The next couple of entries probably aren’t going to be of any interest to anyone except me — and isn’t it cute that I think any of my entries are of interest to anyone except myself? — but these are housekeeping-type things that I feel obligated to do in order to satisfy my own OCD-fueled mania for lists and historical accounting, and I need to do them pretty damn quick, too, since the first month of 2011 is already gone. Anyhow, if for some reason you are interested in reading on, here’s everything on which I wasted my meager leisure time during the previous year…

Books Completed in 2010:
Not a bad reading year with 22 books completed, roughly the same as in 2009, and just about the same breakdown, too: six non-fiction, two graphic novels (that’s a fancy comic book to the uninitiated), and the rest mostly trashy paperback entertainments. Hey, I like what I like, and I don’t feel the need to apologize for it today. Tomorrow may be another story, but today, I’m secure in my own tastes.

It was kind of a strange year in that so much of it was devoted to a single series, Charlaine Harris’ delightful Southern Vampire Mysteries, but these books are fast, addicting reads of the type where you just don’t want to leave the vivid, likable characters when you finish one, so you immediately have to pick up the next one. They’ve all blurred together in my mind so I couldn’t tell you what happened in which volume, but they were definitely the high point of the year.
Here’s the rest of the list with occasional comments:

• Force 10 from Navarone — Alastair MacLean
  Forgettable, tedious sequel to the far better Guns of Navarone. Much like the two Navarone movies in that sense.
• Night Passage — Robert B. Parker
  The first of the Jesse Stone novels, an engrossing mystery and interesting to compare-and-contrast with the Stone TV-movies starring Tom Selleck, of which I’m a fan (as you’ll see on the 2010 DVD list).
• The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, a.k.a. “Those books the True Blood TV series is based on”:
  • Dead Until Dark
  • Living Dead in Dallas
  • Club Dead
  • Dead to the World
  • Dead as a Doornail
  • Definitely Dead
  • All Together Dead
  • From Dead to Worse
  • Dead and Gone
  • Dead in the Family
• Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead — Steve Perry
  A tie-in adventure featuring Indy and his buddy Mac from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull running from voodoo-style zombies in Haiti. Superficially enjoyable, but I’d hoped for more characterization and backstory on Mac, whose aggravating lack of reason for being there was one of my biggest complaints with Indy IV.
• The Pleasure Police: How Blue-Nosed Busybodies and Lily-Livered Alarmists Are Taking All the Fun Out of Life — David Shaw
  Not quite the fun rant I expected based on that title.
• V for Vendetta (graphic novel) — Alan Moore (writer) and David Lloyd (art)
  A classic of the genre that I’d never gotten around to reading. It’s somewhat dated — lots of ’80s-specific references — but still very engrossing and effective. Better than the movie, naturally.
• Superman: Red Son (graphic novel) — Mark Miller (writer) and Dave Johnson, Andrew Robinson, Killian Plunkett, Walden Wong (artists)
• Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip — Nevin Martell
  A difficult proposition: a biography of a guy who refuses to grant interviews and has maintained an almost Salinger-esque low profile. Martell does the best he can, and it’s pretty good, but it got tedious reading quotes from other people about Watterson instead of something from Watterson himself.
• Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause — Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel
  Excellent behind-the-scenes peek at a classic movie, and one of the most enduring icons of the cinematic era, i.e., James Dean.
• Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void — Mary Roach
• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex — Mary Roach
  Roach is a fascinating writer, utterly without fear or shame, and her books are always packed with answers you’ve wanted to know. And sometimes things you really didn’t want to know… such as the term “degloving.” Trust me, you really don’t want to know.
• Supercargo: A Journey Among Ports — Thornton McCamish
  It was a disappointingly dull journey, I’m afraid…
• Blockade Billy — Stephen King
• 20th Century Ghosts — Joe Hill
  Hill is Stephen King’s son, and fans of the former can see much of the him in the latter, but Hill often displays a lighter touch and a shade more compassion toward his characters. This collection of short stories is a mixed bag, as such collections are, but the title story is one of those stories I wish I had written myself, a beautiful, haunting, sentimental tale of death, love, and movies. Simply perfect.

And speaking of movies…
Movies Seen in a Theater in 2010:
Only one fewer than I saw in 2009, but the count nevertheless feels like a major drop-off to me. Partly there weren’t that many films I wanted to see desperately enough to go out for them, and partly I just plain don’t have the kind of discretionary time I once took for granted, but whatever the reason for my lifestyle change, it seems almost inconceivable that entire months can now pass without a trip to the movies. My 21-year-old self, the one who worked as an usher and later projectionist for the multiplex, would be flabbergasted. Hell, so is my 41-year-old self. Anyhow, the list:

