There's bad, and then there's 2008 level bad. You know this list is looking down into a deep dark bottomless pit of cinematic despair when Mike Myers' shameful Love Guru didn't even make the Top 20!
Oddly enough, while the major studios continue scratching their heads over how to sell yet another new format (Blu-ray) to disinterested consumers, several outside distributors made sure that this would be a digital year to remember.
The Year in TV was a lot like the US economy: struggling until summer and then tanking under the hope of a 2009 comeback. Still, our staff found 30 solid reasons to be cheerful come entertainment investment time.
Just like the end of an inspiring speech that may or may not succeed in making its point, these final four weeks before 2009 tend to define or defeat the entire awards season purpose.
Why the most intelligent show on TV, a compelling exploration of the circumstances and institutional pressures that make people who they are, gets an "F" in Gender Studies.
The dense mythology, painstakingly created over five novelistic seasons, has enough drama packed inside to be easily spun out for the next five, ten, 15 years.
In David Simon's indictment of American capitalism, numbers -- say, crime stats and school test scores -- no longer have an epistemic value, they don't refer to any external reality.
In memoriam of a TV season cut down before its prime time, PopMatters staff celebrates the Top 30 TV Shows of 2007. Some are old favorites. Others have barely made their impression felt. But at a time when all broadcast fortunes are up in the air, they definitely deserve the recognition.
300's penchant for drama and exaggeration is proof that a far-reaching vision and hyperbole can come together to tell a much better story than one based purely on historical facts.
