As 2007 draws to a close we are looking back over a very successful year at the cinema with blockbusters, independent and foreign movies all making their mark at the box office.E Entertainment's Daily 10 movie boffin Ben Lyons takes a look back at this year with his highlights and what to look forward too in 2008. The best film of the year, hands down, is Into The Wild. It's directed by Sean Penn and it stars Emile Hirsch, it's based on a true story, it's got a great score and soundtrack from Eddie Vedder, it's with Vince Vaughn and Catherine Keener if you haven't seen it you have to see it.It's the movie that everyone will be talking about for Golden Globes and Oscar it's truly an inspirational film. It's the story of a kid who didn't want to go a cushy law school or get a job as an investment banker, like all his peers, he just wanted to live off the land. It's truly inspirational it gets you thinking about what you want to do with your life and you place in the universe, it's a film that is going to live with me for the rest of my life.

Award season is coming up who are you tipping for an Oscar win particularly in the big four categories?
No Country For Old Men is one of the best thrillers I have seen in years, one of the scariest films too, not because it's gory but scary because it's real. It's with Javier Bardem who will win the Academy Award, you heard it here first. Awards season who else do we like? No Country For Old Men, Into The Wild.

I think you are going to see nominations for a film called the Kite Runner which is directed by Marc Foster, who is directing the new James Bond film, Angelina Jolie will get nominated, or at least she should, for her performance as Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart.

And I was talking to Johnny Depp about this today and if you look at someone like George Clooney in Michael Clayton and Brad Pitt in Jesse James these people are such big stars and they are so well recognised, we know where they sleep. who they are sleeping with, what they are eating, what they are wearing, we see unflattering photos of them when George Clooney comes on screen you forget he is George Clooney he is instantly Michael Clayton when Brad Pitt comes on screen you forget he is the biggest star in the world he is Jesse James.

Nowadays that shows what a great actor you are, as opposed to maybe thirty forty years ago when you didn't have to deal with all that stuff you just knew them for their work and that's it. Now we know so much about them, when Lindsay Lohan is on screen I don't believe her as her character she is Lindsay Lohan, she's orange, she's smoking cigarettes and drinking Red Bull she's Lindsay Lohan I can't get over that. I think nowadays you have to be such a talented actor to put that persona aside.

So those are some that I would pick: Angelina Jolie, No Country For Old Men, Into The Wild I think they will be the front runners come award show season.

What films should we be looking out for in 2008?

There is a great fun movie called Be Kind Rewind and it stars Jack Black and Mos Def and it's directed by Michel Gondry, who everyone knows is a visionary, it's a great buddy film. I don't know if you are familiar with the premise of the movie, I have seen it it's absolutely hilarious, two guys run a video store and all the tapes get erased in the video store.

So in order to keep the store afloat they go off and shoot their own versions of the movies, so Jack and Mos with like a little camera and they are trying to make Ghostbusters. And of course they become cult stars and their movies end up being more popular than the original movies.

It's just brilliant it's got a heart to it, Danny Glover is in it as well, it's a fun movie and it's going to be playing this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

And for 2008 it's a year of big blockbusters: there's Batman coming out at the end of July, with Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes thank God. Then there's Ironman directed by Jon Favreau, Jon Favreau is probably the first person I got to actually know in the business and he is such a genuinely good dude, and he's directing Ironman with Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrance Howard, an all star cast, that's going to be a huge movie. Also another Indiana Jones movie so there's a lot of big stuff coming out in 2008 so I'm pretty excited.

Is there any names we should be looking out for?

A girl who gave a great performance this year was a girl called Nikki Blonsky, she played the lead in Hairspray, and she was working at an ice cream store in Long Island and sent in her audition tape and next think you know she is starring alongside John Travolta. And she has got a couple of cool movies coming out next year, I got to visit her on the set of a movie called Harold, which is also playing at Sundance, she stars in that. And it's just great to see a girl who is comfortable with her body, comfortable with who she is, talented way beyond her years and it's just a fresh face in Hollywood, a bit like this year's Jennifer Hudson in some ways, somebody who appreciates everything, doesn't feel entitled to it.

Also I'm sure that you are familiar of course to James McAvoy, The Last King of Scotland, and he is a talented kid, a really nice kid too another one who really appreciates where he is at, he has got a couple of big movies coming out in 2008, I think he is finally going to achieve that A list stature if you will.

I have a story about James McAvoy I was on the red carpet at the Academy Awards and had about two hours to kill and I realised that my press pass allowed me onto the red carpet so I thought I would sneak onto the red carpet, why not? chance of a lifetime. So he is the first kid I see, I had interview him, and he said 'Ben I'm so nervous I'm presenting the first award of the evening,' and I said 'James you know the old trick just picture everyone in their underwear and you will be totally fine.' And he went 'Dude I'm presenting with Jessica Biel if I picture her in her underwear I think I'm going to faint.’ He was petrified but he did a good job.

Atonement, a film he stars in with Keira Knightley, that should get some award season attention. But I love those kids who appreciate where they are at with their careers and how lucky and privileged because 95% of actors are not working they are waiters, bus boys, working in real estate they don't get to act, if you get the privilege to be a working actor it's a very lucky thing.

But unfortunately the movie industry looks certain to end on a low with the writer's strike still in full swing and it's starting to have a detrimental effect on the business.

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What is your opinion on the writer's strike and how is it effecting the industry?
It is absolutely horrible for the industry, however, the writers, I believe, are just in their plight, they are asking for better compensation, to my understanding. The problem is a lot of the things that they are asking for haven't been determined, nobody knows how lucrative digital downloads will be, nobody knows if movies on your Blackberry will be a profitable business, so to determine how much a percentage someone should get it's kind of difficult, the studios have their hands tied. From having friends in the business who are producers or studio executives it's killing them the phones are dead they can't do their job. And people forget it's not just the writers and the studio people who are in trouble it's the crew guys, the people who do food on set, security guys, I have a friend who is a writer on The Office and if this doesn't get solved in six weeks he is going to have to sell his home, I mean it's that serious. No other industry has had anything as high profile or like this in recent memory, I remember as a kid in New York the doorman would strike every six months or so and they would figure it out in like a week, but this is really crippling the business so many of our favourite TV shows are going off the air new movies, Johnny Depp just lost being part of a film because they wanted to do script re-writes and they can't so that fell apart, friends who are actors aren't going to work for a while so it's really crazy and I hope everybody has figured it out.'

Catch Ben Lyons on The Daily 10 weekdays at 6.30pm only on E! Entertainment Television (Sky: 152/ Virgin Media: 173)

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw