Another week, another new show consumed and ready for digestion. Over the past year, I’ve been on a decidedly British kick, with Misfits, Sherlock and Doctor Who (well, two seasons of it) under my belt. I’ve loved them all to various degrees, and so I was ready to accept another UK recommendation, Luther, with open arms.

It was suggested to me by a couple of readers when I was talking about these previous shows, and Idris Elba, whom I’ve loved since The Wire, actually just won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of troubled cop John Luther. Surely, a recipe for success.

Luther is by no means a bad show. It’s very well made, well acted and a few of the story arcs are actually quite gripping. At only ten episodes total across two seasons, it manages to be a serial that allows for stories that are more complex than a 40-minute murder mystery.

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Films like Kick-Ass and Super are enjoyable because they imagine what it might be like if the particularly brave or mentally ill decided to become superheroes despite having no actual powers. The reverse side of that, an everyman developing superhuman abilities, has been the subject of many comics throughout history, and is the origin story for the majority of our now-classic heroes.

But what if comic book lore was given a decidedly human twist? What if the people given those incredible powers were just three kids from your high school history class? Chronicle aims to well, chronicle what exactly that journey might look like.

For as much as “found footage” films are derided as of late as the newest trend in movie making to be exploited, I would argue that the fact remains that the majority of the films that use the tactic are in fact quite good. It may be personal taste, but I’ve very much enjoyed movies like Blair Witch, Rec, Paranormal Activity and so on. The only real film to use the style and breakout of the horror mold has been creature feature Cloverfield, but now we get to see a new genre through that lens, the superhero film.

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A long time ago, there was a game that was almost going to be the singular reason I bought a PS3. I loved the first two God of Wars, engrossed by not only the addictive combat and sheer brutality, but also bywhat I found to be an especially compelling story. The creation of a modern Greek myth could have been laughable, but Kratos was the singular most badass video game character created in the last ten years, and had an epic tale to match.

Knowing God of War III was on the horizon for the PS3, it was enough to tempt me to make the purchase. But for years I stuck with my Xbox, and never got to experience the final chapter in the saga until now. It’s my last major exclusive title I’ve put off playing on the PS3, outside of the Shadow/Ico HD pack. Does it live up to my anticipation? Read on.

I often complain with a good number of series that even if something was good once, by the third or fourth or seventh time you come around, it’s just not all that great anymore. It’s been true for games like Gears of War, Call of Duty and even Uncharted to a certain extent. God of War is somehow different, though. Even if little has changed across three console titles and two handheld games, the formula is SO good and SO fun in the moment, there’s rarely a time you can actually say the repetitiveness has made it boring.

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It’s been a while since I’ve felt the need to use the world “manly” to describe a movie. The last such occasion was for The Expendables, which crammed so much testosterone into every frame I walked out of the theater with a fresh coat of chest hair.

But while The Expendables was traditionally “manly” in an obvious, chest thumping, gun blasting way, The Grey is a far more understated way of demonstrating physical, and often more importantly mental, toughness.

A plane crash leaves only seven men alive in the frozen tundra of Alaska, all employees of an oil company attempting to head home. Injured and freezing, they must make their way south, battling the cold and a far more immediate foe: wolves.

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It was a combination of extreme boredom and the nagging itch to level up in something that drove me back to the wilds of Skyrim for one more adventure. I’ve spent the past week or so with an entirely new character, and in the process, tried to get a different perspective on the game I’ve pretty much talked to death already.

This was my third such venture. My original character, a beastly Nord barbarian, got all the way up to level 40, clad himself in Daedric armor, and was the savior of the land from world-eating dragons, master of every guild and collector of every Daedric artifact after a hundred hours. My second effort, a female high elf mage, got less playing time, as I grew tired of the cumbersome spell switching process, and once I discovered how easy each school of magic was to level exploit, I got bored quickly when all my stats shot to a hundred in an hour or two.

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We need female action stars. Just look at the cast of The Expendables if you don’t believe me. It’s full of burly men who each have been in the lead of a half dozen classic action films over the past thirty years, with nary a woman to be seen.

