The head of an association that helps victims of sects, Catherine Picard, called the verdict "intelligent."

"Scientology can no longer hide behind freedom of conscience," she said.

The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has been active for decades in Europe, but has struggled to gain status as a religion. It is considered a sect in France and has faced prosecution and difficulties in registering its activities in many countries.

Defense lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said during the trial that neither the Church of Scientology nor the six leaders on trial had gained financially from the group's practices.

The original complaint in the case dates back more than a decade, when a young woman said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of euro21,000 on books, courses and "purification packages" after being recruited in 1998. When she sought reimbursement and to leave the group, its leadership refused. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.

Olivier Morice, lawyer for civil parties in the case, said the verdict was "historic" because it was the first time in France that the Church of Scientology has been convicted of organized fraud.

Investigating judge Jean-Christophe Hullin spent years examining the group's activities, and in his indictment criticized what he called the Scientologists' "obsession" with financial gain and practices he said were aimed at plunging members into a "state of subjection."

The Church of Scientology teaches that technology can expand the mind and help solve problems. It claims 10 million members around the world, including celebrity devotees Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Belgium, Germany and other European countries have been criticized by the U.S. State Department for labeling Scientology as a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its operations.

• A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source, that features four different actors playing the same role and also includes the final performance of a recently departed star (no, really -- his final final performance), directed by a one-time rebel genius now viewed as both a loose cannon and box-office poison.
• A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source and shot almost entirely in a green-screen, effects-driven process that makes its director (he says) "jittery and crazy." Said director is a one-time rebel genius now viewed as an underperforming Hollywood hack.
• A remake of a breakthrough American indie crime drama of the '80s, made in a foreign language by a director who himself made more than one breakthrough indie crime drama in the '80s.
• A remake of a breakthrough foreign-language film of the '60s about an intense, crypto-erotic relationship between two women, sexed up and made contemporary as a comeback vehicle for two flagging post-teen stars.
• A remake of a red-meat, Red Scare action film of the '80s, sexed up and made contemporary as a vehicle for the offspring of a flagging mega-star.
• Approximately the umpteenth adaptation of a tear-jerking literary classic read widely by teenagers, to be scripted by a major American writer who seems uniquely unsuited for the task.

So how did we do? Too easy, right? I would agree, but I would further contend that my fake idea is no worse than the third- or fourth-worst idea on this list. And yeah, maybe I cheated by including one movie that actually exists, along with another one that's partway along. That's not the point, if I have one; the point is to argue that the movie-supply pipeline of the moment seems jampacked with baffling, half-baked ideas that, y'know, could surprise us and be pretty good, but have a really high potential of turning out to be incredibly awful and/or memorably bizarre, and very likely belong in the category of Someone Should Have Thought About This a Little Bit Harder.

Now, to review. In order, as above:

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" Yes, the latest addition to Terry Gilliam's oo-ver is an actual, completed motion picture that will apparently be released this fall. Doesn't quite seem that way, though, does it? Gilliam's effects-driven, unsummarizable, Munchausen-scale fantasy -- which does indeed feature four actors playing one role, and stars the late Heath Ledger alongside Johnny Depp -- premiered this spring at Cannes, to mixed and tepid response. That's neither a positive nor a negative; dark, indigestible films don't do well at film festivals (this is known as the "Synecdoche, New York" problem). This movie has a higher profile than anything Gilliam has made since God knows when -- "12 Monkeys," maybe? -- but given his propensity for muddled aesthetic results and commercial failure, that's not saying a whole lot.

My personal feeling is that Gilliam has been so badly burned by the forges of the film industry's Saurons that he's morphed from Sméagol to Gollum -- he's become a perennially sour old dude who has lost all sense of how to reach audiences. I know he's got fans out there, because I hear from y'all every time I complain about him, so let me state what should be obvious: Gilliam is a rare, acerbic talent with genius-level skills in composition and design, and one of these years he might cough up a good movie. Thing is, I'm tired of waiting -- and unlike almost everybody else in North America, I actually sat through "Tideland," the hackneyed, cruel and thoroughly poisonous Alice-in-Wonderland knockoff that was his last film. Go watch that -- no, I'm serious, go right now; the rest of us will wait -- and then come back and tell me what a big fan you are.

