My Best/Worst 2012 Films, Oscar Rankings

Sure, it's 55 days into 2013 but why not take a trip back in time with me? Since I've finally seen all of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, and I don't think there are any more 2012 releases that I'm going to see -- if any I haven't seen are even still in theaters -- it's time for my top ten of the sixty films (up by 6 from last year) I got to see. But first...

My Bottom 5 of 2012

5. Men in Black 3 -- An extremely tired sequel.
4. This Means War -- The worst rom-com and there's no Katherine Heigl or Gerard Butler in sight.
3. Silent House -- So bad I couldn't remember what it was about until I checked Wikipedia, and then it all came back to me.
2. Les Miserables -- I think I hated "Silent House" worse but I walked out of this one. But I did stay to the end of THE worst film of 2012...
1. Rock of Ages -- I will never understand why the film version, with the female lead's character named Sherrie, didn't bother to include the song "Oh Sherrie." Never. That song might have saved this from my only F of 2012...umm, probably not...

My Top 10 of 2012

May 19, 2012: My Festival Fest

On a warm late-spring Saturday afternoon I took in three different festivals in the city. I took many pictures and some video (using my tablet's camcorder)!

I started out at the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival , which has been held for the last seven years in Kensington (in a spot where, I'm guessing, it borders Fishtown). Its attractions are basically as advertised: arts and crafts (such as "Billy Maze," pictured),  food, vendors, etc. However, it also featured the 6th Annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. (Arts festival and derby photos are here.)

The what?


Basically, it's like this: a kinetic sculpture is a vehicle that's powered by humans (such as a bike) but also has some special artistic additions, making them look like parade floats or something. What they do is ride these things along a stretch of the street. There's no race, but there is one element to challenge them: a mud pit. They have to design their kinetic sculpture so that they can get it through the mud. Here's a sample:



Here's a close-up picture of the mud pit...

It's really entertaining. Next year I want to go again, but get a seat nearer to the mud.

Then I headed for Franklin Square for

Quick Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

In between the summer superhero behemoths -- "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" -- comes "The Amazing Spider-Man." "The Avengers" turned out extremely well, and I have similar expectations for "Dark Knight." As for this Spider-Man film, my expectations weren't as high despite some of the hype. So I wasn't overly disappointed that I wasn't overly excited by it. It looks good, it's well-acted, but with it being a reboot of the franchise so soon after the previous three films (the first of which arrived in 2002) it felt like I had pretty much seen it before. Peter Parker's back in high school, with Andrew Garfield taking over for Tobey Maguire. They changed a few details, added some more, swapped out love interests and villains, but otherwise it's the same: Peter's bitten by the spider, gains powers, doesn't stop a bad guy, bad guy kills Uncle Ben, Peter becomes Spider-Man, fights villain... I will say that I liked it more than the first movie in the Maguire-as-Spidey trilogy, so if this new one's sequel improves similarly, the next one should be quite a film. My grade: B-minus.

Quick Reviews: May 2012

Since I continue to procrastinate and waste time (not entirely wasting it, as I've had some stuff to deal with as well), I have to lump together the films I've seen instead of trying to do post after post. After today I've got seven that I've seen since the start of the "summer" movie season (which this year was, I suppose, the week "The Avengers" was released, which was before Mother's Day). Since I saw four of them in May, I'll wrap them up. Really, though, what's finally spurring them on is the one I just saw a few hours ago, so stay tuned.

Marvel's The Avengers: Do I really have to refer to this as "Marvel's"? Anyway, I am a bigger fan of the DC superheroes -- although with their "New 52" crap driving me away from the comic book stores, not to mention the better success of the Marvel character movies, it's a bit harder to say that. I have high hopes for "The Dark Knight Rises," but once Christian Bale's final Batman movie is over with, anyone trying to make a DC movie will seriously need to step up their game to come close to what "The Avengers" pulled off.  I was so dazzled that I had to really think of a reason to not give this a perfect A-plus grade. I finally came up with this: there's an obligatory scene where some of the heroes fight each other. This happens in the comic books and almost always is contrived -- they have to fight each other before teaming up to fight the bad guy. Even though in this movie it was almost plausible and understandable plot-wise, it was still there. My grade: A.

Dark Shadows: It started with a surprisingly long prologue before getting to the 1972 setting for the main story, which turned out to be quite disappointing. I love that Johnny Depp throws himself into these roles, and there were a few moments that were enjoyable, but resurrecting this old TV show just seemed totally unnecessary. My grade: C-minus.

The Dictator: If my generalization is correct, people mostly loved Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" and mostly hated "Bruno," although I loved both,