Movies

Best Movies of the Year

12. 300
Easily the best comic film adaption to date, we can only hope Watchmen turns out as well.

11. Knocked Up

10. Live Free or Die Hard
Truly, an updated take on the Die Hard franchise, this film showed us that John McClane still has some life left in him. It'd be higher on the list if it didn't eventually derail into bombastic action sequences.

09. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

08. Grindhouse

Sorry for the late netcast, but this was a lot of editing. We visited San Diego for Comic Con back in July. We had a blast. This netcast is packed with tons of pop culture but contains the same level of mediocrity you'd expect from us here at Mediocre Minds. 

Download Netcast 008

Show Notes and Links

• We start off by talking about several film projects:
  • The Watchmen film may be an "impossible project".
  • Whiteout is based on a graphic novel.
  • We once again mentioned Superbad in our netcast. We really are Michael Cera's bitches.
  • Everyone who saw King of Kong loved it.
• Next we talked about Comic Con exclusive figures.
  • Sumir and I each bought a Dan Hibiki figure from Wizard.
  • Despite the fact neither Sumir nor I bought any of their figures, Hasbro cleaned up at the con with their Transformers, GI Joe, and He-Man figures.
  • I plan on using my Golden Bender Bank from FunKo, thus violating the prime directive of collectibles.
  • I have since sold my Mating Season Zoidberg from Toynami as well as my JLU Action Figures (Shayera, John Stewart, and the Ray) from Mattel. I also bought the Naruto figures.
  • Both Leonidas from NECA and Race Queen Rei from Kotobukiya were not in demand and easy to purchase.
• We also discussed the Heroes panel.

• Then there was discussion about various games:
  • I showed how hyped I am for Eye of Judgment despite the fact that I need a PS3 to play it!
  • Sumir talked about the Star Wars Miniatures game by Wizards of the Coast.
  • We both discussed the 24 CCG, which while funny flavor-wise wasn't very good mechanically.
• Finally we rambled on a bit about what Comic Con has become and what it means to each of us.

 

Winners are highlighted in blue; those who were the worst in their categories can be found in orange.

Gaming

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion	Xbox 360 Game of the Year Dead Rising combines Capcom's expertise in zombie games with a light-hearted spoof of the zombie genre. The story takes itself seriously but with a pretty open world and a ton of character customizations and over-the-top abilities, Dead Rising is one of the most entertaining games we have played in a long time.
Dead Rising
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Gears of War

Wii Sports	Wii Game of the Year Yes, it's not Zelda. I know Twilight Princess is easily the best Zelda game but Wii Sports is much more important. It's the game that my parents can play. It's the game that defines the Wii and Nintendo strategy of going after non-gamers. Judging from brisk holiday sales, this new strategy appears to be working. Let's not forget it's probably one of the only games my parents can beat me at as well!
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Rayman Raving Rabbits
ExciteTruck

Xenosaga Episode III	Playstation 2 Game of the Year Final Fantasy XII truly revolutionizes RPG combat systems. The Gambit system enables a much more streamlined, abstract interface that drastically cuts the tedium out of the traditional active time battles the series has had in the past. FFXII also has an interesting License skill system and a great (Star Wars inspired) plot, easily cementing its 2006 award.
Okami
Bully
Final Fantasy XII
Guitar Hero II

LotR: Battle for Middle Earth II	PC Game of the Year There were good games from nearly every genre available for the PC this year, but greatness was very rare. Company of Heroes is a great game. With a meticulous level of detail for a WW2 RTS game (you could imagine playing this on a hex board), a lot of good innovation (a refined cover system, interesting units and objectives, and control points, to name a few), combined with stellar graphics and physics, Company of Heroes excelled while other games simply overachieved.
Auto Assault
Dreamfall
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Civilization IV: Warlords
DEFCON
Neverwinter Nights 2
Company of Heroes
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Animal Crossing: Wild World	Nintendo DS Game of the Year Like Wii Sports, Brain Age is the game that convinced many older people to buy a DS. The US version had Sudoku, which only increased its popularity. Just like with the Wii, Nintendo has been on a roll targeting non-gamers with its systems.
Brain Age
Elite Beat Agents
New super Mario Bros.
Final Fantasy III
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

