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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The day's fastest-spreading casting rumour intrigues as much for its potential for on-screen carnage as its requisite off-screen tragedy: The man who originated Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street has Billy Bob Thornton pegged to portray the razor-fingered villain in a planned remake. Robert Englund doesn't sound too upset about it, either, informing JoBlo that the Michael Bay-produced reimagining would treat Wes Craven's original with the hacky, high-gloss dignity it deserved 25 years ago. Englund stopped short of suggesting he'd join the film, of course, lest he subject himself to Thornton's infamous scythe-handling clumsiness.

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It seems like only yesterday that Deepak Chopra flexed his philosophical muscle in the name of The Love Guru, deflecting rumours of its anti-Hindu undercurrents in a zinger of an essay on BeliefNet: "Silliness often has wisdom hidden just beneath the surface — perhaps The Love Guru will, also, since Myers laced his Austin Powers farce with a message about tolerance — but if you can't accept silliness in the first place, you are likely to be immune to wisdom, too."

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After the unfortunate reception for The Love Guru, it's just too easy to write off New Line's prospective Austin Powers revival (which Mike Myers is reportedly working on for New Line with former series collaborator Mike McCullers) as yet another ill-advised folly belching the black smoke of Myers's career. In fact, taken as merely a part of the larger phenomenon we at Defamer like to call The End of Ideas, the Powers franchise is but a speck of the shit on Hollywood's collective bathroom wall — a tableau diligently studied today by the haz-mat crew at Entertainment Weekly.

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· And now for some non-earthquake-related Big Brother rumbles: In one corner, we have 75-year-old contestant (and the oldest person on CBS since Murder, She Wrote), Jerry. In the other, we have professional "mixologist" Memphis, precisely one-third Jerry's age. We won't tell you how it plays out, except to say so long as you're glimpsing three-quarters-of-a-century-old armpit, Jerry's winning. [Big Brother]
· A fourth Austin Powers is reportedly being written by Mike Myers. It's a "very personal [take] with a father and son theme loosely based on his own life," meaning it's sure to feature a scene in which the old Mini Me is tossed around in the backyard. [Deadline Hollywood]
· In honour of Discovery Channel's Shark Week, a chat with a Great White. [edithzimmerman.com]
· Hitting every stop on the Interactive Ben Kingsley Accent Map would wear out even the sturdiest Amazing Race contestants. [bestweekever.tv]
· Hey—bear running around a track in high heels! [Jezebel]

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It's that time of year again, when Hollywood's biggest stars harvest their multiplex crops, drop the hammer on their mums and size up their places among Forbes's annual list of highest-paid movie stars. As we've come to expect, it's Will Smith's world, with the megastar and noted Scientology-school patron raking in $80 million since last June; the remainder of the list comprises mainstays like Johnny Depp ($72 million) and Leonardo DiCaprio ($45 million) along with slip-sliding shockers including Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers, each tied at $55 million thanks in large part to the Shrek franchise's enduring success.

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Life is rough these days for Verne Troyer, the diminutive, sex-tape-making, back-tax-owing (allegedly), bomb-starring actor whose bout with the tabloids took an introspective turn Tuesday in an interview with E! Denying he had anything to do with the "unauthorized" release of his videotaped tongue-stabbing of ex-girlfriend Ranae Shrider, a sober Troyer inventoried Shrider's motivations for supposedly dropping the tryst at TMZ's doorstep — and, in the process, both defused and started harrowing rumours we could have gone the rest of our lives without conjuring:

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It occurred to us here at Defamer HQ that The Love Guru—by all accounts, the most execrable film sediment to coat our cultural shores in eons—marks something of an Unfunniness Benchmark for its dwarfhandling star, Mike Myers. Which got us a-thinking: Was he ever funny? What if we could map the relative comedic trajectory of his collected oeuvre over time and space, in a scientifically controlled environment?

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With the summer solstice finally arriving in our rear-view mirrors over the weekend, join us in recognising the first real box-office hits and misses of the season:

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Seriously, there is such a thing as anti-comedy — the type of willful unfunniness we've been gleaning from every trailer, teaser and report emerging from the cultural black hole that is The Love Guru. Not that we require his validation, but the concept appeared again today in the highest-profile forum yet: A.O. Scott's slightly displeased NY Times review:

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