I don't really know Dreamgirls the way I know, say, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or Anything Goes or Brigadoon. I could hum you "One Night Only" -- or, at the least, its unrelenting chorus -- but that was about it. I was surprised, then, not only by the verve and dazzle Bill Condon brought to his big-screen version of the 1981 Broadway musical, but also by the strength in the original material -- the songs, the script, the underlying micro-to-macro swoop of the story as it looked at years of history in America through a pop group and a family's journey. Dreamgirls is the sizzle and the steak, the glam and the grit, in one rousing piece of moviemaking.

As terms of art go, "Movie Musical" is like "Fresh-Frozen," a self-contained contrary idea. The musical is theater; it's live. There are no cuts; there are no shots; your point-of-view is determined by your ticket. And the musical gives us something -- life -- that the movies do not. It's why they're so damned sentimental, and one of the reasons they live for us. And even as an art form in decline -- and living in the tryout market for a musical based on Legally Blonde will make you think that the musical theater is in decline, or at least it does for me -- I'd wager that while more people in America have seen movies than live musicals, more people have been in live musicals than movies, those clumsy high-school productions and university revues, or standing as a baritone shepherd in a Nativity chorale.

Mad Cow Disease -- which changed its name from Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) when it got famous in the late 1990's -- is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle, spread by the host consuming animal by-products infected by this protein mutation. The disease is zoonotic -- meaning it can be transmitted to humans (and vice versa) -- so this forced cannibalism resulted in the deaths of over 150 Europeans through 2004 who had consumed tainted beef. While only five BSE-infected cattle were identified in the U.S. through 2005 (due to their largely soy diet), the panic was enough to cause widespread bans on U.S. beef.
 

Yesterday, we learned that Paramount distribution chief Wayne Lewellen had been dumped in favor of former Dreamworks distrib president Jim Tharpe. Today, we're getting more details on the shift, and it looks like it was anything but amicable. As suspected, Lewellen's status as a member of the old Paramount guard meant very little to new Paramount chief Brad Grey – or, at least, very little good. Grey, who was vacationing in South Africa at the time, instructed newbie marketing officer Rob Moore to inform 33-year veteran Lewellen, on the day before Christmas, that he had been terminated. I don't know where these chatty cathys got the idea that studio execs are suppossed to have manners, but that slight has apparently got the whisper train rolling. "It's just horrible. Truly horrible," a "high-level studio source" told Page Six. "Brad fired him at Christmas and he didn't even have the common decency to pick up the phone and call Wayne himself. He had to have his henchman do it. Wayne is the best in the business and to just toss him out like that is unforgivable."

The quick blow is apparently the first of many to come. The Sixxers' source claims that whilst trying to secure the merger, Grey made a promise to Dreamworks' Steven Spielberg and David Geffen that they'd be able to place any of their people anywhere in the Paramount organization that they liked. This is a double boon for Grey, who has been apparently looking for excuses to clean the Paramount house of the employees he inherited. "Unlike Brad, who just got here and couldn't care less about us, Steven has actual loyalty to his people," says the source. "Brad must have figured it was easier to get rid of everyone who built Paramount than to risk crossing Steven or screwing up the deal."  And so Grey lounges on the beach, no doubt surrounded by servants and nubile young boys, whilst Paramount's entire distribution division fears for their jobs. "Everyone is going nuts. Paramount isn't going to tell anyone whether or not they still have jobs until DreamWorks comes in and decides who gets to stay."