It’s that time of the season where we look back on the year that has just gone by and…….. come up with a Best Of list. This year, Nine Over Ten 9/10 is doing something that hasn’t been done before in the history of this site. For the first time ever, we’ve got like enough stuff to fill up not one, but SEVERAL categories including iOS Games, Comics, Music and many more. Check it out:

Nine Over Ten 9/10′s Best of 2011

Best iOS Game: Tiny Tower

This game had me playing for weeks, even months. My girlfriend (now fiance) even went to the extent of cheating in the game to get a leg up on me. Micro-managing a simulated tower with all its residents and businesses can actually be fun..I wonder why real-life building supervisors are a grumpy bunch.

Notable Mentions: Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense, Mage Gauntlet

Best Comic Book Series: Uncanny X-Force

Personally I’m more of a DC fan, but if there’s a comic book which features an ensemble cast (which features Wolverine, Psylocke, Deadpool, Archangel, Fantomex and a Deathlok who can’t help but feel love now) mixed with incredible writing and art, these bunch of mutant wetwork specialists are your go-to-guys.

Notable Mentions: Detective Comics, Batman, Venom

Best Movie: X-Men: First Class

This was actually pretty darn good, with an interesting ensemble cast. It’s a movie meant to wash away the bad aftertaste from stuff like X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine and gives the franchise the opportunity to well…start over with flying colours.

Notable Mentions: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Best Music Release: Torches (Foster the People)

Torches is by far the best thing I’ve heard through my pair of Grados this year, and it’s an incredible aural experience. It’s easy to get addicted to any of the tracks in this CD and at the moment I can’t help but put Call It What You Want on repeat!

Notable Mentions: None

Best Book: Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)

The guy died this year and because of that his autobiography was released earlier than its original release date. The book helps readers understand the person behind the innovations that came out of Apple. The guy wasn’t perfect, but the book is the perfect primer with regards to him.

Notable Mentions: None (I tend to buy books that are published the year before..they tend to be cheaper that way)

Christmas has always been known as a time for giving and we would like to kickstart this year’s Nine Over Ten 9/10 Christmas 2011 Gift Guide with a question: why not gift a gift and do your bid for charity as well? The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is the perfect avenue for this. Not only can you purchase this bundle which consists of amazing indie games such as Gratuitous Space Battles, Super Meat Boy, Bit.Trip Runner and many more, as a gift, part of the purchase goes to American Red Cross and Child’s Play Charity. Check it out over here.

If you are feeling a little more generous, you can always head over to the nearest NGO or Charity out there and donate. Here are some organizations that are closer to home in my case:

• National Cancer Council of Malaysia: http://www.makna.org.my/
• National Council for the Blind: http://www.ncbm.org.my/
• National Kidney Foundation: http://www.nkf.org.my/

OK, with that charity bit out of the way here’s our annual gift guide for Christmas 2011, this time it has something for everyone, I think, ranging for the bookworms to tech heads (I’m actually adapting my Amazon wish list for this year’s Christmas guide):

Books

1. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Hardcover)
2. Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape: The Remarkable Life of Jacques Anquetil, the First Five-Times Winner of the Tour de France by Paul Howard (Paperback)

Electronic Devices and Gadgets

1. Apple iPad 2
2. Kindle Fire
3. Arduino UNO Board
4. Grado iGi In-Ear Headphones

Video Games

1. Nintendo 3DS
2. Batman Arkham City Collectors Edition
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Collectors Edition

Movies

1. Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray]
2. Harry Potter: The Complete 8 Film Collection [Blu-ray]

Music

1. Torches (Music CD) by Foster the People
2. Pickin’ Up The Pieces (Music CD) by Fitz & the Tantrums.

If you need more gift ideas, check out our super popular guide articles:

• Ultimate Guide to Getting the PlayStation Vita (click here)
• Ultimate Guide to Nintendo 3DS Accessories (click here)
• Ultimate Guide to Nintendo DSi LL/XL Accessories (click here)
• Ultimate Guide to Sony PSP Go Accessories (click here)
• Nintendo DSi Accessories Guide (click here)

I managed to catch Nasi Lemak 2.0 in the cinema last weekend. Word on the street was the movie is receiving rave reviews and it was difficult to get a seat. Anyways, the fiance managed to score 2 tickets and off we went to watch Namewee’s (the director/lead actor) latest movie.

He shares screen time with Karen Kong, a local singer and a host of other Malaysian celebrities. The plot is a comedic one, with Namewee playing a Malaysian, albeit racist chef, educated abroad, who when down on the dumps, has to learn to cook the ubiquitous Malaysian dish known as Nasi Lemak.

In a way, the movie is a play on how Malaysian Chinese look upon members of other races in Malaysia’s melting pot of cultures, and it was actually quite funny to watch how all these stereotypes play out on screen. Oddly though, aside from my fiance and I, and a few other people who were howling with laughter, the rest of the audience seem to be unable to catch the jokes on screen.

Perhaps being Malaysian Chinese they couldn’t take such an interesting way to point out just how coloured our views can get. I guess some people really do need to lighten up a bit.

