· Oh. Ma. Ga. Ladies and gentlemen: Britney Spears, lean, mean, and executing complicated choreography. Is she actually going to perform at the VMAs? You'll just have to tune in to our liveblog—from the actual theatre, all live-like!—to find out. [MSN Video]
· "The item in today's 'Drudge Report' is categorically untrue," Winfrey wrote. "There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show...I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over." Translation: That lipstick-wearing pitbull gets this lipstick-wearing pitbull ratings, not the other way around. [ABC News]
· Because we can never get enough, here's an entire gallery of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist star Michael Cera looking adorable next to someone else. [Getty Images]
· Let Mary Hart take you on a tour of ET's all-new, state-of-the-art, super-duper hi-def set! Yup, that oughta hold 'er for another 50 years. [ET Online]
· And finally, we'd like you to meet John Travis, the indestructible singing delivery guy. We just hope it's never on the road. [YouTube]

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Out of the 2006 Oscars came many things, among them an unlikely two-horse sprint—one gay, one racist and mangled—between Brokeback Mountain and Crash for Best Picture. Crash would win, its tapestry of bigoted Angelenos embarking upon a futuristic death race for ultimate ethnic supremacy striking a chord in many Academy voters. Some time passed, and news came down the transom that Crash would become a weekly TV series on Starz. (While Brokeback Mountain: The Series never really progressed past the point of some preliminary interest at that network's specialty offshoot, Gayz.) Well, friends, we're thrilled to now present for you the Crash series trailer. It might not have Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock, but it does have Dennis Hopper—who told us personally about his enthusiasm for the series ("We had an orgy the other day. For me it's a joy,"), and who in it delivers what is sure to become his signature phrase ("OOOhhh—I'm scared of a black man with a gun!") with admirable aplomb. [Crash]

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Touted as a historical television fundraiser and awareness drive across three networks (Fox is sitting it out — stay classy, Rupe!), tonight's Stand Up For Cancer event was momentous enough to commandeer halftime during Thursday's NFL season opener at Giants Stadium. But it wasn't quite momentous enough to keep the sold-out crowd from cascading jeers onto unpopular Giants co-owner/Oscar-winning producer Steve Tisch and innocent bystander Jeff Zucker, whose eventual introduction and comments were only slightly better regarded than his host's, according to a Defamer operative in attendance. (Seriously — did Zucker's infamous My Name is Earl introduction get around to that many people?) A fan captured the video featured after the jump, featuring plenty of middle fingers, chants of "asshole" and a much more benevolent welcome for Zucker-preceder Christie Brinkley. Tough crowd, indeed. [YouTube]

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Now that those exhausting political conventions are finally over, we can get back to the issues that really matter to hardworking Americans: sex addiction, huge breasts, and plastic surgery! That's right, it's time for another installment of Dirt Sandwich, prepared by Defamer videographer (and viable third party candidate) Molly McAleer. What's her platform, you ask? Why, it's to make sure that ordinary people have access to both universal health care and celebrity clip montages. After all, when that phone rings at 3AM, we need a candidate who knows how to deal with Jennie Garth's dramatic 10-pound weight gain, not one who'll have to learn about it on the job. That's the kind of experience you'll be getting from Molly McAleer on Day One — won't you cast your vote today?

Jump!

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In its bid to top the deceptively simple "I"m a Mac/I'm a PC" ad campaign of its rival, Microsoft went big, hiring auteur Michel Gondry to direct a commercial featuring Jerry Seinfeld alongside Bill Gates (update: we've been informed that though Gondry shot at least one commercial for this campaign, this particular ad was crafted by director Bryan Buckley). For his involvement, Seinfeld was handsomely compensated to the tune of $10 million — a big number, but small potatoes compared to the whole ad campaign's rumoured $300 million budget. For that kind of cash, you might expect the end result to be an orgy of CGI with all participants covered in a thick sheen of liquid gold. However, Microsoft had something considerably quieter and more head-scratching in mind. Take a look at the lackadaisical proceedings and then try to physically restrain yourself from bolting out the door to buy a PC. That is what's being advertised, isn't it? [Microsoft]

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When the Wild Things Are: For those waiting for a shred of good news to emerge from the long industrial nightmare that is the Where the Wild Things Are release date saga, today might be your day. Warner Bros has reportedly announced Spike Jonze's troubled fantasy will finally land in theatres on Oct. 19, 2009 — almost a year after its original date, which Warners scuttled for re-shoots that didn't seem help matters much as they dragged on. It's too long a wait for us to hold our breath, but we'll keep quiet from here lest some WTWTA curse abides. You can never be too careful. [Coming Soon via Vulture]

