MY FAVORITE ENTERTAINMENTS OF THE 2000'S - By Jeremy Gable

I believe the most important decade is the first one which we were old enough to appreciate. While I do not remember much about the 1980's, and hold fondly to the childhood nostalgia of the 1990's, the 2000's were the first decade that I was really able to fully able to comprehend. I spent my 18th through 27th years immersing myself in movies, music, television, theater, books and video games. As I approach the end of 2009, I have tapped into a decade's worth of memories to see what stuck out the most for me. What will define my 2000's.

And while there were more influential entertainments throughout this decade - such as The Strokes' "Is This It" and the existential journey of "The Sims" - and other things that I was obsessed with - such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Quentin Tarantino's exploration of 1970's cinema - these are the ten entertainments that were my favorite discoveries of the 2000's. So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...

MY FAVORITE ENTERTAINMENTS OF THE 2000'S

HONORABLE MENTION: "LOST"

For the last five years, I kept hearing about ABC's hit drama series, and I had to respond that I had never seen it. But I would always disclaim: "I'm sure if I did, though I'd be terribly obsessed." Thanks to Hulu, I've been able to spend the last six months catching up on all five seasons (its sixth and final season starts in February). Sure enough, I have begun to realize that it is a milestone in television.

Few shows have inspired more theories and discussion than this one. As the mysteries of the island pile on top of each other, the show rarely loses its narrative thread, and remains fitfully compelling. And while it can be said that its structure and style take a few pages from "24", it is a better narrative because it aims higher.

From episode to episode, "Lost" throws moral curveballs at its characters. The arc of its story is riddled with lies, double-crossings and violence. Groups of seemingly ordinary people are thrust into situations where they must act against their nature. Then, through the consistently clever use of flashbacks, we are shown that it may not be against the character's nature at all. Watching the show, I cannot help but wonder what role I would play in the group, where I would land on many of the moral issues, and whether my past experience would dictate what I would normally perceive as unusual behavior.

I go through this watching almost every episode.

"Lost" is an anomaly in a world where most mainstream entertainment is safe. It is weird, it is intelligent, and most of all, it is ambiguous. It's a wonder that it survived past its first season. Instead, it's become a phenomenon. And rightly so.

10). "THE COLBERT REPORT"

After 9/11, both Time Magazine and the editor of Vanity Fair announced that irony was dead. If this was at all true (it wasn't), Stephen Colbert made sure to throw that out the window. In 2005, he took his popular Daily Show persona (sure-fire but clueless) and turned it into a star vehicle.

Taking cues from Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, Colbert created a new language of political comedy, one bred out of extreme sarcasm. His interviews are masterstrokes, as he uses his quick wit and intelligence to appear confused and wrong-headed, often turning his subjects into a babbling mess (he has twice convinced Congressmen to admit why they enjoy cocaine and prostitues).

And an amazing thing has happened: the world started listening. By spreading right-wing propaganda with a left-wing sense of irony, Colbert has managed to reach both sides of the aisles. Since the show's inception, he has been knighted, given a doctorate, and had numerous landmarks named after him. Rahm Emanuel has warned freshmen Representatives not to talk to Colbert. And yet the list of influential figures he has interviewed is lengthy. While Jon Stewart's skewering has the typical polarizing effect of most political satire, it seems almost impossible to dislike Colbert because at some point he says something that you have to agree with.

However, for all of his posturing, Colbert really does seem to love America. His week of shows for the American troops in Iraq was nothing but respectful, and his recent sponsoring of the American Olympic speed-skating team earned him the cover of the latest Sports Illustrated. His fan base, deemed The Colbert Nation, has raised countless amounts of money to support a variety of organizations over the show's five seasons.

In a world that was supposed to be achingly "sincere" and "real", this decade ended with one of America's most notable political personalities dripping with irony. How ironic.

9). "SPRING AWAKENING"

The rock musical for decades seemed like a weird joke. Rock music and theater never seemed like a sure fit. "Jesus Christ Superstar" was never able to fully blend the two, and the genre was weirdly labeled on very non-rock musicals like "Evita" and "Phantom of the Opera" (perhaps through their use of synthesizers). "Rent" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" helped bridge the gap. And then along came "The Producers", and the rock musical just...went away.

