· Iron Man scores. Looking beneath the big guy's hood. Marvel's ready to make a movie out of anything they can slap a "Man" onto. Crushing Speed Racer into a little cube.
· Picturehouse and Warner Independent, they sleep with the indie fishes. We pick through the wreckage.
· Is Scientology® brand Baby Gruel hindering the development of Hollywood's next generation of disenturbulated superstars?
· Oh Wachowskiiiis...Come out, come out wherever you are!
· Who says Scarlett Johansson can't have it all? She owes it all to her five totally not-perving-on-her dads.
· Sumner Redstone extends a gilded olive branch to Tom Cruise.
· Susan Sarandon just gettin' by on biker tats and speed.
· Lindsay Lohan loses an $11,000 fur and a job in the span of one week, but neither were really hers to begin with.
· Twilight looks better than Lost Boys 2, but both could use a heavy dollop of Haim.
· If Barbara Walters thinks Oprah's heels are hard to maneuver, how did she handle the corset, Bunny ears, and tray?
· There's gold nuggets in them thar Hills!
· The wisdom of a John Cusack, Diablo Cody, or Bob Ross isn't all that different than you might think.
· Madonna is just another housewife who didn't figure out she's a lesbian until she hit her 50s.
· "And I'm proud to be an American/Where at least there's bikinis..."
· Gearing up for the Scheisse Video Trial of the Century.
· Team Taco Trucks!

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You know what sounds good right about now? No, besides a few glasses of Glenmorangie. Yep, that's right, a mouthwatering Dirt Sandwich. Defamer's resident Sandwich Artist, Molly McAleer, spent all week combing through oodles and oodles of high-calibre celebrity infotainment programming in search of the tastiest ingredients this side of a fresh crop of salvia. This week's installment features Prince William's rapidly eroding hairline, TMZ's (imagined) kidnapping of Paris Hilton, David Foster's truly brutal verbal pummeling of Idol reject Jason Castro and, of course, Lindsay Lohan's minknapping incident (which, naturally, Dina Lohan chalks up as part of the vast media conspiracy against her eldest daughter). Enjoy!

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PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week (depending on volume), so send them in early and often—without them, we'll surely be forced to endure another Pellicano trial! Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you saw Jessica Alba cut in the breakfast line at the Griddle Cafe.

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After all that hullabaloo following Liv Tyler's missing wedding ring (and missing date) at Monday's Costume Institute Gala, the dimpled rocker spawn has officially announced that she and husband of five years Royston Langdon "have confirmed their separation." Whether this means those divorce rumours from weeks ago will materialize or that the pair is just going on one of those godawful "breaks" that never work out (see: Swank/Lowe and Richards/Sheen) is unknown so far. But after we took a look at Liv's previous paramours, we have a feeling Tyler will have no problem finding a worthy suitor.

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Stopping by the heiress-friendly zone of the Ed Sullivan Theatre to plug her latest exciting venture—MTV's So You Want to Be Paris Hilton's New Top Friend or whatever—the Hottie or the Nottie star admitted she had never seen an episode of that network's massively popular realitainment, The Hills. It was a pronouncement so startling—where else do people like Hilton turn to fill the long hours between hair-extension-launch press conferences and the next SLR-hotboxing or pole-rocking opportunity?—that it instantly called to mind her blanket denial of having ever engaged in drug use of any kind during her post-incarceration Larry King Live interview. While both statements seem highly unlikely, King responded by voicing his scepticism on a later broadcast, while Letterman instead chose to hang himself in his office by Brooks Brothers necktie 30 minutes after taping. [Late Show with David Letterman]

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Just when we thought we had seen the best headline of the week over at BBC — "Great Tits Cope Well With Warming" (get your mind out of the gutter! It's about birds) — and the best-possible What Happens in Vegas dismissal (courtesy of a caustic Manohla Dargis), along comes Time Magazine to combine the two distinctions in one revelatory piece of film criticism entitled "What Happens in Vegas Stays Sucky":

