Oh, Graydon Carter, you're a smart one. That Hollywood Issue idea was a stroke of genius: the covers, the portfolio, the mere fact that you can appear to put together a special "Hollywood" issue when, let's face it, every issue of VF is the Hollywood issue. When Carter finally steps down and the Tina vs. Graydon debate begins in earnest -- the Who Really Made Vanity Fair Great? debate -- a big fat stack of Hollywood Issues will make a compelling Exhibit A for Carter's advocates.

In fact, the Hollywood issue is such a purring publicity engine that it works even when...well, the individual parts aren't so great. And to be truthful, this year's issue feels like Selma Blair -- a bit thin. Sure, there's a great, long, Enron-for-Dummies story, but that doesn't really count, since it's not about Hollywood. And there's a great, short piece by producer Art Linson about the making of The Edge, the bear movie with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, which offers some valuable insight into why and how mediocre movies like The Edge get made. (And some funny stuff about Alec Baldwin and his beard.) And there's a good piece on vigilante films by the reliably good James Wolcott.

Otherwise, though, there's not much there there. The cover -- the vaunted, fought-over, much coveted cover -- works fine; VF has decided to return to the safe and idiot-proof Hot Young Starlets format. You might remember this format from such covers as "Hollywood Issue 1995" and "Hollywood Issue 1997."

As VF watchers know, the magazine has vacillated with its Hollywood Issue covers, wobbling between ones that feature established stars (busy schedules; finicky about who stands next to whom) and ones that feature unknown up-and-comers (wild cards; too likely to flame out; and, really, once you've opened the door to the Marley Sheltons of the world, you'll be answering pleading phone calls from publicists 'round the clock). So the question remains: stars, yes, but of what magnitude?

VF flirted for awhile with doing the "You don't know them yet, but you will soon" covers, but it resulted in one too many Vinessa Shaw and Norman Reedus and Sarah Wynter and that guy from Amistad. So last year, they switched to a "Legends" format, which was pretty canny, because how do you convince Gwyneth to come pose on a cover with a bunch of other people unless you tell her that it's a "Legends" cover? That she'll be appearing with other "legends"?

But maybe the legends were too hard to book or a little too weathered (the real legends, that is) for the tastes of the magazine's advertisers, because this year we're back to the happy compromise: young, fresh-faced actresses that you've already heard of, none of whom are such long shots that VF will end up looking stupid if and when they drop off the map six months hence. You've got your Kirsten Dunst, your Kate Beckinsale, and your Jennifer Connelly (on the cover-cover); Rachel Weisz, Brittany Murphy, and two-time "Hollywood Issue" cover includee Selma Blair (second fold); and Rosario Dawson, Christina Applegate, and Naomi Watts (third fold).

All pretty solid picks, though we worry a bit about that third fold: Watts is coming off a big buzz film that not a lot of America saw, so she could go the way of Linda Fiorentino if she's not careful. And we can't help wondering if Applegate wasn't part of a quid pro quo deal with some publicist -- after all, you don't see David "Bud Bundy" Faustino on the cover of Vanity Fair. And Rosario Dawson -- God bless her -- has been locked and loaded in the torpedo tube of stardom for quite awhile now, waiting to be launched; of course, Josie and the Pussycats was a misfire, so her hopes are now pinned on Men in Black II (again: think Fiorentino) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

All right, let's head inside.

One of our favourite things about the Hollywood Issue is the ads. Not the single-page ads, but the eight-page, card-stock, portfolio-style ads, in which big companies fork over huge clumps of cash to stars who are at exactly the level of fame at which they're willing to do a fake portfolio for huge clumps of cash. In other words, the Natasha Gregson Wagner level.

Our favourite of these campaigns is the Ermenegildo Zegna one titled "Style Defined," which features Steven Weber. (It's shown up in a few other mags as well.) No, we're not joking. Steven Weber! Not to steal the old hack comic line from that SNL sketch, but what advertising genius came up with this idea? Oh, what we would have given to be hidden under the table at that meeting, in which a klatsch of execs put their heads together to find the perfect spokesman. "Who is style defined?" they'd say. "Someone who represents classic elegance with a contemporary flair," they'd say. And then one guy says, "Hey! I know! That guy from Wings! No, the other one!" And, apparently, the other execs nodded their heads in agreement, and slapped each other's backs in glee over this coup, rather than staring at each other in disbelief and then shooting that one exec dead on the spot, which would have made much more sense.