2006's "Spring Awakening" came as a shock. An adaptation of Frank Wedekind's controversial 19th century play, singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik and little-known playwright Steven Sater became the unexpected toast of Broadway, winning multiple Tony Awards.

Instead of going for the 1970's rock sound of previous musicals, "Spring Awakening" feels very modern, not too far removed from the alternative post-Strokes music scene. And yet, in a great move, the story stays firmly planted in 19th century Germany. With this, the rock musical took a giant leap forward. More than most musicals, the songs are, fully and completely, served as the emotional support of the characters. What seemed like an outdated relic of the German stage became one of the most relevant pieces of American theater in years.

Of course, text and music only goes so far. The production was near-perfect. Michael Mayer's minimal staging is all about endless energy and creativity, and Bill T. Jones' choreography is the finest example of hormonal angst I've seen on a stage. It set the recent standard of smaller character-driven musicals that make the recent movie adaptations flooding Broadway look downright childish. The Broadway runs of "In The Heights", "Passing Strange" and "Next To Normal" - and what is quickly becoming a new movement in Broadway's history - would not have been made possible had it not been for this landmark show.

8). COMIC BOOK MOVIES

Comic books have been turned into movies for decades now, and the standard was set in 1978 with Richard Donner's "Superman", perhaps the finest example of the genre. However, the past ten years showed the comic book adaptation hitting a new milestone, having created many of the decade's finest films.

This started in 2000, when Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World" became the first comic book adaptation to be nominated for a Screenplay Academy Award. Since then, there have been a number of amazing films based on comic books, from the gangster Greek drama of "The Road To Perdition", to the compelling slow burn of "A History of Violence", to the meta brilliance of "American Splendor". The genre was lent further legitimacy when Cannes Film Festival awards went to "Oldboy" and "Persepolis".

In addition to the character-driven pieces, the more fantastic comic book films also increased in quality with the Frank Miller adaptations "Sin City" and "300" receiving a great deal of critical acclaim. Then in 2008, the genre exploded with two entries. First came "Iron Man", which boasted Robert Downey Jr.'s brilliantly unconventional performance. Rather than protecting his own fictional town, Tony Stark took his superpowers straight to the Middle East, lending an unexpected relevancy to the summer blockbuster.

And then came "The Dark Knight", which changed everything. Taking two of our most popular cultural icons - Batman and The Joker - and plunging them into the Bush-era American mindset, the film was a glorious labyrinth of chaos and moral ambiguity. With a layered screenplay, sharp direction and a handful of great performances, "The Dark Knight" surprised the industry when it was NOT nominated for Best Picture.

The end of the decade finally gave us the long-awaited adaptation of Alan Moore's "Watchmen" (who found several of his works adapted over the past decade). Flaws aside, it was a notable entry, a three-hour epic that retained the original source's bleak outlook and multiple themes. In many ways, it was the perfect way to end a decade that turned Comic-Con into an event as important to Hollywood as the Sundance Film Festival.

7). THE WRITTEN WORKS OF CORMAC MCCARTHY

Cormac McCarthy's written works are few and far between. So it was unusual that, in his 70's, he suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

First came his 2005 novel "No Country For Old Men". Featuring the familiar setting of the desolate West, and containing McCarthy's trademark stark-yet-poetic prose, the story introduced an unforgettable character: the fate-gambling no-mercy killer Anton Chigurh. His presence, which is felt lurking in every scene, makes the book a quick, tense read. And with the sudden disposal of a main character and an ambiguous ending, the novel ranked as one of McCarthy's best.

He followed this up the next year with a play, only his second. Entitled "The Sunset Limited", it was a throwback to the more talkative dramas that came out of the 1960's. With a simple set-up and only two characters, simply named Black and White, McCarthy discusses nothing less than the purpose of existence. Black and White argue the existence of a high power, the point of constant human suffering and whether suicide is retreat or defiance. It's not life-changing, but still a powerful piece.

However, McCarthy found perhaps his greatest success with "The Road", which managed to win both the Pulitzer Prize and a place on Oprah's Book Club. With very little plot and few supporting characters, McCarthy tells a bleak, terrifying post-apocalyptic tale of a father's unending duty to protect his son. Sadness does not even begin to describe the prose, which is without any amount of hope and happiness. It's a harrowing book, but astoundingly addictive.

