Best of the Best: 2002

SUCH a good movie. Arguably Disney's last great movie.

Year: 2002
Movie: Treasure Planet
Game: Eternal Darkness (or Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance)
Album: Degradation Trip by Jerry Cantrell
Song: Psychotic Break by Jerry Cantrell

2002 was an interesting year for me. It was certainly an improvement over the darkness of 2000 and 2001. But it was still a very uncertain time for me, as I was without a place of my own, kind of floating around, spending time at my mother's tiny apartment, settling back into college, trying to figure shit out. As far as movies went, of course, there were many big ones that year. The first Sam Raimi Spider-Man, while flawed (that Green Goblin suit was retarded), was a movie I really enjoyed. There was the second Harry Potter, the second in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (which in some ways is my favorite of that set). There was the excellent inverse take on an alien invasion, in the M. Night Shyamalan film Signs. There was the dark but interesting Spielberg directed, Tom Cruise film Minority Report. Many other little films I enjoyed like Orange County, John Q, Mr. Deeds, and The Transporter. I, like many people, saw the American remake of The Ring, and while it honestly isn't a great movie, I was certainly drawn in at the time simply because I didn't know what the hell was going on. In fact, it's the only time to date, that I have ever gone to see a movie two times in one day. My friends and I had seen it, and gone back to one of their houses, and his roommate had just gotten home, and we were telling him all about it. He wanted to see it, and the next showtime was going to start soon, so we all packed in a car and rushed back downtown to go see the very next showing. Sufficed to say, that movie freaked me out a fair bit, as I have a thing about ghosts and such. I had to sleep with the TV on in my room for a bout a year after that, let's just say that.

But while I was tempted to pick Star Wars Episode II for my Movie of 2002, I decided to go a different route, and pick what in my humble opinion is the last great traditionally animated Disney film, Treasure Planet. There were others around this same early 2000s era that were good, like Atlantis and Brother Bear. But I really loved Treasure Planet, it just had a lot of whimsy and adventure to it....and like Atlantis, it didn't have any singy-song moments, which is rare for Disney. I thought the sci-fi space take on the classic story was very well done, and very imaginative. And I really, truly wish that Disney would get back to making movies like this again. They did, years later, make another "Princess" film that was 2D animation, and a Winnie the Pooh movie after, but for the most part, they still just do 3D CGI cartoon films. And some of those are good, don't get me wrong....but 2D animation, to me, will always, always be the best. It just has a magic to it, that CGI lacks.

Probably the best "Horror" video game ever made.

Gaming in 2002, for me, was much like gaming in 2001, though I did perhaps get to see or play a higher volume of games. There were several games I tried and liked, such as Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, which was a fun Godzilla battle game, though it needed more monsters. Metroid Prime was a major risk, making a 3D first person Metroid game, but it worked out, as the game was really in-depth and fun to play, though hard. Nintendo actually released a second 2D Metroid on the Game Boy Advance called Metroid Fusion, released on the same day, a major overload for Metroid fans after a near decade wait for a new game. There was also an okay remake of Spy Hunter by Midway. But the two that are the strongest candidates for me, were both "horror" related games. The first was the Game Boy Advance game, part of the Castlevania series which I have loved since my teens, called Harmony of Dissonance. It was a game very similar in style to their Playstation hit Symphony of the Night, and some have criticized it for the fact that music isn't the most amazing in the series. But to me, it was the best new Castlevania to come along in years, and the best one they've made since. It was very fun, and they added some really awesome mechanics to the SoTN formula that fleshed out the gameplay experience even more. It was basically the SoTN sequel people had been clamoring for for years, so in all honesty, people should have been far happier with it.

However, I did not actually get to play HoD until 2003, so that leaves my pick for Game of 2002 to be the Nintendo published oddity (for them), a "survival horror" game entitled Eternal Darkness. Now unlike the Resident Evil series (of which the Gamecube that same year had received both a good remake of the original, and a not-so-good prequel called RE Zero), Eternal Darkness had a much better functioning gameplay system, in which you could aim for enemies heads, limbs or torso with relative ease, and there was more strategy and flow to the gameplay. The story and setting, though, were what won me over. Hearkening deep shades of two of my favorite writers, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, the story spans many centuries, allowing you to play many different characters, as events center around a dark cult, a Necronomincon type book made from human flesh and bones and written in blood, and their attempts to bring the Old Gods back into this world, to wreak destruction. It had a fairly deep story, and some genuinely creepy moments, including a certain bathroom moment earlier in the game (if you've played it, you know), that managed to scare the shit out of me. Not a perfect game, and it really would be nice to get an improved remake or sequel. But it was really great and novel for it's time, and I enjoyed it a lot.

RIP Layne Staley.

2002 was a more sparse year for music, however, so my choice of favorite album and song was a fair bit easier. There were song bands I got into that year, but nothing that was new that year. So my choice is the second Jerry Cantrell solo album, "Degradation Trip". As you can see, the album was dedicated to the memory of his former Alice in Chains band-mate, singer Layne Staley (aka the reason I loved AiC so much). Layne had died that same year, of a drug overdose, as he had never beaten the addiction demons that had caused Alice in Chains to break up in the first place. But he was still a close friend of Jerry, so Jerry dedicated the album to him, and even wrote the last track "Gone" in his memory. On a funny side note, as you can also see, bassist Rob Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendencies, was in a transition phase at this point in his career, also having played for Ozzy Osbourn and Black Label Society, before he would ultimately get hired as the new bassist for Metallica in 2003. As for song, while there are several goods ones from that record, I chose "Psychotic Break", a haunting and somewhat sinister tune that has stuck with me over time. In a better year for music, I likely would have picked something else, but it's still a very good album.

Best of the Best: 2001

My movie crush of the new millennium.

