With at least one major exception, it's been a relatively modest cycle for manufacturers of Oscar-season buzz. But one day into 2009, the new "hybrid quote" looks to revolutionize the Fine Art of Hype.

Via Towleroad, we bring this production still from The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, in which John Travolta is upstaged by two doomed cowboy lovers who appear to have wandered into the wrong movie.

Happy New Year, folks—or, as English-torturing songstress Courtney Love might blog it, "HAPPPPPY happy yr NEW happy." Love has posted a brand-new pair of wildly accusatory Myspace entries. Can we decipher them?

Jewel heist survivor Paris Hilton was spotted around Christmas getting cozy on consecutive nights with George Clooney, according to a shocking report from the Centers for Disease Control.

12/28 — VINNIE JONES of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties in full soccer kit at an IHOP in West LA with Hollywood United F.C. teammates. You heard me, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties! [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

After Viacom went blazingly public Wednesday with its threat of an MTV/Comedy Central/Nickelodeon blackout on Time Warner Cable, an 11th-hour truce settled the matter just in time for 2009.

Being a celebrity is a double-edged sword: you're often more likely to find yourself involved in ridiculous, well-publicized crime, but at least it's easy to get acquitted!

A note taped to Defamer HQ's door greeted us this morning — not an eviction notice as we feared, but rather just another Weinstein news dump announcing Inglourious Basterds' [sic] eyebrow-raising late-summer '09 release date.

1/1 — SCOTT FOLEY from The Unit engaging in some New Year's Day shopping with friends at Century City Mall. He's a handsome guy. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

Marky Mark was snapped once again by a creepily urine-curious paparazzo, this time on a golf course. The tinkle-splattered bush in question was then pruned by an industrious caddy, who'll later put the Ziploc-sealed clipping up for sale on eBay in a bogus charity auction for the nonexistent "Mark Wahlberg Incontinence Research Fund." Don't be fooled.

Apparently, Hugh Jackman would prefer his career uncapsized, as Variety notes he has pulled out of Steven Soderbergh's upcoming 3-D musical, Cleo (citing scoffed-at "scheduling conflicts"). So who in Hollywood can replace him?

We hope your NYE was as joyous, wasted, and overstuffed as ours was, and your First Hangover of 2009—which felt like a tiny monkey putting up drywall inside our skull—has abated.

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your radically truncated guide to what's new, noteworthy and/or foolhardy enough to open on the last weekend of the year at the movies.

For this, our final post of 2008, join Defamer in recalling the heroes, history and other Earth-shattering phenomena that raised the bar for years of pop culture to come.

New Year's Eve is one of the worst television days of the year: year-in-review montages, college football, competing countdown shows. This lack of thoughtful programming is as good a reason to drink as any.

As we wind down another year of mind-boggling Hollywood highs and lows, we thought we'd crack open the 2008 archives and bring you some of our personal favorites. Our choices after the jump:

In Newbury, Vermont, nobody touches you. They're always behind this metal and glass. Matt Dillon thinks we miss that touch so much, he drove at an insane 106 mph before being busted by police yesterday.

Four months ago we suggested that Viggo Mortensen had three chances in 2008 to repeat as an Oscar nominee. As the last of those chances expires today, all we can say is, "Maybe next year?"

An affliction as unusual as Jeremy Piven's sushi poisoning demands a treatment that's equally unorthodox. And so it is that Piven has begun a rigorous medical trial to find models he wants to (therapeutically) bang.

12/30 — Saw MEG RYAN at the Brentwood Country Mart today at lunch. She was eating with a nondescript couple at City Bakery. She is too skinny and looked mean. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]