The "Best" of 2008.

In a year of change, I’m changing too. Below isn’t the “best of the best,” assigned a number and listed according to preference. Instead, I’ve presented not the “Top 10” in film, or television, or any other media arena—but rather those things that, in the dreary coming weeks of January, will still cause me to look back on the Year That Was, and smile.

The Best Films of 2008:

WALL-E

A wordless procession of images marshaled together in service of re-discovery, of finding the utterly beguiling charms of daily hum-drum life, followed in turn by a zingy satire that’s like Charlie Chaplin in space—and through it all beats a pulse of romanticism and unabashed reverence of pure cinematic creation: WALL-E, writer-director Andrew Stanton’s love-story-adventure-comedy-eco-parable about life then that feels remarkably like now, is all these things and more. It’s everything Pixar Studios has represented in the last twenty years, tied up together in a film that doesn’t just stun you with its visual beauty, but also with its emotional integrity. I’m all for films that talk, talk, talk—but Stanton takes a different approach: he finds the magic in silence, the fascination in the wordless. So when the film, in its second-half, becomes a screwball comedy on a space station, many tune-out, claiming the move as a rote one not worth their time. But they miss the anger in Stanton’s vision—the blistering satire in his work. WALL-E is a robot love story, and its two central robots don’t talk much, but the joy of the movie is the way the architects (of both animation and narrative) over at Pixar don’t settle for something charming but coy and removed. They bring every stitch of their metallic fabrication into reality, and find, among the ruins of a future far away from any of us, life very much like our own.

The Dark Knight

A sumptuous big-screen feast that leaves you only slightly queasy afterwards, Christopher Nolan’s 153-minute The Dark Knight became the zeitgeist movie of the year (and, perhaps, the decade) for a number of reasons—not the least of which was its monstrous box office performance. But underneath all those staggering financial numbers was a simpler fact: the film is wholly, consistently, and perfectly hypnotic…and terrifying. Not only a master class in how to create a near-perfect sequel (take that Sam Raimi!), nor just the vehicle for the year’s greatest performance, this sixth Batman movie in as many years does all the ones previous one better—it leaps forward, to The Now, and dares to underline the caped crusader not only with pathos, but relevance. Forget the stylized design of the Burton films, or the cheeky pastiche of Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever and Batman and Robin—this is a new kind of comic-book movie: in telling of how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale, with his dynamic rasp still firmly in place) edges closer and closer to madness trying to take out The Joker (Heath Ledger, in a feat of Method Madness so complete, so unshakeable, that it makes you miss the actor behind the make-up all the more), the movie does something, if not original, than excitingly different. It’s dark, and it’s ponderous, and it’s philosophical. It’s manic, and it’s tricky, and it’s thrilling. And it’s too long. But so what? This isn’t a perfect film, but it earns a high spot for the very boldness of its creation. If it’s not the first summer spectacle to leave you thinking as you leave the theatre, nor the first crime-drama produced with dazzling skill, then The Dark Knight may just be the best of both of them, swirled together: a mesmerizing and dark concoction.

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Perhaps too cute, or too slight, or too confectionary a movie to triumph and to treasure—whatever: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a joyous romp that has such a light, heartfelt touch that it does something entirely too rare for a romantic-comedy: it redefines its own genre for a modern audience. It’s a teen break-up/meet-up sweet-and-sour plug-in-and-let-go experience that creeps up and wins you over. Lorene Scafaria’s screenplay, adapted from the novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, has charm and wit to spare, but the real behind-the-camera winner is director Peter Sollett, who doesn’t just follow his actors into every nook and cranny of nighttime NYC, he chases them. And the more he does so, the more he—and you, the audience—begin to understand what he’s chasing. The movie fills its cast richly, with ethnicities and sexualities of all types, and pays each of them rich consideration. Rare is the film that doesn’t just lay bare the shallow frivolities of adolescence, but glorifies and deepens them. Nick & Norah isn’t as great a conversation piece as, say, Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, but the talking is second to the atmosphere created. And the world discovered by Michael Cera and Kat Dennings is unlike most anything else seen on a movie screen lately and that’s because the world they find is ours.

