Blog Series | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for the Blog Series Category

My Favorite Movies I Saw in 2024

Posted in Blog Series, Movie Board, movies with tags Movie Board, movies, reviews on February 20, 2025 by Paxton

Movie Report

Here we are. My favorite movies countdown of 2024. This is my 18th year of doing this. That’s kind of crazy! As always, I’m keeping up with my movie watching throughout the year on my Letterboxd account. Check me out there to see more reviews!

So, on to my list. Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2024 are eligible. I’ve gone back and forth on these lists about watching new 2024 movies after January 1st until I’ve done this list. I’ve put a freeze on new movies, I’ve watched new movies (meaning 2024 movies eligible for the list). It’s however I’m feeling at the time. This time I watched one or two new 2024 movies before writing this list. And new movies to me from any year are typically handled as honorable mentions in another article or one that I may tag on to this list. We’ll see how I’m feeling after I word vomit all my stuff to you.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2024 were. This was an interesting year. I normally do 5 spots. That was about perfect, but I could really have done a top 7. Maybe I will. So, here are my top 5 (or more!) favorite movies of 2024. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Deadpool and Wolverine – I had super high hopes for this going in, despite me really trying to mitigate my hopes and dreams for this. So I was primed for it to be the greatest movie ever, or a colossal failure. And it managed to be one of my favorites of the year. It worked on its own for me, but lot of this is tied up in the experience of this movie. My son was going to see this with me, so I had to prep him. We did a whole “Road to Deadpool & Wolverine” marathon where I had to prep him for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I think my son at the time had only seen the very first X-Men movie. So we watched X2, The Wolverine, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Then we also watched a few movies to prep him for cameos, like Daredevil and Fantastic Four. He had already seen all the Blade movies. And then we finished it all up with Logan, before we both watched Deadpool and Wolverine. And it played like gangbusters. I loved watching him slowly understand what it meant to have Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine, the history and the legacy he brings with that. Deadpool was his favorite, but our marathon may have pushed Jackman’s Wolverine out in front. So, like I said, all in all, this was a blast both because the movie turned out to be fun and awesome, but also because I shared all this movie’s history with my son.

Wicked Pt 1
Wicked – So, yes, it was super annoying to see Wicked Part 1 flash up on the screen when I saw it in the theater. I had no idea. They kept that little tidbit hidden VERY well. That aside, I loved this. First of all, I’m a big fan of Wizard of Oz. I’ve read all 14 of the original L Frank Baum books. I’ve seen the 39 musical so many times. I read the original Wicked novel by Gregory Maguire back in the early 2000s (didn’t love it actually), and I saw the original Broadway run of Wicked with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. TWICE (but I LOVED that). So to say I was “on the jazz” for this movie would be an understatement. And it lived up to everything I wanted out of it. I was originally unsure about the leads, but they were wonderful. I think my favorite thing was Oz. The world building of Oz in this movie is incredible. I loved how the world worked. How everything looked. I loved Goldblum as the Wizard, he was actually better than the Broadway version played by Joel Grey. And having the Animals actually be animals instead of clearly people in animal masks, really really worked. Well done. I can’t wait for Part 2.

Fall Guy – I’m a really big fan of Lee Majors as The Six Million Dollar Man. I’m also a huge fan of Heather Thomas (particularly from the movie Zapped!). That led me to watch Fall Guy. I haven’t seen a lot of it, but I’ve watched a few episodes. So I was pretty excited that two of my favorite actors were teaming up for this. And it’s GREAT. The on screen charisma of both Gosling and Blunt is just joy to watch. This is fun, fast, action-y. It’s everything I wanted it to be. This should be a series of movies. Well, actually, AFTER Gosling makes a few more Gray Man movies. That first. Then do more of these.

Abigail – This one blew me away. I had no idea what to expect. It was such a fun surprise that I had to put it in this list. It’s got a great, eclectic cast, it’s super gory and over the top, and I was really surprised by the dark humor. It may be hard now, but go in knowing as little as possible.

Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – Oh man, I am in love with this cast. Superman, Reacher, Snake Eyes? Yes, yes, yes. I have really been enjoying Guy Ritchie’s output lately. The Gentlemen, Operation Fortune, this. They are big, fun, blockbuster releases, but they are so entertaining. Great actors having so much fun. Lots of aweseome set pieces. And a Nazi heist in the middle of it all. Really enjoyed this one.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – I had not seen the original Planet of the Apes movies when the first of these “new” movies came out in 2011. But I loved this “new” trilogy so much, two of them directed by Matt Reeves, that I had to go back and watch the original 70s movies. And I think, for me, these “new” movies I like better than all the “old” ones. That’s just me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked a lot of the old Apes movies, but this new set of movies is just DYNAMITE. Kingdom continues the adventures by moving forward an uncertain amount of time (100 years? 200 years? Longer?). We meet two clans of apes, new ape characters, and a few human characters. Another really good entry in this series populated by good apes, bad apes, and good and bad humans.

