A Star Is Corn: "Country Strong" & the Gwyneth Paltrow Gagfest

There needs to be some complicated noun (perhaps the Urban Dictionary can get on this, better than “hiberdating” or “internet coma”) to express the rather long-winded “feeling of revulsion when seeing overexposed celebrities in internet-news headlines that you’ve just become sick and tired of because you’ve seen their names once too often.” See what I mean? Into that category would be the (easy, sad) Lindsey Lohan, (awful, repulsive) Sarah Palin, and now (cloying, smug) Gwyneth Paltrow has a country western movie, Country Strong, yeehaw! I even like C&W music, the best kind, like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Willie Nelson. (Not to mention the terrific song, “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.,” which David Bryne used in the best Big Love episode ever.) But a whole film about a c&w star just out of rehab, with a plot that reads like a mutant hybrid of All About Eve and A Star Is Born? Oh, what the heck. I’ll watch it when it comes to satellite, just to hear the bad lines of hokey dialogue.