The Year is Half Full. Or it's Half Empty. Or it's Non-Existent.

I go This time last year I had already seen my two favourite films of the year - The Cabin in the Woods and Young Adult (a brief note on that list, I will reassessing it in the next week or so to include a few films I'd missed out on and shuffle things around a little). It's only fair then that at this point of the year I look back and see what is on track for films, music and television. I used to include books in this but it's been a while since I've read a book that came out in the year it was published.

Film

The downside of living in Australia is that the great films from the end of 2012 that were released in America only just make their way onto our screens at the beginning of 2013. I could list films by their international release date, but that's not a feasible thing to do. It makes the early part of the year top heavy with great films, and then the end of the year there are a smattering of good to great films. 

This year there have been at least three immediate classics and a few great films. Here they are:

Amour - I absolutely love Michael Haneke's films. Watching Haneke's films now as they arrive - one masterpiece after another (the only American director that I can compare him to in terms of quality is Darren Aronofsky) - is what it must have been like to see Truffaut's films when they first screened. A cinematic slap to the face. Amour is probably the greatest film that Haneke has made - it's his warmest, his most human, his most heartbreaking film. Emmanuelle Riva gives the finest performance of the year (although her competition is pretty fierce.) 

Rust & Bone - Just like Amour, I wept in this like a little baby. I knew absolutely nothing about this film going in other than it had Marion Cotillard and a killer whale. These facts alone had me sold on the film. I went in and was quite simply blown away. This is a powerful amazing film that challenges and grasps you in your seat and never lets go. Cotillard gives the performance of her career - she is subtle, and yet so strong. 

Zero Dark Thirty - This film was like watching Speed for the first time. I was young when I watched Speed, and my experience with high tension films wasn't great, but I sat on the edge of my seat throughout the whole film. Zero Dark Thirty was exactly the same. I was riveted, amazed, stunned. I didn't care if what was on the screen was true or not. I didn't care about torture and my personal feelings on it or not. What I was seeing was an instant classic. It was a film that partially redeemed Kathryn Bieglow's Oscar win. Without the poor The Hurt Locker, there would be no Zero Dark Thirty. The depth in this film is astounding - the characters appear cold, but are so very human. Zero Dark Thirty is a film I will love revisiting over and over. Whilst I'm sure people will mention Argo here and there as a good Oscar winning film (and it is very good), Zero Dark Thirty is the film that should have won this year. 

Life of Pi - I am not a religious person at all, but this overly religious story moved me quite a lot. Whether it was the inclusion of damn cute meerkat's, or one of the most intense scene's of the year involving CGI animals, or the best quote in a film of this year (and quite possibly the decade - 'No Richard Parker, that is my tuna!'), Life of Pi proved that Ang Lee is one of the most eclectic and versatile directors around. The performances he gets from two first time actors is jaw dropping - Suraj Sharma is perfect as the young Patel, but the mostly CGI tiger steals the show throughout the film. Whilst I side with Christopher Doyle on Life of Pi's cinematography win (The Master is the better shot film) - it's a visually amazing film, but none of that is achieved in camera - its computer assisted cinematography helps soar the film above the basic 'boy and tiger in a boat for two and a half hours'. 

This is 40 - I was not a fan of Funny People. I thought it was good, but was in serious need of an editor. This is 40 manages to maintain a bloated length, but Apatow fills that length with probably his finest work yet. Knocked Up will still be my favourite Apatow film, but This is 40 works as a great follow up to that. I feel that Apatow is finally reaching the stage in his career where he understands how to straddle comedy and drama perfectly in his films. I feel I could easily rewatch this again at any stage - just like I do with Knocked Up at least once or twice a year. 

Music

I've been a little disappointed by the international music on offer this year. Maybe I've been listening to Kiss My Apocalypse and I See Seaweed too much to notice anything else. The albums I have listened to I've initially loved - The National's new album, Eels Wonderful Glorious - but I've forgotten them and not returned. Yeezus exists and is a slap in the face but I'm not sure I want to be slapped in the face every time I listen to music. Ian Ball's new album is good, but I'm not in love with it - just the same as his last album. At the end of the year I have a feeling that The Lone Ranger soundtrack will be on my top ten album list simply for the fact it's got a Gomez song with Blacky singing. 

Kiss My Apocalypse - Abbe May - There's no denying that Abbe May is one of the finest musician's Australia has to offer. I firmly believe that right now she is the best female Australian vocalist and musician at the moment - and that's with some fine competition from Sarah Blasko and Adalita who are both still producing some of the best music of their careers. Kiss My Apocalypse is like nothing Abbe May's ever done before. It's sex-synth driven pop that gets in your mind and just doesn't stop grooving. There's not been a day since this album dropped that Sex Tourettes or Perth Girls hasn't been in my mind. It may not be my favourite Abbe May album - that honour still belongs to Design Desire - but this is a different beast altogether. 