WHEW. I did it. I picked 5 (ish) movies to be my favorites this year. I had a lot of good choices. A couple big franchises weren’t included; Furiosa probably being the big standout. And don’t think I didn’t love that movie as well. I did. But I had to make some cuts and I really feel like this group right now as I’m speaking to you were my favorites.

Now, let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week. My overall total was 270 movies watched, which is about 37 more movies than the last two years. That’s just over 5 movies per week. You can very clearly see that I had the highest viewing week in December. The week of Dec 23-29. This was all Christmas movie watching by me and my family. 13 films watched that week. That’s one higher than my biggest week of 2023.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. Elvis is at the top because I embarked on a journey of watching all of his movies starting back in 2023. Overall there were about 31 of them to watch. I watched 9 of them in 2024. I still have three left to go. My son is a huge fan of Keanu Reeves so we went on a bit of a binge watching his movies. Schwarzenegger as well. I watched all the Hunger Games movies with my daughter (they are great, btw), so that’s why Jennifer Lawrence and Donald Sutherland. And you can see the remnants of my rewatching the Fast and Furious movies on AfterLunch with Vin and Michelle Rodriguez there.

I’m in the middle of an Elvis filmography marathon so that’s why Elvis is way out in front with 16 movies watched. Seth Green seems an odd #2, but we watched all the Austin Powers movies with the kids as well as a few other of his movies randomly. Courtney Cox and Roger Jackson are there because I did a Scream franchise marathon with the kids. We watched all 6 of them. I also rewatched Mission Impossible 3-6 (Tom Cruise) as well as watching all of Bruce Lee’s martial arts movies. It’s interesting to see who pops up based on your watching habits.

Oh wow this is an interesting list of directors for the year. The first two are for my rewatch of the Prep and Landing franchise. Norman Taurog is for his Elvis movies. Justin Lin for Fast and Furious movies, and Mangold for his Wolverine movies and I also rewatched 3:10 to Yuma. We were doing a watch of the Ranown Westerns over on Hellbent for Letterbox, my western podcast, so that’s why Budd Boetticher is in there. And Francis Lawrence is for the Hunger Games. Wow, that’s such a weirdly, cool and eclectic list of directors.

Here are the milestones for the year. My very first movie in 2024 was Good Burger 2. My 50th movie was No Hard Feelings, and my 100th movie was Rambo Last Blood (with my son we were finishing out the Rambo franchise). My 200th movie was the original Terminator when I watched it for I Read Movies, and my final movie of 2024 was my rewatch of The Count of Monte Cristo. That’s such a bad ass movie. Watch it if you haven’t. It’s awesome. There’s going to be a new adaptation of that story in 2025. I’m really looking forward to it.

This was an interesting part of my stats I hadn’t noticed before. Movies that I rated higher/lower than the average across Letterboxd. to be honest the top row where I rated those higher than the average, I’m not surprised by any of those, except for Hawkeye. 3.33 seems low for that series overall, but I don’t know. I love that series whole heartedly. Rated lower than average, I was pretty savage to those, it’s really hard honestly to get a 1 star out of me, but it happened three times there. I really did not like those movies. The Getaway is considered a classic, fine, but I really didn’t like it.

Here’s another section I hadn’t noticed before. Highs and Lows. Most Obscure must mean that it was the least reviewed of the movies I watched. The lowest and highest average ratings make total sense. The oldest movie I watched last year was Phantom Carriage. That’s pretty cool. I watched that for my horror podcast Crestwood House.

Well, there we go. That wraps up my 2024 favorite movies list. Man, I keep saying I’m going to do Honorable Mentions lists, but then I never do them. I’m really going to try to get that done this year.

Leave a comment »

Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2024

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Beastie Boys, Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, reviews, Run-DMC, Superman, Year End Books on January 24, 2025 by Paxton

It’s the beginning of the year, which means it’s time for my yearly round up of the books I’ve read. I was surprised how many books I read I’d read last year, 275. Which is a nice total. But this year, I topped that. Which is kind of crazy. But as usual, it’s not all novels, there are a healthy amount of comics in that total as well.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2024 was 250. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 344 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. I’m waiting for this surge to end. Watch, next year I’ll only read like 100 books. LOL

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2024.

GoodReads stats 2024

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Like last year, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. I may focus more on novels this year. There was a big stretch last year where I read all two years worth of John Byrne’s Superman comics. So that definitely inflated my totals quite a bit.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Looking at my list it looks like I read about 61 novels this year. And everything else was comic books. You can see the shortest thing I read all year was a short story. It’s a part of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, which I’m quite enjoying. I’m looking forward to the upcoming series for that. The longest book I read was the second Gray Man novel, On Target. So far, that Gray Man series is really good. I’m hoping they make more movies with Ryan Gosling based on the books.

