What better way to greet the Jewish New Year than with a packed sneak preview screening of Bill Maher's new religion-skewering documentary, "Religulous"?

For years now we have been listening to Maher diminish and mock religion in general, religious people in particular and especially Catholicism, with a very special glee. Now he sets out across the globe on a more pointed anti-faith inquiry, adopting a style that's kind of Borat-meets-Michael Moore, but without the comic commitment of the former or the intellectual acuity of the latter.

What I mean is, religion is easy pickings. We all know about the suicide bombers, the pedophiles, the golddiggers and the closeted anti-homosexual preachers. Where's Maher going by putting these all end to end?

When he chooses to probe the inconsistencies in Christian dogma by querying truck stop drivers at a roadside Mass, or playing 'gotcha' with the guy who plays Jesus at the Holy Land amusement park, it isn't exactly a fair fight. And when Maher unexpectedly comes across a maverick priest at the Vatican who scoffs at his religion's hypocrisy, Maher seems unsure where to put this iconoclast in his religion-bad; agnosticism-good cosmology.

More revealing is when he gets U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, who is a fundamentalist Christian, to admit that you don't need a particularly high IQ to get into the Senate. Or when he queries his own Jewish mother about why he and his sister were raised Catholic, with no acknowledgement of her religion, nor discussion of the family decision to abandon the church.

In many scenes, Maher does all the talking, laying out his own doubts while allowing the interviewee only a few words - or a shrug - in response. (And by the way, that guy on the left in the picture is Larry Charles, the director, not some religulous nutbar; it would have been a good idea to tell this to viewers, since Charles appears inexplicably in lots of frames.)

But Maher must be given credit for attempting a courageous statement of militant secularism in a world where religion evokes knee-jerk support. He clearly believes that faith - or belief in God, or truth, or whatever you call it - is behind many of the ills in today's world, that blindly following religion is leading the world toward Apocalypse, a manmade one. The missing piece in the film is the more balanced reality, which is that most people temper their religious observance with the practical realities of the material, science-based world, even when those two things stand in stark contradiction.

Nonetheless, Maher's impassioned plea for a world where reason rules decision-making rather than religion, is valid and relevant. In our age of politicized religious fanaticism, one might even call making this film a leap of faith.

Yesterday, the Screen Actors Guild negotiating committee passed an advisory motion recommending that the board whip up a resolution to vote on an authorization to strike.

This sounds like madness, and maybe it is, but my read is that the guild is looking to put pressure on the studios to return to the negotiating table. The motion recommended that the national board "adopt a resolution strongly supporting such an action, and recommending that the membership vote in favor of a strike authorization."

In a country where the economy is teetering on the brink of crisis, and in an industry where there is almost no new movie production underway because of the lapsed SAG contract, one wonders why the guild is now prepared to push for a strike vote. The answer is that the guild has precious few options given the unmoving position of the studios, represented by the AMPTP, and is seeking to force the studios back to the table.

The studios, however, do not seem to be feeling the pressure. The scary state of the economy undoubtedly gives them comfort that strike talk is bluster. The AMPTP put out this statement last night: "Is this really the time for anyone associated with the entertainment business to be talking about going on strike? ... It is unrealistic for SAG negotiators now to expect even better terms during this grim financial climate. This is the harsh economic reality, and no strike will change that reality."

On the other hand, self-destructive acts by Hollywood guilds are not exactly unusual. Just because a strike might not achieve the desired goal (as in the case of the writer's guild) is no reason to believe that SAG might not go there.

Four fired writers from Tyler Perry's production company, House of Payne, are planning to picket the opening of the niche superstar's new studio in Atlanta on Saturday. They had been demanding the right to unionize, and were fired instead on Tuesday.

"Disrespected, betrayed, saddened," is how one of those writers, Lamont Ferrell described himself, on being fired after working on 100 episodes of "House of Payne," the flagship show. Perry has raked in millions from the show and his series of movies that have been huge hits in the African-American community -- including "Meet the Browns" and "The Family That Preys" -- but is not interested in a guild contract.

Meanwhile, The Writers Guild of America, West, which has been trying to organize these writers, filed unfair labor practice charges against Perry's company with the National Labor Relations Board. They'll be striking at the grand opening of Tyler Perry Studios at 4 pm on Saturday.

Give the people what they want. What do they want? Singing Chihuahua movies.