Here's the British trailer for "Imaginarium," which New York magazine's Vulture blog has summed up as "something you'd dream after eating some bad clams and falling asleep in a sauna":

"Alice in Wonderland" Now we come to Tim Burton's effects-driven spectacular in the offing, and I got stuck trying to define exactly what relationship Burton bears to Terry Gilliam. He's the rich man's Gilliam? He's the saner, less evil member of a pair of evil-genius twins? I can't quite figure it out. I know, I know, you're very excited that Burton is finally making a Lewis Carroll adaptation, he seems perfect for it, etc. There's a huge gap here, in that none of the screen versions of "Alice" is fully satisfactory, and I absolutely agree that Burton's trailer looks gorgeous, exactly the kind of vaguely sinister visual candyfloss that made his reputation.

But let's be honest here: Burton has a terrible record with adaptations ("Sleepy Hollow," anyone? "Planet of the Apes"? Didn't think so) and if the story's not about a damaged Goth kid, he doesn't know how to tell it. There's a real risk here that this "Alice" will wind up with Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter as the main character, who happens to meet some chick from another world. And as for making Alice a fully pulchritudinous young adult instead of a little girl, doesn't that risk pushing Dr. Freud even closer to the surface of the film? Again, just personally, I was greatly and pleasantly surprised by Burton's take on "Sweeney Todd," mostly because I wasn't expecting much, but expectations are already off the charts for this one. In case you haven't seen the trailer, or need another look:

Zhang Yimou's "Blood Simple" remake There were some startled blogosphere reactions to the idea that the director of "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Hero" is set to stage a Chinese-language remake of Joel and Ethan Coen's hallowed 1984 debut film. I'm here to tell you that I think it's a tremendous idea. Several of Zhang's best movies have a pronounced noir element, slowed down and adapted to the rhythms of life in rural China. And here comes the moment where I blow my so-called indie cred: I don't like "Blood Simple" that much. It's really well made, but it's one Coen movie that totally earns their rep as sadistic and smirky. I'll probably like Zhang's version better.

Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan "Persona" remake Sadly, this does not exist. Yet. Awesome idea, though, right? I'm hereby offering to write and produce, hopefully launching myself on a Zalman King-like trajectory as softcore mogul of the 2010s. Screw the moody, black-and-white cinematography of the original, of course -- but you know that scene when Bibi Andersson tells the story about how she and her hot friend get it on with some kid on the beach? What we do with that scene is gonna put the whoot-there-it-is back in avant-garde cinema, my friends. (And that moment where the film breaks and all sorts of crazy shit happens is a good spot for some product placement: BK, Red Bull, Captain Morgan.)

Connor Cruise "Red Dawn" remake This is just depressing and there are all sorts of reasons I don't want to think about it, let alone write about it (or, still worse, actually watch it). Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's 14-year-old adopted son, Connor, has joined the cast of a remake of John Milius' Cold War action flick "Red Dawn," to be directed by Dan Bradley, which sounds like a porn-star name but is actually the name of a dude who shot second-unit on the Bourne films. Evidently this reheated Red Scare paranoia exercise will involve the premise that Russian and Chinese troops are invading the American heartland and -- I'm sorry, that's enough.

Mind you, I might want to act all high-minded, but I'm pretty sure I paid to see the Milius film on the big screen myself, so OK. Since we're casting celebrities' kids in remakes of popular '80s films that the world would have gotten along fine without in the first place, there's also a "Karate Kid" remake in the works, with Will Smith's son to play opposite Jackie Chan. Your suggestions please! "Back to the Future"? "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"? "Dirty Dancing"?

David Mamet "Anne Frank" project So by the time I get around to deriding the news that irascible man's-man playwright and screenwriter Mamet has been hired to write and direct a version of "The Diary of Anne Frank," not just one but two parody excerpts have already been scribbled by my competitors. Neither is pitch-perfect -- Mamet's voice is so distinctive that mocking it is quite difficult -- but I think the Village Voice version is closer, and much funnier, than the New York magazine attempt.