Year: 2001
Movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Game: Pikmin
Album: Animosity by Sevendust
Song: Duck and Run by 3 Doors Down

So the infamous Year 2000 came and went, bringing with it some good, and a lot bad, at least in my personal life. 2001 would not fare much better, in fact in some ways it was worse. I spent the vast majority of the year still being devastated by the bad relationship I had gotten out of, so much so that even though my Baltimore Ravens won (not just won, but outright fuckin' dominated) the Super Bowl that year, and I know I was there with some friends watching it, I only vaguely remember seeing it, because my thoughts were elsewhere. I was in an incredibly vulnerable state, to say the very least, and what I thought my life had been, and where it was all going, PRE-girlfriend, was basically flipped upside down and backwards. I was still intent on trying to follow through with the plans I had before her, that I was going to go abroad, to England first and then wherever in Europe, possibly never to return for all I knew. I certainly had no desire at all to ever come back to California, I wanted to leave my shitty little hometown and all the bad memories I had collected in it far behind me. So I did go, I traveled by myself, on a Greyhound bus (no fun, not recommended) cross country, and eventually wound up in New Jersey, staying with an aunt of mine. Long story short, my stay there was not what it could have been, and it was the most lonely and isolated I had ever felt, with no friends and basically only myself for company most of the time. I never did get the money saved up to go on to the UK, and life threw me a curveball and sent me headed BACK across country (by bus again, brutal), to the California side of South Lake Tahoe.

I was 19, finding myself in yet another situation that was mostly out of my control and unstable, living with a "friend" there, and trying to write a book, which I actually did get several chapters into. But then life happened...Fate happened...and "9/11" happened. I don't mind telling you, that day, that time right after then, was possibly the scariest and most lonely I had ever experienced, even when compared to the toxic fallout from the ex. I was awakened very early that morning, told to turn on the news, and saw the Twin Towers and the Pentagon burning. It was a nightmare come to life, the world that had once seemed sleepy and relatively safe from my California vantage point, the world that had been so uneventful and undeniably better in the 90s, was forever changed in one day. I honestly feared that this was it, that our crazy-as-fuck President Bush was going to go off the handle, and we were just going to start bombing people to hell. That World War III was upon us, and that kind of post-apocalyptic shit you see in movies was going to actually happen. That was my initial fear at least. And there I was, helpless, alone, and broke in Lake Tahoe, powerless to do anything. I felt very very small during that time, and a world already full of uncertainty, became all the more uncertain by the moment. Well....WWIII never did start, and though we engaged in two pointless, costly wars in the Middle East over time, war was not the biggest price we paid in that "Post 9/11" world. No...the real price we paid was, at least in my view, a kind of innocence lost. I turned 18 too late to vote against George W. Bush, and then the world was thrown into chaos before I had even turned 20. I got to spend my adult years, my 20s, the "prime of my life", in a much darker, much more bitter and paranoid, much more uncertain America.

Such a great film.

As for movies? Well, I saw less movies in 2001 than I might have, in part because at varying points I was living in New Jersey, then Lake Tahoe, and eventually wandered my way back to Chico shortly after 9/11 occurred, broke as a joke. There were several movies I saw, especially late in the year, that I did really like, such as Jet Li's The One (possibly still my fav. Li movie), the silly Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander, the dark Denzel Washington drama Training Day, the first Harry Potter film (I had never read the books, but found that I liked the movies), and even the excellent Jim Carrey drama The Majestic. That last one in and of itself, was a very close candidate for my Movie of 2001. It's a great story, that speaks to the love and magic of films, that spoke (ironically) of a loss of innocence and things changing forever, and of the paranoia of the 1950s McCarthy era. The filmmakers couldn't have had any way of knowing just how much this film would speak to a Post-9/11 world when they were making it, but it certainly came at a pertinent time. The film didn't do that well money wise in the box office, but American audiences honestly often ignore really great films, and pour money into hot garbage instead. Regardless, it was a really gteat film, one of Carrey's strongest performances, with a fantastic co-starring performance by Martin Landau as well.

But, as much as I love that movie, there was one other film that came out in late 2001 that I loved even more, and that was the first in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. I had been waiting for them to make a live action LOTR movies for years, hearing rumors and then finally confirmation that it was happening. And one thing, in all that pain and loneliness and confusion and outright insanity that my world, and the whole world, now was, that could soothe things and help you escape for a little while, was the outright greatness that was that first, glorious moment seeing Tolkien's work put up on the big screen. I had grown up with The Hobbit and Rings books, first being read to me, and then later reading myself. I grew up with the amazing Rankin/Bass Hobbit cartoon that is one of my top five favorite films of all time, as well as the "sequel" Return of the King, and Ralph Bakshi's late 70s LOTR animated movie as well. So it was safe to say I was a lifelong fan, and my anticipation for this film had been higher than perhaps any other since I started getting to see movies in theater in 1995. And it did not disappoint. From opening to close, I enjoyed it, and marveled in the sheer spectacle of Middle Earth being brought to painstaking life on the screen.

I loved it so much after seeing it, that I actually think, if I'm remembering correctly, that I went back to see it a total of something between seven and nine times, which is by far a record for me. My mother asked me what I wanted for my 20th birthday, and I told her all I wanted was enough money to go see Fellowship several times, so she obliged. This movie was my pick, replacing Dragonheart, as my top fav. movie of all time, for the next several years. I even loved it so much, when I bought the special edition DVD set, I sat and watched ALL of the special features, many hours worth, and enjoyed it the entire time, both because I love Tolkien, but also because I love the magic of film-making in general. But, all that being said, looking back, it was not a perfect film. The story could have been adapted better, especially after my finally going back and reading the LOTR books in 2014, I realized just how much could or should have been in the film. I know if I ever, in my wildest dreams, had the chance to do my own big budget LOTR trilogy, it would be distinctively different. Still, many things about the film WERE spot on, such as the casting, for the most part. Ian McKellan as Gandalf the Grey, and Sir Christopher Lee as Saruman the White, were brilliant. The soundtrack, also, was superb, and their take on Hobbiton was truly beautiful.

