1. Mad Max Fury Road ★★★★☆
2. Northmen a Viking Saga ★★★☆☆
3. Captain America The First Avenger ★★★★★
4. Captain America 2 The Winter Soldier ★★★★☆
5. Thor ★★★★☆

1. Pirate Latitudes - Michael Crichton | ★★★
2. Star Wars: Republic Volumes 4-8 - Various | ★★★
3. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel |
4. Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig | ★★★★
5. The Death Cure - James Dashner | ★★★
6. Halo: Last Light - Troy Denning | ★★★★
7. J.R.: My Life as the Most Outspoken, Fearless, and Hard-Hitting Man in Hockey - Jeremy Roenick | ★★★★

1. Staten Island Summer | ★★
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) | ★★★
3. Night at the Roxbury | ★★★
4. Hot Pursuit | ★★★
5. Kingsmen: The Secret Service | ★★★★
6. Get Hard | ★★★★
7. Hardball | ★★★
8. Rocky III | ★★★★
9. Rocky IV | ★★★★
10. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials | ★★★★

Books:
20. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk - ★
21. Desperation - Stephen King - ★★

Films:
123. Nightwatch (1997) - Ole Bornedal - ★★
124. The Evil Dead (1981) - Sam Raimi - ★★★★
125. Braindead/Dead Alive (1992) - Peter Jackson - ★★★½
126. Land of the Dead (2005) - George A. Romero - ★★★
127. Videodrome (1983) - David Cronenberg - ★★★½
128. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) - John Carpenter - ★★★
129. Silent Night (2012) - Stephen C. Miller - ★½
130. The Visit (2015) - M. Night Shyamalan - ★★½
131. Psycho II (1983) - Richard Franklin - ★★★
132. Dog Soldiers (2002) - Neil Marshall - ★★★½

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orthodoxy1095 said:

Crap. Forgot to do my update to complement Ashes' update. 191 books and 264 movies.

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• The Maid's Version (2013), Daniel Woodrell - ★★★½ - Interesting novel that I might not have otherwise read. About blame and the truth.
• In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7: Time Regained (1927), Marcel Proust - ★★★★ - While I'm glad to be done with it and also happy to have enjoyed all of it. I like stream of conscience writing and while at times the story does bog it down but the structure and reflection keep it strong and carry it all the way through.
• Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Daniel Kahneman - ★★★ - Boring but good. There's a lot to consider when thinking and it's interesting to see it all spelled out even though it aligns well with what I've thought on the subject.
• Purple Hibiscus (2003), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - ★★★½ - Warfare on both the pious and civil. Nigeria is torn up from the inside and the family is torn up by an overly religious patriarch. All portrayed though the naïve eyes of the protagonist. Her story is worth telling and is far from the sentimental book I thought it was going in.
• Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997), J. M. Coetzee - ★★★ - An interesting recollection of growing up in South Africa. It introduces the factions and various groups of people. It, however, never really does anything with it. A life's story. Not really a grand novel.
• Gone Girl (2014), Gillian Flynn - ★★★★ - The war between man and woman falsely cleverly desguised as a crime novel. I'm really intrested to see in what she does next.
• Bonjour Tristesse (1954), Françoise Sagan - ★★★★ - The summer holiday with the free loving father figure. Really good and to the point. The reflections of a young girl that's raised to be who she wants to be with only a male rolemodel is an interesting one.
• Art Through Innovation: Success Through Innovation the Ideo Way (2001), Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman - ★★½ - While I'd love for this book to be about art trhough innovation it's not. It's an IDEO commerical with some intresting tidbits.
• Save Me the Waltz (1932), Zelda Fitzgerald - ★★★ - It's a shame she never wrote more than this book. It showed great promise. It felt almost deliberate that the book was trying to convince you of how fabulous everything was with fancy adverbs and adjectives--very meta. The story of Alabama is an enticing one but falls just short of greatness. A curiosity, none-the-less.

