We all do it. "You have to watch this movie. Sit down. I'm putting the DVD in. Hey-hey-hey -- don't try to stand up. Sit down. On the couch. Stop talking. I'm pressing 'play.' Don't try to go to the kitchen, or I'll make you watch it twice."

Or maybe you do it with music: "I'm putting this on your iPod, and if you try to remove it, your iPod will blow up, and if you don't listen to it within a week, it will start destroying files. You don't want that, do you? I didn't think so."

This is cultural proselytizing by brute force, and you only do it with people you really like, because anyone else would probably be rather unsettled by it.

For me, on New Year's Eve, it was Frisky Dingo, an Adult Swim cartoon I discussed in the year-end TV-on-DVD piece. You almost have to force Frisky Dingo on people, because they will almost certainly have never heard of it, the concept (superhero parody) doesn't exactly sell itself, and the name sounds like it refers to either something very child-oriented or something very adult-oriented, depending on your point of view.

But it's riotously funny, and I find that most people can be hooked within one or two 11-minute episodes. It's just a matter of getting them into the handcuffs.

So what do you find yourself pushing most frequently? Is it something obscure? Something popular that most of your friends eschew as hopelessly middlebrow? A movie everyone else has forgotten all about? You never know; maybe you can pick up a convert, and isn't that what it's all about?

True crime? It is to laugh: David Samuels' The Runner is more a true-confessions kind of book. The New Press

 

by Sarah D. Bunting

A new year brings with it New Year's resolutions — to lose weight, to quit smoking, to cap the impractical-shoe budget once and for all. It's easy to make these resolutions, then break them as the second week (or hour) of January dawns.

It's even easier to suggest resolutions for other people, so I'd like to propose a New Year's resolution for David Samuels, the author of The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue, to wit:

"The next time I write a true-crime book, I resolve to write an actual true-crime book, not pad a con-man profile I already wrote for The New Yorker with indictments of Ivy League admissions policies and our haves-versus-have-nots society."

In fairness to Samuels, such indictments have their place. And the book is not bad or anything; it's quite well written.

But I don't read true crime for good writing, and neither does anyone else. (Fortunately, because it's in short supply). I read it because I want to learn about a given case. Ann Rule hasn't sold a bajillion books because she's such a fantastic wordsmith; her prose is mediocre at best. But she knows how to identify a juicy story, she knows how to get access to everyone involved with it, and she knows how to keep it moving.

What happens when you don't keep it moving, after the jump ...

Hogue has a long history of property and identity theft that neither began nor ended at Princeton, and tends not to cooperate with writers and filmmakers wanting to tell his story. But Samuels put together a solid piece on Hogue for The New Yorker in September of 2001.

He should have just left the story at that. Alas, the full-length book romanticizes Hogue as a trickster who showed up the establishment, and casts Hogue's attempt to defraud Princeton as an admirable act, a long-overdue comeuppance for a hidebound, short-sighted institution.

Despite having attended both Princeton and Harvard himself, Samuels harbors an undisguised bitterness towards the Ivy League: "Accepting my ticket to an Ivy League college made me a willing participant in the greater fraud of a meritocracy in which some were ordained more equal than others."

I attended Princeton too, at the same time as Hogue, and my patience with Samuels's "Let me crap all over the Ivy League just in case somebody mistakes me for a Republican" attitude is limited. But that isn't the point.

The point is that I remember when Hogue got arrested. I remember half the campus wearing "Free James Hogue" T-shirts, I remember when he turned up at Harvard and got arrested again, this time for nicking gems from their geology lab, and I want to read about that.

Hogue didn't hoodwink Princeton's admissions department so that he could expose the Ancient Eight as a hotbed of nepotism and overbred privilege; he did it because that's what Hogue does. He hoodwinks. He defrauds.

He did it before, in Palo Alto, enrolling in high school with a false name. He did it again in Telluride, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down from friends and colleagues. He can't seem to help himself.

