SPECIAL
The Year in DVDs: 1. | Top Ten by Lee Gardner and Bret McCabe
The Year in Video Games:
1. | Top Ten by Benji Anft
The Year in News:
If we had to pick one word to define 2008, it would have to be "crisis." National headlines this year were all about it: financial crisis, the foreclosure crisis, the crisis in the shrinking media industry. | Top Ten
The Year in Film:
Movies went pop this past year, if this list is any evidence to current tastes and predilections. | Top Ten
The Year in Television:
The year began in a writer's strike that threatened to sentence viewers to a spring season of nothing but reality piffle and endless syndication cycles of the Law and Order franchise, but 2008 soon turned out to be yet another banner year for television. | Top Ten
The Year in Music:
Yes, the list that follows is staggeringly bent toward indie-rock. | Top Ten
The Year in Local Music:
A nice mix of already heavily lauded records and sleeper gems, this year's local top 10 astounds for its breadth. | Top Ten
The Year in Books:
Publishers recently announced staff cuts. | Top Ten
The Year in Art:
Baltimore's art community continued to grow in activity and quality in 2008, and it's increasing scope is the primary reason City Paper changed up its year-end top picks process a tad this year. | Top Ten
The Year in Stage:
As this list attests, Center Stage had a banner year. | Top Ten
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COLUMNS
Silly Season: Nature abhors a vacuum, and nothing sucks in the stupid quite like the period after a big, paradigm-changing election. | Political Animal by Brian Morton
Elbow Room: Now that the holidays have hit, I am officially ready for 2008 to be over because, try as I might, there is nothing left to say about this past year. | Social Studies by Vincent Williams
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COMICS
Dirt Farm: by Ben Claassen III
Important Comics: by Dina Kelberman
Lulu Eightball: by Emily Flake
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ARTS
It's a Wonderful Frosty Red-Nosed Grinch Who Stole the Christmas Carol . . .: And then some at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's holiday production | Stage by Anna Ditkoff
The War at Home: Group show unsettles rosy assumptions about comforting domesticity | Art by Martin L. Johnson
Down From The Tower: Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers Tackle Art and The Academy | Books by Martin L. Johnson
Riff Laugh: Rising Local Improv Community Debuts Its Most Ambitious Project Yet | Stage by John Barry
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MUSIC
The Year In Live Music: We go to many shows. | Music by Raven Baker, Michael Byrne, Jess Harvell, Bret McCabe, and Al Shipley
The Year In Songs: Consider this less a "best songs" list than a clearinghouse for songs we really, really wanted to write about but didn't get a chance to anywhere else this year. | Top Ten by Michael Byrne, Lee Gardner, and Bret McCabe
Blinded by Silence: Sawako, The Carriage House, Dec. 5 | Feedback by Michael Byrne
A Furious Smile: Boris, Growing, and Clouds At The Ottobar Dec. 4 | Feedback by Lee Gardner
The Short List
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FILM
Lola Montes
| Review by
Lee Gardner
A Christmas Tale
| Review by
Bret McCabe
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EAT
Marie Louise Bistro
| Review by
Wendy Ward
Eat Me
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