Such a weird, but wonderful game.

Moving on to video games, between the years 2001 and 2004, gaming was an odd, uncertain time for me as well. I had somewhere along the way, been an idiot (much as I had been in years past with my NES and SNES consoles that I eventually replaced), and got rid of my N64. So there was a period there where I did not actually personally own ANY video games on my person at the time, truly a first in my life since early childhood. Even so, even though I would eventually get my hands on an NES and SNES again, by 2003, I did not own a Nintendo Gamecube, nor a Sony Playstation 2. It bears mention, I suppose, that I have never been attracted to the Xbox brand, and thus have never bothered owning any of those systems either. But during this time, I had, I suppose you could say, "fallen out of gaming". Not that I didn't still love video games, I did. I was just poor, didn't have any new systems of my own at the time, and was just less interested in them than I had been in my childhood or teens. But, having said that, I still did get to check out certain new games that came along due to friends who owned the systems. My friend Harold owned a Gamecube, and so I got to see things like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Wave Race: Blue Storm, both of which I enjoyed. But the game that really won the year for me, in the "eleventh hour" even, releasing in December, was an odd little game, a brand new franchise from the mind of Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario and Zelda, etc.), called Pikmin.

It was a very weird type of game, where you played the part of a tiny little spaceman called Captain Olimar, who had crash landed on a strange, alien world, and needed to recover the parts to and repair his ship, before 30 days were up, because that it when his life support runs out. Lucky for him, he runs into these tiny little vegetable creatures, which he names Pikmin, who sprout leaves and then flowers on their head-talks, and travel in packs. As Olimar, you use up to 100 Pikmin on screen at a time, to help you explore the world, and find the parts to your ship, as well as fight miniature monsters who get in your way, and discover "treasures" to take home as well. The "treasures" were one of the best parts of the whole experience, as they were in actuality little bits of human trash, and Nintendo even took the time to change many of those items from Japanese-centric, to things Americans would recognize for our release of the game, such as Duracel batteries, or 7-Up bottle caps, etc. You used the three types of Pikmin, the red immune to flame, the blue immune to water, and the yellow immune to electricity, to help you complete your mission in a weird fusion of exploration, puzzle-solving, and strategy gameplay. And quite frankly, while Harold thought it was okay, I fucking loved it, so much that I stayed up by myself at his house when he rented it, and played through the entire game. I initially got the shitty ending, because the last boss is a real bastard. But it was still the most original, coolest game experience I had had in years, and it instantly became one of my Top Favorite Video Games of all time.

A really bad ass album.

Now, as for music, as I once again find myself talking too much about a given year, 2001 was a stronger year for music indeed, at least to me. There were several albums that I really liked that came out that year, including Megadeth's "The World Needs a Hero", Sepultura's "Nation" (my favorite album of theirs), and Live's "V" (Five). But the two bands that topped my that year, were Sevendust and Creed. In a stroke perhaps of sheer irony, both bands' initial efforts came out in 1997. Then the year I got into Sevendust, both bands' second albums release in 1999. And wouldn't you know it, both bands' third albums dropped shortly after 9/11 happened, in late 2001, Sevendust's "Animosity" and Creed's "Weathered". I really loved both albums, and both had many songs that really spoke to me. But I gave the final nod to "Animosity" because it has stuck with me after all this time, and remains to this day my favorite Sevendust album.

As for song, well, I had gotten the debut 3 Doors Down album "The Better Life" back in fall 2000, but in 2001, amidst all the danger and adversity and uncertainty I was facing, the song "Duck and Run" became a real anthem for me. It's a song that speaks of life just beating you down, over and over, but you keep getting back up, you won't "Duck and Run" away, because life is not going to beat you. And I don't mind telling you, there have been many, many moments in my life when it earnestly felt like life had in fact beaten me, that I was down for the count. Yet I persist, I survive, and keep moving forward. And this song was yet another in a long line of music that has helped me in that survival, throughout all these years.

Best of the Best: 2000

This poster would be perfect without their faces.

Year: 2000
Movie: Unbreakable
Game: Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Album: Demons & Wizards by Demons and Wizards
Song: Do Not Resuscitate by Testament (or 3 Days in Darkness by Testament)

So......to put it mildly, 2000 was an interesting year. It was the turn of the millennium. There was a big "Y2K" scare trumped up by news outlets and various businesses, making people think that some sort of glitch in computers' dating systems, was going to cause the entire modern world to just crash. Spoilers, that didn't happen. I even remember gathering some friends together that New Years' Eve ('99), so that we'd be together just in case shit went down, and then it didn't. It was another NYE just like any other. 2000 was the last half of my senior year of high school. I took my first couple of college classes to finish out credits I needed to graduate. I briefly worked my first (and only) fast food job that summer. I went to my first real concert (not just a local band), to see Anthrax and Megadeth live. I started the first chapter in my post-high-school, technically adult life. I started my first full college semester in the fall. Oh yeah, I also had my first real girlfriend. And that turned into a mess all it's own that is better not gotten into. I briefly gained an old friend back, lost a couple others. It was a very up and down year, that, due to said girlfriend, put simply, didn't end well.

BUT, as ever, there was always various mediums of entertainment there for me. On the film front, 2000 was actually still a pretty solid year for movies. I still went to see many. Though I for some reason also quite possible racked up a lifetime high score for most shitty movies I've ever bothered to see in theater in a single year. Movies such as Scream 3, Hollow Man, The Cell, What Lies Beneath, two very "MEH" films about missions to Mars, Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach, Final Destination, etc. I suppose I should have known not to go see most of those crap-tacular horror films. I also saw Battlefield Earth, which while not GREAT, I surprisingly didn't hate as much as most seemed to.

