Ledger's Death Named Top Entertainment Story of 2008

Mirroring the rest of the world, there were very few positive stories among the year's biggest entertainment headlines. The Associated Press ranked the death of Heath Ledger as the top story of the year, and perhaps because the news cycle moves so quickly now, his untimely passing seems like it happened even longer ago. Death was a common theme on the list, which also included the Writers Guild of America strike, the constant trainwreck of Britney Spears' life, the rise of political comedy, and the enormous success of The Dark Knight among its biggest stories of the year. 1 - The death of Heath Ledger 2 - The writers' strike ends 3 - The Dark Knight 4 - Political comedy shines 5 - Britney Spears' downward spiral 6 - The death of Paul Newman 7 - TV Networks embrace the web 8 - The death of George Carlin 9 - The death of Tim Russert 10 - Jennifer Hudson's family tragedy From a movie perspecitve, I'm a little surprised to not see Robert Downey Jr. or Twilight mentioned anywhere. At the very least, it would've lightened the list up a tad.

Comments

[Robert Blair]

For me the biggest tragedy of 2008, was the death of my friend and
soon to be movie star Jimi Lloyd.

Jimi, a Sunset Beach surfing star, was selected to play the lead in
the forthcoming film "Rising Tide".

Shortly after completing the film Jimi passed away early this summer,
somewhat before his 20th birthday.

The film should be released late spring, early summer 2009, and
I urge everyone to go see what a remarkable guy he was.

Jimi and I were planning to see "The Dark Knight" together, but it
wasn't meant to be.