These are the “most popular” and “least popular” books I read this year. It looks like Lord of the Flies was the one I read shelved by more people than any other. That’s still a good book, I hadn’t read it since high school. I had read the book FantasticLand right before it, and it reminded me of Lord of the Flies. So I re-read it right after. Still really good and you can see where it’s influenced so many other things. That issue of Tom King’s Wonder Woman looks like no one else had shelved it, which is not surprising, it’s a fairly new issue.

Okay, let’s dig into my list of favorite books I read in 2024. Rules are the same every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2024 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes – Back in 2023 I read Madeline Miller’s books; Circe and Song of Achilles. They made my 2023 favorites list. They made me want to read more modern retellings of mythology. Which, because of Madeline Miller, there are a lot of now. So from there I read a book this year called God of Fire. And I *did not* like it. Most of it was okay, but the way it handled the protagonist, Hephaestus, really grated on my nerves. Then Michael May recommended to me Stone Blind. And *this* one was exactly what I wanted. Modern retellings of mythology that are fun and interesting. This revolves mostly around the Medusa/Perseus myths, but you get a good grab bag of a lot of the stories. And they are written well. I really enjoyed what it was doing and how it got there.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells – I read the first book in this series back in April 2023. It did not make my favorites list. I liked it, I thought it was good, but not great. Consequently, I didn’t read the second book in the series until last year. Early last year. And I loved it. I think I just liked the overall story in this one better. Plus, the book introduced a ship run by an AI called ART. And ART was awesome and I loved his relationship with the main character. I wanted every book after this to be ART and Murderbot’s adventures into space. It’s kind of hard to describe this series, but Murderbot is a security robot that hacked its governor module and gave himself free will. Now all he wants to do is watch his downloaded media and be left alone. But instead he’s constantly pulled into drama with humans and having to save them when they inevitably put themselves into situations that will cause their immediate grisly deaths. I’ve read up through book 4 and hope to read book 5 very soon. For those that didn’t know, this book series is going to be an AppleTV+ series some time this year.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi – I’ve been interested in Scalzi for years. I had eyeballed his Redshirts for years to read. And I want to read his Old Man’s War this year, too. The only thing I’ve read by him (besides this book) is Kaiju Preservation Society, which I enjoyed quite a bit. This one I liked even better than KPS. A guy from a wealthy family is sort of the black sheep. He’s a step sibling, as his mother was different, and none of his siblings like him. One day a mysterious uncle on his mother’s side dies and leaves him his business. And the novel is spent learning about what this uncle did. And what the uncle did is kind of weird and hard to explain, but he’s somewhat like a Bond villain. And the guy has inherited this entire empire. It’s a really great world. Lots of great characters. It really has fun with the concept. I don’t want to get too much into it because the discovery of the world is the best part.

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven – I think I read a review of this somewhere, and it got me interested. It’s about a hurricane that floods the surrounding area of an amusement park similar to Disney World, trapping hundreds of park goers and staff inside the park for a month. That’s interesting enough, but what this book does isn’t show you the events happening in real time. The story in the book takes place years after the event. It’s interviewing different people that were involved in the events and slowly reveals all the craziness that happened in the park. It’s a fascinating “oral history” of these events. I really really dug this book. It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies, and I went on a strange Lord of the Flies kick after reading this. I re-read the book and even watched the 1990 movie with Balthazar Getty and James Badge Dale.

James by Percival Everett – I’m a fan of Mark Twain. And I’m a fan of Tom and Huck Finn. I read both of those books in high school, and just a few years ago, I re-read both books and they hold up as good reads, especially Huck Finn. I even read the two novellas that Twain wrote as follow-ups; Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer Detective. So when I saw someone had written a book that was essentially “The Adventures of Huck Finn but from Jim’s point of view”, I knew I had to read it. And it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s a lot funnier than I was expecting. Also, yes, there’s a lot of heavy themes most of them pertaining to slavery and how whites treated blacks. But also, Jim is really awesome as a character. And you see the events of Huck Finn just from a different angle. I love that. The end of this book though, kind of goes its own way, but in a good way, I think. It’s really good. I highly recommend it.