Don Bluth's Last film for many, many years.

On the GOOD movie front, there was a lot to like. There were dumb but fun movies like Little Nicky, Dude Where's My Car?, The 6th Day and Ready to Rumble. There were some great martial arts/action films, like Romeo Must Die and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the latter of which I was really blown away by. I went to see it multiple times. It was full of not only amazing fight scenes, but also a gorgeous, haunting soundtrack, beautiful visuals, and deep philosophy. That one was honestly a very close runner-up for my "movie of 2000". There were other really strong films, like the Dennis Quaid film Frequency, and of course the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator. 2000 also marked the last year, as seen above, that a Don Bluth directed film would come out in theaters. He had a grand, epic concept, and wanted to do a serious, science fiction animated film, and in all honesty, it was pretty good, but as Hollywood is often wont to do, it was terribly mis-marketed, and thus really failed to find a big audience. The financial failure of the film caused Bluth, arguably the greatest animation director of all time (this side of Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki, of course), to tap out, and got out of the film business, which made me very sad.

But, as already long since spoiled by the first image of this article, while there were a few very strong candidates to consider, my "Movie of 2000", hands-down, was M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable. I had already become a fan of Night's work, as many did, due to his big hit from the previous year, The Sixth Sense. But this movie, for me, topped that one in every way. His strength as a director, to me, was obviously smaller scale stories, based strongly around character growth. He unfortunately became known for "twists" in his movies, to the point that people expected them, and got disappointed when some of his later films stopped having them, as if he was obligated to continue the same trick over and over. Some of his most recent films, also sadly, have not been up to par, mainly, I feel, because of his attempt to do bigger budget, large-scale "Hollywood" style pictures. I think he's still a great director, or can be, he just needs to scale it back down, and get back to the style of films he was best at. But to me, for my movie-going dollar, Unbreakable represents him at his very best. A heartfelt, even heart-rending story about an ordinary man, experiencing marriage and family troubles, unsure and unfulfilled with his place in life, a very strong drama all around, but wrapped in a wonderfully powerful and haunting "real life" look at the metaphors and themes found in superhero comic books. The movie addressed the core essence of comics so well, I thought, and even the "twist" at the end, to me, was more powerful on a narrative level, than any other he has done. This was his finest work, it remains my favorite film of his, and honestly, I'd probably put it somewhere in my Top 30 or 40 films of all time, easily. And trust me, that's a tough list to suss out.

Not amazing, but very fun.

Moving away from movies, on the games front, 2000 was far less prolific. At least to me. As mentioned before, I did not own a Playstation, nor a Sega Dreamcast. Though at one point I had intended to try and get a Dreamcast, which would have been the only Sega system I had ever owned at that point. But then the really neat looking 3D Castlevania game that had been in development for it got cancelled, and my interest in owning one eventually waned. Which is just as well, because, alas, Sega was not long for this world as a console maker (the officially gave up on the Dreamcast in 2001, after less than 3 years of being on the market, and went "third party", which led to the insanity of seeing Sega games on Nintendo consoles). The newest system I owned was just the Nintendo 64, and by 2000, there really weren't that many great games coming out for it anymore. At least to me. I was not into Banjo-Tooie (one of the worst game titles of all time), nor Zelda: Majora's Mask (I tried, but seriously, fuck that resetting-time mechanic). There were neat titles like Mickey's Speedway USA, WWF No Mercy and Paper Mario. Perfect Dark was okay, but the main thing I liked about Goldeneye 007 wasn't the single player, but rather playing the multiplayer with my friends. PD had the opposite thing going on, where the single player was more interesting, but the multiplayer, at least to me, wasn't as good.

So the game I picked as my GOTY for 2000, was HAL Laboratory's Kirby 64. It was the first "3D" Kirby, or rather, the first to feature polygonal graphics, instead of 2D sprites. That was a trend that everything in that PS1/N64 generation followed, which made me very sad as a gamer, because they had barely begun to scratch the surface of just how impressive 2D gaming could be, when most companies suddenly abandoned it for the new craze of polygons and "3D" gameplay. Kirby on N64 however was kind of a compromise, because it featured (for the time) fairly impressive 3D graphics, but gameplay that was for the most part still very much traditional 2D Kirby fare. The game featured a new element in the ability to "fuse" two different powers, to make additional powers. Not really revolutionary, but a neat added wrinkle to the design. I think the game was a tad short, it could have used at least one more world. But all in all, I still had a lot of fun with it, so it was likely my fav. game from that year.

Still like this cover.

So, now that I've gone and talked about the Year 2000 far more than I had intended to, I guess I'll wrap it up by talking a bit about music. There weren't an over-abundance of new albums that year that I really loved. Metallica dropped a new song for the fifth year in a row, "I Disappear", which was featured in the credits of Mission Impossible 2. Green Day came out with their new album "Warning", which I bought and liked, and it had some very good songs on it, though I didn't love it as much as the previous album "Nimrod". I had gotten into the group Apocalyptica back in 1998, which is a Finnish quartet of cello players, who originally got famous covering Metallica songs as instrumental cello versions, which is how I came to know them. They too put out a new album, "Cult", in 2000, and it had some good music on it, featuring for the first time mostly new original works by the band themselves. But when it comes to "best album of the year", for me, it was "Demons & Wizards". D&W was a side project that I had been highly anticipating, a collaboration between the prime players of two of my new favorite bands of the time, Blind Guardian and Iced Earth. To be specific, it featured the lead songwriter and guitarist of IE Jon Schaffer, and the lead singer of BG Hansi Kurch. It was a really great combo, for my money, and featured some really strong songs, including the explosive album opener "Heaven Denies".

