Happy New Year: 2018 Review!

Greetings, New Year’s Eve is finally upon us and that means there is only one blog update left for the year as 2018 comes to its conclusion. It has been a year of ups and downs but marked an important milestone for the blogging community as I celebrated the 10 year anniversary of Falcon’s blog back in July. As it is the 31st December, I have some titles to pick as my entertainment choice of the year. As per usual, there are four categories that I need to crown the winner for. The categories in question are television, film, games and books that I had reviewed in 2018 but doesn’t necessarily have to have been produced or released in this year. Be sure to let me know what the highlights of entertainment was for you this year in the comments below.

Television Show of the Year: Mad Men

Mad Men is a critically acclaimed Television show that ran from 2007 to its finale in 2015 and unquestionably, in my opinion, deserves the praise it receives. Its quality never dropped off or dipped during its whole seven series, a problem that has befallen many other beloved shows with shorter runtimes. All 94 episodes were a delight to watch and I was constantly gripped by the dramatic journeys of Don Draper and Peggy Olsen as they lived their day to day lives in the backdrop of the advertising world of the 1960s. The show also notably launched the careers of Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss as they now take on interesting roles in their post-Mad Men career. The amazing, contemporary soundtrack also has to be mentioned and gives Mad Men a certain stylistic charm.

Book of the Year: The Shining

One of Stephen King’s most famous novels, the Shining is a must read for any fans of this acclaimed horror writer. Set in the creepy and unique location of the Overlook Hotel, the book has no shortage of unsettling moments or sinister spectres to give the reader goose bumps. Jack Torrance’s descent into madness is well written and fleshes out the character nicely, giving him a more layered personality than Jack Nicholson’s iconic performance could encapsulate in Kubrick’s masterpiece. It is also interesting to note the small differences between the original book and the film adaptation while reading it. The Shining is one of my favourite novels of all time and I look forward to diving deeper into King’s lengthy bibliography.

Game of the Year: Batman: The Telltale Series

It was difficult to choose between this and the cult favourite fantasy, Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but I believe Batman just slightly nudged in ahead of it to get Game of the Year. Batman followed the same classic episodic approach and the decision based mechanisms that made the now sadly defunct Telltale Games a tour de force in the gaming industry. What set this the game apart from the long list of other Dark Knight video games was the importance placed on the caped crusader’s real identity, Bruce Wayne, which made him as important to the plot as his famous alter ego. I do hope to play the second series that was produced by Telltale shortly before their closure.

Film of the Year: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came against some tough competition from the likes of Avengers: Infinity War and the Graduate, both noteworthy works in their own right, but the 1969 film is easily one of the best in cinematic history. The charismatic performances of Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katherine Ross as Butch, Sundance and Etta are as iconic as they are entertaining to watch. Alongside a great soundtrack by Burt Bacharach, the movie is a must watch for Western fans and cinemagoers in general. I also aim to watch another film starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman called the Sting next year.

The next blog update will be posted at some stage in January 2019 in which I will be covering Netflix’s western miniseries, Godless, that was released a year ago. It is rather hard to believe but in a year of this exact date we will be celebrating the end of the twenty-tens and welcoming in the twenty-twenties. As such, I’ll not only have to celebrate 2019 in a blog update but the entire decade as well and all that happened within it. Have a happy New Year and I wish you all the best for an awesome 2019!

Quote of the Day

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Rick Blaine

Casablanca