Now, a little over a year later, I find myself marveling not only at what ended up as the 90-minute crowd-sourced compilation curated by veteran director Macdonald, but at the very feat of putting it together.

Pardon the obvious tardiness, but as often occurs, life got in the way. So, no more procrastination, here are my favorite films of the just finished year.

Due to the fact that the top two films (Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) are literally tied at $42.5 million, I'm ignoring the rankings and just concentrating on the numbers.

With rapacious pirates attacking ships, the Taliban executing eloping couples and the ongoing murderousness in Mexico, it's beyond irony that Hollywood sees more drama in the economics of newspapers.

Much has been made of the fact that, within two weeks, we have two movies that deal with the crisis in newspapers that is threatening contemporary journalism as we know it.

State of Play is the sort of movie that "they just don't make anymore." Despite its attempts to include newfangled ideas regarding journalism, it is a refreshingly old-fashioned star-driven thriller.

State of Play is a political thriller wrapped inside a journalistic thriller that works better as the latter.

Rodney Dangerfield, I feel your pain. In the new movie State of Play, Ben Affleck plays a politician named Stephen Collins. No one on was concerned about having a major character in their movie with my name.