Blood Work started in June of 2014 with the sole purpose of sharing my love of film, comics, kaiju, and more. That first seven months were sort of a beta test. This year marks the first full year of Blood Work and this year I feel Blood Work has finally found its voice and knows what it wants to be. Let's kick off the new year with a celebration of the best of 2015! So without further adieu... on with the blood!
KAIJU OF THE YEAR
(As the category implies this is merely a fun award. We here at Blood Work love all kaiju)
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| Artwork by the great Yuji Kaida |
The kaiju reviewed this last year were:
And the Award for Kaiju of the year goes to...
GAMERA
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Atlantean engineered Guardian of the Universe. Gamera is one of our favorite kaiju and one of cinema's greatest monsters! Check out the concept footage for the next Gamera film hopefully coming to completion this year!
COMIC OF THE YEAR
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| Artwork by Alan Davis |
The comic books reviewed last year were:
Legendary Star-Lord
Thanos: The Infinity Relativity
The Indestructible Hulk
Guardians 3000
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
The Immortal Iron Fist
The highest rated comic book reviewed in 2015 is...
THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST
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| Artwork by David Aja |
In 2006 Marvel Comics Group released one of my all time favorite comics books, the Immortal Iron Fist. This book is almost a perfect example of how great comic books should be. It also established the hero IRON FIST as one of my personal favorite super heroes. Hopefully this next year we will finally receive the promised NETFLIX original series of Iron Fist!
THE HIGHEST RATED COMIC BOOK PRODUCED IN 2015...
GUARDIANS 3000
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| Artwork by Alex Ross |
Dan Abnett finally returns to the cosmic Marvel stage giving the original Guardians of the Galaxy their due. This was the first good cosmic Marvel book since 2011's ANNIHILATORS: EARTHFALL and was truly worthy of being called cosmic. The comic was short lived but still quite remarkable in its brief life. 2015 was a strange year for comic books in that Marvel interrupted nearly all of their comic books and subsequently cancelled them all for their mega event SECRET WARS, which has yet to finish. Guardians 3000, like so many others, was an unfortunate casualty of this. The story has continued in the latest book from Marvel GUARDIANS OF INFINITY (my most anticipated book of the All New All Different rebranding of Marvel.
VERSUS BATTLE OF THE YEAR
This year at Blood Work we began a new series of posts where we pitted classic warrior cultures against each other a la SPIKE TV's DEADLIEST WARRIOR. I asked all my coworkers their opinions, tallied the votes, and then wrote an original story based off the voting outcome. Here's the list of Versus Battles from 2015:
Valkyrie VS Amazon
It was the closest of all of the surveys and perhaps my personal favorite of the stories. Again this was something of a writing exercise and completely fun for me and hopefully fun for everyone else involved. The Valkyrie VS Amazon story was also the first Versus story where I found myself wanting to revisit these characters and continue writing the story. Indiana Jones Vs Lara Croft comes in a close second!
BLOODLIEST TV SERIES OF THE YEAR
The television shows reviewed last year were, and this includes Anime, regular broadcast television, and premium original series like Netflix. I know I should probably separate animation and live action and perhaps I will in the future but for this year we're lumping all of TV together.
The shows reviewed last year were:
Jessica Jones
Daredevil
WGN's Salem
Blood-C
Mobile Suit Gundam 0079
And the bloodiest television series of 2015 goes to...
SALEM
This was a difficult decision to make. I didn't review a whole lot of television this year but the shows that I did review were incredible. The two Netflix originals Daredevil and Jessica Jones were outstanding! Daredevil especially was just as good if not better than many of the super hero movies being made today. And of course this year I finally watched the original Gundam series that started it all, the Star Wars from Japan. But the original WGN series Salem was simply amazing. Maybe it's the fact that it appeals to my love of horror but I dare say my love super heroes is on equal if not greater footing. Salem is easily the scariest and best depiction of witches I've ever seen.
HORROR FILM OF THE YEAR
This is going to be a tricky category. Do I include all the horror films I've reviewed, the old and the new discoveries? For this year I think I will include only the horror films I had not seen prior to this year. We'll save the rest for a Top 10 List in the future. So technically this category is Best New Horror Discovery of 2015.