McCarthy captured better than any other novelist I've read the feelings evoked by the Bush Administration. With an unrelenting sense of fear pounded in our faces, we were left with nothing but confusion, hopelessness and dread. The inevitability of death is on every page of "No Country For Old Men". "The Sunset Limited" attempts to throw faith values on to the subway tracks. And "The Road" feels like a cautionary tale, albeit one that does not know what to caution us against. In a decade filled with torture porn, McCarthy showed that the right application can make fear very potent. And very real.

6). "BRAID"

The discussion of video games as possible art probably started sometime around the release of "Myst". Roger Ebert has spent years arguing this idea with people who have evoked the names of "Fallout 3", "The Sims" and "Shadow of the Colossus". However, I feel that the closest I've seen a video game become a work of art is Jonathan Blow's 2008 masterpiece "Braid".

Just a warning that spoilers must abound if I'm to talk of the game's brilliance. If you still want to be surprised, skip to the last paragraph.

"Braid" is a side-scrolling platform/puzzle game that starts as many in its genre do. An ordinary man named Tim has discovered that his love, a princess, is running away from a monster. Exploring the different rooms in his house, he embarks on a quest to find her, avoiding dangers and bouncing off the heads of monsters to get there.

If this sounds similar to "Super Mario Bros.", it's supposed to. "Braid" constantly takes the familiar in video games and turns it on its head. This becomes evident the first time you die, and are given the option to reverse time back to when you made your mistake. This is merely the first in many options you are given to manipulate time and space. The game is not easy and requires the ability to think outside the box, creating unconventional scenarios to solve ridiculous problems.

However, the genius of the game lies less in its mechanics and more in its presentation. With beautiful graphics and a haunting score, Tim enters each world with further clarification of his conflicted, unhappy relationship with the Princess. He learns of the things he said wrong, the ways he could have been better, the behaviors that made her leave. As the game progresses, it seems less and less like this relationship is even worth saving.

And as we get to the last level, all time is moving backwards. You work together with the Princess, throwing switches to get to the end of the level, only to find the scene repeated in its intended forward motion. The end was really the beginning. The switches thrown by the Princess were really traps she was trying to spring on you. The large knight she seemed to be escaping from is actually saving her. And as they walk off-screen together, you are left all alone. That's when the horrible realization sinks in: You were the monster from which she was escaping.

The ending of the game is a true marvel. You find that the relationship was over before you even started, and that all of your hard work was for a lost cause. Further texts reveal that the relationship may have been more mother-and-child than lovers, and yet further reading (and exploration of the worlds) draws comparisons to the making of the atomic bomb.

In the end, the game becomes about our sad pursuits, whether it be to salvage the relationship that has long since died, or to make a weapon that will knock God from the sky. We are to be reminded every so often that Mankind's fulfillment can go too far too fast, and the pursuit of it can turn us all into monsters. In what was truly one of the most surprising pieces of entertainment this decade, "Braid" started out as a simple video game, and turned into an astoundingly insightful look into the human condition. If that's not art, I don't know what is.

5). "THE OFFICE"

In 2001, two guys no one had ever heard of completely changed television. I had seen single-camera sitcoms before, with "Sports Night" and "Malcolm in the Middle" paving the way. I had also seen quite a few mockumentaries, thanks to Christopher Guest.

However, I had never seen anything quite like "The Office". The series was only 14 episodes, composing of eight hours length. And yet it is about as perfect as television comedy gets. Taking place in a paper office in the English village of Slough, the series stays almost entirely within the confines of the Wernham-Hogg Paper Company. We meet the counter-productive boss David Brent, his right-hand man Gareth, the sales representative Tim and the receptionist Dawn.

The co-creator, co-writer, co-director and star of the show is Ricky Gervais, who specializes in this series' forte: the comedy of embarrassment. Gervais' Brent is a brilliant comic creation, the wannabe entertainer who has found himself in the unlikely position of branch management. With few social skills and the instinct to run from problems, Brent tries to dance (sometimes literally) around his sexist, racist instincts, and manages to find the worst solutions to threats of office closure.

What makes "The Office" an original creation is its authenticity. The show is incredibly funny, but it doesn't get there through cheap gags or easy targets. For a show that was written and rehearsed, it feels very spontaneous. Characters say the wrong words and stumble over jokes. The camera "accidentally" picks up important moments in the plot. The details surrounding the will-they-or-won't-they relationship of Tim and Dawn are mostly off-screen. Unlike its American counterpart, the unseen documentary film crew is just as realistic as the characters on the screen.