Two early estimates from the weekend box office: Disney's "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" movie will rake in $28.5 million, a serious box office sweep. Let's just get the concept behind this movie straight: a dog, best known from a taco commercial, visits Beverly Hills and experiences grand, Busby Berkeley-style celebration. That's entertainment!

Pity, by contrast, Marc Abraham. The talented and well-liked producer got his first shot at directing this weekend, with the Greg Kinnear film, "Flash of Genius." It's about a regular guy who invented windshield wipers, or something like that, and sues Detroit automakers for stealing his idea. (I admit: I haven't seen this film. Or Chihuahua-ville. I went to "Religulous," see previous.)

This may well be Abraham's last directing foray. The movie was rolled out in a very respectable 2,000 theaters, and is expected to take in $2.3 million. As the chihuahua would say:  Ooooouch.

Even "Religulous" made more than that: $3.4 million, by the first estimates. Meanwhile, Shia Lebeouf's "Eagle Eye" keeps pulling in big bucks, an estimated $17.5 million this weekend; so did "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," another of those light comedies, this starring the likeable nerd Michael Cera, taking in $12.1 millon, according to early numbers. 

Updates and final numbers tomorrow.

Sarah Palin at a rally in Carson today. Photo by Jonathan Alcorn. More at his blog.

"The golden age of the blog is over."

So writes Nick Denton, the chief honcho at Gawker Media, explaining in an internal memo his reason for firing 19 people last week. This, even as he reports that his advertising is up 30 percent over last year. He's cutting people and incentive bonuses, he says, because he expects advertising to go down.

So, now Nick Denton is laying people off, just like those dinosaurs in mainstream media.

The difference is, mainstream newspapers fired real journalists.

What the Gawker empire represents is as transitory as the people he employs. Denton has indisputably proved that you can create a lucrative business model out of highly targeted blogs, fed by tightly managed staffs of journalists who've numbed themselves to nagging doubts that what they do every day is journalism.

If Gawker's advertising goes down, it won't only be because of the economic downturn. For years, Denton - a savvy businessman - has been incentivizing his staff to reach deeper into the gutter by paying people based on the number of page views (and what do you think gets more clicks - naked Lindsay commentary? or John McCain's "unsubstantiated rumor" of a love triangle? And, yes, I wrote about John Edwards' love shenanigans, when it became an issue of media ignoring a major story). Meanwhile, the Internet has mushroomed as a community where more and more people turn for information.

I know Denton's traffic is up, overall. Nonetheless, I believe that readers and advertisers alike are fully saturated with the sort of substance-free-snark that feeds the Gawker machine and its many tentacles. There are really only so many times you can read "Britney Spears in Hail Mary Sex Embargo " before deciding you'd really rather do something, anything, else. And as newspapers wither, people need reported information.

It's hard to come by on the Internet. The online world is changing and evolving, and quality is the next big thing. When the internet superhighway first debuted, it was pornography that drew all the eyeballs and clicks. The next wave was the independent bloggers -- the likes of Wonkette, and Gawker and Defamer. As those got bought up by bigger companies, or grew into bigger companies, we've been flooded with attitude. Aggregation, and attitude. What about some well-reported facts, surrounded by intelligent analysis, in a timely manner? That's what we're hungry for.

Denton is ripe for mocking, and he knows it. "I could come up with some bullshit line about how much worse it would have been to wait until we were forced to control costs; or how much more unpleasant life will be at the many internet ventures and newspapers that won't make it through the downturn," he writes. He then does this adorable pirouette to head off the expected snarkback: "Gawker Media is behaving like those big media companies that we mock so easily." (Used to? Does this mean they will no longer mock and smear and malign journalists at big media companies? Too late. Had I known, I might have stayed at The New York Times.)

Quality. And while I'm at it, let me publicly lament the flight of talented colleagues, Jeff Leeds of the Times and Gabriel Snyder, once of Variety, to the world of celebrity infotainment, and the kingdom of snark, respectively. Leeds, one of the best music journalists working (or, rather, not working) has gone to Buzznet, where he will be the editor-in-chief. Snyder becomes managing editor at Gawker. Like other journalists, they have to eat, so one can hardly blame them. But their joining the world of lowest-common-denominator-clicks makes those of us seekers in the world of information-that-matters the poorer.

UPDATE TO READERS:  A warm welcome to readers coming from The Daily Beast, our new editorial partner. Read the same post there.

DreamWorks has all-but-officially closed a distribution deal with Universal, with an announcement expected in the next few days, my sources tell me.

