Bagger smells "Dreamgirls" cave

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"The Bagger" -- a.k.a., N.Y. Times Oscar columnist David Carr -- has tallied up all the positive-attitude L.A. Times articles about Dreamgirls and concluded that, column-inch for column-inch, the film is getting a bit more cunnilingus from that paper than may be absolutely warranted.

Carr also suspects that maybe, just maybe, L.A. Times staffers are glad- handing Bill Condon's widely-liked musical a bit more than necessary with the idea that David Geffen, the film's somewhat fearsome, Godfather-like producer, may own the Times before too long...maybe.

"The LAT and its Oscar website, The Envelope, has dived deeper into the [Dreamgirls] tank and more often than almost any media outlet," Carr writes. "The Bagger is no cynic -- he actually enjoyed We are Marshall -- but he has watched story after story emerge from his esteemed West Coast competitor and wondered if someone, certainly not him, would begin to think thusly:

"Dreamgirls is the long-beloved project of David Geffen, the Los Angeles macher who owned the film rights to the story and who has been rumored to be in talks with the Chandler family about teaming up on a bid for the LAT. No one knows what, if anything, Mr. Geffen is going to do, but if you worked at the paper, might not the possibility that you would soon be calling him boss or He Who Must Be Obeyed have an impact on the amount of attention Dreamgirls gets?"