(t5!) My Year In Lists 2012: #Hashtags!
Because of my full-time job and my full-time wife, I simply don’t have the time to write about summer blockbusters, Swedish pop gems, and chillwave LPs like I used to. The fact that I also aim to develop professionally and we also have a baby Benoza on the way (!) most likely won’t help matters. As much as I aspire to be the next Chuck Klosterman or the next Malcolm Gladwell, there is honestly more important matters that I need to tend to than writing. That’s the reason why I only posted four times since I rolled out last year’s (t5!) My Year In Lists!
But the only thing worse than bloggers who never update their blogs are those who keep apologizing for doing so. So I’m done apologizing and I’ll just be honest. On the off chance that anyone is still checking this space in the hopes of reading the more detail oriented pop culture criticisms, unfortunately I won’t be posting them anymore. You can blame my 9-to-5, my wife who loves spending time with me, or my virility. Once I invent a device that increase the Earth's circumference so that we can have more than 24 hours in a day, then I'll figure something out. But until then, we're all shit out of luck.
But I’m not going away just yet. Let’s face it, we are currently living in a 140-character, animated GIFs, tl;dr type of world anyway, where long and winding expositions are no longer fashionable. Ain't nobody got time for that! So why not embrace that. This version of Let’s Touch Fives! will be more concise, more efficient, but most importantly, more present. I still would like to finish My Philippines Experiment posts some day, but from this point on, I’ll be focusing more on lists with significantly shorter blurbs. Those are easier to do those than to produce proper, persuasive, and coherent paragraphs. If you don’t care about reading those as well, you can at least enjoy the graphics with their rankings superimposed in them. Or just check out the Tumblr version.
Anyway, let’s kick off this list party with (t5!) My Year in Lists 2012: #Hashtags!, a list of last year’s most blogworthy triumphs that happened in the world of sports, film, TV, Internets, cats, basically everything that can be ranked that isn’t music related.
Huge disclaimer though, Zero Dark Thirty is not on this list. Publications all over have included it in their Best Films of 2012 lists because it premiered in Los Angeles on December 18, 2012. The rest of the world though, a set that includes the modest town of Edmonton, only got to see it for the first time on January 11, 2013. Don’t be surprised if it leads this list next year, maybe second only to Spring Breakers.
Another disclaimer, the only pop culture event that would’ve made this list if I’ve experienced it before I made it is Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Seriously, I can’t find a blu-ray rip, a DVD rip, a screener, or a Cam rip copy of this movie. The Internet has failed me on this one.
Also, spoiler alert in effect for some of these.
One of the benefits of me shortening the blurbs is that I can extrapolate these lists. Start this shit at 50! #YOLO
Kicking off this list with Project X is less in praise of the movie, its characters, or its cinéma vérité style. It's basically all abaout that massive party. Every teenager who grew up in the suburbs have dreamt, in one form or another, of throwing or attending a house party just like that. You wished you were there.
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Due to the unfortunate dismissal of the show’s original creator Dan Harmon, this may have been the last of these esoteric high-concept Community episodes that we'll see. “Digital Estate Planning” wasn’t LOL funny, but anyone who has been enslaved by 8-bit video games once upon a time watched this Season 4 finale with unequivocal glee.
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I remember a Grantland reader wondering the possibility of Gabby Douglas being the love child of Allen Iverson since they both come from Virginia. Although Gabby Douglas’ father completely made this scenario unfeasible, it would’ve perfectly explained the athleticism and competitive spirit that Gabby displayed when she dominated women’s gymnastics in the London Olympics. One can hope.
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Tina Fey receives well-deserved props for finally abolishing the ridiculous argument that women can’t be funny, but her Second City classmate Amy Poehler, for some reason, still doesn’t get enough credit. “The Debate” is entirely Amy Poehler; she’s the episode’s star, writer, and director. Although she was unquestionably the episode’s center, she was generous and talented enough to give everyone in Pawnee a turn in the spotlight.
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The 2012 example of why it’s unfair to judge a movie before seeing it. Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd was underwhelming, so I didn’t give this version any chance when it first came out. After watching Dredd 3D at home however, I instantly regretted not watching it in theaters. The bend of artistry used whenever the perspective of the Slo-Mo drug user is shown would’ve looked awesome in 3D.
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Silver Linings Playbook should have been a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy if it wasn’t for the two spellbinding main characters and the script that they sensationally acted out. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence were superb here, and while they necessarily weren’t characters that are easy to identify with, their slowly developing relationship and character arcs were refreshing.
