The A-list movie-star incursion on Broadway this fall just got a little B-listier with the addition of Haley Joel Osment to the cast of American Buffalo, David Mamet's 1976 play set for revival in November. And we can't wait: For sheer envelope-pushing, neither Daniel Radcliffe's full-frontal horseplay nor Katie Holmes's Dawson-ization of Arthur Miller is likely to compare to their fellow ex-child star's profane verbal tussles with castmates Cedric the Entertainer and John Leguizamo — a duo whose characters entangle Osment's young, broke schemer Bob in a bluer-than-blue cascade of "cunts," "fucks" and other Sixth Sense-era unutterables. And all it'll cost Osment, 20, is the low, low price of a semester behind at NYU:

As we expect for most of the series throughout May, this week's edition of Defamer Attractions comes down to about five words: Iron Man, and everything else. Nevertheless, join our weekly survey of new releases for a guess at just how soundly the superhero will beat the competition down, as well as a look at the dog that never stood a chance, our favorite (OK, the only) Harmony Korine film of the last decade, and a run through the week's must-think-about-seeing DVD releases. As always, our opinions are our own, but they're also right. Blockbuster season makes it easy!

David Mamet is making fantastic time in his macho, myopic trot toward senility, first with his sloppy jeremiad against "brain-dead liberals" in a March issue of the Village Voice, and now in the new issue of Vanity Fair. In the magazine's traditional issue-ending Proust Questionnaire, the playwright / screenwriter / director brings his terse, complete sentences to bear on subjects from... well, Mamet can speak for himself:

Playwright/filmmaker David Mamet warned the press line at the premiere of his latest film Redbelt to refrain from making references to his prior work. Mamet told the studio's publicist to be on the watch for some wise ass from one of those "Extra Inside Access Entertainment" show who always does a horrible rendition of Alec Baldwin's monologue from Glengary Glen Ross. Mamet said that every time I hear the guy, it makes me feel as if I'm in a community college acting class; what did I ever do deserve this degree of a personal hell?

David Mamet, estimable playwright of certified masterpieces like American Buffalo and (in my humble opinion) The Cryptogram, really needs to shut the hell up. Well, at least he needs to stop writing essays like the one in this week's Village Voice, in which he meanders incoherently through an explanation of why he recently rid himself of his "brain-dead liberalism." Never mind that he's writing about brain-dead liberalism in a brain-dead liberal publication, it's really just the plain old technique of the piece that rankles. Mamet (to whom I once served very crisp bacon at a Newton, MA diner) has long been praised for his terse yet lyrical writing style (got him a Pulitzer!), but it does him no service here. He jumps willy nilly from point to point, anecdote to anecdote, losing his way every time. Maybe you more politically savvy, high-minded types can parse it better than I, but to me it seems to be just a weird, regressive attempt to publicize his new-ish Broadway play November. After the jump, my favorite paragraph from the essay, plus video of Mamet on Charlie Rose talking about Oleanna.

"David Mamet always sprays the word 'phucque' (the Gaelic spelling) throughout his dialogue. In this production, it's 27 times within the first three minutes. If Mamet ever wrote a religious play, nuns would probably be saying it, too. At the wave of laughter following the line, 'What the f - - - am I going to do with a time share in Aspen? I want to be president,' I toured the whole theater." Cindy Adams—still increasingly mad, still apparently wholly unedited—is under the odd impression that if David Mamet were to write a "religious" play (what is his Faustus adaptation, a sex farce?), it would be about nuns. Cindy! Everyone knows Mamet can't write women! [NYP]

Seriously, does everybody in the world have to be blogging? Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet will blog as the character from his latest play, November, for the duration of its run. Charles H.P. Smith is played by Nathan Lane and is a president in danger of not getting re-elected. So far, he has blogged exactly three Andy Rooney-ish observations such as, "The best that [stem cell] research could accomplish would be to prolong the lives of people who were going to die anyway. Is it worth the aggravation?" One might ask the same question of this promotional blog. [NYT]

· Tim Allen? David Mamet? Together on a "mixed martial arts drama"? Has the world gone totally fucking insane? [Variety]
· TV casting crisis! Close the borders! Foreigners are stealing roles on new Fall series that could be going to American actors. [THR]
· Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson team up to produce three digital 3-D features based on the Belgian cartoon Tintin. They'll direct one installment each, with the last going to Brett Ratner, guaranteeing the franchise will not live past their original vision for a trilogy. (Relax, we're kidding about Ratner. But in a world where Tim Allen and Mamet can collaborate, nothing seems impossible.) [Variety]
· The success of Ugly Betty earns budding TV mogul Salma Hayek a 2-year overall deal with ABC Studios. [THR]
· Adorable netlet The CW makes like the big-people channels, picking up the dramas Gossip Girl, Reaper, and Wild at Heart; Veronica Mars, however, remains on the bubble. [Variety]

Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker has been cleared of, well, being an Internet analyst during the boom. The bankers, Eliot! The bankers! Focus on the bankers! Not the analysts. The analysts are pawns, Eliot. Whores for The Fucking Man! [Sorry. Feeling a little David Mamet today.]
Morgan's Meeker not to be charged [Reuters]