Together Forever: Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys
Together Forever: The Run-DMC and Beastie Boys Photographs – Yes! I’m sticking in a sixth book! This isn’t a novel, it’s a coffee table book. And it’s a collection of photographs of the rap groups Run-DMC and Beastie Boys; two of my favorite groups of all time. They used to tour together and hang out and did promotional stuff all the time. These are all the photos they did together. It’s a gorgeous edition. Lots of really awesome photos, the majority of which were in the 80s. I really really love this book.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

Strange/Doctor Strange by Jed Mackay and Pascal Ferry, and various – I guess, if I HAD to pick a favorite comic of the year, it would be the epic run Jed Mackay had across the Doctor Strange titles. First with Strange, where Clea takes over as sorcerer supreme after Strange’s death, and then in Doctor Strange which has Strange return from the dead to join Clea. Mackay writes Clea as awesome and badass and funny. And I love her and Stephen’s relationship. They fully support each other and they have fun banter like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies. I also read MacKay’s lead up event to this; The Death of Dr Strange. The main issues of that are really good as well, but these two titles are…*chef’s kiss*

Black Cat by Jed MacKay and various artists – Yep, I’m doubling down on Mr MacKay. MacKay’s run is made up of two different series, but they all kind of go together. I read the first series back in 2022. I finished out the series in 2024. I also read several one shots and minis that MacKay wrote for Black Cat after the series ended. They are all really funny. Particularly the run I read this past year where Black Cat and the Silver Fox face the God of Death and bargain with him. So much adventure, fun, and snappy banter. This is a great series. Felicia even manages to steal her own version of Iron Man’s armor from Tony Stark. GREAT!

Birds of Prey by Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero – Let’s switch over to DC Comics. Kelly Thompson has been a favorite of mine since she did Black Widow, Kate Bishop: Hawkeye, and West Coast Avengers several years ago. So when I heard she was going to take over the super girl group, Birds of Prey, I was pretty excited. And come to find out, I was correct. This title is AWESOME. It has a great set of characters, they have great and fun interactions, and the story plots are wild, adventurous, and really have fun with the concept. That’s all I want out of things. Just write like you enjoy the characters. Kelly Thompson does that and this title exemplifies that.

Wonder Woman by Tom King and Daniel Sampere – So I read several events by both Marvel and DC this past year. One of them was DC’s Absolute Power by Mark Waid, which was really good. But the best thing that this event did for me was introduce me to Tom King’s Wonder Woman. I read a bunch of the Absolute Power tie-ins. I’ll be honest, most of the one-off titles were garbage. But several of the in-title crossovers were good with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Particularly Wonder Woman, which was written by Tom King. Who for the most part I like, but sometimes he can’t get out of his own way. I love King’s Vision series and the beginning of his Batman run. But his Miracle Man title was WAY too convoluted. So I gave his Wonder Woman a try based on the Absolute Power crossover issues. And I loved it. This is such a great title. King does a great job respecting the character. He ties in Trinity and the other Amazons. The story structure is a little weird. We are introduced to a new villain called The Sovereign. The whole story is told by him in flashback AFTER the events have happened. So while I’m side-eyeing King’s decision to have Wonder Woman’s story told to us in flashback by a guy, a guy villain nonetheless, I will say, that construct does manage to get out of the way of the story and be as non-intrusive as possible. And the actual story that is being told is EXCELLENT. You really see how awesome and bad ass Wonder Woman is. I also want to point out that King also writes a backup story in each issue that takes place in the future involving the antics of Trinity, Damien Wayne, and Jon Kent. It’s funny and lighthearted. It’s supposed to be less serious. And it’s a wonderful companion to the main story. I love this title so much.

John Byrne’s 2 year run on Superman/Action Comics – I’ve talked about on this very blog how much I love Byrne’s run on Superman back in the late 80s. For two years he wrote and drew Superman and Action Comics. And towards the end, he was also writing Adventures of Superman. I was buying his run piece-meal from the racks in the 80s and loved it. So I decided in 2024 to read the complete 2 year run of Byrne’s Superman which includes the main Superman title, Action Comics, the mini-event Legends, the graphic novel The Earth Stealers, several issues of Adventures of Superman, and several issues of Legion of Superheroes that tied into his run. It was one long glorious ride. Not everything was my favorite, I’ll say that. But over the two years, particularly in the first year or so, there was some dynamite storytelling. And Byrne’s art. I love Byrne’s art. It’s just so well composed and lends itself to the action-y stories.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2024. I read some really fun stuff last year. It was difficult to narrow it down, but only for 1 or 2 things. Most of this stuff jumped out immediately as “this belongs on the list”.

Hope you guys found something new to read that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! I need to rewatch a few things, so movies may be another week or two down the line. But I’ll get them out, I promise you!!

Thanks for reading.

Leave a comment »

I Read Movies 2024 Novelization Round Up

Posted in Blog Series, books, movies, podcast with tags I Read Movies, movie novelization, podcast on January 17, 2025 by Paxton

Welcome back to the beginning of my year end round up articles. Usually in January and February I will write up my favorite books and comics I read, movies I watched, as well as a third round up article talking about the novelizations that I read for my podcast.

