Anniversary Note: The first issue of this review, for the November 21, 2003 issue of Entertainment Weekly, was posted on November 16, 2003, which means that, with this issue, the EW Review has completed a full circuit around the sun. Dizzy? I thought so. Me, too. That's why the Review is going on vacation for the holiday season...and, as we learned last week, the holiday season extends to January 28, 2005, so don't go looking for new issues until some time after that. In the meantime, I'm going to try to finish a book that, unlike this enterprise, will actually pay a few dollars and perhaps keep me from selling my internal organs on E-Bay. Coincidentally, the book's manuscript submission deadline is also January 28, 2005 (does EW know my editor?). So let me thank all one or two of you for reading EW Review over the past year, and I hope you enjoy the final (for now) issue. See you on the other side of the solstice.

The cover presents Angelina Jolie, Colin Farrell, and Val Kilmer staring at the camera, respectively haughty, bemused, and smirking. "The Real Story Behind Oliver Stone's Alexander" is supposedly featured within this issue: I'll see if that's true, but, given that this is EW, I suspect that the statement is somewhat overblown.

An AOL Mail 'bot writes that it was "moved [...] to tears" by the recent issue featuring Jamie Foxx on the cover (I've lost count of the issues that have moved me to tears, not to mention growls, shrieks, and intense nausea); the 'bot's missive concludes, "I absolutely expect an Oscar nod and hope for a win," though I can't figure out for which Oscar category a mail 'bot writing to EW is eligible. Two 'bots take Lisa Schwarzbaum to task for her recent review of The Machinist, with one accusing her of "overwrought ax-grinding" -- I have to admit that calm and considered ax-grinding usually does produce a sharper and more reliable edge.

Joshua Rich and Missy Schwartz join forces to open News + Notes with Law of Attraction, a shocking exposé on the inability of Jude Law to draw huge audiences to see a remake of Alfie that was, by most critical accounts, mediocre. I await their next exposé on the shocking fact that bread gets stale and moldy if you leave it out for a week or two. Chris Willman's Q&A interview with Tim McGraw and Nelly quotes the former as saying that he "couldn't go pop with an a--hole full of firecrackers", but I think that McGraw may be mistaken: anybody up for running that experiment? After reading Dalton Ross' latest Hit List, I think I can suggest on whom we should perform the trial run before running the final experiment on McGraw. Whitney Pastorek in Taste Test muses on MTV's predilection for depicting vomit, and I'm so glad that she isn't just writing filler for her paycheck. The floating heads that adorn Gregory Kirschling's The Deal Report are really starting to freak me out...that, and his unprovoked and annoying ad hominem slurs (e.g., "As that CBS crazy-talker Dan Rather would say..."). Jeff Labrecque asks Is It Just Us... "...or is Alexander Payne's Sideways so money?" Jeff, I don't know...maybe if you actually read a review or two of that movie, you could answer that question without bothering the rest of us. Hallowed Eve finds Joshua Rich apparently astonished that scary movies do well around Halloween, which is the second time in the issue -- so far -- that he's been gobsmacked by the amazingly obvious. I'm gobsmacked by a pair of articles, Fight Night by Lynette Rice, about the ratings fall-off for NBC on Thursday night, and Inscrutables by Steve Daly, a listicle of in-jokes that occur in The Incredibles, because they are informative and interesting. On the other hand, Truman Show by Rebecca Ascher-Walsch attempts to generate excitement with the story of two films currently in production that dramatize Truman Capote's experiences researching In Cold Blood and the piece ends up being more annoying than Capote's voice (which, if you've never heard it, sounds like a higher-pitched version of Droopy Dog's). The Style Sheet attempts to prove that the character of Edna Mode in The Incredibles is modeled on a number of fashion designers whom I don't care about, while The Shaw Report continues its streak of being completely stupid by proclaiming that "re-embracing tap water" is in. A Legacy note in Monitor seems to suggest strange temporal loops are appearing in the space-time continuum: "Howard Keel [...] died of colon cancer Nov. 7 at 85. Keel later joined TV's Dallas [...]".

The opening two-page spread of Daniel Fierman's look at the making of Alexander, Kings, Queens & Wild Things, consists of a photo in brown tones that depicts Angelina Jolie pulling a giant snake from between her legs , Colin Farrell looking at the tongue-fluttering snake as though he wants to kiss it, and Val Kilmer huddled against a wall as far from the other two as the setting permits. The article begins, "There are a few things you need to know about Thai transsexual makeup artists," and I think, no, there really aren't. This is one of the most extensive articles I've seen in EW recently: subtracting the photos, there are almost four full pages of text -- pity they're about people with whom I'd really rather not spend my time and a movie that I don't intend to see.

Jessica Shaw's Portia Control profiles Portia de Rossi. On Arrested Development, de Rossi portrays a stereotypical self-centered blonde airhead; Shaw, as is all too often the case, writes like one.

The opening paragraph to School Daze, Chris Nashawaty's interview with Tom Wolfe on the writing of I Am Charlotte Simmons, contains several words printed in bright colors, which confuses me because I've just been writing about programming editors that provide syntax coloring and I keep wondering why "dress", "drink", and "hook up" are colored as reserved words and constants. A note midway through the interview points out that EW trashed Simmons in its recent review of the book, and either Wolfe didn't mind the pan or the review was published after the interview took place. I wonder which way the odds-makers in Las Vegas are leaning.

The next 16 pages are occupied by Bring the Noise, a listicle of the 25 biggest moments in rap music over the last quarter century. Since I don't really know much about rap, nor care much about it, I can get jiggy with skipping the piece.

The Must List loves The Incredibles. Not so incredibly, I agree. It also describes Pavement as "catchy-as-a-cold indie gods," which doesn't sound all that lovable.

Movies opens with Owen Gleiberman's review of Finding Neverland, which he calls a "placid domestic variation on Shakespeare in Love" -- it is true that both movies are about playwrights, and that both movies appeared in theaters, which I guess in a film reviewer's mind makes the one a variation on the other. Lisa Schwarzbaum engages in intertextual intercourse with herself, using her regular work in the Ask The Critic sidebar as an opening hook for her review of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason -- and then she opens her review of the Polar Express by citing her review of Bridget Jones (I hear the sound of one hand doing something, and it isn't clapping). As for the actual Ask The Critic sidebar in this issue: I would never have thought to compare Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not to Milo Jovovich in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, though Lisa somehow makes that leap.

Dalton Ross returns to the lead review position in DVD & Video, but the DVD in question, the Live Aid benefit Concert, interests me not at all, and Ross' review does nothing to change that. For Your Collection reports the release of the Fritz Lang Epic Collection, which does pique my interest; reviewer Edward Karam notes that "the science is silly" in one Lang film, however, which means it would likely fit right in to the high-school science curricula in several states these days.

Gillian Flynn seems to have completely displaced Ken Tucker for good in Television, providing both the lead review (in which she gleefully welcomes back another season of The O.C.) and the Ask The Critic sidebar (in which she reports how rather less horrible two horrible situation comedies that I don't watch because they're horrible have become). No report on what happened to Tucker, though: perhaps he was cancelled or put on hiatus. Lynette Rice and Sam Brown report on what the TV networks plan to offer next season in Drama Queens, and their report does not make me wish for time to move any faster. Alynda Wheat is still trying to tell me What To Watch, but her three pages of capsule reviews actually tell me to keep my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears.