Three major studios were vying for the guaranteed cash that comes from the right to distribute DreamWorks’ movies. Now that the billion-dollar deal between the Steven Spielberg-David Geffen-and-Jeffrey Katzenberg machine and the Indian media conglomerate, Reliance, is closed, Universal, Fox, and Disney are all keeping communication lines open to get this deal done, according to two people close to the deal-making. A senior figure at DreamWorks said that the deal is not yet done, but that Spielberg would decide by the weekend.  He declined to say who had the edge in the discussions.

But Universal has had the lead position from the start. It is no secret that Spielberg considers the Universal lot his home – it’s where he started his career, and where his production company, Amblin, has been based, even with DreamWorks’ purchase by Paramount in 2005.

The devil is still in the details. (And I don’t specifically mean Geffen by that reference.)

The terms are complicated by the fact that DreamWorks and Paramount are still contractually intertwined for the next several years. Paramount has the right to co-produce any DreamWorks films that were in development at the time of the Reliance ADA deal, which officially closed in September. Therefore Paramount also will have the right to share distribution with whichever major studio gets DreamWorks distribution.

Second, Geffen is peeved at Universal for not putting up the cash to bring DreamWorks back onto the lot from Paramount in the first place, which forced the mini-studio to seek funding outside of Hollywood.

Meanwhile Spielberg is non-plussed that Universal passed on the opportunity to co-finance his epic 3D animated adventure tale, “Tintin,” which he is making with director Peter Jackson. (Universal ran the numbers, and found that with the guaranteed gross paid to Spielberg and Jackson, the film would have to take in well over $400 million to be profitable for them.)  Universal’s reticence has held up progress on the film, which had been scheduled to start principal photography in October.

Third, DreamWorks is seeking favorable distribution terms, in which they would be fronted cash by the studio, one person involved in talks tells me. Distribution deals are highly sought after by major studios, because it generates guaranteed cash for their bottom lines. They typically are able to charge 12 to 15 percent of the box office in exchange for distribution, and in the past Universal distributed DreamWorks films for about nine percent.

But all the parties involved are making nice. GE’s Jeff Immelt and Universal chief honcho Ron Meyer had dinner with Spielberg and DreamWorks co-chairman and CEO Stacey Snider recently. The word is they were not talking business, but the bonding experience was apparently priceless.

In Hollywood terms, this will be a long-term deal, an alliance expected to last six years,  well beyond the current development slate which is shared with Paramount. I’m told negotiations are being handled mainly by Spielberg and Katzenberg lawyers Skip Brittenham, Bruce Ramer and a host of other high-powered attorneys.

UPDATED: From Media By Numbers. Here's the box office numbers, quick and dirty:

"Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is top dog, again, taking in $17.5 million, according to studio estimates.

"Quarantine," the pulpy horror film from Sony's Screen Gems, took in $14 million.

"Body of Lies" is a head-scratcher. Here's an A-list director, Ridley Scott, with a AAA-list cast -- Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe -- in a thriller that has had a little to no traction. The Warner Bros film opened in 2,700 theaters and took in a modest $12.5   $13.1 million.

Is the Ridley-Russell dynamic duo worn out? This is the second joint endeavor of theirs to disappoint at the box office. Last year "American Gangster" did decent, not great, business. But the previous year's effort, "A Good Year," was an unvarnished disaster, taking in a total of $7.4 million (!!) in this country.

Elsewhere on the list, "Eagle Eye" took in another $10 $11 mill, and good old "Nick and Norah" found $6.5 3 mill at the box office.

The prosecution nears the end of its run in the trial of Anand Jon. In more than two weeks of testimony, all nine women plaintiffs have taken the stand to accuse him of rape, and several more have testified as to his poor character, giving their versions of assault.

There have been emotional moments, and sidebar discussions involving intimidation, or alleged intimidation by Sanjana, Anand’s sister. It is hard to overstate how attached both Sanjana and her mother, Shashi, are to the accused, Anand. Throughout, Sanjana sits in the hall outside the trial, and apparently some witnesses find her dagger-gaze intimidating.

Regardless, the testimony on the stand from the plaintiffs has been as confounding as the accounts in the grand jury. On one hand, many of them have recounted heart-rending tales of being lured to Jon’s apartment and then raped. On the other hand, their behavior after the alleged rape is still difficult to fathom – failing to go to police, staying with Jon, paying him rent. And under cross-examination, some of the stories seem flimsy. 

