January 2008: Top 10 Film, TV, and DVD Preview
by Brian Tallerico

4. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (FOX, 1/13)
The Terminator franchise is fascinating. Every time you think it's finally over, someone brings it back to life. With news that McG might be directing Christian Bale in a fourth film and Fox premiering the long-anticipated The Sarah Connor Chronicles series, it looks like The Terminator might enjoy a renaissance again. (There's an "I'll be back" joke there somewhere, but we're not touching it.) To be honest, any show that stars 300's Lena Headey and Firefly's Summer Glau would make this list regardless of the concept. The fact that one of them will carry a shotgun while she tries to save the world and the other is an f-in killer robot means we have the Season Pass programmed already.

3. The Wire (HBO, 1/6)
The final chapter of this epic televised novel starts Sunday. We're well past the point of begging you to watch this show, which never turned into the hit that it should have been, so this is mostly just for the people who have taken the time to commit to HBO's masterpiece of a series, one of the best of the new millennium. The Wire is like a great album or novel that wasn't quite appreciated by the masses in its time. In the same way that people can't believe Blade Runner wasn't a hit immediately or that it took so long for Scorsese to win an Oscar, a few decades from now, people will marvel that The Wire wasn't a bigger hit and didn't win more awards in its time. It's one of the most richly developed shows on the air, and we'd love it if more people watched the final season and gave this show the send-off it deserves, but, just like the plots on the show itself, we don't expect a happy ending.

2. Cloverfield (In Theaters, 1/18)
"Did you see that?" It's about time, right? Ever since the creepy first trailer for Cloverfield hit theaters, we've been anxiously anticipating 1-18-08. Spoilers have started to pop up here and there, but we've avoided as many as possible, trying to stick with the air of mystery surrounding this brilliant idea for an action film. In an era where everything is recorded, why not make a monster movie purely from the viewpoint of a handheld camera? It's a great idea and, while much has been made of J.J. Abrams' involvement as producer, we're even happier about the fact that Drew Goddard wrote the film. Who's Drew Goddard? Ask a Lost, Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Angel fan. He wrote some of the best episodes including Lost's "The Man From Tallahassee" (two words - Locke, window) & last year's finale "The Man Behind the Curtain," Buffy's "Conversations With Dead People," and Angel's "Why We Fight." Drew Goddard rules. J.J. Abrams rules. The concept rules. Cloverfield has as much potential to rule as anything between now and The Dark Knight. Maybe more.

1. Lost (ABC, 1/31)
The countdown begins here. Wait! Make that both countdowns begin here. The bad countdown is that there are only eight episodes of Lost in the can that were actually completed pre-strike. If the strike doesn't end soon, that dream of an unbroken Lost season is going to go up in a puff of killer smoke. Call an HBO executive and ask how long hiatuses work for hit shows if you want to know the kind of disaster many showrunners are preparing themselves for if the strike continues. If we can get this thing going, the good countdown starts at number 48. That's how many episodes of Lost we have left. Now that we know where the finish line is, and all those weird kinks that marred the midsection of season three have been ironed out, is there any Lost fan out there who doesn't think this is going to rule? If they don't, they must not have been watching the show last May when the writers ended season three with some of the best television of the last few years. If they can pick it up anywhere near that level of quality and ride it out until the end, Lost could be even more of a TV classic than we first thought.