David Browne is reviewing Music again, and this time it's Eminem's latest album: he doesn't like it in comparison to Eminem's previous efforts, referring to the artist as sounding like "a bilious Fox News talking head " -- perhaps if he tried using the No Spin treatment on the CD it would sound better. Tom Sinclair's Getting Props From Dylan quotes three passages about other musical performers from Bob Dylan's memoir, and then quotes those performers' reactions to Dylan's statements, which means that Sinclair actually had to go to the trouble of tracking these gentlemen down and talking with them, which sounds too much like actual journalism to be suitable for the pages of EW. Ryan Dombal's review of Fabolous' Real Talk says, "Braggadocious bangers like the Just Blaze-produced 'Breathe' are suffocated by tracks like 'Baby,' a Biggie-biting slice of lovey-dovey hip-hop pap" -- I think Dombal's been taking music critic lessons from Browne.

Jennifer Reese wastes her time reviewing The Godfather Returns in Books; though she does note that this commissioned Godfather sequel is "a timid, derivative novel," she doesn't make clear that a timid, derivative novel is probably exactly what Random House hired Mark Winegardner to produce. Troy Patterson gets all alliterative in his review of V.S. Naipaul's Magic Seeds ("a gripping glimpse at the sadness of a dream deformed"), and Jessica Shaw at first surprises me by reviewing a non-fiction book about a 19th-century woman until I realize that the subject, an "overly litigious, stingy, stubborn, and cruel" millionaire, is exactly like a character on a modern night-time soap opera, and her interest begins to make sense.

Stephen King gives A Dozen Thanks in his Pop of King issue-closing column. I give many more because I won't have to write the EW Review for a while. You should be thankful, too.

The theme is the Holiday Movie Preview, and the cover features Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman. They are very beautiful to look at, and yet there's something about the way they're looking back at me that makes me slightly uncomfortable. It's not as if they can tell what I'm thinking....

At last, incontrovertible proof that 'bots are writing letters to the Mail page: the very first letter is from an artificial personality apparently condemned to read EW in Bot Hell. The 'bot takes issue with the placement of Mel Gibson instead of Christopher Reeve on a recent cover, and writes, "I guess I'll just rip off the first few pages and pretend you folks cared enough to put a true Superman on the cover", though I would suggest that ripping out all of the pages of the magazine before reading them is a better idea.

What sells? Sex, of course, which is why a cartoon woman in a provocative pose is one of the illustrations gracing For Adults Only, Neil Drumming's News + Notes opening article about how "Grand Theft Auto takes videogames to a whole new extreme". In this case "extreme" seems to mean the commission of virtual acts of violence and other anti-social behavior in an urban American setting rather than in a medieval setting or in an extraterrestrial setting. Raymond Fiore tells me that Alicia Keys Keeps A 'Diary' and that Keys apparently plans "on becoming the next Maya Angelou", although I already knew that from EW's rather mean-spirited review of Keys' book of poetry last week, so it seems that Raymond actually has told me nothing I didn't already know. On the next page there's another Dalton Ross Hit List as well as an unsigned Is It Just Us..., both of which are so embarrassingly unfunny that they cause the cowboy in the Stetson cologne ad on the facing recto to look away. The floating head of Wayne Newton accompanies The Deal Report, and the associated story that Newton is hosting a new reality show starting in January threatens to loose my head from its moorings. Karen Valby reports in Texas Tease that Robert Harling is writing a movie adaptation of the TV series Dallas, in which "[e]very woman in the cast is Lady Macbeth and every man is Macbeth" -- I know that there's often some doubling in Macbeth, but this sounds rather excessive. College Rocks, according to Leah Greenblatt, courtesy of the 750 colleges that offer mtvU, which unlike its MTV parent actually plays music -- the story is quite upbeat, since it only interviews music company executives and not students or their parents. The Style Sheet shows a fashion model wearing a denim jacket with nothing on underneath it, and I wonder just how irritating the rough fabric feels rubbing against her skin, but I know it can't be as irritating as this week's The Shaw Report. The Monitor reports on three celebrities who are dealing with DUI charges, reports which seemingly are more newsworthy than the buried note on the murder of van Gogh's great-great-grandnephew, a filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death after receiving death threats for "criticizing the treatment of women under Islam"...maybe if he'd been arrested for drunk driving first....

It's the Holiday Movie Preview, and EW celebrates by bulking out the magazine with six consecutive pages of photos before actually getting to the first story, Julia...&...Clive..&...Natalie...&...Jude by Scott Brown, which is actually pretty good by EW standards, by which I mean that I didn't completely want to gouge out my eyes after reading it.

'Company' Man by Josh Rottenberg profiles Topher Grace and spares maybe two sentences to discuss the movie in which Grace appears.

Daniel Fierman's Parts of Darkness offers two paragraphs and two captions to accompany three stills from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Nice work if you can get it, Dan.

Steve Daly recounts the development and production process behind The Polar Express in Claus and F/X, and his writing is not nearly as creepy as the ads for that movie are.

Missy Schwartz's Behind the Music, a "sneak peek" at Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, provides one paragraph and two captions for a two-page spread of photos, almost exactly like Fierman's effort a few pages earlier, right down to the layout. Way to crank out the verbiage, Missy! And kudos to EW's layout artists, too, for their undeviating adherence to their carefully crafted "sneak peek" template.

Dave Karger's Sexy Feast, the preview of Kinsey, tells me much about Liam Neeson and not much about the film, being mostly a listicle about Neeson's other films and his opinions of them.

Michelle Kung follows the one-paragraph, two-caption, facing-page photo spread paradigm, pioneered previously in this issue by Schwartz and Fierman, in Come Dance With Me, a sneak peek at House of Flying Daggers. It appears that the film features long, pink, sleeves, which I somehow think is not going to be enough to extract the ten dollar admission price out of my wallet.

Kung then offers Global Storming, a listicle about the various locations in which various forthcoming movies were filmed, though few of the accompanying photos actually highlight those locations: the picture of Al Pacino in his Shylock togs, for example, looks like it was shot against a hastily painted backdrop.

Steve Daly's second article, What, Him Worry?, profiles Spanglish and its director, James L. Brooks, and, like Daly's earlier efforts in this issue, is reasonably intelligent and informative, but it doesn't answer the most important question I have, which is why he bothered to compose two substantial articles in one issue? Has he learned nothing from Kung, Fierman, and Schwartz?

Oscar's Hopefuls gives Dave Karger free reign to discuss the award nomination chances of various films, directors, and performers; since nearly all the films mentioned have not yet been released, Dave's opinions are free to float untethered by the bonds of boring reality.

The Calendar reveals that the holiday season extends to January 28 this year. Good to know, because it means that I can put off my holiday shopping for that much longer. Thanks, EW!

At number 8 on The Must List is Gilgamesh, which EW finds slightly less lovable than the Darth Vader Voice Changer, which is at number 2.

