyable romp though it ramps up to a point where you wonder how to pull two more books out of it, especially given some of the science used (and ignored, both) in the book.

The Blade Itself was great. I can't wait to keep going in that series.

43/50 Movies

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
• The Dark Tower (2017)
• Kong: Skull Island (2017)
• Justice League (2017)
• Geostorm (2017)
• The Book of Henry (2017)
• Black Panther (2018)
• Being Canadian (2015)
• Willow (1988)
• Justice League Dark (2017)
• Despicable Me 3 (2017)
• Journey Through the Past (1974)
• Coco (2017)
• The Music of Strangers (2015)
• The Big Sick (2017)
• Chronicle (2012)
• Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
• Darkest Hour (2017)
• The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Ready Player One (2018)
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
• Peter Rabbit (2018)
• Paddington 2 (2017)
• The Greatest Showman (2017)
• Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
• Solo (2018)
• Annihilation (2018)
• The Shape of Water (2017)
• Incredibles 2 (2018)
• A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
• Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
• Sherlock Gnomes (2018)
• CHiPS (2017)
• The Equalizer (2014)
• Bubble Boy (2001)
• Beerfest (2006)
• Best in Show (2000)
• Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)
• Inside Man (2006)
• Mission Impossible 2 (2000)
• Downsizing (2017)

Peter Rabbit/Paddington 2 were serviceable kids movies I guess. The Greatest Showman had some good moments in between some that were questionable. The one song "Never Enough" though was amazing. Just...wow.

And watching The Shape of Water so soon after Paddington 2...probably not recommended! My wife actually wanted to watch that one as a family because our son is 13 and I had to tell her no. She didn't think it was that bad until we got to the end where Mrs. Paddington is naked and then describing via pantomime how Abe Sapiens performs.

Chips was hilarious. I've only seen Michael Peña in the Ant-Man movie (and I guess Wrinkle but that was dumb) so it was great seeing how funny he was. The Equalizer was pretty good, though a little extended, if that makes sense? Bubble Boy was kind of dumb, though Zach Galifianakis was hilarious. The incredibly racist Chinese-guy scene was pretty awkward to be sure. And the weird poontang editing with the backfires? They could say poonanny but not poontang? Beerfest was just muddled.
Keeping Up with the Joneses was better than I expected. It wasn't hilarious but it was funny enough. Best scene was at the end where Isla Fisher was talking to Gal Gadot about being in their underwear and Patton Oswalt interrupted and said, "wait, are you talking to her? Proceed."

Inside Man was a re-watch with my wife. It's still a very good movie but there were some points that made me question the film logic instead of accept it. I think even a throwaway line about how they found out about the box would have been good. I saw some fan theories and they make sense but it's left open in the film.

MI2 was a John Woo film, yup. I had heard it was the worst of the series and I have to say, having only seen 1 and now 2, that it's probably true. My son wanted to watch them all to get ready for the newest one and at the end he said, "let's just skip the rest, that was terrible." I convinced him to watch them by saying that I heard that 3 was the best in the series.

[GibbonBlack]

MI2 was a John Woo film, yup. I had heard it was the worst of the series and I have to say, having only seen 1 and now 2, that it's probably true. My son wanted to watch them all to get ready for the newest one and at the end he said, "let's just skip the rest, that was terrible." I convinced him to watch them by saying that I heard that 3 was the best in the series.

2 is by FAR the worst. 3 has a great villian. From then on they are just all darn good action movies.

If you made it through 2 you'll be happy with the quality of the rest

[allegate]

67/50 Books

• Son of Retro Pulp Tales by Joe R. Lansdale
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
• The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
• A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
• Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia
• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Null States by Malka Ann Older
• Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Red Dwarf #1) by Grant Naylor
• Better than Life (Red Dwarf #2) by Grant Naylor
• Backwards (Red Dwarf #4) by Rob Grant
• Last Human (Red Dwarf #3) by Doug Naylor
• Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia
• Shadow Moon (Chronicles of the Shadow War #1) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• Who Could That Be at This Hour? (All the Wrong Questions #1) by Lemony Snicket
• You're Saying It Wrong: A Pronunciation Guide to the 150 Most Commonly Mispronounced Words--and Their Tangled Histories of Misuse by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras
• Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire! by Polly Horvath
• When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions #2) by Lemony Snicket
• Lord and Lady Bunny--Almost Royalty! by Polly Horvath
• File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents (All the Wrong Questions, #2.5) by Lemony Snicket
• Shadow Dawn (Chronicles of the Shadow War #2) by Chris Claremont, George Lucas
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Moone Boy: The Blunder Years by Chris O'Dowd
• Dragonslayer by Wayland Drew
• Willow (Chronicles of the Shadow War) by Wayland Drew
• Moone Boy: The Fish Detective by Chris O'Dowd
• The Last Jedi by Jason Fry (AB)
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (AB)
• All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells (AB)
• The Smartest Book in the World by Greg Proops (AB)
• Only Human (Themis Files #3) by Sylvain Neuvel (AB)
• Shadow Star (Chronicles of the Shadow War #3) by Chris Claremont
• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill (AB)
• Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
• Shouldn't You Be in School? (All the Wrong Questions #3) by Lemony Snicket
• Pines (Wayward Pines #1) by Blake Crouch
• Wayward (Wayward Pines #2) by Blake Crouch
• Horns by Joe Hill (AB)
• The Last Town (Wayward Pines #3) by Blake Crouch
• Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• Mustache Shenanigans: Making Super Troopers and Other Adventures in Comedy by Jay Chandrasekhar
• Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? (All the Wrong Questions #4) by Lemony Snicket
• Guardians of the Whills by Greg Rucka
• FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
• The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer
• Savage Season (Hap and Leonard #1) by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne #1) by Mark Hodder
• Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk
• False Idols (The Dragon Lords #2) by Jon Hollins
• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
• Night Shift by Stephen King
• Blindsight (Firefall #1) by Peter Watts
• The Blade Itself (The First Law #1) by Joe Abercrombie
• Gideon's Sword (Gideon Crew #1) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• Gideon's Corpse (Gideon Crew #2) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• The Hatching (The Hatching #1) by Ezekiel Boone
• The Lost Island (Gideon Crew #3) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• Beyond the Ice Limit (Gideon Crew #4) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• The Pharaoh Key (Gideon Crew #5) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• The Authorities™ by Scott Meyer
• Frank Miller's RoboCop by Frank Miller (GN)
• Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe (Deadpool Killogy #1) by Cullen Bunn (GN)
• Deadpool Kills Deadpool (Deadpool Killogy #3) by Cullen Bunn (GN)
• Deadpool vs. Carnage (Deadpool VS) by Cullen Bunn (GN)
• Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: The Official Movie Novelization by Christie Golden (AB)
• Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Since I read the other four Gideon Crew books and got all caught up I read the fifth one. Not good either. They give the guy a death sentence in the first book, say they want to write 12, and then it just ends in 5 with him still alive but the story is effectively done because the in-story doctors say you have three months and the story takes 2 months and three weeks. They should have had him die as the final page, I would have been happier with that.

