A quick round up of TV deals, as the week winds down:

– “Diary of A Mad Black Woman” creator Tyler Perry‘s goes outside the traditional studio system again. After “Madea’s Family Reunion” opened as strong as it did, Perry could have gone to any network (“My Big Fat Greek Family”, anyone?) but Perry wanted control. And so, “House of Payne,” is heading for limited run through spring and summer, with Debmar-Mercury distributing.

– Fox Broadcasting, unwilling to attempt a 24/7 “American Idol” schedule after Ryan Seacrest‘s physicians insisted he sleep at least three hours a week, has set up two fall series, Variety reports.

Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa have gotten a greenlight on “Til Death,” a Sony Pictures sitcom that stars Garrett and Joely Fisher “as a long-married couple whose new neighbors are idealistic newlyweds (Eddie Kaye Thomas, Kat Foster).”

And Josh Berman has gotten the OK on “Vanished,” about “a senator’s wife who goes missing as part of a larger conspiracy. Inspired by the country’s ongoing fascination with missing women, (Ed: The country has an on-going fascination with missing women?)the story behind “Vanished” will unfold throughout the season, as told through the eyes of law enforcement, family members and the media.” (We’d have noticed this sooner, but we were a little preoccupied.)

The Church’s move today against “The DaVinci Code” baffles us on many levels.

For one, there’s the E! reportage,

“Monsignor Angelo Amato, the number two official in the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office, has urged Catholics everywhere to boycott the upcoming Tom Hanks film on the basis that it patently “offended” the Christian faith.”

“Powerful doctrinal office?” What’s so powerful about it? As a former Catholic myself, I’m couldn’t even hazard a guess at what this means. Does E! think that whenever the Vatican suggests something, a Popesignal is shined up into the firmament, activating the boycott chip that lodged in the cortex of every Catholic?

Like we said, baffled.

Then there’s the obliqueness of the comment: Why not have the Pope just come out and say it his holy self? Why have some faith-lackey do it, if Tom Hanks‘ is so patently offensive? Besides, Tom Hanks? This softie is offensive? Are you kidding me? He’s a candidate for canonization based on the Times essay alone.

And finally, there’s the whole Palpatine / Pope thing. You’d think that a guy who looks so much like the Emperor would be a movie lover, not a hater.

We just got off the phone with our old pal, Tom Tapp, the former editor of the lamentably-late Variety celeb lifestyle monthly, V Life.

In one conversation, he ruined our afternoon: Six months after leaving Reed Business Information, he’s launching – gasp! – a competitor to FishbowlLA – the cunningly-christened “Hollywood Wiretap” – designed to simultaneously exploit both the Anthony Pellicano scandal and the people searching the web for it. Get it? Tom Tapp? Wiretap?

Of course, Tom, tells us, it’s much more than a Pelican news site, and its not a blog. It’s meant to be “Matt Drudge, but for Hollywood.” Tom has experience with that sort of pace, too: He was a wire-hanger for E! Online for years before joining Variety.

Naturally, we wish him the best of luck – even as we plot a denial-of-service attack against him.

This is Hollywood, after all.

(Though it launches Monday, you can check out the beta version today: www.hollywoodwiretap.com)

As Americans, we’re cheap.

As Jimmy Carter pointed out not so long ago on Charlie Rose, America gives proportionately less foreign aid to developing countries than any other Western nation.

But with a muy expensivo war on, what to do?

The answer came today, in a flash of brilliance from the U.N.: Deploy pregnant celebs to developing states!

As Reuters noted today,

“If Angelina Jolie gives birth in Namibia, she would have done for our tourism sector what our tourism board budget cannot do in a year,” Namibian Ambassador to the United States Hopelong Iipinge said in a letter released to the media late Thursday.”

Britney and K-Fed, you take Burkina Faso. Matt Damon and Luciana? You’ve got Mozambique. Okay. Niger, Niger… Rachel Weisz? You and Darren Aronofsky are bound for beautiful Niamey.

Don’t tell us you don’t like Africa – we saw “The Constant Gardner!”

