9/10ths Full of Penguins Review of the Year 2009

As the decade with the crappest nickname since the roaring Nineteen Noughties comes to a close, I have been reflecting on the last ten years. I will be blogging some thoughts over the next few weeks, but I thought I'd kick things off with my customary review of the year.

Best Moment
Laughing so hard my sides hurt for 3 days while watching Bill Bailey live in Manchester ranks pretty high. However, sharing this glorious sunset with Heidi while on holiday in Northumbria wins the accolade.Worst Moment
My 6 year relationship with Refresh FM came to a sad and rather painful end. See my post from November for my thoughts and links to the various other posts and articles.

Best Film
In hindsight, 2009 was a good year for movies with some absolute blinders wowing my eyeholes. Watchmen and Avatar just about met expectations, Star Trek and State of Play exceeded them and The Hurt Locker and District 9 came out of left field and almost stole the show. However, there can be only one winner and that was the wonderfully eerie Let the Right One In which showed all the other vampire films released in 2009 exactly how things should be done.

Worst Film
Channing Tatum and his unfeasible face slunk into a few movies this year including the inexplicable GI Joe. However, he sunk to new depths in the utterly dreadful Fighting. A film called Fighting which is about fighting should have more actual fighting in it. It spent so long talking about fighting and setting up the bouts for the charmless Tatum that when they finally arrived the director appeared to get rather over-excited and crammed 2 minutes of badly choreographed handicam scrapping into the film.

Best TV
Battlestar Galactica finally come to an end in 2009 and still managed to be just about the best TV of the year. Although honourable mentions do go to the superbly crafted Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and BBC's Life.

Best Album
Its a tie between Neon Horse's Haunted Horse: Songs of Love, Defiance, and Delusion and Absence by Paper Route

Best Book
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. It may not be the best book of the year, but it was my favourite. Pratchett is as good as ever and reading his books now comes with a slight twinge of sadness. If you missed the marvellous two-part BBC documentary where he explores possible treatments for his Alzheimers I suggest you seek it out. It's both funny and moving - very much like the man himself.

Best Penguin related story of 2009
The heartwarming tale of penguin adoption in a German Zoo. A hearty slap in the face for all those stupid fundamentalist Christians who use penguins as an example of 'wholesome' family values. They're just animals, they're not proof of anything!

Blogs of the Year
Fat Roland
Cultural Snow

Here's to more blogging in 2010...