It ought to be more like this:

Anne: What do they want? The people who ...
Peter: People? What people? The Nazis? Is that what you mean? The fucking Nazis? [Laughs.]
Otto: Peter. The child. She's just a child.
Peter: She's a child? A child? You're a fucking child. No, no, I'm sorry. I take that back. I apologize. I fully and freely apologize. I'm the child here. Let's be honest.
Anne: The people who will come here ...
Otto: When I was a child, there was a river. No, a stream, not a river. A river is ...
Peter: Roaring. A river is roaring.
Anne: What will they do? What do they want?
Otto: Yes, roaring. That's right. A stream gurgles. It gurgles.
Peter: Where was this stream? When you were a child? It was at your house? Your house, or someone else's?
Otto: Yes. No. Perhaps it was my grandmother's house. Perhaps it wasn't near a house. I was a child.
Anne: I think about what they will do. But I can't imagine it. You can't imagine something like that.
Peter: Did you throw stones in it? In the gurgling stream? I love to throw stones. That is one thing that I love.
Otto: I did. I threw them. I think I threw them. Or I am saying it because you said those words. How can I be sure?
Anne: I am asking you a question! What will they do when they come to this house?
Peter: They will fuck us with their big uncircumcised cocks and they will suck the marrow from our bones. Is there anything else that you would like to know?

Or it could mean that said movie features a once-huge star who may not have the drawing power with audiences he once had, and who may feel he needs a degree of protection from possible criticism. Tom Cruise, who dominates "Valkyrie" as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the aristocrat turned officer who came close to assassinating Hitler in 1944 by sneaking a bomb into his private conference room, has become He Who Cannot Be Named unless you're going to say something nice. He's also the weakest link in "Valkyrie," which is neither a masterpiece nor an embarrassment, but a workmanlike picture that sits, inoffensively, in the middling space between.

The titles at the end of "Valkyrie" tell us there were 15 known attempts on Hitler's life, although the one dramatized here, masterminded by operatives in the German resistance, is the best-known, partly because it came so close to succeeding and partly because it resulted in the execution of some 200 conspirators. Out of necessity, Singer and his writers, Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, have condensed the number of players in the story: On the good guys' side are, among others, Bill Nighy's Gen. Friedrich Olbricht, Kenneth Branagh's Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow, Terence Stamp's Gen. Ludwig Beck and, of course, Cruise's Stauffenberg. On the side of those remaining to be convinced (with varying degrees of success) are Tom Wilkinson's Gen. Friedrich Fromm and Eddie Izzard's Gen. Erich Fellgiebel.

That's a lot of uniforms to keep straight, and although Singer does an admirable job of making sure that most of the main characters emerge distinctly, this isn't an actors' movie. Singer is better with the mechanics of the story, which are both complicated and fascinating: The operatives knew that it wouldn't be enough just to assassinate Hitler, or Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler. They would need to take control of the government as well, and their chief tool for doing so would be Operation Valkyrie, a contingency plan that, as the movie explains it, had been conceived by the German military as a way to contain civil unrest in the event of Hitler's death, or if his power were somehow compromised. Stauffenberg (whose position allowed him close contact with Hitler) and his co-conspirators would first assassinate Hitler with concealed explosives and then, somehow, get Friedrich Fromm to initiate Operation Valkyrie. (He was the only officer with the authority to do so.) They could then move forward in disarming the SS and arresting other Nazi leaders.

Obviously, the plan didn't work -- "Valkyrie" also briefly dramatizes an earlier plot, in which a Cointreau bottle cleverly rigged with explosives fails to go kaboom -- and in this detailed procedural, Singer outlines all the hows and whys of its failure: There's a tense briefcase switcheroo, and some furtive fumbling with a small detonator thingie. This is the stuff of which suspenseful dramas are made. But "Valkyrie" drags a bit ponderously for the first two-thirds, as Singer and his screenwriters dutifully set up the mechanics of the murder and subsequent takeover plot. It's all necessary information, presented authoritatively. But does it have to be so drab and lifeless? The movie's color scheme doesn't help much: Shot by Newton Thomas Sigel in a palette of institutional grays and greens -- predictable Nazi colors -- "Valkyrie" has the look of a movie that's only following orders.

"Valkyrie" can't decide if it wants to be a sturdily constructed modern-style thriller (McQuarrie also wrote Singer's first big hit, "The Usual Suspects") or an old-timey suspense entertainment packed with movie conventions. Singer throws in a little from Column A and a little from Column B, and not all of it works. Just before Stauffenberg sets out to finalize the assassination plot, he bids his wife, Nina, played by Carice van Houten (the terrific actress from Paul Verhoeven's "Black Book," in a smallish role), goodbye. The moment turns mawkish when he reminds her that if he's caught, the authorities will come after her and the couple's children, too. The camera drifts down from Nina's face to show her hand clutching her dressing-gown-clad stomach, the semaphore used in the old days to signal that a character is "with child." Conventions like that aren't necessarily clichés -- it all depends on how they're executed -- but Singer doesn't always have good control over these melodramatic flourishes. Too often they jangle the tone of "Valkyrie." The story -- we're talking about a bunch of guys trying to kill Hitler, for God's sake -- has enough drama on its own; who needs the extra hokum?

