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On Sunday, I saw “Frost/Nixon” the movie – great watch and great cast. (Probably not a coincidence that the real original Frost/Nixon interviews are now out on dvd). Frank Langella oozed Nixonian in his portrayal as Nixon; Michael Sheen as Frost – well, I had no idea that Sir David Frost back in the day was so light-weight (ok, I’m not so familiar with Frost), and the rest of the cast was good too. Recommended.

I’m not a big enough movie-viewer to make a list of 2008 movies, but suffice to say that I really thought well of “The Dark Knight” and the films of AAIFF’08 and “Wall-E,” and even “Iron Man.” “Quantum of Solace” was also a decent watch. I didn’t hate the X-Files movie (although I’m probably the only one).

For 2008 in review, TV critic David Bianculli on his tv top ten list; and tv critic James Poniewozik on his tv worst list and his Tuned-In (mostly tv) Persons of the Year (and his top 10 best 2008 tv stuff and top 10 2008 tv episodes (I agree with Poniewozik – the Lost episode “The Constant” was quite an episode for 2008).

Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker also has his best/worst of 2008 lists (I agree with him on “Fringe” and “Lost” as among the best; and on his worst – “Knight Rider” and “The Moment of Truth (really shitty, FOX, really)).

EW also has a best and worst episodes list – sooo happy that they included the amazing “How I Met Your Mother” episode with Ted’s lovely 2 minute date.

Among the great pictures of 2008 in the year’s end issue of EW is a funny gallery of photos where the “How I Met Your Mother” cast pose in the year’s big events (the guys posing as the USA men’s swim team’s big gold win at Beijing 2008 Olympics and a posing from a scene in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” were strangely amusing to me for some reason).

My personal Top TV list for 2008 – which I had posted on Bianculli’s website and re-post here: (in no particular order and intentionally adding what others might not have mentioned, plus unnecessary commentary!):

1. “Fringe” (FOX) – I’m glad FOX is giving the series a shot; it seems to be getting stronger as the season continues – and I love the father-son relationship of Walter and Peter.

2. “Lost” (ABC) – what a season! Very interested to see what will happen when it returns.

3. “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS) – what fun was the end of last season, despite the strike! And this season has been some great laughs.

4. “Life” (NBC) – I was stunned that NBC renewed it after the strike-shortened first season, since I thought that series I liked wouldn’t succeed (and I liked it in 2007). But, the couple of episodes I caught this season was great fun, even if I still don’t quite appreciate the conspiracy storyline. Damian Lewis is great; and Adam Arkin and Sarah Shahi are underappreciated.

5. “Eli Stone” (ABC) – It was the fun series of spring 2008, and I was happy that ABC returned it. I missed much of this season, much to my regret; boo to ABC for cancelling it.

6. The Presidential coverage – for good or bad, this was quite a tv event of 2008; as I’m a PBS snob, kudos especially to Jim Lehrer and the Newshour crew for their work during this election year and Charlie Rose for his interviews and roundtables.

7. “Aliens in America” (CW) – sweet, short-lived series on friendship and family with good humor, and kudos for trying a little something different in the age of a more diverse America (when an American family hosts a South Asian Muslim foreign exchange student, things get amusingly complicated); I’ll even give a little kudos to CW for “Reaper,” which was a bit more fun than I expected.

8. Again, I’m a PBS snob, so I’ll also add “Great Performances” for its coverage of the NY Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang, North Korea (I even blogged about it); and “Masterpiece Theatre” (for continuing to give quality drama, even in such troubling financial times, which began awhile ago for “Masterpiece Theatre”/”Mystery” when they had to be under one umbrella), especially for rescuing me during the strike.

9. “Law and Order” (NBC) (the original/the mothership) – the 18th season (starting in Jan. 2008-May 2008, due to NBC’s scheduling shenanigans and then disrupted minimally by the writers’ strike) – during the strike had me watching; the cast of new detectives and the new ADA turned out to be more fun than I thought – and less of the melodrama of “SVU” and “Criminal Intent,” which relieved me (if it’s not obvious, I’m not a big “SVU” or “CI” viewer; just not my cup of tea). The 19th season of L&O so far has been also fun, keeping up with the quality of last season.