In Movies Lisa Schwarzbaum loves The Incredibles, and love makes her do strange things, such as produce this bizarre and unlovely opening sentence: "The onrushing convergence of pop-cultural trends and technological progress has resulted in a lot of dubious achievements lately -- cell phones with built-in cameras, low-carb bread, The Swan -- but there's one place, at least, where phenomenal gains in mechanical sophistication have been applied in the service of profound artistic creativity with the power to change the entire movie medium." Can you feel the love? Owen Gleiberman evidently doesn't feel any for Alfie, and he blames the lead actor for what sounds to me more like failures in direction and writing. He feels even less love for Anatomy of Hell, calling it "homophobic, sex-phobic, maybe even human-phobic" and unintentionally evokes in me a neologism-phobic response. He also plays Ask The Critic with one of those "name the best" questions that reduces the act of critical analysis to absurdity and the critic to a disallowed fool.

Michelle Kung is Dalton Ross in DVD&Video this week; that is, she does the lead review of Gone With the Wind, and her paraphrase of Rhett Butler ("[the DVD] should be watched, and often, and by someone who knows how") with which she concludes the review makes the very act of movie watching sound distinctly dirty. Donald Liebenson's review of The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection refers to "the carbon-dated Cocoanuts", which both gets the name of the film wrong and implies that Liebenson may not be very clear on the concept of carbon-dating.

Gillian Flynn continues to be Ken Tucker in Television, to indifferent effect, and her answer to an Ask The Critic question ("What recent shows have influenced our language the most?") proves her to be no linguist. On the other hand, Josh Wolk's review of The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Sexes 2, while ignoring the ungainly title of the show, does introduce the term narcissexual to describe the contestants, which quells my burgeoning neologistiphobia. Although November is a sweeps-month, Alynda Wheat's What to Watch provides evidence that this may be more of a sweepings month.

Neil Drumming is David Browne in Music, and his lead review of two dance music albums, rather than annoying me in the way that only Browne can do, simply quells my interest painlessly and quickly. David Browne does appear to write a capsule review of Elton John's latest release, but his seventy-three-word-review just isn't long enough to irritate me very much, though, to be sure, it is not without its annoyances (e.g., "balm-cream ballads"). Nearly a full page is devoted to The New Wave Of '90s Nostalgia sidebar, "That's Sooo Last Decade", and I'm all sooo what about it. Chris Willman reviews a Courtney Love and Juliette Lewis concert, proving that there is little that's more uninteresting than reading about a musical event you didn't attend featuring performers you don't particularly like.

Lisa Schwarzbaum is Jennifer Reese in Books, and in her lead review of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons she suffers another bout of bizarre opening sentence syndrome with a 113-word parody of Wolfe's style that is as bad as her opinion of the book. Reese does have a featured review on the next page, though, and while it is not bad, it seems oddly incomplete. Nicholas Fonseca reviews a book by Seth Mnookin -- I only mention it here because Mr. Fonseca recently wrote me to complain that I regularly misspell his name in the EW Review (sorry!) and I note that he doesn't misspell Mnookin's name, which I would have found tempting.

Sharon Osbourne answers Dan Snierson's Stupid Questions. I think that speaks for itself.

Elton John, in black T-shirt and bright red coat, smiling and snapping his fingers, stands against a white background on the cover. "Elton John Speaks Out I'm Not Cranky!" says the accompanying text. No, but perhaps menopausal, I respond.

The first mailbot missive in this week's Mail comes from Johnny Wayne Hicks of Boone, North Carolina, who seems to be a fan of Desperate Housewives, Melrose Place, and The Brady Bunch -- I suspect that the 'bot's gender_role_conformance settings may need some tweaking. Another 'bot says that "today's pop tarts" aren't old enough to write their memoirs and that they should "wait 30 or 40 years", a strategy that wouldn't really have worked for folk like Aaliyah or Kurt Cobain.

News + Notes lead article is "Grudge" Report by Joshua Rich and Missy Schwartz. The story's sub-head asks if the opening weekend box-office receipts for The Grudge "make Sarah Michelle Gellar a movie star", yet the article itself actually asks, "So does this mean the former TV princess has become a movie queen?" Which is it, star or queen? It's sloppy writing like this that...oh, hell, what do I care? This issue will become non-biodegradable landfill shortly and I won't have to think about it ever again. Neil Drumming's interview with a rap star, Jay-Z Is Back In 'Black', quotes the rapper as saying that the demands of commercial success have forced him to "tone it down" and, that if it was up to him, he'd only "think about the couplets and the metaphors", which are two words that I never thought I 'd see in this magazine. Dalton Ross deposits another Hit List on this week's pages, and there's not a single couplet or metaphor to be found in it. And there's another Is It Just Us... sidebar right beside it, and I wonder if it's just me or does anyone else wish that this semi-regular feature would just go away...and take the Hit List with it? Allison Hope Weiner's The Man Show wastes a page discussing the 2004 Academy Award nominations for Best Actor; she interprets every actor's promotional appearances on behalf of his current movie to be Oscar campaigning, and doesn't realize the irony is directed at her when the president of New Line says that his company's secret plan is to "buy advertising in newspapers and on television, release the film in theaters, send screeners to the Academy members, and hope they hear good things and watch it." In 'Women' on the Verge? Rebecca Ascher-Walsh describes Diane English's decade long efforts to produce a remake of The Women, yet the article provides almost no information about the original nor why it would be a worth remaking -- in fact, I have seen the 1939 film, and I can guess why English might want to remake it, but no thanks to Becky A-W, who's much more interested in just dropping the names of various actresses who have been associated with the project over the years. Whitney Pastorek writes an interminable shaggy-dog article about the Miss America pageant, No Hit, Miss, that consists mostly of set-up for four not-very-amusing "unhinged suggestions" for improving the contest ("Winner's bouquet swarming with killer bees" is the best of the bunch). I got maybe two sentences into Gregory Kirschling's The Deal Report before I was distracted by a bug crawling across my office window (for which, dear bug, many thanks). The Style Sheet page reports that "biker chic" (as evidenced by a picture of a pink leather jacket) is invading Hollywood, but does not report how the stars are avoiding the concomitant helmet hair. According to the Monitor, famous people don't simply "have" babies, they "welcome" and"greet" them -- I envision a receiving line of celebrities where everybody wears latex gloves, surgical masks, and pink leather jackets .

Dave Karger writes the rocket man blasts off, the sub-head of which article-cum-interview reads, "With a new CD, a hit Vegas show -- and those controversial rants about Madonna and the paparazzi -- Elton John is the coolest old-timer in rock", an assessment that is probably depressing to the likes of Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. As I read, I could feel my interest flickering like a candle in the wind.

In One Hot Toon, Scott Brown provides a smattering of background information and not much else concerning Pixar's The Incredibles, but he does note that computer-graphics are so good now that "If you're looking to make that long-overdue CGI Ulysses adaptation with talking flatworms, your hour may have arrived." I guess I'll have to dust off my silverfish Ulysses script and revise.

