Monday, December 31, 2007

The 1st Annual Gonch Awards

Hello one and all to our first ever Gonch Awards, aka the Gonchies. Is the name lame? Good, we achieved the first task at hand. The purpose of these awards to is simply give my personal opinion of the best of the year's most entertaining and interesting forms of creativity. Movies, tv, books, music, it's all here and more. Categories will be whatever springs to mind and my opinions will likely be, well whatever I want them to be. That's just how it goes. Without further ado, the 1st Annual Gonch Awards! DISCLAIMER: I have likely not experienced enough of these mediums to give a great consensus this year, so I'll do the best I can.

MOVIES

Best Visual Effects - Transformers; the staggering amount of effects needed for each transformation borders on ridiculous let alone keeping the chaos on screen intact for various battles. I can only imagine the number of painstaking nights spent working on this at ILM.

Best Comic Book Adaptation - Spider-Man 3; I wouldn't be surprised if 300 is the correct choice here but I unfortunately haven't seen it yet, so this will have to do. Mostly because it certainly beats out Silver Surfer, the usage of Venom, Sandman, and Gwen Stacey along with the new Goblin were interesting, if not at all times accurate. But in general, the series remains one of the most joyfully comic book like out there.

Best Film - ???; immediately I have to say, I doubt I've seen the best movie of the year. With that said, if I had to pick anyone movie, I'll pick the Bourne Ultimatum. It has few if any flaws, is tense and gripping with a smart, mature story that leaves one satisfied with the conclusion of the trilogy.

Most Anticipated Film - Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull/The Dark Knight; no choice but to award a tie here. Dark Knight is the safer bet to be good, but Indy holds so much cool promise for us. They could both be great, we can only hope.

TV

Best New Show - Chuck; the smart combination of action and comedy isn't seen too often but this show pulls it off deftly with heart as well. For the geek in all of us, this show speaks while melding the spy genre. A neat concept that tv needed badly.

Best Returning Show - Heroes; a slow start got moved along with the reintroduction of Sylar and Adam Monroe. It may prove better for what comes next but it's still a very enjoyable show. Smallville actually wasn't too far behind this time believe it or not, for embracing a lot of mythology including Supergirl and other Kryptonian ancestry, Bizarro, and the clear return of Brainiac.

Most Anticipated New Show - Terminator, The Sarah Conner Chronicles/Dollhouse; let's face facts, anything that involves Whedon or Whedon alum is automatically at the top of the list. Add to it that the first is a terminator tv show with Summer Glau as the machine in question and the latter is Whedon's supposed return to tv and you've got a great mix to work from.

Most Anticipated Returning Show - Lost; the promise of the end of last season with a shorter season and non-stop episodes could really start to quicken the pace and relight the show. With the flashforward last season, anything is possible.

MUSIC

Best Song - Foo Fighters, The Pretender; a strong, kinetic song announces that once again, the Foo Fighters freakin' rock. It's catchy, simple and it rocks. That's really all you need.

Best Album - Hoobastank, Every Man For Himself; the bigger album release this year was Linkin Park's Minutes To Midnight and while it's a good entry, it doesn't quite have the near perfection the previous albums garnered. Hoobastank immediately jumps into a series of inspiring lyrics and crafty chords. There's too many good songs on here to ignore.

BOOKS

Best Release - Stephen Colbert's I Am America! And So Can You; sure it's only real book I got this year, but it's quite clearly the funniest and most entertaining out there. This is good stuff from what I've read so far. A great continuation from America the book.

Best Comic Book - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8; as if there was any question I would choose this. Sure I haven't read it yet but it's not like I was going to pick anything else, heh.

Got comments, suggestions, complaints? Think of anymore categories I could add? Feel free to let me know.

6 comments:

Lumie said...

Where can I pick up my Gonchies for books?

Gonch In Goal said...

Well you didn't write the books but you certainly provided the winners to me. Gonchies will be delivered in beautiful imaginary cases to all the winners and provider of winners. Now sure, the awards exist only in theory, but I assure you they are quite a glorious sight to behold, one assumes.

As a side note, the technical Gonchies were handed out a few days prior. But because no one cares about that, no one technically won those. We'll be selling them on eBay, once we figure where they are.

Adam Entertainment said...

While I liked The Bourne Ultimatium, I don't think it was the best movie. I know you had limited opportunities to catch much this year, but my top 5 would be:

1. The Simpsons Movie
2. Superbad
3. Knocked Up
4. Ratattouille
5. Spider-Man 3

I know that 4 out of 5 of those movies are comedies, but I find comedies generally outshine their action or dramatic counterparts. I can recall lines and bits from comedy more so than explosions from action movies and scenes from dramas. Hence, why they always are in my top 5.

David McIntyre said...

Aw, but the Gonchie is the only award that Bourne Ultimatum won. I think they'd be disappointed if they had to give it back.

Gonch In Goal said...

Bourne Ultimatum was a solid film that has few faults if any. To be fair of course like I said, I haven't seen a LOT of films this year so it's really hard to make the call. If Spidey 3 had been better it'd be easy.

Then you're biased when it comes to the Simpsons and while I'm sure it was good, I'll be impressed if it's really the best movie of the year. Something tells me Ratatouille is actually better.

Adam Entertainment said...

Oh, of course I am biased towards The Simpsons, that's why I said "my top 5" ;-) But yeah, there really wasn't anything mindblowing awesome this year, since Spidey 3 dropped the ball. Though Hot Fuzz came out around this time last year, so maybe that should belong in my top 5...