Nasi Lemak 2.0 gets a 4 out of 5. The ending was a little weak though, could have thrown in the outtakes during the credits to spice up an otherwise quiet (and silent) credits roll.

The Final Destination movies have always been formulaic. If you haven’t noticed it already, it goes like some fella gets a premonition that something bad is going to happen, and somehow barely manages to avert the tragedy, but as you “can’t cheat DEATH”, fella and his companions will one by one die horrifically.

This same formula is in effect in the latest movie of the series, Final Destination 5. I guess that the audience is in it for how these new bunch of characters die and in video game terms, the deaths are like finishing moves rather than outright insta-kills. There are plenty of red herrings and distractions, but somehow the deaths tend to be comical AND horrific at the same time.

Perhaps in 5, the series is branching out into the horror-comedy genre instead of just plain horror. In any case, there’s very little invested to the characters, but there’s one standout, Miles Fisher, who plays a character not unlike a younger, more intense Tom Cruise, but albeit taller. He’s almost a shoe-in for future Mission Impossible movies.

Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Final Destination 5, a 3.5 out of 5. The movie is a rather short one at an hour and 30 minutes, and yup, no kids allowed.

I’ve not done this ever, but my fiance and I watched two movies at the cinema in the course of a single week (most of the time we’re just too busy with work to do this). We caught both Captain America: The First Avenger and Rise of The Planet Of The Apes.

Lets start with the good stuff first. Rise of The Planet Of The Apes is, IMHO, a pretty smart re-boot of the original series and it serves as a reminder that the road to hell, is indeed paved with good intentions. James Franco’s scientist character, Will, develops a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and tests the cure on chimpanzees.

This ultimately leads to the creation of Caesar, a super-smart chimp, no thanks to the cure (a virus really) being passed to him in-vitro by his mum, Bright Eyes (heh…the movie starts fast with the references to the first film in the original series). A stronger cure created by Will results in even smarter apes but proves to be fatal to humans, killing them off, resulting in the titular “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.

The film however suffers from one fatal storytelling flaw, Will isn’t cast as the bad guy and he gets off easy (no tragic death by gunfire, helicopter, virus or ape), with just a longing look in his eyes that the ape he raised can now talk and is now “free”. The film relies on the likes of Brian Cox (yup…Hannibal Lektor) and Tom Felton (yup…Draco Malfoy) as two really bad zookeepers who give Caesar a really hard time in an ape sanctuary he was interred in, to deliver the goods.

That’s pretty “Meh” as the two sideshows prove to be lightweight and I seriously thought that Will should had have it coming (you know, as a poster boy for animal testing and generally for killing off the human race). I did enjoy the movie (like I said, it’s a smart re-boot), and fans of the original Planet of the Apes movie are going to love the references to that film. Lines like “It’s a madhouse” and “Get your hands off me, you damned, dirty ape” somehow managed to show up in the script. This movie is a MUST WATCH.

Okay, now, the bad stuff. I became a fan of Captain America when Marvel’s Ultimates line-up helped create a jumping-on point for new comic book readers back in the year 2000. Yup, the first books I collected were The Ultimates by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch and this was basically a revamped version of The Avengers.

You can tell that the books are pretty influential, their particular version of Nick Fury, and to some extent, Hawkeye are what you see on the silver screen today. And this brings up the problem I have with the movie. The Ultimates version of Captain America is pretty damn bad-assed. He’s a master tactician and field commander, jumps off planes without a chute, and has no qualms about kicking ass (basically killing people) and taking names.

Chris Evan’s potrayal of Cap on the other hand reminded me of a cute puppy…that was something I highlighted ever since I saw the trailer to the movie. My fiance mentioned that the movie made her laugh. And that sums up Captain America: The First Avenger. It has its moments, but it’s ultimately a joke.

If you have an iPhone 4 or a 3rd Gen iPod touch, you might want to check out Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty. Previously priced at USD 4.99, it’s now going for just USD 0.99 to celebrate the stellar opening weekend of “Captain America: The First Avenger“. Remember to check out our review over here, before downloading the game from the iTunes App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/captain-america-sentinel-liberty/id434478300?mt=8

I finally managed to watch Transformers 3 in 3D yesterday afternoon, but I left the cinema hall rather disappointed for what seems to be the last film in a trilogy of Transformers films done by Michael Bay. While Transformers 2 was plagued with director hubris, Transformers 3 suffers from very poor editing that makes everything look like a mess.

Questions like “How did that guy get there?”, or “What just happened just now?” are best asked outside the cinema hall as Mr. Bay attempts to throw EVERYTHING including a kitchen sink or two at the audience, sacrificing any semblance of a cohesive story. The only saving grace about the movie were the Bot fights that were going on towards to the end and even then it was confusing.

The movie storyline turned out to be rather different from the novelization/graphic novel, leaving practically no room for a sequel as my fiance had put it rather succinctly: “All the bad guys (the prominent ones), are dead“. In the book, Megatron lives and leaves Earth whereas in the movie, Prime practically decimates him and leaves him without a head.