For those that don’t know, my novelization podcast is I Read Movies. It can be found on the Cult Film Club podcast feed as well as the CFC website. If you haven’t listened yet, check it out. And if you have, thank you very much, you are a true gentleperson and a scholar. Every month on IRM I read a movie novelization and then I talk about the differences between the movie and the novelization. It’s so fun to see the differences between the two because many times the movie novelization is written from a different version of the script. Check out the podcast, I think you’ll like it.

If you want to check out a list of all of the episodes online, you can find the show at CultFilmClub.com/IReadMovies.

All the episodes are nicely displayed there in a bookshelf format with book covers. Browse just like you do at the library!

So, let’s revisit 2024 real quick. I covered 13 novelizations for I Read Movies, which was two more books than usual. I covered 2 books in March, and I normally take the month of November off, but you guys got an extra episode in November. And, spoiler alert, you will this year as well. I have another new-ish episode to you that I’ll post in November.

So, now, let’s talk about this year. Normally in this round up I’ll look at all 12 books I covered the previous year and pick my 5 favorites. And then I’ll go over some stats involving the authors I’ve covered over the years. Can I come up with my 5 favorite novelizations in 2023? *papers shuffling* Challenge accepted.

The images I use for each of the below entries are my photoshopped episode banners, assuming I made one, for that book. I really enjoy doing them and I want to showcase them a bit more. I’ll link each entry to the IRM show page on CFC.com. These favorites will be listed in the order they appeared on the show last year.

Let’s kick this off with…

Romancing the Stone (1984) by Joan Wilder – The novelization to Robert Zemekis’ hit romantic adventure was the first novelization I covered in 2024. Accredited to the fictional writer played by Kathleen Turner, Joan Wilder. The book is also written as if it’s a legit romantic adventure novel. It’s a lot of fun, it has several scenes that aren’t in the movie, as well as a bunch of backstory for characters like Ralph and Ira, but especially Jack Colton. Definitely worth the read if you like the movie.

Over the Top banner
Over the Top (1987) by Joel D Humphrey – Yes, the novelization of the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling movie made my list of top 5 for the year. This book is exactly what you want in a novelization, particularly a Sylvester Stallone movie novelization from the 80s or 90s. The novelization is clearly written from an earlier script, I’d venture to say it was the script right before Sly rewrote it to be more “Stallone-ian” (that’s a word, look it up). The book is lighter on the arm wrestling, and heavier on the father-son bonding. And Lincoln Hawk is clearly supposed to be of Native American descent. It’s a really fun novelization to read.

Iron Man (2008) by Peter David – There were three adult novelizations for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Only three. This one, Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2. After Iron Man 2, Marvel backed off adult novelizations, and leaned hard into junior novelizations for the MCU, including even re-adapting these first three movies. This was a really fun book. Peter David knows what he’s doing. He handles Tony Stark very well, and it’s action packed.

Spider-Man 2 – Peter David – Peter David may be the first author to show up twice in one of my IRM year end round ups. I don’t think I’ve covered any other author twice in one year–Oh, I take that back, I did it a couple times. Now that I think about it, I did Craig Shaw Gardner twice in one year when I did Batman/Batman Returns, and again when I did Back to the Future II/Back to the Future III. I also did Ed Naha twice in one year when I covered Robocop/Robocop II. This doesn’t take away from Peter David. Spider-Man 2 is my favorite of the Raimi movies and David expands a lot of the ideas in the movie. This is a really great read.

Superman III novel
Superman III (1983) by William Kotzwinkle – Sadly only the lesser of the four Chris Reeve Superman movies got novelizations. I covered Superman IV a few years ago, and this one completes the set. I don’t love this movie, but I was very curious how the book would handle the complete mess of a story. And William Kotzwinkle is an interesting writer, I have covered him previously for the ET the Extra Terrestrial novelization. He certainly makes this book interesting. Superman is super annoyed at humans and Earth. He has several super violent thoughts towards Brad. And Gus Gorman’s computer skills are treated as a kind of super power. He literally has no understanding of what he’s doing. He just does it. The book is interesting, but it doesn’t make me like the movie any better.

Terminator novelization
The Terminator – Randall Frakes & Bill Wisher – It took me a while to find this novelization and I was super excited to cover it. This was also one of the select few that had a completely separate book written by a different author over in the UK (horror writer Shaun Hutson). The US version is my favorite, it’s longer, and it adds more to the overall story. This is a great read. And I’m really looking forward to the T2 novelization, which is written again by Randall Frakes (but no Bill Wisher even though he did work on the script).

So those were my favorite novelizations I covered on IRM in 2024. Let’s take a look at a few stats for I Read Movies.

