Entertainment Weekly’s annual “Entertainers of the Year” list just came out, so I figured I’d share it. I’ve subscribed to the magazine for years now, and this list is one of my favorite recurring features in that it’s always a spot-on yearbook of everything that was popular this year. (2007’s #1 was George Clooney; 2006’s was the Grey’s Anatomy cast; 2005’s was the Lost cast; 2004’s was Jon Stewart; and 2003’s was the cast/crew of Lord of the Rings). The 2008 “winners”…
- Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man, Tropic Thunder)
- Tina Fey (30 Rock, Baby Mama, her Sarah Palin impression)
- The cast & crew of The Dark Knight
- The ‘Gossip’ Girls – Blake Lively and Leighton Meester
- Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight series)
- Lil Wayne
- Rock Band (the game)
- The Women of Sex and the City
- The Jonas Brothers
- The Talking Heads – Jon Stewart, Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity, The women of The View, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Campbell Brown, and Stephen Colbert
- Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia, Doubt)
- The Stars of Bravo – Tim Gunn, Nene Leakes, Jill Zarin, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, Vicki Gunvalson, Jeff Lewis, Zoila Chavez, and Rachel Zoe (I’ve heard of exactly one of them)
- James Franco (Pineapple Express, Milk)
- Wall-E
- Coldplay
- Elizabeth Banks (W., Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Role Models)
- Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim (Lost)
- Kid Rock
- Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
- Katy Perry
- Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, Step Brothers, Burn After Reading)
- Michael Phelps
- Leona Lewis (who?)
- Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, Harold & Kumar, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog)
As I indicated, I’ve never heard of Leona Lewis or pretty much anyone on Bravo, but I’ll let them slide — after all, most people still probably don’t know who Richard Jenkins is.
However, I have to protest with their #4 choice. Yes, Gossip Girl has a devoted following; yes, it’s more entertaining than you might think; and yes, EW loves it even more than they love Lost. But nobody watches it. TV critics, wannabe Mean Girls, and the stray fan here and there, and that’s it. Its ratings are just as bad as Veronica Mars, and you didn’t see Kristen Bell landing on any Entertainer of the Year list. And that was a better show.
Also, I know a comeback story is impossible to resist, but Robert Downey Jr’s two movies combined made $420 million — still a good $100 million less than The Dark Knight. I hate to make it all about numbers, but this list is basically a popularity contest, so you can’t ignore it. I accept Tina Fey’s #2 ranking because her Sarah Palin impersonation was a bona fide phenomenon that permeated the narrative of the 2008 election. Iron Man was wildly successful, but not as much of a phenomenon as The Dark Knight, and that’s a fact.
