The Siskoid Awards 2021 - Technical Achievement Ceremony

As usual, the Siskoid Awards are followed by a Technical Achievement Ceremony, hosted by a famous star parallel to the main event, and by technical, we mean a hodgepodge of categories and jokes that would have made a mockery out of the actual ceremony.

And to host, deferred from last year (which was a big one for her), hot off Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho, Anya Taylor-Joy! We got her just as she got off the set of The Northman, so we should hurry before she's called to do a Bjork biopic or something (that something being a Super Mario movie, but let's not go there). Go Anya!

Best role-playing moment of 2020, 2021 follow-up: Last year, I touted the fact that my Let's Roll! podcast brought me back together with a couple players from what we consider a seminal - but never completed - role-playing campaign from the early 2000s. Just talking about GURPS Shiftworld got the juices flowing and we vowed we would pick it back up and give it a proper ending. Well, 2021 was the year we made it happen. Not the ending, not yet, but we started playing more or less on a bi-weekly basis, and I hope to bring things to a satisfying (and revelatory) conclusion in 2022.

Best comedy(ish) special of 2021: If I'd considered it a movie or a television show, Bo Burnham's Inside would have been in the Top 5 of that category. It's not quite either of those things so I'm giving it its own prize. In equal measures funny and sad, with a number of songs that found their way into my rotation, there's just nothing in any media that so well captures what it means to be alive right now.

Musical Discovery of 2021 - The nominees are...
3. Thérapie Taxi
2. Tessa Violet
And the Golden Typewriter Monkey goes to: Pomplamoose - I love this quirky American duo and its extended band, especially theirs covers of French songs which, thanks to Nataly Dawn having been partly raised in Europe, are perfectly enunciated, but also their interesting mash-ups. Keyboardist Jack Conte has got to be the happiest man in music.

Movie Trailer Moment of 2021: For me it's when Paul finally says "Fear is the mindkiller" at the end of the first Dune trailer - one of my favorite lines in all of literature - and I missed it when later trailers instead tried to convince general audiences that the movie was high on action and humor. Also, when it ended up not being in the film!

Best Viral Clip of 2021: Don Cheadle laying into Kevin Hart for his lazy ageist humor. ROLL THE TAPE!

Worst Comic Book of 2021: Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow #1. I was so annoyed by this comic that I had to throw it in here, even if it's a booby prize. While Bilquis Evely's art is quite pretty, Tom King - who calls this a FUN comic, in public and everything - is basically (further) screwing up the character of Kara so he can tell a fantasy/sci-fi story that really has nothing to do with her. She's on a planet with a red sun, she's turned into a sword & sorcery hero, and a new character is the audience's POV. This Kara has turned 21, gets drunk, and curses like a sailor. But what makes the FIRST issue so abominable is that it kills Krypto, who didn't even have to be on this trip. Comet showing up later might keep the WHOLE mini-series from getting the prize, and who knows, the Super-Dog could somehow be restored by the end of the story (just not at time of writing), but this is the ultimate sin. Tom King is a big enough name to be given access to the toy chest, but all he seems to want to do is break the toys.

I'd like to end the ceremony with a few movie statistics and prizes, courtesy of Letterboxd. Last year, I logged 826 entries in my movie diary (including shorts), so let's compare. This year, only 555 (478 were new watches). I do admit to having taken on a number of work contracts that cut down on my viewing, but I also got back into reading (more on this below), so it's really trading on medium for another. Which stars did I watch the most? Let's have a look:

I've actually edited the image to remove all the Doctor Who stars because I don't think it's fair to the other actors. For podcasting purposes, I've watched a lot of the specials that are on Letterboxd (putting many in the 8-film category, which seems to be the ceiling this year). Quite happy to see my girl Florence Pugh top the list, but it's not a surprise, sharing co-credit with Jean-Claude Van Damme (but exceeding him in quality). As you can see, I caught up on Tony Leung movies available on my streaming services before going to see Shang-Chi - he's one of my favorite actors of all time. Stallone?! It's that damn 50 Years of Action Films project - seeing as I don't particularly like his stuff, he was in a lot of things I'd never seen and thus got flagged for that viewing project. There are too many fivers to count, including Jeanne Moreau whose career I actively chose to discover. And directors represented?

Agnes Varda wins almost by virtue of directing so many short films. Sometimes, you don't have a lot of time and they fit right in. With Anno, it's just the new Evangelion films. All in all, it's Park Chan-wook's work that blew me away the best. A few movie awards while we're here, relating to the 50 Years of [name yer genre] projects I've decided to pursue on this, my 50th year on Earth. One is still going, and there'll be another beyond that, but for now, what were my favorites in each project?
Best Science-Fiction Film: Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World (1991)
Best Action Film: Sholay (1975)
Best Horror Film: Harder to decide as none actually achieved more than 4 out of 5 stars, but I'm gonna give it to Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997).

If Letterboxd is my movie tracking platform, GoodReads has that job for my READING. Last year, I let my failing eyesight get the better of me and read a total of only 3 books, failing at my very conservative 12-book GoodReads reading challenge. With some encouragement from about half of oHOTmu OR NOT's Squad also participating, I set myself a higher goal - 21 in '21 - and ended up breaking the bank and pushing the goal posts back a couple of times (to 50!), managing, in the end, 55 books. Once I hit my original goal, I didn't care if I "cheated" a little and added short novelty books and graphic novels I might not have otherwise counted. Here's a graphic of the year's reads:

Catching up on favorite author Julian Barnes' latest novels but also essays (which I'd unfairly neglected) was a big part of my momentum as I just DEVOURED those books. (Really, the vast majority of these 55 reads (or 14,443 pages) are from June to October.) Science fiction otherwise loomed large as I endeavored to read all of Asimov's Foundation books before the series dropped (not that they have much in common, ultimately) and a decision to start reading the Eighth Doctor Adventures from the beginning  added another chunk. Well, let's try to keep this going in the new year!

And there you have it, folks. Another year, another meaningless awards season. My thanks to Ms. Taylor-Joy and thank YOU for sticking with us all these years. The Siskoid Awards will probably return in a year's time, barring the ever-nearing Apocalypse.