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I never grew up with Harry Potter, so I never understood the appeal of Emma Watson. But after seeing The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, it get what the geeks whom profess love for this Hogwarts alumnus saw in her. She is quirky, adorable, and conceivably attainable in this terrific teenager coming-of-age flick, perfectly casted as the wallflower’s object of affection.
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Adrian Peterson was awarded the 2012 NFL’s Most Valuable Player, but no one impacted more plays than Houston Texans’ J.J. Watt. The 2012 Defensive Player of the Year led the league in sacks and tackles for loss. He was 62nd in solo tackles, where he’s the only defensive lineman in the top 140. He is tenth in passes defended, which is unreal for a defensive end.
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If this year’s Emmys include a Comeback Show of the Year in their string of awards, it's Dexter's to lose. Deb finding out about Dexter’s dark passenger was inevitable, but I didn’t have faith that the handlers of the show would be able to do it so competently. Deb knowing alters her and Dexter’s relationship completely, and it provided a shake-up that this show desperately needed.
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Beasts of the Southern Wild is a wonderful tale of life and survival that is both simple and metaphorical, both turbulent and picturesque, and both poignant and triumphant. If your heart doesn’t ache for the adorable 5-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, then schedule an ECG appointment soon.
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Further proof that you only need a hot goalie to win the entire NHL playoff tournament, the eight-seed Los Angeles Kings rode Jonathan Quick’s 1.41 GAA and .946 save percentage all the way to a 2012 Stanley Cup championship. Quick also get points for being the mostaptly named goalie in the history of the NHL, unless you can find me a goalie in the Swedish Elite League named Puck Stoppersson
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This isn’t to say that Ben Affleck isn’t a talented actor, but there’s a big enough sample size to conclude that he may be more exceptional at directing than he is at acting. Sure, the script and true-to-life story is harrowing and thrilling enough that any director can make Argo sensationally tense. But the transitions from Hollywood to Tehran, only a skilled director can handle that shift in mood.
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I’m curious how Wreck-It-Ralph resonated with kids who didn’t grow up on NES, Sega Genesis, and classic arcade games. The plot and the message of loving oneself and finding a friend in unexpected places were ostensibly directed at a younger audience, but I doubt that younger audience would’ve been as affected as I was by the early 90’s video game homages and references sprinkled throughout this movie.
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Jared Harris’ Lane Pryce wasn’t my favorite Mad Men character, but his suicide was one of the most shocking television moments in 2012 even though everyone who’s been watching Season 5 knew it was coming. “Commissions And Fees” was only the penultimate episode, but the disturbing images in this episode perfectly capped the very dark atmosphere of the season.
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Probably didn’t match the cult-like status he garnered in 2008, but Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign was still pleasurable to follow. Pete Souza, the official White House photographer, took photos that immediately went viral the moment it hit the Internet. He hopped on Reddit for a half-hour Ask Me Anything chat, which gave the website mainstream approval. In the end, there was no match. At least, Romney inspired the Binders Full of Women Tumblr page.
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During Kentucky’s championship run in the 2012 March Madness tournament, I was swooning over Anthony Davis’ potential. He already has the athleticism, length, and basketball instincts to become a terrific NBA player, but if you teach him proper post moves, he could be a unibrowed Hakeem Olajuwon. His professional debut season was derailed a little bit by an ankle injury, but he has shown flourishes of brilliance.
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With 44 home runs, 139 RBIs, and a .330 batting average, Miguel Cabrera captured the Triple Crown in 2012 MLB season. The last batter to win the Triple Crown? Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. People who claim that Sabermetrics is ruining baseball did the math and found out that these achievements were 45 years apart, and thus, gave Cabrera the AL MVP trophy based on these calculations.
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Flight is a pleasing enough movie with a pretty nice visual of a plane flying upside down but it’s nothing without Denzel Washington’s performance as airplane pilot Whip Whitaker. It’s amazing that Denzel, 25 years after St. Elsewhere ended, is still one of the most charismatic actors in the movie business. If played by a different actor, Whip Whitaker would be completely unlikable.
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If there are any doubts that Mike Ehrmantraut, the geriatric cleaner and consigliore on Breaking Bad, was an utter badass, “Madrigal” debunked any of it. First he handles Hank’s questioning, then he goes through his would-be assassin Chris like hot knife on butter. This second episode of the fifth season revealed the unnerving Lydia, whom would’ve gotten got by Mike if she didn’t beg Mike to let her daughter be the one to discover her corpse.
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In 2012, we may have witnessed the debut of the best baseball player of the next ten years! This kid can hit, run, and chase down balls better than mostly anyone in the league already. Mike Trout could’ve won the AL MVP in his rookie season, but voters who believe that advanced metrics like WAR, OPS+, wRC+, BABIP, BsR, RngR, and UZR are all make-believe numbers.
