Hello, folks, Mark Lisanti here. I've returned from yet another all-too-brief hiatus from the blogging grind. But please don't think that I put aside my responsibilities to go cavorting in some hedonistic paradise where the blow is served in hollowed out coconuts and delivered to your cabana by a volcano-ready virgin. No, this was a working vacation. Unfortunately, a pretty comprehensive nondisclosure agreement prohibits me from divulging the details, but suffice it to say that when Brian Grazer offers you a million dollars to carve his likeness into a pumpkin, you call in sick to the day job and learn to love the feeling of seedy, orange guts running between your fingers.

Saturday's LAT provided us with another opportunity to play our favorite parlor game, Journalists Making Studio Executives Admit That Their Summer Movies Were Shitty. This latest round of insincere sackcloth-and-ashes fun stars Sony's Amy Pascal and Brian Grazer of Imagine, who do their part to promise the ticket-buying public through gritted teeth that this time, they really, really mean it when they say they're going to rededicate themselves to quality:

Wanting to ensure that his boss would look his best for Monday night's Flightplan premiere, producer Brian Grazer's Special Skin-Tightening Assistant cranked the winch on the back of Grazer's neck one too many times, rendering him unable to blink or close his mouth. Luckily, Grazer's Director of Emergency Facial Lubrication also attended the event, and periodically misted the power-players's face to prevent his gums or eyeballs from succumbing to any uncomfortable dryness.

· Given that Imagine Entertainment has signed fauxteur Brett Ratner to direct a heist flick/buddy comedy with Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, thus insuring that his extra-Rush Hour box office losing streak will be snapped, we are forced to conclude that Ratner has very, very incriminating photographs of Imagine's Ron Howard and Brian Grazer sexually humiliating prisoners at Guantanamo (i.e. hosting a screening of A Beautiful Mind), or some high-def video of the duo poisoning the water supply of half the San Fernando Valley. These are the only possible explanations for his hire. We're still trying to figure out what blackmail material Ratner found to land the X3 gig. [Variety]
· Bryan Singer screens Superman Returns footage at Comic-Con, hundreds of pairs of blue-and-red Underoos sufficiently creamed. [THR]
· Var calls Comic-Con a "big fat geek wedding." [Variety]
· Entourage gets a third season pick-up, and HBO head Chris Albrecht plans to hire more writers to squeeze out more than thirteen episodes a season. [THR]
· Former Fox TV head Gail Berman and OC creator Josh Schwartz reunite at The New Paramount, where Schwartz will attempt to channel his bankable facsimile of high school angst writing and directing a feature adaptation of the book Looking for Alaska. [Variety]

The NYT reports that the braintrust behind Cinderella Man met on Tuesday to try and make some sense of the movie's failure at the box office. (Of course, Russell Crowe's ill-timed bludgeoning of a hotel clerk didn't help, but wasn't seen as the deal-breaker.) Let the wringing of the hands, the gnashing of the teeth, and the wailing to a Creator who's cruelly indifferent to period boxing movies commence!

A reader dumps out the contents of the gift bag from a certain author/A-list war bride's book party for the whole internets to see. Unsurprisingly, the gratis knickknacks blur the line between the sublimely ridiculous must-have accoutrements of Hollywood wifehood and objects of ironic, yet somewhat conflicted, roman a clef writer scorn:

The Sunday NYT's pornucopia of Hollywood handjobs spilled over into the Sunday magazine, where screenwriter/novelist/Brian Grazer bride Gigi Levangie Grazer received the long-form profile treatment. Throughout her guided tour of the Hollywood Wife Lifestyle (plastic surgery consultations, nannys, "girls' nights," etc etc), writer Alex Witchel can't quite figure out how much of Grazer's "knowing outsider who still might get a brow lift" dance is genuine and how much is spin, as she identifies some Death-Star-level defense mechanisms:

Gigi Levangie Grazer, screenwriter, novelist, and Hollywood war bride of Imagine's Brian Grazer, offers the Rocky Mountain News a helpful guide to the intensive, potentially year-long beauty regimen that should be undertaken by any Oscar-quality arm candy worth the limo ride. A taste:

A reader scolded us for missing this story (we were drunk, etc etc) about Brian Grazer's potentially fatal flight to Sundance:

· Adam Baldwin joins cast of Fox drama The Inside as a "tough, seasoned FBI agent, a man's man with 25 years on the job." [THR]
· Lifetime movie of the week catches President Bush's eye, prompts him to pass the Video Voyeurism Protection Act. The act makes secretly taping people a federal crime, unless your name is Cheney. Perhaps more important though, is the revelation that the President is watching Lifetime (Television for Women (and Homos)), and can be communicated to through said outlet. Look out for the network's new series Get us the Fuck Out of Iraq, this spring. [THR]
· Oscar Ballots were sent out this weekend, and in the holiday mail rush, are sure to end up unfilled, on Hollywood's mantle, next to Brian Grazer's children. [THR]
· It's official: everyone got an iPod for Christmas, except you. (And except for those of you who got Sirius radios, to whom we say: ha ha!) [THR]

Defamer is proud to present Hollywood Holiday Cards, a (hopefully) recurring feature in which we share the warm holiday wishes of the entertainment industry's biggest players with the world.