Favorites of 2009 – Additional Details

A few days ago, I posted my choices for my “Favorites of 2009″.  Today I wanted to take some time to shed some added light on some of my choices.

Restaurant (National Chain): Chop House

I don’t eat at Chop House all that often, because let’s face it, it’s pretty expensive.  However, I have found myself eating there more often during the past couple of years than I used to.  Although I’ve heard a few negative reviews of it from time to time, the food and service have both been outstanding every time I’ve been there.  It’s not a place I eat at on a daily or even weekly basis, but it’s very enjoyable when I do, and it has become one of my favorite restaurants in Kingsport.

Restaurant (Fast Food): Pal’s

Until recently, I hadn’t eaten at Pal’s all that often for more than a year.  Believe it or not, I was trying to be more careful about how much fast food I ate.  However, I’ve recently started eating at Pal’s more often again, and I was quickly reminded of just how good their food is.

Restaurant (Local): China Wok

I believe this is my first repeat winner from last year.  I eat at China Wok once a week, and it’s far and away my favorite locally owned restaurant in Kingsport.  Their food is a higher quality than most other Chinese restaurants in town.

Movie: I Am Legend

I think this movie was released prior to 2009, but I watched it for the first time in 2009.  I thought I Am Legend was good, but not great.  The reason I picked it is because I try to pick a fairly new movie to present this award to, and I just don’t remember seeing any outstanding new movies in 2009.  If I included all movies that I saw for the first time in 2009 in this category, regardless of their age, I would have picked the 80s horror movie Cube.

T.V. Show: Destination Truth

I love Ghost Hunters, which won this award in 2008, but I’ve come to like Destination Truth even more.  It’s simply more interesting.  Something that can’t be explained seems to happen in every episode.  Could they be faking it all?  Sure, but it’s still exciting.

Destination Truth doesn’t focus exclusively on ghost hunting.  They investigate all sorts of unexplained phenomena, including bizarre creatures (in the ilk of Bigfoot).  My favorite episode was probably the one where they investigated Chernobyl.

Video Game: Dragon Age – Origins (X360)

I actually just finished this game last night but it was hands-down my favorite console game I played in 2009.  It’s very much like a traditional computer role-playing game, only with the controls tweaked a bit to fit the X360 controller.  The combat, inventory system, story, and all other aspects of the game are outstanding.  I liked it much better than Fable 2 or Fallout 3.  And it absolutely beats the socks off of Mass Effect.  The first expansion pack for Dragon Age is slated to be released in March, and I’m looking forward to it.

PC Game: Torchlight

This game was released in the latter part of the year, and I have only been playing it for about a month.  It’s basically Diablo I with better graphics.  It’s even from some of the designers who worked on Diablo (and Fate).  Don’t be dissuaded from trying Torchlight just because it’s more like Diablo than Diablo II.  It’s a ton of fun, and it only costs $20 (you can even get it for $9.95 if you catch it on sale).

Card Game: Phase 10

My new favorite card game of 2008 (Rage) failed to repeat as the winner in this category in 2009 simply because several of my friends disliked it so much that we never played it again.  I didn’t figure I could give a “Favorite of 2009″ award to a game I didn’t play in 2009.  So, Phase 10 wins this year.  It’s a great game too.

Board Game: Loaded Questions

Deciding the winner in this category was a tough decision.  Why?  Because I realized when I was picking the winners that I don’t remember playing any of my actual favorite board games during 2009.  I don’t think I played Scattergories, Sorry, or Oh What A Mountain! at all.  But I did play Monopoly, and now that I think about it, it would have won this category if I’d thought of it when I made up my list.

Don’t get me wrong, though – Loaded Questions is a good game and it’s a lot of fun.  It’s one of those games that asks a lot of different questions (some of them revealing), and challenges one of the players to figure out who wrote down each answer.

Electronics Store: Circuit City

Despite being out of business, Circuit City is still my favorite electronics store.  I don’t shop at Best Buy unless it’s absolutely necessary (i.e., if they have something I need in a hurry that I can’t find anywhere else).

Website: Facebook.com

I still seem to spend more time on Facebook than I do on all other websites combined.

Sporting Event: Fall race at Bristol

A couple of years ago, we almost let our Bristol tickets go because I had decided that fighting the crowd and the long walk wasn’t worth it.  I was wrong.  As the date of the race grew closer, I realized that I would really miss it if I wasn’t at the race.  It’s now become my favorite sporting event once again.

Amusement Park: James H. Drew Exposition (Appalachian Fair)

I’m probably as shocked as you are that Dollywood didn’t win this award.  You’ll probably also be shocked to learn that I didn’t visit Dollywood in 2009.  I can’t remember the last time I went a full year without going to Dollywood.  But none of my friends bought season passes, so I didn’t either.  I didn’t even find time to take the once a year trip that I usually make with mom and dad.

So, the James H. Drew Exposition at the Appalachian Fair wins the award.  It’s really a carnival instead of an amusement park, but it’s a large one.  And it’s impressive.  The rides are in better shape than in any traveling carnival I’ve ever seen.  In fact, they are in downright pristine condition.  The folks who run the Drew Exposition deserve to be commended.  It’s easy to see that they work very hard to keep their midway in tip-top shape.

TV Station: TV Land

Although some of my favorite shows are on SyFy, our TV seems to be on TV Land more than any other station, especially when the Andy Griffith Show is on.  A few days ago, I said that TV Land probably wouldn’t be my favorite station in 2010, but that was because I thought they were going to stop showing Andy Griffith.  That lasted a week before they put Andy back on.

Food:  Crab Cakes

This selection ties back into my favorite chain restaurant (Chop House).  My favorite dish has become the crab cakes with burgundy mushrooms and Parmesan spinach.

Movie Review – The Strangers

It’s been a while since I did a movie review, so I thought I would review The Strangers, which I finally watched tonight.  As with most of my reviews, there will be some spoilers, so keep that in mind if you haven’t watched the movie yet.

I had heard back when the movie was playing in theaters that it was a pretty good movie that was brought down by a poor ending, and I agree with that assessment.  The Strangers seems to be one of those movies where the writers and director crafted an excellent movie for the most part, but couldn’t think of a good ending.

The first hour or so of the movie was quite good.  The plot is actually very basic – a couple returns home after attending a wedding, and unknown masked assailants attack them.  There is just enough time spent at the beginning of the movie developing the protagonists to make you care about them, but it didn’t take too long to get into the suspenseful part of the movie.  Simple but effective plot devices, such as knocks at the door and an unknown person standing in the yard staring in the window, are used to create an atmosphere that is genuinely scary.  I thought the skipping record on the record player while the villains searched the house for their victims was particularly effective.  The masks worn by the villains were very creepy as well.

The first 15 minutes or so of the movie’s second hour felt like filler to me.  It almost seemed like they made an hour-long movie that was really good, but realized it would have to be longer to see a theatrical release.  The things that happened during this part of the movie were very run-of-the-mill horror movie cliches.  The victim tries to run from the house to the barn, falls down and hurts her ankle, and has to crawl the rest of the way; the victim tries to call for help on an old radio but the villain smashes it; the victim hides in a closet while the villians walk around the house looking for her.  This part of the movie almost became boring.

The ending of the movie was very basic.  There wasn’t anything particularly creative about it, and there wasn’t any sort of revelation as to why the villains did what they did.  They just tied the victims to chairs and stabbed them.  When one of the victims asked why they were doing this, one of the villains simply replied “because you were home”.

There were several things that I didn’t like about the ending.  First, the villains removed their masks and revealed their faces to their victims before stabbing them – but their faces were never shown on camera.  This was a huge disappointment.  Secondly, the very end of the movie just didn’t make sense to me.  One of the victims was still alive – and the villains knew it.  However, they willingly left her alive.  I didn’t understand why they would do that, since they had shown their faces to her.  Finally, the final scene was puzzling.  Two kids entered the house and found the bodies of the victims who had been killed, as well as the surviving victim.  One of the kids approached the survivor, she opened her eyes and screamed, and the credits rolled.  I don’t know what that was supposed to represent, unless it was to show that she survived, but we already knew that.

As a new feature of my movie reviews, I’ve decided to end them not only by giving my rating of the movie, but also by picking three other movies from the same genre and telling whether I though they were better or worse than the movie I just reviewed.

The Strangers Rating:  *** (Good)

Was it better than:

• The Halloween remake?  YES
• Vacancy?  NO
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original)?  NO

Mini Movie Reviews

Lawson posted some comments a while back where he gave his thoughts on some movies he’d seen recently, and I said that I would post my thoughts on those movies as well, as I’d seen several of them myself.

Since I like pro wrestling, I’ll use Lawson’s scale for rating the movies. Movies can score between 0 and 3, with the 3 being the best (since scoring a 3-count is how you win a wrestling match).

