Custom loop pagination

hi guys, here’s what i did: i created a custom loop on Single-post which lists the posts of a category provided by a custom field. the problem is, the pagination didn’t work at all, it always returns to the first page. i’m trying to find something on Google for a few days now (it seems to be a common issue) and i’m trying all these different codes but without any success
can anybody help me? i’m gonna put here the things that i’d tried and didn’t work

<?php $my_query = new WP_Query(array( 'cat' => get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epicat', true), ‘orderby’ => ‘menu_order’, 'caller_get_posts'            =>1, ‘paged’ => $paged, 'posts_per_page' => 8, )); if ($my_query->have_posts()): ?>
<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

<?php $paged = get_query_var( 'page' ) ? get_query_var( 'page' ) : 1; $args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 8, 'paged' => $paged, 'cat' => 128 ); $loop = new WP_Query($args); while ($loop->have_posts()) : $loop->the_post(); ?>

<?php
$temp = $wp_query;
$wp_query= null;
$wp_query = new WP_Query();
$wp_query->query('showposts=5'.'&paged='.$paged); ?>

<?php while ($wp_query->have_posts()) : $wp_query->the_post(); ?>

<?php
  global $paged;
  $this_page = $_GET['page'];
  $paged = $this_page;
  $my_query = new WP_Query(array( 'cat' => get_post_meta($post->ID, 'epicat', true), 'posts_per_page' => 8, )); if ($my_query->have_posts()): ?>
<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>

PS: i’m using the Kriesi’s pagination, but the issue doesn’t seem to be there since the result is the same with next_posts_link() and previous_posts_link()