2015 Hugo Thoughts, Part 2: Video!
Jan. 6th, 2016 01:21 pmWhoo boy this is a good year for things. I'm not even going to TRY to list everything I saw that qualified, I'll just stick to things I think might make it onto my ballot and things that DEFINITELY won't.
Best Dramatic Long Form:
Let's start here with the 400kg gorilla that is going to be the eventual winner: Mad Max: Fury Road. It's going to make the ballot and it's going to win. It deserves it. There are many other choices that, in a year without Fury Road, would be potential winners, but none of them deserve to beat Fury Road.
(I'm voting for Fury Road, for the record. Because it is the best thing.)
Other great choices:
Inside Out
It Follows
Rick And Morty Season 2
Jessica Jones
Certainly adequate choices:
Age Of Ultron
Crimson Peak
Daredevil
Ex Machina
iZombie
Ant-Man
I am noping the fuck out and you should too because my personally tastes are objectively correct, that's why:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - because, seriously, being way better than the prequels doesn't make up for still being worse than the remastered Return Of The Jedi with added musical numbers and more Ewoks. It's the first JJ Abrams movie to ever not be complete shit, but "not complete shit" does not a Hugo nominee make. Nope.
Anything involving Doctor Who - I haven't seen a good episode of this in years, and Moffat's sexism is really repugnant. Nope.
Anything involving Game Of Thrones - I've complained about the two writing groups on this show, the ones who are good and the ones who just add more gratuitous rape and torture scenes because "it's HBO". Amusingly, the showrunners have ALSO complained about this, but unlike me they should have been able to do something about it and they haven't. And I can't think of a single episode where I didn't completely hate a bunch of the scenes, for this reason. Nope.
Chappie - gee, a director famous for racist overtones and whitewashed casting makes *another* movie in South Africa that has no black actors, and also casts literal white supremacists - open, enthusiastic racists - in key roles. Nope.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - the TV show was exactly like the book. I threw the book across the room in disgust and never finished it. Nope.
Ones I haven't seen but have heard great things about:
The Martian - I don't hate Matt Damon the way I hate Tom Cruise, but he's still the reason I haven't seen it yet. I'm not going to nominate it, but I'll watch it if it hits the ballot.
The Man In The High Castle - I'm not finished this yet. Two episodes in, if it keeps going like it is now it's going in "certainly adequate" at least and likely "other great". And then it will lose to Fury Road.
Welcome To Night Vale - This is just not my thing. I get that it's good and I like it in tiny doses but I can't get into it.
Ones that started in 2015 but they're not over yet so they're eligible in 2016 and not now:
The Expanse Season 1
Supergirl Season 1
Best Dramatic Short Form:
Rick And Morty deserves a Hugo but the season as a whole is going to lose to Fury Road, so I want to pick a specific episode to nominate for Short Form. The problem is they're *all good*. Probably the best standalone episode for a new viewer is "Total Rickall", in which the family are trapped in their house with alien parasites that insert themselves in your memory and reproduce by flashback. So I'll nominate that one.
Community: RV Repair And Palmistry is a very clever low-key time-travel story, in the same mold as earlier Hugo nominee Remedial Chaos Theory was to alternate worlds. Free to watch on Yahoo TV for as long as Yahoo TV lasts, which I believe is something like "until next week".
Supergirl: Red Faced is a surprisingly deep examination of what it means and how people react when a woman gets angry. And Callista Flockhart's Cat Grant is awesome. As I understand the rules, if this make the ballot, it makes Season 1 as a whole ineligible next year - but I kinda suspect Season 1 as a whole won't be as good as this episode was, since this is definitely the best so far.
Ones I would nominate but am not for Reasons:
"John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular," the Audiobook, Read by Me, John Scalzi - John Scalzi has requested no award nominations in 2015 and has said that he is going to decline any nominations, because he's sitting on a gargantuan 10 year book contract with multiple movie and TV things and needs no award bump.
..... I don't actually have a lot of Short Form favourites, and that seems a little odd. What am I missing, Short Form Fans? Part of my problem is that I see binge-watch series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones as single works and have trouble picking out individual episodes.
