There’s lots of ink—virtual and dead-tree—being spilled about the problems of Hollywood.

Time’s Richard Corliss knows what’s wrong:

The winner, in the film, director, screenplay and supporting actor categories? The Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, which three different people told me they’d been meaning to see. The runner-up, with wins for best actor and cinematographer? There Will Be Blood, an audience-punishing epic that doesn’t open for another two weeks. Best actress? Julie Christie, in Away from her, which earned less than $5 million in its North American release. …

By the time I’d got back to my office I had realized that we critics may give these awards to the winners, but we give them for ourselves. In fact, we’re essentially passing notes to one another, admiring our connoisseurship at the risk of ignoring the vast audience that sees movies and the smaller one that reads us.

So the reviewers are “connoisseurs,” and they’re reviewing the work of independent Hollywood spirits like, say, George Clooney, who are proud of being out of touch with the mainstream.

And then everyone wonders why the audience isn’t connecting with the movies on offer? How much “connoisseurship” does it take to recognize that I’m Not There, for example, is a dog? Not a lot! And yet reviewers fell all over themselves to declare it genius.

Blech.

When spoiled Hollywood writers take to the picket line, they don’t operate in a vacuum, as they should have known.

Now the writers’ strike is costing blue-collar workers their jobs:

Meanwhile, the WGA is taking fire from a Hollywood union that represents behind-the-scenes workers such as drivers and stagehands. Thousands have been laid off, to the chagrin of Tom Short, the head of the Intl. Assn. of Theatrical Stage Employees. On Friday, he accused WGA leaders of holding to an overly rigid negotiating strategy. And Sunday, hundreds of displaced workers marched through Hollywood in a protest aimed at urging both sides back to the bargaining table.

Not only that, but their demand for respect is taking a beating, too:

On Monday, writer-director Craig Mazin (”Superhero!”) used his ArtfulWriter blog to suggest guild leaders focus primarily on new-media compensation, and drop peripheral demands such as jurisdiction over writers on reality TV shows.

“Now it’s time to dramatically reduce all of our demands down to the only one that matters, in an attempt to wrest this negotiation back to our union and away from the DGA,” he said.

What a bunch of assholes.

If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be grand entertainment to watch the unfolding of the growing counterattack on the NIE report.

Case in point—the WSJ ($$) reports that an “Iranian opposition group” says that Iran in fact resumed its nuclear-weapon-production program in 2004. This group also provides details:

Group Says Iran Resumed Weapon Program 

The Iranian opposition group that first exposed Iran’s nuclear-fuel program said a U.S. intelligence analysis is correct that Tehran shut down its weaponization program in 2003, but claims that the program was relocated and restarted in 2004.

Read with a rain of salt—since the group, NCRI, doesn’t have a track record of reliability and its politics are characterized as Marxist—but here are the details:

“What the first part of the NIE says is right, that they halted their weaponization research in 2003,” said Mohammad Mohaddessin, foreign-affairs chief for the NCRI. “But the second part, that they stopped until at least the middle of 2007, is wrong. They scattered the weaponization program to other locations and restarted in 2004.”

Equipment was relocated first from Lavisan-Shian to another military compound in Tehran’s Lavisan district, the Center for Readiness and Advanced Technology, Mr. Mohaddessin said. Two devices designed to measure radiation levels were moved to Malek-Ashtar University in Isfahan and to a defense ministry hospital in Tehran, he said. Other equipment was sent to other locations the NCRI hasn’t been able to identify, he said.

“Their strategy was that if the IAEA found any one piece of this research program, it would be possible to justify it as civilian. But so long as it was all together, they wouldn’t be able to,” Mr. Mohaddessin said.

Meanwhile, however, the AP reports that Ahmadinejad has declared victory over the NIE and is losing no time in pressing his (perceived) advantage. He has renewed his invitation to Bush to debate him.

But he has also upped the ante. Now he claims that there are other issues besides the nuclear issue that must be resolved before Iran and the United States can make friends—namely, Israel:

The hard-line leader told reporters that an “entirely different” situation between the two countries could be created if more steps like the intelligence report followed.

We consider this measure by the U.S. government a positive step. It is a step forward,” Ahmadinejad said.

If one or two other steps are taken, the issues we have in front of us will be entirely different and will lose their complexity, and the way will be open for the resolution of basic issues in the region and in dealings between the two sides,” he said. …

“Regional nations have rights and want to fully use their rights. Respecting these rights is a serious change in strategy. This is the next step. If it is done, then you will see that … it is not that a 60-year issue can’t be resolved,” he said referring to an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Why would he choose to up the ante?

Because Iran’s leaders need to have external enemies in order to deflect the people’s attention away from the miserable, rotten, caged existence they are forced to live under those leaders—and away from their nonexistent future.

This morning on BBC World, we were told about the latest in German reality television: Death TV. Watch the report here.

Michele Hartley explains that it’s undertakers who are behind this ghoulish, um, undertaking:

As if television isn’t depressing enough, starting in 2008, you can watch the death channel in Germany. Etos-TV, a new German channel which will start broadcasting in 2008, is devoted to death. The channel will feature documentaries on cemeteries and burials and other issues dealing with death. Additionally, you can spend your day viewing obituaries.

For people that have lost loved ones a photo and written obituary costs about 2,000 euros a photo for ten spots, and for a little more money, videos of the deceased and spoken narrative can be broadcast. Etos-TV calls itself the “neue Trauerkanel” (the new sad channel) and sees the new channel as a new vehicle for the undertakers of Germany to reach the public as well as capitalizing on the close to a million deaths a year in the country due to the aging population. It does make a for a nice tribute to loved ones and people have the added advantage of being able to put the tribute on the Internet once it has aired. For my money, it’s a bit more reality than I care to deal with.

“Everone is entitled to an obituary,” says one of the guys interviewed in the BBC piece.

Indeed.