As a blogger, I’m contractually obliged to produce and publish annual lists of things wot I like. It’s one of those tedious tasks in life you try to put off until the last moment and always bitterly resent, like getting your car serviced, completing a tax return or flossing. If I don’t do it, though, bad things might happen. I could lose my weblog licence, get a nasty email from Technorati or even end up with a terrible gum disease.

So what follows are my favourite films of 2009 at this particular moment in time. These are movies that were released in the UK between 1st January and 31st December 2009 that I watched during this period, and it doesn’t include any films that were released during this period that I watched last night with Clare. Which is a shame, really, because otherwise Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell might have been a contender.

Just like last year, each entry comes complete with a lovingly hand-crafted piece of bad haiku.

Don’t say I never treat you.

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10. Public Enemies

Mann’s gangster epic

Is a fedora-clad ‘Heat’

(The film, not the mag)

9. Avatar

J.C. rose again

With pulp sci-fi eye-popper

Tangled up in blue

8. The Wrestler

Rourke drifts to glory

With tale of aging fighter

Who’s your (Big) Daddy?

7. In The Loop

Big-screen Thick of It:

In this sharp, sweary satire

‘Fog of war’ turns blue

6. Gran Torino

It’s flawed, but who cares?

Clint’s in front of the camera

And that makes our day

5. Inglourious Basterds

Don’t burn cinemas

Unless there’s Nazis inside

In which case, it’s OK

4. Fantastic Mr Fox

Roald Dahl kid classic

Goes stop-motion to Wes World

(It’s no cluster-cuss!)

3. Star Trek

Lapsed Trekkers rejoice

As Abrams’ restores their faith

Final frontier fun!

2. Where The Wild Things Are

Spike’s grown-up kids’ film

That’s perfect in every way

A beautiful freak

1. Let The Right One In

Swedish vampire tale

Is no flat-pack Drakea

More Bergman with bite

J.J. Abrams’ rather excellent Star Trek film will be available on your home entertainment format of choice this coming Monday.  That seems like a reasonably good excuse to dig out the following slice of Trek-themed nonsense from my archives:

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It’s a short parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation (or should that now be Star Trek: The Previous Generation?) that was illustrated by my pal Rob Walsh, a proper artist (he has exhibitions and stuff) who was gracious enough to illustrate several comic strips for me in the past.  Rob’s a tremendously talented chap and I think he did a bloody marvellous job with this.  If you want to see some of his proper art (ie the kind of stuff that hangs in galleries and doesn’t feature speech balloons or cheap puns), then he has a website you can find here.

In case you’re interested, the strip originally appeared as a back-up feature in an issue of Stonebroke, my long-in-hiatus small-press comic about public transport in a post-apocalyptic world (think ‘Mad Max’ meets ‘On The Buses’).   This is my first attempt at a webcomic, so to make it browser-friendly I re-lettered it using Plasq’s Comic Life then used the WordPress plugins NextGEN FlashViewer and NextGEN Gallery so you can navigate and enlarge the pages to your heart’s content.

I might be doing more of this in the future.  Consider yourself warned.

The New Yorker’s legendarily outspoken film critic Pauline Kael once said of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan “Now that’s more like it.” At least, I think that’s what she said. Whatever the case, it’s a phrase that went through my mind last night as the credits went up at the end of JJ Abrams’ wonderful reboot, reimagining and reinvigoration of Star Trek.

Let me make my position clear: I’m what you might call a lapsed Trekkie. As a kid, as a teenager and even into my twenties I was addicted to all things Star Trek. I watched every episode of the original series countless times, went to see each movie on the opening weekend and even learned to embrace The Next Generation. In my defence, however, I never went so far as to attend conventions, dress up in costumes or sport a pair of fake pointy ears. As Mason said to Dixon: “You’ve got to draw the line somewhere”.

At some point, though, something went wrong. I began to despise Star Trek. This didn’t happen overnight; there was no Phantom Menace-style moment of clarity. Over time, however, I became increasingly disenchanted with the franchise. The TV shows became increasingly anodyne and even the old Trek movie ‘even-numbered good; odd-numbered bad’ maxim was replaced with a new, entropic holding pattern of ‘even numbered dull; odd-numbered duller’.

Thank God, then, for JJ Abrams. He’s not only created a Star Trek film that’s exciting, kinetic and full of great characterisation, but he’s done something that hasn’t been done before. He’s made a cracking piece of mainstream entertainment that just happens to be a Star Trek movie.

Now that’s more like it.

My brother and I will be off to see JJ Abrams’ Star Trek at the Birmingham Imax this evening and – I must admit – I’m rather looking forward to it. As a lapsed Trekker, I’ve almost forgotton how that feels. To actually look forward to a Star Trek fim… why, that’s a sensation I haven’t experienced since about 1994. That was Star Trek: Generations – the one where Captain Shat met Captain Baldy – and it turned out to be not very good. I’d have to go further back to find one I look forward to and actually enjoyed.

When tonight’s tickets came through the post an accompanying leaflet promised an evening of ‘Star Trek themed fun’:

• Come in costume and receive a FREE sci-fi goodie bag
• Have your photo taken with your favourite Star trek characters
• Competitions to win amazing Star Trek prizes

Oh dear.

While it’s nice of the Imax to make an effort and all, this does not bode well. I’ve been to places where grown-up people dress up in genre drag and its never a pretty sight. I don’t relish the opportunity of spending this eveing surrounded by chartered accountants dressed as Klingons.

I guess I’ll be coming home empty handed.

So declareth Maurice LaMarche – the voice talent behind such animated greats as ‘The Brain’ from Pinky and the Brain and the self-proclaimed “third most prominent imitator of William Shatner” – and who are we to argue? The mighty Shat turns 78 today, and LaMarche urges us all to celebrate this great man’s birthday by adopting some of his highly idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms.

He even offers some handy tips on how to do it right:

You’ll never say the word ‘sabotage’ in the same way again.

Happy birthday, Mr Shatner.

Yummy.

A quick break from this bus route blather:

I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to tampering with this particular fictional design classic, but at least it looks a damn sight better – and remains truer to the original concept – than some of the franchise’s other misguided efforts…