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To be one of the greatest song-and/or-dance performances of the decade you don't have been in a musical - but it helps. Equally, you don't need any ability at singing or dancing, just an enthusiastic attitude and a willingness to go for it. Don't believe us? Check these babies out…
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The comic book movie went supernova this decade with reboots for Superman and Batman, and long-awaited big screen adaptations for Spider-Man, X-Men and Watchmen. Not just for geeks though, these crossed over into the mainstream, with demands for a lower certificate on Spider-Man leading to the creation of the 12A certificate for Spidey-mad 8-year-olds. Several crashing fails along the way - Elektra, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ghost Rider - were balanced out by the likes of V For Vendetta, Road To Perdition and Ghost World alongside the more mainstream superhero flicks.
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The Everyman became a leading man this decade. Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and Steve Carrell lead the charge, leaving chiselled cheekbones behind in favour of schlubbier heroes. Paul Giamatti's stressed-out wine buff won Virgina Madsen over in Sideways, McLovin stole the limelight in Superbad, and Arrested Development launched Michael Cera's career as an unlikely heart throb.
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In a world where pop culture is largely synonymous with "dumb", a mini-trend of the Noughties celebrated pure intelligence - and in children, for bonus points. Kicking off with 2000's Bruno (not to be confused with Sacha Baron-Cohen's fashionista), spelling competitions became a film buzz, with charming 2002 documentary Spellbound spawning a fascinating star with a wide variety of facial expressions in coverboy Harry. Then 2006's Akeelah and the Bee and 2005's Bee Season provided varying degrees of heartwarming drama - and taught us how to spell "xanthosis", so that's nice.
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George W Bush aside, who didn't come out of Bowling For Columbine, Enron… or An Inconvenient Truth without feeling like Something Had To Change? While it didn't always last - Empire slid back into McDonald's within about two weeks of seeing Super Size Me; damn those Big Macs - the likes of Michael Moore have made the documentary a real gut-busting format, showing that fact (however manipulated) can be just as, if not more, engrossing than fiction.
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One date dominated the 2000s: September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the subsequent fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan had a huge effect on cinema. Firstly, visually: Spider-Man removed the prominent Twin Towers footage from its teaser trailer and last reel. Second, indirectly: the Western world turned to a different sort of action movie, with fewer terrorists and more monsters. And third, public discord with the war that followed was reflected in films like Fahrenheit 9/11, Jarhead, Syriana and Rendition, while World Trade Center and Paul Greengrass's United 93 explicitly touched on the day itself.
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