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When he was drafted first overall in 2011, I wrote that there’s no way Kyrie Irving can be one of the best point guards in the league. Now in his second season in the NBA, not only is he the most exciting point guard in the league, he may also be the most clutch. If the Cavaliers can surround him with two or more pieces, he has the ability and the self-confidence to lead his team deep into the playoffs one day. His Uncle Drew commercials were pretty clever too.
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Wherever your patriotic ties lie, I’m willing to bet that you were rooting for Usain Bolt to win the 100-meter, the 200-meter, and the 4x100-meter relay in the London Olympics. He didn't manage to break his own world record, only breaking his own Olympic record by running the race in 9.63 seconds, but that still translates to an average speed of just over 37 km/h. That’s faster than what most drivers in Edmonton go when there’s fresh snow on the ground.
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Let’s set aside for a moment my opinions on the result of the fight or Pacquiao’s lack of preparation going into the fight. Before Marquez knocked out Pacquiao, this was a toe-to-toe skirmish between two skilled fighters. If only Pacquiao lasted that final second of the sixth round, it could’ve been a twelve-round classic, but even so, it’s still one of the best fights I’ve ever seen.
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Sure, Javale McGee, the hyper-athletic, 7’-0” tall, 7’-6” wingspanned center of the Denver Nuggets, has tons of potential but he’s not NBA appointment viewing because he is dominating the other big men in the Western Conference. You’re excited every time he steps out on the floor because at any given moment, you never know if he’s going to do something incredibly breathtaking or incredibly dumb. It’s as if the greatest basketball player in the world don’t know how to play basketball.
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The first time Tina Fey & Co tried to do a live 30 Rock episode, it seemed very much like a gimmick and didn’t receive much acclaim. Thank the comedy gods that they were ballsy enough to try it again in their sixth season, because with a few tweaks, more surprising cameos, and better sketches, they proved that a live 30 Rock can be as dynamic as a 30-minute long Saturday Night Live episode.
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Whenever an athlete tears both his ACL and MCL from now on, Adrian Peterson’s 2012 season will forever be evidence to appease any of his fan’s concerns. This injury used to be a career-ender in sports but once Peterson recorded the second-most rushing yards in a season, nine yards short of the record, 12 months after he had knee surgery, then anything is possible.
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Ever since Avatar came out in 2009, the usage of 3D in film, for the most part, had been questionable. But once in a while, a director like Ang Lee, whom has an uncanny eye for seeing pretty scenes, uses the 3D as a productive apparatus to enhance the art and graphics of his movie. In Life of Pi, Ang Lee abducts his audience into the world he created, making it seem as if you’re marooned in that boat along with Pi and his crouching tiger.
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I desperately wanted the Patriots to win Super Bowl XLVI for various reasons: (1) Tom Brady is a pigskin throwing demigod; (2) Eli Manning has a horshoe up his ass; (3) I want revenge for Giants ruining the Patriots’ run for an undefeated season in 2007; and (4) the viewers who only tuned in to watch the commercials were rooting for the Giants because they are from the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. Sadly for me, in Super Bowl XLVI, Brady was less than spectacular, Eli threw another miraculous throw and now has more rings than his future Hall of Fame older brother, and non-NFL fans rejoiced. Terrific game nonetheless.
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Sure, USA’s Olympic entry for basketball could’ve been loads better if Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, and Dwyane Wade weren’t injured and were able to participate, but the way they dominated in London, they probably didn’t need those superstars anyway. As an added bonus for fans, Team USA players posting their Olympic experiences in Twitter and Instagram made you want to be part of this team.
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It’s inconceivable to think that one of the best shows on television can be better, but Mad Men did so in their fifth season by becoming experimental. Showing the same timeline from different character’s perspectives is a pretty common narrative trick in film, but it hasn’t this done this expertly in the small screen. Because of this, “Far Away Places” felt like an acid trip, similar to what Roger might have experienced during the episode.
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Creator, director, and main protagonist Lena Dunham had the balls to write these four young post-teenagers as narcissistic, credulous, and irritable borough divas. The stories of the four girls of Girls, whether or not they represented today’s women in their 20s, were funny, perceptive, affecting, and downright entertaining.
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What Sam and Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom represented is love at its most picturesque and unspoiled. This film awakened memories of so many romantic fantasies that most had when they were younger; I’m hoping I’m not alone in saying that I wished I could have eloped with my elementary crush into an isolated beach, just us against the people diminishing the feelings we had as nothing but puppy love.
