Third place goes to one of the (some might say only) few bright spots from the thoroughly repellent Kick-Ass, in Hit-Girl. As played by Chloe Moretz, she's the amazingly profane, hyper-violent pre-teen assassin trained by her father to take down an underground criminal organization. As gimmick comic book heroes brought to life go, she's a pretty good one.

Fourth spot falls to another comic book character, but of an entirely different stripe. Wallace Wells is the conscience of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, serving as the big, older, sexually voracious gay angel on Scott's shoulder. Kieran Culkin lifts him off the page to be an even greater and more important presence in the film than in the comic, and provides a solid portion of the film's humor with razor-sharp sarcasm, but also flips the switch when necessary to cut through other characters' cynicism and direct them on their right path.

Fifth and sixth place nearly tie, appropriately enough, seeing as they're the two main characters from True Grit, Maddie Ross and Rooster Cogburn. We give a slight edge to the tough-as-nails teenager determined to catch her father's killer over the alcoholic U.S. Marshall she hires to do it, but both are remarkable creations. That they came with an added difficulty is even more impressive, considering that the Coens, along with actors Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges, faced existing iconic portrayals from the 1969 film version. The problem was solved in an unexpected way – humor. These are two of the funniest characters in a western (although they might not think so) since Blazing Saddles, but the humor never undercuts the seriousness of the proceedings around them. Time will tell if either of these portrayals supplants their original counterparts (my guess is not, but you never know), but they can certainly look their predecessors square in the eye.

One of the more original literary creations of the past decade survived the trip to the big screen in seventh place for us. In bringing Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed, pierced and shockingly violent central character from the Millennium Series novels, to real life, there were huge obstacles in overcoming expectations of fans of the series. It's hard not to be thrilled with the result, with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's version of Salander feeling just as alien but protecting a damaged center as we felt she should be. David Fincher gets a second take on the character this year, but it's hard to imagine it being topped.

Eighth spot goes to Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network. Bringing a real-life person to the screen is always a challenge, since you have to deal with the feeling that accuracy is the most important thing (don't fool yourself – no one has ever, ever been portrayed with perfect accuracy on screen), especially with a figure as contemporary as Zuckerberg. Whatever changes had to be made to Zuckerberg for the character to work on screen, they're well worth it, as he become almost a stand-in for our times, a tragic figure isolated by his own actions, a failure in his own success.

In a banner year for animation, surprisingly only one animated character makes our list. Toothless, Hiccup's “steed” from How To Train Your Dragon makes our list as the second of our three-way tie for eighth, and perhaps unsurprisingly so considering how many pet lovers there are among us. Toothless perfectly captured the experience of having a companion and despite having no lines, helped the film to have an emotional center as an E.T. for our times.

Lastly, we have another “true”-to-life character, in Dicky Eklund from The Fighter. As a crack-addled manic force of nature, he creates the central conflict at the heart of the film, about how family obligations can be an anchor on dreams. And boy, what an anchor Eklund is. Echoing some of the great sad sack boxing characters in cinema, Eklund brings the tragedy of wasted potential into sharp focus.

In this highly competitive category, some of the notable characters from 2010 who just missed the cut are Nina Sayers, Natalie Portman's emotionally stunted ballerina from Black Swan, Steven Russell, Jim Carrey's homosexual con artist from I Love You Phillip Morris and Cobb, Leonardo DiCaprio's tragically afflicted dream thief from Inception. (Reagen Sulewski/BOP)

Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Best Videogame
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture

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