· Any chance you happened to catch the kayaking event during the Olympics earlier today? We're not sure why paddling down a Lazy River that exists entirely within the confines of the Bird's Nest is an Olympic sport, especially after seeing this video of a man who can jump on eggs without breaking them. Face it, not even Michael Phelps could pull that off. [YouTube via AOTS]
· For those of you desperate for a Bret & Jermaine fix while awaiting Season Two of Flight Of The Conchords, their new music video for "Ladies Of The World" ought to suffice. [MySpace]
· Cinephiles rejoice! Criterion will be releasing Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket on DVD and Blu-Ray in November. [Criterion via Skeet On Mischa]
· Janeane Garofalo and SNL's breakout rookie Casey Wilson are doing a shot-by-shot remake of Tango & Cash. We're not exactly sure why, but we sure hope they keep it up. [CC Insider]
· Twilight will take that pre-Thanksgiving slot that Harry Potter just vacated, thankyouverymuch. [Variety]

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Won't anybody listen to the "content kings" over at Warner Bros.? Despite the fact that they actually have plausible reasons for bumping Harry Potter to next year — i.e the writers' strike had left them with a summer 2009 slate that lacked a single tentpole release besides Terminator: Salvation — tongues are clucking that there simply must be ulterior motives at play. The latest to toss out a conspiracy theory is daffy Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who puts the blame squarely on Daniel Radcliffe's barely legal shoulders:

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Though dating Kelly Kapoor could drive any man to self-medicate, never did we think that Darryl from The Office had quite as extensive a stash as his portrayer, Craig Robinson, has been revealed to possess. According to TMZ, Robinson was busted late last month for driving under the influence, and what officers found led them to charge him with two felonies:

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Cheers to Ed McMahon, whose week started with more miserable news about lawsuits and money owed but ends with word that he's managed at least one solution: He's found a buyer for his Beverly Hills manse, which was mere weeks away from foreclosure after the beleaguered 85-year-old legend defaulted on $4.8 million in loans with Countrywide. Alas, the inevitable catch: The buyer is Donald Trump, who boasted to the LA Times about his "honor" in leasing the home back to McMahon, adding, "When I was at the Wharton School of Business, I'd watch him every night. How could this happen?"

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Welcome to another installment of Defamer's Dirt Sandwich, our weekly romp through the perilous wilderness of tabloid television. Each week, we task Molly McAleer with culling through close to a dozen hours of television to bring you, the loyal Defamer reader, the best two minutes of hilarious hyperbole that came across the airwaves. This week's episode does not disappoint, as diverse topics like Bernie Mac's death, Tropic Thunder's RetardGate and Manoj Night Shyamalan's public perception woes are covered. So while we've got you, why don't you take a bite and enjoy all the savory salaciousness you can handle. Bon appetit!

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Fun and Games: And now, another installment of "You Win One, You Lose One" (NBC Thursday night edition)! Win: 30 Rock's Tina Fey and The Office star Steve Carell are teaming up to play a married couple in the big-screen comedy Date Night! Lose: It's being directed by the hacky Shawn Levy, who made Big Fat Liar and Cheaper by the Dozen. Win: Fey's costar Alec Baldwin is in talks to romance Meryl Streep in an untitled comedy... Lose: ...written and directed by Nancy Meyers, so it will no doubt be a cream-coloured, two-hour-plus slog that looks like it came straight out of a Lands' End catalog. Thanks for playing! [Variety]

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Ashton Kutcher, Margaret Killer? Make what you will of the news that playwright/filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan is rewriting an Ashton Kutcher comedy — on one hand Lonergan has Oscar nominations for both script-doctoring Gangs of New York and guiding his fussy You Can Count on Me through the indie trenches, while on the other we hear he's been cooped up in an editing room, fighting off Fox Searchlight for nearly two years over his troubled Anna Paquin/Matt Damon (among many others) drama Margaret. We'd like to think his taste will light the way on Like Father, which will star Kutcher as a man whose animosity toward his father abates as they "coincidentally" raise infant sons and "are forced to go through the fatherhood experience together." And maybe it'll be great, but we trust our first impression here more than we necessarily trust Lonergan: With work like this holding him over, don't be surprised if his own baby Margaret never sees the light of day. [Variety]

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Though a lot of people have known Madonna intimately, few may have gotten as close to her as Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman. Picked to take over the pop superstar's acting role in the 1998 David Mamet play Speed-the-Plow, Huffman decided to inhabit Madonna's leftovers in a very unorthodox way. Says People:

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Look, we're old. Not "old" old, but more like "the Olympics were so much better in Los Angeles" old. And definitely not "Beatlemania" old, but old enough to wonder if the Jonas Brothers phenomenon is anything like what we've heard about Beatlemania. We honestly don't know — before today we'd never listened to a Jonas Brothers song, we've never seen them perform, we don't even know which is which, only that the moppiest-headed one occasionally receives photos of Miley Cyrus eating her skivvies.