County General is a multi-authored listicle detailing the cast and characters of The O.C. and seldom have so many done so much to so little effect...if you don't take into account the previous forty-seven issues of the magazine. One O.C. character (Summer Roberts) is described as "90210's Kelly (season 1) + (Buffy's Cordelia) ÷ Felicity's Megan)²" as part of EW's long-term quest to prove to its readers that math skills are no laughing matter.

a day at the beach (the second lower-case feature title in this issue -- why does EW hate majuscules?) recounts Chris Nashawaty's adventures in the Bahamas with Woody Harrelson, which concludes with Chris' wistful realization that Harrelson is "not a flake -- just a free spirit who seems newly serious about the things that matter to him most." In other words: Chris got to hang out in the Bahamas with a guy who seems like a nice guy with whom to hang out, and he got a feature article published, and yet he's vaguely disappointed that he couldn't find sufficient grounds to denigrate the article's subject. Sucks to be you, Chris....

Geoff Keighley describes the forthcoming Halo 2 video game in Hooray for HALOWOOD. Of the game, Bill Gates is quoted: "Movies are great, but games like Halo 2 take the experience further. They allow you to be the character, the director, and the audience all at the same time." Sounds like too much work to me, Bill, not to mention that it's not so great if you're a bad director or a crummy actor. Personally, I'd rather amuse myself by trying to pronounce Geoff Keighley's name phonetically.

The Must List loves Scott Wolf and Anne Heche in Everwood this week, but makes no mention of Heche's "baby-sized pussy."

Owen Gleiberman's very positive review of Ray in Movies is first marred by a cheap blind-man joke title ("Out of Sight"), and then by a metaphor mix-master disaster ("Yet at the film's center is a man of startling complexity and egocentric magnetism who forged every moment of his destiny, thereby sentencing himself to stand alone"). Lisa Schwarzbaum likes the "moist puppy eyes" of Rhys Ilfans in Enduring Love but remains silent about any other moist puppy parts. She also promotes the films of Kathryn Bigelow when she tackles the Ask The Critic question, but I feel compelled to throw down a penalty flag for unnecessary esotericness.

DVD&Video welcomes back Dalton Ross, who has been absent from this section for several issues; this week he reviews the Shrek 2 DVD as being "fun but overly facile"-- coincidentally, neither of these terms apply to Dalton's recent work. The Ask The Critic sidebar is also handled by Dalton, which implies that someone at EW regards him as a critic, though I think they were really thinking of a similar sounding word after they recalled the annoying chirping noise he emits.

Ken Tucker is still missing from Television, so Gillian Flynn writes this week's lead review of Huff, which also seems to be on a DVD inserted in my copy of EW. I haven't watched the DVD, so I can only take Gillian's word that the show is a "kinda-family-sitcom-semi-midlife-dramedy-medical show." Like Dalton, Gillian also seems to have earned the exalted title of "critic", and in her Ask The Critic answer to the question, "what's the best supporting cast on TV?" she names the cast of Arrested Development, completely ignoring the powerhouse actors on Joan of Arcadia, but I don't think Mary Steenbergen, Joe Mantegna, Amber Tamblyn, Jason Ritter, Becky Whalstrom, or Michael Welch should care what Gillian thinks, since they're on a widely regarded hit TV show and she's only a substitute for Ken Tucker. Alynda Wheat looks at several dozen shows in What To Watch again, an activity that may eventually cause her serious mental health problems...I wonder what kind of health care EW provides to its staff?

David Browne engages in some actual reporting in Music this week as his Pay It Again, Sam examines how and why the major record companies have begun releasing multiple versions of the same CD within months of each other -- I'm amazed that he does a credible job exploring this topic, which makes me realize that it's his critical opinions and not his reporting abilities that have sucked so badly for so long. I find Nancy Miller's look at The Music Geeks Behind All Those Cool 'O.C.' Tunes to be an interesting piece ruined by an annoying tone, but it's nice to know that there's a place in the world for those disturbing people who seem to spend their lives discussing the relative merits of Death Cab for Cutie versus Jimmy Eat World.

In Books the lead review's sub-head declares that "Jennifer Reese swoons for author Margot Livesey's romantic new novel"; in fact, though Reese does seem to enjoy the book, and very competently explains why she does, I see no evidence of swooning. Michelle Kung looks at four books made into movies in Reel Lit: See the Movies or Hit the Books, and in three out of four cases, the books win. Troy Patterson reviews a poetry volume by Alicia Keys that he declares "would not pass muster in an introductory writing course at a four-year college" (I've taught such courses, and the standards are nowhere near as high as he seems to think), and then gratuitously remarks that the poems "are roughly on the level of Maya Angelou". By those standards, Troy's writing ranks somewhere on the level of William McGonagall.

This week's Pop Culture Quiz is all about the show Cheers; after this week's election results, I could use a stiff drink.

The cover announces that "Everybody Loves Ray", yet Jamie Foxx, who appears on the cover sitting in front of a microphone and keyboard, is not named Ray, and though Foxx does portray Ray Charles in his new film, he's not made up like Charles in the cover picture either. So maybe the cover caption writer didn't see the cover picture. Or didn't care. I know that I don't. It's not that good a picture, anyway.

The cover photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar in a recent issue seems to have seriously disrupted the programming of one of EW's Mail 'bots: "I'm still disturbed that such a violently suggestive image was deemed suitable for a mass-media publication" writes the 'bot, from which I infer that the 'bot is not very familiar with American mass media. Several other 'bots argue among themselves about possible racism in reality TV programs, and I once again suspect that the noise is an attempt to provide distracting cover for the secret plan underlying the EW Mail page, which I fear moves inexorably forward.

Tidol Wave by Nicholas Fonseca opens News+Notes; the premise is that five albums from former American Idol contestants are being released, and the question the article poses is "When will record buyers say, 'Enough'?" I have an answer: when McDonald's sells its last burger, when Old Navy stitches its last fashion knock-off, when Fox News Network lives up to its motto, and when monkeys fly out of my butt. But, then, I'm an optimist. This issue has another installment of Dalton Ross' Hit List; I can't think of anything to say about it that wouldn't fall as flat as the list itself. In Hero's Welcome Joshua Rich provides a listicle of factoids about Brandon James Routh, who has been chosen to play Superman in a film that comes out in two years; coincidentally, Time Warner owns both DC Comics and EW. I'm just saying. Is It Just Us... asks if Fox Sports' baseball coverage sucks: some questions don't even need to be asked. As I read The Deal Report I discover that not every entertainment industry deal is worth reporting. Gilbert Cruz lists his favorite set of movie end credits in Credits Report, and mentions that "like old-tyme movies, [Monty Python and the] Holy Grail runs its end credits at the beginning", which would make them not end credits -- however, EW seldom let facts or consistency interfere with its noble mission of filling pages with type and pictures every week, and they haven't done so here. Recently Sinclair Broadcasting attempted to broadcast a commercial-free showing of a slanted, politically charged documentary, raising many legal, ethical, and constitutional issues: in Do The Right Thing, Dan Snierson and Josh Wolk ignore those issues and list imaginary shows that Sinclair might broadcast in the future instead, because why analyze when you can trivialize? Jeff Labrecque reports in Fool's Gold that a film based on The A-Team TV series is in the works (shouldn't this have been in The Deal Report?); he then speculates about which actors will take which roles, a regular EW article-filling activity that I tend to think of as casturbation. The Style Sheet asks, "Will fall movies inspire offscreen style?" I ask, "Do I care?" and the answer comes to me in a burst of blinding light, so I don't have to read the associated article. The Monitor reports on Bill O'Reilly's legal troubles but mentions neither the tape transcripts nor the Middle Eastern dish involved; it also reports that John Stewart called Tucker Carlson a d---, which I don't think can be said enough.

