Category Archives: 2023

The 2023 Anna Devane Kick Ass Female Award

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The Anna Devane Kick Ass Female Award

Previous winners:  Rey (Star Wars), Mockingbird (Marvel Comics), Wonder Woman (DCEU), The Shirewolves, Captain Marvel, Kamala Harris, Wanda Maximoff, Pearl 

I loved Anna Devane when I was younger and watched General Hospital. I loved how she could kick the butt of anyone placed in front of her. That is where this award came from.

You can call it a woke award if you wish. It doesn’t matter to me. I love a great female asskicker. Here are some of the best of 2023.

Runners-up: M3GAN kicked off the year in a great movie, although she is a robot technically and not necessarily a female. Spider-Gwen is a major star from the Across the Spider-Verse film and she has had a couple of series at Marvel Comics this year. I don’t care what anyone says, I loved The Marvels (Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau). They re definitely in this category. Barbie dominated the box office and found her way into the real world. Another one I will debate till the end is Hope, aka the Wasp, from Quantumania. Yes, she did not have as much to do, but she came up big a couple of times. Another comic character is Daredevil, aka Elektra Natchios. She was a major figure in Matt Murdock’s life and now is still in the DD costume during the Gang War story. Julia Page is a reporter from the No/One comic and she probably wouldn’t have made this list had it not been for the podcast that I listened to tied to this series. The podcast was inspiring to me and Julia was a great character. The biggest tour of the year kicked a lot of ass as Taylor Swift made ALL the money. The Last of Us debuted on HBO and gave us a perfect version of Ellie. Her confrontation with the cannibals was absolutely mind-blowing. Donna Noble returned with The Doctor for three specials on Disney + and showed why she was one of the best companions the Doctor ever had. Juliette Nichols battled through the first season of Silo on Apple TV + trying to solve a death inside the dystopian silo. Lucy Gray Baird dominated the screen in the new Hunger Games film. She was the winner of the Games and of our hearts. One of the top characters in the new D& D YouTube series Bonus Action was Bar’B Mourdusa, a barbarian, as played by Amanda Nicholas. 

And our winner among this massive list of powerful and dominant females is…

Winner: Dorothy “Dot” Lyon. 

Aka Nadine Tillman, played by Juno Temple on FX’s Fargo. 

Dorothy has been the main protagonist in Fargo season five and she has been just so awesome. Being pursued by her ex-husband, Sheriff Roy Tillman, Dorothy had to fight off his flunkies while still trying to maintain her new life from crashing around her. She has been absolutely brutal all year and her wits and intelligence shone through everything. I am excited for her final showdown with Roy, which is clearly coming soon.

2023 I See Kid Actor Award

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I See Kid Actor Award 

Previous Winners:  Emjay Anthony (Chef), Jacob Trembley (Room), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things), Dafne Keen (Logan), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Noah Jupe (Honey Boy), McKenna Grace (Troop Zero), Jeremy T. Thomas (Antlers), Alisha Weir (Matilda the Musical)

Last year, it was a late arrival to win the award. It was around the Thanksgiving holiday when I saw Matilda the Musical and I knew that Alisha Weir would win this award. This year’s winner was an obvious choice that I knew immediately after seeing the movie, just like last year. The only difference was that this one was earlier in the year.

Runners-up: Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth season 2, Cocaine Bear), Lidya Jewett (Exorcist: Believer), Olivia O’Neill (Exorcist: Believer), Emma Ho (The Baker), Chase Dillon (Haunted Mansion), Abby Ryder Fortson (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret), Elle Graham (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret), Iain Armitage (Young Sheldon).

This year’s winner: Madeleine Yuna Voyles (The Creator)

One of the top performances of the year came from one of the youngest actors out there. Madeleine Yuna Voyles was amazing in the sci-fi movie. She was just nine years old and she made her acting debut in this movie and she was absolutely the best part of his movie. The Creator did not make a lot of money, but it was a great movie and much of that greatness came from this little girl.

2023 The John Carter Memorial Award

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Flop.

It is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the world of movies. At times it is really a matter of opinion. Others it is painfully apparent as to whether a film has flopped. Sadly, 2023 saw more than its share of flops.

Truthfully, even some of the better movies of the year could be considered a flop this year because of the way the box office seems to be going. I know that there will be some films on my Top 30 films list of the year that would be considered a flop. It has been a tough year.