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When American Idol lost its monopoly on singing competitions last year, it would appear that the show’s best days are behind them. However, in their eleventh season, they lucked out with two of the best singers the show has ever seen. Each week, Jessica Sanchez and Joshua Ledet made the wannabe divas and crooners of The Voice and X-Factor look like the true amateurs they really are.
If you’re as disheartened by the lack of originality in horror movies, The Cabin In The Woods might be your invigorating poison. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon, the brainchilds behind the film, took the old formula of five teenagers on a doomed weekend getaway and put it on a pedestal to be both admired and ridiculed by horror movie enthusiasts.
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Due to Don’s perfunctory decision to marry his secretary Megan at the end of the 4th season of Mad Men, everyone anticipated that she gets a little more screen time in the fifth season. However no one anticipated that Jessica Pare, the topless girl from Hot Tub Time Machine, can be such a magnetic presence on screen. After a 16-month long absence, she welcomed back Mad Men fanatics with a sexy rendition of Gillian Hills’ “Zou Bisou Bisou” in season five’s first episode “A Little Kiss”. Throughout the season, she was persuasively used as the ideal woman of 1966 and underlined the frightening reality that Don may be out of touch with the modern generation.
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The sitcom is titled New Girl, and the plot centers around affectionately quaint Zooey Deschanel and her signature bangs. But the real star of the show may be Schmidt played by Max Greenfield. It’s tiresome sometimes that the show still has a tendency to heavily impose Jess as this whimsical indie crush onto its audience, immobilizing her male roommates as characters that need to react to her quirkiness in order to make it stand out. But New Girl became one of the funniest shows on television by tweaking their original plan. Fox should realize that Schmidt happens.
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It wasn’t as if the fans of Game Of Thrones were expecting a battle scene in the same scale as The Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers or The Battle of Thermopylae in 300. It’s understood that budgets for a TV series—even one funded by a lavish cable network like HBO—would seem like peanuts to someone like Peter Jackson, but even on limited allowance, the execution of “Blackwater” was not only impressive, it may have contained the greatest action scenes of the year.
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I have an affinity for NBA players like Ricky Rubio who give someone an easy bucket or an open look for their own enjoyment. The way Rubio passes is artistry. The variety of ways he gets the ball to a teammate—whether it’s a behind-the-back pass, a bullet one-hander, a side-english wrap-around, or a simple bounce pass between an opponent’s legs—is remarkable. He made basketball easy for the Minnesota Timberwolves, who, in spite of their average record, are appointment viewing on NBA League Pass.
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The Dream Team, the group of NBA players that competed in Barcelona Olympics in 1992 for the United States, was the greatest sports team I’ve ever seen play. The only thing I didn’t like about that team is that it existed pre-Internet. Thankfully, NBATV’s “The Dream Team” successfully turned the second-hand stories about them from myths into absorbing realities. The documentary covered everything from the Isiah Thomas’ exclusion to Charles Barkley’s antics to their legendary practices, which was dubbed the most intense game of basketball ever played by writers who seen it first hand.
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In spite of McKayla Maroney’s misfortune in the individual vault finale, the Internet still fell in love with her. Animated Gifs of the immaculate vault went viral. The McKayla Is Not Impressed Tumblr, a screenshot of her reaction to her defeat superimposed into a collection of things she theoretically disapproves of, infiltrated the meme universe. Every stop of her publicity tour was blogged. McKayla went from a sore loser to an Internet princess.
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For approximately two weeks in 2012, Jeremy Lin convinced the universe that he was the clear-cut MVP of the NBA. Not only because he averaged 23.9 points and 9.18 assists per game during that span, but also because Linsanity took over the league like a tidal wave from out of nowhere. I’ll concede that there was maybe a minor condescension about the fact that his sudden rise wouldn’t have been international news if he wasn’t Asian-American, but to take away his distinction as the Great Yellow Hope strips the community he represented—wilfully or not—of the joy of seeing one of its own succeed in an unlikely arena.
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As usual, Walt and Jesse’s disinclination for bloodshed lead to one of Breaking Bad’s most thrilling moments. In “Dead Freight”, a traditional drug crew would have plainly taken care of the train engineers and stolen the methylamine payload. Fortunately, we didn’t though because we wouldn’t have gotten the show’s greatest episode. If this was a 40-minute movie, it would’ve rivaled Heat, Ocean’s Eleven, and The Great Muppet Caper as one of the greatest film heists of all time.
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The Avengers had the greatest degree of difficulty to succeed out of all the movies of 2012. Luckily, Joss Whedon has directing skills, and in spite of all of this turbulence, he was there to land this colossal helicarrier with style and grace. Not only did Whedon do a formidable job coordinate battle sequences that highlighted each super member, he also enlivened the dialogue and humanized these playboy billionaires, Norse gods, and gamma-bombed scientists.
