The results if the Village Voice/L.A. Weekly year-end critics' poll are in. The snarling, pointy-headed elitists who make up the core voting bloc went with a kiddie cartoon and box-office smash, Andrew Stanton's Pixar instant classic WALL-E, a choice that meets with the Screengrab's hearty approval. "Sometimes", writes Voice Grand Poo-bah J. Hoberman, "the movies really are universal." However, Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, which finished out of the Top Ten at #12, deserves recognition as the year's "prize critical cult film...Despite generally mixed reviews, Demme’s independent feature received a higher percentage of first- and second-place votes than even WALL-E, meaning that the people who liked it really liked it." Hoberman detected an optimistic strain in many of this year's top films, not just WALL-E and Rachel but also such favorites as Happy-Go-Lucky and (its ending aside) Milk, extending even to Let the Right One In, "an unexpectedly touching treatment of child vampirism", and his own choice for best film of the year, "the relatively cheerful" Flight of the Red Balloon. Maybe if this optimistic vibe can be fully tapped, the Voice itself will be able to last another year.

One last, must-see on-line portal for tributes to the year past: "Moments of 2008", parts one and two, at the Museum of the Moving Image's "Moving Image Source" site. Here, a lively selection of writers and film folk, including Guy Maddin, Karina Longworth, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Jonathan Lethem, Todd Gitlin, Joshua Land, Dennis Lim, Scott Foundas, and others, cite their own most thrilling "moving-image highlights", with results that include movies both new (Man on Wire, Before I Forget, Madden's own My Winnipeg) and old as well as TV (The Wire, The Wire, The Wire) and news and politics. Also among those participating: David Hudson, whose work at GreenCine Daily has set a high standard, and provided invaluable assistance, to the Screengrab and all on-line film writers. Hudson has just gravitated over to IFC's fil blog The Daily, leaving the GreenCine site in the capable hands of Aaron Hillis. We offer our thanks for past services and wish them both well in the coming year.