Even the juggernaut of film companies, Disney, has lost its share of money on movies this year. If it can happen to Disney, it can happen to anyone.

The excess of streaming services can be blamed for some of these flops. Who wants to go to the theater when they can just wait a few months and see the film on Disney + or on Max?

The John Carter Memorial Award is given to the film chosen by EYG as the biggest flop of the year. This year was a tough decision.

Past years had some tough choices too.

John Carter Memorial Award

Previous winners:  John Carter, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Lone Ranger, A Million Ways to Die in the West, Expendables 3, Jem and the Holograms, Pan, Rock the Casbah, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Robin Hood (2018), Mortal Engines, Playmobil: The Movie, The Rhythm Section, Reminiscence, Strange World  

This year had plenty of runners-up.

Dis-Honorable mention: One of the reasons that these films are considered flops is the size of the budget. Some of these movies just spent too much money and had no chance of making it back. One example was the fifth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was a decent movie, but it seemed as if no one was going to go see it. Certainly not enough to make up a budget of reportedly 294.7 million dollars, not counting marketing. Another film with a budget too high was the first official flop of the MCU, The Marvels. I liked that movie a lot, but it did not make it to $100 million domestically. Killers of the Flower Moon also did not make much money domestically with a considerably larger budget than this type of film usually has. Shazam: Fury of the Gods did not succeed on building on a successful first film. Disney’s latest film Wish should have done much better business than it did, just showing that Disney is struggling to put together that classic animated hit. Big George Foreman only made $5.7 million worldwide on a $32 million dollar budget. I did not see it either. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One was one of the best films of the year, but it just did not make much moolah.

Of all of these, though, there is one that should have been way more successful and should have been a lynchpin of the films this summer. 

Winner: The Flash  

This was a huge DC Comics film, featuring one of the top characters of the company. The Flash had a nine year TV show preceding this. And yet, it was as if everything was playing against The Flash for Warner Brothers. Starting with the craziness of its star’s life over the last couple of years. Ezra Miller made headlines with his behavior and it reflected poorly on The Flash. Though not the sole reason for this film’s downfall, it did play a part. Secondly, the film was not very good. It had some parts that were solid, but a film that saw the return of Michael Keaton as Batman should never have had this much trouble. Third, everyone knew that this was a film that was staggering to the end as the whole DCEU was being revamped into the DCU by James Gunn and this film would not go on. 

I’ve always liked the Flash. He is one of my top DC characters. This was, at best for me, okay and I could see the numerous problems with it. I never would have guessed that it would only make $55 million opening weekend. 

That makes this the John Carter Memorial Award winner for 2023.

2023 I Am Groot Voice Acting Award

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“I am Groot” Voice Acting Award

Previous Winners:  Robin Williams (Aladdin- honorary), Auli’i Cravalho (Moana), Andy Serkis (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes),  Josh Brolin (Avengers: Infinity War), Ryan Reynolds (Detective Pikachu), Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian), Jeffrey Wright and Chadwick Boseman (What If…?), Antonio Banderas (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish)

Every year, there are talented voice actors who create characters with their voices. In this category, we include animated movies, CGI characters, and even live action characters whose face you never see.

There are always a lot of great choices. Here are the Honorable Mentions…

Honorable Mentions: A couple of actors from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse included a great performance from Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen and Oscar Isaac as Spider-Man 2099. Vin Diesel does a great job as Groot both in Guardians Vol. 3 and I Am Groot animated shorts. The iconic Peter Cullen brought Optimus Prime back to the live action Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The four young actors, Micah Abbey, Shannon Brown Jr., Nicolas Canter, and Brady Noon in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem were brought together in the studio to do their voice over together. Daveed Diggs appeared as Sebastian in the live action Little Mermaid flick. If I had a basic runner-up, it would be Jack Black in The Super Marion Bros. film.

And the winner: Bradley Cooper (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3)

Rocket was the emotional heart of that movie and Bradley Cooper brought his best work from the franchise. Though he did not record the really young Rocket, he did the majority of the character and did the most painful parts. He has been exceptional as the raccoon and he is a big reason why Rocket is a major character in the MCU.

The 2023 Christopher Reeve Memorial Comic Book Movie of the Year

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2023saw a bit of a decline in the subgenre of the comic book movie… at least in the eyes of some.