10. “John Adams” (HBO) – wow.

Extra credit to Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, and Ferguson for their efforts on late night tv this year.

For worst tv of 2008, I’ll nominate “Knight Rider” (NBC) (I may have grown up with and enjoyed the campiness of the original “Knight Rider,” but that doesn’t mean it had to come back, and in such poor execution), and I’ll also continue my disapproval of bad reality tv (of which 2008 seemed to have a lot).

A thoughtful Christmas, as we’re in the middle of an economic crisis and two wars.

The passing of Eartha Kitt, actress/singer/political activist.

A NY Times article on President-Elect Obama’s Hawaiian attitude. We should all have a little Hawaiian zen in us during these hard times and the holiday stresses.

How Christian is Christmas? Considering that Christmas co-opted some pagan practices and then there are those secular tendencies of Christmas, maybe we should try to accept that Christmas is rich and more than we think it is. An op-ed by Laura Miller, regarding C.S. Lewis’ portrayal of Christmas in Narnia.

Columns by NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman to get us thinking about the state of things in the middle of the holiday season of 2008:

Kristof notes that studies out there suggest that so-called liberals don’t individually give as much as so-called conservatives, even though the so-called liberals expect the government to do more and conservatives don’t think it’s the government’s job at all to do much (ok, I’m simplifying). He raises the interesting questions of what does it really mean to be generous during this time of year, and does your political outlook affect your generosity?

Friedman passionately notes about what Americans must do (and I found myself whole-heartily agreeing):

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions. [….]

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

Merry Christmas!

Well, let’s try to have some hope and cheer: a clip of “The Hard Nut” from YouTube, as I tend to think that it’s never quite the holidays until I view multiple versions of “The Nutcracker.”

A slushy and snowy messy December day.

Fascinating Slate article on the kinds of district court judges that Obama should take a look at in deciding who to appoint for the appellate level – and there are a lot of positions to fill.

Oh how sad – the passing of Majel Roddenberry, the widow of Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek – most famous for her roles as “Number One” in the pilot, the Enterprise’s first officer (a woman of authority in the final frontier, a pioneer for the 1960’s); Nurse Chapel; Mrs. Troi in “ST: The Next Generation”; and of course, the voice of the computer in almost all the ST series and the movies.

The least surprising item of news: Obama’s Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

NY Times’ Thomas Friedman on the irony of the current economic crisis:

The stranger, a Western businessman, slipped into the chair next to me at an Asia Society lunch here in Hong Kong and asked me a question that I can honestly say I’ve never been asked before: “So, just how corrupt is America?” [….] It’s the whole bloody mess coming out of Wall Street — the financial center that Hong Kong moneymen had always looked up to. How could it be, they wonder, that such brand names as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and A.I.G. could turn out to have such feet of clay? Where, they wonder, was our Securities and Exchange Commission and the high standards that we had preached to them all these years?

One of Hong Kong’s most-respected bankers, who asked not to be identified, told me that the U.S.-owned investment company where he works made a mint in the last decade cleaning up sick Asian banks. They did so by importing the best U.S. practices, particularly the principles of “know thy customers” and strict risk controls. But now, he asked, who is there to look to for exemplary leadership?

“Previously, there was America,” he said. “American investors were supposed to know better, and now America itself is in trouble. Whom do they sell their banks to? It is hard for America to take its own medicine that it prescribed successfully for others. There is no doctor anymore. The doctor himself is sick.” [….]

The Madoff affair is the cherry on top of a national breakdown in financial propriety, regulations and common sense. Which is why we don’t just need a financial bailout; we need an ethical bailout. We need to re-establish the core balance between our markets, ethics and regulations. I don’t want to kill the animal spirits that necessarily drive capitalism — but I don’t want to be eaten by them either.

