As you read here earlier today, Vanity Fair has cancelled their Oscar party, but there’s no stopping their annual movie issue. Somewhere amid the hundreds of glossy ads and smelly cologne strips, you’ll find articles on the films of Norman Mailer, the glitzy life of producer Jerry Weintraub and “A Guy’s Guide to Chick Flicks” by the ever-vigilant James Wolcott. The web site offers none of these, but it does feature a slideshow of all the Hollywood Issue covers photographed by Annie Liebovitz. It’s fun to flip back through the years and have a good chuckle at some of Vanity Fair’s picks to click from days gone by (after first pausing briefly to once again admire Scarlett Johannson’s rear flank in the March 2006 edition). For instance, without peeking at the caption, how many of the stars on the 2000 cover can you identify on sight? The “hot new wave” (their words, not ours) of 1998 seems to have panned out for the most part, but are there any pangs of regret for including both Stephen Dorff and Skeet Ulrich in 1996’s "Boy’s Town" lineup?

Probably not. After all, Vanity Fair isn’t in the talent evaluation business; they’ve got a product to move, and apparently putting attractive people on their cover is a time-tested way of doing it. The Hollywood Issue is probably a more accurate barometer of which publicists have the most juice than anything else, so if anything we should be impressed by their batting average over the years. So take heart, Ginnifer Goodwin, Alice Braga, Elizabeth Banks and the rest of you 2008 “Fresh Faces”: all is not necessarily lost.