Celebrity

Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, The Complete First Season
$29.95
As a mental health professional and medical educator, I purchased this DVD to show students and psychiatry residents what goes on in a rehab program following didactic lectures on the topic. Having worked in this type of setting in the past, I am familiar with treatment programs for addictions. Dr. Drew Pinsky is board certified in Internal Medicine and fellowship trained/boarded in Addiction Medicine. He is a professional and clearly shows compassion for his patients who struggle with addictions. He also sets limits and maintains boundaries. However, the people who made the DVD created a hodgepodge of segments that jump around, repeat and it is difficult to show the continuity of care and progress that some of the people make during treatment. I would not purchase this DVD until the producers find a way to make it less chaotic.Perhaps Season II will be better?

Celebrity Nude Revue, The Saucy 70's
$25.99
It was great to see alot of the older actresses with there clothes off again.

Celebrity
$7.99
I assume that Kenneth Branagh imitates Woody Allen here because Allen himself is now too old to keep playing the woman-chasing schlub who ends up with women way too attractive for him. Maybe this isn't classic Woody, but it's pretty good stuff.

The Celebrity Culture Reader
$49.95
What defines celebrity? Why is the ubiquitous cult of celebrity so important in contemporary Western culture? Through its combination of classic pieces and more contemporary writings, The Celebrity Culture Reader examines the proliferation of the study of celebrity over the last two decades, and the significance and importance of celebrity in contemporary culture.
The contributors look at the cult of celebrity from Alexander the Great, to the transformation of the actor into a public person in the eighteenth century, to the industrial apparatus leading to the star system in early narrative film. Taking a broad definition of the concept of celebrity, the Reader discusses music celebrity as personified by New Kids on the Block, the celebrity status of literary authors, the emergence of CEOs as corporate business celebrities, and the role of celebrity in politics. Individual articles move from discussion of recognized celebrities such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and Princess Diana through to reality television and the idea that through enough self-promotion, anyone can now achieve celebrity status.
The Celebrity Culture Reader is divided into the following sections, each with an introduction by the editor:

* Celebrity and Modernity: The Historical Pattern of Celebrity

* The Textual and the ExtraTextual Dimensions of the Public Persona

* Ascribed Celebrity: the Transformed Public Sphere

* Transgression: Scandal, Notoriety and Infamy

* The Body and Celebrity

* Celebrity Culture: Narcissism, Fandom and the Will-to-Celebrity

* Celebrity Nation: Celebrity in National Contexts

* The Celebrity Industry: the Management of Fame

* Surface and Depth: Celebrity in the 'Post-Celebrity' Era