Blogkeeping -- Spring 2013

Yeah, it might not be quite spring yet, but it feels like it, and it's pretty close, so Spring 2013 it is.  The last blogkeeping post can be found here.

Time for more blogkeeping!  What can I say, I did a little bit of housecleaning today too, so it seemed like a good time to finally clear out the movie/book lists there on the right.  The following were seen from about July 2012 (bottom) to December 2012 (top).

The Woodlanders **** / Scents & Sensibility ** 1/2 / The Women * 1/2 / Avatar: The Last Airbender (Season 1) ** 1/2 / Office Space [r] *** 1/2 / Liz & Dick * 1/2 / Notting Hill [r] **** / The River Wild [r] **** 1/2 / The Mayor of Casterbridge [r] **** 1/2 / Battlestar Galactica (Season 1) [r] **** / The Watcher In the Woods [r] *** / Skyfall **** / America's Next Top Model: College Edition (Cycle 19) * 1/2 / Brave [r] **** / The Amazing Spider-Man [r] **** / Battlestar Galactica: The Mini-Series [r] **** / What To Expect When You're Expecting *** / Rock of Ages * / Princess Mononoke [r] ** / Corpse Bride [r] **** 1/2 / The Nightmare Before Christmas [r] ***** / Knocked Up (sort of) *** / ParaNorman ** 1/2 / Coraline [r] **** / Lady In White [r] *** 1/2 / Frankenweenie *** / Project Runway (Season 10) **** / Dr. Seuss's The Lorax ** / The Vow ** / Moonrise Kingdom *** / Paris je t'aime *** 1/2 / The Decoy Bride *** / I.Q. [r] **** / Buffy the Vampire Slayer *** / London River *** / The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain [r] *** / The Neverending Story III * / The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter [r] ** / The NeverEnding Story [r] **** / The Adventure of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn [r] **** / GoldenEye *** / The Man Who Planted Trees **** / Batman: Mask of the Phantasm *** / Wuthering Heights (1992) *** / Joyful Noise *** 1/2 / New Year's Eve ** / X-Men: The Last Stand [r] *** 1/2 / X2 [r] **** 1/2 / X-Men [r] **** / X-Men Origins: Wolverine [r] ** / X-Men: First Class [r] *** 1/2 / The Pirates! Band of Misfits *** / Chronicle ** 1/2 / The Amazing Spider-Man [r] *** 1/2 / The Journey of Natty Gann [r] *** 1/2 / The Hunger Games [r] **** 1/2 / Paulie [r] **** / Sherlock (Season 2) [r] ***** / Bride Wars ** 1/2 / Star Trek [r] **** 1/2 / This Means War *** 1/2 / LOL * / Cleopatra ** / Far From the Madding Crowd (1998) **** / Inception [r] *** / The Hudsucker Proxy [r] ***** / The Mission [r] ** 1/2 / The Fifth Element [r] **** / Drop Dead Gorgeous [r] *** 1/2 / Harry Potter and the Etc. Etc. Marathon [r] ***** / Andrew Lloyd Webber - Masterpiece (Live In Beijing) ** 1/2 / The Princess Bride [r] **** 1/2 / Death Becomes Her [r] *** 1/2 / The Help [r] **** 1/2 / The Dark Knight Rises *** 1/2 / The Dark Knight [r] *** / Batman Begins [r] *** 1/2 / Flight of the Conchords (Season 2) *** / Sherlock (Season 1) [r] **** 1/2 / Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [r] **** 1/2 / The Spirit [r] **** / Mystery Men [r] **** / The Prestige [r] **** 1/2 / Labyrinth [r] *** 1/2 / The Dark Crystal [r] *** 1/2 / Spider-Man 3 [r] ** / Spider-Man 2 [r] **** 1/2 / Spider-Man [r] **** / The Amazing Spider-Man [r] *** 1/2 / Flight of the Conchords (Season 1) [r] *** / Stardust [r] *** / Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows ** / Iron Man 2 [r] ** 1/2 / Iron Man [r] **** / Captain America: The First Avenger [r] **** 1/2 / The Amazing Spider-Man *** / The Brave Little Toaster [r] **** 1/2 / Shallow Hal [r] **** / The Return of the Native [r] ***** / Daria: Is It College Yet? [r] ****

And, since the time has come for this too, here are the last 50 books I've read, from mid-March 2012 (bottom) to mid-December 2012 (top).

A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) ***** / Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) ***** / The Nightmare Before Christmas: 13 Days of Christmas (Steven Davison) **** / Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas: The Film, the Art, the Vision (Frank Thompson) **** / The Nightmare Before Christmas (Tim Burton) **** / The Cheesehead Night Before Christmas (Fred Lane) ** / The Woodlanders (Thomas Hardy) **** / The Silver Cup (Constance Leeds) * / T is for Terrible (Peter McCarty) **** / The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) *** / The Art of Brave (Jenny Lerew) **** / The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy) ***** / The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury) **** / The Werewolf of Paris (Guy Endore) *** 1/2 / Dracula (Bram Stoker) *** 1/2 / Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) *** 1/2 / Two On a Tower (Thomas Hardy) **** 1/2 / The Worry Week (Anne Lindbergh) *** / So Brave, Young, and Handsome (Leif Enger) *** 1/2 / The Neverending Story (Michael Ende) *** / Edenbrooke (Julianne Donaldson) ** 1/2 / A Laodicean: A Story of Today (Thomas Hardy) *** 1/2 / Brian's Hunt (Gary Paulsen) ** 1/2 / Brian's Return (Gary Paulsen) *** / Brian's Winter (Gary Paulsen) **** / Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (Ransom Riggs) *** / The Trumpet-Major (Thomas Hardy) *** 1/2 / The Help (Kathryn Stockett) **** / The River (Gary Paulsen) *** 1/2 / Hatchet (Gary Paulsen) **** / Oldsoul (Dan Haring) **** / The Return of the Native (Thomas Hardy) ***** / Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) **** / The Art of James Christensen: A Journey of the Imagination (Renwick St. James) **** / Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (James Gurney) **** / The Hugo Movie Companion (Brian Selznick) **** / The Hand of Ethelberta (Thomas Hardy) *** / Kingdom Keepers V: Shell Game (Ridley Pearson) * 1/2 / Parables (Robert L. Millet and James Christensen) **** / Dinotopia: The World Beneath (James Gurney) *** / The Alliance (Gerald N. Lund) ** / Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy) ***** / How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4: The Art of Design and Animation (Chris Georgenes) *** / Tangled: A Read-Aloud Storybook **** / Voyage of the Basset (James C. Christensen) *** 1/2 / Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (James Gurney) **** / The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) ** / A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy) *** 1/2 / The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander) **** / Wonderstruck (Brian Selznick) ***

So many good books and movies!  And some pretty poor ones (The Women, Liz & Dick, Rock of Ages, The Neverending Story III, LOL in movies,  The Silver Cup, The Alliance, The Night Circus and the latest Kingdom Keepers in books).  Highlights in the movies were Sherlock, Harry Potter, and The Return of the Native, while top books were a lot of Thomas Hardy (almost all!) and a little Dickens.

(I also want to note that these lists have turned out to be pretty helpful now and then, on one notable instance a few days ago when I couldn't for the life of me remember the title of an obscure foreign film I watched several years ago, though I could remember vague details about it.  I checked the Blogkeeping post from 2008, et voila!  There it was.  You just never know!)

EDIT 29 January 2013: Added PR (10), moved Daria (IICT?) from previous post, and moved BSG (2) and TDKR back into the queue.