Entertainment in 2008

• The best recent film I saw in 2008: this was a good year for animated films, with WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda, but the Batman movie, The Dark Knight, might be the most stunning film of the few I saw in 2008. I also enjoyed Iron Man, Leatherheads and Cloverfield, for completely different reasons.
  
• The best classic film I saw in 2008: perhaps To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Double Indemnity (1944), The Searchers (1956), or Where Eagles Dare (1968). There are so many really good films out there, it's hard to choose.
  
• The worst film I saw in 2008: it's a close call between Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), Tom Jones (1963), and All That Jazz (1979). All of these are award-winning films but were painfully unwatchable. It just shows that there's no accounting for taste, mine or the experts. I should also note that I'm decidedly picky when it comes to new films, in order to bypass a lot of the time-wasting cinematic dross. So the worst stuff I see is the boys' movies and classic films that didn't stand the test of time.
  
• Recent films I wanted to see in 2008 but will have to rent in 2009: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II, Tropic Thunder, An American Carol, Madagascar 2, Slumdog Millionaire, and Valkyrie.
  
• Films I had no intention of seeing in 2008 and may never bother with (and why): The Day the Earth Stood Still (Al Gore does sci-fi, again), W. (Oliver Stone never lets the truth get in the way of a good story, even when he's trying to be sympathetic), Milk (all gay activists are persecuted and noble, don't you know), and any movie with "saw," "high school musical," "traveling pants" or "chihuahua" in the title.
  
• Films I didn't expect to see or like in 2008 but did: Hairspray (2007), The Good Earth (1937), and Kagemusha (1980). Hairspray completely blind-sided me; I never saw that one coming. The other two, the former about Chinese peasants and the latter about a Japanese warlord, I reluctantly watched based on recommendations and thoroughly enjoyed.
  
• Best supporting hamster in a film: Rhino from Disney's Bolt.
• Best television show in 2008: NFL Films Presents. This has been their best season but they make you work to find when it airs each week (middle of the night or middle of the day requires a TiVo). Chuck, Mythbusters, and the last two seasons of Survivor ("Fans/Favorites" and "Gabon") were also great.
  
• Most disappointing television show in 2008: The dismal wanderings of Heroes, which has struggled going all the way back to the finale of season one. I really wanted to like that show but at least it is undergoing a major overhaul this spring.
• Best non-fiction book I read in 2008: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
  
• Books I wanted to read in 2008 but will have to read in 2009: The Shack, Arden's annotated Macbeth, How Football Exlpains America, and The Forgotten Man. That and the growing stack of 25 or 30 books that have begun to tower over me while I've been watching those classic movies.
• Best Game I played in 2008: With Mario Galaxy, Boom Blox, World of Goo, and Mario Kart Wii, the competition is pretty stiff. But the game I most enjoyed was the Gamecube's Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which I played on the Wii. Seriously, Wind Waker was really that good.
  
• Best Game that made me think: Even after teaching my boys to play Tetris on the Wii, World of Goo was the best puzzle game I played in 2008.
  
• Best live performance I saw in 2008: Once again, there's no competing with the first class productions and five-star gourmet food of the New Theatre in Overland Park. We go a few times per year every year if we can. It's hard to beat an evening at the "theatre" like this.
  
• Nerdiest entertainment of 2008: My newly acquired Rubik's cube skills. Other than Battlestar Galactica, nothing says "hopeless geek" like solving the cube!
  
• My best entertainment experience: Watching the Kansas Jayhawks win the Orange Bowl and win the NCAA basketball Championship within three months of each other. That was awesome (and probably won't happen again anytime soon).