Paul O'Donnell: January 2008 Archives

Everybody, sitting down? Britney was taken to the hospital again in the wee hours. TMZ was running exclusives all night long. You can hardly blame them though--their business model relies on this kind of gossip--for running the story, and proudly, with a nice shot of Britney looking either deranged or seriously pre-coffee in the ambulance.

But in the strange media maelstrom that governs stories like this these days, both the L.A. Times and The New York Times websites ran the story as front-page news, justifying their interest by reporting the presence of other professional onlookers. "The winding street on which Spears lives in Studio City," says the L.A. Times, "was jammed with the vehicles of journalists and photographers for several hours prior to the police operation."

Like the recent dustup over the revelation that the AP has Brit's, LiLo's and other young stars' obits pre-written, this is a story that confuses covering a story with a story. Major news outlets, which used to pride themselves on making news judgments, are increasingly driven by their websites' traffic minders to carry the story that's generating heat. Their attention, in turn, makes a story a legitimate one. We've always paid attention to stars' private lives (kids, lookup a lady named Liz Taylor), but the web's butterfly effect fans every leaked photo into a tsunami. But having an obit on file doesn't mean a star's death is imminent; having paparazzi and bloggers accompany a star to the hospital doesn't mean we need to pay attention.

In 2001’s “Joan of Arcadia” God appeared to a small-town teen disguised as a cute boy, a cafeteria lady and other random citizens. In “Saving Grace,” a beer-sipping angel with a Nashville twang pops in on an Oklahoma City detective. In “Eli Stone,” the new dramedythat debuts Friday night on ABC, the messenger of the divine is George Michael. It’s him, by George, standing on a coffee table, bleached by heavenly white light, crooning his tune “Faith” to nudge the hotshot corporate lawyer of the title into helping a poor autistic kid sue a drug company. The appearance of the slightly grizzled singer is funny in a postmodern, post-TV generation sort of way, and that pretty much describes this latest attempt to give God his own TV series.

Or more accurately, it’s the recession, stupid. Just as the major presidential candidates have rewritten their scripts from “change agent” to “steady at the helm,” the Oscar nominations, announced this morning, are asking us to take a second look at dark films we once dismissed but seem right on-message. Each of the best picture nominees scold, doubt or plain old go bad.

It’s become a truism that Americans don’t want to hear about the Iraq war, especially not in their entertainment. Last week Noah Feldman led off the New York Times Magazine with a piece bemoaning the lack of Iraq discussion among the presidential primary candidates, and as an aside repeated the CW about the conflict: “The film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months ('In the Valley of Elah,' anyone?).”

Assisted living sounds like a rational, caring way to tend to our old folks while giving them their independence. I won’t hear the phrase the same way after watching “Andrew Jenks, Room 335,” a new documentary that debuted on HBO Tuesday night (click here for the remaining airings). Jenks, a 19-year-old from suburban Westchester County, New York convinced an assisted living facility in Florida to let him film his month-long stay in Room 335, living alongside the ruefully charming residents as they take their hallway constitutionals, cry “Bingo,” and make a fuss over this handsome Christian boy in cargo pants and his video crew. Asked if they have advice for the newest inmate, the oldsters uniformly answer, “Move out while you can.”

A New York Times News Service piece on VeggieTales founder Phil Vischer tells the tale of how his zeal to build a world-beating Christian media company overwhelmed both his connection to God and his management skills. “I had made the...

Andrew Morton, author of two biographies of Princess Di, is used to getting blowback from his subjects’ defenders. And he expected his new book on Tom Cruise to raise the considerable ire of both Scientology and Cruise himself. (His publisher,...

The New Yorker magazine this week takes a peek inside the Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Centre, the hulking but elegance Hollywood palace that serves as the church’s clubhouse for the likes of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other Sci-celebs. Built...

The folks who bring you the Saturday morning Christian cartoon series VeggieTales make movies that appeal not just kids but, as the old Hebrew National kosher hotdog commercials used to say, “a higher authority.” They offer themselves as an alternative...

You hardly need to be told that Denzel Washington is the son of a minister—it’s in the booming authority of his voice, and in the sense we have, from his complete absence in the tabs, that he’s a bit of...

Planting one on the forehead of mama's darling used to be the surest route to public office. These days, it may be playing with a talk-show’s house band. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appeared on Leno last night, and though his...