As for song of the year.....well, I was listening to a lot of stuff around then, but one that I listened to a lot, both because I liked it, and also because I was by varying degrees at times in a very dark mindset, listening to the '99 Testament album "The Gathering". It had many strong, dark, angry songs that fit that mood, but the two songs that really "spoke" to me, were "Do Not Resuscitate" and "3 Days in Darkness". The first dealt with, as you might imagine, life becoming too much to bear, and just wanting out. A feeling and mindset I'm sad to say that I've been able to relate too far too many times in my life. The second, about the infamous "Mayan Calendar" prediction that the world would end in the year 2012, complete with a really bad ass instrumental outro that really did sound like the world was ending. So yeah. There's that. All in all, 2000 was another major year for me as a person, and in many ways, much like 1995, was a milestone year, because once again, my life would never be the same afterwards.

Best of the Best: 1999

One of the last great 2D animated theatrical films.

Year: 1999
Movie: The Iron Giant
Game: Wrestlemania 2000
Album: The Distance to Here by Live
Song: Higher by Creed

So 1998 turned into 1999, a new year, the last year of not only a decade, but a century....even a millennium. And I'm sorry to report that while it had it's collection of moments, 1999 was not all that kind to me a lot of times, and it was far from one of my favorite years. But as usual, amidst the drama and bullshit of real life, and having to deal with other human beings (who can of course make your life both a heaven...and a hell), various forms of entertainment were there to help me somewhat sooth my wounds and troubled spirit. To help me find some release and escape. 1999 was certainly not a BAD year for movies, but it was a markedly lesser year compared to '96, '97 or '98, for me. It still had it's fair share of movies I really enjoyed, among them October Sky, Office Space, The Mummy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ghost Dog, Big Daddy, Instinct, Detroit Rock City, The Sixth Sense, Man on the Moon, and Bicentennial Man.

There were a couple of candidates I had to consider for "best movie", one of them being Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I realize, much like Metallica in the late 90s, that it's a popular opinion to have, that the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and that first movie in particular, are "garbage". I would like to point out that I have never felt that way. Were they flawed? Sure. Not AS good or as classic as the original movies? Absolutely. But I still always felt they were good movies, AND good Star Wars movies, even Phantom Menace. I never hated Jar Jar Binks, to me he was always just another goofy character like the robots, or like the Ewoks. I think a lot of people really just need to grow up. The movie itself was fine, and it had a lot of things to like about it, most especially the Jedi master Qui-Gon Jin, and the Sith warrior Darth Maul. And that epic song for their final confrontation, "Duel of the Fates", is still a great piece that I love to this day. The prequel movies are flashy, and they honestly should have used less CGI. But I still like them. However, upon really thinking about it, the movie that stuck with me the most from 1999, was The Iron Giant. It really has that Don Bluth type of vibe to it, even though he was not involved with it, and it was one of the last great traditionally animated theatrical film releases. A fact that makes me, as a huge fan of traditional hand drawn animation, very sad, as I wish it would make a comeback, a REAL comeback, in the United States. But Iron Giant is a really great story, a fun movie, and though many wouldn't know it, one of actor Vin Diesel's first real movie roles, as he did the vocal noises and eventual voice for the robot.

As for game? Well, looking back, '99 was the first year I ran into where it was honestly a little rough trying to pin down a favorite, as there were just less games that year that I really loved, the arcades had less releases, and I didn't own a Playstation or even the debuting Sega Dreamcast. Even though, the game Soul Calibur on Dreamcast WAS a game I immensely enjoyed, as I had very much liked it's arcade predecessor Soul Edge. I got to play it at a friend's house a bit, but not owning a DC myself, it's hard to really say it was my favorite game that year. And then I remembered, that I had gotten the wrestling game Wrestlemania 2000 for the N64 that year, and I DID happen to put a ridiculous amount of time into creating wrestlers and playing the game in general. So kind of by default, it wins game of the year on those merits. It was a decent game, though it doesn't hold up well now, too blocky and slow and clunky, but for it's TIME it was the best wrestling game out there.

SUCH a great album. The band's masterpiece.

When it comes to music, '99 was a weird time. In the late 90s in general, rap and "hip hop" had gradually become more and more mainstream and popular, and at the same time, an often rap-hybrid style of rock called "Nu Metal" (because they couldn't just spell new correctly) also got real popular. And of course pop music, what with Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys, etc., was just getting worse. Though I had no way of knowing that shit would be awesome to listen to compared to how much worse pop music would continue to get. But there was certainly still much for me to enjoy as well, as I continued to get more into metal, discovering other bands and albums. One of those that I really got into in '99, was Sevendust, as I discovered their album "Home" by hearing the song "Denial" on VH1 randomly, and then later on the radio, and I really dug it. So I went out, got the album, and eventually wound up really liking it overall. Another big music moment for me also came from VH1 in '99, as they broadcast part of Metallica's amazing "S&M" symphony concert. And let me tell you, that to me was heaven in that moment. My favorite band, along with classical music which I really love, it as like peanut butter and jelly (or chocolate). And to my delight, they later came out with the concert on CD and DVD, which I of course eventually got both of. One of the two new songs they did for that concert, "No Leaf Clover", also wound up becoming one of my favorite Metallica songs, and was a decent candidate for my song of '99.