That is what makes him a good subject — not that Princeton's faculty and staff looked like idiots for admitting him. Princeton admitted Lyle Menendez, too; we've had to apologize for everyone from Brooke Shields to Bill Frist. So what?

Samuels is a good writer, but he didn't write the book he wanted to — namely, about the perversions of justice allegedly perpetrated by the Ivies — and he didn't write a true-crime book, either.

I learned nothing I hadn't already gleaned from the New Yorker piece or from Wikipedia; I got no insights into Hogue, his family, or other con men of this type.

Instead Samuels serves up a not entirely convincing thesis about the American dream, and how the "reinvention" therein is actually lying, along with a heaping side of resentment towards his own education.

And while that's his truth, it's not true crime.

Sarah D. Bunting reviews true-crime books, depressing documentaries, and more at TomatoNation.com.

I mentioned here last week that I have been, at times, an outspoken defender of Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew. Yes, it's the worst title in the history of reality television, quite possibly, and that's already a field with an impressive history of bad titles. Yes, the world might be a better place without either celebrities or rehab, let alone the meeting of the two.

But it's also a show where, every now and then, someone accidentally says something weirdly insightful, mostly because he or she forgot to be a self-centered yahoo for about ten seconds and a little window opened up that let a beam of light crack the otherwise impenetrable wall of superficiality. Intermittent reinforcement, right? The most effective kind of all.

I'm always fascinated by other people's "outspoken defender" experiences. It's not the same as "guilty pleasures," exactly -- guilty pleasures are the things you know have no merit but enjoy anyway. I'm talking about being the one person who truly found The Love Guru hilarious, or being the biggest fan that the ABC show Cavemen -- which was based on the insurance-selling cavemen, by the way -- ever had. The best thing you can bring to your consumption of popular entertainment is a genuine ability to think for yourself (as opposed to an ability to disagree with the majority, which is totally different, of course), so in some ways, this may be your mark of genius.

So let's throw it open: Are you an outspoken defender? Of what? Do you admit it to your family? Your friends? Have you suffered what one of my college professors would have called the disapprobation of your peers as a result? If I can admit to mine, after all, you can admit to yours.

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 ...

No surprises in the top two spots: The Dark Knight and Wall-E grabbed the gold and the silver again.

 

After that came that other surly superhero, Iron Man. Again, no big surprise there; it had the third-biggest opening weekend of any movie in 2008.

But: Once the superheros and the animated romances were accounted for, your 4th and 5th favorite-blockbuster picks were a bit of a surprise. (Top 8 results in the bar chart; full results here.)

Not the newest Indiana Jones. Not Hancock or the new Bond flick or Twilight. And not Kung-Fu Panda — though every last one of those movies opened bigger than the two you did pick.

Your favorites, after the top three? Mamma Mia! and Sex and the City. A shameless romp that's all about adults letting down their hair and remembering what it's like to be young and carefree, and ... well, a shameless romp about adults putting down their cocktails and coming to terms with growing up.

That's my NPR crowd: Even your escapist movies have a little something going on under the surface.

Happy New Year, everybody — and thanks for joining in.

'Til next year ...

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.

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...

3. Rediscover comedy. There is surprisingly little comedy on television right now -- NBC has Thursday night comedies, CBS has Monday night comedies, ABC has Samantha Who? and has now nabbed Scrubs from NBC, and Fox has Sunday night comedies. But that's about it for the networks, and while cable has a few popular entries -- notably FX's It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Entourage on HBO, if those are up your alley -- cable has not dramatically improved the comedy landscape as it has with drama. We're primed for a comedy revival, what with the dismal news everywhere, and while I wouldn't presume to suggest where the time to show more comedies could come from, I do think I could get by without fifteen hours of network crime/mystery-solving per week. (A number I did not make up.)