Indie film is rarely a land of cotton candy and peppermint rainbows, but a report by Salon.com’s Andrew O’Hehir suggests this year’s crop of TriBeCa indies are particulalry caliginous:

Viz:

- Emmanuelle Bercot‘s “Backstage”: “trashy but highly absorbing

- Matt Williams‘ “Walker Payne”: “redeemed from total triviality, in fact, by its darkness.”

- “Civic Duty,” a claustrophobic, low-budget thriller starring Peter Krause: “a gloomy, intense and effective little picture, without being the least bit original.”

Salon.com‘s O’Hehir continues, “Stay tuned: I’ll be back with many more films, though not necessarily more cheerful ones: a controversial documentary about Golden Gate Bridge suicides, a tale of death row in Iran, a story about an all-night bender in Dallas, multiple visions of the Iraq war, how Colombia’s drug kings brought vice to Miami and much, much more.”

Much, much more? Uh, thanks, but no. Amazingly, “RV” is starting to look like a laugh riot.

The John Connolly / Bryan Burroughs fall-out begins.

Variety carries the PR counter-offensive today, with some curiously worded defenses:

“Cindy Guagenti, who reps Pitt and Sandler, said in a statement, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley have never once engaged the services of Anthony Pellicano, either directly or through a representative.”

OK. Now for the odd part:

“Guagenti added that none of the three thesps were contacted by the magazine before the story was published.”

We’re curious: How exactly would one go about contacting Farley these days? We recently went for a meeting, but he kept us waiting in the outer office all day.

– In Atlanta hip-hop, payola meets the treasure bath.

– Ay caruymba! In a hurry? Maybe you avoid Wilshire and La Brea come Monday, eh?

– I left my heart corpse in San Francisco: Documentary, or snuff film? You decide.

Occasionally, local news is worth a moment of your time. We said occasionally. To wit, a recent ABC 7 report here in L.A. to counter the surfeit of overseas rumors:

Quoting “inside sources,” national and international tabloid newspapers have gone with the story that Elizabeth Taylor is near death. That information has now been picked up and re-worded by various publications – mostly on-line sites. According to her publicist Elizabeth Taylor is not near death: Dick Guttman says that he can refute every allegation in these published reports. In fact, he says they didn’t get anything right.

This is actually pretty funny, because I’d thought Dick Guttman was dead. Dick’s so old, he was nearing retirement around the time “National Velvet” came out.

You gotta love the guy – still at it.

The tragic tale of Kaavya Viswanathan, the juiciest – albeit most unpronouncable – New York book scandal in recent memory today sent its ripples all the way to Hollywood:

Per Variety,

“For DreamWorks, the scandal arrived just after the studio received a first draft of a screenplay by Kara Holden. Once Viswanathan’s school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, revealed at least 40 glaring similarities between “Opal” and McCafferty’s earlier books, a promising project joined a Warner Bros. adaptation of James Frey‘s “A Million Little Pieces” on the movie-adaptation trash heap. While the studio initially contemplated acquiring ["Sloppy Firsts" author Megan] McCafferty’s book rights, days later DreamWorks was considered likely to cut its losses.”

The whole thing stinks to high Heaven. As the the New York Times pointed out a day ago, an editorial assistant at McCafferty’s publisher, Crown, Claudia Gabel, moved to Alloy – the “book packager” of “Opal” – where Gabel then helped develop the idea for Viswanathan’s book.

Aside from the unalloyed chutzpah Alloy has marshalled to leave Viswanathan twisting and humiliated in the wind, we also admire the utter audacity that DreamWorks displayed in such a morally ambiguous situation: We love the Opal story. Maybe we should just buy the other chick’s books?

Ah, Tinstletown: Faced with a corpse on the sidewalk, we simply step over the body and keep on walkin’.

We just spied this on MP3.com – a whopper of an accusation laid at the feet of Sony Music BMG – you know, the guys who settled their payola accusations only to get sued over copy protection?

Basically, both the Allman Brothers Band and Cheap Trick say they’re being shortchanged on digital music fees.

Viz,

“Sony Music is presently engaged in a widespread attempt to underpay its recording artists,” music attorney Brian Caplan said in a statement. “With the technological advancements in the music industry, where many people download songs to their iPods and other portable devices, it is essential that artists receive the royalty income to which they are entitled.”

It’s really hard to beleive Bertelsmann didn’t want to renew Andy Lack‘s contract, isn’t it?