Personally, I enjoyed most of the comic book movies of 2023, and while there were none that were unbelievable, I do not subscribe to the theory of the narrative of the “comic book movie fatigue” that some have been pushing for nearly a decade now. It is not a theory to which I would agree as it just feels like more toxicity than anything else.

So among the films this year, I have a few that I considered for the Christopher Reeve Memorial Comic Book Movie of the Year. Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania fielded a lot of hatred, much more than it deserved. The Flash had some good moments (but not the baby-hospital rescue part), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was one of the best movies of the year.

Previous winners are as follows:

The Christopher Reeve Memorial Comic Book Movie of the Year

Previous Winners: Batman (1989), Dick Tracy (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Batman Returns (1992), Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), The Crow (1994), Batman Forever (1995), The Phantom (1996), Men in Black (1997), Blade (1998), Mystery Men (1999), X-Men (2000), From Hell (2001), Spider-Man (2002), X2: X-Men United (1993), Spider-Man 2 (1994), V for Vendetta (2005), 300 (2006), Superman: Doomsday (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), Watchmen (2009), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Captain America: First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Captain America: Winter Soldier & Guardians of the Galaxy [tie] (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Logan (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

So in 2023, the Christopher Reeve Memorial Comic Book Movie of the Year is…

Winner: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a tremendous conclusion for the James Gunn-led trilogy. The emotional backstory of Rocket informed the whole film and we truly got a chance to see how vital that character was to the overall franchise. There were some beautiful moments in the film, including many of the moments between Rocket and Lyla.

Guardians Vol. 3 was able to blend humor and tragedy together into a wonderfully epic tale.

2023 Confirmed…or it it?

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In the world of the internet, sometimes stories gain a life of its own. Thus, the award called Confirmed… or is it?. This is the former winner.

Confirmed… or is it? Award

Previous Winner: Mephisto is in WandaVision (2021), Fantastic Four has been cast (2022)

I was originally going to give this award to the story that CM Punk, fired from AEW earlier this year, was going to show up in Chicago at Survivor Series and return to the WWE. It sure felt like a ridiculous idea considering the way that Punk had left the WWE almost ten years before.

And then he showed up.

So much for a Confirmed.. or is it? Award for that. It’ll probably show up in the WWE awards later.

That meant I needed a new winner. So … looking back at last year’s I see a nearly repeat potential winner:

Winner: Everyone is cast as Reed Richards.

People have been crazed about the casting of Mister Fantastic in the upcoming Fantastic Four MCU movie. It kicked off as John Krasinski. He was a fan cast and appeared in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Then there was Adam Driver. It sounded as if this was a sure thing. Then, it wasn’t. Then there was Penn Badgley from You. Ryan Gosling was speculated. So was Jake Gyllenhaal. Matt Smith.

The most recent actor signed for Reed Richards unofficially is Pedro Pascal.

Well… we’ll see.

2023 EYG Kurt Russell De-Aging Award

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The Kurt Russell EGO De-Aging Award

Previous Winners:  Robert DeNiro (The Irishman), Mark Hamill (The Mandalorian), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things season 4)

Technology has been changing every year. Taking an older actor and de-aging them is a huge step forward instead of just putting a funny wig on them.

Runner-Up: Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). I expected this to be the winner this year. I even made a comment on last year’s award that this was going to win in 2023. And it was great work, but the winner just looked that much better.

Winner: Samuel L. Jackson (Secret Invasion)

There was not a lot of great coming out of Secret Invasion, but the look of Nick Fury in flashbacks was just astounding. It was even better than his appearance in the movie Captain Marvel. These flashbacks made Nick look like he absolutely did in the past.

If only the rest of Secret Invasion was as excellent as this de-aging technology.

2023 EYG Star of the Year

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The EYG Star of the Year crosses many areas of content. We’ve had several winners over the years such as:

EYG Star of the Year

Previous Winners:  Gal Gadot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jennifer Lawrence, Marvel Studios, J.J. Abrams, Josh Brolin, Damon Lindelof & Regina King, Netflix, Andrew Garfield, Tom Cruise

This is the first year where we get a straight singer as our EYG Star of the Year.

But first, we have one runner up.

Runner-Up: Pedro Pascal. I considered him as the choice considering his roles on the Mandalorian and The Last of Us are iconic. Had Pedro been officially announced as Reed Richards, which he is rumored to be cast as, he may have aced this award. However, that official announcement has not yet come.