4. Give Neil Patrick Harris his Emmy, already. Neil Patrick Harris, the onetime teenage star of Doogie Howser, M.D., has elevated his How I Met Your Mother character, Barney Stinson, from a typical oversexed buddy sidekick -- think Larry from Three's Company -- to a guy who is, convincingly, both a total sleazebag and a stupendously devoted friend. His performances during the supposedly invulnerable Barney's estrangement from "bro" Ted were masterpieces of saying one thing and feeling another, and the wallop of his besotted stare when he realized he had feelings for his female "bro" Robin was considerable.

So why can't he get an Emmy? Because he works on a show that's a straight-up, crowd-pleasing sitcom in a world where all the love is going to supposedly "edgier" material, like Entourage. Entourage is the home of Jeremy Piven, who has stolen the Emmy that should have been Harris's for three years (one when Harris wasn't even nominated, and then two when he was). The fact that The Wire was endlessly neglected was depressingly predictable; the fact that Neil Patrick Harris can't get an Emmy from a group that gave three to Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond is just crazy.

5. Keep reaching. It's a famous story now that HBO, which has developed many of the most respected dramas of the last ten years, turned down Mad Men, which went on to help transform AMC from the butt of jokes about which movies are actually "American Movie Classics" to a serious drama supplier. I bring up that story not to slam HBO, but to point out that even people with a lot of experience simply don't know what's going to work until they try it, no matter the good faith with which they're working to pick the Next Great Show.

It's critically important that particularly cable networks, which have more wiggle room both creatively and financially than broadcast networks, continue to try a lot of different things to see what sticks. Chasing someone else's successes is not the answer; the success of Mad Men doesn't mean everyone else should make advertising-themed period pieces, any more than The Sopranos meant that everyone should make endless gangster shows. It means that everything is a gamble, so you might as well gamble on things you actually think are good, and not pretend that it's an exact science, because if it were? We'd be in the third triumphant season of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.

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.

Grazers simply work their way through their stack of weekly titles in whatever random order the shop rang them up. Thus they can seem to radiate a sort of blitheness that borders on indifference. And this weird, Adam and Eve-before-the-Fall nonchalance is something inveterate Stackers like me publicly scorn -- and privately envy.

Here's why: Stackers carefully -- nay, ritualistically -- sort through their selections prior to reading. As we set about prioritizing our weekly funnybooks according to any one of a hundred different sets of metrics, we engage in a deliberate process that demands close attention and no small amount of self-reflection.

I know several Stackers, for example, who can't bear the miscegenation of fictive universes, and so finish all of their Marvel books before moving on to their DC books, their Image books, et cetera.

Others read team books first, or sort by genre -- Western before horror before indie, and so on.

By far the most common criterion used by Stackers is the simplest and most subjective one -- how much they like a given series. But even here there's a key distinction.

There are, of course, the instant-gratification types who read their favorite series first. I understand this impulse, having spent a few years in this camp myself. Ultimately, it began to feel like I was eating dessert first.

Today I religiously place favorite series on the bottom of my stack. True, this has the unintended effect of causing me to plow through the books I care less about so quickly that their contents never quite make their way to my long-term memory.

(I couldn't tell you much of anything, for example, about what's happened in some of this year's major crossover superhero "events" -- I know that aliens at one point impersonated Spider-Girl, but I couldn't tell you why. I know, too, that Batman is either dead or on workman's comp, but that's about it.)

Below are the ongoing comic book series — some going strong, some recently cancelled — that always ended up on the bottom of my personal stack in 2008.

• Scalped — Crime noir set on a Native American reservation; contains generous helpings of everything you think of when you hear the word gritty: Guns, gams, gambling, and so forth. But it's also got characters with rich, complex histories that continue to shape them, issue after issue. Never disappoints.

• Blue Beetle — The tale of Jamie Reyes, a young Mexican-American who patrols the streets of El Paso with the aid of a talking alien warsuit, is the one book that consistently comes closest to capturing the exuberant charm and whimsy that was once a hallmark of the superhero genre.