D&D Online: Stormreach	Multiplayer Game of the Year Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is the latest and best of the Marvel-licensed action games by Raven Software. Featuring about 20 Marvel superheroes, everyone from the well-known (Captain America) to the relatively obscure (Luke Cage), an interesting plot that takes you from Atlantis to empires in space, and enough characters to make even the most hardcore Marvel fan geek out (Enchantress, Dr. Doom, Silver Surfer, Black Bolt, and many others). Not only is the gameplay solid, the character abilities are interesting and well-planned, making the game a lot of fun to play with your friends. With a solid online play component, this is our Multiplayer Game of the Year.
Metroid Prime: Hunters
Tetris DS
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance
Lego Star Wars II
DEFCON

The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion	Overall Game of the Year It's hard to convey just how FUN Dead Rising is for the Mediocre Minds staff. We love zombies; we love cheesy movies; we love humor that wouldn't be entirely out of place in Army of Darkness. This game has all of those in spades. Any game where you have the option of killing zombies with chainsaws, pistols, or giant teddy bears is a Game of the Year for me. And if you don't agree, there is something seriously wrong with you.
Company of Heroes
Final Fantasy XII
Brain Age
Dead Rising

Movies

PotC: Dead Man's Chest	Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie of the Year While it wasn't as good as the first movie, PotC2 was still a brilliant film. It may have suffered from second-film-in-a-trilogy-itis, but it greatly expanded the PotC universe and filled it with interesting locales and great characters, while managing to bring back nearly every important character from the original movie. I cannot state how incredible it is for a movie to successfully present over a dozen engaging characters. Besides... pirates! AAAARRRHHH!!!
X-Men: The Last Stand
Superman Returns
V for Vendetta
The Fountain
The Children of Men

Hostel	Drama/Horror Movie of the Year Proving once again that an American director can take a Hong Kong movie and make it ten times better (see also Reservoir Dogs), the Departed kicked ass. With an awesome ensemble cast including Matt Daemon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicolson playing villain, the Departed had everything one could ask for in a gritty crime thriller. And who could forget the shocking conclusion with overblown symbolism? For all these reasons and more, it was the Drama movie this year.
Inside Man
Silent Hill
United 93
World Trade Center
The Departed
Saw III
Flags of Our Fathers
Rocky Balboa
Letters from Iwo Jima
The Pursuit of Happyness

Thank You for Smoking	Comedy Movie of the Year Borat came out of nowhere for most of America and especially for American film critics. While Da Ali G Show was known to a few people through its HBO rounds, no one predicted that the spinoff character would generate such a buzz. The story of a Kazakhstani reporter named Borat travelling through the US cleverly ties together set pieces with actual improv pieces to expose a hilarious (yet scary) segment of the population in this country. Sacha Baron Cohen's acting is amazing.
The Benchwarmers
Clerks II
Little Miss Sunshine
Talladega Nights
Nacho Libre
School for Scoundrels
Borat
For Your Consideration

Casino Royale	Action Movie of the Year Not too many people saw Crank, but it was the best pure action movie of the year. Starring Jason Statham (The Transporter, Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), Crank was a completely over-the-top thrill-ride. The premise is that Statham has been injected with an exotic drug (the Beijing Cocktail) and he will die as soon as his heartrate gets low enough. To keep it going while he can exact revenge, Statham's character goes through ludicrous extremes, providing a fantastic move experience.
Mission: Impossible III
Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Miami Vice
Snakes on a Plane
Crank

Slither	Unseen Movie of the Year Slither reminded me a lot of another dark comedy movie, Army of Darkness. Both have a fan favorite (Nathan Fillion in this case) in the lead. Both underperformed at the box office. Both are hilariously funny and worth watching. Slither was a great horror comedy that nobody saw despite great critical reviews. The film was willing to kill just about every character and it showed us why you should never use one liners in "real" life.
Brick

Fearless	Foreign Movie of the Year Jet Li's final historical martial arts film isn't his best, but it's still quite good. The action sequences are solid and the plot isn't as wafer thin as it could be. The twist at the end is easily the best part of the film.
The Curse of the Golden Flower