Our EYG Star of the Year is very worthy this year. She has the most successful tour in years (grossing about 2.2 billion in North American tickets alone) and parlayed that tour into a massively successful concert film ($96 million opening weekend domestically) that brought tons of fans back to the theaters. In fact, this very week, she has been named Time’s Person of the Year.

EYG Star of the Year: Taylor Swift

Top 12 YouTube Shows of 2023

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YouTube has become a land of content providers and I loved plenty of shows that pop up on the site. Here are my top 12 choices for 2023.

#12. Late to the Party. A reactor channel. Like most of these reactors, it depends on what they are watching. The thing is… there are dozens if not hundreds of reaction shows and this is one of the best.

#11. Ashleigh Burton. The second reactor of the list. Ashleigh is very entertaining and fun to watch. It still depends on what she is watching if I watch it, but I loved watching her watch the Marvel stuff this year.

#10. Fatman Beyond. Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin star in this show. I used to watch this more but the show is always very long, which makes it more difficult to watch with all of the other content. I do love the pair though.

#9. The Hot Mike. Scoops galore. The show from John Rocha and Jeff Snyder is always fire because they are both very opinionated and not afraid to speak their minds, even if what their minds are saying is very controversial.

#8. Alex Hefner’s TV & Movie Vault. Another reactor channel and he has watched some really fun films and TV shows this year. Watching him see the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time was epic, even he was more surprised at the reveal of Luke and Leia as brother-sister than he was for Vader being Luke’s father.

#7. Reel Rejects. Citizens of the Reject Nation… Another of the reactor channels, this includes Greg Alba and John Humphrey, as well as other guests. I loved watching them react to Loki season two, One Piece, and even the weaker Secret Invasion. John and Greg have some excellent analysis of the shows and give strong opinions.

#6. FYC. Stands for For Your Consideration. It is an Oscar preview show featuring Scott Mantz, Perri Nemiroff, and Jeff Snyder. They discuss the potential nominees and whom they believe will win. The trio’s chemistry is clearly the glue that holds this show together. They also did Emmy Awards this year and more the merrier.

#5. The Geek Buddies. AAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY! John Rocha, Michael Vogel and Shannon McClung do reactions, reviews and a weekly show where they talk about the biggest news from pop culture. Again, the key to the show is the chemistry between the Geek Buddies.

#4. Preview’d. This was last year’s number one. It did slip a touch because they decided to stop much of what they did this year for the actor’s strike. Even still, the reaction to Jeopardy Masters was hilarious.

#3. Settle the Score. Host Matt Knost and musical director Andy Merryweather bring a weekly show featuring well known movie and YouTube personalities competing with musical trivia. Merryweather is truly an amazing talent and the show is always a lot of fun.

#2. Ups & Downs. Simon Miller from What Culture Wrestling has the finger of power and he watches wrestling shows and gives the good bits an up and the bad bits a down. While I only watch WWE Ups and Downs, he does one for RAW, Smackdown, NXT, and the Pay Per Views (premium live events). Miller is a great host and brings a definite “Positive Pete” energy that makes me feel warm and fuzzy in my tum tum. A big up for Simon Miller!

#1. Bonus Action Vol. 1. It seemed a strange idea. Jay and Adam from Preview’d had been planning this out for quite a while and it came together this year. Eight episodes (although there were three prequels too) of the two of them playing D & D with their group of comedian buddies. Who would have thought this would be as compelling as it turned out. There were six brilliant characters that were played to the hilt by the six players. David Armstrong is the friendly neighborhood DM and Jay Schmidt and Adam Lash are joined by Je-ron Young, Jason Speena, Amanda Nicholas, and Josh Hurley. This is the show where friends don’t let friends adventure alone.

2023 The Don’t Feed the Trolls: Insane Rage Scandal of the Year

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The internet can be an ugly place. Yes, it has its awesome moments, but it allows some individuals (or groups) rage against things that they do not like. Hence, this award came into being three years ago.

The term “Trolls” has been given to those on the Internet that go out of their way to speak down to something. Previous winners of this award include:

The Don’t Feed the Trolls: Insane Internet Rage Scandal of the Year

Previous Winner:  Baby Yoda eats frog’s eggs (2020), Masters of the Universe: Revelations part one (2021), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)

Twitter purchased by Elon Musk, becomes X

There are few ends of the internet with as many Trolls than we saw with Twitter. Only billionaire Elon Musk chose to purchase the social media site and immediately made some changes that created an even more toxic environment, enabling the trolls to run wild.