Clarissa Cruz once again rises from the Style Sheet page to produce a feature article; this time, it's Oscar on My Mind, a profile of Jamie Foxx which centers on Foxx's portrayal of Ray Charles in the film Ray. Surprisingly (given the magazine in which it appears), the article is reasonably straightforward and informative, though Cruz can't help herself from opening the piece with a fashion note ("Clad in a perfectly tailored black Zegna suit, Jamie Foxx is crooning a soulful ballad....") and from sprinkling similar fashion asides throughout ("Wearing a white-and-blue Adidas sweatsuit, matching sneakers, a diamond-encrusted watch, and a black Sean John cap with the bill pulled over his right ear...."). Sitting in my black cotton yukata as I write this, I put down my Pelikan fountain pen and look around for my J. Crew vomit bucket. Damn. It's already full, and I still have half a magazine to go.

A sidebar accompanying Crime Of His Life gives Rebecca Ascher-Walsh the opportunity to humiliate Gary Sinise by listing his worst films and asking him to comment on them. Why? Maybe she's upset that he spends his free time visiting the troops in Iraq and has cofounded the Operation Iraqi Children charity. Or maybe she's just mean.

Chris Nashawaty interviews actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman about their world-spanning motorcycle trip in The Motor-cycle Diarists. Apparently on their journey the actors ate sheep testicles in Mongolia. Apparently I needed to know this.

In Hollywood Wine Josh Rottenberg cracks himself up by saying that Alexander Payne's new film, Sideways, could have been called Dude, Where's My Pinot Noir? Other than that, the article is a look-behind-the-scenes story about a movie that seems much more interesting than Rottenberg's article about it.

The Must List puts NBC series Scrubs in the number one position...but it airs opposite Veronica Mars, so I'll have to wait to see it in reruns. The List also likes Left of the Dial, a four-disc set of "the greatest hits of the Me Decade" but doesn't say which decade that was.

In her lead review in Movies, Lisa likes Dude, Where's My Pino...I mean Sideways, which she says has an "unimprovably lovely script", while Owen doesn't much care for The Grudge, forgetting to mention that it does have the virtue of being only 88 minutes long. After imbibing the wine of Sideways, Lisa seems hungover in her review of Surviving Christmas, which she gives an F -- she seems particularly unimpressed with star Ben Affleck, who she says is "a celebrity the size (and substance) of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon" and who has "a hairdo similar in texture to a 1970s Flokati rug." She also thinks that the weight Christian Bale lost for his starring role in The Machinist is an "obscene" insult to "the millions who have died -- in famines, in sickness, in concentration camps", so I don't think I want her to know that I'm hoping to drop a few pounds myself before the holidays. Joshua Rich spends a page profiling Undertow star Jamie Bell in Southern Bell, which is completely undercut by the tepid review Owen gives the film only two pages earlier. The question Owen answers in Ask The Critic is so inane that I forget both it and the answer even as I read it.

Chris Willman once again fills in for Dalton Ross in DVD&Video; his lead review is a listicle of horror films on DVD available for "this Hallowday season". However, Dalton does appear in this section with a compare-and-contrasticle, Tale of the Tape, which looks at the 1979 and 2004 versions of Dawn of the Dead and which reveals that Dalton may have already had his brain eaten by a zombie, though it's actually hard to tell one way or the other.

Gillian Flynn reviews the new UPN Television series, Veronica Mars, and she likes "this dandy little UPN show". Lynette Rice enjoys crying each week as she watches Extreme Makeover, much like I cry every Friday when a new issue of EW arrives -- it seems that tears of joy are just as salty as tears of despair. Gillian's Ask The Critic sidebar offers an entirely different question and answer than the one Owen fielded in Movies, but my reaction is surprisingly similar. In What To Watch, Alynda Wheat waxes indignant about the very existence of Drawn Together, which she awards an F, saying "This is TV that's so bad, it's bad for you" -- as though the fifty-one other shows she looks at aren't.

David Browne's criteria for what constitutes good Music get more bizarre every week: in his review of the The Donnas' new album, Gold Medal, he notes that although the group will "surely inspire a new generation of young female musicians [...] they won't scare the crap out of anyone in the process" -- maybe he'd be happy if the CD had razor-sharp poisoned edges; I'd certainly be happy to toss him one. Leah Greenblatt dodges child-labor laws to exploit some New York City pre-schoolers in order to obtain a few infantile quotes in Out Of the Mouths Of Babes: Tots Weigh In On Kids' Music. In the capsule reviews, everybody is, or wants to be, someone else: the group Hope of the States is called "the next Radiohead", 1970s group Cactus is described as once being thought of as "the American Lead Zep", and Bad Wizard are now accused of wanting to be "the new Cactus". Help, Mr. Wizard!

It's all about the genitals in Books this week: Jennifer Reese gets to read some seamy, steamy non-fiction this week -- one book is about "the sexual escapades of a precocious Italian teenager", one about a woman who celebrates anal sex, and one that includes a photo of the author's "favorite masturbating position". Two pages later, Karyn Barr concludes a review of Sarah Bradford's Lucrezia Borgia with "do we really need to know how many times she had sex in a night? Some things are better left unsaid." Not in EW they aren't.

There's a Stage section this week. I don't do theater.

Although the year still has two months to run, Stephen King's The Pop of King presents the writer's Pet Peeves of 2004. It's everything Dalton wishes his Hit List would be and isn't (i.e., well-written and funny).

Note: In just a few more weeks I'll have finished one year's worth of EW reviews. My experience has been much like Morgan Spurlock's, only with a magazine instead of fast food, and lasting for a year instead of only thirty days. Let me know if I should continue beyond that (if you can't figure out my email address, it's at mac.com, and the username is ewreview...it doesn't get much simpler than that).

Mel's on the cover and he looks angry, like he's just about to take a swing at me. How does he know I don't like him? Because I don't. Meanwhile a smiling, happy, dead Christopher Reeve stares down from the corner of the cover. I wonder if Mel wants to deck him, too.

It seems that the Mail 'bots like them their CSI -- the first three messages are "excited", "ecstatic", and "happy" that the CBS series was featured on a recent cover; in fact, the writer of the fourth message "could hardly wait" to open the magazine (me, I could hardly wait to close it). A self-proclaimed "14-year-old" (which means that EW wants you to think that their demographic is getting more mature) makes a pee-pee joke when referring to "the teen stars that reign on the red carpet today", and another dissatisfied putative reader is pissed that Owen Gleiberman liked "a partisan documentary" and implores EW to "stick to entertainment" as opposed, say, to the incisive and detailed socio-political commentary on which the magazine has built its reputation.