I See Seaweed - The Drones - It's been five years since the Best Album of All Time (Havilah) dropped, and Gareth Liddiard feels like he hasn't missed a beat. I See Seaweed is one heck of a blistering listen. It reaffirms that Liddiard is Australia's finest song writer - his lyrics are acidic and blistering with their brilliance, and the way Liddiard spits them out as he sings is nothing short of astounding. The more I listen to The Drones, the more I feel they're probably the finest Australian act to exist. I See Seaweed sees the band evolve for the first time in their career and include a piano to the mix, and it's as perfect an addition as having a visible brass section with Gomez or having Pip whip out a fantastic violin solo during Deja Vu for Something for Kate. I've already been through two copies of Havilah I overlistened to it so much, I expect about the same for I See Seaweed.

Push the Sky Away - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Nick Cave is another great Australian songwriter, and Push the Sky Away is one heck of an album. I feel like I'm not qualified enough to write about how great Nick Cave is, there's enough words about how brilliant he is out there on the internet. I'll just say that the first time I heard Jubilee Street this year I just had to listen to it another six or seven times. It's a song which is right up there with Into My Arms and 15 Feet of Pure White Snow for me. Also, this album takes the album cover of the year hands down.

Television

Last year saw the arrival of Lena Dunham's perfect television series Girls. This year saw it continue with brilliance in a season which I think is better than the first. I'm excited to see where Dunham takes this show as I think it could easily become one of the most enduring shows of recent times. 

Fringe finished its run - thankfully it reached five seasons - and I still can't accept it. I'm not sure when I'll watch the series finale, but I'm going to guess sometime near the year 2028. 

Happy Endings also got pushed over the cliff like an unwilling lemming. 

The best new show to hit this year is easily Hannibal. Visually it's a beautiful show, but more importantly, it takes the subject of Hannibal Lecter and gives it to people who respect the character and the mythology - something that Thomas Harris hasn't been able to do since he started writing Hannibal. Mads Mikkelsen gives a great performance as Lecter and Laurence Fishburn has quickly turned in one of my favourite characters in a crime show. 

Games

Out of all the subjects so far, I think my favourite games list will be the one that changes the most. With the arrival of a new console at the end of the year, and most importantly, a new Rayman game, my short short list so far will be shuffled around a bit. 

Guacamelee! - I can't gush enough about how great this game is. It's fun from start to end, it's rewarding, it's genuinely hilarious. I had probably the greatest amount of fun I've had playing a platformer since the first (and second, and third) time I played Rayman Origins. The creators of Guacamelee! know what makes a perfect platformer and they deliver in spades. Right now this is the one to beat, although...

Hotline Miami - ...takes a pretty good shot at stealing Guacamelee!'s crown. This is addictive perfect gameplay. It's gameplay that pulls you back in after each short round. It's like Super Meat Boy in top down form. It's speed running and pulse driven gameplay at its finest. Whilst you're blitzing through rooms and getting blown away in return, your quick return desire strikes and you fly into the room again, building the pressure and anxiety to high levels. I haven't even mentioned the pitch perfect soundtrack - it's an 80's aural throbbing ball of bliss. 

Bioshock Infinite - I still controversially love Bioshock 2 the most in the series. I've completed it three times and to me it's the most complete game out of the lot. Bioshock Infinite is a fantastic game, but I'm finding myself increasingly noticing the distance between gameplay and narrative that occurs outside the gameplay. Where games like Guacamelee! and Hotline Miami has narratives, they're pure games at heart. Bioshock Infinite's narrative is great, and the characters are interesting, but there is a ludo-narrative feeling in the difference in what is going on as a player and what is going on as a character. I still think it's one of the best games of this generation, it's just unfortunate that this is the game that is making me see even more flaws in first person shooters. The difference between a narrative being dictated at you, and the narrative evolving because of you...

The Last of Us - ...which is something that The Last of Us does perfectly. I'm only eight hours into the game, but it's a game which evolves as you progress through it. The environments that you transverse are the narrative. The villains your fight are the narrative. The characters you interact with and the way you interact with the world makes up the narrative. Naughty Dog have always created perfect stories and immersive gameplay (as much as I dislike that term), and The Last of Us is them at their finest. It's like they took the already perfect The Walking Dead and made it into a third person shooter/stealth. Everything that The Last of Us does, it does better than its competition. I liked Dishonoured last year, but I felt that the ludo-narrative of that game was just too much (and the ending was appalling). The stealth in Dishonoured was good, but not great. The Last of Us though, there is a genuine need to play this game stealthy - you care about the characters and you feel their deaths each time you fail at being stealthy in gruesome detail (the worst is when Joel gets his jaw ripped open by a clicker - a scene which puts Dead Space's deaths to shame.) There is so much to love about The Last of Us and so much to praise about it.

Dead Space 3 - If there's one space opera trilogy I've loved the most in this generation, it's Dead Space 3. Dead Space 2 is one of the finest games I've ever played - and a true 10/10 game in my eyes - and Dead Space 3 almost holds up to the heights of Dead Space 2. It's a bigger, better, more explosive, more action packed game, but it's not a weaker game because of that. It's still got the scares that Dead Space and Dead Space 2 had, but it's also got some great characters and great great moments. I hope that this isn't the end for Isaac (I haven't played the DLC yet, even though I should) and his necromorph pal's, I've grown quite fond of his over the top gruesome deaths. 

And that's it so far. The complete lists of my Top 25 Films and Top 10 Albums and and Best TV Show of the Year and Top 10 Games will hit January or so next year.