Big Picture

'The Big Picture: AFI's Great American Movie Quiz' When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood Tickets: $11-$158 Information: (323) 850-2000 or http://www.hollywoodbowl.com

Re "In praise of maps that fold," Opinion, Feb. 3 Kudos to Simon Garfield and his love for paper maps. In addition to his keen observations about folding maps and their GPS cousins, consider that cellphone maps, while accurate and helpful in one's immediate environment, lack the big picture. You know where you are in a pinpoint sense, but not where you are in the world. With a paper map, you start with the big picture and zoom in to your location; not so with a map app. Missing are landmarks, near and far, as well as a sense of cardinal directions, all key to establishing and maintaining orientation.

A look at the teams that have qualified for the NFL playoffs and those still in contention through Sunday's games: DIVISION CHAMPIONS * Buffalo * Houston * Kansas City * San Francisco THEY'RE ALSO IN * Dallas * Denver * Detroit * Green Bay * New York Giants THEY'RE STILL ALIVE * Raiders * Miami * New York Jets * Pittsburgh * Minnesota * Philadelphia * New Orleans

We're watching the BCS championship game together Monday night in Lane Kiffin's USC office -- you know, the game the Trojans were going to be playing in Miami. It sounds silly, if not ridiculous, after the kind of season the Trojans have just experienced, but five months ago Kiffin and others were voting USC the No. 1 team in the country. Right now Miami feels millions rather than a couple of thousand miles away, a brooding Nick Saban on the TV screen, a winner of two of the previous three title games.

The education of Andrew Bynum continues on many fronts near the midpoint of his fourth NBA season. For Lakers special assistant coach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, it's a chance to emphasize the importance of the big picture. When they go over game video, often at Bynum's home, the league's all-time leading scorer details the significance of the other nine players on the court besides Bynum.

Re "Spiritual but not religious," Opinion, Dec. 28 Corinna Nicolaou looks backward in her quest for a "special kind of wisdom"; it is the religious who should look forward to her and other like-minded "Nones. " She contemplates the pervasive myth that Nones are "missing out. " I ask: Can religion propagate kindness without intolerance? Does it incline people "to see the big picture," or is a church a group of people encouraging each other that they no longer have to wonder?

I have the day off, recovering from a trip back East with the Lakers and old age. But I find myself writing because I cannot believe the idiotic things being written about Kobe Bryant. Now I know what you are thinking: The guy really does need a rest if he's defending Kobe Bryant. But ESPN's Chris Broussard and Fox's Jason Whitlock have done Kobe a disservice, both coming to the conclusion that Kobe is the reason for the Lakers disappointing everyone this season. Without Kobe being Kobe this season, the Lakers might as well make like the NHL and disappear.

Earlier this week, angered by a question about the return of an injured player, Lane Kiffin stormed out of a daily news conference after less than 30 seconds. I don't need that long to give him some advice. Chill out, dude. Stop sweating the small stuff. End these weekly tiffs with the media. Worry less about hiding injuries and more about hitting linebackers. You are distracting your team and clouding your mission. I called Kiffin Thursday about this growing mess, and, give him credit, he acknowledged his part in it. He admitted he was wrong to walk out of the news conference.

When I began writing this column in 2000, I was wringing my hands about what looked like a new low in the movie business. Sony Pictures was about to release "Charlie's Angels," a less-than-stellar remake of a less-than-venerable TV show. It sounded like a terrible idea, especially when I discovered that the studio had paid a whopping 17 writers to work on the film - including A-listers such as Akiva Goldsman and Susannah Grant, and a batch of"Seinfeld" vets who did a round-table joke writing session right before production started.

As the presidential campaign moves into high gear, politics is front and center these days in Hollywood. Warner Bros.chief Barry Meyer held a $2,500-a-head fundraiser on Sunday with Michelle Obama as its headliner. Harvey Weinstein just had a $35,800-a-head dinner that raised $2.4 million for President Obama, whom Weinstein dubbed the Paul Newman of American presidents. George Clooney hosted a fundraising dinner here in May that raised $15 million. Spike Lee, "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy and others have been rounding up the dollars at similar events.

The best thing you can say about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is that it's impossible to imagine it ever being investigated for campaign finance violations. While our two political parties are expected to each spend nearly a billion dollars in negative advertising to elect a president this November, the academy's upcoming presidential election proceeds with polite, almost quaint, rules. Next Tuesday, someone will be named as the academy's new president, succeeding Tom Sherak, who is termed out after three productive years as chief.

Just hours before 12 people died and dozens were wounded in the "Dark Knight Rises" movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., I was at a screening of "Gangster Squad," an upcomingWarner Bros. film about a war between 1949-era L.A. cops and the gangster Mickey Cohen. One of the bloodiest scenes in the film featured a scrum of gangsters nonchalantly shooting up a movie theater, causing a panic as they killed scores of innocent filmgoers. The studio has already cut the scene from the film's trailer and may edit it out of the movie, due in September.

I once asked a famous producer how he first became fascinated with Hollywood. His answer? "When I was 14, I got a subscription to Variety. " And no wonder. For more than a century, Variety was the most trusted brand in the entertainment industry, the bible of showbiz. But those days are gone. Media outlets everywhere are wrestling with how to generate revenue as readers have abandoned print for easy Web access to information. But Variety has been hit especially hard by its core audience's migration to the Internet.