"...and a happy new year; let's hope it's a good one..." part 2

There was a decent amount of damn fine movies in 2008. Most notable was The Dark Knight, press about which was dominated by the untimely death of Heath Ledger. This had the unfortunate effect of various people claiming that the movie was only being praised so highly as he had died out of some sort of misplaced sympathy. This is, of course, a bunch of Tottenham. It was praised so highly as it was a damn fine movie, and Heath's role in it as The Joker was a wonderful scene-stealing performance which was the first time a movie Batman villain has been superior to their 60s TV series counterpart. You could see elements of Cesar Romero's performance in Heath's - most notably the laugh at time, and the way he keeps bobbing about. But, the best thing was that on first watching you really have no idea what he's going to do next. His very last scene in the movie, hanging upside down, where he tells Batman that they're going to keep on doing this for the rest of their lives - Batman won't kill him due to his moral code, and he won't kill Batman as he's too much fun to have around - is a neat reversal of a scene in what had previously been the key text on the Joker - Alan Moore's The Killing Joke. It's all the more saddening that at the end of the movie, The Joker is still alive, presumably carted off to Arkham; a scene in the asylum with the Joker in the third in this series of movies would have been a certainty had Heath not died. 

Other good movies:

• I Am Legend: probably the best film Will Smith has ever made. That he spends about half the movie acting pretty much on his own, with just a dog for company and manages to make it entirely captivating and convincing is quite a feat. 
• Wall-E: probably the best CGI cartoon since Toy Story. Even after you've seen it about a gazillion times due to a small child insisting they see it again. And again. And again.
• The Mist: a rather engaging "base under siege" horror movie set in a supermarket. You never really learn the true nature of the threat, and the ending has to be seen to be believed. The DVD version has a black & white version of the film on it. Sounds intriguing...
• Hellboy 2: the first movie was somewhat underwhelming, but this sequel takes all the things that were good about the first, expands them, and makes a movie that's much better than I expected. I love the smoke guy...

Best reads of the year were T is for Television by Mark Aldridge & Andy Murray, and Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. 

The former is a marvellous book all about "The small screen adventures of Russell T Davies" which looks at RTD's writing career right from the start, including all the obscure things you probably never knew he wrote, up to the latest season of Dr Who. There are loads of nuggets of information there, uncovering all sorts of things about his career. 

The latter is an exploration of various misunderstandings, or outright lies, about matters scientific; things like so called miracle pills, the work of Gillian McKeith, bad stats, the media's misuse of science, and the MMR scare. The approach is one suitable for all, as complex topics are discussed in a manner that all should be able to understand. 

You should own both books.