The Authorities was a really fun book, and bonus if you live in Seattle it's set there and has some good local humor.

The graphic novels were all fair to middling except for Robocop which was pretty bad and all over the place storywise. I just couldn't care for any character and the story was just too over the top in violence and sexualization. I don't know what Frank was going for but I think I figured out why they didn't use his story for the film.

Deadpool was just OK. I assume the one-shots like these are not as well written as a longer storyline, maybe? They just seemed rote.

Valerian was pretty terrible. First you have a pretty straight retelling of the movie, but then there's also little to no internal dialogue to help bring more life out of the characters. For as bad as the characters were in the film they are even flatter here.

Meddling Kids was a standout. Imagine the last case of the Scooby gang was a real monster and they grew up and then 13 years later go back to find out what actually happened and then suddenly it's Cthulu-time, that's what you get here.
There's some weird writing styles going on - it will switch the dialogue would change from standard quotation marks and dialogue tags to script style in the middle of a scene. There are multiple 4th wall references like "the monster blah blah blah and didn't even survive this paragraph" or another part where it's talking about monster Mu (as in the Greek letter) and then it says "getting back to Mu from four lines ago". There's even a part with a monster (as in monsters and the sheer size of the crowd) fight that is at least a page long and is one sentence. It gives it a frantic style that I could appreciate but I also skimmed because I don't care who punches who where or slices this or that appendage off when it's this frantic. It was a little busy in that regard.
I think when I'm done with it - I'm right near the end - it'll probably be a 3.5 out of 5. It has some decent humor and the way he turns a phrase has me frequently re-reading sections just to enjoy them again. "The corner chaise lounge was for catatonics. The sofa was a sort of UN demilitarized zone, an upholstered Jerusalem that members of different creeds reluctantly shared during interbellum periods." Which leads me to this review I'm reading on Goodreads:

From the beginning, the way that Cantero chose to describe or word particular scenes became bothersome. I began to feel rather unintelligent: 'sotto voce'd', 'perennial kawaii smile', 'Byronian face', 'Greenwich parallel of Eternia'. Umm, HUH? Maybe I should know what some of these mean, but without looking them up I simply passed right over them, not a clue.

It's made funnier that she mentions in the previous paragraph that she liked She-Ra but then she doesn't get Greenwich parallel of Eternia. Also he's from Barcelona so English isn't even his first language.

44/50 Movies

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
• The Dark Tower (2017)
• Kong: Skull Island (2017)
• Justice League (2017)
• Geostorm (2017)
• The Book of Henry (2017)
• Black Panther (2018)
• Being Canadian (2015)
• Willow (1988)
• Justice League Dark (2017)
• Despicable Me 3 (2017)
• Journey Through the Past (1974)
• Coco (2017)
• The Music of Strangers (2015)
• The Big Sick (2017)
• Chronicle (2012)
• Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
• Darkest Hour (2017)
• The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Ready Player One (2018)
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
• Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
• Peter Rabbit (2018)
• Paddington 2 (2017)
• The Greatest Showman (2017)
• Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
• Solo (2018)
• Annihilation (2018)
• The Shape of Water (2017)
• Incredibles 2 (2018)
• A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
• Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
• Sherlock Gnomes (2018)
• CHiPS (2017)
• The Equalizer (2014)
• Bubble Boy (2001)
• Beerfest (2006)
• Best in Show (2000)
• Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)
• Inside Man (2006)
• Mission Impossible 2 (2000)
• Downsizing (2017)
• Collateral Beauty (2016)
• sdf

Downsizing the Trailer had a pretty dumb premise - let's get little and drink! - but Downsizing the Movie was actually alright, for a bit. It just seemed to me to be all over the place with what it wanted to do. A few good ideas that were dropped too quickly and then a bummer (maybe?) of an ending.

Collateral Beauty was just strange. I thought it was a serious movie but they kept having lots of funny comedic bits in weird places. It got to where I asked my wife and she said, "What's funny about it so far?" which made me wonder what's up with my humor. I called the last twist almost immediately when I saw it but the first one I didn't see coming until a few seconds before it happened. And holy cow...I just checked Wikipedia because I was going to complain about the one person being so much younger than Will Smith but she's only 8 years younger. She looks like she could be early 30s, that's amazing. The tech of removing a person from a scene like they did was just a little far-fetched, especially the one on the subway.