The issues occurring on Twitter even drove millions of people, temporarily, to Threads, a new online community. It was huge for a minute but it could not sustain the momentum.

Then Musk decided that he wanted to put his own stamp on Twitter, so he changed the name to X.

X? Yes, X.

Twitter… errr, I mean… X can still have its moments. Unfortunately, the hate is free as well.

Year in Review: 2022 movies in 2023

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Every year there are movies that I missed from the previous year or that I watched once the calendar switched from December to January. Those movies I do not consider for the 2023 year end lists even though I watched it in 2023.

This number has increased since I started doing the June Swoon, this year the second annual June Swoon included 30 unseen films from 2022.

Here are the top 12 films that I watched during 2023 that were actually listed as films from 2022.

#12. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. A fun, sexy romp with Emma Thompson working through some sexual satisfactions with a sex worker. Thompson is always fun and she is great here.

#11. The Pale Blue Eyes. I love Edgar Allan Poe and seeing this film provide one of the best versions of the author ever on screen. Plus, Christian Bale.

#10. Honor Society. One of the biggest surprises of the year. A film that I never thought I would enjoy turned out to be really funny and a bit of an unexpected shock at the end. Featured Angourie Rice and Gaten Matarazzo.

#9. On the Count of Three. Two friends decide that life is not worth living and they agreed to kill each other after a last day taking care of loose ends. Dark comedy at its best.

#8. Brian & Charles. Brian invents a robot named Charles out of a washing machine. This is a top notch British (Wales actually) comedy and it very funny.

#7. Decision to Leave. Epic Korean film where a detective investigating a man’s death ends up developing feelings for the man’s widow. Story is very smart and well designed.

#6. The Duke. Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren are an old couple whose marriage was strained by life. Broadbent ends up stealing a valuable painting, holding it for ransom.

#5. A Man Called Otto. Tom Hanks is a grumpy man who is preparing to commit suicide but a new neighbor throws a wrench into his plans and his life.

#4. Breaking. John Boyega is a Marine Corps veteran who holds a bank hostage. Based on a true story, Boyega does an amazing job in this portrayal.

#3. Women Talking. A film about women talking does not sound that compelling. It absolutely is. A religious community is shocked to find out the secret being kept by the men.

#2. To Leslie. Andrea Riseborough received an Oscar nomination out of nowhere for this role and, after watching the movie, I can see why. She was amazing and Marc Maron was very good too.

#1. Living. Bill Nighy is unbelievable in this movie as a man who receives some bad news and it changes his life and the lives of many people around him because of his choices. This was such a great film with an Oscar-worthy performance from Nighy.

2023 EYG Year in Review

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Every year after Thanksgiving here at EYG, we start the annual Year in Review. The best and worst of the year in TV, Movies, Pop Culture, Wrestling, Animation, Music, Comic Books are organized into several lists, including the Best and Worst Movies of 2023. This is always one of my favorite times of the year and the project is such fun.

Of course, these choices for best and worst are only my opinions. If you disagree, that is fine. All of this is subjective and one person’s garbage is another person’s art.

2023 has been a really solid year at EYG. We started off the year with a Genre-ary DailyView of Sci-Fi movies. We did a DailyView of Twilight Zone episodes. We watched both seasons of The Bear. We have done rewatches of Moonlighting, The X-Files, and Picket Fences. We did the Comic Catch-Up and transformed that into the Comic Cavalcade. Of course, we have been doing movie reviews weekly as well as watching TV shows such as Loki, Secret Invasion, Gen V, The Last of Us, Goosebumps, Bodies, The Fall of the House of Usher, One Piece, Sweet Tooth, The Silo, Ted Lasso, American Horror Story: Delicate, Bonus Action, Only Murders in the Building, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Invincible, Fargo, I Am Groot, among others.

We have multiple awards we give out. These range from EYG Star of the Year to I See Dead People Award (Best child actor). Some of these awards we have given out for years and there may be some brand new ones this year.

These posts go more active in December. There may be a few in November, but there are a lot of movies that I have to see in December before the year comes to an end.

I always love the Year in Review. It is a chance to look back and remind myself of everything that happened and have a chance to look forward t what is ahead.

Happy 2023