I’m currently sitting in the livingroom with the xfactor final about to start. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to get my usual end of year post done.

I present to you my favourite things of 2011

Top 3 Movies

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Attack the Block
Melancholia

Top 3 TV Shows

Community
Modern Family
House

Top 3 Books

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Top 3 Albums

Um, Uh Oh by Say Hi
No Witch by The Cave Singers
Tron Legacy by Daft Punk

Top 3 Songs

Someone Like You by Adele
Devils by Say Hi
Paradise by Coldplay

Top 3 Podcasts

Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Books You Should Read
TEDTalks

Top 3 Games

Bejewelled Blitz (iPhone)
Football Manager (mac)
Words With Friends (iPhone)

Top 3 iPhone Apps

IMDB
Eurosport LIVE Scores
Momento

Top 3 Real Life Moments

Finding out I was to become a dad!
Weeks holiday in Cape Verde
Being an Usher at my mate Duncan’s Wedding

This year has probably been the biggest of my life. Married, in a new house, St Lucia, business being busier than ever. Along the way I’ve managed also to take in some time with the worlds media. Here is my favourites!

Movies

1. Inception
2. The Social Network
3. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Books

1. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Atonement by Ian McEwan
3. The Average American Male by Chad Kultgen

iPhone Apps

1. Twitter
2. Reeder
3. iPicasso

TV Shows

1. Community
2. House
3. Lost

Most Visited Internet Sites

1. Torrentleech.org
2. Facebook
3. Goodreads

Songs

1. The Sunshine Underground – Coming To Save You
2. Richard Ashcroft – C’mon People (We’re Making It Now)
3. Foo Fighters – Wheels

Bands

1. The Sunshine Underground
2. Codeine Velvet Club
3. Radiohead

Podcasts

1. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
2. Slash Film
3. Astronomy Cast

Games

1. Bejewelled 2 (iphone)
2. Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2 (PC)
3. Mario Kart (Wii)

Favourite YouTube Video’s

Have a look at the trailer and featurettes of the movie. You’ll definitely be intrigued.

I really want to see this. In a nutshell, it is a documentary following Joaquin Phoenix around for a year, during what people are calling, a ‘tumultuous year’. He renounces acting for a rap career and generally goes way off the rails.

Of course there is a lot of discussion going on as to weather this is actually real. Did Joaquin Phoenix take a year long 24/7 acting role on and fool the worlds media? I’ve loved Joaquin as an actor thus far. Sign, Two Lovers, We Own The Night, Walk The Line have cemented him as one of Hollywood’s greats. I can see him being enough of a method actor to pull this off. I have some reservations, but I can’t wait to see the movie to make up my own mind.

Watch the trailer. It has one of the coolest voice-overs I’ve ever heard.

Also here is a youTube video of an appearance on the David Letterman show where he first showed his new persona.

You may or may not be aware that there is another similar type movie coming out soon called ‘Kick Ass‘. The movie has been getting rave reviews so far, but I have a hard time imagining it being any better than Defendor.

Anyway, on the back of this movie, I was watching the new trailer for Kick Ass and noticed a really nice text effect going on in it. Thought I would try and recreate the effect myself. Here is the result using a mixture of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop:

Didn’t take long to do. I might do a tut on it if anyone is interested?

This is a continuation of this post and this post.

Yeah! The top 100!

The most interesting thing that happened when creating this list was me identifying just how much I loved ‘The Planet of The Apes’. If someone had asked me my top ten before using flickchart I don’t think I would have mentioned it. But through the voting process I really discovered my thoughts on it. It was very hard to vote against.

A last minute vote saw ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Return of the King’ change positions. It was too hard to pick, but I think the re-watch-ability and personal history with ‘Star Wars’ made it the only number one.

The Top 100

There is a fair few blogs I follow. Some of them are written by good friends. We constantly talk (and sometimes blog) about movies. My good friends at swordfishtrombones.com, chasethehaggis.com and murphyslaw.com have recently been doing the IMDB challenge; where they attempt to watch as many movies in the official imdb top 250 as possible. I was really opposed to the idea because the movies that I have left to watch (110) are really not appealing to me.

Our friend over at Pontiac Dream then pulled the cat out the bag by announcing that he was going to create his OWN top 250 movies ever. I liked the idea, but I thought it was an almost impossible task. Just the thought made my mind boggle.