Case in point: For the first few story arcs, the warsuit's word balloons were written in an alien alphabet that I, dweeb that I am, learned to read. Thereafter, every page of the book became suffused with an indelible, super-secret-decoder-ring kind of joy. Writer John Rodgers left the book this year, taking some of the series' particular snap with him; DC Comics recently announced the title's cancellation. Which: Rats.

• Manhunter — A brave, gorgeous, doomed attempt to do a lot of things that superhero comics have historically avoided, namely:

1. Allow a strong, flawed, female lead character to carry a title by herself,
2. Explore the real-world legal ramifications of superheroing (read: costumed vigilantism), and
3. Deal matter-of-factly with gay characters.

Consequently, it's been canceled a lot. Most recently, for good. Too damn beautiful to live, this book.
• I Kill Giants — I recommended this 7-issue miniseries early in its run, half-fearful that it wouldn't be able to sustain its singular, adorable-but-disquieting vibe. I'm happy to report that it's still going strong as we hurtle toward the end, growing more layered and more satisfying in the process. Also, darker. Considerably darker.

• Proof — So yes, the premise — mysterious organization protects Earth from otherworldly threats — is familiar. And the fact that its lead character is an erudite, nattily dressed Bigfoot named Proof might fool prospective readers into thinking the book is little more than a collection of high-concept action-movie tropes.

But this serial takes its time to create the world around its characters — when they're not out hunting chupacabras, they're talking to each other, and caring about each other, in grounded yet endearingly unexpected ways. (The issue in which the lumbering titular sasquatch takes a colleague out on the town for a fashion makeover, for example, made me want to accost strangers on the street and shove a copy into their hands.) It's cryptozoology with heart -- and a distinctive sense of style.

The Daily Show: This, and many other Viacom shows, may be about to disappear for a lot of cable subscribers.Comedy Central

 

by Linda Holmes

Media titans don't come much bigger than Time Warner and Viacom, and right now, the two are locked in combat in a showdown that plausibly could result in Time Warner Cable customers losing access to Viacom channels including MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon.

And it could happen tonight. As in, hours from now.

Why you might lose Dora and Stephen Colbert, after the jump...

This one dispute includes elements of a barrel full of challenges that are facing media organizations right now. Television ratings are down across the board, so advertising is sagging, so the money has to come from somewhere. Subscribers are strapped, so the existing model, in which cable subscribers essentially pay what they're told to pay, has become precarious.

Time Warner also isn't happy that Viacom makes a lot of its programming available online (thus bypassing the cable provider), but in an interesting reversal, it's now claiming that it will use this fact to its advantage by telling its subscribers how to get their favorite shows online, presumably reducing the customer fury that will be unleashed if the channels disappear and allowing it to hold out longer.

This is one of those quietly simmering disputes that everyone assumes will be resolved at the last minute until all of a sudden it just...isn't. It probably won't be allowed to go on for very long, but don't be surprised if this particular game of chicken does result in a day or two of lost programming.

TV marathons: Being an engaged viewer is overrated -- if you do it right, television can go on and on without attention of any kind. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

As you have undoubtedly noted, we are in the late stages of the Television Dead Zone, which lasts from about mid-December to early January -- a time in which seriously, honestly, nobody does anything interesting on television. (This is why our new Discerning Viewer is taking a hiatus: honestly, right now, discerning viewers are going to the movies instead.)

However! It's New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, and while that doesn't bring anything new, it does bring the traditional selection of marathons. They can keep you away from football, they can keep you away from your relatives (hey, I don't know your relatives, I'm just saying), and in some cases, they can help you catch up on worthy shows you might have missed.

Fortunately, the blog Interesting Pile makes a habit of digging up the list of marathons at times like this, so you don't have to. Among this year's notables:

• Rocky movies on Versus (a cable network you may or may not receive, which highlights both bull-riding and NHL hockey in the title bar of its web site, so...you get the idea). Beginning at 11:00 a.m. today (Wednesday), they'll be showing all five Rocky movies consecutively. You should, of course, watch them while working out.

