My Top 40 in Pop Culture for the year 2010

Note: This list encompasses my pop culture year, which means that some things were current and many others originated in past years. Of the things I saw and heard through 2010, these are the ones that stood out… for better or worse.

MOVIES
1.	Inception
2.	Salt
3.	Toy Story 3
4.	Crazy Heart
5.	The Hurt Locker
6.	The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
7.	Knight and Day
8.	The Expendables
9.	Stage Door
10.	Breakfast at Tiffany’s (which I finally, finally saw this year)

 

TELEVISION
1.	Rubicon (may it rest in peace)
2.	concluding the saga of LOST
3.	the final season of 24, which included my beloved Clayne Crawford and provided my number one favorite moment of its entire series run: Jack Bauer’s armored assault
4.	Mad Men, featuring the steady downward spiral of Don Draper, the comic demise of Miss Blankenship, and Sally Draper’s coming of age
5.	the parallel universes of Fringe and my ever-increasing love for Peter Bishop
6.	The Walking Dead, the zombie series I never knew I’d want to watch
7.	finally discovering Friday Night Lights
8.	Cole Hauser’s return to a weekly series (however brief it may turn out to be)
9.	the revival of Grey’s Anatomy, with more Christina and less Meredith (thankfully!)
10.	giving up on no less than 8 series in a single network season, including two longtime favorites (Survivor and Private Practice)

 

MUSIC
1.	Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now album
2.	Free by Zac Brown Band
3.	White Liar by Miranda Lambert
4.	Every Dog Has Its Day by Toby Keith
5.	an actual mass-produced CD from Christian Kane
6.	discovering Josh Turner
7.	discovering Blake Shelton
8.	giving Kenny Chesney a chance
9.	realizing I’d been loving the music of Garth Brooks without knowing it
10.	the continued (superior) musical output from Glee, which made me love a Lady Gaga song and reminded me that Gwyneth Paltrow can sang, baby

 

NEWS & EVENTS
1.	Earthquake in Haiti
2.	Oil spill in the Gulf
3.	Flooding in Nashville, Tennessee
4.	Chilean miners survive more than two months trapped underground
5.	The Great North Texas Snowstorm
6.	Texas Rangers play in World Series
7.	Royal Engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton, which brought back memories of his parents’ grand wedding in 1981
8.	Sandra Bullock wins the Best Actress Oscar for a family film then shows true grace through the public spectacle of her crumbling marriage
9.	the ridiculous success of Avatar sets off an influx of movies released in 3D… much to my dismay
10.	my personal highlight of 2010: finally getting a chance to see Wicked on stage and being able to share that with Kiwi

 

Films I Saw in 2010 :: The Complete List

Though I keep a fairly good running commentary of movies that I see at the cinema and on DVD throughout each year, I’m not able to devote time to each and every film I watch through all of the mediums currently available. However, in recent years I have made it a habit to keep a simple daily log of all the TV and movies that I watch over the 12-month period, and I try to post a simple blurb about anything that stands out or surprises me. This year’s list of movies is probably 99% complete — allowing for a missed calendar entry here or there — and I have also included a basic rating from zero (depicted as “— —”) to 5 stars. This rating is purely subjective, of course, and most often derived from emotional connections (or lack thereof) and whether I found any merit in the performances of the players. You will see, for instance, that I may have given a median rating to a few truly horrible movies and then given a lesser rating to a film that performed better with the critics or the masses; my reasoning is often that I found the ensemble of actors to wholeheartedly commit to their characters, even when there was no way to salvage the film (as in Smokin’ Aces 2), but did not see such engagement in the film of higher expectation (such as Whiteout). Similarly, I ranked a few critically-acclaimed films (and Oscar-recognized classics) lower in my estimation because they did not resonate with me personally, but may have found a deeper connection to a film with a great many flaws. Like I said, it’s all very subjective. But that’s the reason I love movies so much in the first place and why I spend time documenting these thoughts each year. In ten or twenty or thirty years, some of these films may affect me differently, and I will appreciate having a record of my thought process at this stage of my life.

Feel free to add your own thoughts and opinions about the movies listed here. I’d love to know how they may have affected you!
 