My new horror discoveries this year were:
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Insidious Chapter 3
It Follows
Crimson Peak
Burying The Ex
The Mountain of the Cannibal God
Horns
Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead
And the bloodiest horror film of the year goes to...
Crimson Peak
Stiff competition between the films here as I rated nearly all of them a 6 out of 10. Crimson Peak edges out the others because it offers something truly rare in horror cinema. If the distributors of the film had marketed it correctly reviews would be more positive. Guillermo Del Toro approaches his films with a certain purity that movie executives don't seem to understand. Crimson Peak is another amazing film from Del Toro and one I hope garners more recognition and praise with time. Runner up horror film this year goes to Burying the Ex because it is so much fun and every horror movie buff's dream come true.
MOVIE OF THE YEAR
Here it is. This is the big one. Blood Work's choice for the best movie of the year! Let me just begin by saying there were a lot of good movies that came out this year. I tried to see everything on my "Must Watch" list but sadly I missed a lot. Among the failures to see have been CREED, KRAMPUS, HATEFUL 8 (which fortunately I can still make it to), TERMINATOR GENISYS, GREEN INFERNO, and I'm sure more. But here are the movies I did make it to this year...
It Follows
Furious 7
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Jurassic World
Mad Max: Fury Road
Ant-Man
Spectre
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Furious 7
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Jurassic World
Mad Max: Fury Road
Ant-Man
Spectre
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I wish I could say this was difficult to decide because if that were the case than that would mean there were some great movies this year. Compared to 2014 I feel 2015 fell a bit short on quality albeit 2015 may be the greatest year in cinema history financially. But just because a movie does well at the Box Office doesn't mean anything in terms of quality. Still, there were a lot of good movies this year even though I was disappointed with some. Really it came down to two movies: the runner up this year and one bloody good experience goes to Ant-Man. I loved Ant-Man. Far and away the best super hero film of the year. But there is one film that take away the crown:
The best film of 2015 goes to...
I can't say enough about this movie. No other movie this year comes close to rivaling how entertaining and utterly spectacular this film was. We've seen some pretty amazing films in the years gone by and we've seen some truly epic action set-pieces. But we've never seen anything like Mad Max: Fury Road. The tension. The pace. The sheer spectacle. And most of it is real. Very very little CGI went into the action scenes. And when you see it you'll think "these people are crazy!" Everybody who worked on this film poured their heart and soul into it and it shows. Mad Max: Fury Road deserves some kind of Oscar or Academy Award for flawless execution. And for being totally frickin' metal.
NINJA OF THE YEAR
In case you didn't know, we here at Blood Work love Ninjas! Shinobi, Kunoichi, Mutant Turtle, video game, movie, cartoon, and Lego. We love NINJAS! So, it is my great pleasure to finish off this year's award ceremony with perhaps the greatest award I can bestow and the one award that's been on everybody's minds: Who is the Ninja of the year? If you've been keeping up you'll remember that we explored a lot about ninjas this past year. Here's what we posted on our favorite topic in 2015:
(The film responsible for the status of ninjas today in pop culture.)
(A brief examination of female ninjas and how cool and dangerous these women were.)
(A survey in which I asked coworkers who they thought would win and a story based on the outcome.)
(A list of my favorite fighting game males, some of which are ninjas!)
(A list of my favorite fighting game females, many of which are ninjas!)
(I'm cheating a bit here since this was published in 2014 but I had to include it.)
And the ninja of year award goes to...
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| Artwork and character design by Makoto Tsuchibayashi |
The hero of the Playstation 2 video game SHINOBI. It's a good thing this is a fun award because I completely cheated by including him. He's my all time favorite ninja. Since this is my first ever award ceremony for Blood Work it's only right that I end this Award show with officially crowning one of my favorite heroes as the best!
Thank you all for joining me along this journey over the last year and a half of Blood Work. 2016 looks to be an exciting year for movies, not so sure about comic books. Whether it's new or old discoveries, if it's cool and up my alley expect to see it posted here! I hope you all have enjoyed the posts whether you agreed with my ego-inflated opinions or not. Thank you all and keep the blood pumping.
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