• The Raid 2: Berandal (2014, dir. Gareth Evans) - ★★★★ - Continues the proud tradition to be the best martial arts actions movies out there. It does have an absurdist twist on the first one where it just continually just forces gigantic fights. The ending is sublime.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011, dir. David Gelb) - ★★★½ - Savour the moment. I'm finding it hard to get into the documentary genre. I've watched too few of them no doubt. Jiro's Dream is an interesting subject matter and it's delivered very somber. Perfecting the art of sushi.
• Frances Ha (2012, dir. Noah Baumbach) - ★★★ - A woman's somewhat bitter tale about having to grow up. Stuck in a female Peter Pan-limbo status she struts through life. It's not very ambitious but it does what it does competently.
• Team America: World Police (2004, dir. Trey Parker) - ★★ - The core concept is so great and the jokes are there but something is just off. It doesn't work. It doesn't come together. As a whole it's less than the sum of its parts. And I really love the concept
• Byzantium (2012, dir. Neil Jordan) - ★★★½ - I could listen to Gemma Arterton's voice all day and here she does great with the material. Vampires might be best in Stockholms's suburbs but this is the most entertaining vampire movies I've seen.
• 28 Days Later... (2002, dir. Danny Boyle) - ★★½ - The Zombie genre has grown stale and uninteresting. This might have had a place in the pre-Walking Dead-world but now it's just a zombie movie. There's no reason to go back.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, dir. Matt Reeves) - ★★★★ - I don't get how they manage to get away with crafting such good movies from a source material that's milked to this point with such one-dimensional characters but they do. Even Jason Clarke manages to contribute. Serkis is phenomenal like always.
• Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu) - ★★★½ - Stream of conscienceness turns into a movie. So over overwrought with pretension that it's hard to enjoy it. Norton really steals every scene he's in. Awesome experiment but lacking in substance.
• Men in Black 3 (2012, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld) - ★★★ - Entertaining movie. The ending suffers from the budget being spent elsewhere. Josh Brolin steals the show playing Tommy Lee Jones playing Tommy Lee Jones stereotype.
• Whiplash (2014, dir. Damien Chazelle) - ★★★★ - There are two stories at odds in this movie that prevents it from being truely great. The story between the drummer and his teacher, which is greatm and the story of the drummers life, which is so bland and mediocre they could just as well have left it on the cutting room floor. The drumming is some of the most intense action you'll see.
• Tree of Life (2011, dir. Terrence Malick) - ★★★★½ - A movie where the actors hardly matter. Non-linear with the camera as its principle character. The vague recollection of boyhood and the loss of a brother. It's heartfelt but not in a melodramatic way. It's a very personal movie. Film making wise it's all over the place. Some of it is pure mastery of the medium while some of it is just spelling out stupid stuff the audience already gets.
• 12 Years a Slave (2013, dir. Steve McQueen) - ★★★★½ - How did I miss this? Some of the best, most effective film making on display. Brad Pitt sticks out like a sore thumb but every other actor gives his or her A-game. Lupita Nyong'o steals the show and brings out one of the best performances I've seen in the medium.
• Hannibal (2001, dir. Ridley Scott) - ★★ - The Jack Sparrow-mistake. Hannibal is the most interesting character of any movie he'll be in, but he's a supporting character to the story. He's better when he's reacting and manipulating rather than being the focus of attention. I don't know who is at fault for making a story about Hannibal himself. Just goes to show that while he's interesting, it's more interesting if it's background and not center stage.
• Big Hero 6 (2014, dir. Don Hall, Chris Williams) - ★★★½ - Really by the numbers Marvel/Disney stuff going on here. There's some genuine heartfelt moments and the action is fast paced. Thankfully it's a diverse cast of characters and of course the comical relief is engineered to heartwarming-and-funny perfection.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010, dir. Mike Newell) - ★★ - What should have been a The Raid-like action flick with the Prince acrobating and time bending his way for two exiting hours with a cast of interesting supporting characters instead tries to carbon copy Pirates of the Caribbean and becomes a poor imitation.
• Boyhood (2014, dir. Richard Linklater) - ★★½ - It took 12 years to make this and not once during the production did they stop and ask the question: "Why are we telling this story?". I'm left with feeling bored, mildly amused by some good scenes and only watched it to the end because of some misplaced courtesy.
• The Princess and the Frog (2009, dir. Ron Clements, John Musker) - ★★★★ - Scratched that handdrawn animated itch I've been having of late. Imaginative with a fun supporting cast. It's a shame they don't make them like this any more.
• Prisoners (2013, dir. Denis Villeneuve) - ★★★★½ - Villeneuve is becoming one of my favorite directors. Prisoners is his strongest movie so far. Jackman and Gyllenhall turn in really good performances. Deakins delivers the pictures. So many lovely things to say about this movie.
