The Ten Best Films of 2008 That I Saw

Scott Hardie | January 4, 2009
My annual list is published. I didn't see very many films this year, but apparently I didn't miss much; popular and critical consensus is that 2008 was a pretty weak year for movies. I wouldn't normally expect The Dark Knight to have a shot at an Oscar for Best Picture, but have you seen its competition? Anyway, there were still ten pretty good movies to write about, and I hope you get a rental idea or two out of them.

What were the best movies you saw this year?

Jackie Mason | January 4, 2009
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Tony Peters | January 4, 2009
You list Iron Man which was good but skip the HULK which was awesome, finally someone does the movie justice

Samir Mehta | January 5, 2009
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Tony Peters | January 5, 2009
I don't think I saw 10 movies in the theater this year and what I did see was mostly action,


The Incredible Hulk =This was by far my favorite comic book movie in a long long time

Wanted = not your normal comic to movie nor was it a faithful adaptation but it told a good if not beleivable story (the problem with ang lee's Hulk was the story)....and I like Marc Millar

Iron Man = Robert Downey as Tony Stark is probably the best casting choice for a superhero in history

Twilight=Ok I'll admit that I read the books...but I had 6 weeks doing nothing so I needed to do something.......somewhere in the middle of the second book I got hooked. The movie had the same quality of cinematography as "Snow falling on Cedars" I'm actually egar to see where they go with it only the first book was overyly highschool teen feeling

Hell Boy 2 I agree with Samir about the tree scene it really absolutely haunting

I saw a bunch of stuff on Cable and DVD but that all blurs I do remember being very disapointed with Prince Caspian

Samir Mehta | January 5, 2009
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Tony Peters | January 5, 2009
The Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton) was controlled by Marvel unlike Ang Lee's Hulk which was controlled by Hollywood. The Story was also much better and more inkeeping with the comic mythos though it wasn't a direct from the pages adaptation either it told a story that was much better written and in the end special effects only added to it instead of trying to support a crappy script like in Ang Lee's movie. I can't stress enough how important it is that Marvel has taken control of their properties especially after Xmen 3

Scott Hardie | January 5, 2009
Prince Caspian was really lame. I thought the series could only go up after the first film, but no. Disney has pulled the plug on future Narnia films and good riddance.

Benjamin Button disappointed me too, although not as much as Samir I gather. [spoiler alert] I didn't expect much going in. At first I thought it was hokey and artificial at first. After one-third, I was surprised how much it was growing on me. After two-thirds, I thought it might be the best movie of the year. After it ended, I shook my head at how sloppy of an ending it had. After all the attention to detail throughout the first part of the film, he goes to India, he brushes his teeth on the side of a mountain, he rides his motorcycle, he comes home? They clearly had no idea where to go with the movie after Cate Blanchett shows up at his doorstep. This movie went through many different production teams over 14 years, so I can see how the different chapters don't mesh together very well. Still, I really liked the good parts.

Incredible Hulk didn't appeal to me enough to see it, although I like Edward Norton and I figured it had some good action scenes at least. Despite some of the problems with the first film, I saw it as an Ang Lee fan and not as a Hulk fan, which made me one of few people who actually really liked it. Since this one was intentionally made to be the polar opposite of the first one, I knew it wasn't for me. :-)

My biggest regret of the year is not being able to see Synecdoche New York, which probably would have blown away the rest of my list. This has been the weakest year since I started writing this in 1999. That's not a slight to the films I did choose, some of which (The Orphanage and The Onion Movie) have already joined my collection of favorites.

Scott Hardie | January 7, 2009
What about other bests you enjoyed in the last year? Books? Albums? Games? Sporting events? Anything.

I didn't buy a lot of new music in the year, and I've already raved about Death Magnetic, and everybody else has already raved about Vampire Weekend, so let me take a moment to appreciate Chinese Democracy, which is a pretty good holy shit Axl Rose actually finished Chinese Democracy? What the hell is happening? Does the Loch Ness Monster play bass on some of the tracks? Anyway, it's not exactly seventeen-years-in-the-making good, but by ordinary standards, it's a great Big Rock Album, overproduced and anthemic and playing to the rafters. On the other hand, AC/DC's Black Ice was this year's let-down.