Rebecca Ascher-Walsh and Jeff Jensen lead News+Notes with 'Gangster' Wrap, which asks the question, "Why did Denzel Washington's next big project die?" Possible answers include racism, personality conflicts, and money -- as if you can only pick one. According to his Hit List, Dalton Ross seems to think that eating extra ramen makes a person incontinent, and I am forced to think that this may be based on his personal experience. Gregory Kirschling's Walken 'Around' is a four-question interview with Christopher Walken, who apparently actually says things like "make hay while the sun shines" in normal conversation. In The Deal Report, Greg reveals his secret passion for Kelly Preston in Space Camp, thus telling me more about his adolescent fantasies than I ever wanted to know. Ring a 'Bell', the third News+Notes piece to contain quote marks in its title, has Annie Barrett compiling a typical EW compare-and-contrasticle: here it's the Saved by the Bell characters and the life as we know it characters being compared and the result is neither illuminating nor amusing. The fourth quote-marked title, Never 'Ending', is for a brief interview of Tears for Fears by Nancy Miller, and it only reminds me why I hated the 1980s. Missy Schwartz's Checkered Past notices similarities in posters for three recent movies; I notice that Missy is wasting my time. Shock Waves looks at Howard Stern's forthcoming move to satellite radio, and in the process gives Chris Willman the opportunity to use the phrase "tipping point" in his piece as though he actually understands the concept. The Style Sheet page contains a short rant by Clarissa Cruz about the overuse of hair gel and mousse and how they can ruin pillowcases -- perhaps the magazine should "stick to entertainment". The Monitor reports that Jim Carrey became a United States citizen on my birthday this year; he could have just sent a card.

Joshua Rich does the Christopher Reeve obituary duties in Man of Steel, opening with "Long before he stepped into a phone booth and threw on the red cape...", which would have been a great opening except that Reeve didn't put on the red cape in a phone booth as Superman until his fourth Superman movie. Rich also describes Reeve as the "well-bred son of Northeastern intellectuals", leading me to wonder if Northeastern intellectuals are an ethnic group, a cult, or a marketing demographic. I think there's a sub-text there waiting to be unearthed, but I decide not to expend the energy, since EW is like kryptonite to intellectual effort.

Most of the second-tier writing staff of the magazine combine to provide this issue's centerpiece, a mega-listicle titled Power 2004. That, by the way, is why Mel is on the cover and why his entry in the list is the first and the largest: it befits his both creative and financial stature and his ability to move magazines when he's featured on the cover. In past Power issues, EW has ranked the entries on a numerical scale, but the writers have "rejiggered" the list this year, to, as they say "hone in on what we think you really want to know: Who gained -- or lost -- power in the last year." (Interestingly, I lost power in the last year, but Southern California Edison restored it in just a few hours.) It's easy to spot the gainers and losers: each entry comes with a blue up-pointing arrow or a burnt-orange down-pointing arrow. The entries are also divided into the major entertainment categories: Movie, Television, and Music (it seems that print media are just not entertaining). Within each of these categories, the entries are divided between Creatives, Talent, and Suits, though neither Music nor Television seem to have any Talent. Concluding this complexly arranged collection of gossip and factoids is By The Numbers, which offers a chart of the major entertainment companies in each category and some financial information about them, though the writers do admit "We leave the crunching to you" because, I guess, math is hard.

Gillian Flynn writes about Team America in World on a String, and she also interviews its makers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They sound tired, querulous, and sick of the whole project, which makes me really want to go out and see the film, because tired, querulous, and sick are such attractive qualities.

The Importance of Being Julia is Dave Karger's very light profile of Annette Bening. He begins, "Chances are, the last time you saw Annette Bening was on Oscar night in 2000"-- this, of course, is wrong, because I have cable, which showed The American President last night, and her latest movie was recently reviewed on Ebert & Roeper. The rest of the article is just as good.

Item 7 on The Must List reads, "'Common People' Produced. By. Ben. Folds. William. Shatner's. Stilted. Speech. Lends. Itself. To. A. Cover. Of. The. Talk-Heavy. Hit. By. Pulp." What. Ever.

And so, I come to the back of the magazine where the reviews live. And, surprise, the first review in Movies is Owen Gleiberman's take on Team America (hmmm...I think I just ignored an annoying article about it). Owen likes it well enough, though he does complain that it doesn't satirize the things he'd satirize -- I guess he'll just have to put on his own puppet show. Owen also likes Being Julia well enough, and mostly, I think, because he apparently loves Annette Bening; meanwhile, Lisa Schwarzbaum is annoyed at Shall We Dance because it "can't decide whether to frown or twirl". Then, in her review of P.S., Lisa trots out the word "deracination", which probably has most EW readers scratching their heads and grunting querulously. The photo above Gregory Kirschling's review of The Final Cut portrays Mira Sorvino and Robin Williams with the caption, "These two people actually have Oscars" -- jealous much, Greg?

The best thing about DVD&Video this week is that Dalton Ross didn't write the lead review, but other writers take up the banner of mediocrity in his place. For example, Michael Sauter's review of the Damn Yankees DVD begins with "The plotline is older than dirt", a statement, which, somehow, I think may be a slight exaggeration. And Edward Karam is taken with the "nifty sense of period" in 1944's Since You Went Away -- which just happens to be set in 1944.

Once again, Gillian Flynn takes the top review spot in Television, this time reviewing CSI: NY and Law & Order. She calls the former "eager, overdone noir" which is part of an "increasingly cynical franchise", while she likes the way the latter is able to "spell out both sides of any issue...in bite-size parcels, so you don't have to think too hard." While I don't know many people who eat parcels, I'm sure that many EW readers welcome the opportunity not to think too hard. Lynette Rice's review of Everwood calls Treat Williams' character "Dr. Feelgood", which is neither true to Williams' character nor fair to the real Dr. Feelgood. And Dan Snierson describes the SF Channel's Earthsea as "Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter" which both should make Tolkien spin in his grave and put Ursula LeGuin into hers. Dalton Ross writes a guest review of The King of Queens in What To Watch, in which he says that some of the show's lines "make me wanna walk around the office in jean overalls singing 'Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li'", and now I have to carry that disturbing image around with me for the rest of the day.

David Browne's lead review in Music is for the late Elliott Smith's new album; Browne says that the "only disappointing thing about [his] new album is that it is also his final one"(as usual, I find that the most disappointing thing about the review is that it isn't Browne's final one). According to Browne, Smith had a "silken voice" with an "opaque quality that held everything in check", which can't help but make me think that Smith's voice sounded like expensive pantyhose. Browne concludes the review with "If Smith took his own life, did part of him feel there was no longer a place for what he did? In the saddest news of all, he may have been right" -- nothing like making up a story to prove your conclusion, David! But when I read Browne's revelation in his Ask the Critic sidebar that he loves Hanson's first album, I'm tempted to make up a story, too, about a poor reader whose brain exploded, leaving bits of charred skull and blood all over the pages of an entertainment magazine; in the saddest news of all, it may have actually happened.

Jennifer Reese, on the other hand, actually writes a readable, intelligent review in Books of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, forcing me to make sure that I suddenly haven't picked up a different magazine. But I know I haven't as soon as I read Melissa Rose Bernardo's Chairman of the Bard collection of random factoids about Shakespeare culled from Stephen Greenblatt's new book.