• Total Recall (2012, dir. Len Wiseman) - ★½ - I reckon the production looked like this: the team put together one movie and half-way through the studio decided they needed to adapt a PKD novel, scrambling they picked Total Recall figuring they could sell it on the old movie's good merit and tried to salvage as much as the movie as they could. There seems to be two movies at play here, neither of them very interesting.
• Searching for Sugar Man (2012, dir. Malik Bendjelloul) - ★★★★ - Another documentary and a really good one at that. A good documentary, I feel, is that chooses to deal with one subject but also deals with something else, something larger in the background. Sugar Man seemlessly deals with the political situation of South Africa while at the same time focusing on a really odd artist named Rodriguez. Who, as it turns out, is a really fun guy.
• The Act of Killing (2012, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer) - ★★★★ - Another documentary and a really good one at that. How do you make a movie out of a bunch of mass-murderers re-enacting their crimes for their own movie? And how do you make it stick? They succeed. This is a very thin line to walk for the crew.
• Blue Jasmine (2013, dir. Woody Allen) - ★★★½ - Cate brings her A-game and that's the reason to see it. Woody Allen is very hit or miss with me and this is a hit. Interesting and fun but not too deep.
• In the Heat of the Night (1967, dir. Norman Jewison) - ★★★★ - The core questions of cultural hate are still relevant to this day. Some good performances still stands out while other aspects feel date.
• Sin Nombre (2009, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga) - ★★★½ - Before True Detective there was Sin Nombre. A very classic movie that reeks of authenticity. A simple story delivered with confidence. True Detective is still his biggest masterpiece. Really looking forward to Beasts of no Nation.
• Incendies (2010, dir. Denis Villeneuve) - ★★★★ - Some really powerful visuals brings the conflict in a family and in a country to its burning point. Somewhat brought down by the overly dramatic twist ending. Lubna Azabal is great in this movie.
• How to Train Your Dragon (2010, dir. Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders) - ★★½ - The most formulatic animated movie I've seen. It's so by the numbers it's amazing in its utter non-specialness. Not even Deakins' cinematography saves it. It's constantly somewhat entertaining but I have no clue as to why this recieves such high praise.
• Enemy (2013, dir. Denis Villeneuve) - ★★★ - Adapting Saramago must be a nightmare. I have every belief that Villeneuve managed to adapt the material perfectly, it's the material's apitude as a movie I'm questioning.
• The Game (1997, dir. David Fincher) - ★★★ - David Fincher's sophomore attepmt at making his own style. The bits and pieces are there but the lack of a cohesive whole makes it not that interesting. It was when in the post-Zodiac era that Fincher perfected his craft and The Game only stands as a stylistic attempt that's entertaining.
• Nymphomaniac: Vol. I - Director's Cut (2013, dir. Lars von Trier) - ★★★★ - I found the dialogue between Skarsgård and Gainsbourg really interesting. It really moves the reflection to all kinds of places bringing up various social, cultural and religious motifs into the fold. The sex was interesting, not as fun as something like Shortbus, but on the whole it felt very not-porn.
• Somewhere (2010, dir. Sofia Coppola) - ★★ - The formula from Lost in Translation makes a return and it's extremely uninteresting this time around. Competently put together but without a clear purpose.
• Under the Skin (2013, dir. Jonathan Glazer) - ★★★½ - Sexuality and its the fear we treat it with on display in a quasi sci-fi horror flick. Not really that scary but extremely effective. The eerie score really delivers and sticks with you.
• Jacob's Ladder (1990, dir. Adrian Lyne) - ★★★ - It hasn't aged well but some of the imagery is still really potent. I always felt at a loss discussing Silent Hill (one of my favorite game series) while not having seen Jacob's Ladder but now that I have I can safely say that Silent Hill does it better. There really needs to be more fiction like this out there.
• Nymphomaniac: Vol. II - Director's Cut (2013, dir. Lars von Trier) - ★★★★ - Billy Elliot steals the show as the sadist. He's really interesting to watch and that whole chapter was really bizarre, especially the religious themes. It wraps up the story nicely. Very theatrical and checkhovian. I liked how they brought up James Bond.
• Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011, dir. Liz Garbus) - ★★★ - Fun documentary about chess and world politics. Chess is fun but the focus is all over the place. He was an interesting person, too bad he crackled. I had fun knowing that he played chess against the player and not the game. I should start playing again but first I need a new board.
• Selma (2014, dir. Ava DuVernay) - ★★★½ - Some fucked up shit went down in the South. It's a captivating tale of people at their worst and at their best. Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory lives on and it shines through everything. As a movie it's decently crafted with good actors doing their respective parts, nothing as truely inspiring as 12 Years a Slave.