There are some that try, but only halfheartedly. Beckinsale and Jovovitch only suit up for ass kicking when their respective Underworld and Resident Evil franchises give them a sufficient paycheck to return. Other actresses like Jolie, Weaver and Thurman have dabbled, but only in extremely select roles, and action is not their main forte.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see an attempt to build a female action star from scratch. Steven Soderbergh has enlisted MMA fighter and former American Gladiator Gina Carano to try and reinvent the action heroine, in a no nonsense, no spandex way. And it almost works. If only she had a better movie to brawl in.

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In the time I’m spending twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Mass Effect 3 to make its glorious debut, I figured I had a few options gaming-wise. I could throw another hundred hours into Skyrim with  my third character (stealth cat bitches!). I could beat my  head against a wall (ie. play Modern Warfare 3 for more than twenty minutes). Or I could catch up on a few of the better, overlooked titles from the year.

I dabbled in the first two, but am starting to try the latter. One of the alleged best games of the year I missed wasn’t actually a triple A title (as really, I didn’t miss many of those this fall). Rather, it was an indie game available on PC and Xbox Live called Bastion.

I hadn’t heard much about it, but it was landing on many people’s top ten games of the year list. I don’t often check out that many indie titles, but when I’ve taken the plunge for games like Torchlight and Braid, I haven’t regretted it.

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It’s been a great year for discovering new television shows, and I mainly have the Brits to thank for that. I discovered teenage superhero comedy, Misfits, which I found to be distastefully delightful. I’m working my way through six seasons of Doctor Who, which is really starting to grow on me. But finally, I’ve discovered yet another British show that is far and away the best new program I’ve seen out of any country in the last few years.

A modern day reboot of Sherlock Holmes sounds like a bit of a boring venture, as I hate procedurals with a passion. I can’t stand shows like CSI or Law and Order that have one mystery per forty minute episode, and everyone stands around looking at hair fibers until they can prove one of the four people they interviewed is guilty.

It’s beyond formulaic, and generally painfully dull. I was worried that perhaps the Brits were looking to us Americans for a change, and would set this new Sherlock to be clever detective that solved a mystery an hour and that would be that.

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Whoops.

I thought that by seeing over 60 or so movies this year, including nearly all of the “best” ones, I was in fair shape to write my Top Ten of 2011 list. Sometimes I’ll see a film after the fact that probably should have been included, but I’ve never have a made an omission this glaring, and I felt I needed a whole post/review to explain why The Artist is in fact the best film of the year, even if you haven’t heard of it. You will.

The film is topping many critics’ lists, and is racking up more award nominations than I can count. With a mostly unknown cast and director, and it not playing at any theaters near me for months, I figured it was an arthouse fluke. When I heard it was a modern day silent film, I figured the gimmick must be what was drawing all the attention, and what I’d find would probably be the height of pretention.

But you don’t have to be a film snob or classic cinema buff to appreciate The Artist. Despite it looking and sounding (well, not sounding, rather) like a 1920s feature, it can be enjoyed by anyone of any age or knowledge of film.

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The onslaught of video games this past fall caused me to put my recently acquired PS3 on the shelf for a stretch that has only ended recently. Though titles like Battlefield, Modern Warfare and Skyrim were available on both systems, years of loyalty and comfort with my Xbox 360 caused me to buy all cross-platform games for it rather than Playstation.

Now, I’ve finished with most of them (I’ll get around to you eventually I suppose, Assassin’s Creed Revelations), and I’m able to catch up with the one PS-exclusive title out this fall that I cared about missing, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

If you’ve missed my thoughts on the previous two Uncharted games, you can find them here and here. It’s a series I hadn’t been able to play for years, but I’m happy I finally managed to catch up with it at last. And now with Naughty Dog’s next project being the mysterious apocalypse thriller “The Last of Us” rather than another Drake adventure, I think we might have seen the last of him for quite some time.

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