And in the moments when the show does get serious, the whole vehicle shifts in tone without missing a beat. In the end, Tim gave us four sentences that perfectly explains the appeal of the show: "The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. I mean, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. But probably all you have in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day."

From "The Office" came its American remake, which helped usher in a successful era of single-camera series (which includes every show on NBC's famous Thursday night line-up). However, none of these have been able to match the beauty of the original. Few in television's history ever shall, I imagine.

4). THE SCREENPLAYS OF CHARLIE KAUFMAN

When Charlie Kaufman's script for "Being John Malkovich" was produced in 1999, who knew that this former sketch comedy writer was just getting started? Five more of his screenplays were produced in the 2000's, one of which he directed. At his weakest ("Human Nature", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind") he is merely original and inventive. At his strongest, he has written some of the best movies ever made.

In 2002, his follow-up to "Being John Malkovich" took autobiography to a new level. "Adaptation" originally started as his attempt to adapt "The Orchid Thief" into a movie. In the end, it turned into the cinematic equivalent of two mirrors facing each other, reflecting into eternity. The movie became about Kaufman's struggle to adapt "The Orchid Thief", and instead writing about Kaufman's struggle to adapt "The Orchid Thief", and instead writing about etc. The screenplay explored the ability of living beings to adapt to their environments, be it insects to flowers, writers to Hollywood, mankind to evolution. In the end, the hand of Charlie Kaufman's non-existent twin brother (who shared a writing credit and an Oscar nomination) took over to adapt the movie itself to Hollywood standards, in what was one of the most shocking and unusual final reels that I have had the joy of watching.

In 2004, he teamed up with "Human Nature" director Michel Gondry, and together, they came up with the best film of the decade: "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". The idea is relatively simple: What if you could erase your memories? Applying this to a relationship gone sour, Kaufman weaved a dream-like tale of a man fighting for his memories as they are disappearing around him. With an absurd idea, Kaufman was able to tell a story that is more painfully honest about relationships than any movie I have ever seen. Eliminating the extremes that plague Hollywood romances, "Eternal Sunshine" found the grey area where the heart lies. When things are good, it's the best feeling in the world. But things aren't always good. In the moment, the bad times devastate you. But in the end, you can't live or learn without them. "Eternal Sunshine" covers all of this, while still being very funny, extremely beautiful and at the end, filled with hope.

Finally, last year brought us perhaps his best screenplay, and the best movie of 2008. "Synecdoche, New York" defies classification. It's too funny to be a drama, too sad to be a comedy, not scary enough to be a horror film, too scary to be anything else. The movie is basically about the meaning of life. When faced with his own mortality, theatre director Caden Cotard uses his recent MacArthur Grant to stage a life-size recreation of his own world. It is a massive show that is constantly evolving and perhaps will never play for an audience. This idea takes "All the world's a stage" to unexpectedly profound heights. It's a story that's difficult to describe, and impossible to disregard.

That seems to be Kaufman's specialty. He answers hypotheticals with unusual premises, and in the end asks us questions about what makes one's identity, what influences one's experiences, and how one should spend the rest of one's life. Big stuff for a comedy writer.

3). YOUTUBE

Everything about the Internet - all the good and the bad, the educational and the pointless, the profound and the self-indulgent - found its Mecca in 2005 with the forming of YouTube. Before then, videos on the Internet were difficult to upload and a pain to watch. YouTube changed the rules by giving us a central place to create and watch videos. It was fast, it was clear and it was free.

As most Americans, I have watched videos on YouTube more times than I care to remember. People send me links to YouTube videos on an almost daily basis. I've worked at places that have had YouTube parties, consisting of watching the best the website has to offer. I have uploaded my fair share of cell phone videos, trailers for shows I've been involved with, and my own recreation of John Travolta's "Saturday Night Fever" dance. In the past five years, I'm willing to bet that I've spent more time watching YouTube than I have watching actual television.