Kung-Fu Panda

It was something of a good year for animated films. The genre produced masterpieces, like that aforementioned one about the robot, and several that were, for lack of a better phrase, just really fun. A better example of this than most was Kung-Fu Panda, which was written by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger as a thorough exercise in tongue-in-cheek bravura; what’s more, the directors and their actors—Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, leading a Jack Black as he gives one of his all-too-rare show-stopping soul-on-his-sleeve performances—give actual life to the phrase “tongue-in-cheek bravura:” the animation is fluid, and lightning-fast, and the sarcasm flows about as quickly. The last third devolves into nothing more than a slapstick-y karate bonanza, but it’s conceived and drawn out with such rambunctious energy that you forget to care. If WALL-E taught us of the magic in a single, solitary soul (synthetic or not), then Kung-Fu Panda reminds us all of the capacity for filmmakers to not just draw pretty moving pictures, but to make them funny, too. It’s a simplistic notion (and if the final product didn’t pay such richly humorous dividends on repeated viewings the picture would be all the more blah for holding it center-stage) but here, like its lesser-compatriot Horton Hears a Who, the film holds itself rapt with the possibilities of silliness in animation—and the audience, suddenly, is held rapt too.

Australia

As with all of writer-director Baz Luhrmann’s work, his fifth film in two decades is firmly love it or hate it—and, darn it all, I adored Australia, utterly and with complete abandon. True, it’s a mess of a production, and the narrative feels gangly, overgrown, overworked, and precocious; and, true, the odd mixture of drama, action, and comedy that Luhrmann is trying to pull off never feels more awkward than when he attempts all three at once (which he does quite frequently). But his visual zest remains firmly intact (his cameras swoon with unabashed glee in a mad rush to capture the expansive landscape of his story), and his mad, desirous aesthetic is madly infectious. For the first time (that’s right: Moulin Rouge! doesn’t count), his romance—his soul—connects through the screen with the audience, and so the inherently cheesy nature of this Out of Africa redux is forgiven—lo! Less than forgiven: overlooked entirely as you rush headlong into sweeping sequence after sequence, heart melting, swoon swooning, lips curling, and hands shaking. If for no other reason than that Australia is the perfect argument for why certain movies have to be seen on the big screen, have to be absorbed as they were conceived, without boundaries, without thought to structure, and with but one goal in mind: to shock, awe, and over-stimulate—

Actually, that’s reason enough.

Other Notables Events, Products, and Persons of Greatness:

Love on the Inside: Sugarland

What would seem to be just a good album becomes nearly great in context. Consider: in the last four years the group (once a trio—now a duo, sans the grittier aesthetic of Kristen Hall) has released three collections, with Love on the Inside being their third. And the triumph in it all isn’t just how consistent each piece of work is, but how remarkable the larger body is as a whole because of it. Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles (he plays, she sings; they both write) remain as cleverly mainstream as ever, and if their latest CD lacks an emotional stunner like Enjoy the Ride’s “Stay,” it more than makes up for it with goofy jives like “Steve Earle” and “It Happens.” Plus it happens to have, with “We Run,” what may well be the purest expression of first love all year. That kind of sincerity, which at its best touches naturalism, is all a part of their synergetic brand: a swelling celebration of middle-class humanism.

The Enchantress of Florence: Salmon Rushdie

Perhaps not the best book of the year, but who needs greatness? Rushdie, taking a step away from the heft of his more revered works like Midnight’s Children, instead delivers to us this delightful fable-within-historical fiction, about a wanderer who comes to the court of the powerful Mughal king Akbar with a story to tell (or, just maybe, a lie to spin). Quickly, this incredibly handsome, blonde-haired young man has ingratiated himself into the upper-echelons of Akbar’s capital city as his charm, good looks, and quicksilver tongue enrapture ever-increasing portions of the population. But wait—just what, exactly, is going on? All is revealed, but slowly, as both the wanderer’s story and his tale-to-tell are told, in overlapping, hazy scenes. The characters (none more so than the emperor himself) are warmly, tartly, sketched-in; the dialogue has a breezy-glam intelligence; and the conclusion is bitter-sweet, but the novel as a whole is all the more sumptuous for it: a piquant, delicious, and witty display of men at the height of their powers—of deception, of empire-building, of longing, of violence, and of love.

30 Rock/Pushing Daisies

Both are quirky, lighter-than-air shows—but one happens to be a sitcom, and the other is a murder-mystery-romantic-comedy. And one premiered to minimal viewership, while the other did blockbuster numbers. And one of them just got renewed for a fourth season, as its fan-base steadily increases (kind of like The Office three years ago) while the other was just cancelled. So, ok, 30 Rock and Pushing Daisies have only minimal similarities, but over the first half of the 2008-2009 season (at least in a landscape that was sans Friday Night Lights), they were both celebration-worthy gems.

