2005: The year's ten biggest influencers

Bye, bye 2005. But before we go, here are our 10 entertainment phenomena of the last 12 months.

1. THE DREAM RUN

On the face of it, the three films don't have a lot in common: one's a remake, one's a kid's book, and one's a love affair between an old codger and his motorcycle. But, of course, the three were made by Kiwi directors all or largely in New Zealand, where they ruled the box office in the final weeks of the year.

And King Kong, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The World's Fastest Indian shared something in their origins - they were born of their respective creators' younger selves.

Peter Jackson has long held the original King Kong as a formative influence.

Andrew Adamson said he wanted to capture the sense of wonder he had as an 8-year-old reading The Chronicles of Narnia.

And Roger Donaldson's fascination with speed demon Burt Munro harked back to a doco he made while a budding director in the early 70s.

So all three films weren't just the markers for a remarkable year for New Zealand film-making, just when we thought the party was over post-The Lord of the Rings. No, they were films of big dreams from a small country. No wonder we liked them so much.

2. THE COUCH POTATO

It's little wonder box-office takings took a 5 per cent nosedive this year.

Excluding the above, of course, pickings were slim. It didn't really matter. Why spend your hard-earned $12 if you can watch blockbuster entertainment free at home? With Desperate Housewives and Lost came the kind of ardent social tele-watching not seen since Sex & the City and Telethon.

People were indeed lost between the hours of 8.30-9.30 every Monday night as cameras delved behind the picket fences of Wisteria Lane. The show had everything: fantastic wardrobes, sexy men and a murderous, soap opera plot that wasn't afraid to send itself up.

Just as hyped was Lost, which came with a more mysterious premise. Yes, the plane crash island survivors turned a bit Lord of the Flies but the island was even weirder. We had many questions, none of which we found the answers to. We probably never will.

3. THE MEDIA CIRCUS

Nothing puts a dampener on a music career like a child molestation charge. So it was that Michael Jackson went from King of Pop to "the accused" in what made O.J. Simpson's trial look like a trip to the principal's office.

The media descended on Santa Maria and for three months the world watched Wacko Jacko head for court, waving to fans as though he was about to break into Billy Jean. TV called it the "trial of the century".

The E channel made daily reconstructions. Neverland became Exhibit A. As the allegations delved deeper, Jackson's high-profile friends, including Macaulay Culkin, Jay Leno and Chris Tucker, were brought in to testify.

Throughout his ordeal, Jackson suffered the flu and chronic back pain and showed this was a real-life Thriller when he turned up to court in his pyjamas.

As if things weren't going appallingly enough, in May an accountant declared Jackson was heading for financial ruin. Finally, the jury found Jackson not guilty on all 10 counts against him. He skipped the country, promising never to sleep with boys again.

4. THE FAME GAME

When the world's most important couple broke up, part of us did too. Brad and Jen were like cheese and crackers, a glimmer of normality in Tinseltown. Half a Brazilian rainforest was dedicated to coverage of the split as we attempted to patch up our broken lives, to blame Angelina, to curse Jen's career-minded womb.

Then came the Bradgelina photos, complete with African beach romps, fake family picnics and orphan-shopping trips. But our hunger for the truth would not be satiated by another woman. Thank heavens, then, for the couch-wrecking, sprog-making phenomenon that is TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes for the tabloid-impaired).

Cruise's ex-wife Nicole Kidman wasn't about to let a Dawsons Creek geek get away with turning her ex into a raving lunatic, or let the laughing-stock nuptials of Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney put her off marrying a country star. Enter Kiwi-born Keith Urban, whose rock she could not refuse.

It was also the year of Paris and Paris, Ben and Jen (Garner, not J-Lo) and the now defunct Nick and Jess. As for who's next on the celebrity marry-go-round we can only speculate. But when the photos arrive we'll let you know.

5. HOLLYWOOD'S RUDE GOOD HEALTH

Hollywood wasn't very good at being Hollywood in 2005. Sure, it gave us some decent prequels about the origins of a couple of famous cape wearers during its middle-of-the-year blockbuster season. But where was the action? The Spielberg-Cruise War of the Worlds was hardly the event flick it was meant to be. Neither was The Island.

And as for The Fantastic Four and Stealth ...

But if this year's high-cost action flicks kept missing the mark, then the year's break-out popcorn hits were a couple of sex comedies - The Wedding Crashers (pairing Vince Vaughn, right, and Owen Wilson) and The 40 Year-Old Virgin (starring Steve Carell).

Sure, for years we've had capers redefining the term "box office gross". But these two were different. They had more class than crass. They might have had sex on the brain but they had romance in their heart. And best of all, the standards they set as crowd-pleasing grown-up entertainment could hopefully mean that Deuce Bigalow is finally out of a job.