But the picture starts moving along more briskly in the last third, as Singer and his writers get into the groove of balancing all the little ways in which the scheme goes wrong -- and right. And maybe "Valkyrie" gets more interesting as it steams toward the climax because by that point, we're distracted from fixating on the almost uniformly lousy performances of the actors. A colleague of mine said that he thought "Valkyrie" would be memorable only because every single actor in it -- with one exception -- gives the worst performance of his career. I'm not sure he's completely right -- I think I've seen Tom Cruise much worse -- but he's got a point. It's strange to see people like Nighy, in particular, fluttering around the picture like a nervous bird. I'm sure there were nervous German generals in real life, but Nighy just comes off as dithery and high-strung. Wilkinson is sometimes a terrific performer ("In the Bedroom") and sometimes a massive scenery chewer ("Michael Clayton"); here, he settles into a comfortable groove of Naziformity, though he's not particularly engaging to watch. But poor Izzard -- a genius as a comic and often an extremely appealing actor too -- has it the worst. I don't think it's in Izzard's blood to be able to play an uptight German army officer with a straight face. Everything he does -- from his mannerisms to his clipped line readings -- comes off like an impersonation of some famous person you just can't place.

It's a shame that most of the actors in "Valkyrie" can't find their footing, considering that one of the most compelling facets of this story is the way it distinguishes between men who knew enough to think for themselves and those who just went around following orders. The story at the heart of "Valkyrie" recognizes that there were members of the German military who saw the damage Hitler was doing to their own country, not to mention the rest of Europe, and who were determined to take action. One actor in particular, Stamp, brings that idea home: His final scene is extraordinary, a moment of uncomplicated grace that temporarily stops the movie cold.

Cruise stops the movie too, but in a different way. Stauffenberg makes for a dramatic-looking character, all right: In 1943, while he was stationed in Africa, he was injured by British bombs and lost his right hand, several fingers on his left hand and his left eye. And like many other officers in the German army, he came from a refined, aristocratic background: He was a man of ideas and probably had superb posture to boot.

Cruise does OK in the posture department: He's had years of experience marching around self-importantly in movies, so playing a German officer isn't such a stretch. And he does have one good moment, as Stauffenberg stares himself down in the mirror during a morning shave: He confronts his reflection, and that empty, shriveled eye socket, with a degree of determination that seems to have been summoned from the core of his very being. Unfortunately, that doesn't much help his diction. At one point, Stauffenberg raises objections to certain parts of the assassination scheme: "What are you going to do?" he asks. "How are you going to deal with Goebbels, the SS?" Except the words that come tumbling out of his mouth are, "What're you gonna do? How're you gonna deal with Goebbels, the SS?"

Whassup with that? And sue me: Every time I looked at Cruise's solemn, self-serious visage, I kept seeing a chipmunk with an eye patch. I do have some sympathy for Cruise. After a career of coasting on his regular-guy boyishness, he's now well into middle age, and while actors have it easier than actresses as far as that goes, in Hollywood, advancing age is no one's friend -- especially if you first made a name for yourself as a teenager dancing around in your underwear.

Then again, wouldn't now be a good time for Cruise to start figuring out how a German army officer -- an aristocrat -- might actually speak, instead of riffing on stuff he remembers from "Top Gun"? In "Valkyrie," Singer decided to let all the actors use their natural accents, instead of speaking with a German one. It's a choice with pluses and minuses, but at least it allows an actor to shape a performance in the way he's most comfortable with. But maybe Cruise is just too comfortable in the role of Tom Cruise. In his own personal land of make-believe, you can become someone else just by donning an eye patch. But that doesn't mean you had much depth perception to begin with.

But you know what makes all the little children feel better about how dark and scary the world is? Fairy tales. So let's start with a fairy tale about a little prince named Tom Cruise.