Over the course of the show I’ve covered over 100 books and novelizations (includes regular episodes as well as appendix and other special episodes). I don’t officially number the episodes, but The Terminator was the 87th regular episode of the show. How about an author breakdown?

Up to this year, IRM’s reigning champ of novelization authors has been Craig Shaw Gardner with 5 books (Back to the Future II, Back to the Future III, Batman 1989, Batman Returns, The Lost Boys). As of this year, Peter David finally caught him. David is now also at 5 books (Spider-man, Spider-Man 2, Return of Swamp Thing, Iron Man, Batman Forever). And I definitely have several more to cover for him in the future, so there may be some movement again in the author rankings next year. However, will someone else reach 5 books, or will someone finally SURPASS 5 books on the show? You’ll have to wait and find out!

Next is a three way tie at 4 books. We have Alan Dean Foster (Star Wars ’77, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), BB Hiller (Superman IV, and all 3 Karate Kid novelizations), and Glen A Larson with 4 of the Knight Rider novelizations that I’ve covered on the show. After this there are a plethora of authors with 1 and 2 books that I’ve covered on the show.

So that was I Read Movies in 2024. I thought this was a really strong year, and I had a lot of fun putting it together. And knowing what the schedule is for 2025, I think it’s going to be another fun year. Please join me!

1 Comment »

My Favorite Movies I Saw in 2023

Posted in Blog Series, Movie Board, movies with tags Movie Board, movies, reviews on February 8, 2024 by Paxton

So. Beginning of the year and my favorite movies countdown. We meet again.

This is my 17th year making this list, guys. How is that even possible?! As always, I’m keeping up with my movie watching throughout the year on my Letterboxd account. Check me out there to see more reviews!

So, on to my list. Rules are like my books, only movies new to me in 2023 are eligible. Normally, starting Jan 1 through whenever I post this article, I put a moratorium on 2023 movies that are new to me. I don’t watch them. I have to wait until I’m done with this article. However, this year, I did actually watch a few new 2023 movie that I hadn’t watched within the calendar year of 2023. So I’m trying new things. Look at me, all growed up.

First, I’ll do a list of my favorite movies released in 2023. Then, possibly, depending on how things go, I’ll do a second list of my favorite movies I watched for the first time in 2023. Those can be from any year. But in this article I’m focusing on 2023 released movies and a few stats from Letterboxd.

So let’s see what my favorite things to watch in 2023 were. This was a tough decision to make. There were three big tentpole releases that could have made it into this list, but I made a decision to nudge them out and do a couple other movies I felt needed the exposure.

Here are my top 5 favorite movies of 2023. I got most of my images and links from Wikipedia.

Barbie
Barbie – I don’t know what I expected here, but I did not expect *this*. It’s lovely. It’s hilarious. It’s thought provoking. I was already getting a major man crush on Ryan Gosling and this just furthered that cause. It’s amazing what Greta Gerwig did with this movie. I love what it wanted to say, I love how it said it. Just a wonderful movie and if pressed, I’d probably almost call this my favorite movie of the year. Almost, this is a tight top 5.

Across the Spider-verse
Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse – Man, they managed to do it again. The first one was such a masterpiece, I’m like, how are they going to follow that up? And they managed to do it by making almost every frame of the movie a work of art unto itself. The way they have art styles blending through the movie and even within one scene, it’s breathtaking. And they brought in one of the more interesting villains, Spot, and made him crazy and weird and totally awesome. I can’t wait to see the final installment.

Three Musketeers: Part I – D’artagnan – This was the movie that benefitted from my new rule this year where I could watch movies from 2023 that I didn’t get to before Dec 31 and it could still count towards this list. I’m a big fan of the Alexander Dumas novel, I read it in college. And I love all of the adaptations I’ve seen of it. A particular favorite is the Disney version from 1993 with Chris O’Donnell, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, and Tim Curry. Anyway, this version is not only an excellent adaptation of the novel, but it’s a great movie with amazing sets and costumes, and the cast they got is KILLER. I thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to Part II, which doesn’t drop until December, unfortunately.

Air
Air – I’m really getting personal in this list. You’ll notice neither Fast X nor John Wick 4 have shown up yet. Air hits every kind of button I have. It’s a “behind the scenes of a bit pop cultural event. It’s about the 80s NBA. It has Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck in a fun role as Phil Knight. This scratches all the itches for me and it’s a great movie. I watched it twice last year.

D&D:HaT
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – Again, I’m picking the movies that entertained me the most here. This movie looked good, but man oh man, this was better than even I thought it was going to be. I love the humor. I love the awesome cast. The world is wonderful. The easter eggs for the D&D cartoon were a salve to my battered heart as it’s one of my fav Saturday morning cartoons. They need sequels to this. NOW.