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We have learned a great many things during this election year, but chief among them is that Republicans hate Hollywood (though not really). In fact, their vendetta against Tinseltown is so strong that they have now seized the means of production, which would at least explain the trailer for the upcoming right-wing comedy An American Carol — that is, if anything could explain An American Carol. A spoof of The Christmas Carol from Republican director David Zucker, it's the story of a Michael Moore-resembling filmmaker who is shown the error of his ways by a cast made up of Hollywood's biggest Republicans. If that description sounds a little dry, try these details on for size: the Moore stand-in comes to his senses when he is taught to kill members of the ACLU, and George Washington is played by Jon Voight. A closer look at the insanity, after the jump:

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Still reeling from their recent poster contretemps with self-declared marketing genius Dane Cook, the crew at Lionsgate was quick to reclaim its edge with yet another shrewd move on behalf of Oliver Stone's forthcoming W. Having successfully leaped from the innovative "Shreveport Arrest Phase" to the "Benson-esque Trailer Phase" of its campaign, a new step-and-repeat poster onslaught has taken over Denver — host city of this month's Democratic National Convention. The art, viewable after the jump, features Josh Brolin doing his best imperious-child act beneath the tagline "A life misunderestimated"; we expect its GOP Convention analogue — perhaps with the flight-suited Commander-in-Chief grinning alongside the even more succinct slogan "Four more months" — to infiltrate Minneapolis-St. Paul by the end of next week.

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Whoops: We bet the crew over at EW wishes they had a Time Turner right about now. Hot on the heels of Warner Bros.' announcement that they'll be spiriting Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to summer 2009, EW has released its fall 2008 movie preview featuring... Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Let's all agree to a Confundus Charm and pretend this never happened. [EW]

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Overbearing hype aside, Inglorious Bastards really wouldn't be a Quentin Tarantino film unless he revived at least one moribund career in the process. Enter Mike Myers, who is now confirmed to play British Gen. Ed Fenech, "a military mastermind who takes part in hatching a plot to wipe out Nazi leaders." It's a relatively small part, we're now told, with Fenech featured on only seven pages — 29 lines total — recruiting a Nazi killer reportedly tailored for Simon Pegg, who has yet to be officially attached.

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After releasing an initial set of publicity photos that were nothing more than a cruel tease, the CW has relented, cutting together a teaser trailer for the new 90210 that finally, finally gives the people what they've been waiting for: Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth, sometimes even in the same frame! While we have to give the network kudos (we figured they'd merely tease the presence of the actresses as though they were the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park), we must again protest the severe lack of screen time for the performer we really want to see: Jessica Walter, who is essentially reprising her soused Lucille Bluth character from Arrested Development. Tell you what, CW: if you guys can promise to release a scene where a withering Walter sniffs at the snacking Jennie Garth and says, "You want your belt to buckle, not your chair," we'll call it even. [The CW]

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]As if second-generation Hollywood underdog Rumer Willis doesn't have enough to contend with living in the long shadows of her dazzlingly successful biological parents and a stepfather three years her junior, there's also those little life-obstacles thrown at her that could have just as easily been avoided. To wit: her name, one of the earliest and most egregious examples of the eccentric-celebrity-baby-naming trend that gripped the industry in the '90s and has yet to show any signs of letting up. We point as evidence towards such recent additions to the Weird Celebrity Baby-Name Registry as Sunday Kidman-Urban, Honour Alba-Warren, Birdie Phillipps (daughter of Freaks and Geeks star Busy), and the unabashedly onomatopoeic Phlbbbbbbfffft Simpson, the not-yet-born offspring of mother Ashlee. From Page Six:

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After The Dark Knight filled out its ensemble cast with people like Eric Roberts and Anthony Michael Hall, we're sure that Christopher Nolan's office was besieged by headshots from every actor in Hollywood in dire need of a comeback. The latest is former 90210-er Brian Austin Green, who tells MTV Movies that he isn't interested in simply being tenth-billed; no, he's going for the brass ring and nominating himself to play the Riddler in the next film. There's just one catch: if they're going to cast him, they kind of need to let him know now...

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Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your bulletproof one-stop resource for the weekend in new moviegoing. Or sort of bulletproof — Pineapple Express burned us last week with a late slowdown, but we're preparing to bet the farm on The Dark Knight's fall from box-office supremacy by Sunday night. But is what's replacing it even any good? Yes and no, but we'll get to that, as we will with this week's best release off the beaten path and a look-see at new DVD releases for the tired, cheap and/or agoraphobic among us. As always, our opinions are our own, but as long they're right, what's to argue?

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