Cruisin'
Once upon a time, there was a sad little prince named Tom Cruise who wanted to share his love with the world, but the world wasn't in the mood. As the little prince trampled joyfully on Oprah's butter-yellow sofa, all the world's peoples sighed and picked lint off their corduroys. Even as they listened to the squeals of the unruly fraudience of middle-aged "Top Gun" groupies who'd been fantasizing about Tom to the strains of "Take My Breath Away" for 20-odd years straight, they remained indifferent. They had fallen out of love with Tom somewhere around the 50th time they heard a roomful of frat boys sing "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." They certainly weren't having any of this latest flash of bleached teeth and overflowing emotion for a princess bride whose career had been up "Dawson's Creek" without a paddle for years.

So little prince Tom gave the world the cold shoulder. Prince Tom and princess Kate and their anatomically correct robot-baby, Suri, would lock themselves away in their 400-acre kingdom in Telluride, sipping red rum to get through those long wintry months. Sure, they'd allow legendary photographers to enter the snowy compound and photograph them as they squeezed each other and squinted into the middle distance like models at a Sears catalog shoot, but otherwise they'd remain far from our nasty, clawing, thetan-infested, psychotropic-drug-popping clutches.

Until last week, when little prince Cruise decided to allow Oprah (also royalty, after all) into his magnificent castle for a face-to-face interview. Needless to say, there would be no jumping and waving and fist pumping this time around. No, sir. Donning his "No, I'm serious!" face, Tom sat down with Oprah for a heart-to-heart ... or maybe we should call it a heart-to-press release.

Oprah: People think you're insane, judgmental, controlling and possibly gay. They wonder why you lost your doughnuts on my show. They wonder why you condescended to that nice man Matt Lauer and insulted poor depressed Brooke Shields. They wonder if Suri is your baby or just a wondrously lifelike assemblage of pricey robotics ...

Tom: I'm not going to comment on what ... The press really doesn't interest me, unless they've got all their credentials in order and they're contractually obligated to photograph me from my good side.

Oprah: Come on, Tom, don't you just want to die sometimes?

Tom: [Frowning] I'm incredibly happy, so happy I can't even put it into words. I feel so very privileged and blessed, truly blessed, to live this life. I feel pretty and witty and ... I'm sorry, our time is up. The chopper is waiting outside for you.

And so Oprah flew off, and the little prince lived happily ever after in his imaginary mountain kingdom! See, children? Even when entire villages are leveled and pretty horsies are killed, there's still hope left in the world. God isn't dead, boys and girls, he just likes Tom Cruise better than you.

If you're craving even more "T.C.," there's a nice summary of his interview in the Washington Post, but here in ILTW-land, we've got bigger fish to grab straight from an icy river, chop into little pieces, stuff into jars and subsist on for the next three months.

Unbaked Alaska
Did that make you hungry? If so, it may be time for you to tune in for "The Alaska Experiment" (10 p.m. EDT Tuesdays on Discovery), which starts with the basic premise of "Survivor" -- ordinary people, struggling to survive without caffeine, booze or Internet access -- and throws in subzero temperatures, hungry bears, rifles so powerful that they bruise your face, rocky cliffs, rusty handsaws, freelance moose-hunting experts, canvas tents and circling wolves. Oh, and there's no million-dollar prize, either. Welcome to the Discovery Channel, where you suffer for free!

The aptly named "volunteers" of "The Alaska Experiment" consist of four teams. There's a married couple (Greg and Bernice), three friends (Tim, Jasmine and Allan), a father and two daughters (Dennis, Jennifer and Carolyn), and a dating couple (Elizabeth and Jeff). The quality of living quarters and the surrounding landscape vary wildly for each team. While the family of three lives in an "old fish shack" near a beach, the dating couple beds down in a canvas tent, even though they see brown bears roving around the area regularly. The teams also spend their time differently: The three friends obsessively chop wood for the winter, while the family and the dating couple spend several days catching salmon with their hands, cleaning them, chopping them into chunks and then sealing them in cans so they'll have a source of protein to eat as the winter approaches and there's not much hunting or fishing in the area.

The teams also seem to have very different aptitudes for surviving in the Alaskan wilderness for three months. The father and daughters manage to can a bunch of salmon for the winter, while dating couple Elizabeth and Jeff don't seal their jars correctly and lose half of their salmon as a result. In fact, Elizabeth and Jeff seem to struggle at every turn: Water floods their camp; menacing bears linger in the distance; crab traps remain empty (while a voice-over scoffs that they'd have to eat many a crab indeed to ingest even a little protein); driftwood refuses to budge as the waves lap at their feet. Meanwhile, hunger and fatigue make them both snippy -- although we're not treated to the sorts of knock-down, drag-out bickering matches you'd find on "The Amazing Race." (Dear Discovery Channel: Please try to emulate CBS's policy of recruiting wildly dysfunctional humans for your reality shows so we'll get all the hotheaded exchanges and unwarranted nastiness that we so richly deserve.)