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No other athlete had a more productive year than LeBron James: he went home with the MVP crown; he won his first NBA championship, in which he was awarded the NBA Finals MVP; and then, he received a gold medal in the London Olympics. More importantly though, he finally became what he was hyped up to become, the undisputed king of the NBA. He embraced the move to power forward, developed a post-game, and became the focal point of the offense on the low block. Aside from that, he effectively guarded all five positions. What’s scary about this is that he just lifted all the pressure from his shoulders, and he is uninhibited now to dominate even further.
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Whether or not the journey of Dr. Dragon Tattoo and Fassbender Head ends up in Nostromo in Summer 2016, Prometheus is a legitimate addiotion to the legendary Ridley Scott franchise. Prometheus feels like a new era translation of Alien: it’s an electrifying horror movie set in a science fiction world. Where Prometheus differs from Alien, however, is that the scenescape of the former is vastly more breathtaking and expansive than the latter. The sense of size and space in Prometheus made shelling out extra cash for the IMAX 3D experience worthwhile.
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Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s homage to Spaghetti Westerns and the latest of his revenge fantasies, is another indication of why his movies had become pop culture events. Beneath the grisly and unyielding look at America’s original sin, Django is a love story with all of the cinematic qualities that make Quentin Tarantino an unparalleled director: wicked sense of humor, wonderfully anachronistic soundtrack, exorbitant violence, and mesmeric, profanity-filled dialogue uttered by Hollywood’s most skilled actors.
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Back then, I was amazed by the way Michael Vick dominated the game both with his passing ability and his feet, and I thought he was going to be unstoppable. Now here comes Robert Griffin III, Michael Vick 2.0. Robert Griffin III is bigger, faster, more accurate, can throw longer bombs, and has a better pocket presence than Vick. If Vick had the promise to become the best offensive player the NFL has ever seen, then I imagine Robert Griffin III’s ceiling sits at a height that Felix Baumgartner would gladly freefall from to promote Red Bull. And yes, even after reconstructive knee surgery.
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Time travel is a tricky premise to pull off, which is why most films that tackle the subject is infested with pardoxes. But Looper proved that terrific visual ideas, proper execution, and a well-constructed prosthetic face can patch up any glaring plot holes. Looper wasn’t flawless by any means, and yet it still was one of the beastiest action flicks of 2012.
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The reason why “Gangnam Style”, despite being a single that peaked at #2 in the Billboard Charts in 2012, shows up in this list and won't be showing up in the (t5!) Singles! list is because if you remove Psy, the dance, and the video from all of this, then “Gangnam Style” is essentially an LMFAO single. But the music video, the one that was viewed over gazillion times, and the dance movement that came with it pretty much defined entertainment in 2012.
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I didn’t expect The Dark Knight Rises to be as good as The Dark Knight, and it wasn’t. I didn’t expect it to have as compelling an acting performance as Heath Ledger’s Joker, and it didn’t. With all of that said, The Dark Knight Rises was brilliant, both as a summer blockbuster and as a conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s trilogy. I’m delighted that I ventured into post-Harvey Dent Gotham City with my expectations properly lowered, because I wouldn’t have appreciated this fairly if I was constantly wishing that Bane’s incomprehensible Connery was more like Joker’s lip-smacking, Tom Waits-inspired diabolical absurdity. The absence of The Joker’s shine-blocking charisma allowed everyone else to be noticed, like Anne Hathaway’s classical Hollywood rework of Catwoman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s quixotic crime fighting style.
Heath Ledger’s most undeserved thunder theft in The Dark Knight was when his performance caused Christopher Nolan’s brilliance to be overlooked. If this Batman franchise was entrusted to any other popular director, it would’ve failed to distinguish itself from every other superhero film churned out every year to make millions. But Nolan figured out that you can attract massive audiences without compromising your mission to invoke thought, propagate discussion, besmirch the Occupy movement, and blow up the Pittsburgh Steelers return team.
Nolan wrapped up the story of Bruce Wayne as Batman so neatly that it would be pretty difficult for someone else to follow up The Dark Knight Rises with a fourth instalment, but if I know anything about the film industry, they will milk a cash cow until it’s dry. There will be another Batman movie before the decade ends. Fortunately, the Batman saga is rich enough that a new director can easily expand on this version (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Nightwing would be fantastic), but if they can’t get Nolan on the driver seat, I fear that it would seem bleak in comparison to this trilogy. I'm keeping my expectations lowered.
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