There you go. I did it. I picked 5 movies to be my favorites this year. Like I mentioned, that was hard this year. I had a lot of good choices. Fast X, John Wick 4, and Mission Impossible 7 all could have been in this list. I only didn’t include them because I’ve included iterations of these franchises in my list before. These movies are a given. I’m of course going to like them. The above movies I loved and there was no guarantee that I was going to love any of them (well, maybe Spider-man).

Let’s take a look at some of my movie watching stats from my account over on Letterboxd.

Here’s a graph of the number of films I watched throughout the year broken down by week. My overall total was 233 movies watched, which is exactly the total I got last year. Weird. That’s 4.5 movies per week. My highest weekly total of movies watched in 2023 was 12. It happened the week of Oct 23-29. That was me finishing out some Halloween watches. Next highest total was 10 movies in a week, and then 9 movies.

Here is the list of actors that I watched the most movies of this year. I’m in the middle of an Elvis filmography marathon so that’s why Elvis is way out in front with 16 movies watched. Seth Green seems an odd #2, but we watched all the Austin Powers movies with the kids as well as a few other of his movies randomly. Courtney Cox and Roger Jackson are there because I did a Scream franchise marathon with the kids. We watched all 6 of them. I also rewatched Mission Impossible 3-6 (Tom Cruise) as well as watching all of Bruce Lee’s martial arts movies. It’s interesting to see who pops up based on your watching habits.

This is the top 10 list of directors I watched this year. Again, you see where marathons shape these lists. Norman Taurog directed Elvis’ movies. Wes Craven directed the majority of the Scream films. I watched a couple of the Zorro films, and Mr Deters and Mrs Wermers-Skelton directed the Prep and Landing shorts which we watched over the holidays.

According to my milestones, the first movie I watched in 2023 was See How They Run, a murder mystery starring Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan on January 1. The last movie I watched in 2023 was Gran Turismo on Dec 29. Surprising I didn’t watch any movies between Dec 29 and Dec 31 last year. You can see my other milestones there, the 100th movie I watched in 2023 was Air.

Anyway, that about wraps up my 2023 movies list. I’m kicking around the idea of doing a few “honorable mentions” articles. Talk about some TV shows I watched, and maybe some other movies and books that I read last year that might be worth talking about.

Leave a comment »

Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2023

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Magic Johnson, Marvel Comics, NBA, reviews, time travel, Year End Books on February 2, 2024 by Paxton

Well, I was shocked in 2022 that I had read the most books I’d ever logged…EVER. And then, in 2023, I managed to top that. Which is crazy to me because in November and December I kind of stopped reading for a while due to work. Let’s dig into one of my most weirdly productive years ever.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2023 was 200. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 275 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. It’s even more remarkable to me because around November, I had a streak of books/comics that I didn’t like and it killed my momentum for a month. So this total could have been higher.

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2023.

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Looking at it, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. Most of that was because, like I said, in Oct-Nov, I hit a snag where I just couldn’t read any books. It just wasn’t happening. That’s why I’m surprised I got as much read as I did.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Going over my spreadsheet, it looks like I read roughly 64 novels. The rest were comics issues and trade paperbacks. In the image above you can see my shortest and longest book I read. Over Halloween I read several Poe stories. Cask was one of them. I also read Murders in the Rue Morgue and Masque of the Red Death. I enjoyed them. Longest book I read is that Return of the Living Dead Complete History. I love that movie. And that book was excellent. However, full disclosure, I wound up only reading the chapters for the first three movies. I did not care about parts 4 and 5. That came out to about 2/3 of the whole book, not the full 751 pgs.

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. Most popular was The Song of Achilles, which is EXCELLENT, btw. Wow over 3 million other people read that last year. And exactly 0 people read Tim Holt Western Magazine #11. That doesn’t surprise me, but if you were wondering why I read it, it’s because that is the first appearance of the original Ghost Rider, when he was a heroic but mysterious gunslinger.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same as every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2023 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller – This was recommended to me by a family member. I’m a big fan of the Trojan War and the 2004 movie Troy, so I thought this might be an interesting read. It is FANTASTIC. It’s a retelling of The Iliad, but from the point of view of Achilles’ partner. In the movie Troy, that character is his cousin, but in The Iliad and this book, he’s more of a companion and lover. I loved this book. It’s a fantastic retelling. The characters are great. I loved it. So much so I also read Miller’s follow up, Circe. That is a retelling of The Odyssey and also fantastic. And then I read two of her short stories, Galatea, and Heracles’ Bow. I’m anxiously awaiting her next book.