But "The Alaska Experiment" makes up for the lack of personality disorders on display with other fun stuff, like freezing rain and flooded outhouses and gigantic bears that stare at you long and hard instead of running off into the brush when you yell at them. Sometimes the voice-over is a little too cheesy to take -- "Back in sunny California, Greg is used to pouring concrete, not fending off wolves!" -- but this show is just too rich to be tripped up by a little clunky prose. Plus, when Greg almost stumbles down a rocky cliff while trying to shoot a goat in the foggy distance, all we can think is, "Jesus, this guy is used to pouring concrete back in sunny California, not stumbling down rocky cliffs while trying to shoot a goat in the foggy distance!"

In last week's episode, Tim, Jasmine and Allan get so desperate for some source of protein before winter sets in that they go out hunting for squirrels and rabbits. Even though they do tag a few sweet little woodland creatures, Jasmine, who describes herself as a pacifist, is less than thrilled about the situation: "I have to say, it wasn't the most pleasant experience to have to cut off their paws."

Then the next day, the three of them are on a walk when they see big birds circling nearby. Despite the risk of running into predators, they draw closer and discover the bloody carcass of a bison. "Eww!" Jasmine gasps, and then she practically elbows the feasting eagles and birds out of the way as she reaches for her hunting knife. "There's still a lot of meat left on it!" she murmurs, carving some red, gnarled-looking muscle from -- yes, that's right! -- the dirty, bloody heap of skin and bones and guts they just stumbled on.

In other words, unlike the contestants of "Survivor" or "The Amazing Race," the volunteers of "The Alaska Experiment" don't demean themselves; Mother Nature demeans them. Mother Nature is a vengeful whore, too, which explains why we're watching a pacifist hacking on a bison carcass. But seriously, does TV get any better than this?

Let me guess: Next week, lost in the snowy woods, Jasmine tries desperately to build a fire, but her matches keep dropping into the snow and going out. "I have to say, it wasn't the most pleasant experience freezing to death."

Going back to Cally
And while we're slipping into the darkness, let's not forget "Battlestar Galactica" (10 p.m. Fridays on Sci Fi), which has swerved into seriously uneasy territory lately, with each scene more full of desperation and despair than a malfunctioning jumpy castle filled with sugar-addled toddlers. Starbuck pulls a gun on Roslin, Roslin obsesses over her impending death, Adama mumbles around in a funk, and Chief Tyrol stays out late drinking with the increasingly demonic fellow skin-job Tory, telling her, "I look in the mirror nowadays, I don't even know what I am."

Christ, Chief, pull yourself together! But in case you missed this episode, which plays like an after-school special on the dangers of fraternizing with robots, Chief's quiet moment of heavy drinking is interrupted when a sleepless, haunted-looking Cally enters the bar with her fat baby on her hip, Sean Preston-style. The baby starts screaming and crying and basically doesn't stop for the entire episode, which, taken alone, would be enough to make most of us leap out of the nearest airlock and float off into outer space. (Foreshadowing intended.)

But it gets worse! You'll recall that Cally is absolutely brimming over with hatred for those damnable toasters. Remember that awesome scene on Caprica where she shouted at Chief, "Talk to me, you motherfracker!" and then they both laughed, and you had to wonder if they liked each other a little bit? Yes, those two had the enduring love of two college kids who once got drunk and macked at a kegger, and then spent the rest of their lives together, trying to figure out why. Chief was always far more smitten with Boomer. (And hey, Chief and Boomer were both Cylons, too! They had sooo much in common.)

Anyway, Cally follows Chief and Tigh and Tory one night, and she hears them talking about the fact that they're Cylons. She's so distressed over the whole thing that she scoops up her crying baby and looks about ready to float out into space and take the kid with her. And honestly, there's something vaguely distasteful about the whole thing, like the writers are trying to teach us a lesson about racism and the rigidity of the American identity and how the pressures on working-class people with families are sometimes just too much to bear.