I also really liked the Creed album "Human Clay". I had gotten into Creed back in '98 actually, in the second half of my shit-tacular sophomore year. Their first album "My Own Prison" also really helped me through those tough times. Creed is of course, ironically, another band that many people shit on, but fuck 'em, I liked the first three albums at least (was not a fan of their recent reunion though). They were, at one point, considered one of my favorite bands, because I really resonated with some of their lyrics (because of the singer Scott Stapp's Christian religion, there were some Christian undertones to some of their songs, but thankfully, most of the time, they were fairly ambiguous, so non-Christians could also really relate). Well, "Human Clay" was one I really had to consider for my "best album" of the year, as I more or less loved the whole album. But really putting it to thought, and trying to "feel" which album meant the most to me, I decided to go with Live's "The Distance to Here" instead. In some sense, both albums held equal sway with me back then, but Distance was just so.....inspiring. Not every song is amazing, but the album as a whole is, and there ARE amazing songs on it, such as "The Dolphins Cry", "They Stood Up For Love" and "Dance With You". So it's my pick for album of
99. I also. however, decided to give it to Creed for my song of the year, with "Higher". It just really spoke to who I was and how I felt about the world back in my late teens (still do to some extent). To some I'm sure they felt the song was talking about the afterlife concept of "Heaven", but to me, it spoke more about dreaming of a better world, here on Earth.

Best of the Best: 1998

Such a great movie, such a legendary actor.

Year: 1998
Movie: Patch Adams
Game: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Album: Nightfall in Middle Earth by Blind Guardian
Song: Dust in the Wind by Kansas

The first half of 1998 was rough. A horribly shitty time for me, in fact, as issues with my mother and school and everything else all just kind of came to a head, and I was absolutely miserable, to put it mildly. By the summer, however, things took a turn and started to brighten somewhat, as I got to live with someone else, got my first ever official summer job, and headed into my junior year in high school (back in home study by choice) in the fall, with at least for the time being, things seemingly looking up. The summer of '98 especially had many good times, dicking around with friends, etc.

Many great movies, again, came out in 1998. Some of my favorites were The Wedding Singer, Dark City, My Giant, Almost Heroes (Chris Farley's last film), The X-Files movie, Lethal Weapon 4 (my first exposure to the great Jet Li), There's Something About Mary, Ever After, The Avengers (I had never seen the old show, but I loved the movie), Wrongfully Accused (great Leslie Nielsen film), Rush Hour, Pleasantville, and The Waterboy. But the three that stood above and beyond for me, were also films that touched me or spoke to me in some deep way. The first was The Truman Show, which was technically still kind of a comedy, but it was also the first real taste of Jim Carrey's considerable dramatic acting ability. And it spoke to me on the level that, it was honestly a satire on our very society, the way we go about our daily lives, and to my 16 year old mind at the time, it totally made me think "My god, what if I actually live in a little plastic universe too?" Plus it was just damn entertaining. The other two are both Robin Williams films, diving right into his late 90s "touching but serious films" phase. One was What Dreams May Come, which is equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring. Even though by this time in my life I was no longer the Christian I had been raised to be, the movie was very ambiguous and even universal in it's approach to the afterlife and all of that, and it was just a really deep, beautiful film.

But the movie that was the cream of the crop, for me, was Patch Adams, not only because it was a great movie somewhat inspired by a very awesome real life person. But also because, for me, the story and the things it had to say, about people, about life, and about what COULD be, instead of merely what is, really really touched me deeply and spoke to me. I simply cannot do justice with words to how much this movie impressed me. It was flawless, and it's concepts were enormous to my mind, and really got gears turning in my own head, with massive inspiration and ideas. It, of course, has the one major flaw, THAT scene, which some writer came up with, which never actually happened at all in Hunter Adams' life, and was absolutely unnecessary to give the movie a manufactured sense of drama. It already HAD it's own drama and tension, it didn't need that crap. And that kind of thing might bring a lesser movie down...but the rest of the film was SO strong that it thankfully survived that shit (and I really, truly hate that scene, in one of my otherwise favorite movies of all time). It is just a great movie, and in some very powerful ways, it quite literally changed my life, and had a big hand in my own personal evolution.

Da da da DAAAAAA!!

The game of the year, for me, and for many people, was of course Ocarina of Time on N64. There were many other good games in '98, not the least of which was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the original Playstation. That game was one of the last great fully 2D games that came along, for years, before the indie scene really popped up within the last decade. And it was just a fantastic action game with a nice rpg-lite type system in place. It heavily "borrowed" elements from the Super Nintendo classic Super Metroid, putting it mildly, but it put those elements to great use, and gave birth to what many gamers now refer to as the "Metroidvania" style of game. But, Zelda was where it was really at.

1998 was also the first year I could afford to buy my own brand new game console and games by myself, and the N64 was the first system I ever bought myself, that summer. And Ocarina quickly became the highlight of my collection when it released. The game has not exactly aged super well, even though it's still great, but at the TIME, let me tell you, it was mind blowing. As much as Mario 64 had been mind blowing in 1996, "Zelda 64" was far more-so in 1998. It had (almost) everything you could want, it was very cinematic, it had a great soundtrack, it was one of the first  games to REALLY do 3D gaming right, because it controlled and played very well (for the most part). There was an epic story going on, and the game was just fun to play. I think the only major complaint I had about it, even at the time when I first got it, was that when they were developing it, they had done a lot of vague talking up, insinuating that the game world was going to be massive, and that you were going to be able to go exploring like in the old Zelda games, and there would be all these villages you could encounter, etc. etc.....and then what it actually was, was a "hub" (Hyrule Field), in which you could go to different levels, basically like Mario 64. But in spite of that limitation, I still poured a ton of hours into this game, and enjoyed it very much (except for that goddamn Water Temple).

SUCH a great album. And just look at that cover art.