Zorro #1
The Curse of Capistrano (aka The Mark of Zorro) by Johnston McCulley – I kind of got into a Zorro kick in 2023. I’ve wanted to read the original Zorro story for many years, and in 2023 I finally did it. And it is so much fun. Lots of action. Great characters. Fun dialogue. I was thrilled. It’s everything I wanted a Zorro story to be. So I read the next two McCulley Zorro stories as well; The Further Adventures of Zorro, and Zorro Rides Again. I loved all of them. They are really fun stories. I hope to keep going through McCulley’s Zorro series, but I don’t know how many full stories are left. I think a lot of them are short stories.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High – Cameron Crowe – I’m a huge fan of the 1982 movie. Have been for years. Finally was able to read a copy of the really hard to find book that was the basis for the movie. And it didn’t disappoint. The basic structure of the movie is there, but there’s a lot of extra content and even a few extra characters. Cameron Crowe wrote a fun book and managed to capture what it was like to be a teen in high school in the late 70s-early 80s.

On Target (The Gray Man #2) – Mark Greaney – I really enjoyed the first Gray Man novel (as well as the movie), so I thought I’d try the second book. And it delivers. Lots of action packed adventure. Court finds himself as a double agent sent on a mission for a Russian gangster. He’s supposed to assassinate an African dictator, but he works a deal with his old office, the CIA, to kidnap him instead and deliver him to them. In return Court will get back in their good graces and can stop running from agents sent to kill him. This was very twisty-turny. I love Court as a character. His mission goes sideways, of course. Lots of fun. Can’t wait to read more. And hopefully they can pump out a few more Gray Man movies with Ryan Gosling.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

I Hate Fairyland (2022) – I was a HUGE fan of the original run of this comic by Skottie Young. And at the end of 2022 Young decided to return to this world. Gert, the protagonist/antagonist from the previous run, returned to Earth, but realized that since she spent so long in Fairyland, she had no life skills. So she has trouble keeping a job. Then a tech guru wants Gert to go back to Fairyland to find his son who disappeared there. I’ve read the 10 issues or so that they’ve released so far. It’s really good, a lot of fun, and I love the art. The first 5-6 issues felt like they were building up to something really big, and the last 4 issues felt like they were told to “wrap it up” by the publisher and it felt a bit rushed. The story I mean. There are a ton of action montages that briskly go over a lot of action. That’s a small nitpick though because the issues in question are still really good. And the art is always cartoonishly fantastic.

Batman White Knight
Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy – I finally dug into the Murphyverse in 2023. And I loved it. I read all three White Knight series; White Knight, Curse of the White Knight, and Beyond the White Knight. As well as all the mini-series in between. Murphy has built up this excellent Batman universe with compelling iterations of your favorite characters. Particularly Jack Napier/Joker. I thought I was over any more Joker adaptations, but Murphy nailed his version. It’s so good. As is his Harley Quinn. For the first two books, I almost didn’t really even like Batman, he’s kind of a jerk, but that’s part of what Murphy is trying to do. And it worked for me. This is a great series of stories. I look forward to more.

World's Finest
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest by Mark Waid (writer) and Dan Mora (art) – I love Mark Waid as a writer. His Kingdom Come is for me, pound for pound, the best look at mythology and super heroes bar none. And yes, I’m including Watchmen and Dark Knight. So it was such a fun surprise to see Waid take on this title and have so much fun with it. He really plays around with the history of these characters and how their friendship works. And he brings in the Bat family, the Supes family, and tons of other heroes. This ongoing book is a joyful celebration of DC, its characters, and its history. You won’t believe the places this title goes in later issues. Oh, and Dan Mora’s art is THE BEST. It’s so clean and iconic. I really love it.

Superior Spider-man by Christos Gage – Superior Spider-man has become one of my favorite characters. Originally written by Dan Slott, Christos Gage takes over in this series. I love the concept that, on his death bed, Otto Octavius switches minds and bodies with Peter Parker, leaving Parker to die in his place and him to take over being Spider-man. And no one realizes it! Otto continues to try to be a better Spider-man than Parker ever was, but he has trouble working with other people. He certainly beefs up Peter’s operation and does seem to make it more efficient. This is a really great series. They are bringing Superior Spider-man back this year, and it’s written by Dan Slott, so count me excited!

Jughead
Jughead by Chip Zdarsky – I think I’ve mentioned I was a big fan of Mark Waid (again!) and Veronica Fish’s reinvention of Archie. This was a follow up series to that, written by the great Chip Zdarsky and Ryan North who took over in later issues. I really loved their version of Jughead. They also bring in Sabrina who I also love their version of her.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2023. This was a kind of tough choice, I did have a few really good things that didn’t make the list. I always threaten it, but maybe I’ll do an “honrable mention” article to talk about a few of the other books/comics that didn’t make the list.

Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! This year, I’ve actually been taking my time with movies. I’m rewatching several I felt needed rewatches and I’m even for the first time watching a few movies I missed in 2023 to see if they’d make it into my favs list. Normally I don’t allow that. Let’s see if it changes anything!

Leave a comment »