• Sherlock Holmes
  I liked this far more than I expected to, largely because of the chemistry between Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law. I still despise the herky-jerky editing style, but at least it was used sparingly and to somewhat good effect in this one.
• Twilight Saga: New Moon
  Well, it had a broader color palette than the first one.
• Avatar
  A more accurate title: Dances with Wolves with Blue People. Way overrated and not nearly the transformative cinema experience so many claim it is. But then, I always thought the same thing about The Matrix, too, and look how many folks went gaga for that thing..
• Crazy Heart
  What does it say about 2010 that the best film I saw all year was actually released in 2009? What does it say about me that a story about a broken-down has-been who’s made a complete shambles of his life resonated so strongly with me? Seriously, I can’t recall having such a powerful reaction to any movie in ages.
• The Runaways
  I knew next to nothing about the titular band going in, so while I’m sure the movie plays fast and loose with the facts, and it’s really only about two of the band’s members (Cherie Curie and Joan Jett, to the exclusion of Sandy West and Lita Ford), I enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for these musician biopics anyhow, the performances were good, and I thought the movie captured the look of the pre-disco ’70s rock scene really well.
• Iron Man 2
  I liked it. A bit messier than the first one, yes, but Downey pulls it off, and it’s just plain fun, something damn few of the oh-so-serious summer flicks these days manage. So there.
• The Karate Kid (2010 remake version)
  Another one that surprised me. Despite my usual “remakes suck” philosophy, I thought this one worked pretty well, and Jackie Chan broke my heart in a scene where he breaks down talking about what happened to his wife and child.
• Knight & Day
  I remember enjoying it. That’s about all I remember about it, though. Disposable.
• Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  And I’m finished with these. Thank you, Anne, for releasing me from my obligation to go with you to the next one.
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
  Again: I remember enjoying it, but that’s it.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Red
  Great Saturday-afternoon movie. The entire cast rocks in a slight but fun action flick, and Helen Mirren especially is a delight.
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
  It’s a Harry Potter movie. At this point in the series, they’re not even trying to make them accessible for newcomers, and I think they’ve gotten better for it. Looking forward to the conclusion this summer.
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  Yes, I’m talking about the Chevy Chase classic from 1989, which I have of course seen many times. My account team at work rented a theater for our holiday party and screened this. Great fun to see it in a theater again; I still remember the exact moment I used to swing the auditorium doors open as the end credits began. (I was an usher at the time this was playing.)
• TRON: Legacy
  I hope to write in more detail about this one, but the short version is that I liked it much more than I expected to. As I expected, it was in many ways a remake of the original TRON, but it respected the source instead of pissing on it. Jeff Bridges was good, as always.
• True Grit (2010 remake version)
  More Jeff Bridges. 2010 was definitely the year for him. I run hot-and-cold on the Coen Brothers, and don’t always get what they’re up to. This was possibly their most commercial film (at least out of the ones I’ve seen), and I thought it was their best one to date. Utterly engrossing, authentic, and moving. Bridges is excellent again, as is Matt Damon and young Hailee Steinfeld. The affected language got a bit tedious in places — I’m pretty sure people used contractions in the 1880s! — but this was a minor complaint. Great flick.

Movies Seen at Home in 2010:
While my theater-going has been way down the last two years, I’ve more than made up for it on the homefront. I won’t comment on these individually, since we’re running very long here, but I will make a couple notations:

* indicates a repeat viewing, i.e., something I’ve seen before.
+ indicates something I own; everything else came from Netflix or was borrowed from friends.

My reason for those notes — aside from just satisfying my own obsessiveness, of course — is to make a point to a couple of people who have questioned whether it’s worth having a big DVD collection, as opposed to just renting or watching everything on demand or whatever. Basically, I’m trying to demonstrate that I do watch things from my own library, and I do watch movies more than once. It isn’t simply a “collecting mindset” that causes me to buy all these shiny discs. Oh, and just to make a further point to these same people, I’ll also be marking the movies I watched on VHS cassette… Yeah, baby, I’m an iconoclast!

• Song of the Thin Man (1947), * +
• Touch of Evil (1998 restoration version )
• Super Fly (1972)
• Force 10 from Navarone (1978), * +
• Coffy (1973)
• The Long, Long Trailer (1953)
• Lassiter (1984), * + [VHS]
• In the Line of Fire (1993), +
• The Mummy (1959)
• High Road to China (1983), * + [VHS]
• Shaft (1971)
• Harper (1966)
• The Hangover (2009)
• The Last Man on Earth (1964)
• Clash of the Titans (1981), * + [VHS]
• Jackie Brown (1997)
• The Princess and The Frog (2009)
• Cannery Row (1982)
• Crazy Heart (2009), * +
• The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
• Sunshine Cleaning (2008)
• The Empire Strikes Back (1980), * +
• The African Queen (1951), * +
• Lady Sings the Blues (1972), +
• Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008)
• Police Academy (1984), * +
• The Informant! (2009)
• Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), * +
• Wall Street (1987), * + [VHS]
• Taken (2008)
• Time After Time (1979), * + [VHS]
• Captain Ron (1992), * +
• (500) Days of Summer (2009)
• Black Snake Moan (2006)
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994), *
• The Invisible Man (1933), +
• The Fog (1980), * +
• Halloween (1978), * +
• Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
• Bad Santa: Unrated Badder Santa Edition (2003), * +
• Continental Divide (1981)
• White Christmas (1954)
• A Christmas Story (1983), * +
• Back to the Future (1985), * +
• Back to the Future, Part II (1989), * +
• Back to the Future, Part III (1990), * +

Final total: 46, 21 of which I’d seen before, 24 of which I own, five of which were VHS. Just in case you’re keeping track.

And finally:
TV Shows Viewed on DVD in 2010:

• The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Series 1 (1976), * +
• Jesse Stone: Sea Change (made-for-TV movie, 2007)
• Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (made-for-TV movie, 2009)
• Burn Notice, Season 2 (2008-09), * +
• Dead Like Me, Season 1 (2003)
• Dead Like Me, Season 2 (2004)
• Dead Like Me: Life After Death (made-for-TV movie, 2009)
• Simon & Simon, Season 1 (1981-82), +
• Man from Atlantis (made-for-TV movie, 1977), +

And there you have it, another year’s pointless entertainment…