1998 also happened to be, thanks in large part to my first ever summer job, the year that I really started both getting more into heavy metal music, but also just getting less into radio, and more into actually buying and owning albums. There were many great bands and albums that I discovered in '98, such as Metallica's "Garage Inc." (an album of cover songs), Megadeth in general but especially their albums "Cryptic Writings" and "Countdown to Extinction", Iced Earth's albums "Burnt Offerings" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes", Testament's "Souls of Black", other classic Metallica albums like "And Justice For All" which would go on to become my favorite of all time, and Rob Zombie's "Hellbilly Deluxe". But when I think back to albums that specifically came out in '98 that I got into, one really stands out the most, and that is Blind Guardian's "Nightfall in Middle-Earth". I can't do the album justice just using words to explain it, but let me just tell you, it's epic, and it's artistic, and it's fucking awesome. The album tells a good half or more of the tales from J.R.R. Tolkien's posthumous Silmarillion, which was something of a history and creation myth of Middle-Earth. I first discovered this band, and album, as I did many bands in 98, on an old site called "MP3.com", which you could listen to many songs for free to sample them. The song that did it for me, for Blind Guardian, among others, was "Nightfall", which tells of the first ever case of murder among the Elves, and their downfall into madness as they pursued the Jewels of Light (The Silmarils) into Middle-Earth. The entire album is just fantastic, playing out something like a metal "opera" of sorts, though not operatic vocally. And I must say, as a personal aside, Brian May of Queen is my favorite guitarist of all time, because the tone and texture of his lead guitar work is SO smooth and lyrical, and the lead work of Blind Guardian's Andre Olbrich is obviously heavily inspired by May, and that is never more evident than on his amazing work on this album. As a further side note, the album was produced by the Danish producer of the great Metallica 80s albums, Flemming Rasmussen, and it shows. If you've never heard it, even if you're not really into metal music, check it out, it's worth it.

BUT, as an odd bonus, my SONG of the year for 1998, was not even from the same decade. For some insane reason, even though I had grown up hearing various classic rock, there were many classic rock bands, and songs, that I just never heard. And as crazy as it seems, among them, was another band that would (along with Metallica and Queen) go on to eventually become one of my top favorite bands of all time, and that was Kansas. And the song, specifically, that won me over, was their biggest hit, "Dust in the Wind". Now, the irony was that I was just having lunch with my uncle one day, and the radio at the restaurant started playing the song, and it caught my ear and sounded amazing, and I asked him "Who's this?", and he replied "I think it's Kansas". It was game over after that, I went to Harold's house sometime later, and while his family stepped out to go get food or whatever, I looked up Kansas, and that song, on his computer. I'm pretty sure I found it on MP3.com or wherever, and started listening to it. And I listened to it on repeat for like, seriously, half an hour. It was that good, and it just hit me like a tidal wave.....it's simplicity, it's enormity, it's beauty and profound message. Plus that fuckin' sweet Robby Steinhardt violin solo. Sufficed to say, it instantly became one of my favorite songs that I had ever heard, and would eventually settle as my TOP favorite song ever made, of all time. That's right, my favorite band ever is Metallica, but my favorite SONG ever is by Kansas.

Best of the Best: 1997

Karting perfection? Close enough.

Year: 1997
Movie: Conspiracy Theory
Game: Mario Kart 64
Album: ReLoad by Metallica (or The Black Album, by Metallica*)
Song: Good Riddance by Green Day (or The Unforgiven by Metallica*)

Now, by 1997, shit had started to change. I was slowly growing up, one of my new best friends, Brandon, had moved away in December '96, my high school experience was getting gradually worse, and relations with the mother I "had" to live with, were also getting worse. But thankfully, while shit was genuinely getting pretty rough (and would only get worse in the following years) for young Jesse, there was still some pretty great entertainment of various kinds to help distract me somewhat from the pain and crap that real life can (and will) often dole out on you. 1997 was honestly a better year for movies, all around, than 1996 had been, and there were many that I really loved. Some of those were Beverly Hills Ninja starring the late, great Chris Farley, Liar Liar, Austin Powers, The Lost World (Jurassic Park 2), Con Air, the original Men in Black, Contact, Kull the Conqueror, etc.

But when it came down to what I thought the BEST movie of that year was, it was a battle between The Fifth Element, and Conspiracy Theory. While Element was a bizarre, fun ride with some cool mystical (even spiritual) undertones, and I REALLY loved it at the time, looking back now I have to give it to Conspiracy. I mean it's directed by Richard Donner (one of my fav. directors), stars Mel Gibson before he went a little nutso, as well as the gorgeous and classy Julia Roberts. And it was just a really really great film, fantastic story, amazing turn as a sinister as fuck bad guy by Patrick Stewart, you name it.

Now gaming, as you can plainly see by the pic above, 1997 had it's share of really good games too, across many consoles, like SNES, N64, Playstation, and of course arcade. And my friend Harold and I specifically rented a LOT of games on Nintendo 64, some we really wanted to try, and others just because why not. But out of all of them, the two that stood tall above anything else that released that year, to us anyway, were both because of the great N64 4 player multiplayer action. And those were Mario Kart 64, and Goldeneye. But while we played the SHIT out of both on many many nights with our friends, or just against each other, and while the 007 multiplayer was and is still arguably the best multiplayer first person shooter ever made, I had to ultimately give it to Mario Kart. That game is just a blast, whether it's single OR multiplayer. The tracks were awesome, the battle arenas were awesome, it was fully 3D, yet it still had cool looking 2D prerendered sprites for the racers. And it still to this day remains my favorite Mario Kart of all time, arguably my favorite racing game of all time.

So controversial to some, but SUCH a good album.

Now I have to speak about Metallica. When I first moved to my new town in '95, and for probably the next year+ afterwards, my favorite band, so I said, was Green Day. But the truth is, I didn't really HAVE any one band yet that I absolutely loved, and had a huge passion for. Well, that all changed in 1997. I borrowed a copy of "The Black Album" from a friend in high school, and that album in a very real way "changed my life". It sounds hokey sometimes when people say that, but it's the truth. I finally got around to discovering that album at a time in my life when shit was getting worse, and I really needed it. I half-jokingly referred to it as my "Bible", and most of the songs on the album are very deep, and some spoke to me in some very personal ways, that really helped me cope with a lot of the hard shit I was progressively having to deal with. Well, THE song out of the entire album that really really spoke to me, was "The Unforgiven", and I succinctly said then (and I must say, in some respects it's still true), that that song was the "story of my life". I listened to that song on repeat more times than I can tell you. But it really did speak to me, and it really did help me.

