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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Vinyadan's Avatar

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    Nov 2009
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    Default Your 2020 Favourite (10 Top) List

    Around this time of the year, there normally is a top 10 posting in the Metal thread, but it hasn't surfaced in a while, so I thought of opening a thread open to all top 10 or general favourites in all media categories for the year 2020. After all, this probably was a year in which we consumed more than usual and even felt a necessity for books, movies, songs, et cetera.


    So, my top 10 Music Albums (mostly metal):

    • Dark Forest -- Oak, Ash, and Thorn. Pensive heavy/power metal. UK
      I think that Oak, Ash and Thorn is an exceptional album in spite of the fact that the singer is out of his range in it. The songwriting in excellent and very evocative, and I think that an album that deals with the myths and history of a nation has something going for it, if it sounds like if it were sung by just anyone of the countless people that told those legends and lived that history.
    • Brothers of Metal -- Emblas Saga. Shameless symphonic power happy drunken soaring vikings. (Sweden)
      Symphonic metal requires huge technical skills. Once you have the skills, you need the ideas, which is why the genre tends to collapse in an imitation of Nightwish. Brothers of Metal (which also have a female vocalist) have just about everything. The disk is framed as a mythological narrative around the fire, which means a bit of talking at the start (I prefer when I start the disk and I get the music).
    • Unleash the Archers -- Abyss. Canadian power metal that transitions from a fantasy past to a sci-fi future.
    • Magnum -- The Serpent Rings. Hard Rock. (England)
    • Skyryder -- Vol. 2 -- heavy metal/hard rock (UK)
      It's not just good, it's also short! (it's an EP.)
    • Boisson Divines -- La Halha. Folk power metal in Gascon (Occitan), with some autochthonous songs. (FR)
    • Wytch Hazel -- Pentecost. Guitar white metal (Lancashire)
    • Forndom -- Fathir. Very slow neofolk from Sweden.
    • Two albums out of some that I didn't really spin many times, but are very good: Seven Spires -- Emerald Seas, Eternal Champion -- Ravening Iron, Armoured Saint -- Punching the Sky, Judicator -- Let There be Nothing, Countless Skies -- Glow, Sacred Outcry -- Damned for All Times.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Troll in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your 2020 Favourite (10 Top) List

    Top Ten films released to cinema

    I actually saw a grand total of 11 movies this year so only one gets the boot. Sorry 'The Gentleman' but quite frankly you weren't very good.
    In order, best first.

    1) Parasite- Almost unbearably tense. Intelligent, well acted and an insight into a society I knew little about. Just brilliant
    2) 1917- Technically magnificent. Beautifully shot and oh god it was a horrible time to be alive and this shows it.
    3) Jojo Rabbit- I like black humor so this one was a hit with me. And Scarlett Johnasson is adorable as the very cool mum
    4) Tenet- Ok I admit this one actually lost me following exactly how the world worked roughly half way through (where the bad guy interrogates the hero from the other side of a glass wall). However its a tribute to the film that I want to watch it again and maybe this time figure it all out
    5) Onward- Its a Pixar cartoon with DnD jokes. What's not to love ?
    6) Birds of Prey- I liked it, OK ?
    7) David Copperfield- It was Ok but perhaps I was expecting more after 'The Death of Stalin' ?
    8) Bill and Ted Face the Music- It gave me a warm nostalgic feel and I laughed enough to ignore the fact I spotted how it would end literally 10 minutes in.
    9) New Mutants- It was all right I suppose. Just seemed a little brief. And while I liked some of the characters some came of as utterly bland
    10) The Hunt- It sucked
    Last edited by comicshorse; 2021-01-06 at 05:07 PM.
    All Comicshorse's posts come with the advisor : This is just my opinion any difficulties arising from implementing my ideas are your own problem

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Troll in the Playground
     
    Kitten Champion's Avatar

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    Aug 2012

    Default Re: Your 2020 Favourite (10 Top) List

    The only 2020 movies I actually watched from 2020 were on Disney+ - Onward, Soul, and Mulan - and The Old Guard on Netflix. Maybe I saw something else on Netflix but I genuinely can't recall.

    Soul is excellent. I fully expect it to win a Best Animated Oscar for what that's worth from 2020, but it's just a well thought out and well animated movie with great pacing and dialogue. It's also a kind of daring movie to make from concept to execution, in much the same way Up! was. It's a script written by someone(s) who didn't want to engage with the usual simple platitudes and went to the effort not to.

    Onward is a great movie, it's only real fault is that Pixar makes a lot of great movies and you can feel the comfortable Pixar-ness of it. The unconventional plot turns and character moments are what you'd expect from Pixar in 2020 that it doesn't quite hit you in the feels like it would a decade ago, but that in no way makes it a poor movie. The setting and use of D&D tropes/concepts within modernity gives a fresh feel that I appreciate.

    Live action Mulan felt less like it was an interpretation Chinese folktale and more of a YA fantasy epic, but after accepting that I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. It's lovely to watch and the actors perform well. I'd say the biggest issue I had with it is third act feels rushed and the battles near the end feel small relative to their import. I do like the story choices which conform to the Ballad of Mulan are the coolest parts of the movie.

    As to The Old Guard, I also enjoyed it. It's very much in the "we want to do John Wick" world of action, and the worldbuilding with these immortals is generally quite good with the actors convincingly suggesting their longevity without beating you over the head with it. Like, they could do the annoying thing where they namedrop historical events and figures, but rather they took the wiser route and made the characters feel very world-weary and self-assured with everything they do.

    Biggest issue with it was how much it felt like it was setting up itself for sequels. Which is okay - though not great - when you do get those sequels and you can get that full narrative, but to me can ruin a potential franchise from the get-go. Also, the villain was pushed way too much on the weaselly stereotype side when he had the potential to be something more sympathetic and interesting. Instead of being an "ends justifies the means" anti-hero who wants to cure the world's diseases and is willing to sacrifice a few extraordinary lives to achieve it is compelling, I think, but he ends up just wanting money like a Die Hard villain.

    Oh, no, wait, I did see another movie. Project Power. Yeah, it was good as well. Also with Jamie Foxx, oddly enough. I felt it did well with a not-exactly-Hollywood budget to pull off the whole superpower concept. They also made some interesting worldbuilding decisions with these powers that lets you use them while keeping its world more-or-less like the real one, by making their usage limited and extremely dangerous for the individual. The way they worked it into larger social issues was also pretty deft, I mean, especially relative to some American comic books I could point to. The young actor... Dominique Fishback according to IMDB, she was quite strong in her role and that went quite a ways to sell the movie.

    I don't have a numerical order for these, aside from Soul, which is my favourite.
    Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2021-01-07 at 05:21 AM.

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