One thing to note about watching it in 3D, it has nothing on Avatar, so save the money and watch the movie in 2D instead, as the only things to pop-up were the…wait for it….SUBTITLES! Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Transformers: Dark of the Moon at a 2 out of 5. You can’t really expect much from a movie franchise that is made to sell toys these days. So much for high expectations in the 21st century.

I pretty much panned the live action Green Lantern movie in my review published right here on Nine Over Ten 9/10 several days ago. However, I forgot to mention that there are superior feature-length Green Lantern movies, albeit animated ones in the form of Green Lantern: First Flight and Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

First Flight (Amazon: USD 18, Blu-ray, click here) is the earlier of the two, and is basically Hal Jordan’s first major case right after being inducted into the Green Lantern Corps. Sinestro betrays the Corps, harnesses the yellow light of fear to wreck havoc on his former Corps before being brought down by Hal with help from Killowog.

Emerald Knights (Amazon: USD 17, Blu-ray, click here) on the other hand features Hal as a veteran of the corps, telling the new recruit Arissa stories of some of the most illustrious members of the Corps as they prepare to face an old foe hell-bent on destroying Oa, home base of the Green Lantern Corps.

Having said that, what the live action film lacked, these two animated films had in spades: amazing space battles, special effects, and the Green Lantern Corps in action. Emerald Knights deserves special mention, since its plot device results in 5 mini stories being told, with some of the funniest, and bloodiest scenes I’ve seen so far in a DC animated film.

I managed to catch Green Lantern at the cinemas last night, and it was the third superhero movie that I watched this year (second for my girlfriend), and I must say, this was perhaps the lamest movie among the three. Somehow, the notion of intergalactic polic corps powered by rings capable of churning out anything was diluted while making the transition from the comic books to the silver screen.

In movie, the Green Lantern Corp are reduced to a bunch of posers, rising only to two occasions (to shoot beams of light into the sky on head honcho Sinestro’s reckoning), while rookie lantern Hal Jordan from Earth has to face ALONE one really badass enemy (Parallax, which in the comic book looks like a gigantic space bug, over here, he looks like an octopus) that even the bosses of the Green Lanterns, the Guardians, are afraid of.

The storyline, which was supposedly adapted from the Green Lantern Secret Origins books (Green Lantern vol 4 issues #29-#35) is at best a diluted one. The filmmakers have failed to tap the rich tapestry that makes up the Corp and for supposedly a sci-fi epic dubbed the Star Wars of our generation, this film fails miserably.

I’m very disappointed how things turned out. It’s like the same complaint as Transformers 2, the humans get too much of the spotlight, while the titular aliens (in this case Green Lanterns + 1 human rookie) don’t get the screen time. Hector Hammond in this movie is just as lame as Hal, more like a clown compared to the really creepy pervert in the comic books.

Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Green Lantern at a dismal 2 out of 5. I think I’ll just go read the comic books. Thank God I didn’t splurge on a pair of Gold class tickets.

X-Men: First Class kick starts with a brief background on Magneto, borrowing  from Greg Park’s amazing piece of comic book work known as Magneto: Testament. I’m not sure whether First Class set off to be a character study of Erik Lehnsherr (a.k.a Magneto) in the first place, but after the movie, you would kinda feel like he’s a tragic anti-hero more than a villain.

The X-Men comic books and story lines have only until a few years ago started casting Magneto as more of a sympathetic character; books like Magneto: Testament, and plot points in X-Force make it easier to understand what motivates the guy to do what he does: protecting mutant-kind and making humanity his bitch at the same time.

While Magneto does hog the limelight, the movie does an amazing take on Charles Xavier, the future Professor X. Here he’s portrayed to be every bit a man of the world but there’s also a certain grey area in him that has been exposed in recent years in the comic books. He has no qualms in reading minds nor does he have any problem giving an attitude adjustment to people. Heh, all for the greater good eh Charles?

Anyways, back to the movie. It’s off then onto the swinging 60s with the backdrop being the Cuban missile crisis. But in this alternate history, the leader of the Hellfire Club, Sebastian Shaw, is the one who instigates this, like a chess player playing both sides of the board, causing the U.S.A and the Soviet Union to clash with each other.In other to tackle this threat, Charles partners with Erik to form a team, and the rest is…history.

This scenario is certainly more mainstream then say assembling a team of X-Men to take on a sentient mutant island called Krakoa (cough….. Giant Size X-Men #1), and certainly less incredulous in having one team of X-Men take on the same sentient island to rescue another X-men team, only to get destroyed in the process, and then having a third team come over (cough… Deadly Genesis).

The movie does work on a lot of levels, but with its cast of characters, it is somewhat leaning to the fan-boy side of things rather than the casual viewer. X-Men: First Class is definitely the pick of the crop when it comes to the X-Men movie franchise, it even trumps the first two films made by Bryan Singer. The last arc fell a little flat though, but nevertheless I like the movie a lot, and it’s two thumbs up!