So I don't clearly remember whether or not I got "Load" in 1996 when it came out, because I had heard the song "Hero of the Day" on the radio/MTV and really liked it, or if I got it in 1997, but either way, while many people really shit all over that album, I on the other hand REALLY loved it. A lot of old hipsters and metal fans shit all over Metallica in general in the late 90s, which was hard for a young me to deal with as well. It felt somehow shitty and "unfair" that a band I was JUST getting into, and loved SO much, both their old 80s thrash music AND their mellower (but still heavy) 90s output, was getting so much hate from so many people. Like, it literally became the popular opinion to have to say "Metallica sucks", even for people who probably had never really even heard them, old or new. Regardless, fuck everyone else, I loved them, and when ReLoad came out in November of '97, I loved that album too. In fact, I was staying briefly with Harold's family at the time, and it's funny how certain songs or albums you'll associate with other things you experienced while first listening to them sometimes, and for me, that was Duke Nukem 64. Harold had just gotten the game around the same time I got the album. So we would sit in his room, and he would play while I would blast ReLoad, and those were some pretty good times.

BUT, in the midst of all that Metallica love, another great album by my PREVIOUS "favorite" band (and honestly they still are in my like Top 10 or 20), Green Day, also released in '97, the album "Nimrod". And off of that album, one song in particular also spoke to me, and I listened to it countless times on repeat, and that was the song "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)". Now I picked that as the initial pick for Song of 1997, because it actually came out that year. If we're talking songs that mean more to me overall, all time, I'd probably pick "The Unforgiven". But "Good Riddance" would also be very high on that list, so I'll just say fuck it and pick both.

Best of the Best: 1996

"Well, how many dragons do you know?"

Year: 1996
Movie: Dragonheart
Game: Killer Instinct 2
Album: Load by Metallica
Song: Comedown by Bush

So 1996 was my first full year in my new town, with new friends, and relative teenage autonomy. In some ways, I "went wild", understandably, but I was never a "bad kid", never really got into drugs, or parties, or criminal activity, or any of the stupid shit that I easily could have. Nope...I was still largely into the same things I had been into as a kid: movies, cartoons, games, comics, music etc....just more of it, because I now had more access. When it came to movies, as I said, I saw quite a lot of them at this point. And of those I saw, many were really good, even great. Some of those were fun comedies like Black Sheep and Happy Gilmore, big epics like Independence Day and Escape From LA, and dumbass shit that I for some reason still liked at the time, like Beavis and Butthead Do America.

But the movie that stood head and shoulders above the rest that year, was hands down Dragonheart. Starring Dennis Quaid as the "black knight" Bowen, and the great Sean Connery as the voice of the dragon Draco, it was just a really wonderful film that spoke to me on a lot of levels. It actually had a semi-profound affect on me, from the perspective of the "Old Code of King Arthur" and the mythology of the dragons and all that. It was just really cool stuff, and I didn't yet recognize it at the time, but I think it spoke to the part of me deep down that was already starting to transition into what would become my rather "pagan" beliefs by my late teens. Plus it was just a lot of fun, the dragon was great SFX for the time, it had a great soundtrack, a good balance of action and humor, etc. Dragonheart would actually remain my top favorite movie for many years afterward.

"Fight On"

So when it came to gaming in 1996, there was certainly a lot to like. I had finally, after many years of wanting one, gotten a Super Nintendo as a hand-me-down from a cousin for Christmas '95, so I finally had access to the 16-bit world in my own home, and thus I rented and played various SNES games. But the game that truly was my "game of 1996", was an arcade game, Killer Instinct 2. In the months that I lived fairly close to the mall in my new town, I spent an awful lot of time there, specifically in the old arcade it used to have, called "Tilt". I was there for a lot of new games arriving, and possibly the biggest, to me personally, was the morning I just happened to stroll in, when no one else was there, and they were setting up KI2. I'm about 95% certain that the cool guy that worked there (there was, naturally, also another guy who was a jerk), put in some free tokens to let me try it out after he finished setting it up. And of course, to a 14 year old boy who loves video games, that was amazing.

The game itself was amazing to me at the time, with prerendered graphics by Rare, the same company that made Donkey Kong Country on SNES, that looked more advanced than anything I had ever seen. The soundtrack was bad ass, and the gameplay, to me, was refined and improved over the original game. I liked KI1, but I fell madly in LOVE with KI2, and my favorite character was easily the werewolf guy you see up there, Sabrewulf. Ironically, my fav. character from KI1 was the girl opposite him in that pic, Black Orchid, though they totally changed her moveset for the sequel, and I didn't like her as much. But Sabrewulf was my "guy", and though I got pretty good with other characters, I more or less mastered him. Though in a twist of irony, when it came to my favorite games of '95 and '96, with UMK3, I was really good at versing other players, and I got a fair share of wins, but that game was a son of a bitch to actually try and beat. Especially because the last boss, Shao Kahn, is a royal motherfucker, the cheapest of the cheap. Whereas with KI2, I actually beat it quite regularly when I would play, and managed to beat it with several characters, but because of the more intricate combo system or whatever it was, I was not nearly as good as versing other players.

As for music? Well, also ironically, my "jam", my favorite song in both '95 and '96, were songs from albums that had originally released in 1994. In this case, it was "Comedown", by Bush, though I also really REALLY liked another song from that album, "Glycerin". But 1996 was also a year in which I first had a CD player, and thus very very slowly started to acquire CD albums. I picked "Load" by Metallica, because while I don't think I actually owned that album yet (I may have, don't quote me), it was certainly, looking back, my favorite album that came out that year.