But all we're thinking at home is, "If Sean Preston doesn't make it out of this alive, I am going to be pissed!" Luckily, though, Tory is on the scene to soothe Cally into handing over her son, and once the baby is safe in Tory's arms, Tory casually backhands Cally, sending her flying several feet. Then Tory stares Cally down with her cold Cylon eyes and presses a button that opens a hatch and sends Cally tumbling off into space. We should be horrified, but now that the baby has been saved, seeing Tory go all Legion of Doom on Cally's weak Wonder Twins ass is mildly thrilling. Muhahaha!

But Chief Tyrol and his kid don't have a lot in common with K-Fed and Sean Preston, so instead of sharing a forty of Schlitz to celebrate their newfound freedom from Sean's crazy-ass moms, the two spend the next episode moping around Chief's dank, gloomy quarters. (If my kid's crib were a few feet from my head at night, I think I might want to kill myself, too. Having a baby isn't always the best choice when you live in a walk-in closet.)

Chief, who suspects that Cally didn't commit suicide like Tory said she did, deals with the pain by boozing it up. (Meanwhile, who's at home with the kid? The Galactica seems to have a seriously abysmal day-care system. Maybe that's something Baltar should take up with his rabble-rousing lady friends.) Once he's good and drunk, Chief has a seriously shocking exchange with Commander Adama (and just to be clear, this one isn't imaginary like the Oprah/prince Tom discussion above):

Tyrol: How many of us ended up with the people we really wanted to be with? Got stuck with the best of limited options. And why? Because the ones we really want, we really loved, are dead, or dying, turned out to be Cylons and they didn't know it, like Boomer, and ...

Adama: Let's go.

Tyrol: No! I didn't know. So I buried my head in the sand, and I took it and I settled. I settled for that shriek, those dull, vacant eyes, that boiled cabbage stench of her. And why? Because this is my life! This is the life I picked, and it's fine. But you know, what? It's not. I didn't pick this life. This is not my frackin' life!

Adama: What the hell's gotten into you? Don't do this. Don't do this to her memory.

Tyrol: I'm sorry that I'm not going to do this the way you want me to, the way you might, but I will not make an angel out of somebody who wasn't an angel.

Sweet Jesus, Chief, did you really hate her that much? Of course he's right -- Adama wouldn't in a million years dream of revealing his darkest emotions to anyone, no matter what the circumstances. When Adama gets mad, he smashes priceless model ships into tiny little bits, but he doesn't use words, no way!

Anyway, Chief continues to use his words until Adama demotes him, which also probably means Chief can trade in his walk-in closet for a broom closet. I wonder if he and Sean Preston can fit in that crib together?

Throw in the hybrid calling Starbuck "the harbinger of death," Roslin going bald, Tigh struggling with visions of his dead wife, and Baltar gaining conviction in his spiritual notions, and you've got a pretty dark, soupy mess on your hands. Right now, the situation is darker than the Cylon occupation of New Caprica (which, aside from the torture and the unannounced assassinations, wasn't all that dark, all things considered), maybe even darker than the days after the Cylon's nuclear attack.

What does it all mean, Galactican groupies? Thankfully, Friday night's episode was more suspense thriller (Hello, "Minority Report"!) than Lifetime movie of the week, but the repetitive spiritual questions aren't all that compelling, and whenever the plot loses steam, some character loses his or her mind. Remember when the lunacy was limited to Baltar, while Richard Hatch's Tom Zarek filled the need for a revolutionary underground? Making half of the characters on the show crazy feels like overkill -- and we've seen it all before.

But then, we've seen dead horses, deadly cyclones, erupting volcanoes and dumb people with babies before, too. I guess you can't teach an old God new tricks.

Here's what we know for sure: nothing. Cannes head programmer Thierry Frémaux won't reveal his slate for two more weeks, and his subordinates are sworn to public silence. Last year many bloggers and trade magazines knowledgeably reported that Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" would premiere at the Côte d'Azur fest, and of course it didn't. (In fairness, Allen evidently turned down Cannes' closing-night slot, which is somewhere between a booby prize and a black hole leading into a lifeless alternative dimension.)

Still, pride goeth etc., even if King James Bible quotations may be a bit grandiose when debunking idle showbiz gossip. It was widely and confidently reported in recent weeks that Joel and Ethan Coen's new screwball comedy, "Burn After Reading," would premiere at Cannes on May 14, which would make it the opening-night feature. Certainly the carefully managed Cannes-Toronto-New York festival trajectory of "No Country for Old Men" worked out to everyone's satisfaction, even if the Coens were denied the Palme d'Or (and quite rightly so, in my view) in favor of "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." This one sounds more commercial, frankly, and it's certainly got a dazzling cast: John Malkovich is an alcoholic CIA agent whose wife (Tilda Swinton) is sleeping with their Treasury-marshal best friend (George Clooney), with Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand in supporting roles. I haven't tried to add up the Oscars in that list; you do the math.

