2015 Hugo Thoughts, Part 2: Video!

[theweaselking]

Whoo 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?

Comments

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

I personally prefer Ant-Man over Age of Ultron myself.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I forgot Ant-Man!

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Ant-Man started out with two strikes against it in my book: it was called Ant-Man, and it starred Paul Rudd. My wife and I were pleasantly surprised how entertained we were, so it squeaked out 3 stars.

[kjn]

Kung Fury, for the ridiculous over-the-top-ness with extra ridiculous over-the-top?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That's one that I keep looking at and then filing under "Nah, not in the mood for Danger 5 right now."

I'll definitely have to take a look.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

You have missed something huge: Agent Carter aired entirely in 2015. For a single episode, I nominate "Snafu"; that's the one with the vest. You know, the Stark-invented vest.

I am behind, but I suspect there's going to be something worth nominating in Orphan Black.

Why do you not love Flash? (I know you don't love Z Nation. You are objectively wrong, and I accept that, but Flash is lovely. So is The Librarians.) ETA: Okay, I accept that some people might not see them as Hugo-worthy. But I really don't think they're less Hugo-worthy than e.g. Ant-Man (she said, spilling her personal biases all over her comment).

Into the Badlands does not strike me as having done a Hugo-worthy episode yet, but I think it might be worth keeping an eye on.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I did forget Agent Carter! I haven't seen any 2015 Orphan Black and hadn't realised I missed a season.

Both The Flash and The Librarians are light, fluffy, silly, and joyously stupid. They're like an enthusiastic puppy. They're also, like an enthusiastic puppy that does not belong to you, eminently forgettable.

Into The Badlands, right, as one for next year.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I understand where you're coming from on Flash and Librarians, but since I think they manage moments of joy rather than just joyful stupidity, I'll suggest the following for Flash in short form:

One of
* "Fast Enough" (the season 1 finale)
* "Tricksters" (the original "seriously, you expect me to buy Luke Skywalker as the Jok-- oh Jesus he's creepy" episode)
* "Running to Stand Still" (season 2 Christmas episode with Mark Hammill as the Joker Trickster). I get that it's mawkish and Christmassy and twee, but they really are hammering, I think, on "guy would be a total Blue Lantern", and I think in general and here specifically it manages that.
* "Flash of Two Worlds" (second episode of season 1, with the cover callback)

Binged Librarians, harder to pick an individual ep. Will think about it.

[andrewducker]

The penultimate episode of Dr Who is a work of genius. But I completely understand anyone washing their hands of the whole thing.

I'd consider Age of Ultron less than adequate.

The Martian is well worth watching. Better than I expected.

Rick and Morty should, indeed, win All The Things.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Was that the "punching through a diamond wall with my bare hands over the course of 200 billion years because for some completely unspecified reason the room with the diamond wall is the only room that doesn't reset, and also it's completely pointless because I'm a TIME TRAVELLER and the me who eventually punches his way out is only a few minutes older than the me who got caught in the trap and then time-travelled back to immediately after I entered the trap with no time elapsed, so I don't remember being trapped and nothing happened while I was trapped, DUH" one?

Because, uh, I didn't really like that one.
First: That room not resetting is never explained, and also doesn't make sense, and also the Doctor wouldn't know that's happening until he'd taken action based on that happening for *millenia*.
Second: No, in fact, a human-ish hand punching a perfect diamond wall will not, in fact "eventually" wear down the wall. because you need to be able to affect it even minutely before you can affect it cumulatively.
Third: "I'm going to punch it until I die, respawn, punch it until I die, respawn, punch it until I die, respawn, etc" is a BAD VIDEOGAME solution. It's the I-am-bad-at-Bioshock solution. It's not the Doctor's solution.

That was just bad writing, all over.

Also terrible Doctor Who episodes have been driving good media out of the category for so long that I often refer to it as the Best Doctor Who Episode Written By Stephen Moffat category, when in fact only Blink ever deserved a NOMINATION, let alone a win. Doctor Who is forever banned from my Hugos.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

when in fact only Blink ever deserved a NOMINATION

I really feel "Vincent and the Doctor" did too, and "The Doctor Dances".

What bugs me about the penultimate episode--which is incidentally the last one I am expecting to see with John Hurt, and possibly the last one I am expecting to see for quite a while--wasn't so much the punching the diamond; I will accept that.

What bugs me was that I felt like it was filler. It was grand noble filler about the fiercest and most dangerous man running through time that if you look at it was just about him doing something once and being photocopied, and if they really felt it was that important that he would not, could not change who he was in any way that mattered, I wish they could have showed it in five minutes scattered throughout the episode and gotten on with a plot.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

II thought it was clever, and I thought it was creepy, but I am finding that I have drifted away from Doctor Who and a lot of the reason for that is really adequately summarized over here.

[andrewducker]

Yup, I'd agree with all of that.