— Melissa Lafsky
www.drnz.tv.com
The LA Times brings us word that Rupert Murdoch's Fox Filmed Entertainment is expected to announce plans for a Christian-only branch. Called "FoxFaith," the newly-anointed division will produce up to a dozen faith-based films a year, with distribution deals already ascending from theater giants AMC and Carmike Cinemas. Each film will have a combined production and marketing budget of under $10 million, chump change compared to the studio's average $96 million per movie ($60 million for production, $36 million for marketing). But the move marks the biggest Hollywood acknowledgement to date of the Christian right's entertainment purchasing power.
Cracks on the irony of the network that spawned Temptation Island turning to religion aside, the evangelical movement has been growing at a massive rate, with the media finally starting to pay attention. And, as constant chants of "Passion of the Christ, $371 million domestic gross" fill the Hollywood hills, studio execs can surely smell potential profits. Fox isn't alone; other studios have caught the scent, with New Line releasing The Nativity Story in December and Warner planning a film version of Milton's Paradise Lost. Hey, if The Da Vinci Code can make $218 million in the U.S., they may as well start carting all the Biblical screenplays out of storage. Just think what CGI could do for Dante's Inferno.
Still, something feels a little off here. The Christian right is considered a niche market (for the moment, anyway). So a dozen movies a year? At $10 million each? That's a pretty sizeable piece of change. What about other recently-acknowledged niches, some of them just as underrepresented and hungry for films geared towards their culture and beliefs? One glaring example: the African American community that gave Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman its $51 million domestic gross. A phenomenon so stunning it left everyone in Hollywood speechless, Diary was made on just $5.5 million, a fraction of Passion's $30 million production budget (though how Mel managed to rack up a $30 million bill on a 126-minute snuff film remains one of the mysteries of cinema). Perry's follow-up, Madea's Family Reunion, opened at number one in the box office, eventually bringing in $63 million on a $6 million budget. So where's his new greelit studio? Where's the new Fox division announcing plans to put out at least a couple African American-aimed films a year for $10 million a pop? Funny how some niches seem worth filling, and others less so.
— Melissa Lafsky
Per the AP:
The Pentagon defended its months-long detention of an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, asserting that it has authority to imprison him indefinitely without charges because it believes he had improper ties to insurgents.
But journalism organizations said that covering all sides in the Iraq war sometimes requires contacts with insurgents. They called on the Pentagon to either bring charges against photographer Bilal Hussein so he can defend himself, or release him.
Which side sounds more reasonable here? The Pentagon, asserting it's right to hold indefinitely without charges on suspicion of "improper ties" to insurgents, or the side that says, fine, then charge him with it and give him a chance to defend it. If "all indications" received show that Bilal Hussein "has strong ties with known insurgents" and was "doing things" outside his journalistic ambit, then bringing charges should be no problem. But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would provide no details (maybe the AP photographer is trying to kill Matt Lauer's family).
The AP notes that this doesn't really address the whole indefinitely-held-without-charges aspect of the case. According to Whitman, Hussein's case has had three separate reviews by U.S. and Iraqi authorities; the AP professes to have only been aware of one, where Hussein was unrepresented.
The Committee to Protect Journalists told the AP it was "alarmed" by the lengthy detention and lack of due process as U.S. officials had promised to review journalist detentions promptly.
from Truthdig.com
Bill Clinton was on The Daily Show last night to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative, which raises money and enlists commitments to working on projects addressing four issues: Global warming, the alleviation of poverty, global health challenges and religious and racial reconciliation. He also talked about the woman who, as Stewart noted, could let him know she was running for President via post-it note on the fridge. But we'll get to that; in the meantime, a great interview, and a galvanizing one for the audience, it seemed; Stewart knew to let Clinton say his piece (and drop some nice tidbits along the way, like the fact that he's working on a 'global climate initiative' with Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch ).
There was an interesting discussion about what effect politics and partisan agendas have on getting things actually done (a big theme in Stewart's questions and a meme he brings up often on his show). Clinton was diplomatic about working with the current White House (he said tactfully that he "disagreed" with the White House on certain matters), and emphasized the importance of doing the most you can do wherever you are: "I think I'll have to live a long time 'til I can do as much good as a former President than I did as a President," said Clinton. "When you're president, you can get up every day and really do things that affect millions of people. On the other hand, you can also be paralyzed by events. When 
you're a former President, you can have a bigger impact in a narrower field." His point is to do what you can wherever you happen to be: "There will [always] be a gap between what is and what ought to be. So people like you and me, private citizens, have more power to do good than ever before and we should step into the gap." (In other words, "you have to bloom where you're planted"). He then encouraged everyone watching the Daily Show to give ten or fifteen dollars to alternative fuel sources, they could make a huge impact. Said Stewart, archly: "You might want to cast a wider net"; replied Clinton, laughing: "My daughter says that it's the new source of choice now for all discerning young people." Huge applause from audience, no doubt comprised of apathetic, undereducated slackers that don't bother voting
But of course the juicy stuff was about Hillary, handled deftly by Stewart and even more masterfully by Clinton : "Mr. President, Hillary Clinton may be running for president. If so, what is the key to defeating her?" After cracking up, Clinton offered: "Get more votes." Then came the meat:
Stewart: Is she running for president?
Clinton: I don't know. She's not now running for president. I don't know if she will or not &mdash I don't , and that's the truth, and I think I'd know if she were, if she'd decided.
Stewart: There'd be a post-it on the fridge.
Clinton then dipped into an aside about Ann Richards ("I loved her very much and so did Hillary") and then said, seriously, he didn't know. But this much he knew:
Clinton: I know this: If she did run and win, she'd be great. She'd be really good. I do not know if she's gonna run, I don't know if she'll win if she does. But if she ran and won, it'd be good for America.
Cookie magazine unveils its website sometime today, which means parents are now just a mouseclick away from getting their precious offspring that effortlessly chunky playground hair ("For best results, have him rub no more than a quarter-size dollop of gel between the palms of his hands and apply to damp hair from roots to ends") and a Mommy-matching Marc Jacobs ensemble (Marc Jacobs - for kids! Find it here). It's also naturally got a blog — "Daysitter" — which so far proves notable for an actual story of a kid who jumped on his bed so hard he bounced out the window (the kid was miraculously fine; the blogger thoughfully provides a link to "Window Safety Tips" just in case, though). The blog looks like it will have newsy and spicy tidbits for moms (like highlighting new book "Mommy Has A Tattoo"; less interesting to non-moms is the written-from-the-point-of-view-of-an-infant "Baby's First Blog," wherein Baby Sophie shares her "thoughts" and her mommy renders them faithfully in blog form (NB: The entries from yesterday's beta dry run seem to be gone, with just one entry, so maybe they'll cut the baby gobbledygook down. Though "blog" sounds like a fun word to say with a tot. Blogblogblogblogblogblogblogblogblog!).
Though ETP can't opine on the relative usefulness of stroller comparisons or, thank God, baby announcements, it does seem to be a clean, attractive, newsy site with a broad range of information and lots of real-time content updates — essential for surviving in the online space. The site is the latest in the new Conde Nast launches like Jane, Glamour , Domino and Self and is the 'baby' of Cookie web editor Peter Feld, who often hits the town with effortlessly tousled hair just like the kid on the right.
Next-Day Update: More on Cookie's website and the Conde Nast web phenomenon in this week's NY Observer.
