Best Movie
Uh, The Dark Knight. There is no question here. Not only was it one of the best movies I've ever seen, it easily takes the cake as the best movie this year.
Runners Up: Cloverfield, The Wrestler, Ironman
Best Movie Score
Same as above. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard scored The Dark Knight perfectly. From the pumped up action sequences to the simple yet chilling theme for the Joker, there was not a better soundtrack to come out all year.
Runners Up: Cloverfield (yes, it only had one original song, but it was badass), The Wrestler
Best Book I Read
It certainly didn't come out this year, but Watchmen takes this cake. Again, one of the best books ever, so it;'s easily the best book of the year.
Runners up: Nothing was even close to this good.
Best Movie I Watched That Did Not Come Out in 2008
That would have to go to V for Vendetta. It's one of those movies that I can watch again and again and again and it gives me the chills every time. It takes a special talent for an actor to make an audience sympathize with a man whose face you never see, and Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job of it. Put that together with a drop-dead amazing score, plus great acting from the supporting cast and a very powerful, relevant story, and you have one hell of a movie.
Runners up: Prime, Running Scared, The Da Vinci Code
Best Video Game
I had to think long and hard about this particular one. There were a ton of great games that came out this year, so I had to find a way to narrow the results. After much thought, I narrowed the list to 2 games, but I just could not decide which was better, so I've decided to say they are both the best game of 2008. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Dead Space. I wrote about how great The Force Unleashed is here. A review of Dead Space is forthcoming. They are both phenominal games in their own rights, and they set a standard for what gamers should be able to look forward to from the future of video games.
Runners Up: WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009, Rock Band 2, Fallout 3
Best Video Game Score
Yet again, there were a metric ton of great scores for video games this past year. I could prattle on and on and on about how great a year it was for video game soundtracks and even longer about how much time I've spent listening to them. Again, this was a very hard list to narrow down, but in the end, the award goes to only one. Steve Jablonsky (who also had my favorite movie score from last year with Transformers) gets the nod this year with Gears of War 2. As I said in my short review, I'm not much of a fan of the game itself, but the score is just mind-blowingly good. The themes Jablonsky creates, coupled with the grandiosity of the soundtrack as a whole make it one of the most compelling listens of the year.
Runners Up: Too Human, Infinite Undiscovery, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Best Album
Death Magnetic, by Metallica. Easy one here. None of my favorite bands came out with anything particularly great this year, but Metallica released a CD that renewed my faith in their music writing skills. After the tragedy that was St. Anger it was refreshing and relieving to hear guitar solos and drums that sounded better than a baby beating on mommy's pot collection.
Runners Up: Cartographer (Piri Reis Remixes) - E.S. Posthumus
That covers my list of the most awesome of the awesome from 2008. Cheers to a very happy and healthy new year to everybody reading this, and everybody who hasn't discovered it yet.
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