I was kinda leaning towards the idea, then I came across the site flickchart.com. This site has made the idea possible. It uses movie by movie comparison and creates a chart of your movies based on the results of the comparisons you have made. So,8300 movie comparisons later, I have my official top 250. I’m really happy with it and has even opened my eyes to the opinions I had about some movies. The stats don’t lie people.

I’m sorry for steeling your idea Keith. Most sincere form of flattery n’all that.

250to200

Yes. Titanic is in there folks. I thought it might even come in a little higher, but I’m pretty happy with that.

I tried to be as honest with myself as possible when voting. I didn’t change anything to look cool or controversial. I based my votes on the impact the movie had on me at the time and also if I was struggling to decide I would think “which one would I prefer to watch now on a rainy Sunday?”.

Looking at the list I supposed the most ‘out there’ movie is Four Rooms. It’s basically a movie which brings together a few directors and they each have a 35/40 min short story about something bizarre that is happening in one of the rooms of the hotel. Great fun. The last story with Bruce Willis is the best of the four.

Stay tuned for the next batch in the coming days.

Just after Christmas I bought myself a BluRay player and had been really enjoying the immense picture quality. It made me want more. The next thing, I thought, would be to get the best standard of sound available. So I started doing some research into home cinema systems. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I realised that I had to get myself a 5.1 speaker package and also an amplifier to decode the digital signal from my BluRay into 5.1. I went to richer sounds and bought the Yamaha RX-V365 (see above) and went for Yamaha Speaker set up too (NSP-270).

NS-P270

After about 3 hours of setting up the amp and speakers in my house, I sat back, stuck an episode of Band Of Brothers on and was totally blown away. I had heard surround sound before. But I was fooking amazed at how good my sound was. I totally didn’t realise just how much more of an immersing experience watching a movie is with this get-up. The last few nights I’ve been having a great time surrounding myself with sound. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Since getting the setup I have also connected my PC up to the 5.1 and also my Virgin+ Cable TV box. Amazing!

Wires and Plugs

Which kinda leads me onto my next point. I have everything in my life in one room. DVD, BluRay, TV, PC (and peripherals), Cable TV, Amp, 5.1, Router, Modem, Speakers and a Wii. I’m all out of plugs. I have two wall sockets on the side of my room where everything is. Connected to these sockets are two 1:4 sockets. With another 1:4 connected to one of the 1:4′s. That gives me 11 plug slots. On one of the slots I have a 1:2 adapter giving 12 plugs. Every one is in use as I type this.

My house is going to burn down.

What I found interesting, especially for a mainstream Hollywood movie, was that because of this inability to lie, the world had no religion. As far as people were concerned you died and then you went to an’ eternity of nothingness’. (**SPOILERS AHEAD**) Our protagonist in the movie somehow develops the ability to lie and at one point in the film is at his mothers deathbed. She is contemplating the ‘nothingness’ ahead and in our main character’s despair he decides to tell this lie:

Mom, you’re wrong about what happens after you die. It’s not an eternity of nothingness. You go to your favorite place in the whole world. And everyone you have ever loved or who has ever loved you will be there. And you’ll be young again. There’s no pain, just love and happiness. Everyone gets a mansion.

iPhone album track number 4

The doctors in the room are flabbergasted at this revelation (remember they don’t understand the concept of lying) and tell the press about this ‘man’ who has information on an ‘afterlife’. This then results in a massive religious following of our main character.

Being a atheist and sceptic, I found it very interesting that this kind of social commentary was tackled. This movie was written by Ricky Gervais who is, as we all know, an outspoken atheist who has a lot to say on the matter. Good on him for getting a method of sceptical conversation out there.

Anyway. During the movie there was a song played in the background. I’d never head it before but instantly loved it. I shazam’d the tune and it turned out to be a song called ‘Catch The Wind’ by Donovan. If you’re a guitar player and you don’t want to pick up your guitar after hearing this song then you ain’t right in the heed man.

I did. And even took the time to learn it. Thought I’d record it on my phone for you all.

Incidentally. Fourtrack has become infinitely better since a recent update. It used to be that you would have to export each track individually to your computer and use some other method of mixing the tracks together. Fourtrack now has an in-build method of mixing all your tracks into one file. Amazing.

Ain’t it cool news just posted some new pictures of the ‘forth’coming Indianna Jones movie. I thought I would use my superior photoshop skills and create a wee wallpaper out of one of the pics and behold the result below.

Click here to download full size