Dave Chappelle's Block Party	Documentary of the Year Yeah ok, it was a serious film for a serious problem. That doesn't make it a bad film. It's a must watch if you have any interest at all in the future. Al Gore clearly learned (unlike Kerry) that after you lose a presidential election you might as well go off and do something productive. It's a good thing he made an informative film instead of getting involved in a verbal faux pas.
An Inconvenient Truth

Over the Hedge	Animated Movie of the Year While Cars was not on the level of Pixar's previous film, the Incredibles, it was still an excellent film. The film made me not hate Owen Wilson, a feat no other film has come close to accomplishing. The surprise ending was only icing on the cake. I get the feeling Pixar will win the 2007 award for this category next year...
Cars
Ice Age: The Meltdown
Flushed Away
Happy Feet

PotC: Dead Man's Chest	Overall Movie of the Year Let's just count the things we like in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: pirates (duh), monkeys, Keira Knightley, ship battles, zombies/the undead, that crazy gypsy woman I thought was pretty hot despite her teeth, Captain Jack Sparrow, feathered pirate hats, the giant three-way sword duel on the spinning wheel o' death, dinosaurs... ah, I need a break. Can we just call this the best movie of the year already?
The Departed
Borat

Television

Heroes	Sci-Fi/Fantasy Television Show of the Year Sure it's pretty much The 4400 meets X-Men, but that doesn't mean Heroes isn't a great show. Totally the new Lost, Heroes takes the adult sci-fi drama genre that The X-files and Lost pioneered but ramps up the pace to keep viewers tuning in week after week. With a wide cast of characters, including a teen aged cheerleader, twin brothers, a hot single mom, an Internet comic geek and an Indian (!), there's something for everyone in this show.
The Lost Room
Battlestar Galactica

Blade: The Series	Action Television Show of the Year We should just call it The 24 Award from now on. Prison Break was an above-average show (the second season is quite good too) and Blade was surprisingly good but tragically short. 24, however, may have elevated itself into campiness - there were scenes where Jack Bauer could have been Solid Snake from the Playstation video game franchise. There were far too many plot holes for me to ignore, but the sheer awesomeness of the main character made up for all of that. We love you, Jack!
24
Prison Break

Psych	Comedy Television Show of the Year 2006 was Colbert's year. From the Greenscreen Challenge to boxing on the Wii, Colbert ruled the mind space of every high school teen, college student, and twenty-something in America. Add a hilarious appearance at a Presidential dinner and midterm elections that had the Republicans getting pw3nd and there was no shortage of material for him to lampoon this year. Need I even mention Mark Foley?
The Colbert Report

Vanished	Drama Television Show of the Year With the exception of House, Veronica Mars stands heads-and-shoulders above any other show in this category. As with most shows, a calendar year contains parts of two seasons for Veronica Mars - the end of season 2 was unexpected and great; season 3 made a successful transition of the characters from high school to college. The writing continues to be the best on television. As Binkley once put it, this show realizes that sarcasm is the teen angst of real-life teenagers. It is a show that is more in touch with teens and 20-somethings than anything else on TV. You can have your Gilmore Girls, as long as we can keep our Veronica Mars.
Justice
Standoff
Veronica Mars
House

Fantastic Four	Animated Television Show of the Year I refuse to give an award to an anime series so full of filler, so Prince of Tennis it is. Besides, Prince of Tennis is blazing a trail in being the first shonen sports anime to be broadcast on a national cable channel like Cartoon Network. One can only hope we see more in the future.
Legion of Super Heroes
Bleach (US)
Prince of Tennis (US)

Densha Otoko

Unseen Television Show of the Year Densha Otoko is a show almost no one has seen, but it is a huge hit in Japan. Centering on a socially-inept otaku (loosely: geek) who meets his dream girl and falls in love with her, the show is one of the most entertaining and well-acted shows we saw in 2006. Particularly hilarious are Densha's interactions with an online community who help him try to get the girl and the various obstacles that stand in his way.