More marathons, after the jump...

• Rocky movies on AMC. That's right -- starting at 3:00 p.m., AMC will also run all five Rocky movies. Either there's some crazy boxing mojo in the air, or the price of showing Rocky on television has just dropped precipitously.

• American Idol on Fox Reality. Did you miss the 2008 season? Do you feel left out? Starting at 9:00 a.m., Fox Reality has many hours of singing, both good and not-so-good. Spoiler: Ramiele Malubay? Not the big winner.

• Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel. Like most famous chefs, Bourdain is a love-hate proposition, but his fans will happily gobble episodes of his show, starting at 3:00 p.m.

• Monk on USA. Great news for my brother-in-law! USA is showing Monk all day tomorrow, so if you've always wondered what all the fuss is about and why Tony Shalhoub wins all those awards, it's a fine time to find out.

• The Brady Bunch on TV Land. And finally, what would a list of marathons be without six hours of The Brady Bunch? Nothing, that's what. Beginning at noon, enjoy Jan-centered episodes including "Her Sister's Shadow" (that would be "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!") and "Try, Try Again," in which it hilariously turns out that Jan is, indeed, bad at everything.

Madonna: This, surprisingly, is an almost-teenager's mother. But her Sticky & Sweet Tour hasn't lost a step, ticket-wise. Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

The results are in from Pollstar magazine, and the highest-grossing concert tour of 2008 was Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour, which made more than $105 million. She's followed in the top ten by Celine Dion, the Eagles, Kenny Chesney, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond, Rascal Flatts, the Police, and Tina Turner.

It's like my entire high-school class time-traveled 20 years into the future and dominated the year in ticket sales, except that the only thing we had to listen to in the time machine was contemporary country radio (you know how that happens in parts of, like, Wisconsin), so we emerged liking everything we liked back then, plus Kenny Chesney and Rascal Flatts.

If the attention that went to Sean Penn's performance in Milk made you curious about the real Harvey Milk, you'll be glad to see that Hulu has gotten hold of The Times Of Harvey Milk, the 1985 documentary that not only won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, but also won a Special Jury Prize at the very first Sundance Film Festival.

Hulu has moved slowly into acquiring worthwhile theatrical films, compared to its early strength with television, but they're getting serious now.

Run for your life: What are the New York police worried about for New Year's Eve? The terrifying Jonas Brothers. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Today in adolescent menaces: People reports that the New York Police Department is very nervous about New Year's Eve in Times Square, because one of the performances on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve is the Jonas Brothers, the Disney-driven pop trio made up of (left to right in this photo) Tall Hair Jonas, Flat Hair Jonas, and Jonas Who Looks Like Tom Hanks In Bosom Buddies.

What could happen, after the jump...

All of which is rather strange, because Times Square on New Year's Eve is crawling with drunks.

The Jonas Brothers are a Disney Channel act. No one who is interested in personnel promoted on the Disney Channel should be in Times Square on New Year's Eve.

If you are in Times Square on New Year's Eve to see the Jonas Brothers, your biggest problem is not the presence of too many other Jonas Brothers aficionados. It is the presence of too many other people who have had eight beers and are wearing paper hats and blowing into their cell phones after mistaking them for festive noisemakers.

Is this our future?: If you're looking for a hint about recession-era movies, you may find it in Marley & Me.Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

You may have heard there are a few problems with the economy.

Because many people's lives have only begun to be directly affected in the last couple of months, it's been difficult to tell what effect, if any, the grim national mood would have on popular entertainment. It's a Hollywood article of faith that movies are "recession-proof," in part because people seek out escapist entertainment when they're troubled -- an belief arising primarily from the eagerness with which Americans continued to go to the movies during the Great Depression.

But the Great Depression didn't have Netflix, Blockbuster, HBO, movies on demand, or digital thievery, all of which are highly convenient and wildly less expensive ways to enjoy a movie than going to the theater. (I am not advocating digital thievery, you understand; only acknowledging that it exists.)

