Lists and awards, 12/31.

"Swedish veteran director Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments received the highest number of nominations - eight - for the Guldbagge awards, Sweden's national film prize," reports Jorn Rossing Jensen for Screen.

Harry Tuttle indexes a year of "Crisis" in film criticism.

IndieWIRE editors run their own and industry insiders' top tens.

Criticwatch 2008: Erik Childress presents an astoundingly well-documented round of awards for the "Whores of the Year." Also at Hollywood Bitchslap: Peter Sobczynski's "Worst Films of 2008: Another Boll-Free List!"

"The Lumière Reader's film editors and contributors select the movies that mattered in 2008."

"I think between our toilet economy and the general pessimism in the air, there seems to be a free-floating dread seeping into movies." Sean Burns and Matt Prigge discuss the films of 2008 in the Philadelphia Weekly.

"Going to the movies isn't just fun and games. If you pay attention, you'll also get quite an education. While some of the facts we picked up at the theater in 2008 may seem to be of dubious value, you can be assured that if you saw it on the movie screen, it's 100 percent true!" Filmcritic.com presents "What We Learned at the Movies in 2008."

"More than ever, ambition in Hollywood has become a wage-slave in an Oscar-hungry boutique, trading desperately in the Christmas build-up and abandoning the rest of the year, like the Romans did their empire, to hordes of ravening cinematic barbarians. I saw some of the best films I've ever seen in the past twelve months - trouble is, they were all from last year." Still, Roderick Heath finds a few 2008 releases worth noting.

"There's certainly no shortage of ideas about the films and film trends of 2008 from the select crew of Bay Area filmmakers, critics and industry pros SF360.org polled for our Year-in-Film series," notes editor Susan Gerhard. Also, the "Top unreleased films" of the year.

"Notwithstanding Robert Downey Jr's performance of the year in Tropic Thunder, my favorite films of '08 tended toward the spare and simple, winning me over with eloquent reticence." Jonathan Kiefer's #1: Lance Hammer's Ballast.

"In 2008 I conducted nearly 60 interviews!" Michael Guillén looks back on ten of his favorites.

Michael Hawley's #1: Jaime Rosales's Solitary Fragments.

"2008, the year of death, decay and the wisdom of the beautiful loser. The year movie stars examined their own mortality and fading beauty via their on-screen personas (Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke and Clint Eastwood, who managed to be as cute as Sarah Silverman while delivering his racial humor - I'm still wondering if that was his point - and I'm still fond of his weirdly toned movie.) The year Heath left us and Mickey came back and Robert Downey Jr became a superhero." By this point, you may be suspecting that Kim Morgan's #1 movie of the year is The Wrestler.

The standout in Michael Tully's enormous list for Hammer to Nail: Benh Zeitlin's Glory at Sea.

David Lowery looks back on the "Ones to Remember."

Zach Campbell offers "a few words on a film that I've chosen from what I saw during each month of this calendar year. These are not necessarily the best or most interesting films I saw in each given month. They're only meant to to pique curiosity, direct attention to interesting films, or perhaps vent a little snark."

Topping James Rocchi's ten: Steven Soderbergh's Che.

Ambrose Heron goes alphabetical.

"The retrospectives in 2008 were the highlight of the year for me," writes Acquarello: "filling the gaps from the idiosyncratic cinemas of such diverse filmmakers as Jean Eustache, Manoel de Oliveira, Teuvo Tulio and Nagisa Oshima, and discovering the richness of some national cinemas from the 'other' Europe, such as Slovenia and Romania." Also in the Auteurs' Notebook:

• David Cairns: "I barely seem to have seen any new films this year - I did vaguely 'keep up' by seeing stuff on DVD from the year before, but most of my explorations have been archaeological in nature."

• Harry Tuttle: "If the Film Criticism Crisis of 2008 taught us anything (new), this would have to be the inadequacy of audience's habits and critics' duty. Not a viable profession."

• Zachary Wigon: "Hunger (Steve McQueen) is one of the best films I have ever seen."

Earlier: Round 1.

Filmmaker's "Year in Review" series picks up again with entries from Mary Glucksman, Jason Guerrasio and Scott Macaulay. Earlier: Round 1.

At Screengrab, Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce agree at least on the best film of the year: Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.

Bob Turnbull agrees, too, and he's got a slew of other lists to boot.

Topping Chicagoist Rob Christopher's list: Sarah Polley's Away From Her.

Josef Braun: "There are indeed more than ten films listed in my... best of, but I did manage at least to contain them all in ten groupings."

"With the elimination of a competing format, 2008 saw the establishment of the backwards compatible Blu-ray (BD) system as the high-end subset of the DVD format," writes Doug Pratt, introducing his "Top Ten DVDs and BDs of 2008" at Movie City News. "While it is less flexible and does not offer significant improvements in supplementary features (except enhanced interactivity and an ability to connect with other fans of a title online), the BD's sound and picture advantages are spectacular." His #1: the Blu-ray release of The Dark Knight. Also, Noah Forrest's #1: A Christmas Tale.

The AV Club lists the "Best DVDs of 2008." #1: The Films of Budd Boetticher.

Matt Dentler lists his "10 Best Festival Experiences of 2008."

More top tens at AICN: Capone (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Massawyrm (Frost/Nixon).

The Playlist's "Worst Films of 2008."

Tina Daunt lists the "Top 10 moments in 2008 celebrity activism" for the Los Angeles Times.

Nitesh Rohit recalls the highlight of "a year in the life of an Indian cinephile."

Amie Simon's #1 at the Siffblog: Tarsem's The Fall.

At IFC, R Emmet Sweeney lists the "Five Greatest Pratfalls of 2008."

Rex Sorgatz is wrapping up his almighty list of lists, but here's the fun one: the most notable blogs of the past year.

Ed Champion's been writing up the best books of the year all over the place.

In the New York Times, Ben Schott presents a quiz, "118 questions, and a fiendish election table, on the incidents, accidents, hints and allegations that defined 2008."

Tops and flops auf deutsch: Film-Dienst, new filmkritik and zitty.

More on the music of 2008: The Art of Memory, MS Smith and Bobby Solomon.

Online listening tip. Robert Horton's been taking calls.

Online listening and viewing tip. DJ Earworm mashes up "the Top 25 hits of the year, according to Billboard Magazine, arranged into a four and a half minute song."

Online viewing tip. Razia Iqbal looks back on the year in the arts for the BBC.

Online viewing tips. "It's hard to pick the 'best' videos of the year. There are so many reasons that they can be good," writes Mike McIntee at the UpTake. "So I've picked several based on my own categories."

Posted by dwhudson at December 31, 2008 1:57 PM