OK, but hold the phone! Variety.com blogger Anne Thompson, a vastly more trustworthy source than most, now reports that "Burn After Reading" won't be finished in time for Cannes, and that Frémaux hasn't even seen it, in whatever shape it is at the moment. (Regardless of all this nonsense, we'll all get to see it when Focus Features opens it widely on Sept. 12.) So let's move onward to Cannes rumors 2 and 2A, both of them pretty noxious.

I sincerely hope this is the only time in this blog's history when I link to Fox News, whose Roger Friedman reported last month that Steven Spielberg's semi-anticipated "Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Kingdom of the Corridor of the Arthritic Celebrity" -- I may not have that title quite right yet -- would probably premiere at Cannes before its worldwide opening on May 22. You kind of have to read Friedman's piece to appreciate it; I can only hope he's performing a brilliant self-parody of the celebutainment journalist. He writes: "I'm told that Spielberg, perhaps producer George Lucas and stars Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LeBeouf, Karen Allen and others would make the walk up the fabled red carpet at the Palais. Talk about sizzle! Sacre bleu!" True. I mean, come on: Karen Allen!

OK, enough pot vs. kettle snarkery. Friedman's probably right about this one. The timing's right, and the Cannes M.O. is to mix name-brand art house films, dark obscurities that only viewers as masochistic as I am will sit through, and red-carpet premieres of Hollywood's biggest and most irrelevant spectacles. So, yeah, Karen Allen, mesdames et messieurs, sur le tapis rouge. I strongly suspect "Indy 4" won't be the opening-night film, though; even by recent Cannes standards ("The Da Vinci Code," 2006) it's too lightweight of an opener. For whatever it's worth, IMDB currently lists the Spielberg movie as premiering at Cannes on May 18, which would be a Sunday-night centerpiece slot.

I wish I felt the same skepticism about the rumor recently floated by Hollywood Reporter blogger Steven Zeitchik to the effect that Michael Patrick King's likely-to-be-misbegotten "Sex and the City: The Movie" may wind up as opening-night fare at the Palais des Festivals. Unfortunately, it all fits: modest star power, wide international appeal and a certain vapid pretense at sophistication and cultural significance. (And I say these mean things as someone whose kid once played with Sarah Jessica Parker's kid at a Central Park playground. She was nice, too.)

Zeitchik points out that that would make three English-language Cannes openers in a row, which is admittedly improbable, but it does fit the festival's recent pattern of alternating art films and Hollywood product in the opening slot. (Last year it was Wong Kar-wai's "My Blueberry Nights," and in 2005 it was Dominik Moll's "Lemmings," little seen on this side of the Atlantic, or anywhere else.) Arguably "Sex and the City," even if it's a car wreck, will be a movie people actually want to see, unlike what Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw once dubbed "Cannes' long-running series of opening-night europudding clunkers," including Nikita Mikhalkov's 1998 "The Barber of Siberia," Roland Joffé's 2000 "Vatel" and Gérard Krawczyk's 2003 "Fanfan la Tulipe."

Other American films in the Cannes rumor mill have included Bryan Singer's forthcoming "Valkyrie," starring Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg, the German officer who led a plot to assassinate Hitler; the Angelina Jolie action-adventure "Wanted," from Russian director Timur Bekmambetov; the Larry Charles-Bill Maher documentary "Religulous" (that's not a typo); and Charlie Kaufman's directing debut, "Synecdoche, New York," starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton and Michelle Williams. Of course, if Frémaux and his staff do their work, those more or less hyped projects will be driven into the shadows by something from way off the map that you and I have never heard of.

I was going to lead from Cannes rumors into a topic based on tangible information, that being a sneak peek at program highlights for the Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off in New York on April 23 (when we likely still won't have a Democratic nominee, dammit!) with the premiere of the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy "Baby Mama." You think I'm kidding about that, and I'm not. That's the opening-night movie. Tribeca has announced its lineup, which kind of dampens the market for rampant speculation. And what the hell fun is that? I jest, mostly. More soon.