Necrovex said:

Necrovex - 42/50 books | 37/50 movies

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KillerBEA said:

KillerBEA - 2/50 books | 9/50 movies

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Freeza Under The Shower said:

Freeza Under the Shower - 5/50 books | 50/50 movies | 3 shows

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Apt101 said:

Apt101 - 12/50 books | 40/50 movies

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• Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness (1899)
• Lois McMaster Bujold - Barrayar (1991)
• Maureen Ash - The Alehouse Murders (2007)
• Simon Singh - The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography (1999)
• Ståle Dyrvik - Året 1814 (2014)
• Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004)
• Terry Pratchett - The Shepherd's Crown (2015)
• Toni Morrison - Beloved (1987)

• J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
• J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)

• 2 Fast 2 Furious - John Singleton (2003)
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - Eric Radomski and Bruce W. Timm (1993)
• Byôsoku 5 senchimêtoru (5 Centimeters Per Second) - Makoto Shinkai (2007)
• Click - Frank Coraci (2006)
• Ex Machina - Alex Garland (2015)
• Ghost - Jerry Zucker (1990)
• Jurassic World - Colin Trevorrow (2015)
• Kurenai no buta (Porco Rosso) - Hayao Miyazaki (1992)
• Mad Max: Fury Road - George Miller (2015)
• Nuovo Cinema Paradiso - Giuseppe Tornatore (1988)
• Robot Overlords - Jon Wright (2014)
• Terminator Genisys - Alan Taylor (2015)
• The Evil Dead - Sam Raimi (1981)
• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift - Justin Lin (2006)
• The Shining - Stanley Kubrick (1980)
• Tomorrowland - Brad Bird (2015)

• The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, by Helen Vendler
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (The Arden Shakespeare: Second Series, Ninth Edition), by William Shakespeare; edited by Kenneth Muir
• The Ferguson Report: Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, by y United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (Author), Theodore M. Shaw (Introduction)
• On Immunity: An Inoculation, by Eula Biss
• Shakespeare's Poems: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the Shorter Poems (The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series), by William Shakespeare; edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen
• Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, by Jill Leovy
• Celibacy in Crisis: A Secret World Revisited, by A.W. Richard Sipes
• The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill, Ronni Solbert (Illustrator)
• We the Animals, by Justin Torres
• Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder
• Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
• The Naive and Sentimental Novelist, by Orhan Pamuk
• Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
• Jack, by A.M. Homes
• Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin
• Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina
• The Rise of China vs. The Logic of Strategy, by Edward N. Luttwak
• China Goes Global: The Partial Power, by David Shambaugh
• Double Down: Game Change 2012, by John Heileimann and Mark Halperin
• Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture - and What We Can Do About It, by Kate Harding

• Meru
• The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
• Pawn Sacrifice
• Game Change

• Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
• I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
• Snuff by Terry Pratchett
• Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
• Five-Minute Whodunits by Stan Smith
• How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

• Heather McDonald: I Don't Mean to Brag
• Ralphie May: Imperfectly Yours
• Eugene Mirman: Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store
• Style Wars
• Craig Shoemaker: Daditude
• The Lego Movie
• Moonrise Kingdom

William said:

First update in months, after a long break without reading anything and feeling crap about it I am jumping back in for the autumn and winter months! Hope I am doing this update correctly, apologies if not.