6. NO MARKETING

Nah bro, don't worry about marketing and advertising, it'll be sweet as. That was the philosophy when Fat Freddy's Drop released their debut album, Based On A True Story, in May and the "no marketing" marketing plan worked a treat. With sales of more than 60,000 copies it is the third biggest-selling album of the year behind Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams and Coldplay's X&Y.

The album was always going to do well, because it was years in the making and the anticipation from fans was worth a good 15,000 copies alone. And all those one-eyed Wellingtonians would say "We told you so" because they reckoned they knew their lads had the goods. But really, no one could have predicted just how well Based On A True Story would do.

It was the only independent record to make the end of year top 10 albums. It hit No 1 on debut, and then, after 30 weeks, it went back to No 1. And it's still selling. It's the most freakish music phenomenon of the year, and if ever there was a local, little-guy success story then Fat Freddy's are it. Don't be surprised if True Story ends up being the biggest selling album of the year when the final results come out early next year.

7. LIVE 8

In 1985, Bob Geldof's Live Aid brought together the world's biggest music stars for a concert that was watched by a billion and a half people. It raised more than $222 million to help the many victims of famine in Africa.

Twenty years later, on July 2 this year, Geldof (right) organised it all over again. But this time round the gig wasn't about charity, it was about political lobbying and making poverty history.

Live 8 - at nine world venues - featured performances by acts including U2, Coldplay, and Kanye West and was watched by 3.8 billion people.

In the same week as Live 8, world leaders were meeting at the G8 summit in Scotland, and Geldof and U2 frontman Bono met with them to talk about poverty.

Geldof told the eight leaders: "We came tonight with 3.8 billion people in our back pockets. What are you going to do about it?"

And Bono, ever the speechmaker, said: "That's the most powerful mandate in the history of mandates."

Also this year a time troubled by natural disasters - there were charity gigs for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the tsunami in Asia.

8. CARTOON CRAZIES

If there was one frog you wanted to chuck in a blender this year then Crazy Frog was it. However, to be fair to this infuriating little critter, he was hugely popular. Not bad for a thing that used to be a humble ringtone.

He had three No 1 hit songs (Axel F, Popcorn, and Jingle Bells), and a No 1 album (Crazy Hits).

He also did what every superstar musician does and released a Christmas edition of Crazy Hits.

Not only was the crazed, helium-voiced freak hooning round on TV screens and blaring out of speakers, he started turning up in person at events such as Christmas in the Park. He even got invited to cool places like music channel C4 and the Christmas party of trendy radio station George FM. What is the world coming to?

However, the Gorillaz were a cartoon creation who weren't so irritating. This imaginary band, dreamed up by Damon Albarn from Blur, released their second album, Demon Days (TimeOut's third best album of the year), and it was a stunner. And single Feel Good Inc., was as catchy and cute as Popcorn was annoying.

9. GOING BEYOND IDOL

We should have seen it coming. But we didn't, and for that we are sorry you all had to suffer the slew of B-celeb-infested dancing and singing shows that followed Idol and Dancing With the Stars like a bad smell. Although they did kinda cancel each other out by appearing on competing networks.

What we did know was that the second Idol would not rate as highly as the first. How could you top the novelty of seeing cuzzie bro on the telly the first time around? Not with Rock Star: INXS, surely, in which the Aussie band attempted to find a new lead singer rather than disappear into the rock'n'roll ether. The band's integrity threatened to do so, though, as Dave Navarro joined the lads to judge the range of muscled bods, dreadlocks and tattooed flesh belting their rasping throats out. The good news? We probably won't see another Idol next year. The bad? So You Think You Can Dance? is coming. This time you've been warned.

10. LEGALISING IT

Admit it, many of you have been downloading music for ages. Haven't you? Well, this year you were able to stop feeling like such a criminal thanks to the emergence of legal music download websites in New Zealand.

Local site Amplifier has been offering Kiwi music downloads for a few years now, and Digirama started in November last year. But things really heated up this year with the launch of Coketunes.

The website, owned by drinks giant Coke, started in August with more than 500,000 tracks on offer, dwarfing the 75,000 that Digirama had available.

The competition in the market sparked a mini price war between the two rivals. Coketunes had songs for $1.75 each and albums from $18. So, not to be outdone, Digirama dropped its prices from $1.99 a song to $1.69 and from $19.99 an album to $17.99. And that's how the prices remain today.

With Apple's iTunes service rumoured to be arriving here early in the New Year, music downloads will be even more popular.

Elsewhere, Vodafone and Telecom also started up music stores, so - providing you had the swanky new phone required - you could download music to your phone. But $3.50 a song is expensive.