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Hollywood can't win for losing these days with the German people, whose extra-defending litigious streak has nothing on the wounded national pride recently suffered after readings of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards screenplay. While the thing has gathered dust on our computer desktop since midsummer, it's being voraciously consumed in Starbuchsens, on MeinSpace and around other social-gathering hotspots around the country; the ensuing national controversy condemns "scenes of vengeful Americans bashing, scalping, shooting and strangling German soldiers" and — worse yet — the almost certain state subsidies promised to the Deutschland-based production:

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While regular Nikki Finke readers know she don't do geek, you'd be forgiven for assuming from today's column that she occasionally dabbles in dweeb: Watch as she churns a Spidey Wiki's worth of Peter Parker biographical material cross-referenced with the latest villain indexes into the mother of all Spider-Man 4 exclusives, its vital insider information fed to her in the basement of a Century City parking structure by an anonymous figure known only as Deep Flack.
The basics:
· Spider-Man 4, based on a screenplay by Zodiac writer Jamie Vanderbilt, is a go, with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire on board.
· Kirsten Dunst's character is in the script, but hasn't yet signed on.
· The "black costume" won't return.
· They may shoot 4 and 5 back-to-back.
As for villains, well, we'll leave you now to Finke's capable deductive services:

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While these parts have been known to house a predatory cougar or two, nothing could have prepared us for the family of bobcats who have moved into a foreclosed home in Lake Elsinore. The brood — at least two adult cats and three kittens — have lived in the house for weeks, sunning themselves on an outside wall and hanging out by the koi pond. "They are great neighbors," said local Scott Brown, "and as long as they don't want to baby-sit my kids, it's not a problem." That's how it starts, Scott, but before you know it, you're forced to drag your autistic young brother through the house in a desperate attempt at survival. Be wary. [LAT]

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Though we noted a while back that Tina Fey as Liz Lemon and VP candidate Sarah Palin share more than a passing resemblance, we were quick to point out their dramatic differences on issues like gay marriage, the economy, and crappy exes. Our Liz Lemon is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, we insisted — until Good as You reminded us that in a self-flagellating monologue during season one of 30 Rock, Lemon admitted that though she might tell her friends she was supporting Barack Obama, she'd likely cast a secret vote for John McCain. Is Fey, then, that much-pursued Hillary voter who can be lured to John McCain by nothing more than a fellow set of horn-rimmed glasses? Perhaps that Life cover shoot was more prescient than we realized... [Good as You]

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On a clear day Robin Williams can see forever — or at least to Alaska, from which Sarah Palin's fiefdom crept souther and souther until going absolutely radioactive this week in St. Paul. Assessing the phenomenon last night on Letterman, Williams alluded to the hard questions in its wake; to wit, how does a mother of five find time to hunt caribou? And what exactly does set a "snow machine" champion like Todd Palin apart from lesser men? It's one of the comic's more inspired tangents of late, and one that reminded us how little the issues really matter when we can conceivably have a vice president who can play wineglasses like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality. This politics thing gets easier for us every day. [CBS]

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Now that the McCain/Palin ticket has usurped Barack Obama to become the official celebrity story of the day, actual celebrities are weighing in on Palin, and the reception is mixed. Following in the footsteps of Palin critics Lindsay Lohan and Albert Brooks, here's the latest roundup of stars going political:

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· Tom Cruise and UA have bought the rights to The Monster of Florence, about a serial killer responsible for eight double-homicides between 1968 and 1985. No word yet on whether Tom would play the monster, or Florence, or (spoiler alert) both! [Variety]
· Denzel Washington will star in The Book of Eli, set in the near future, when "America is a wasteland and a lone warrior fights to bring society the knowledge that is key to its redemption." Denzel's good, but he's not convincing Alaskan hockey mum good etc. etc. [THR]
· OK, here's the thing America. Germany loves your movies and movie production dollars. But not when they involve sadistically taking out your WWII issues on innocent make-believe Nazis! [THR]
· Robert DeNiro made it to the set of Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness, and then abruptly dropped out. Said a spokesman, "Sometimes things don't work out; it's called creative differences." Coincidentally, that's the last thing Don Fanucci heard before getting shot in the face. [Variety]
· The Beijing Olympics had an audience of 4.7 billion viewers, or roughly 70% of the Earth's population, or approximately half the viewers who tuned in to see which David would take the Idol crown. NBC must be thrilled! [THR]

