How about a magic trick? Heath Ledger's Joker helped drive
The Dark Knight to the top of your 2008 list -- and the critics' lists, too.
Warner Bros.
by Trey Graham
Nearly 3,500 of you weighed in, and your verdict was clear: With a solid 41 percent of the almost 7,500 votes cast, The Dark Knight was your favorite movie of the year.
Not that we disagree: It made Bob Mondello's list, too.
David Edelstein begged to differ — but then he liked Sex and the City and sniffed at Slumdog Millionaire, so make what you will of that.
Come to think of it: That's what keeping up with a critic (or two, or three) is all about. You don't have to agree with 'em. The idea is to get to know their taste, and figure out how it squares with yours. Disagreeing — without assuming that the other person is an idiot — is the name of the game. Unconvinced? Check out the chart below. Is of these three NPR critics more on your wavelength than the others?
Side by side by side: Disagree with our critics? Well,
so did they ...
Kirk Radish/NPR
But we digress. Wall-E was another movie that made your list and the critics' picks: You ranked it No. 2, and Mondello, Edelstein and Kenneth Turan all picked it for their Top 10 roundups. (Does that mean you're antsy about the, um, uuuuuupcoming release of Pixar's Up?)
I loved Slumdog, so I was happy to see it land at No. 3 on the user poll — especially since it was only in 10 theaters initially, and it's still playing at only 614 venues nationwide. That's real passion reflected in those poll results — and in Slumdog's per-screen average, which is higher at this point than the average for Yes Man (a newer film, playing on 3,400 screens, and a star-driven comedy besides).
The tally: Click for complete results.
Milk made your short list, too, which I'd argue says good things about Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn and the NPR audience too. So did The Visitor: Nearly 10 percent of you picked that unassuming but enormously affecting character study as one of your three favorite movies of the year — which pleased me and Mr. Mondello no end.
That's your Top 5 — you'll find the rest of the NPR Listener Poll's Top 10 Best Movies of 2008 in that bar chart at right, and the complete list of results in the widget over on the original poll page.
After the jump: Your favorite blockbusters ...
Continue reading "Best Movies of 2008: Your Picks" »
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Before you get too down in the mouth over the state of popular entertainment, check out this lovely retrospective of 2008 movies, created by a guy named Matt Shapiro. It takes a lot of care to put something like this together so that it works, and this one is a great success. There truly were a healthy number of very, very good movies this year, and if you don't say to yourself, "Oh, right, that too!" at least once, I'll be surprised. Kudos to Matt.
Via Slashfilm (naturally) and Low Resolution.
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Neil Patrick Harris: An Emmy for this guy is on my list of 2009 television wishes.
Michael Buckner/Getty Images
by Linda Holmes
Everyone agrees that 2008 was a difficult year for TV, which isn't too surprising when you consider that in late 2007 and early 2008, there were no writers on the job for three months. (It would be more depressing if they'd been gone three months and it didn't matter.)
So will 2009 be better? One would hope. How does it get there? Five things I'd like to see:
1. Learn the lesson that if a storyline sounds stupid, it probably is. There are exceptions to the general rule that where there's silliness smoke, there's preposterousness fire -- I have been an outspoken defender of, of all things, VH1's Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew -- but on the whole, a little more skepticism wouldn't hurt. Someone on the Grey's Anatomy staff could have simply said, "Sex with a ghost doesn't sound like a good idea," and it would have saved everyone a lot of heartache. In fact, "No sex with ghosts" wouldn't be a bad rule.
Four more choices, after the jump...
Continue reading "A 2009 Television Wish List" »
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by Glen Weldon
Know this: Among those few, those happy few, those bands of geeky brothers and sisters who dutifully hit their local comic shops every Wednesday to pick up the week's batch of new comics, there exists a host of distinct species and subspecies.
Blue Beetle: What it has to do with my No. 1 Geek Confession of 2008, after the jump.
DC Comics
Let's start with the most basic split in the trunk of the comic book fan's taxonomic tree. And it's got nothing to do with DC vs. Marvel.
No, this classification is even more fundamental, and it's bound up in one's essential character. Which is to say: It's not what you read, it's how you read.
After the jump: Reading habits as Rorschach blots, the five ongoing series that consistently end up at the bottom of my pile, and why that's a good thing.
Continue reading "Toward a Comics-Geek Taxonomy, Plus Five Flatly Awesome Comics" »
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