Stupid Questions are asked of Wanda Sykes by Dan Snierson on the issue's final page. Sykes refers to "stupid little hybrid cars that belong on a Hot Wheels track" in response to one stupid question, prompting me to ask her another one: "Wanda, would you like to lie down in front of my Prius while I check its accelerator?" I hope she answers, "Yes." Now, though, I'm off to celebrate the holiday.

The stars (Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, Teri Hatcher, and Eva Longoria) of Desperate Housewives grace the cover. Ordinarily, I suppose I'd find them seductive, but I have a cold so all I can think is, gee, I'd really like it if one of them would make me some chicken soup.

I haven't been tracking it for a while, but I notice this week that four out of six Mail messages generated by the EW 'bot army have AOL return addresses, and while these messages don't seem particularly ominous on the surface, I can faintly detect a disturbing undercurrent if I read between the lines. I don't think it's the Nyquil....

News + Notes pairs Josh Rottenberg and Allison Hope Weiner, who, in Wither Harvey?, speculate for 800 words about the Miramax founder's future under some vaguely postulated and described "new indie rules" -- Missy Schwartz supplies "additional reporting" in this melange of movie-industry factoids. Joshua Rich briefly interviews Jimmy Fallon in a Q&A about his new film, Taxi, and as I read, I can hear glial cells popping a few inches behind my eyes...I don't think that's a good thing. Dalton Ross grinds out another Hit List in his ongoing effort to erode the last vestiges of respect I once had for him. Death is on a rampage this week as two more EW Legacy articles note the passing, respectively, of Janet Leigh and Rodney Dangerfield, who probably never imagined themselves paired in this nor any other way; the Dangerfield lets-not-call-it-an-obituary draws heavily upon the EW profile of him that appeared in May. In The Deal Report Gregory Kirschling seems far too excited that there's going to be a theatrical He-Man film. The subhead for Jennifer Armstrong's Easy As 1-2-3? wins the coveted No, Really? award for saying that "ABC's best ratings in years could add up to a comeback"; I also wonder just what Campbell Mithun media buyer John Rash thinks the Rosetta Stone is when he says in the article: "Two weeks does not a season make [...] These are not Rosetta stones, but potential cornerstones in rebuilding [ABC's] schedule." I learn something new from Karyn Barr, whose Snipe Attack informs me that those annoying promotional animations that all too often appear at the bottom of the TV screen are called "snipes". The Style Sheet page offers to let me know "what does Britney smell like", but I honestly think that's something I neither want to nor should know ; however, I do appreciate the shout-out from the article's author, Whitney Pastorek, who states that "We sniff the stars so you don't have to." Whitney, it turns out, is also responsible for most of this week's Monitor, which includes the tidbit that Pierce Brosnan recently became a U.S. citizen so he can vote for John Kerry. And there's one more Legacy, this time for Richard Avedon -- in light of all the wonderful photos Avedon took, it seems odd that EW decides to use a picture he took of Tina Turner that looks like she's about to hoist up her skirt and squat on stage.

Aaaaanndd...I'm now into the meat of the mag, the chewy center of the Tootsie Pop, which begins with Screen Saviors, an editorial collaboration that's a five-section listicle of the five top shows of the new TV season. "This fall, TV is back with a vengeance" the article begins, and the idea that TV a) has been gone (though mine stayed put in the living room all summer long) and b) is now back and, apparently, vengeful, distresses me no end. Anyway.... The first show listed is (quelle surprise) Desperate Housewives, which Jennifer Armstrong describes as "genre-defying" because she's never heard of soap opera and black comedy before. Dalton Ross describes Arrested Development because the same phrase may describe Dalton, but his description of the show is lackluster. Karyn Barr tackles Veronica Mars, and quotes the show's star as saying that her character is "grounded in reality", which means that hyper-intelligent 17-year-old daughters of disgraced police chiefs who help their fathers investigate crimes and who are searching for their mysteriously missing mothers are realistic...heck, I don't think there were more than one or two of those in my high school. Two other writers describe two other shows, and there are also a bunch of lists appearing in sidebars, but I'm bored, congested, and have a headache, and so I just flip the pages and leave my imaginary readers to imagine the stuff that I'm not bothering to describe. Have fun, kids.

Rebecca Ascher-Walsh does not sing The Billy Bob Blues, which is not about music but about Billy Bob Thornton and which, if it accurately reflects the article's subject, makes me very grateful that I don't have to spend much time in the company of Billy Bob Thornton.

The Return Return of Duran Duran by Nicholas Fonseca Nicholas Fonseca is one of those pieces that, if you knew nothing of the subject matter before you read it, would leave you in much the same state after you had read it.

This issue contains L2T - Listen 2 This. I skip it, because a dose of sudafed only lasts for so long and there's so much wonderful good stuff remaining in this issue that I can't afford to waste time on this subscribers-only supplement.

All In by Daniel Fierman looks at the growing popularity of televised high-stakes poker and the folks who play it. I fold.

Jessica Shaw deals out Playing It Coolidge, which profiles Jennifer Coolidge and is up to Shaw's usual standards, which is to say, I envy Gloucester.

One of the ten things that EW loves this week in The Must List is Brian Wilson's SMiLE , which I happen to have. The List says, "The greatest album never made. A teenage symphony to God. The year's best. SMiLE good. Must List happy. You buy now." Oooookay. I'm backing away and turning the page now....

Gosh and golly, this issue of EW features a profile of Billy Bob Thornton and then later, in the Movies section, Lisa Schwarzbaum reviews a movie starring...Billy Bob Thornton. Coincidence? Also, News + Notes has an interview with Jimmy Fallon and then Owen Gleiberman, in Movies, has a review of his film, Taxi. Coincidence? I think my headache is getting worse. Coincidence? On top of all that, I feel dizzy when I see Owen comparing Hillary Duff's acting to "the comparatively Dostoyevskian depths of Sandra Dee"...maybe my Dayquil is adulterated...or Owen's is. In Ask The Critic, a reader asks Owen if it bugs him when a period drama portrays a character maintaining perfect hair and makeup while engaging in strenuous and messy activity, and though Owen never says if it does, he does note that "it takes years of perspective to realize that the way actors have been coiffed and powderpuffed reflects nothing so much as the historical era in which a movie was made" -- in fact, Owen, I've found that it only takes just a few days and a Netflix account to realize that.

Dalton brings on the snark in his DVD&Video review of The Day After Tomorrow; a case of "takes one to know one", I guess. David Marc Fisher thinks We're Dyin' For... a DVD of Busby Berkeley's 1943 The Gang's All Here, but I've actually seen that film several times and, David, I really don't think it's worth dying for.

Gillian Flynn almost completely takes over a truncated Television section this week, first with an upbeat lead review of Joey, and then with an Ask The Critic sidebar. In the latter she reveals that her "favorite pastime" is playing casting director, but, actually, she seems to want to pitch and produce an entire TV series: in this case, it's a romantic comedy starring Brendan Fraser and Christine Taylor that apparently plays weekly in Gillian's mind. Ken Tucker makes a brief appearance to report on an upcoming episode of Gilmore Girls that will feature "literary legend" Norman Mailer, who, it seems, is neither naked nor dead.