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The following email, which was sent to me by Intrepid Defamer Videographer™ Molly McAleer, arrived in my inbox sometime during the middle of last night. That is all the context you need at this point:

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After only three days, the teaser trailer for Twilight — that highly anticipated franchise initially classified as the "new Harry Potter" — racked up more than two million views on the film's MySpace page. As industry insiders have noted, the vampire flick may break the record of 4.1 million first week views set by Indy 4 earlier this year. But after viewing Twilight's trailer for ourselves, we couldn't care less about records or the fate of Indiana What's His Name. Why? The folks at Summit Entertainment managed to create excitement (and widespread teen titillation) not by appealing to HP dorks or Narnia obsessives, but rather by going the Gossip Girl route and putting together an ensemble cast comprised of barely known and ridiculously hot actors. Take a gander at what appears to be a fantastical and surprisingly romantic Tim Burton-esque world after the jump.

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ICU Nerf-tag warrior Nick Hogan has received his sentence in a Tampa courtroom today: eight months in Florida county jail, five years' probation and 500 hours community service, plus his licence revoked for three years. We hope this comes as a harsh wake-up call to all those street-racers among you: Your irresponsible actions do have consequences, like sitting around behind bars for a couple weeks until overcrowding gets you an early release, and you're forced to wait until your 21st birthday for that rematch with the guy in the suped-up Mitsubishi Eclipse with the "BRNTR8R" plates. [People]

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The heartiest of Defamer congratulations go out today to the marketers behind The Dark Knight and Iron Man, whose savvy trailers have now captivated legions of inhaler-clutching fanboys and the highly discriminating eyes of those judging the Golden Trailer Awards. The films claimed the top prizes in the Action and Summer Blockbuster categories respectively at last night's ceremony at the Orpheum; other notable winners included Tropic Thunder (Comedy), No Country For Old Men (Drama), Atonement (Romance) and, in a miracle of better-late-than-never recognition, The Assassination of Jesse James took home the evening's Best Voice-Over hardware. Even the Weinsteins didn't go home empty-handed, as their teaser for Awake won the Golden Fleece prize for best false advertsing. Way to go, Harvey; we hope you can remember where you put the key to the trophy case. [Golden Trailers via Spout Blog]

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In a continuing creative victory for horse-geezered men around the world, HBO has brought Alexander Payne on board as the director of its new series Hung. Picked up by the network less than a month ago, the dark comedy is about "a well-endowed man ... who was once a high school sports legend, but is now plodding along in middle age as a struggling father and high school basketball coach. His luck begins to change, however, when he figures out a way to use his best asset." Or, as we hear creators Colette Burson and Dmitry Lipkin pitched it, "Kind of like Sideways, but with a huge dick where the pinot noir goes."

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· We're not really sure how studios divvy up video game titles, deciding a Postal or Bloodrayne needs to land on the pile with flies buzzing around it marked "For Uwe," while saving a property like Bioshock for a crowd-pleasing effects wizard like Gore Verbinski, but there you have it: Verbinksi will direct Universal's big-screen adaptation. (We know, we know: It's a classic. Release it from its Microsoft shackles, so we can at least all be on the same page.) [Variety]
· Alexander Payne has been attached to direct the buzzed-about pilot Hung—featuring a well-endowed protagonist who "figures out a way to use his best asset"—for HBO. His agents are currently awaiting their package fee. Rimshot! [Variety]

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Oliver Stone's drive to get his Bush biopic W in front of audiences before Election Day acquired new momentum on Thursday — if you can believe it. And we guess we have no choice but to wait and see if the director and Lionsgate, which yesterday picked up the film's North American distribution rights, can place their prismatic presidential quasi-drama on screens by their proposed Oct. 17 release date. Oct. 17! Stone hasn't even cast Dick Cheney yet — for a film that starts shooting Monday. Not a problem, insists the filmmaker, who's still spinning on the big picture:

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In the mood for a downer? A South Florida NBC affiliate's website is live-broadcasting Nick Hogan's reckless driving trial. The girlfriend (almost fiancée—he was saving up for the engagement ring) of crash victim John Graziano has already tearfully read a statement describing Hogan's "stone face," revealed the meaning of his licence plate CEHSP2 ("Capable of eluding high-speed pursuit,") and, most damningly, testified, "Three weeks after the accident, Nick showed his remorse...by bringing in board games, razor scooters, Nerf guns to shoot people with, and skateboards. I'm not exactly sure who rides scooters and skateboards in a...hospital's ICU unit knowing that their friend can't even breathe on his own." Join in on the fun now!