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donny2112 said:

donny2112 - 46/50 books | 55/50 movies​

Books

1. Boundary Crossed (302 pages) (2015) - ★★★★★ (September 6, 2015)
2. A Dark Lure (408 pages) (2015) - ★★★★★ (September 8, 2015)
3. Dead Spots (287 pages) (2012) - ★★★★★ (September 9, 2015)
4. Crow Hollow (335 pages) (2015) - ★★★★☆ (September 11, 2015)
5. New Frontier: The Returned, Part II (161 pages) (2015) - ★★★★★ (September 12, 2015)
6. New Frontier: The Returned, Part III (171 pages) (2015) - ★★★★★ (September 13, 2015)
7. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (295 pages) (1870) - ★★★★☆ (September 22, 2015)

Movies

1. Shanghai Noon (2000) - ★★★★☆ (September 2, 2015)
2. Parks and Recreation, Season 6 (2014) - ★★★★★ (September 3, 2015)
3. Zatoichi (2003) - ★★★☆☆ (September 9, 2015)
4. Legend of the Drunken Master (2000) - ★★★☆☆ (September 16, 2015)
5. The Scorch Trials (2015) - ★★★☆☆ (September 17, 2015)
6. Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) - ★★★★☆ (September 25, 2015)

Detailed writeups on Books 41-xx and Movies 51-xx

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GK86 said:

September update:

GK86 - 0/50 Books | 129/50 Movies

1- She's Out of My League 3.5/5
2- Dear White People 3.5/5
3- Hotel Transylvania 4/5
4- Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark 5/5
5- Seeking a Friend For the End of the World 4/5
6- 2001: A Space Odyssey 2/5
7- This is Where I Leave You 5/5
8- City of Men 3.5/5
9- Knuckleball 5/5
10- Rambo: First Blood 5/5
11- Commando 5/5
12- Flight 93 3/5
13- The Big Green 4/5
14- The Last Days 3/5
15- Time Lapse 4/5
16- Flipped 3.5/5
17- Short Term 12 3.5/5
18- The Hole 3/5
19- We Are the Millers 5/5
20- Despicable Me 2 3.5/5
21- Coherence 4/5
22- Blue Ruin 3/5
23- McFarland, USA 5/5
24- Shooter 3.5/5
25- Thunder Soul 5/5
26- Maximum Overdrive 5/5
27- Selma 5/5
28- The Inbetweeners 4/5
29- It's Kind of a Funny Story 4/5
30- The Switch 3/5
31- United 93 4/5
32- Silver Linings Playbook 4/5
33- The Masters of the Universe 4/5

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• Vicious - Victoria Schwab ★★★☆☆

• Jackie Brown (1997) ★★★☆☆
• Spy (2015) ★★☆☆☆
• Southpaw (2015) ★★★☆☆
• Dark Places (2015) ★★☆☆☆
• Life in a Day (2011) ★★★☆☆
• Magnolia (1999) ★★★★★
• Ex Machina (2015) ★★★★☆

• The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
• The Fishermen - Chigozie Obioma
• How to be Both - Ali Smith
• If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
• Conversations - César Aira

allegate said:

How Did This Get Made fan, eh?

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GK86 said:

Thank you for the updates, Ashes!

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Ashes said:

#Champions league

Code:

Glaurungr	58	111
TestMonkey	58	54
allegate	54	58
kinoki		50	78

And that's it folks. Congrats to all those folks who have passed fifty in this last month. Noone new surpassed both. So let's get to it!!

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kinoki said:

I think this table is a bit off, though...

... but thank you for all the statistics.

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Ashes said:

#Champions league

Code:

Name		B	F		
Glaurungr	71	138
TestMonkey	69	62
allegate	62	71
kinoki		57	111

And that's it folks. Congrats to all those folks who have passed fifty in this last month. Noone new surpassed both. So let's get to it!!

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donny2112 said:

Thanks, Ashes! I think probably a couple more will make it this month. (^_^)

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Pau said:

Now I can't even remember to do my own update at the end of the month. Oh well. Almost done with books. Need to get on watching those movies. Been watching tv shows instead.

Pau - 48/50 Books | 20/50 Movies​

​

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A Human Becoming said:

How many movies should I be at by this point to reach the goal? 38?

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Ashes said:

It's currently week 41.

So ideally 41 movies.

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