Fortunately, NEWSWEEK provides us with this cyberpulpit from which to pay homage to the Year in Entertainment. My problem is this: top 10 lists are, to me, kind of boring, particularly when my name’s not David Ansen and nobody gives a Shrek what I would put on mine. Sure, I could throw “One Night at McCool’s” on there, just so my mother can buy the DVD and beam with pride when she flips it over and reads that her son–and only her son–called it “One of the Best Movies of the Year!” But for the time being, I’m still above that.

So here’s my solution: no top 10 list, just a smattering of awards (covering all genres) of my design. Some little things were particularly great in 2001, and this is the only forum where they’ll get their due. Meanwhile, some things were particularly terrible in 2001, and this is the only forum where they’ll get the tarring they deserve. Without further adieu, the envelopes please: Best Sex Scene: “Mulholland Drive” Might as well cut straight to the big prize. Yes, boys and girls, there is a lesbian sex scene in David Lynch’s marvelous, mind-bending Hollywood noir, but believe it or not, that’s not the sequence I’m honoring here. No, the best sex scene of 2001 had no nudity and, technically, no sex. This one’s gonna require some explanation. Naomi Watts plays Betty, a small-town actress hoping to make it big in Hollywood. She lands an audition and runs lines with her roommate to practice: her delivery is flat, and the scene, about a young woman resisting the come-ons of an older, married man, is pure junk. Then comes the audition. We watch Betty perform the same scene, only this time, her resistance is a tease. Each line is sizzling verbal foreplay, a dare whispered into her lover’s ear. Watts is downright mesmerizing. Fully clothed and barely grazing her costar, she is hungry, cunning and dangerous. I really, really wish she was my girlfriend. Best Movie Poster: “Ocean’s 11” When you have a movie starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts, not putting any of their faces on the poster is either galactically stupid or very, very cool. In 50 years, this spare, black-white-and-red masterpiece will be hanging on living room walls right alongside “Metropolis” and “The Third Man.” Most Remarkable Downward Trajectory by a TV Series in One Calendar Year: “Ed” This show started out just to the right of “Northern Exposure” [rhapsodic sigh] and now it’s an eyelash left of “Providence.” Has there ever been a show more tickled by its own cleverness? Well, yes, “Seinfeld.” The difference is, “Seinfeld” was clever. Oh, and one more thing: the character Phil Stubbs (Ed’s wwwwacky bowling alley assistant) has never done anything funny, ever. Dear NBC: Please kill him off.

Best Line in a Movie: “Heist”

So many to choose from in David Mamet’s caper flick, but my favorite is Gene Hackman’s response when hotshot partner-in-crime Sam Rockwell promises to be “quieter than an ant pissing on a blade of grass.” “No,” Hackman says, “I want you to be quieter than an ant not even thinking about pissing on a blade of grass.”

Worst Line in a Movie: “Vanilla Sky”

After a few hours of feverish flirtation, Tom Cruise turns to Penelope Cruz and, throwing caution to the wind, says: “I dig you completely.” Like, completely? What’s really dismaying about this line is its author: Cameron Crowe, who won a screenwriting Oscar just last year for “Almost Famous.”

Best Death: “Six Feet Under”

Granted, HBO’s funeral-home drama has a stiff leg up on the competition, by virtue of the fact that someone dies in the opening minutes of every episode. Still, comedy doesn’t get any more black (or more comic) than the episode in which a miserable housewife puts a stop to her husband’s nonstop blathering about his tedious job by bashing him over the head with a frying pan. She did it, she later tells the police, because he was “boring.”

Most Pointless Season-Ending Cliffhanger: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The West Wing” (tie)

Considering that 1) Sarah Michelle Gellar had several years remaining on her contract and 2) the show was moving from the WB to UPN after the season finale (a move UPN presumably wouldn’t have made without Buffy herself) and 3) every single “Buffy” fan knew both of these things, what exactly was the point of killing Buffy in the last episode? Instead of the sniffling, hiccuping bouts of weeping I would’ve poured out if Buffy actually were dead, I thought, “Hmm, that’s a pickle. Wonder how they’ll bring her back….”

On “The West Wing,” we waited until October, nearly half a year, to find out what was abundantly clear in May: that President Bartlett would indeed run for a second term. Note to Aaron Sorkin: foreshadowing–particularly heavy-handed, thrice-repeated foreshadowing–works. Hold your cards a little closer to your chest next time, OK, buddy?

Best Performance in Seven Minutes or Less: Macy Gray, “Training Day”

It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. About halfway through the corrupt-cop flick, Gray appears as a drug-pushing mom in a blighted L.A. ghetto. Wow. For a few electric moments–all fingernails, all chewing gum, all streetwise menace–she goes toe to toe with Denzel Washington. Mariah Carey, eat your heart out.

Best Movie in Seven Minutes or Less: “The Follow” by Wong Kar-Wai

Last year, BMW gave five top filmmakers–including Ang Lee, John Frankenheimer and Guy Ritchie–money to make a short film. Two conditions: each movie had to feature a top-of-the-line BMW and at least one chase scene. British actor Clive Owen (“Croupier”) starred in all five as the driver. Each was a triumph, but the coup de grace was Wong Kar-Wai’s tale of a shady celebrity who hires Owen to track his beautiful, estranged wife. Like the best of Wong’s work (“Chungking Express,” “In the Mood for Love”), “The Follow” is ravishing and mysterious. See for yourself at www.bmwfilms.com–then go rent “Chungking Express.”

Best Song You Didn’t Hear: “At Your Funeral,” Saves the Day

Write down the name. This foursome of just-barely-20 New Jersey kids make some of the most infectious emo-pop this side of Weezer, and the buoyant singalong “At Your Funeral” (which, I hear, is creeping slowly onto MTV2) is an alt-rock anthem waiting for an audience.

Best Song You Heard Constantly, Over and Over Again, Until Your Eardrums Bled, And Still You Loved It: “Let Me Blow Ya Mind,” Eve w/ Gwen Stefani.

Fo’ sheazy!!!

Best Plea Bargain for Murder: “The Sopranos”

After Ralphie (played by Joe Pantoliano) beats a beautiful young stripper to death outside Tony’s club, The Bada-Bing, he defends his conduct by noting that she was a whore (which he memorably pronounces “hue-uh”). Ultimately, he is punished not for murder but merely for “disrespecting the Bing.”

Most Underused Cast Member/Best Southern Accent in a TV Series: Emily Procter, “The West Wing”

It was a wise move by series creator Aaron Sorkin to add a true-believer Republican to his way-too-left-leaning cast, and it was a clever gambit to stick Miss Ainsley Hayes in a dank basement office as a kind of initiation rite. But Aaron, baby, why’d ya leave her down there?! Procter’s honey-sweet Carolina drawl was a beautiful counterpoint to all that New England machine-gun staccato. And Hayes’s critiques of liberal positions–notably her speech about gun control, in which she/Sorkin notes that proponents don’t dislike guns nearly as much as they dislike the people who own guns–complicated the show’s snobby Hollywood politics, if ever so briefly. Sadly, Procter now gets about as much screen time as Dick Cheney. And she’s much prettier.