I’m still here! And so are you! That’s awesome, welcome back. To give you an idea of time, I’m starting writing this on Sunday 7th January, fully a week into the new year. It’s unlikely I’ll finish it today, and with the aim of posting this as soon as possible (before February would be great) I’m going to keep things comparatively brief this year. As years go, 2023 wasn’t the best. In my personal life there were some massive dips (the only grandfather I’ve ever known passed in February, the first truly significant death I’ve experienced in well over two decades) and I don’t think my year ever fully recovered, but we’ve all kept going, life goes on, and the rest of the year saw us take some wonderful trips back to Scotland, see some shows (Back to the Future and Groundhog Day are both excellent) and welcome a new nephew into the family. None of this sounds like it has anything to do with the resolutions I set this time last year, or my plans for the future, so let’s curtail this and move things along, shall we?

List films: Review, however briefly, some of the 12 blind spots and 10 DVR’d List films

It seems I’ve started a new unintentional tradition of pretty much immediately forgetting my resolutions just after setting them. I could’ve sworn my only resolution in terms of List films was to review anything, just get at least one film crossed off the List, which I did with The Lighthouse (after watching it for Deep Blue Sea – The Podcast). It turns out that I also intended to watch 22 specific films, some on DVD and some recorded on my TV, and that I’d write just a short paragraph on each, not necessarily a full review unless the mood took me. Well, The Lighthouse was amongst those films, chosen because I’d had it recorded for a while, only to discover that the recording had failed so I ended up streaming it elsewhere. This is definitely a failed resolution because, as Meatloaf definitely never sang, one out of twenty two is bad.

Non-list films: Watch 12 specific DVDs:

Also no. Not even close. I didn’t finish watching any of the twelve DVDs from the pile/bookcase of unwatched films. I did succeed with my plan of watching Blade, which was pretty great, but I fell asleep halfway through Blade II and didn’t feel compelled to go back and finish it. I used to love watching and collecting DVDs, but the only ones I’ve bought this past year have been for podcasting purposes, when I couldn’t find the film elsewhere. I’m finding there are fewer and fewer new releases that I can see myself re-watching again and again in the future, but hopefully if my mind does change I’ll still be able to purchase physical copies. Time will tell, I guess.

New releases: Go to the cinema at least once a month:

I did it! I saw twenty-one films in the cinema last year. I’ll list them all in my eventual 2023 movie ranking post (I’m still catching up on a few I’ve missed). I feel like I got my money’s worth from the Odeon membership deal, but I doubt I’ll continue it next year as I feel I only saw a substantial swath of this batch’s films because it wouldn’t cost me any additional money to see them, but then I ended up taking more time than I’d have liked to. For instance, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is a film I never needed to see, but I wasted half a day off going to see it, just because.

TV: Finish off some of the started shows:

Yes, partially. I still haven’t started Deadwood, Twin Peaks or Quantum Leap (sorry, Rob), but of the list of shows I’d partially watched this time last year I have now successfully crossed off:
House of the Dragon season 1
Westworld season 4
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia seasons 12-15
Inside No. 9 season 7
Avenue 5 season 2
Rick and Morty season 6
Ghosts 2022 Christmas special and season 5
What We Do in the Shadows season 2-3
The White Lotus seasons 1-2
The Tourist seasons 1-2
I still have the likes of Barry, Succession and Fargo to finish off.

Books: Finish reading two books:
Unbelievably, I’ve met and even exceeded my reading goal for the year, mainly because it was very achievable, yay! Not only have I finished reading two of the three books I was reading this time last year, I also finished the first “book” of Les Miserables, and three additional books as well! Here are some mini reviews:
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell – Not as laugh-out-loud hysterical as I’d been led to believe, but still enjoyable, and I have a newfound understanding of how I may have infuriated staff in bookshops in the past.
The Prophecy: Part One: Lost by my friend Heather Baxendale-Walsh (H.B. Walsh) – Fantasy books aren’t usually my genre (outside of the more comedic Discworld series) but I supported my friend, bought her book, and ended up really enjoying it, so much that I’ll be seeking out the sequel soon. There’s a lot of Buffy inspiration, fun new character-types I’ve not come across elsewhere and an environment that could be depressing but ends up being engaging and cinematic.
Con Air by Richard Woodley – Just watch the film, there’s nothing interesting for you here, although it’s a quick read (one long train journey). It doesn’t even confirm what Baby-O’s crime was!
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson – A recommendation from Rebecca Sharp, this is a very enjoyable book of two interspersed halves. The first details the exploits of Allan Karlsson, the eponymous centenarian, as he escapes the confines of his nursing home and heads on a remarkable adventure, whilst the second takes a brisker route through the many years and brushes with historical events that led him there. There’s a definite Forrest Gump feel to it, with far less stealing glory from African American culture. I preferred the half set in present day, but overall this was a fun and fairly quick read, and I’ll probably be seeking out some of Jonasson’s other works in future.
Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie – I wanted to finish this before watching last year’s A Haunting in Venice. The film is very good, wisely taking only minimal details from the frankly awful book. It’s dull, with too many thinly-drawn and easily confused characters, so when the eventual culprit was revealed my response was “Oh, who’s that then?”

