Being the obsessive compulsive that I am, lists have an obvious appeal - a place for everything and everything in its place and all that. As such, here are some top 5s for last year:

Top 5 Films:

• Good Night, and Good Luck - George Clooney making proper films for grown-ups: what are the chances? Incidentally almost entirely responsible for my affection for Keith Olbermann.
• Brick - easily the best noir made in the last decade. Makes the list on the merits of the scene in the car park on its own “There’s a thesaurus in the library - you’ll find “yeah” under Y. I can wait.”
• Thank You For Smoking - criminally overlooked satire, in which Aaron Eckhart gives perhaps the most gloriously amoral performance since Gordon Gecko.
• A Scanner Darkly - the rotoscoping added just the right about of psychodelia, and Keanu ’s trademark slightly-confused-dude performance found a perfect home.
• Stranger Than Fiction - attracted admirable comparisons to Eternal Sunshine (for both its slightly offbeat premise, and its comedian-in-a-straight-role lead), with sterling support from Messrs. Thompson & Hoffman.

Top 5 Albums:

• Inside In/Inside Out The Kooks - simple guitar driven melodic indie rock. Nice lads too, even if the lead singer looks a little too much like Simon Amstell for comfort.
• Liberation Transmission Lostprophets - the boys from the valleys are sounding more and more American with each release, firmly targeting that lucrative Emo market. Not that this is a bad thing of course …
• Kill Your Own Hundred Reasons - by contrast, the Reasons are firmly of the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” school of thought, turning out their third quality album.
• Dusk and Summer Dashboard Confessional - arguably the best thing Carrabba has done, even going so far as to suggest that he might finally be getting over the girl who did whatever it was she did to him (just because even he has doesn’t mean I should by the way).
• Sam’s Town The Killers - apparently nothing can stop The Killer’s inevitable world domination. I for one welcome our new synth rock overlords.

Top 5 Games

• Shadow of the Colossus - the “video games as art” argument can now officially be settled thanks to SCE. A worthy successor to ICO (and coming from me, that’s high praise indeed).
• Kingdom Hearts II - needed more Roxas and fewer original songs written for the Little Mermaid missions, but otherwise universally excellent. The theme song is still on my ipod.
• Gears of War - ZOMG how pretty? I mean seriously, check out the smoke haze over the muzzle of my gun …
• Lego Star Wars II - there is nothing about this game which isn’t completely awesome. Included purely on the merits of the fact that Leia’s melee attack is a slap.
• DEFCON - Simple, elegant and terrifying beyond all reason. Like it says on the tin, Everybody Dies.