Koko's Top Ten of 2008: Part 1 (1-4)

1. The Wire, Season Five:

Winner of this competition and any other, the fifth season brought us fabricating newsmen, prepubescent sociopaths, impotent drug lords, thriving corrupt legalese, a dead McNulty and a very dead Omar, and a new Omar, a clean Bubbles and a dirty Duquan, and, of course, the last song, which was the first song, in this epic chant d'amour. Everything came together in a lie, not for convenience or closure, as some claim, but because all stories end, even the ones that continue. Aeschylean in the extreme, our beloved series gave us one moment, in one place, with a handful of people, and from them measured the cycles of fate. A very sad thing when the last episode aired, and a crucial step in my education, Emilean though it is and doggedly uncivilized.

2. Wimbledon 2008 men's final: Nadal def. Federer 6-4 6-4 6-7(5) 6-7(8) 9-7:

Better even than the match itself, which proved an exhibition of the highest quality and strung every nerve in my poor body two torques past fishwire, was Nadal scaling the giant scoreboard on Centre Court--apparently disoriented by all the flashbulbs and in some kind of King Kong frenzy--on his historic wandering through the crowd, over the sportcasting booths, and into the stunned company of the royal box, where he heartily shook the King of Spain's hand and draped himself in the robed splendor of their country's flag. It was truly awesome. Also, notice that the scoreboard clock reads 9:16pm. Match play began at 2:00pm. That too is awesome.

3. Wall-E:

No, not a warning for our resource-wasting, glandular futurekind about everything going to pot on McPlanet Earth; Pixar does not produce morality plays. Instead, it gives us genre-spinning homages to forgotten masters. So make no mistake, this masterpiece does not preach wisdom or rehabilitation; it touches playfully at the edges of moral meaning only to withdraw--effectively and wisely--into the conventions, albeit mightily spun, of the classic Hollywood musical, and without the music. It is, in fact, the most convincing love story since Love Story, except that Love Story sucks and these amorous robots make real people look like vacillating chimps. Believe me, this feat is epochal and will survive longer than the old cave kitsch of glamorous woolly beasts and lovelorn captors. Wall-E is one for the ages, an imperfectly perfect, moving, magnificent comedy. Better than Ben Jonson's, anyway.

And Eve looks exactly like my rabbit Birthday, right down to the lethal beams of blue heat shooting from her arms at anything that moves. Compare for yourself:
4. Taxi to the Dark Side:

I already posted on this extraordinary film, so I refer you to that earlier comment. Let me just add that since our new president and harbinger, we hope, of thoughtful changes to our foreign and domestic policies announced that he would suspend his inquiry into whether a tribunal should be convened to investigate war crimes perpetrated under the Bush administration, since that enormous pussy maneuver, this documentary has become even more relevant and persuasive, because, yes, we do need to hold the men who started and conducted this war accountable for its consequences. Political expediency, Mr. Obama, does not excuse our culpability, even though we were not the ones responsible for making this mess.

Dilawar's father and daughter, above, won't lead lives any more complete or healed because we decided that political and national unity--that is, overlooking egregious abuses of power in the interest of popularity and passing ineffectual centrist gestures of solidarity--is more important than passing judgment on and punishing, and creating a precedent against, the evangelical Cold War ideology dispatched by Reagan, fairly buried by Bush the First, and resurrected by his idiot born-again failure of a son and his militant debutant tribe. If we don't condemn their actions now, we sanction them--not only morally but legally as well. With no law recognizing their basic and unforgiveable transgression, others will repeat these crimes and with impunity.

You know, after that other war, the one with the clinical extermination of an entire race, Europe needed to heal too. But it still found the time to hang a bunch of Nazis.