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We rarely like to take a mental walk down memory lane when it comes to the Most Nauseating Celebrity Hookups of all time, but news of the latest addition has unfortunately led us to revisit the grotesque list. We've already seen Liza Minelli and Phantom Of The Plastic Surgery Ward David Gest exchange saliva, Star Jones give Al an awkward lap dance and guiltily pleasured ourselves by witnessing wrinkly charmer Hugh Hefner and his thin lips attach themselves to the Girls Next Door. But after reading about one beach yoga-practicing, SUV-abandoning actor known for generally annoying everyone in Hollywood, and one scratchy-voiced "punk" rock chick known for generally hating everyone in Hollywood playing tongue twister in LA this past Tuesday, we may have a winner. The canoodlers in question, and just how far they went, after the jump:

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A particularly virile, voracious flock of vultures is apparently en route to Cannes, where next week we're told they plan to pre-sell territories to a sequel to Richard Kelly's revelatory 2001 cult classic Donnie Darko. Leading the charge are the sick, sick fuckers at Velvet Octopus, a UK-based sales agency/Faustian hellhole where ideas go to be tortured, mutilated, disemboweled and beheaded in return for an advance against foreign box office.

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Pictured centre in white suit and sunglasses is Playboy magazine editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, holding court on the West Coast's cleavage-friendly response to the Texas Polygamist Wives Compound. ("It's not. A compound. It's our hutch and it's our home.") He's surrounded by several generations of Playmates, gathered to celebrate the crowning of 2008's Playmate of the Year, Jayde Nicole (standing, in the purple milkmaid outfit). Hailing from Scarborough, Ontario, Nicole is just the latest in an illustrious line of Canadian superstar Playmates that includes Pamela Anderson, Shannon Tweed, and the doomed Dorothy Stratten—inspiring Frankie Muniz to recently quip that there must be "something magic in the maple syrup," as he made it in the grotto with a set of twins from Sault Ste. Marie. After the ceremony, guests were invited to join Hef on the lawn, where the former Playmate on the extreme lower right—the answer to what happens when you cross Loretta Swit with Cicciolina and a pneumatic air gun—lay on her back, treating everyone in attendance to a round of impromptu bouncy castle rides.

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We've already made our case for why the Wachowskis' overstuffed Gran Turismo-on-Salvia fever dream and Kutcher and Diaz's feature-length sexual-health instructional film will likely limp their way across the box office finish line this Monday. But that still leaves filmgoers with a taxing dilemma: Which of the two movies would they rather see less? Clocking in nearly neck-and-neck in their bottom-of-the-class Tomatometer scores, it's anyone's race. Perhaps mainstream film critics—and the pun-loving headline writers who really sell the bile—can help you decide:

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The eulogies are on following Thursday's twin killing of Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures by the executioners at Warner Bros. — or perhaps more accurately, by hooded, high-ranking Time Warner axeman Jeff Bewkes, to whom some today are attributing the death penalty that ended in nearly 75 lost jobs between the two mini-majors. While we still suspect that WIP's demise in cosmically linked to its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene.

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Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly source of tips, hints and handicapping for the latest in moviegoing. Today we catch up with projections for the not-so-mystifyingly buzz-less Speed Racer, gauge Iron Man's potential for a second straight week at No. 1, survey the landscape for our favourite underdog on the scene (hint: She shoots a mean game of pool), and browse the DVD stacks for noteworthy new titles. As always, our opinions are our own, but they're also right — Wachowskis be damned.

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