Music looks at the Vote for Change concerts using the typical EW fill-in-the-blank listicle format in which the writers simply fill in categories to create a review; in this case the categories are "Number of References to Bush or Need to Oust Bush", "Musical Highlights", "Ticket-Holder Profile", and "Random Quote". The results are, as I might expect, stunningly enlightening. There's a sidebar titled If You Liked Arnie..., but, since I don't, I didn't bother reading it. Another sidebar labeled Meet The New Faces Of Protest Music asks "Is Jadakiss the next Bob Dylan?", which question makes sense in the EW world where people are no more than interchangeable parts.

Speaking of Dylan, Tom Sinclair leads Books with a review of Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One, and he does a fair job of it. Unfortunately, though,there's another fill-in-the-blank listicle, What Directors Really Want To Do Is Write..., featuring books by film directors; the categories are "Incestuous Tension", "Shakespearean Reference", "Graphic Movie Violence", and "Final Take", but they left out, "Lame Editorial Conceit". The Deal Report's Gregory Kirschling is tapped to review a new novel by Nobel laureate José Saramago, which does nothing to relieve my growing neuralgia.

Finally, the Pop Culture Quiz concerns Autumn, which is an excellent time to burn fallen leaves as well as magazines like this one. Preferably before reading. Which I wish I had done.

The cover features Sarah Michelle Gellar, dressed and lit in blue, crawling in sexually-aroused terror away from the camera. Yes, she's posing. The alternative is too disturbing to consider.

In Mail one of the 'bots demonstrates a new skill: moral indignation. In this case it's directed at Gwyneth Paltrow for "getting pregnant before she was married", which is something that I can only hope the 'bots will never master for themselves. Another 'bot continues testing its artificial irony software by pointing out that "the Monkee's Mickey Dolenz was among the first musicians to incorporate the Moog synthesizer on a pop record."

Color Bind is Mark Harris' News + Notes opener, in which he examines race and racial stereotyping on reality shows, said "shows" being limited to the The Apprentice until the article's penultimate paragraph. Dalton acts out with his Hit List this week -- offing Gungans, shooting lightning from fingertips, kicking Sinead O'Connor's ass -- perhaps in a subtle attempt to score some clozapine. Alex Gordon writes Look Who We Found, the subject of which just won $1 million on a TV show, so I find it hard to believe the person was lost. I'm utterly bored by The Deal Report and I'm disappointed that the Burning Question isn't. Mickey Rapkin discusses ReelSports Solutions in Sports Might while never actually explaining what it is that they do, though I assume it may be something to do with sports. Now that Conan O'Brien has been named as the Tonight Show host starting in 2009, Lynette Rice's It's His Party looks at the "winners" and "losers" resulting from that decision, but omits including in the latter category anyone who thinks Rice actually knows who the winners and losers in fact are. Breast in Peace, the "Legacy " (which is what EW always call an "obituary" because "obituary" makes the staff think of Death, while "legacy" makes them think of "found money") for Russ Meyer includes a very disturbing photo of a young Roger Ebert in which he looks rather like one of my now-dead great-aunts. The Shaw Report says that "vaseline on your teeth" is out and that "lip gloss on your eyelids" is in; no mention is made of Preparation H. For the first time since I opened this issue I find myself smiling when I read in Caller I.D. that a phone number used in a recent episode of Gilmore Girls answers with a request for donations to the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. I skip the Monitor because I don't want to lose my smile.

This is The Photo Issue, which means that for the next 52 pages, text is at a premium, and, yet, it's not premium text because, hey, this is EW.

Fright Night consists of a bunch of pictures taken by James White of Sarah Michelle Gellar in scenes from a thriller that never existed. The point? As Jeff Jensen says of Geller in his introduction, "[t]urning terror tricks is second nature" to her, which, I guess, means he sees her as some sort of a ghoulish prostitute. Way to flatter the cover girl, Jeff. The pictures? What's not to like about an attractive woman in skimpy clothing looking scared?

The Gallery consists of a bunch of pictures from EW photo shoots from the past year that didn't make it into the magazine until now. Yes, that's right, it's just like a lawn sale, only two-dimensional and accompanied by dumb captions.

Candid Hollywood consists of pictures taken by "celebs" to whom EW gave digital cameras so they could fill out six pages (not including ads). It's a lot like the The Gallery, except the pictures are as bad as the captions.

The Must List presents another assortment of eclectic ephemera that energized the neurons of the EW staff for a few moments until the strain of achieving even a low level of consciousness proved too great and they sank back down into oblivious estivation. Sweet dreams!

Owen doesn't heart Huckabees in Movies this week, giving it a lower grade than he gave The Forgotten last week, even though his comments aren't nearly as harsh, once again raising the issue of consistency in grading. Lisa lets her displeasure with Shark Tale drive her to spawn a sloppy metaphor: "...this animated spectacle is a fat lazy air bubble gone astray before the studio sucks it up to dive deep again." (I think "sucks" is the operative word, here.) Scott Brown views and rates four movie trailers in Trailer Park because he must have had nothing better to do. The opening of Owen's review of Dig! seems to describe the world of EW music critic David Browne: "If you're standing outside of it, the world of alternative rock, with its perpetual insular buzz, can seem a hive of rowdy noise. For those in the hive, it can be hard to hear, or see, anything else." In Ask The Critic a reader wants to know the critic's "biggest cinematic disappointment" and Lisa answers with an example of a typical cinematic disappointment instead of her biggest disappointment, which disappoints me.

In DVD&Video, Chris Willman substitutes for Dalton Ross, and his lead review of Aladdin seems to be about the movie instead of being about the reviewer. Refreshing! A review of The Three Faces of Eve is accompanied by a photo of a fearfully crawling Joanne Woodward that seems very much like this issue's cover photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar, who otherwise really isn't very much like Joanne Woodward.

TV's Ken Tucker reviews the latest The Real World series in Philly Cheese and my lack of interest in anything having to do with this contrived exercise in voyeurism is only rivaled by my lack of interest in participating in a government cheese program. Gillian Flynn's Boy Story looks at the new series Life As We Know It , which seems to be about hormonal high school boys -- I'm glad to see that, in an uncertain world, sex still sells. In What To Watch, Alynda Wheat glosses the Vice Presidential Debate by asking the rhetorical question: "Important, yes. But do we really buy lipstick for the free gift?" Since five former vice presidents have become president in my life, I'd have to say, Yes, Alynda, I think that maybe we should.

Michael Endelman replaces David Browne (who is perhaps still lost in the insular buzz) as lead reviewer in Music this week, and I want to know who to thank for this blessed relief. Dalton Ross brings up "unfiltered agression" in a capsule review of Helmet's latest, so it seems that he still hasn't obtained his meds. Chris Willman finds William Shatner's latest album "alternately comic and [...] touching", making me suspect a transporter malfunction.

In Books Jennifer Reese provides an insightful review of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, then risks serious eye strain as she goes on to read and review two additional books, and finally caps her binge by looking over a list of Philip Roth's complete works to pick his five best novels. Ben Svetkey's review of Peter Bogdanovich's Who the Hell's In It says it will please the "four people left on the planet who remember who Lillian Gish was" -- I estimate that's three more than know or care who Benjamin Svetkey is.

Stephen King's The Pop of King looks at rock performers who are politically involved in Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar. If King is right, the President should be nervous, but he can be comforted by the major acts on his side.