since it's been a day or two what are everyone's all-time favorite albums, music artists, tv shows, books, and movies
Here's mine:
Albums - The Fame Monster (Lady Gaga), Born This Way (Lady Gaga), ARTPOP (Lady Gaga), One of the Boys (Katy Perry), 21 (Adele), 4 (Beyonce), Survivor (Destiny's Child), Secondhand Rapture (MS MR), Fleetwood Mac (the band's debut album), Tragic Kingdom (No Doubt), In The Zone (Britney Spears), and Electra Heart (Marina and the Diamonds)
Music Artists - LADY GAGA, Beyonce, Marina and the Diamonds, Cher, Fleetwood Mac, Gwen Stefani, Florence + the Machine, Britney Spears, Neon Trees, Bastille
TV Shows - Avatar: The Last Airbender, Orphan Black, Game of Thrones, 30 Rock, Dragon Ball Z, Teen Titans, and Arrested Development
Books - A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Movies - The Royal Tenenbaums, The Devil Wears Prada, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Persepolis, and Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball at Madison Square Garden (I don't watch that many movies ok y'all...)
also here is my latest selfie enjoy
Nice picture.
Music: My favourite artists are Beethoven, Lady Gaga, Paloma Faith and ABBA. I like random songs from lots of different artists without necessarily following them. On balance I don't really have exceptionally broad musical tastes.
TV Shows: The only ones I follow at present are
Game of Thrones and
Adventure Time. I seem to quite like children's/teenagers' cartoons; one of my favourites was
Xiaolin Showdown. I would include
Yu-Gi-Oh and
Desperate Housewives here for my religious watching of them in youth but in retrospect they were not great. British panel shows like
8 Out of 10 Cats,
Nevermind the Buzzcocks and
Would I Lie to You? are all pretty funny.
Teen Titans was great, except for the last season; same deal with
X-Men the Animated Series (I actually thought
X-Men Evolutions was better). I have fond memories of all those Cartoon Network shows like
Powerpuff Girls and
Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Watching
I, Claudius at the moment and it's pretty good.
Books: His Dark Materials trilogy,
1984,
Mao: The Unknown Story,
Oryx and Crake,
The War of Powers. Iain Banks was a genius:
The Wasp Factory is one of the best books ever written and I love his Culture novels;
Inversions,
Matter and
Look to Windward are all fantastic. Have yet to read
The Hydrogen Sonata and
State of the Art. I also enjoy a lot of Agatha Christie but
And Then There Were None,
Evil Under the Sun and
The Hollow are the best ones. Of course, I can't forget
Harry Potter or
The Lies of Locke Lamora. The Black Magician Trilogy was also very enjoyable
. Wuthering Heights is a great book that I had to study for literature - one of the few I actually enjoyed (curse you,
To the Lighthouse!) I was deeply disturbed as a child by
Lord of the Flies. Certain history books I've found entertaining as well -
Egyptian Mythology and
Byzantium are two, though I grew up on a children's book of Greek mythology, the name of which escapes me.
On the other hand, I hate the
Narnia books with a passion. I want to murder John Banville for inflicting
The Sea upon me, and Andrzej Sapkowski is welcome to leap upon the pyre for writing
The Last Wish.
At the moment I'm reading
Republic and
The Oxford History of Byzantium.
Movies: Princess Mononoke is probably my absolute favourite film but anything by Studio Ghibli is great (except maybe
Ponyo which I guess was aimed at too young an audience for me to appreciate it). Besides that, there's
Pulp Fiction,
Metoroporisu,
Lawrence of Arabia,
Avatar,
Hard Candy and
Life of Brian. Of course, the other Monty Python stuff is great as well.
Tyrannosaur was deeply moving. My favourite Pixar film is probably
The Incredibles. I also like most Stanley Kubrick and Hitchcock. There are tons of great movies I like and if I were to list them all we'd be here all day.
On a related note, the Oscars this year were pretty disappointing. I haven't seen
Dallas Buyer's Club so I can't speak to that, but both
Gravity and
American Hustle were much better than
12 Years a Slave. I don't mean to say it was bad - it was definitely a good movie and I really enjoyed it; it was a poignantly touching film and I came out feeling emotionally drained, which was of course the point. But it just didn't compare to the suspense and cinematography of
Gravity or the brilliant plot and sheer acting genius of
American Hustle.
Also enjoyed
August Osage County and
The Wolf of Wall Street.
And Sophie, you seem to have missed a CRUCIAL ASPECT HERE.
Games: Demon's Souls and
Dark Souls (can't wait for the PC release...),
Age of Mythology and
Age of Empires II,
Shadow of the Colossus,
Sims,
Baldur's Gate,
Dragon Age and of course,
Soul Calibur. I like real-time strategies in general, though it's very difficult to reach a competitive level of skill. My favourite genre is probably RPG, and I played an MMORPG called
Dungeons and Dragons Online for years (considering getting back into it); I also really liked a little browser RPG called
Mardek. At the moment I'm playing
Rome: Total War and loving it.