My Top 40 Movies of 2013

It’s that time of the year when I like to cast an eye back over the 12 months passed. As a warm-up to my 5-day extravaganza of my favourite music of 2013, here are my top 40 movies. Those are all 40 films I’ve seen at the cinema this year, it’s not just an arbitrary cut-off.

Despite a pretty dull Autumn I was a little surprised to have seen so many, exactly double what I watched in 2012! Thanks, Cineworld Unlimited Card… I’ve linked to the reviews where I’ve written one too.

Film: “Gravity” (2013)

I was always a space geek when I was a kid, I’d get endless books from the library about planets. Never was that fussed with practical astronomy, it was always dark and cold and I could never find many stars because of the light pollution. Later I had CD-ROMs with images from various craft, with atmospheric spacey-sounding soundtracks. I still live for that shit, though I don’t really get that excited by things they are looking for now, it’s all a bit too theoretical, or at least practically invisible. I’m old-school, I just like the Moon and I still count Pluto.

So naturally I was excited to see the trailer for “Gravity” at the start of the year, even though the real-life ISS was in the midst of some drama, a leak of some kind. “Gravity” and its depiction of the terminal failure of a spacecraft ironically felt a bit close to home. This unease at how real it felt (despite the setting at the furthest reach of real-life science) also made it compelling. The ISS is OK now fortunately, so I was left to froth over the prospect of this blockbuster on the way, as well as an ascendant Sandra Bullock breaking out of her usual roles.

“Gravity” didn’t disappoint at all, I’m still reeling from it. It’s going to be hard to really describe it without telling any of the story, so I’ll keep it as vague. Dr Stone (Bullock) and Kowalski (George Clooney) are carrying out some maintenance on the Hubble Space telescope when debris causes the mission to be aborted, and leaving the pair in a desperate attempt to get back to Earth against insane odds. That’s all you’re getting out of me story-wise.

Album: Perfume – “Complete Best” (2006)

This is probably a review best served with my other review of “Fan Service Prima Box“, as there is a fair amount of overlap. I’m not going to talk about songs I’ve already reviewed, so I will look at the remains of the “Complete Best” collection. The album attempted to summarise the girls’ career to date, who were yet to release a full studio album.

Releasing a steady stream of singles through the first half of the 00’s, Perfume were ready to start consolidating their fanbase. Debut album “Game” was still a few years away, but they had a strong selection of songs to their name. The collection didn’t really take off in Japan, and indeed it only reached its chart peak when “Game” was released. Either way, I do love a lot of the songs on here.

Eurovision 2013: My #10 – #6

Nearly there! I’m back from Amsterdam now so I can finally wrap this little adventure up in the next few days.

So we are down to the last ten. The Big Five are out of the way, with Italy ending up a creditable 11th, but the presence of only one DNQ leads me to think that Europe made some decent choices this year. Perhaps it didn’t all go my way, but it was definitely a pleasure to see nearly all of my favourite songs grace the Grand Final.

You can skip back to #39-31, #30-21, #20-11 or ahead to the top 5, as well as the Malmö 2013 hub for everything I’ve ever written about this year’s contest.

Eurovision 2013: Jury & Televote split revealed & examined!

So here’s the final piece of the puzzle. It might not be a completely illuminating piece – perhaps a grey bit that might be a bit of someone’s coat or a bird or something – but a crucial piece all the same.

Yes, Eurovision voting is a game of two halves. On one side is the voting public, much maligned for a poor taste for novelty acts, and allegedly involving themselves in bribery from other countries (yeah yeah). On the other are the mysterious juries, also much maligned but nonetheless regarded as the professional face of the scoring, made up – in theory – of singers, writers & composers.

This year we had a tweak to the rules that meant the juries ranked their songs from 1 to 26 rather than just listing their top 10, giving them the power to sink a song popular in the televote out of sheer SPITE! They’d do that you know, if you believe the loons. Of course the voting public had the capacity to do this already. Considering the juries are included for their invaluable insight, it did seem a bit odd that before 2013 we didn’t give a shit what they thought of their non-top-10 songs, even though their 11th place is surely going to be much more liked than their 26th. So I’m all for it. ANYWAY HERE ARE THE SCORES.