Jackie Mason | January 7, 2009
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Scott Hardie | January 7, 2009
That's what I thought about the title too. I'm surprised he didn't change the title a bunch of times over the years, like all those times he changed his appearance, the band logo, and the entire lineup of the band.

Underneath it's still the Axl who wrote Use Your Illusion, but on the surface it sounds nothing like his other work – it's too overproduced with all of these varied instruments sounding off throughout. You can hear plenty of the songs online, like this and this. The more wall-of-sound quality it takes on in the harder songs, the more it resembles today's rock, like say 3 Doors Down. I don't mean that as a negative or positive statement, just an observation. The busy-ness of it all is a mild turnoff at first, but I keep liking this the more I listen to it. 3 Doors Down can learn from this record.

Anyway, I'd like to think that Rock Block has made me more of a rock historian, but I'm still not a music critic. I can't really articulate what I like about it or justify why it's good or bad, all I can say is I'm really enjoying it right now.

Erik Bates | January 8, 2009
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Scott Hardie | January 8, 2009
Me too. And they capitalize the N on top of it. But I guess their punctuation isn't as bad as Salt-N-Pepa.

Samir Mehta | January 17, 2009
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Jackie Mason | January 17, 2009
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Scott Hardie | January 18, 2009
I've been listening to Chinese Democracy more for the last two weeks and I'm even more enthralled by it. This is one very rich album, with a lot of layers that reveal themselves on multiple listens, which is what you'd expect from an album being tweaked for this long. I would say it is definitely like Use Your Illusion, what the band who recorded that double-album should sound like ten years later. YouTube doesn't really do it justice, but this song is my favorite, with one of the many great guitar solos on the album – Slash may be gone, but Buckethead is pretty damn good for a guy who wears a fast food container on his head.

Scott Hardie | January 18, 2009
I find myself talking about this album a lot because I think it needs support. It needs to be considered as a serious artistic work and as a real rock & roll record, not as a novelty or circus sideshow. An extreme example of this sort of thing is Michael Jackson, an incredibly talented artist consumed by the circus that his life became; after Bad, he didn't stop recording, but his music was the last thing anybody paid attention to. The weirdness of Axl Rose's long long journey to create this album has almost completely obscured the album itself, and it shouldn't, because this is one hell of a good record.

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2009
Predict the Oscars 2009 will begin on Saturday. I had planned to start it tonight, but I've been working since I got home and now I have to go back to the office. I think I can still put up another goo at midnight if necessary.

I'm really disappointed in Dark Knight being snubbed for Best Picture. Especially in favor of The Reader, a Holocaust drama from the Weinsteins. I hate those guys. Normally I think "duh" when people say the Academy is out of touch with popular and critical tastes, but this year I have to share the sentiment. All the mention you'll hear in a month about the broadcast's low ratings? They'd have twice that number with Batman.

Samir Mehta | January 23, 2009
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Steve Dunn | January 23, 2009
Scott, I think a close examination of the stats will reveal that Holocaust films are the darlings of the Oscars. It's certainly true in the documentary category.

Scott Hardie | January 23, 2009
I know, that's my point. A friggin' holocaust film, by the friggin' Weinsteins, of friggin' course. Batman can stop crime waves and demented super-criminals, but he's no match for that.

Scott Hardie | January 25, 2009
Predict the Oscars 2009 has started. I'm excited about this! Let's rock!

Last year, Angela Rehn was denied a prize for the second time because of the way ties were resolved, so I gave her one anyway and promised to change the rules this year. Here's what's different:

- Prizes go to the score, not to the player. If two players score 100, then three players score 90, then one scores 80 and five score 70, both players scoring 100 will get the grand prize and all nine other players will get the prizes for the next three scores. Order of entry no longer matters, so predict early and predict often.

- Prizes are no longer fixed per rank. Winners get to choose from a set of prizes all worth about $25. I was tempted to add an additional prize for one random player who outscored me, like Roger Ebert and other pros do it, but that's too vain for me.