I’m not saying that capitalism is bad – but regulation and rule of law exist for reason that should be obvious. Or so we would like to think are obvious. What a mess the economic crisis (recession; depression?) is turning into.

With the scandal in Illinois of Governor Blagojevich, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is the attorney in the news. Time.com did a profile on Fitzgerald – ex-New Yorker. At one point one of “People” magazine’s “Sexiest Men,” he’s married now – but seems to be still a workaholic and what a job in prosecuting the Illinois thing… (hey, sort of a follow up to the year where he had been Lawyer of the Year, huh?).

Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker on the revitalization of the Law side of “Law and Order,” with the legal wrangling between DA McCoy (Sam Waterston) vs. ADA Cutter (Linus Roache). I agree – it has been good stuff to watch. Yes, last night’s episode had a ripped-out-of-the-headline plot (man and his family living a green lifestyle to decrease their carbon footprint) with the non-headline twist that the wife died in a murder, but the heartbreaker was the law portion. It was sad watching the trial judge (Ned Beatty) be revealed as turning to dementia and the law clerk (Sherry Stringfield) was trying to prop him up to keep her job going (and not because she (kind of) had something romantic going with Cutter), and she was a law clerk (actually court attorney, but oh well) who had graduated from middle of her class of her middling law school (or so she told Cutter; so what law school did Cutter go to?). She came off creepy, and made me wonder why on earth Cutter was attracted to her (well, give him credit for being a sucker for smart pretty women; although it was funny how McCoy and ADA Rubirosa raised their eyebrows over Cutter’s implied dating said law clerk).

Ultimately, Cutter moved forward to try to get the judge off the trial, because he did not feel it was right that the judge remain because of the incompetency. He earned the ire of the judiciary (not like McCoy didn’t warn him that would happen; but it is uncomfortable that even McCoy would rather get the conviction than be concerned that the judge wasn’t competent). Plus, people were grumbling about the questionable romance that was going on in the background, and how Cutter foolishly approached the judge in an ex parte manner (after he and Rubirosa spied on the law clerk and the judge during lunch at the Odeon on West Broadway (not some fake restaurant!)), risking disbarment (seriously, Cutter’s been on the series for a second season and the man’s still juggling chainsaws).

No easy stuff. Oh, and the defense attorney was also great this time – I recognize her as the Broadway actress who won the Tony this year. At least, I think so – I can’t seem to dig up credit on the imdb.com or other sources.

Neither law nor politics:

A scientific approach to procrastination (fighting it, that is).

Maybe this media theme lately is procrastination: Newsweek has an article too; I had put off reading the article, but then decided I couldn’t keep avoiding it.

Last but not least: Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman on using leftover egg whites to make little meringues. Mmm! He makes it look real easy on the video, using a ziplock bag to squeeze the meringues into being meringues.

Friday – another birthday; another year and not necessarily wiser. But nice to get away from the office, and so cool to have a nice birthday dinner – Momofuku Noodle Bar. Considering how often I’ve linked to stuff about David Chang and his Momofuku restaurants, I was happy that my siblings and I finally did a Momofuku (my brother has been to Momofuku Ssam a couple of times – and he said the desserts are indeed good). The steamed pork buns were delicious; the smoked chicken wings were tasty. I ordered the Momofuku ramen – good ramen, but a bit saltier than I liked. Thumbs up generally.

Timely too – NY Times’ Frank Bruni made a return to Ssam and enjoyed it.

Hilarious review of the new Star Trek movie trailer on Television Without Pity (as part of the Trailers Without Pity feature):

TV Stuff:

“Fringe” — hmm, Special Agent Olivia Dunham probably did take too much LSD when Dr. Walter Bishop put her into the limbo tank to communicate with her comatose-then-dead boyfriend. So, she has dead boyfriend’s memories stuck in her brain, and now everyone wants her to get to those memories. Hmm. Gee, do you think this means one shouldn’t take LSD? Plus, what the heck is Peter Bishop? Is he a clone, or his father really nuts (hmm, maybe the latter; but Walter would be the first to admit that he doesn’t have his sanity intact).