The reason for this is that it has become the hub for the visual. You can find almost anything you would hope to watch on this site. If you wanted to see the Cosby Show episode featuring a young Alicia Keys, if you want a video tutorial on how to do green screen in After Effects, if you want to see President Obama's speech from last night, if you want to see two girls making out, if you want a list of the ten best deaths in the "Saw" movies, or if you want to see a few douchebags dancing to Soulja Boy Tell 'Em...it's all there.

And then, we all started to watch each other. And ordinary people started becoming celebrities.
We realized that when watching something for three minutes at our workplace, we're able to accept a lot more than we would watching something for a half-hour on our couch. And so the people who weren't quite good enough filmmakers, not quite attractive enough personalities, and not quite funny enough writers found themselves much more popular than they would have been at the beginning of this decade.

Perhaps even more telling is the fact that our society is becoming influenced by YouTube. The stars of popular videos are now appearing on television, the writers and filmmakers are now getting work on actual shows, singers are getting discovered, advertising agencies are getting paid to spoof the popular videos that others did for free. The latest Presidential campaign was at least partially influenced by how the two candidates appeared on video. The Michael Richards scandal from a few years ago would not have been nearly as widespread had the video of the event not been readily available. YouTube is not just influencing what we watch, but what we think.

For all of the ridiculousness of the website, it is undeniable that it has changed a part of our society in a way that can not be reversed, with a power that has not be seen since...well, the creation of the Internet.

2). THE MUSIC OF JACK WHITE

As much as I love music, I am terrible at analyzing it. That could be why this is the only entry about music on this list. Sure, I understand the influence of The Strokes' "Is This It", but I just did not emotionally connect to the album. And while I own all of the outstanding work that Radiohead did over the past decade, I'll be damned if I'm smart enough to fully wrap my head around it. If pressed, would only be able to say, "I don't know why I like it, but I do!"

However, there is one artist that was able to speak to me with the purest sense of "loud and clear": Jack White. In ten years, he released eight albums as a member of three different bands, produced six albums for other musical acts, and made a number of film appearances, most notably as himself playing with a Tesla Coil in Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes".

First, he was unknown. Then, he was everywhere. And why not? At the beginning of the 2000's, N*Sync and Britney Spears were still riding high, and the top rock bands were Linkin Park and Creed. As songwriter, frontman and one half of The White Stripes, he delivered a breath of fresh air by taking a few steps back. The songs were short, the beats simple, the voice clear, the lyrics playful, and the recording sessions alarmingly brief. This was how rock music was made in its beginning years, and yet, while sounding so vaguely familiar, it felt incredibly new.

2000's "De Stijl" started off the decade, with the pounding rhythms of "Hello Operator" and "Jumble, Jumble". This was followed by 2002's "White Blood Cells", which featured his first hit single, the alarmingly short "Fell in Love With a Girl", as well as the "Citizen Kane" rock song "The Union Forever" and the ear-splitting opener "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground". Then in 2003 came "Elephant", which was like a blast of hot air to the face. It wasn't just an album. It was a religious movement, a call to arms, a declaration of love in which the guitars wailed and the drums were relentless. My brain has never been the same since first hearing it.

White has always been able to keep his music sounding fresh and new. With 2005's "Get Behind Me Satan" and 2007's "Icky Thump", The White Stripes started experimenting, successfully blending instruments from around the world with his purely American rock sound. Even his other bands, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, sound different from each other while still keeping with White's movement for a simpler, more engaging rock sound. Along the way, he also injected Loretta Lynn's music with an astounding urgency in her album "Van Lear Rose", and with Alicia Keys wrote one of the best James Bond themes in years.

The influence of Orson Welles on White's music and style could not be made more obvious, but I cannot think of inspiration more appropriate. Like Welles, Jack White has re-written the rules of his medium, delivering beauty in very ugly ways, using fear, humor and ego as his weapons. If there was one musician who was going to take the 2000's by the throat and make it change to their liking, I'm glad that it was Jack White.

1). THE MOVIES OF PIXAR

If one thing defined this decade, it was speed. From the abridged thoughts of Twitter, to the constant pursuit of the fastest network and connection rate, to a movie franchise celebrating being fast and furious, velocity was a trademark of the 2000's. However, one company was more concerned with quality rather than swtifness, taking years to give us the best entertainment around: Disney's computer-animation studio Pixar. I have eagerly awaited each Pixar release, rushed to the theater opening weekend (and lately, on midnight showings) and have never been disappointed.

