The Siskoid Awards model themselves on the Oscars, but without the politics, voting, or Kevin Hart (oh, that's the Oscars too). Differences aside, we do hold a Technical Achievement Ceremony hosted by a famous star as well, and phony trophies do get handed out for things like multi-axis stabilized aerial camera mounts, or in this case, whatever I wanted to underscore, but didn't fit in the main event.
Now, 2018 is the year my watching classic movies on TCM EXPLODED (you may have noticed in each installment of This Week in Geek), so we're holding the ceremony back in time so I can book Myrna Loy as our hostess. I will watch absolutely ANYTHING she's in, regardless of its critical rating, so you can bet I'm going to watch this side-ceremony. Here's hoping you have the same compulsion.
Best Podcast(er) of 2018 - Professor Xum Yukinori and his Done-in-One Wonders Podcast Wonder Show (in addition to his work on various FW Presents podcasts) is leaving everyone else in the dust in terms of production values. Xum does most of his podcasting alone, and yet his studio is full of characters, all helping (or amusingly hindering) him talk about old comics in informative and entertaining ways. Xum also brought a lot of himself out there this year, making the experience intimate as well. This year, he wrapped his first season by destroying the universe, and launched a second by recreating it better than ever. I mean, I do SOME production work on my own podcasts, but I wish I had Xum's work ethic, eidetic memory, and smooth touch.
Top 4 Screen Mary Poppinses - In chronological order, as preferred order is too difficult:
1. Julie Andrews
2. Michelle "Missy" Gomez
3. Yondu
4. Emily Blunt
Best Godzilla footage of 2018 - Oh, so you think the second King of the Monsters trailer has this locked? Sorry to disabuse you of that notion, but no. The winner of this coveted award is the short-listed animated short Lost & Found, a real heartbreaker about friendship, featuring a knitted Godzilla (some outlets call him a dinosaur, but dude, he comes out of a box with Japanese script on it, come one now). Check it out
HERE and vote for it come Oscar time, Academy members who are obviously reading this to get inspired.
Best Spider-Man of the Spider-verse - It's Miles' movie and I'm quite happy for it to be so, but screen time/importance aside, who's the winner? Could it be? Why yes, it's Nicolas Cage's comedy performance of Spider-Man Noir. I love a good black'n'white/color joke and the Film Noir lingo isn't bad either. I didn't catch Mandy yet, but looks like a pretty good year for Cage, doesn't it?
They Keep Pulling Me Back In! Awards - Into gaming, that is. On the console side of things, I can go whole years without putting a game in the system. 2018 was looking like it was going that way, until I got my hands on the C64 Mini. On the one hand, it's fun to play some of the old games that used to obsess me when I was a teenager. On the other, the gameplay isn't so involving that I lose myself for hours or days at a time. A passing distraction suits my lifestyle much better at this point. And on the tabletop side of things, it's hard to get a role-playing game going, so full marks to Marty, Josée and Fred for getting into my Bard-only AD&D variant (let's do the back half of our little mini-series soon), but I also have to give points to Torg: Eternity, possibly my NEXT game as it lured me from my place of "not needing to buy a new RPG ever again" and got me to drop coinage for most of the released products. Looks like a big improvement on the original Torg and I'm kind of eager to try it out.
Best home event of 2018 - We like to give the occasional night a theme over here at Improv House, and the most ambitious one this year was a Lord of the Rings weekend, detailed
HERE, during which we watched all six of Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth films in internal chronological order. Some cosplay, special powers, fantasy foods, gift rings... Going to be a hard act to follow.
I'd like to end the ceremony with a few movie statistics, courtesy of Letterboxd, with corresponding apologies to readers who used to read "This Week in Geek" religiously and are now skimming over it because it's gotten too long (or so they tell me). Yeah, I went a bit overboard with the movie watching this year. In fact, I logged 642 entries in my movie diary, 610 if you don't take shorts into account. Of those, I reviewed (or will have reviewed) about 550 on the blog. So yeah, I watched a lot of movies. It's a sickness, and you know I'm just going to try to beat my own record next year. I haven't learned my lesson. Not at all. But what if we were to give out prizes - that's what we're here for, after all - what would those be. Well, how about who MOST STARRED in the movies I watched? The most represented actors are (drum roll please...)
Peter Lorre with 12, but it's really 13 when you consider I watched Silk Stockings twice. By that logic, our hostess Myrna Loy should score 9 (Libeled Lady), which puts her in a dead heat with Cate Blanchett. Of course, Cate gets an advantage from the aforementioned Lord of the Rings marathon (as did the entire cast, including Christopher Lee). Similarly, Vin Diesel benefited from my watching all the Riddick movies and most of the Fast and Furious franchise. At 7, we find Sam Jackson, and at 6, a lot of people, including Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart, the Rock, Rita Hayworth, the Marx Brothers, and character actor Ian "Mr. Atoz" Wolfe who kept popping up in everything.
What about directors? Who directed the most films I saw this year?
It's Hitchcock by a nose over Peter Jackson (who was marathoned anyway). Netflix made a lot of older Johnnie To available for streaming, and that made a difference. Michael Curtiz keeps popping up because his career was so diverse. You just never know it's him until the credit comes up. Capra might have rounded out the top 5, but TCM Canada doesn't have the exact same programming the U.S. version does, so I ended up missing Meet John Doe twice. (Is that a thing? Is there a rights issue with the film?) Anyway, enjoy your fake award Mr. Hitchcock.
And that, as they say, is that. My thanks to Ms. Loy and than YOU for getting into my time machine. The Siskoid Awards will hopefully return in a year's time.
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