As a matter of fact, the Great Depression didn't have television, and if your desire is for escapism and you have cable, you probably have a hundred channels of it already. For a variety of reasons, making predictions based on what happened during the Great Depression seems like a dicey proposition. Still, whatever effect the economic situation has on how much we go to the movies, the increasing sense that the news consists of a series of stories about how much dread it is appropriate to feel today may well affect which movies do well.

Enter Marley & Me.

Why this may be the dawning of the age of the inoffensive, after the jump...

When I saw Marley & Me, the thing I felt most acutely was how easy to watch it was, and I don't mean that as either an insult or a compliment, necessarily. Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, who play the owners of Marley the yellow lab, are overwhelmingly personable and genial in it for the most part. They're mostly happy, they're mostly going about their business, and it's a fair criticism of the movie -- best explained by Scott Tobias at the A.V. Club -- that its biggest challenge is overcoming the sense that it could be called Highly Attractive Couple Has Regular Life With Dog.

It feels like a perfect story for unhappy times; it really does. It's funny but not cutting, it's not trying to teach you anything, and it's not there to make you think anything other than, possibly, "I really love my dog." You may cry, but only over the normal progression of dog ownership.

One movie is not a trend, but if you're looking for a hint of what recession-era successes may look like in popular culture, this is probably one. I saw it, I enjoyed it, and then I forgot it. It was pleasant to watch, but sort of in the same way tea is good when you're sick.

I wouldn't at all recommend a movie diet made up entirely of movies like this. I saw Doubt on the same day, and it goes without saying (I hope) that it's infinitely more rewarding and interesting as art. (With the exception of Meryl Streep, whose performance has divided critics into two camps called "She Was Amazing" and "She Was Chewing So Much Scenery I Expected Her Teeth To Be Worn To Nubs By The End," and I am emphatically in the second.) (But I digress.)

But I will give Marley & Me credit for an honest portrayal of dog ownership by adults, which hasn't been covered as thoroughly in movies as dog ownership by moppets or ornery old cranks. Having a dog really is often hilarious and crazy-making and it really does end in tears, so in that sense, there's nothing unfair about the film's approach.

If we find ourselves charging headfirst into an era of huge money for what's warm and inoffensive, you can peg the beginning of that era to Christmas Day and the opening of Marley & Me. And you can, as it is so often reasonable to do, blame the dog.

It's not often I can actually say, "This made me bust out laughing," and completely mean it. But this really, truly made me bust out laughing. I don't entirely get the advertising relevance, but particularly if you were raised on '80s pop, you must see it. I have nothing further.

Hat-tip to Glark.org.

You Know You Love Her: Or hate her. Either way, her trashy comedy was big at the box office. New Line Cinema

 

by Trey Graham

As a die-hard defender of the critical prerogative, I'd just like to go on record here and say that the customer isn't always right. The movies that make the most money at the box office? They're rarely the best movies. Which is why, as some of you noted, some hugely popular 2008 titles didn't show up on our main Best Movies of 2008 poll.

But though I'm a critic myself — of theater, mostly — I do have to confess that sometimes when I go to the movies, I just want to put my brain in neutral and be entertained. Sex and the City? I was soooo at the multiplex — as part of an organized outing involving nearly 150 guys, no less — on the first weekend.

So it's with a personal kind of pleasure that I invite you to vote below for your Favorite Popcorn-Delivery Device of 2008.

The poll, and how we picked this nominees list, after the jump ...

Oh, and speaking of Sex and the City: My own biggest laugh of the day came when the polling widget we're using refused to let me add that title as an answer option. ("Please remove inappropriate words from the answer," it insisted, politely but firmly.) So you'll find the cinematic chronicle of The Further Adventures of Carrie & Co. listed here — as 'Socks and the City.'

On the Interwebs, no one can hear you roll your eyes ...