2012: The Year In Review (Part 1)

Look, it's the end of the year, nothing is happening. Just let us rest on our laurels and repost loads of old stuff and keep eating these delicious 'Christmas Marshmallows' we found in the cupboard, right? Here's the best of The Shiznit in 2012.

January



January is typically the first month of the year, and 2012 was no exception. The new release wasteland spat out movies as diverse as Haywire, Goon and The Iron Lady, but I reserved most of my ire for War Horse ("Horses are big, brown, clip-clopping dung machines that'd just as quickly hoof you in the fud as they would help you yield a harvest or win a war").

Elsewhere, we tarted up the year's crappiest movies with extra-classy posters, poked fun at a PG-13 Expendables sequel, rounded up movie mumblers with better diction than Batman's Bane and drew up a game of Wes Anderson bingo (which was later ripped off by Slate.com). Mark Wahlberg was in the news too - shocker: he was being a dick by claiming he'd have stopped 9/11 - so we celebrated by imagining how he'd have prevented the world's worst disasters. Also, Ferris Bueller is a shill and Chuck Norris is an asshole.

Late January saw the announcement of the Oscar nominations, shortly followed by our oh-so hilarious truthful versions of their posters. The internet - somehow sensing I was in New York and only capable of receiving about two hours of WiFi a day - went bananas, and the pics found their way into the pages of Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian and The Washington Post among other fine publications. Fuck. What?
February



Suddenly, FEBRUARY! Films like Young Adult, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Muppets and The Woman In Black came flying at us, as we heroically swatted them down with words. Then, using pictures, we paid a homage to the user-made Drive posters that spread across the web. The Phantom Menace was guffed into auditoriums in 3D, prompting this unique feature: an online blog post dismissing Star Wars.


The Oscars happened, as expected, and were as boring as a shit. The annual photo raised a few laughs ("Nick Nolte, pictured here playing Santa"), and we got excited about next year's Oscar dead cert, The Counselor with a badly-drawn Venn diagram.

The Avengers was still a while off, so we passed the time by writing 'satire' about the obsession with the tie-in toys and boggled at the crappy new UK title, then we just dicked about with the pic of the guy playing basketball in The Amazing Spider-Man. Topping off a bizarre month, we were mentioned on BBC's The Review Show, where Brian Cox revealed he wasn't a fan of our anarchic humour. The twat.
March


Before we'd even had time to remember if February 29th was a thing this year, March was upon us, and John Carter was turding up the joint ("A soul-sucking, humourless mess of technobabble and gobble-de-gook, I'm pretty sure sitting through it made me a Scientologist"). Disney's John Carter didn't even have the good grace to be the most interesting John Carter. Matt bucked the trend and claimed Project X wasn't as bad as AIDS, giving great reviews to The Hunger Games and Dexter Fletcher's Wild Bill, while Rob enjoyed 21 Jump Street and I raved about The Cabin In The Woods for reasons which I'll assume you're familiar with by now. Oh yeah: we were on the poster. (*white man overbite dance*)

Still jonesing for Marvel's Avengers, we assembled the original members, then got distracted by Alan Sugar being a bladdy nuisance. Somehow, I managed to blag my way into the Empire Awards, got tanked up on free wine, failed to record my MyAnna Buring interview and got called a "shithead" by Chris O'Dowd. It's okay though, we hugged it out at the after party. Please invite me back next year, guys. I'll stick to the crisps.


March saw TheShiznit.co.uk venture into the real world with our first film screening: the apocalyptic vision of manliness that is Fight Club. Did it go well? I'd say so, given that I had people drawing anarchic nobs on road signs and tempting fatties with chocs in exchange for mouse mats and DVDs. I suspect Tyler Durden would have approved, were he not fictional.
April



April? More like Avengepril! Matt approved the assembly of Avengers with a four-star review, then got busy interviewing the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige and even Clark Gregg. Clark Gregg! Luke flexed his muscles and created the Avengers Interactive Playset, while I documented Iron Man's hair loss. I also did a phoner with Joss Whedon's mate, The Cabin In The Woods director Drew Goddard, who confirmed he'd be up for doing a sequel if it did okay at the box-office (it didn't).

I put my festival hat on with a look at Sundance London (make Bobert Bedford wink!), then took it off when I realised i wasn't going to Cannes and DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT SO SHUT UP. Reviewing Battleship made the days go faster ("it's impossible to take an alien that looks like Newton Faulkner seriously"), as did Matt's Battleship-flavoured trailer for Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. As expected, American Pie: Reunion had tits in it, but only one of them was called Jason Biggs.

The Pulitzer-worthy exposés kept on coming: first was the discovery of the latest trailer trend (here comes the BWWWOOOooommm), then we compared Jack Kerouac to David Brent, then we had a pop at SlashFilm for their constant burbling over the paranormal non-entity that was, and still is, Ghostbusters III. Then I remade the year's movie posters with animals, because I was bored. APRIL OUT.
May



May I go on? Oh you. Enough jokes: on with the review snippets! Silent House: "SO DULL". Safe: "ACTION MOVIE". Dark Shadows: "confused befuddlement". The Dictator: "lesbian hobbit". Snow White And The Huntsman: "Sam Claflin is officially the most irritating thing in tights since ladders". Men In Black 3: "[insert hilarious video review]". None of those compared to the majesty of The Raid, which I called "the greatest ever videogame that was accidentally a film". Even The Raid, though, will struggle to live up to the amazing sounding Taylor Lautner parkour movie.

Frankly, I'm struggling to find a theme in May, so here goes a complete splurge of the best bits. Here's a collection of animals being paid to watch films. Here's a weird Avengers comic I thought was funny until I finished it. Here's an extremely odd bit of satire on the loose theme of archery in movies somehow being a thing. Here's a picture of the cast of Prometheus posing like Steps. Here's some mad bollocks on GI Joe being delayed. Here are more truthful posters. Finally, here's a horrifying Photoshop of David Cameron and Miley Cyrus, which was topical at the time, we swear.

We occasionally do serious stuff too, like this article on what I subbed 'The Bystander Effect' i.e. the practice of hiring A-list actors in packs, giving them a few lines each to read and reaping the box-office benefits a la New Year's Eve. Thankfully, the film crashed and burned like an out of control space station, full of screaming, talentless astro-cunts.
June



I got so incensed at The Amazing Spider-Man I basically wrote two reviews, although Matt only needed one for Rock Of Ages. One film that proved divisive was Prometheus, but my three-star review was basically the equivalent of Ross doing the 'turn it down a bit' hand thing from Friends. I had lots to say about Brave, but my 'review' of The Five Year Engagement represented a new low, even for a site called 'The Shiznit'. Meanwhile, Ed deemed Plan B's Ill Manors worthy of four stars, while Rob liked Casa De Mi Padre the exact same amount. I was going to do a Will Ferrell Matrix but didn't have time. The inside scoop, there.

Talking of scoops, Green Lantern told us how excited he was about returning for Justice League duty, while Matt made the brave journalistic decision to do a video supercut of animals being harmed in movies. Back in poster land, we asked which Expendable looked the most bored, then we shopped muscles on Batman and a booty on Catwoman in our exclusive Dark Knight Rises edits. Also Ed Harris got a new hat.


In what must count as our most triumphant (*air guitar*) moment of 2012, we held an extra-special screening of Swingers, complete with specially created cocktails (including the Money Martini and the Beautiful Baby), videogame ice hockey and - I still can't quite believe I'm typing this - an exclusive intro penned by Jon Favreau. Top that, rest of the year.

I'll do the rest of the year when I have time. Get off my case, yo.

Update: Hey look, here's Part 2!