- The contest is only open to players who had registered on goo.tc prior to January 22nd. This was a difficult decision for me, because if someone comes along tomorrow and really wants to play, I won't like saying no to them. But the ridiculous 2004 contest was inundated by outsiders who took all the prizes and didn't do squat to participate in the rest of the site, sapping all the fun for us regulars. In the years since, I've tried to require new players to use the site a little before playing, but it just feels corny to see them write ten comments like "wow, that's cool" in TC just to qualify. If a single person over the years had joined goo.tc for the Oscars contest and then decided to participate in other areas of the site for real, I would consider allowing outsiders to play, but to my recollection there hasn't been a single one. This year, the contest is for only for us and the people we've played before.

- Best Costumes and Best Makeup have been promoted to the 3-point category, and Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing have been demoted to the 2-point category. It's been coming for a long time, and the similarity of this year's nominee lists for the two sound awards was the final straw. They just aren't important in this contest, and it's time the points reflect that.

Good luck this year! I hope that we can still get a large number of entrants despite the existing-users-only rule. This is going to be a fun contest!

Steve West | January 25, 2009
I set a new personal record for fewest nominated films seen. I saw Wall-E and didn't really like it but still picked it. Everything is just one big guess. I'm Loving It!

Scott Hardie | January 25, 2009
I have sometimes said that you don't have to see any of the films to do well in the contest, if you understand how the Academy thinks and you pay attention to the buzz. This year, I haven't seen most of the major titles (how do you find the time, Samir?), and I find myself in the curious position of testing my own hypothesis on myself. We'll see how I do on Oscar night, but so far, I just feel emotionally disconnected from the nominees. I have nothing to root for Dark Knight to win except the one category in which it already has a lock, so other than my annual rooting against Sean Penn and the Weinsteins, I don't have much of a horse in this race.

On the other hand, that makes it an interesting academic challenge – can I do better without knowing the merits of each nominee firsthand or being distracted by personal bias? At this early stage, my hunches about almost all of the categories are much stronger than in most years; I feel ready for Oscar night already. Time will tell whether that's just blissful ignorance or a new way to think about the game.

Samir Mehta | January 25, 2009
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Jackie Mason | January 31, 2009
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Scott Hardie | February 23, 2009
Congrats to Josh Paddison, who edged out the competition by one point to win this year's very close Oscars contest. Final scores are here. Prizes will go to Josh, Paul, Patti, Billy, and Steve Dunn. Thanks to everybody for playing so well, and for scaring me for the first half of the contest that I might be giving out two dozen prizes. :-)

Erik Bates | February 24, 2009
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Aaron Shurtleff | February 24, 2009
Woo! 20 of 28! A personal best!!!

Amy Austin | February 24, 2009
So irritated that I was in the middle of making a handful of last-minute changes when the 8:00 cut-off transpired. I wouldn't have won or placed, necessarily... but I would damn sure have made a better place/showing than I did -- in fact, my best ever, even. (Which it may still be... ;-p)

Steve Dunn | February 24, 2009
Original Song totally screwed me. Damn you Peter Gabriel!

Amy Austin | February 24, 2009
Scott... I really liked following your live update for the last two years, but may I suggest (PLEASE!) a slightly brighter banner color for the winning pick next time? You know... for those of us old folks who are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate between pale yellow and white? (Just had an eye exam this past Wednesday, and for the first time ever, I am officially rated at 20/25. I blame... my computer. ;-))

Tony Peters | February 24, 2009
computers are why I wear glasses well that and the crappy light in the photolab on the ship,,,,I switched to my MAC as much for the screen as anything else

Amy Austin | February 24, 2009
I have a 17" screen... but sitting in front of it (and for as long as I do!), I am reminded of all the old wives' admonishments of sitting too close to the TV -- I have a feeling that this trumps that, no matter what the brightness level or screen size. (I am also certain that blink ratio decreases dramatically during computer use... which in turn provides for an increase in "dry eye"... and who knows what else.)

Amy Austin | February 24, 2009
Wow... I just realized that the last dozen or so comments were not under "Oscars"...

Scott Hardie | February 25, 2009
I have darkened the highlight color on the winners. I couldn't even get it to show at all in Chrome short of redoing all of the html on the page, and I had plenty of other things to do during the show, so they're all white to me.

Russ Wilhelm | February 25, 2009
Perhaps I should change my strategy, after I develop one of course. That should help. But hey, 23 point better than I predicted. Can't fault that.