So we’ve had the best and the worst of 2008. Now for the most awkward. And that will be the last list from 2008. From me, anyway.

Never the most comfortable person in a high profile social situation, I have had my share of gaffes when interviewing celebrities. Some of them in the past, such as with Billy Crystal, James Caan and Shirley MacLaine, have come close to ending in serious injury, if not death.

Recently I was reading the article “The Cobra” by Tad Friend in the January 19 “New Yorker” and stopped dead in my tracks at this quote from Sony Screen Gems’ Clint Culpepper : “Most critics are not the target audience for most of the films being made today, so they’re not going to respond to them. How a fifty-six-year-old man feels about a movie aimed at teen-age girls is irrelevant.

Best Movies of 2008 -- A. S. Hamrah

1. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2. Cassandra’s Dream (Woody Allen)

3. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)

4. Stuck (Stuart Gordon)

5. A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol)

6. Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood)

7. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)

First of all, I’d like to apologize to the Academy for underestimating their boldness in their Best Foreign Language Film nominations No way did I think that such dark and challenging films as “Revanche” and “The Baader-Meinhoff Complex” would get in. It suggests that maybe the demographic of Academy members is getting younger, if not chronologically, then mentally and in terms of taste.

We say farewell to Palm Springs, to its outstanding film festival, its balance of stalwart patriotism and ironic kitsch,

its natural wonders, such as

the moon

the desert and

hummingbirds (as common as houseflies -- and harder to swat!)

And white doves of peace, escapees from a wedding at the Wyndham and regularly fed by the attentive hotel staff.

Every year around this time my fellow local critics and myself look at the short list of Foreign Language Oscar Nominees nominees and we say, “Huh?

These are the nine films selected by an Academy committee from the 60 odd submissions from individual countries to be voted on by the Academy at large for the five final nominees.

Much to my surprise, a film I saw the other day had a torrid sex scene in a crummy room followed by a cut to the guy smoking a cigarette. I thought to myself, what, no pizza? So much for that inexplicable international motif.

Other themes, however, seem to hold strong. For example, a preoccupation with desperately poor and exploited Third World-like settings in which audiences can a) vicariously enjoy the sordid sex, violence and melodramatic injustice of the characters a-la "Last Stop 174" without getting too worked up by the political ramifications and responsibilities.

As rewarding personally as I find the experience of participating as a member of FIPRESCI juries in fa-rflung international festivals, I sometimes wonder what impact it has on human history. What, for example, ever happened to the Kazakstan director of the lovely little film “Notes of a Trackman” which got the prize a couple of years ago at Turin, whose name I can’t even remember? That’s why I was enthusiastic about working as a juror at the Palm Springs Film Festival, founded by the late Sonny Bono 20 years ago.

Some more of my esteemed fellow Phoenix critics have offered their lists...

BETSY SHERMAN

Ten Best

1. The Wrestler

The Wild Samoans meet the Dardenne Brothers in Darren Aronofsky’s penetrating character study, starring an awesome Mickey Rourke.

2. Tropic Thunder

In a great year for comedy, Ben Stiller’s Hollywood satire was the funniest and most audacious.