	28 Days Later (TV)		Last of Mrs. Cheyney, The (TCM)
	42nd Street (TCM)		Lawrence of Arabia (TCM)
	Above Suspicion (TCM)		Layer Cake (Starz)
	Abyss, The (TV)		Legend of Bagger Vance, The (TV)
	Across the Universe (TV)		Love In The Afternoon (TCM)
	Adam (DVD)		Lying To Be Perfect (Lifetime)
	African Queen, The (TCM)		Man on Fire (AMC)
	Alice (miniseries) (SyFy)		Marley & Me (HBO)
	Alice Adams (TCM)		Matrix, The (TV)
	Alice in Wonderland 3-D (DVD)		Matrix Reloaded, The (TV)
	All That Jazz (AMC)		Matrix Revolutions, The (TV)
	All the King’s Men (1949) (TCM)		Meet Me In St. Louis (TCM)
	Amelia (Pay-Per-View)		Miracle on 34th Street (1947) (AMC)
	American Psycho (Starz)		Mr. and Mrs. Loving (TV)
	An American in Paris (TCM)		Mrs. Miniver (TCM)
	August Rush (Starz)		Murder on the Orient Express (2010) (Masterpiece Mystery)
	Band Wagon, The (TCM)		My Blueberry Nights (IFC)
	Becoming Jane (Starz)		Night At The Opera, The (TCM)
	Body of Lies (HBO)		No Reservations (Starz)
	Breakfast at Tiffany’s (TCM)		Notorious (TCM)
	Bright Lights, Big City (AMC)		Paris Blues (TCM)
	Brubaker (TCM)		Pitch Black (TV)
	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (TCM)		Pride & Prejudice (TCM)
	Casablanca (TCM)		Ransom! (1956) (TCM)
	Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (TCM)		Red Eye (TV)
	Catch Me If You Can (TV)		Reds (TCM)
	Changeling (DVD)		Right Stuff, The (TV)
	Charlie Wilson’s War (HBO)	—/span>	Ring of Deceit (Lifetime)
	Chronicles of Narnia, The: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (cinema)		Riverworld (SyFy)
	Cincinnati Kid, The (TCM)		Robin Hood (cinema)
	Count of Monte Cristo, The (Encore)		Roman Holiday (TCM)
	Crazy Heart (DVD)		Room With A View, A (TCM)
	Cutthroat Island (AMC)		Runaways, The (DVD)
	Da Vinci Code, The (TV)		Salt (cinema)
	Dances With Wolves (TCM)		Serpico (AMC)
	Deadly Isolation (Lifetime)		Sex and the City (TV edit)
	Deep Blue Sea (TV)		Sherlock Holmes (DVD)
	Dial M For Murder (TCM)		Single Man, A (DVD)
	Diary of Anne Frank (Masterpiece Classic)		Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassins’ Ball (DVD)
	Dirty Dozen, The (TCM)		Some Like It Hot (TCM)
	Doctor Zhivago (2002) (TV)		Somebody Up There Likes Me (TCM)
	Dreamgirls (TV)		Splendor in the Grass (TCM)
	Duplicity (HBO)		Stage Door (TCM)
	Eagle Eye (HBO)		Sunset Boulevard (TCM)
	Eat Pray Love (DVD)		Sweet Bird of Youth (TCM)
	Eloise at the Plaza (Disney Channel)	—	Swimfan (DVD)
	Few Good Men, A (TV)		Swiss Family Robinson (TCM)
	From Here To Eternity (TCM)		Taps (AMC)
	Frozen (DVD)		Tender Mercies (TCM)
	Gangs of New York (TV)		Terminator Salvation (HBO)
	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (TCM)		The 60s (miniseries) (TV)
	Ghost Writer, The (DVD)		The Expendables (Pay-Per-View)
	Gracie (TV)		The Pacific (DVD)
	Grand Hotel (TCM)		Time Traveler’s Wife, The (PPV)
	Green Zone (Pay-Per-View)		Titanic (TV)
	Gypsy (1962) (TCM)		To Catch a Thief (TCM)
	Harper (TCM)		To Kill A Mockingbird (TCM)
	High Fidelity (TV)		Toy Story 3 (cinema)
	Holiday Inn (TCM)		Unanswered Prayers (Lifetime)
	Hud (TCM)		Until They Sail (TCM)
	Hurt Locker, The (DVD)		Up In The Air (cinema)
	In Cold Blood (HBO)		Veronica Guerin (Starz)
	Inception (cinema)		War and Peace (TCM)
	Inside Daisy Clover (TCM)		West Side Story (TCM)
	Intermezzo: A Love Story (TCM)		Where The Wild Things Are (DVD)
	International, The (Encore)		White Christmas (TCM)
	It’s a Wonderful Life (TV)	—	Whiteout (DVD)
	Jeremiah Johnson (TCM)		Without Love (TCM)
	Jumper (TV)	—	Wuthering Heights (1939) (TCM)
	Key Largo (TCM)		X-Men Origins: Wolverine (DVD)
	Knight and Day (cinema)		Year Without a Santa Claus, The (TV)

THE EXPENDABLES

December 31, 2010 (Pay-Per-View)

The Expendables is the perfect kind of summer popcorn flick so I’m not quite sure why I waited so long to finally watch it. I had planned to see it right away… the appeal of all those 80s stars in one giant, explosive movie! But then I heard that Bruce and Arnold had minor roles (more like cameos, even), and Mickey was terrific but had just a few scenes. Which left me with a group of men I’d never heard of (Terry Crews? Randy Couture?) or just plain didn’t care for (hello, Eric Roberts! hello, Stone Cold what’s-your-name!). I opted to wait, but even as I let the time slip by until the DVD release my mind kept returning to the movie. It just has such great appeal for me! Dolph Lundgren alone — and back in a movie that would actually be shown in a cinema! — was enough. Stallone, though, is better and better as he mellows with age but never quite loses his magnitude. I could go on and on with reasons I wanted to see this movie, but very few people in my life really understand. It’s those invisible strings at work again.

Finally watching the movie tonight was all the fun I expected and a rousing kick in the head, as well. I can’t recall a movie with so much gunplay, so many explosions, so much hand-to-hand combat that also featured undercurrents of great wit and humanity. Until I began to watch I also didn’t know that Stallone directed the film, but I could see his touch in every scene. I admit that the major players were all much more interesting than I expected some of them to be, and I now have a genuine interest in Jason Statham (who always surprises me, though I immediately forget about him when the films end) and a new respect for Steve Austin. And Mickey Rourke… he’s a revelation, once again. I hope his career stays on the upswing so he can play these kinds of characters that reveal layers you just don’t expect. Of course, I want my Lundgren back, too. The Expendables proved to be an interesting character study of men with something to say, and though it was carried through the film beneath bullets and breaking bones and more than a few exploding heads, it was undeniable and given the appropriate amount of attention. I felt I got to know the men who comprised this elite team of specialists, and in the end I really wanted to know them all even better.

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image via Internet Movie Database, linked to source