Farewell, 2012!

It’s December 31, which means that 2012 has come to a close. Despite a few different choices for the apocalypse, the world did not end — or if it did, nobody noticed. Every indication is that the world will continue to exist next year as well, so before we head into 2013, it’s time for a look back on 2012, as viewed through Morgan on Media.

My blog celebrated its first anniversary back in September, and it’s certainly grown since both this time last year and even since its anniversary. At this time last year, I had reviewed 68 films — including theatrical releases, TV movies, direct-to-video releases, and short films. This year, I nearly tripled that number, reviewing 202 films for a total of 270 since the blog’s inception. 15 of those were Favorite Films reviews — the rest (barring an occasional exception, such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians) were films I had not seen before. The year began with Cool Hand Luke and ended with Heathers, so while there were definite ups and downs in the middle, it started and ended on strong notes. Overall, I made 328 new posts, roughly six a week — though in truth it was more that after the mid-point of the year I started writing seven days a week, while before it was a little more haphazard. As of this writing, the blog has had exactly 46,000 page views in 2012 (it’ll go up a bit since the year isn’t quite over yet.) Over 10,000 of those were in December alone — though I do expect a bit of a drop-off in January, it’s still nice to compare that to last year, when all four active months combined only added up to 2800 views. But enough of the general stats. Onward for the best and worst of 2012.

Post-Mortem: Burn Notice, Season 6

The nature of Burn Notice‘s split season can have a bit of a funny effect on the memory. When I’m waiting six months for the new season to start, it feels like it’s taking a long time to arrive. And yet, as I write this post-mortem on the sixth season, it doesn’t feel like it’s been an entire year since I wrote one on the fifth.

This season brought some permanent changes, and as usual a lot of temporary flux to Michael Westen and his cohorts. And it maintained the usual high level of energy. As always, spoilers lie ahead.

Weekly Weblinks: Flight From Friday

Hello, everybody. It’s Saturday morning, and that means… I’m a day late with the Weekly Weblinks. Sorry. Those of you who follow me on Twitter knew of the delay in advance, of course, but for those who don’t (or missed it, or just want an explanation), there are a few simple reasons that came together to hold it back by a day. First, because I lost track of how fast October was going by, I wound up with a bit more Halloween Haunters content than I had days for in October. This meant that it wound up going on through November 2nd, which left Friday being a little bit busy between a large post and the round-up. Adding a third post for the Weekly Weblinks would have seemed a bit of a disservice to it. Plus, the fact that my posts for November 1 and 2 were fairly lengthy meant I had less time to spend reading other peoples’ blogs, and had to have the extra day to catch up.

The extra day would have been necessary anyway though thanks to a glitch in my email server. I follow most of the blogs I read by having the post notifications emailed to me — I can and do keep track on Twitter and Facebook, of course, but email is most helpful to me in keeping them organized. And for some nutty reason, the virus scanner on my mail server decided to hold on to absolutely everything and not let me see it for a few days. I’m still not entirely sure it’s released everything at this point. The end result is that I had quite a rush job on catching up on everything once I finally had it available. But things are finally straightened out, and I’ve selected some choice reviews from other bloggers — four of them for new films. There’s also some interesting news on the upcoming film front. Click through to find out what’s going on.

Post-Mortem: Burn Notice, Season 5

As I wrote when I started the “TV Post-Mortem” posts, Burn Notice is one of my favorite current TV shows. I actually came into it a little late, sometime around the middle of the second season, but one of the nice things about Burn Notice is that it’s the kind of show which is accessible and easy to pick up. Michael Westen is a spy for the CIA who has been blacklisted for crimes he didn’t commit (the “burn notice” of the title is the notice given to drop all contact with him.) Cut off from all resources, his financial assets frozen, he is stuck in his home town of Miami. He reconnects with his mother (Sharon Gless), his weapons-crazy ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), and his friend Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell). Later (season 4) the team is joined by Jesse Porter (Coby Bell), a spy that Michael inadvertently burns himself. Michael’s goal in the series is to find out who burned him, get his revenge, and hopefully get back into the CIA’s good graces. In the meantime, he takes on odd jobs for money, helping out clients who have been victimized but who have no other means of helping themselves. Often this involves explosives, but it always involves using his spy training, which is narrated by Westen as he goes along.

The show typically runs for a few months in the summer, then takes a break and runs for a few more months in November and December. The second half of the fifth season just concluded tonight, and as always, it’s set things up for the next season in an explosive manner, both figuratively and literally. So, spoilers ahead, it’s time to look back.