Sites: Clear the New LAMBs backlog, build the LAMB table:
No. None of this. I’ve been a bad shepherd.

House: Complete 12 specific jobs:
Some yes, some no. Here’s the jobs we completed:

• Front garden fence (mount onto wall, paint)
• Front step (replace, re-tile)
• Redecorate bathroom (add skirting board, re-paint everything)
• Redecorate office (repaint, fit new shelving)

We started out strong, but tapered off and I’m shocked how little we actually crossed off, I feel like I’ve done loads of DIY all year! And it turns out we didn’t actually finish re-painting the bathroom and office, damn.

Exercise: Run every other day, exercise more, listen to more music:
Heck yes to the running and exercise! I ran at least every other day in 2023 and smashed my running records. Previously my running record was a total of 2,141km (1,330miles) in 2020, but last year I ran 2,506km (1,557miles)! I’ve no idea how I managed so many, other than I listened to my body a bit more and subsequently suffered fewer shin splint set-backs. Exercise-wise I kept up with (and occasionally led) the monthly exercise Facebook group, which included, amongst others, two months of at least 100 burpees a day, which I wouldn’t recommend. I can’t say I’ve noticed much of a difference, right up until October when the only exercises I undertook were cardio (running, cycling, walking and some paddle-boarding), at which point I noticed a massive drop-off in fitness level due to no longer doing at least some push-ups and crunches every day. The moral of that story is variety is key, and never stop exercising. I had planned on exploring and pruning my entire music collection over the course of the exercise year, but soon lost track of what I’d listened to, so this was dropped almost immediately.

Sleep: 5.5 hours a night, closer to 6:
Not really. I mean, yes, I did get on average at least 5.5 hours sleep a night (5.64 hours, if you’d like the specific figure), but 2023 was my worst year for sleeping since records began (in 2020). Maybe I got more running in because I should’ve been sleeping instead.

Podcasts: less guesting, continue hosting:
I did not reduce my guest appearances on podcasts, in fact if anything I may have done more than previous years! Ah well, it’s nice to be wanted. Mark and I concluded our limited run of Con Air – The Podcast (it turns out 40 chapters was perhaps too many, and our momentum tailed off towards the end but the final episode is pretty great), and Deep Blue Sea – The Podcast has returned to its weekly release schedule as we cover films that can be reasonably considered similar to Deep Blue Sea in some way. 2023 saw us tackle the entire Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, as well as highlighting the DBS-adjacent scenes within the Jurassic Park saga. Lambpardy on the other hand has stalled. After some scheduling issues delayed the first game of the latest tournament until April, I’ve found it somewhat difficult to keep this going. I had such plans for a mini horror tournament with members of Ghouls Magazine, but this has yet to fully come to fruition. Here’s hoping I’m more successful in 2024. Here are some other podcasts I appeared on last year:
MovieRob Minute: When Harry Met Sally Minutes 1-5 & 96, Die Hard 2 Minutes 1-5 & 124, It’s A Wonderful Life Minutes 1-5
The Lambcast – Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, 65/Scream VI/Cocaine Bear, Renfield, 700th Episode, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Pop Art – Windchill / Dead End
It’s Time To Rewind – Memento episodes 2-5, 50 First Dates Intro episode
Out Now with Aaron & Abe – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Forgotten Filmcast – Hello Down There
2 Fast 2 Forever – Fast & Furious
King Kong Minute – Minutes 121-125
The Popcorn Auteur – Shane Black
That’s Da Bomb, Yo! – Volcano

Resolutions for 2024

It’s getting late into the month so I’m going to rattle off the resolutions a little quicker than usual, apologies:

Films:

1. I’m not that excited about many upcoming 2024 releases, so I’ll be letting my cinema membership expire at the end of this month. I can’t see myself going twice a month all year so it’s just not worth the money on top of all the streaming services I already have.
2. Reduce/juggle streaming services. We currently have Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Sky Cinema. That’s too many, we don’t watch them all each month and as their prices go up it’s costing us a fortune. As such we’ll probably knock Prime, Apple and Netflix on the head soon, and maybe Disney once my wife has finished going through all of Grey’s Anatomy (I think she has 3 seasons left which, given she hadn’t seen any this time last year, is pretty good going). We’ll probably reignite the services for a month or two as and when new stuff we want to see crops up. I predict I’ll be terrible at maintaining this.
3. I’d love to watch fewer crap new films, and more critically acclaimed older films I’ve never seen. My full ranking of 2023 releases is still in development, but there are quite a few “Meh” films on there that we watched because they were shiny and new, finished watching, then never spoke or thought about them again, and we went into the viewing fully expecting that to be the case. Less of this, please. More watching old stuff and maybe throwing a paragraph on it somewhere.
4. Here are the few 2024 films I’m genuinely looking forward to:

The Bricklayer
The Strangers Chapter 1-3 (this truly is the year of Renny Harlin)
The Holdovers
Poor Things
American Fiction
Night Swim
Dune: Part II
Kung Fu Panda 4
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
The Fall Guy
Furiosa
A Quiet Place: Day One
Twisters
Paddington in Peru
Drive-Away Dolls
Argylle
Knives Out 3
Civil War
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Deadpool 3

TV:

I have no real TV goals this year. We’ve just started Slow Horses, which is pretty great so far. I’d like to watch more of Succession, Barry and Fargo, and maybe finish Cheers.

Books:
That’s it, I’m giving up on Les Miserables. I finished the Fantine segment, and I’m a few mini-chapters into the Cosette segment, and so far it’s just been about the Napoleonic war, which I don’t really care all that much about (hence why I’ve not yet seen, and indeed may never see, Napoleon). Browsing ahead at some future mini-chapters it looks like there’s a lot more French history for me to fall asleep to mid-paragraph, and I’m pretty sure halfway through the book all the characters don’t start singing One Day More, so I’m calling it a day. This year I’d like to read more books I genuinely enjoy, and I’m trying to read every day, even if it’s just a little bit.

Sites

My poor shepherding skills have come to an end, not because I’m going to become better at doing them, more because I’ve retired as the LAMB’s Shepherd. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s not been fair on those who use the site, revel in the community, and have been waiting a while to join. My former co-host and the current Lambcast host, Richard Kirkham, has accepted the mantle, and I’m remaining on hand to assist if need be. Does that mean I’ll be doing more things on this site? Sure, let’s go with that.

House

1. Re-plaster and paint extension exterior
2. Sand and re-paint house exterior
3. Carpet stairs and landing
4. Finish painting bathroom and office
5. Paint doors
6. Mass de-clutter attic

Exercise:

• Despite 2023 being a record year for my running and other exercises, I still feel like my fitness levels are going down, more so than I’d expect from just being another year older, so I think I need to mix things up a bit.
• Reduce running. It’s still going to be my primary exercise, but I’m cutting down from a targeted average of every other day to three days a week. Doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but as I typically run to work twice a week this would mean I’d only need to go for a run on Saturday or Sunday, and not both like I do at the moment. I’ll also be taking the shorter running route to work more often, as it means I can get up later. If I’m up and ready though, I’ll take the longer route as it’s nice to have some variety.
• More varied workouts, such as skipping, weights, HIIT, etc. I’d love to do more swimming and get an at-home cross-trainer, but I don’t have the space or convenient access to a swimming pool that’s reasonably priced and didn’t give me a horrendous cold the last time I went.
• More yoga. I had to do some papercrafts at home recently where the only space big enough was the floor. After a couple of hours of crawling and cutting it was a real struggle to get up, and the next day was unbearable! It didn’t help that I then had to do the same thing for the following two evenings. Basically, I need to stretch more.
• Sleep more. Yep back to this old chestnut, but hopefully running less will give me more time to catch up on my sleep. I’ve already been trying to go to bed earlier in the evenings, but my wife and I have very different sleep schedules and I’ll often sacrifice sleep just to spend a little more time with her.
• Eat more vegetables, less crap. Again, this still needs to happen, and as a household we’ve cut out a lot of over-processed stuff. Veg-wise I think I just need to settle on stuff I know I like (parsnips, sweet potatoes, sometimes carrots) and eat more of them. Over Christmas we had a load of leftover roast veg that I re-cooked with some pancetta and garlic, and my word it was gorgeous. I’m going to try and have that more often as a leftovers-style lunch, and I’ve already started to cut down on mid-week alcohol, chocolate and my greatest of vices, Pepsi Max.

Podcasts

• Deep Blue Sea – The Podcast is continuing as we lead up to DBS‘ 25th anniversary on July 28th. We have some plans for celebrating that, but my main goal is to cross off as many of the bigger remaining shark films as possible. We’ve done a lot already, but the likes of Open Water, The Last Shark, Shark Tale, Zombie, Aatank, Cruel Jaws and, of course, the Sharknado franchise, have yet to be covered. After those, though, there’s a whole seafood buffet of lower budget shark movies and other aquatic adventure films to be covered, plus we’re cleaning up the last of Renny Harlin’s filmography (starting with The Cleaner) in preparation for the FOUR (!!!!) films he has scheduled for release this year. The guy’s a machine.
• All being well Lambpardy will return! I make no promises, but this is something I’d really like to happen, and soon!
• I’m going to keep guesting on shows, if they’ll have me. In fact I’ve already recorded two (Fight Club Minute and What Do You Love), with three others scheduled for the relatively near future (It’s A Wonderful Life Minute, Die Hard with a Vengeance Minute and The One-Armed Minute (covering The Fugitive)). As I’ll be going to the cinema less I imagine I’ll be on fewer podcasts covering new releases this year, but that’s how it goes.

So that was my 2023. How did yours go? Any plans for 2024?