Feature

2012: The Year In Review (Part 2)

Ali

30th December 2012

With March, June, February, April, January and May all behind us (though not in that order), we look back at the second half of 2012, during which we wasted more time than even we thought possible.

<< Year In Review - Part 1

July



Look everyone! Batman's back! I had a tough decision to make: attend my first baby scan or rush off to the first advance screening of The Dark Knight Rises. I voted baby with a heavy heart, but caught Batman later in the week and deemed it worthy of a five-star review. Rather than run the same Batman features as everyone else, we just made up 50 random Bat-facts, pointed out that this picture makes it look like Christian Bale is getting head from Batman, then laughed at this overpaid extra from Batman Forever. On a more sombre note, the press decided that Batman was a great way to sell a mass murder.

From the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous: Keith Lemon was being his usual twatty self, we went meta on our extra-long report on The Hobbit's extension and Jeremy Renner extended his arms in the odd new poster for The Bourne Legacy. Frankly when you spend the month working on the £10 DVD Bargain Challenge, this stuff starts to seem normal.

Silly season continued: Luke lost his damn mind 'decoding' the teaser poster for Edgar Wright's The World's End, we turned Judge Dredd's frown upside down and everybody loaded their pages with search terms while reporting on the (fake) rumour that sexy naked Emma Watson was to play a ball-gargling virgin in Fifty Shades Of Grey. Rhys Ifans just encouraged us by answering our stupid question about humane spider removal.
August



Shut up, everyone else: The Expendables 2 is here and it's... okay! (The embargo was draconian and we couldn't help but try and break it in the most creative way possible.) Sly and co inspired us to collate the definitive list of ridiculous action hero names, and we pitted Stallone and Schwarzenegger's new movies head to head. Hyurr! Hyaaghh!



Other films were released too. We all had a guilty chuckle at Ted, were non-plussed at Total Recall 2.0, longed for the return of Matt Damon in The Bourne Legacy and vowed never to marry Michelle Williams around about the time Take This Waltz was released. Meanwhile, The Imposter staked its claim to being the year's best documentary, and Keith Lemon: The Film staked its claim to being the year's biggest collection of cunts.

Matt came back off his honeymoon with an Avengers bootleg featuring the worst subtitles ever (Tom Hiddleston approved!), the Justice League started to come together slowly while Luke rounded up six superheroes who didn't deserve a reboot (stand down, Hammerman). Finally, some poster analysis: Movies.com put words in Lincoln's mouth, while Resident Evil: Retribution violently assaulted all of our retinas.
September



Reason, logic and good times came to a shuddering halt upon the release of Taken 2 ("When Liam Neeson uses his particular set of skills to hunt you down, it turns out that what he'll do to you is nothing compared to the butchering you'll receive in the editing suite afterwards"), a movie whose poster baffling featured someone rocking out on electric guitar. Dredd fared a little better (even if Chris Tookey thought it'd chime with mass murderers), as did Shining conspiracy doc Room 237, while ParaNorman enthralled the kids (i.e. Ed). Lawless underwhelmed but Looper was so good, I had my future self write the review from 2042.

Apropos of nothing, we noted that Executive Decision had the worst DVD blurb ever written, discovered that HW Plainview from There Will Be Blood grew up a dumbass and somehow managed to make a feature on Kenneth Branagh hiding in a car seem... interesting? That doesn't sound right. Then Porndogs happened and changed everything.

Finally, as the Autumn chill began to draw in (I'm padding, can you tell?), we showed you how the Killing Them Softly poster was made, laughed at the worst burn ever made in the movies and goggled at Indiana Jones in IMAX. September kind of sucked, obviously.
October



It's hard to remember a time before a new Star Wars movie was announced, but that's the world we live in now. However, freaking out about Episode VII didn't exactly sit well with the cool 'detached' vibe we'd been putting out since 'Sith'. In any case, we had lots of fun mocking Twilight, including the new 'running' poster, The Complete Defacement Project and the worst movie trivia ever (complete with reaction gifs). On a positive note, new Bond movie Skyfall was ace, as were Luke's Blogalongabond browser games (a most impressive waste of time for both you and him). Then he discovered that Quantum Of Solace was basically a remake of Only Fools And Horses and we all had to sit down for a while.

The London Film Festival rolled around again, complete with reviews for Argo, End Of Watch, Seven Psychopaths and more, while Ed tackled On The Road and Rob was spooked by Paranormal Activity 4. Matt took the October spoils, however, with this stonking in-character meta review of Ruby Sparks. It makes me feel less guilty about this nonce joke.

Many questions were also asked in October. What if other actors had younger versions of themselves a la Looper? Why can't Hollywood fcuking spell? Why is it that everyone hates Leslie Mann? With Hugo Weaving dropping a truth-bomb re: Transformers, should actors be forced to watch their own movies? More importantly, what is up with Paul Ross?


November



The month started well, with five-star reviews of The Master and Rust & Bone plus a glowing write-up of Silver Linings Playbook (whose logo we dissected here), but quickly descended into the usual lunacy; namely, Galadriel giving the finger, Iron Man getting jiggy, Wolf from Gladiators standing in for Robert De Niro and Luke's way superior replacement for the now-cancelled 3D re-release of Independence Day.

It was a fine month to be a member of Team Shiznit: not only did we manage to sneak our way onto the poster for Sightseers, but we had a quote and a star rating on the poster for Safety Not Guaranteed, even if it was in text so small no human could read it. Sticking to the poster theme, we made subtle improvements to the one-sheet for World War Z, got pedantic with Zero Dark Thirty, ragged on the new artwork for Oz: The Great & Powerful and stared at the hypnotic Twilight posterface gif.

Star War fever officially reached unheard of levels of 'fucking ridiculous' in November, prompting this heartfelt plea to bloggers and fans to just shut the fuck up, really. Ignoring my cries, Matt dreamed up five potential plotlines for Episode VII, all of which are definitely going to happen somehow, along with our daily bullshit Star Wars rumours. Just you wait.
December



Ding dong merrily on high and all that. It was a fine year for the staff of TheShiznit.co.uk: I had a baby, Matt got married and Luke bought himself a seven-disc Sylvester Stallone Blu-ray for Christmas. Featuring Cobra! Alas, there was still work to be done, hence a site first: two reviews of Jack Reacher, one by a fan, one by just some guy. The Hobbit also divided fans (48FPS? More like 48FFS!) but Life Of Pi was called "lusciously captivating" and we gave Pitch Perfect the thumbs up. Do the kids still do that?

Tits! Now that I've got your attention, here's what iconic female villains would look like if they had the cleavage of the new Wicked Witch. Talking of tits, Danny Dyer seemingly has 2013's worst movie on lockdown with Run For Your Wife, although Status Quo are already giving him a run for his money. We debuted a final set of truthful movie posters, one of which simply says 'Giant Turd'. Try to guess which one!

The first promo materials for Star Trek Into Darkness dropped, prompting us to look deeper into the poster and whinge about how one picture has probably already ruined the entire film. Not to worry, because Wolverine was on hand to make a wank gag and Bruce Willis' face lent itself to Photoshop more than ever in the Die Hard 5 poster. Then we did the Year In Review, which you're reading RIGHT NOW.
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