Animation seemed to be in a sorry state going into the new decade. Hand-drawn animation was quickly disappearing, and the computer-animated films leading the way seemed more interested in pop culture references than in telling a compelling story (*COUGH* Shrek *COUGH*).

However, Pixar has spent the last 10 years doing an incredible job of taking their time with a project, refining their movies until they come out perfect. With almost every film, the storytelling, animation and composition improve. They have made ten feature-length films, each one a box-office hit, each one a marvel. They have made children's films that are, for the first time, perhaps MORE entertaining for parents than they are for children.

In 2001, "Monsters, Inc." turned the fear of monsters in the closet on its head, theorizing that nothing is scarier than a human child. The bits of poignancy mixed amongst the humor was beautifully done, and the last shot was unusually artful at the time for a computer-animated film. Little did we know they were just getting started.

2003's "Finding Nemo" took animation to a new level by staying almost entirely in the free-floating world of the ocean. The popular Pixar theme of enstrangement from children was the most pronounced in this story of an overprotective father who travels an entire ocean to rescue his child from a lifetime in an aquarium. The movie pushed comedy to absurd heights while maintaining a realistic level of pathos (mainly from the blue tang Dory, one of their finest creations).

Brad Bird's "The Incredibles" followed the next year, and faced all of our post-9/11 fears. Combining an engrossing family drama with the metropolis-destroying fun of a comic book movie, it was a superhero flick for the 21st century. Following this up, 2006's "Cars" went in the opposite direction, providing a direct contrast to our decade of speed, hailing a time of cross-country highway trips and small town Americana.

2007's "Ratatouille" was an anomaly in a time of summer blockbusters. With the pace of a French film, a rat for a main character, unusually intelligent dialogue and a climax steeped in childhood nostalgia, the movie took its time to develop, and rewarded its audience with a beautifully told story.

Then came 2008's "Wall-E", which is the company's masterstroke. Political without being didactic, the movie told the tale of a dystopian future in which humanity's savior would be a trash-compacting robot. In a time in which originality was rare, "Wall-E" was the first family-friendly silent romantic postapocalyptic comedy. The movie was a marvel of color (drab in the first half, overly bright in the second), cutting-edge sound design, music (from a severely underappreciated Thomas Newman) and - with the shot of Wall-E drifting head over heels amongst a backdrop of stars - one of the most simple and beautiful expressions of love ever captured on film.

Pixar ended the decade with one of their finest pieces yet, the octogenarian comedy "Up". It was with this film that the mix of sadness and humor, which has been Pixar's trademark, was used most effectively. With a remarkable montage, going through decades of marriage in the matter of minutes, and an increidble amount of imagination, "Up" looks to be the second animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture.

Any Oscar consideration "Up" gets will add to the six Academy Awards and 25 nominations that the company has already received. They seek perfection, telling imaginative, perfectly plotted stories of adventure that manage to entertain the world's audiences without playing down to them. Their movies are smart, inventive and lyrical. In short, they made the best entertainments of the decade.

And now, just because I'm list-crazy, I'll end this with my favorite movies, music and plays of the 2000's. Enjoy!

TEN BEST ALBUMS OF THE 2000'S

1. The White Stripes - Elephant
2. Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
3. The Arcade Fire - Funeral
4. Rufus Wainwright - Want One
5. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
6. Nellie McKay - Get Away From Me
7. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
8. Joanna Newsom - Ys
9. Bob Dylan - Love & Theft
10. Bjork - Vespertine

TEN BEST FILMS OF THE 2000'S

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Kill Bill
3. Synecdoche, New York
4. Wall-E
5. Waking Life
6. Requiem For A Dream
7. There Will Be Blood
8. Punch-Drunk Love
9. Me And You And Everyone We Know
10. Elephant

TEN BEST PLAYS OF THE 2000'S

1. The Pillowman - Martin McDonagh
2. 4.48 Psychosis - Sarah Kane
3. The Gog/Magog Project - Jason Lindner
4. Topdog/Underdog - Suzan Lori-Parks
5. Thom Pain (Based On Nothing) - Will Eno
6. Bug - Tracy Letts
7. Frozen - Bryony Lavery
8. Jerusalem - Jez Butterworth
9. Princess Marjorie - Noah Haidle
10. A Number - Caryl Churchill