Moments That Mattered

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Twelve writers, directors and bloggers describe the year’s most memorable clips, scenes, shows, videos and computer graphics.

TEEN SPIRIT
It was my daughter’s birthday, and she was turning 14 — an age everyone was warning me about. On Facebook, I noticed that a friend had recommended a music video on YouTube, so I clicked on it. The video is basically a compilation of clips from other YouTube videos that kids have made of themselves dancing in their basements. It’s all set to a song by a band called Tomboyfriend.

HEATHER O’NEILL (author of “Lullabies for Little Criminals”)

A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND
Looking over Niko’s shoulder up at the virtual parachute jump in Grand Theft Auto IV’s version of Coney Island, grabbing a dollar hot dog off the boardwalk to get my health back, then leaping into a bullet-hole-riddled Hummer and smashing through my childhood neighborhood, flying over sand dunes on Manhattan Beach and finally drowning in the sea off Brighton Beach. Thinking, Man, I wish they made this game when I was a teenager.

DARREN ARONOFSKY (director of “Requiem for a Dream” and “The Wrestler”)

IN BALANCE
I would be happy to watch James Marsh’s documentary “Man on Wire” on a continuous loop, preferably shown on the wall beside my desk, volume off, while I try to write. Aside from being deft on a high wire, Philippe Petit was smart enough to have made plenty of footage of his gorgeous and glorious youth, rolling around in tall grass in the French countryside with his friends, walking the wire with his girl on his back. But the film’s true moment of glory was also Petit’s: the 45 minutes he spent traversing the space in the air back and forth and back and forth between the two World Trade Center buildings. He bows, salutes, kneels and then, as if the glory of the world has finally overwhelmed him, he simply lies down in the clouds. His art was exhilaration, fearlessness, a wild grab at life. The wire he and his friends strung at night between the two towers formed the intersection of recklessness and precision. And those buildings, those silent supporting actors, you can’t help marveling at how young they are. In August 1974, when Petit took his morning stroll, they were still raw on their upper floors, not completely finished. I would wish for those buildings that they could someday be remembered for how they began — with the felonious act of a young man who was madly in love with them, their height, their audacity, their doubled beauty — instead of how they ended. “Man on Wire” gives those towers back to us, at least for a little while. It also reminds us of all that art is capable of when what is risked is everything.

ANN PATCHETT (author of “Bel Canto” and “Run”)

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Favorites-t.html?th&emc=th