Stuart Cornfeld, the longtime producing partner of Ben Stiller who guided such comedies as Zoolander, Dodgeball and Tropic Thunder, has died. He was 67.

Was 2008 an excellent, good, or mediocre year for movies? Below please find my list of Top Ten Films (rank-ordered).  There are two ties (a way of squeezing a larger number of movies into the list).    What the best films of 2008 share in common are high artistic quality and, perhaps more importantly, they each served as expressions of their director's personal vision.   

Oscar Huge Impact

The expression, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” based on Marx's theory of “the haves and haves not,” describes quite accurately the distribution of rewards in the film industry. The Oscar Award perpetuates the inequality that prevails in Hollywood between the haves and have?nots in every respect–money, prestige, and power.   How pervasive are the Oscar's effects on the winning and nominated films? Is the impact felt in the short run or in the long run?   Part one of this series of articles deals with Oscar's impact on the commercial appeal of the winning pictures.