A roundup of the movies and books I watched and read in 2013. Leaving out shorts, I watched 94 movies, series, and other things. I basically missed all the supposedly great films of the year; what I watched seems to have been mostly gloriously lowbrow stuff.
Leaving out comics and picture books, I read 74 books. I thought my reading would drop dramatically in 2013, but it turned out okay.
Movies · The Year’s Good Stuff
Four series:
Breaking Bad Season 5 (2012)
The best of the year. Apart from the draggy, nitpicky, and occasionally implausible stretch in the middle and latter part of Season 3, it’s basically perfect. The finale got so busy breaking my heart that it felt a little anticlimactic, but the more I sat with it, the more I felt that this was exactly the right way to handle it.
Shameless (US), Season 3
Every time I think the writers have exhausted the supply of decency to destroy, they somehow manage to lower the bar again.
The IT Crowd: The Internet Is Coming (2013)
I was still happy five seconds before it ended; the moment the credits appeared, I suddenly felt terribly sad.
Modern Family, Seasons 1–4
More idiots in a family, more fun for everyone.
Two old films:
Witness for the Prosecution
Agatha Christie’s spectacularly badass script.
12 Angry Men
The 1957 version. Law, logic, reasoning, institutions, morality—it has the whole set.
Four newish and half-new films:
Gravity
The power of air pressure, the silence of space, conservation of momentum… all those middle-school physics details got my blood boiling. The only scene that struck me as a little weird was when the male lead “comes back from the dead,” forces his way into the capsule before the female lead has even had time to put on her helmet, and I was muttering to myself, “That makes no sense—she should die like this,” when the female lead woke from her dream. What a great feeling. Haha.
Stoker
How many people actually understood it?
Blind Detective
Wai Ka-fai and Johnnie To have always believed that ego is a bad thing and that letting go is the way to go. I, on the other hand, have always felt that being deeply attached is an especially captivating state.
Headhunters
Unexpectedly excellent!
Two talk shows:
Luogic Show, Season 1 (2013)
I disagree with some of the opinions (especially in the early episodes), but the hosts are genuinely eloquent and worth learning from. I hope these chin-wagging guys record more psychology programs, so we’ll have more things to play when we feel like slacking off in class. (These days, if anyone still played Rain Man in a psychology class, the students would probably beat them to death.)
Xiao Shuo, Season 1
Something for history teachers to play when they feel like slacking off in class.
Movies · The Year’s Dreck
Personal Tailor
It pleased the filmmakers and disgusted the audience. Wang Shuo and Feng Xiaogang have clearly lost their minds.
Modern Times
Isn’t this just a compilation of slapstick bits? Does it really deserve to be elevated to the status of a classic of cinema?
The Wolverine
Did Wolverine really have to be nerfed this badly?
True Blood Season 6
So many jaw-droppingly stupid plot holes.
Books · The Year’s Good Stuff
Searching for Home — Gao Ertai
The full Taiwan edition. I finished it in fits and starts, and cried every time.
It’s Okay to Procrastinate: Learning Effective Procrastination from Stanford’s Adorable Professor
Apart from this one, every other book about procrastination is talking nonsense. And this one was actually written by a philosophy professor. Psychologists, aren’t you embarrassed?
The Legend of the Akakuchiba Family — Kazuki Sakuraba
It moves from the age of myth to the grand era and then to the tiny era. Watching one good era after another inevitably collapse feels both sad and beautiful.
The Man Who Watched the Sea — Taizo Kobayashi
Poetic hard science fiction.
Positive Energy — Richard Wiseman
A book against “positive energy,” against inspirational slogans, against success manuals—and in the end it could only be published under the title Positive Energy, dressed up as a typical inspirational success book. What a perfect satire!
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
A shit translation has ruined yet another classic, with countless passages that make no sense and countless mistranslations. Published by CITIC, translated into shit—what a shame. Half the essence of contemporary psychological thought is in this book.
That’s Disgusting! Uncovering the Secrets of the Psychology of Disgust — Rachel Herz
Everyone has beaten me to the research I wanted to do. Sigh.
The Shape of Time: A Lay History of Relativity — Wang Jie
How many times have I read a popular-science book about relativity now?
Books · The Year’s Dreck
Authentic Happiness — Martin Seligman
Isn’t positive psychology just inspirational psychology, success studies, and chicken soup for the soul? How much genuinely solid material is there?
When We No Longer Meet in Life — He Xi
Third-rate sentimentality plus third-rate romance.
The Chronicles of the Blood Sorcerer, Volume 20 — Giddens Ko
Giddens Ko somehow turned a sweeping epic into the world of The King of Fighters ’98.
The Foreign Knight — Seishi Yokomizo
Sure enough, as long as a mystery novel’s rating pattern on Douban isn’t an inverted triangle (with five-star ratings in the majority), you can skip it. (Science fiction and fantasy seem to work the same way.)
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