Hollywood milestones in 2008

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Hollywood milestones in 2008
Heath Ledger, RIP An incandescent young actor poised for glory, heartbreakingly struck down in the prime of his years. And he was just getting started.



At 28, he'd already garnered high praise and picked up a Best Actor nomination at the Oscars for his work in Brokeback Mountain. But his truly iconic part came only posthumously with his devastating performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight.



Truly one of the most chilling villains of all time, and a performance impossible to judge minus the performer's context. Indeed, this man will be missed.

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The Writer's Strike closing down the Golden Globes
The Writer's Guild Association went on strike in November 2007, but even as late night talk show hosts lent their backing with indulgent gags, nobody quite expected that the revolt would really stop Hollywood in their tracks.

Here's a quick primer, and things came to a head when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was forced to cancel the Golden Globe awards because stars weren't willing to cross the picket lines. The result: a press conference announcing the names of the winners.



When a bunch of angry writers can stop Armani-wearers from pirouetting for the red carpet lensmen, you know the world's not entirely doomed.

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Wall-E
In the annals of animation history, this film is a watershed. Pixar has always made great animation, but this film -- a look at a dystopic future wasted by humanity, where a tin protagonist seeks succour in the company of a ****roach -- humbled the critics and became the best-animated film of all time.



Within moments of Andrew Stanton's film release, the buzz began about how this was an animated film good enough to get a Best Picture nomination. The only other instance was Beauty And The Beast, back in 1991, which eventually lost to Silence Of The Lambs.



This year, the magnificent Wall-E could do deservedly better. "Osk-aa?" Why not?

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Tom Cruise gets his cool back
It took a while, but a huge bunch of us were rooting for the couch-jumper to head back into the realm of the supercool. And this he did with remarkable humour, playing a hairy, unrecognisable, repulsively tongued producer -- with a thing for expressing emotions via dance -- in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. It is one of the most glorious cameos in comedic history, and Cruise is so awesome that we can't help but love him long before the end credits reveal that it is actually him, after which we fall into worship.



We've always liked men who can laugh at themselves, and Cruise seems in fine self-deprecatory fettle these days. Check out one of the funniest bits on Letterman in ages. That line about Vaporub is just priceless.

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Tina Fey as Sarah Palin
Comedic parodies of real-life politicos are as old as comedy itself, and a fair few of the most-forwarded ones of today come from Saturday Night Live... But this one set a new standard.



Tina Fey's take on the woman who gifted Barack Obama the 2008 elections was inspired, brilliant and, quite simply, uncanny. We've seen Will Ferrell do George Dubya, and Thandie Newton made an insanely good Condoleeza Rice in Oliver Stone's W, but Fey's Palin was the funniest thing imaginable.
Outside of Palin herself talking on the phone, that is.