Did We (Meaning Asians) Rescue The International Film Industry in 2008?

Michael Atkinson of IFC thinks so:

As usual these days (but not, notably, last year), 2008 was rescued by the Asians, even if they didn't remain in Asia proper. Otherwise, my list looks like a clear vote for the new wave-ist upsurge in minimalist realism/realist minimalism, Asian or American, which always seems all the more remarkable when compared in taste tests with Hollywood parade floats and middle-class-middle-age-courting Euro-dramas, which if anything often resemble the unbearable U.S. studio product of decades past. A cinema of idiosyncratic personal force overshadows the products of the machine, even as the "specialty" venues dwindle.

1. My Winnipeg
2. Ballast
3. Wendy and Lucy
4. Silent Light
5. Still Life
6. Waltz with Bashir
7. Flight of the Red Balloon
8. The Wrestler
9. Synecdoche, New York
10. My Blueberry Nights

Hmmm. Of these, I only know of Still Life, Flight of the Red Balloon and Wai Kar Wong's My Blueberry Nights (with Norah J) as the Chinese movies. Maybe Waltz with Bashir (if Israel is included in Asia Major). But this list is impressive and I bet you these won't be shown in your SM theaters so give this list and also these two others to your friendly Quiapo kiterunners:

Allison Wilmore:
1. A Christmas Tale
2. Wendy and Lucy
3. Paranoid Park
4. Happy-Go-Lucky
5. Silent Light
6. The Order of Myths
7. Frownland
8. Milk
9. Momma's Man
10. Reprise

Matt Singer
1. My Winnipeg
2. Rachel Getting Married
3. The Dark Knight
4. Wendy and Lucy
5. The Wrestler
6. Milk
7. Let the Right One In
8. Doubt
9. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
10. A Christmas Tale