The Mist - I thought this was a really good movie overall. In addition to the sci-fi and horror aspects of the movie, they also did a great job capturing a sense of tension and high emotion. I didn’t like the fact that a Christian character was portrayed as the most evil character in the movie, but someone told me that they thought the viewer was supposed to realize that the character in question was more akin to a cult leader and that she wasn’t promoting true Christian values. I thought the ending of the movie was a little illogical, but it was also very ironic. It was similar to the ending of an episode of the Twilight Zone. I think I’ll make a seperate post later where I discuss the ending of this movie in greater detail. Rating: 2 2/3 count

30 Days of Night – I like horror movies, so naturally, I liked this movie. The premise was interesting. The movie takes place in an Alaskan town during the time of year where the sun doesn’t rise and it is always dark, and a group of vampires decide to take advantage of this unique situation. This movie drags a bit in places, and I wasn’t crazy about the ending, but the atmosphere and “feel” of the movie were great. Rating: 2 1/3 count

Cloverfield – I enjoyed this movie. The premise was similar to The Blair Witch Project, but on a grander scale. The entire movie was shot from the point of view of a character who was filming the events on his camcorder.

Now, as some of you may know, I think The Blair Witch Project is the worst movie of all time (and keep in mind that I like horror movies). In Blair Witch, nothing really happened in the entire movie. It was 90 minutes of people filming trees. In Cloverfield, however, a lot of interesting things happened. Among other things, you actually get to see the monster on screen quite a bit in Cloverfield, while all you saw in Blair Witch was a guy using the bathroom in the corner while the girl carrying the camera tripped and fell. I think what really happened to the ill-fated trio in Blair Witch is that when they went back and watched the footage they’d recorded, it bored them to death. But, I digress.

Cloverfield isn’t without its flaws. For one thing, it raises the same question that I’ve asked after watching other movies – If there’s a giant monster on the ground and you’re piloting an aircraft, why wouldn’t you fly high enough that the monster can’t reach up and knock you out of the sky? Also, the part where the heroes climb the outside of a skyscraper that is leaning on another skyscraper is downright stupid.

Despite its flaws, I enjoyed Cloverfield enough to give it a 2 1/3 count.

Movie Review – Halloween

I’m a fan of all of the movies in the Halloween series, and last night I saw Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of the original Halloween movie for the first time. I’m sure I’ll probably include some spoilers in my review, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet and want to be surprised, you might not want to read my review at this time. Also note that I watched the Director’s Cut of the movie, so if you’ve seen the movie and I mention something that you didn’t see in the version of the movie that you watched, that is probably why.

The Halloween remake is really like two movies in one. The first hour is mostly all-new material which covers the years that Michael Myers spent in the asylum. The second hour is pretty much a remake of the original movie.

The first part of the movie covers the period between the time that 10 year old Michael murdered his family until he escaped from the asylum 15 years later. I thought this part of the movie was very well done. It effectively explained how Michael came to be a deranged murderer, and it covered material that hadn’t been seen in the Halloween movies before, except for a few brief additional scenes that were inserted into the TV version of the original movie.

When I realized that there was only an hour left in the new movie before any of the events that took place in the original movie began, I knew that this part of the movie was going to be rushed. It really showed for the next 30 minutes, from about the 60 to 90 minute mark of the movie. There was practically no character development for Laurie, Annie, and Lynda before Annie and Lynda were killed. There was also very little interaction between these three characters. This part of the movie wasn’t bad, and it stayed true to the original for the most part; it just felt very rushed.

The final 20 to 30 minutes of the movie were, for the most part, completely different than the original. I have to say that this part of the movie, especially the ending, were quite run-of-the-mill and disappointing. Nothing here was nearly as good as the original movie. The scene where Dr. Loomis shoots Michael now happens much earlier, and takes place while Michael has Laurie trapped in an empty swimming pool. The famous scene where Michael has Laurie trapped in a closet, and Laurie stabs him in the eye with a wire clothes hanger, is missing. In its place is a fairly boring scene where Michael tears the house apart while searching for Laurie. The best scene of the original movie, where Loomis empties his gun into Michael and stares in terror when he looks off the balcony Michael fell from and realizes Michael is gone, is missing as well. In the new movie, Michael tackles Laurie and they both fall from the balcony to the ground, and Laurie shoots Michael in the head. The movie ends almost immediately after the shooting, and we are led to believe that Laurie has killed Michael. I didn’t like this part of the movie very much at all.

One thing that pleased me is that the familiar musical score from the original movie was used in the remake. Some things I didn’t like were that the profanity, nudity, and sex scenes were excessive, even for a horror movie.

I’ve heard that before they decided to go with Rob Zombie’s version of the Halloween remake, the studio almost green-lighted a movie called “Halloween: The Missing Years”, which would have covered the years that Michael spent in the asylum. Ultimately, I think it would have been better if they had stuck with that idea instead of doing it in combination with a remake of the original movie. The part of Rob Zombie’s Halloween that covered those early years of Michael’s life was quite good, while the part of the movie that was a remake of the original was far inferior to John Carpenter’s original movie.

Despite the fact that I didn’t like the end of the movie, I’ll still give this one 3 out of 4 stars.