Among the more upsetting testimonies – and they are all upsetting – was Britney O., from Arroyo Grande. She testified that shortly after meeting Jon, she was given vodka, passed out, and awoke to the smell of Jon’s anus, and to find him sitting on her face.

(I should note that Sanjana and Anand insisted that he never drank alcohol, and didn’t have it around. The prosecution has introduced photos of Jon’s apartment with bottles of Grey Goose crowded into the freezer.)

But Britney O. was among the least convincing witnesses during the grand jury phase. She testified that Jon forced her to give him a blow job on the couch while two friends, Janice and another Brittany, sat on an adjacent couch. She’s disturbingly vague: “And I realized that his penis was in my mouth, and I didn’t even notice.” Then came the horrific encounter with Jon’s anus. But she called him a few days later with a fashion question: “I felt really weird and I didn’t want to, and I never intended on seeing him again, which I did not, so I didn’t want to have a friendship with him or anything.”

Many of the plaintiffs suggest they were drugged and plied with alcohol. But that leaves their accounts of rape hard to pin down. Several said they were raped when they were unconscious.

Personally, it seems to me that with such uneven testimony, the exhibits are the more convincing evidence against Jon thus far. His “conquest list,” in which he boasts of having “fst fkd” girls, and compliments one for “blow job good – swallow very well,” is just plain repulsive. (It is not necessarily evidence of rape, but it betrays a sexual obsessiveness that feels abnormal.)  Similarly, a video of him fingering the privates of a trembling, naked model is damning (there seems to be a difference of opinion whether he inserted his finger or not, but either way, it’s hardly acceptable designer-model interaction).

So with about half of the argument made, it's very hard to call this case. In the meantime, evidence is emerging of Britney O. having hours-long chats with a hacker in England who gave her information about how to tamper with Jon’s computer. If and when I get documentary proof of this, I will post it. The defense believes this shows evidence of a conspiracy against him.

The defense is scheduled to begin its case on Wednesday. I will keep you updated on any bombshells that emerge. What we all really want to see is Jon on the stand - denying. We should expect nothing less. Denial seems to reign supreme in this case, on both sides.

(Note to readers: I took down comments from previous posts that in my view got out of hand. I will leave these comments open for as long as the discourse remains civil and intelligent.)

What do our readers want?

Independence. Context. Analysis. Investigation. Fact-based reporting. A forward-looking narrative. A global perspective.

Those were the comments from those who took our survey last week about the landscape of entertainment news, sent to nearly 1,000 Hollywood insiders. From the shortest response to the longest commentary, the thought-leaders who took our survey  confirm what I believe to be true: there is a void where thoughtful, substantive coverage of Hollywood and media ought to be.

"They all need an overhaul," writes one respondent of the current alternatives. "There's too much celebrity, gossip news that serves as blaring white noise to block out the good things happening in the industry outside of the blockbuster films."

"The lies bother me most about online entertainment reporting," writes another. "Would like to see more reporting on traditional entertainment trends and less gossip."

Other comments were shorter and to the point:

• "Missing: perspective Bothers me: lack of thought."
• "There is no serious coverage of the film and television industries and absolutely no investigative reporting being done."
• "No information about future trends and most news is very superficial. No in depth stories."

Some were concerned about the lack of independent reporting, free of agendas and personal favors. "There is too much obligation in the relationships between the trades and the studios," writes one. "The daily papers don't have enough insight; much of the blogging has a personal agenda." Also this: "Most news on most all sites is exactly the same information; some reporting is needed and not just posting pre-prepared press releases."

And a thought frequently repeated was the need for smart reporting on the ways in which the entertainment industry is shifting in fundamental ways.   "I think the business is changing rapidly and there needs to be more focus on companies that are forging ahead, making changes, part of the new landscape," wrote one.

Finally, there was this gem of a comment: "Hollywood is neck-and-neck with Washington for being choked by spin. Too much PR power-brokering and captivity to trends. Someone needs to call it like they see it, and hold entertainment to the same accountability standards as other industries."

That is precisely what we intend to do when The Wrap News launches in January. Aggressive reporting to the highest of standards, for the purpose of informing our readership and engaging their participation.

If we don’t live up to this standard, I trust that all you readers will let us know. But the hope is that you will be active participants in the community that we create, a community of real-time news and information, of analysis and criticism, of ideas and debate.

The survey went out to a broad range of entertainment insiders and media professionals. They were divided evenly among men and women; about a third of our respondents are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.