And have I missed any really great Long Form options, either?
Best Dramatic Long Form:
Let's start here with the 400kg gorilla that is going to be the eventual winner: Mad Max: Fury Road. It's going to make the ballot and it's going to win. It deserves it. There are many other choices that, in a year without Fury Road, would be potential winners, but none of them deserve to beat Fury Road.
(I'm voting for Fury Road, for the record. Because it is the best thing.)
Other great choices:
Inside Out
It Follows
Rick And Morty Season 2
Jessica Jones
Certainly adequate choices:
Age Of Ultron
Crimson Peak
Daredevil
Ex Machina
iZombie
Ant-Man
I am noping the fuck out and you should too because my personally tastes are objectively correct, that's why:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - because, seriously, being way better than the prequels doesn't make up for still being worse than the remastered Return Of The Jedi with added musical numbers and more Ewoks. It's the first JJ Abrams movie to ever not be complete shit, but "not complete shit" does not a Hugo nominee make. Nope.
Anything involving Doctor Who - I haven't seen a good episode of this in years, and Moffat's sexism is really repugnant. Nope.
Anything involving Game Of Thrones - I've complained about the two writing groups on this show, the ones who are good and the ones who just add more gratuitous rape and torture scenes because "it's HBO". Amusingly, the showrunners have ALSO complained about this, but unlike me they should have been able to do something about it and they haven't. And I can't think of a single episode where I didn't completely hate a bunch of the scenes, for this reason. Nope.
Chappie - gee, a director famous for racist overtones and whitewashed casting makes *another* movie in South Africa that has no black actors, and also casts literal white supremacists - open, enthusiastic racists - in key roles. Nope.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - the TV show was exactly like the book. I threw the book across the room in disgust and never finished it. Nope.
Ones I haven't seen but have heard great things about:
The Martian - I don't hate Matt Damon the way I hate Tom Cruise, but he's still the reason I haven't seen it yet. I'm not going to nominate it, but I'll watch it if it hits the ballot.
The Man In The High Castle - I'm not finished this yet. Two episodes in, if it keeps going like it is now it's going in "certainly adequate" at least and likely "other great". And then it will lose to Fury Road.
Welcome To Night Vale - This is just not my thing. I get that it's good and I like it in tiny doses but I can't get into it.
Ones that started in 2015 but they're not over yet so they're eligible in 2016 and not now:
The Expanse Season 1
Supergirl Season 1
Best Dramatic Short Form:
Rick And Morty deserves a Hugo but the season as a whole is going to lose to Fury Road, so I want to pick a specific episode to nominate for Short Form. The problem is they're *all good*. Probably the best standalone episode for a new viewer is "Total Rickall", in which the family are trapped in their house with alien parasites that insert themselves in your memory and reproduce by flashback. So I'll nominate that one.
Community: RV Repair And Palmistry is a very clever low-key time-travel story, in the same mold as earlier Hugo nominee Remedial Chaos Theory was to alternate worlds. Free to watch on Yahoo TV for as long as Yahoo TV lasts, which I believe is something like "until next week".
Supergirl: Red Faced is a surprisingly deep examination of what it means and how people react when a woman gets angry. And Callista Flockhart's Cat Grant is awesome. As I understand the rules, if this make the ballot, it makes Season 1 as a whole ineligible next year - but I kinda suspect Season 1 as a whole won't be as good as this episode was, since this is definitely the best so far.
Ones I would nominate but am not for Reasons:
"John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular," the Audiobook, Read by Me, John Scalzi - John Scalzi has requested no award nominations in 2015 and has said that he is going to decline any nominations, because he's sitting on a gargantuan 10 year book contract with multiple movie and TV things and needs no award bump.
..... I don't actually have a lot of Short Form favourites, and that seems a little odd. What am I missing, Short Form Fans? Part of my problem is that I see binge-watch series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones as single works and have trouble picking out individual episodes.
And have I missed any really great Long Form options, either?