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Who's the Bigger Celebrity Now? The Hollywood Reporter sends word that John McCain's nomination acceptance speech broadcast from the GOP Convention was the most-watched acceptance address in history, surpassing Barack Obama's Aug. 28 speech by 500,000 viewers: 38.9 million to 38.4 million. The Republicans had more than wind in their sails, though; momentum from Sarah Palin's blockbuster appearance Wednesday night worked together with a lead-in from the NFL season opener, which mainlined more than 13 million viewers straight into McCain's convention-closing remarks on NBC. Fun fact: The speech outdrew George W. Bush's 2004 appearance by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The GOP is a hit! Still! [THR Feed]

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Though ladykiller VMAs host Russell Brand is certainly no stranger to female anatomy, his elephant-starring VMAs commercial with Britney Spears was nearly waylaid when he became obsessed with, as he puts it, one "terrifying vagina." In a chat with the Ebert-usurping Ben Lyons, Brand details how the elephant's mammoth sexual orifice nearly blew his mind, causing him to be late to an initial meeting with Spears (and subsequently leading the confused pop singer to ID him on-air as "Russell Brown"). With colorful anecdotes like these, the Defamer liveblog of this Sunday's VMAs should be a breeze; most of all, we can't wait until an onstage Brand takes the Jonas Brothers aside to demonstrate the colorful things an ambitious trio is really capable of. [MTV]

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While slappies like Viggo Mortensen hedge their Oscar '08 futures with something close to a film per month, we much prefer the bombast of all-or-nothing awards-season power hitters like Daniel Day-Lewis and Mickey Rourke. Yes, we wrote Mickey Rourke — he of the inflated face, reckless scooter piloting, and now of the acclaimed Darren Aronofsky film The Wrestler, a stirring Venice Film Festival success that Variety pumped as featuring "a galvanizing, humorous, deeply moving portrait that instantly takes its place among the great, iconic screen performances":

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So Mad Men creator/EP/spiritual shepherd Matthew Weiner realises he's sitting on something pretty special with his cast of desk-hopping, Brylcreemed creatives over at Sterling Cooper. Perhaps it was the 16 Emmy nominations that tipped him off. ("Don't think of them as Emmy awards," his inner Don Draper will intone on the big night, "Think of them as tiny angels, flapping their pointy wings to a place where fear doesn't live. They're saying, 'You are OK, Matt...It's all...OK.'") Weiner's contract with the show's studio, Lionsgate TV, is up at the end of this season, and Variety reports he's been shopping himself around town to the highest bidder:

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Perhaps it's just practice for the sapphic VMAs cameo that MTV wants her to make, but part-time actress Lindsay Lohan was snapped smooching Samantha Ronson in Manhattan yesterday. The development will no doubt please LAPD Chief William Bratton, who correctly intuited that Lohan "going gay" would somehow spirit her away from the more aggressive paparazzi in Los Angeles, though there is still no word on what father Michael Lohan thinks of the photo (we're sure, though, that a statement is incoming). Meanwhile, Playboy has offered Lohan a series of less tender snapshots, and they made a surprisingly low first offer:

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Why, it seems like it was only yesterday (or 2003) that actor Michael Cera was just an unassuming Bluth, content to run the family banana stand and do whatever was asked of him by Jason Bateman with a minimum of protest. Today, however, Cera is a fledgling movie star, with two big hits on his resume (Superbad and Juno) and a romantic comedy (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) yet to come. It's while he was promoting the latter that he broke ranks with Bateman for the first time, shooting down the idea that the Arrested Development movie would film next year and stating that he wouldn't want to be a part of it anyway. Says the National Post:

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Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and potentially nausea-inducing at the movies. If summer was really just a heady four-month industry bender of superheroes and the occasional Sex romp, then consider this week the hangover: The brutal post-Labor Day doldrums, when phoner-inner Nic Cage has the box office to himself, our underdog is an ethnic punchline, and we want to to do nothing but shut ourselves in with a few of this week's only slightly more intriguing DVD releases. So read on for a remedy; as always, our opinions are our own, but let's just assume we're all in agreement this time around. It's kind of hard to screw up a week like this.

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Via the Copyranter blog, we bring you this ingenious, if kind of gross, marketing effort for an upcoming showing of Knocked Up on New Zealand TV. It mounts a living, breathing recreation of a sperm's penetration of the oocyte using a diorama incorporating tadpoles and a fish food-stuffed egg-sponge. And while we'd hate to see what kind of baby results from sperms that look like that, we do think this adverquarium could have a lengthy second life as a handy visual learning aid for Sarah Palin, available to wheel out every time she needs to explain to the American public when life precisely begins. Click the thumbnail to view the marvels of science at full size.

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