“Law and Order” – well, I missed about more than a quarter of the episode, but it was quite entertaining. A return of the EEE-vil (or just way amoral) Governor of NYS (you think Spitzer had his nutty moments? Or that Patterson’s funny? Or Pataki irritating or Cuomo stubborn – too stubborn to even have his official portrait done?), well, get a load of the Governor on “L&O” – makes the real governors of NY look great.

Dets. Lupo and Bernard find out that upstate NY ain’t too keen on them downstaters. Det. Lupo thinks that being a cop – a detective no less – and a first year (part-time or evening) law student allows him to represent himself in small town court when the NYS troopers arrest him for being a downstater (kidding; they arrested him to prevent him from taking a witness and because he got a little pissed that they roughed up ADA Rubirosa, who was probably a little charmed by Lupo’s chivalry, since she’s not exactly a shrinking violet kind of woman). Thought the moment where ADA Cutter had Lupo doing legal research on the laptop was HILARIOUS. Thank you, L&O writers; you as fellow lawyers find ways to make it really amusing and proud to be a lawyer!

Plus, ripped-from-the-headlines – not just the whole “Gee, what is the governor making the troopers do?” but also the whole “gee, are upstate civil courts handing out justice properly?”

McCoy going toe to toe with the EEEvil Governor, and then finally deciding he’s going to run for DA of NY county and having Cutter be the first person to sign the petition to get McCoy on the ballot. Umm, shouldn’t make sure Cutter is a NY County resident (probably; he doesn’t strike me as an outer-borough guy) and is it ethical to have one of your subordinates do that in front of you, in your office – like a conflict of interest or something? He must be pretty darn confident about his personal respect and friendship with Cutter.

Plus, the entertaining guest stars of Katee Sackhoff (aka Starbuck of “Battle Galactica” – not a show I watch, since I keep missing it every single time) as the tough as nails murder suspect and Clancy Brown as the EEEvil upstate small town sheriff.

Well, this Daily News article explains why Channel 11 has been changing its brand to “WPIX” again, rather than “CW11” (after a few years as “WB11”). I always thought “CW11” was silly, but being “PIX” rather than the full “WPIX”?) again has been weird.

Plus, the Channel 4 new news studio is major weird – too blue. And, Channel 4 is laying off more people, right in the middle of setting up one of its digital channels into an all-local news channel. Hmm.

Last but never least: a link to Robert Pinsky poem; the former US Poet laureate on family; things to think about during the holidays as we spend time with our relatives.

It’s Pearl Harbor Day.

President-Elect Obama has selected Retired General Eric Shinseki to be Secretary of the Veteran Affairs Department. Shinseki is not only Asian-American (Hawaiian born), he was someone who disagreed with the Bush administration (or certainly Rumsfeld) on how to approach the war in Iraq.

Speaking of veterans, the veterans in our metro area are trying to fix their mom-and-pop businesses as they return from war. Tough situation.

Craziness in Canada – Hmmm… as much as we might be upset with things in the US, Canada’s constitutional crisis sounds… insane… I’d be worried if I were Canadian.

I agree with columnist Timothy Egan that it’s unfair that Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin get paid to publish books when no one really knows their ability to, say, write. But I’m surprised that he didn’t mention that the publishers are paying them for their names/notoriety alone – the publishers will just hire ghostwriters who will do the real writing. I just won’t pay for either of these books. And, like Egan, would rather see when Barack Obama will write again (well, after the presidency, obviously, but he’s a real writer).

And, last but not least: 1st Vietnamese-American has been elected as a US Congressman: lawyer Joseph Cao, to represent Louisiana. He’s a Republican, but I guess I can’t hold that against him; we’ll see what he can do, is the real issue.