Steven Weber: your agent deserves a huge raise. Really. Not just a fruit basket. Like, a new car or something. This must be so encouraging for all the aspiring actors out there: you too are only one mediocre sitcom and one eponymous flop away from wads of cash money as a spokesmodel for a foreign suit company that apparently doesn't know any better.

But on to the real stars, in the real Hollywood Portfolio -- that triumph of logistics that serves as the centerpiece of every Hollywood issue. Well, you know it's been a lean year when even this cavalcade of lovingly photographed celebrity aristocrats feels thin and underwhelming. This year's installment kicks off with a picture of Nicole "The Winner" Kidman, which is fine except that every magazine has already coronated her as last year's breakout star (what was she in 2000? Rosario Dawson?), and we've already seen a dozen photos of her and read a dozen fawning portraits about how she trumped Tom and triumphed over adversity and is the nerviest A-list actress going, etc. etc., as though she'd just won the Olympic 400 metres on crutches. In Berlin. In 1936.

Perhaps we're amnesic, but we don't remember anyone going apeshit over either Moulin Rouge! or The Others when they opened in theatres. They were both solid hits, sure, but hardly cultural phenomena. Unlike last year, when Russell Crowe had so clearly ascended to a new level of stardom on the backs of Gladiator and Dennis Quaid, this year Nicole Kidman feels like a default pick for star of the year -- as though someone added up the numbers and realized, Yeah, well, she did have a good year, I guess. And she did, we guess.

The rest of the portfolio is pretty unsurprising. There's Josh Hartnett, making his trademark, pursed-lip, Hartnettface -- the same one he made on VF's cover a few months back. (The face that says "Hey...Hmmm.") There's Halle Berry looking serious because, you know, she's all serious now. (Was Swordfish really that long ago?) There's a bunch of young hunks you can't tell apart who all starred in war movies. There's a shot of Benjamin Bratt running on the beach that we swear we saw in Us magazine in 1996. And there's quite a lot of lifetime-achievement-ish photos: Patricia Neal, Omar Sharif, Liz Taylor, Costa-Gavras, Richard Lester, Blake Edwards, and so on, which are fine except they make you think you've stumbled on some Legends of Yesteryear photo spread in a magazine called Hollywood Remembers.

But the photo that typifies the whole ho-hum package is the one with The Rock, shot by David LaChapelle. There's the Rock. There's LaChapelle's garish colours. There's a live bull. And there's a gnawing feeling that we've seen this all somewhere before, and we weren't really blown away then, either.

The boffo treat in this year's Portfolio is supposed to be the twenty-year reunion of the cast of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Of course, what you wonder when you hear about a project like this is: Did they really get all the stars back together again? And the answer is: Almost! So close! Sean Penn's there, and Anthony Edwards, and Eric Stoltz and Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judge Reinhold. And Phoebe Cates is there, too, and by God she hasn't aged a day. But, alas, no Nicolas Cage. No Nicolas Cage! Assumedly, he wouldn't participate because he's feuding with Sean Penn over some remarks Penn made about Cage wasting his talent and being a sell-out. The Rock, Con Air, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Captain Corelli's Mandolin -- a sellout? Penn was way out of line!

So while it's kind of nice to see all these people back together again, we just ended up feeling sad for the ones whose careers, for one reason or another, went nowhere, like Kelli Maroney and Brian Backer and Robert Romanus. No doubt some of them have led fulfilling out-of-the-spotlight lives (it is possible, people), but we had to wonder: Did they even bother to pretend that they might not be available for this photo? "Hmmm, photo shoot on the 23rd? That's when Penn can make it? Well, I'm really booked up in January. Let me get back to you."

We feel compelled to say, however, that we're judging this year's Hollywood Issue by the high standards set by issues in the past. And last year did feel a bit ho-hum all around, vis-à-vis Hollywood -- after all, is anyone excited about the prospect of hearing the words "Ron Howard, Oscar Winner"? For celeb-hungry freaks like ourselves, the Hollywood Issue is still like Christmas between two covers. It's just that this Christmas felt like the one where you got two packs of new underwear and a turtleneck.