30 Rock is the better of the two, if only because it benefits ever-more from the steadily increasing artistic strength of executive-producer/head-writer/star Tina Fey (plus it’s also the one of the two that was spared the axe). Fey writes rococo dialogue better than just about anyone except Mitchell Hurwitz, her comedy zings effortlessly from high to low, her guest-spots have Will & Grace-like marquee names, with none of their pandering, and—what’s more—together with her cast (headed by the mercilessly talented Alec Baldwin) she’s made the most winning sitcom of the year by one simple fact: the show is just really funny.

Pushing Daisies has very little of Fey’s profoundly silly wit, but the show, exec-produced by Bryan Fuller, runs on the same absurdly clever wavelength. The atmosphere is lush, confectionary, and in perfect service of the show’s tone: the sour beneath the sweet. Filled with dead people, living people, and dead people who are now living, Daisies tends to feel a bit overcrowded at times, but the ensemble (which expanded nicely in Season Two) is seamless (extra extra kudos go out to Kristen Chenoweth as the waitressing sidekick: if not the heart of the series, she’s definitely the soul). And the writing: is there anything quite like it on network television today—anything quite so rambunctiously literate, voluble, ebullient, or profuse? The conversations go around and around in sardonic circles and if the narratives tend to ramble a bit, it was more a desperate flaw than an irritating one, as the series kept looking for the viewers who evaporated after the Writer’s Strike. They never found them, and after a truncated season, it’s goodbye Daisies. At least there will always be DVD, to help bring you back to life again…and this time, for longer than a minute.

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends: Coldplay

There aren’t any commas in the title of Coldplay’s fourth album—and intentionally so: the label is meant to be read in one pensive moment, as the reader moves from triumph to ruefulness. That’s a lot of tone to pack into just the verbiage, but the English rockers don’t disappoint: all of their pretention is pulled off seamlessly, with producer Brian Eno revitalizing their sound at a perfect intersection in their careers (the CD can be read both as a response to those who deride them as Radiohead-lite, and as a claim to the vacant U2 throne). The sonic stylization is dense, but dexterous, and each song reveals hidden twists and turns upon return visits. “Cemeteries of London,” Life in Technicolor,” (which is the most lush pop-instrumental in quite some time) and “Yes” are all exhilarating, expert creations—the band’s depressing lyricism is counterpointed neatly with out-of-nowhere musical choices like the occasional Eastern interlude. And what of “Violet Hill” and “Viva la Vida”—the latter of which became 2008’s most celebrated rock song? I prefer, ever-so-slightly, “Hill” over its album-mate, but both are indelible for their rich musical and emotional impacts; and, what’s more, they expand the sonic horizon with each swell of Martin’s falsetto, leading the listener more and more to agree with the reflexive labeling by the masses and critics alike: yes, yes—Viva la Vida is, quite simply, sublime.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Joss Whedon: screenwriter, television producer, mad genius—everyone knows those things. But did you also know the mind behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer could write a musical? As in both lyrics and music? And that it doesn’t suck…like, at all? Ok, I’ll be honest: I came in with the highest of hopes—this is Joss Whedon after all. Still, the fact that he (along with a mini-writing staff comprised of his brothers and almost-sister-in-law) could whip this little 43-minute masterpiece over the course of the Writer’s Strike and have it still bare all the trademark Whedonesque flourishes…well, that’s something else entirely. The story is reliably anachronistic, the dialogue is whip-smart, and the actors (all of whom can actually sing) are divine, but it’s the music in this mini-musical that is what sticks in your head. “Freeze Ray,” “Penny’s Song,” “Slipping,” and “My Eyes” are perfectly exemplary of the talents of a man television has gone without now for nearly six years: each song is catchy, but on a larger scale it’s also funny, sincere, and a bit poetic. Rejoice those few of you who missed Dr. Horrible’s debut online months ago: the DVD is already being released. And rejoice, too, those of you who caught the production and are keen now for more of its aesthetic: Whedon’s has already hired his cohorts on the musical, Jed Whedon and Marissa Tancharoen, on as part of the writing staff for his next cult-classic-in-the-making—Dollhouse. Fingers crossed it makes me feel nearly as much.

(One last thing: if I should chance upon any of the myriad number of CDs and movies and so forth I have yet to see and categorically judge that is worth noting—it will be noted.)