Print and Animation

New Warriors cause collateral damage, spark Superhuman Registration Act	Pwn3d Comics Moment of the Year For those of you who have read it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the last story in the Crisis Holiday Special. It takes place in Elseworlds and features an old school (golden age?) Superman and Batman. The page that ends this story deserves to be made into an Xmas card and is worth the price of the comic alone. I won't ruin it here, needless to say everyone should track this down and read it.
Punisher executes Mircochip
Dr. Fate stops the Spectre's rampage by dying
Superboy Prime kills Superboy
Superman gives Batman SuperDickery for Xmas

Infinite Crisis	Mainstream Comics (DC/Marvel) Event of the Year While the story sometimes dragged and was somewhat gimmicky, 52 still delivered on DC's promise to fill in the missing year after Infinite Crisis. Sure, the comic stars a bunch of 2nd (or worse) string "heroes" but that doesn't make it any less interesting (RIP Booster Gold!). The syncing of weeks to real life (Xmas in the comic is Xmas here) was a nice gimmicky touch. Too bad the sheer financial burden of buying a weekly comic has kept me waiting for the trades, whenever they will come out.
Civil War
52

Viewtiful Joe	Licensed Anime of the Year Successfully combining the gritty war giant robot action sequences of the first series with the more light hearted high school comedy routines of the second series, The Second Raid showed us why Full Metal Panic rules. Not too dramatic yet not too frivolous, the anime series finally brought about some closure (or at least as much as one can expect) with regards to the relationship between Sagara and Chidori. Did I mention it also has incestuous lesbian twins?
Hare+Guu
Desert Punk
Nagima
Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid

Death Note	Licensed Manga of the Year Yeah this series is awesome, and so not like other shonen series. The body count and dark tone alone set it apart from other series. The dickery that both Light and L commit to justify their ends is both hilarious and horrifying to read. Quite original, the manga even has DETECTIVE WORK so of course it's getting an award from us.
Eyeshield 21
Yakitate!! Japan
Monster
Golgo 13

Death Note	Unlicensed Anime of the Year I was originally going to give this to Death Note, but the Yakitate anime has something no other series has. Yakitate Japan! has awesome, totally watchable filler episodes. Whether it was Gundam references or battling a real life food product trademark, Yaktiate always kept things interesting when stalling for time.
Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z
Nana
Initial D 4th Stage
Yakitate!! Japan
Melancohly of Haruhi Suzumiya

People and Events

Nintendo Wii	Invention of the Year KillerNIC is a special network interface card targetted at gamers. It is advertized as the world's first NPU (Network Processing Unit), and in fact it DOES run a version of Linux on-board. The theory here is that you can use the KillerNIC does for network communications what a graphics card does for video or 3D processing. We are frankly a little skeptical because, well, we're CS majors and the arguments don't really hold up quite that well. The ridiculous price tag just exacerbates the situation. So why are we calling it the Invention of the Year? Look at the card, man! It's got a "K" on it! For "Killer"! How can we NOT give it an award for being so over-the-top?
KillerNIC

K-Fed's Rise and Fall	Event of the Year Conan O'Brien is broken. His visit to Finland was the end result of his uncanny resemblance to its president; the similarity supposedly helped her get re-elected. Apparently, Conan is an A-list celebrity over there. We can only hope America recognizes his greatness after he takes over as host of the Tonight show.
Revolution Becomes Wii
Conan O'Brien / Finland Elections

lonelygirl15	Person of the Year Quite clearly, I am the Person of the Year. Not you. You're a nobody. You work your 40-50 hours a week for crap pay and have to go out to buy your own groceries. You have to pay taxes. You have to deal with bills. You don't have enough time in the day to do all the things you want. Your life sucks. So you can't possibly the Person of the Year. And if none of you are, then it has to be me!
Masakun
You!
Me!

While working on the 2006 Mediocre Awards, we realized we never actually handed out any awards for last year. So this article is titled correctly - these ARE the 2005 Mediocre Awards. We had to cut down on some of the categories due to hazy memories, and I also had to get rid of all the pictures for speed, but I hope the look back at things that took place nearly 2 years ago will provide some amusement. Or make you feel old. Whatever.

Winners are highlighted in blue; those who were the worst in their categories can be found in orange.

Gaming

Movies

Television

Animation and Print

People and Events