This week, Hollywood blurs reality. Again.

Today, instead of watching an endless round of CNN and CSPAN and Fox News, I read the newspaper, and suddenly it all seemed so much scarier, so much sadder. In print, there’s no distracting ticker at the bottom of the screen, no Middle-East experts with their sombre faces and carefully chosen ties, no cool night-vision shots of tanks and soldiers caught in sandstorms. The immediacy of TV might inure us to reality, but ABC is even more worried that a reality show might be mistaken for the real thing. The war, that is.

See, even before the Pentagon executed their genius bit of PR sending reporters in with the troops, it already had another little project in the works. Last year, Hollywood über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, king of the "war is glory" school of moviemaking (Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor), filmed a documentary/reality show of American troops in Afghanistan.

Now, Bruckheimer says that he has US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s backing to send movie crews in to film the current conflict in Iraq, but that ABC weren’t willing to put up the necessary cash. ABC, on the other hand, say they were worried that unsuspecting viewers might mistake the show for actual ABC News war coverage. Or could they just be worried that viewers would think the current enthusiastic reports of the journalists in Iraq are actually the scripted words of a reality show host?

One quick Oscar hurrah for Spirited Away, the ethereal Japanese film that won the debut award in the new Best Animated Film category. Brilliant creator Hayao Miyazaki’s next project is based on a fantasy tale called Howl’s Moving Castle, by British author Diana Wynne Jones. Jade Chang 28 March 03