For a brief period this year I was addicted to House M.D.: I would come home, watch five episodes, drink a few beers, smoke a few cigarettes, and go to bed. The next few days probably looked the same. The good thing about being addicted to a series, of course, is that episodes are not endless. So eventually, the addiction ended. If you’re going to watch this show, I recommend season one and two; from season three it all goes downhill, unfortunately.
Best of 2008
Film
Highlights ¶ Year in Review
Currently viewing: Film
January Jones of AMC’s Mad Men
Living in Ghent for most of the year, I was delighted to see there are two quality cinemas in the city: Sphinx and Studio Skoop. Both are small, cosy and the people who go there to watch films definitely won’t disturb you while you’re trying to watch a film.
One of the films I was most impressed with was Das Leben Der Anderen, a story about a secret agent that is tasked to follow a couple’s life, becoming increasingly fascinated by what they do in the process. A real piece of cinema.
The Dark Knight held up an impressive 9.6 IMDB score for weeks, so when it was released in Belgium I had to check it out. It’s definitely not memorable (as in lifetime-top-memorable), but the grand opening scene and the brilliant Joker made it way better than your typical action flick.
A couple of weeks ago, due to multiple mentions by persons whose blog I follow I discovered a new series: Mad Men. This series is about a fictive advertising agency in New York City and is set in the early sixties. The opening is a piece of art in itself, the costumes, the characters, it all fits. The story itself is not the best, but still amusing enough to keep following the series. What really makes Mad Men shine is the art direction, which is absolutely wonderful. Related reading: Mad Men, Mad Props and Mad Men Hair Uncovered.
All year I’ve been saying “YouTube is the new TV”. Instead of watching continuous uninterestingness with the occassional good clip on MTV, you can watch anything you want, anytime on YouTube. That is, of course, an overstatement, but YouTube is a goldmine.
Most people use YouTube to watch music clips, but in other subjects there’s also a lot of gold to be found. The TED talks contain quite a few precious gems, I really enjoyed Randy Pausch’s last lecture and Obama’s speech Just Words is pure gold.
Please note that these Best of articles are written from my perspective of 2008, so some content might be from last year, the year before, or even from way before. These articles are intended to be a personal review of the past year, not a historical one.