· Don Cheadle will replace Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2, whose deal with Marvel fell through over "financial differences." Perhaps it came down to salary, but we're pretty sure Marvel wasn't so hot on the stipulation that Howard's Seal/Heidi Klum song become the sequel's "official love theme." [THR] · The Daily Show's married correspondents Jason Jones and Samantha Bee are creating a CBS sitcom for themselves about "a celebrity chef (played by Jones) and the two women who run his cooking empire (one of whom will be played by Bee)." [Variety] After the jump: Which two new The CW series are circling the toilet?· The National Assn. of Theater Owners is abandoning ShoWest, and starting its own convention beginning in 2011, where they'll award the NATO Breakout Star of the Year Award—the closest Chace Crawford will ever come to actively contributing to world peace. [Variety] · French-Canadian comedy hit Taxi 0-22, about an Archie Bunkerish cab driver with a gay son, is being shopped around to American TV studios. [THR] · Two new CW series, Easy Money and Valentine, Inc., have been put on hiatus "to give writers time to catch up on scripts." Take your time, guys! [THR]

Paging Dr. Redstone: Viacom president Philippe Dauman was optimistic Tuesday in Cannes, where he downplayed Sumner Redstone's move this week to sell off $233 million in stock to help pay down the company's debt. We guess it is better than last week's estimate of $400 million, but Dauman isn't letting numbers get in the way: "If you have a life-threatening crisis," he said, "there is no one on the planet you would more want to have by your side, helping you figure out how to get out of it, than Sumner Redstone." Oh, please, Philippe — we love Sumner, too, but everyone knows that nobody assuages A-list panic better than Werner Herzog. [Variety]

The Weinstein Company today announced that Quentin Tarantino's WWII epic Inglorious Bastards has begun principal photography, and the accompanying press release was notable for two reasons. First, the official announcement spells the title as "INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS," aping the misspelling on the title page of the widely-leaked (and poorly spelled) script; does this mean that the film will goose-step into theaters bearing the same appellation? Still, there was one other tidbit tucked into the end of the film's cast roundup that we're shocked to find wasn't the subject of its very own, trumpet-blaring announcement:The 26th and final name listed in the cast? None other than Dancing with the Stars comeback queen Cloris Leachman, who will hopefully revive the German accent that has served her so well in both Young Frankenstein and Broken Lizard's Beerfest. Sure, sure, we're also excited that Goodbye Lenin's Daniel Brühl has been confirmed (he's our bet to succeed Gael Garcia Bernal as the next hot foreign import) and that Mélanie Laurent has been announced as female lead Shoshanna, but let's face it: all other news pales in comparison to the Cloris. Quentin, we eagerly look forward to her paso doble/Batusi dance scene — don't let us down!

Click to viewBoomp3.com The creative and sales departments of popular fictitious advertising agency Sterling Cooper hit the back 9 for a lil’ company retreat on Monday afternoon. The typically Mad Men became a group of Mellow Men despite going over—very over—par on their outing. The usually dapper Don Draper enjoyed a relaxed look. Draper said, “No one bothered us. No one asked me for advice or to come home with them. It was refreshing.” [Photo Credit: Getty Images] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

As a 14-year-old transitioning to more grown-up roles, child star Dakota Fanning has an important choice to make: Does she want to be a Jodie Foster or a Lindsay Lohan? (Also, lesbian leanings in former child actresses: discuss) We've always pulled for the precocious Fanning, so you can imagine how we felt yesterday when we discovered that Rowan Woods, the director of Dakota's upcoming Winged Creatures, had called out the actress as a tantrum-throwing "diva" whose performance in the film turned out to be a "disaster" that necessitated some judicious editing. Today, Woods got in touch with us to present his side of the story:

T-minus 48 hours and counting until theater critics can officially digest the spectacle of Katie Holmes's Broadway debut in All My Sons. Can't! Wait! But while the amateur pundits have already gotten a jump on the show's previews and Anonymous protesters have hammered out the kinks in their own play in front of the Schoenfeld Theater, one perennially-trustworthy perspective has trickled out onto the Web this morning for everyone to parse: That of Fox crack gossip and drama wonk Roger Friedman, who hastens to note that today's column is a "report," not a "review," lest Holmes might have been saving her A-game for Thursday's premiere.Never mind that Friedman writes in detail about the "recently discovered" Patrick Wilson, who has been an awards-hopeful leading man for the last two Oscar seasons. Katie is the story here, however buried, and however non-committal:

Maureen McCormick stopped by The Today Show this morning in support of her new autobiography, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice. We were prepared to settle in for the old former-child-star song n' dance: the typecasting, the self-loathing, the drug binging, the weight-loss reality show comebacks. What we weren't quite ready for was the McCormick Family Ugly Secret, which the actress reveals without a much-needed warning to first shoo your children out of the room: Syphilis, you see, destroyed her family.It led her grandmother to die inside the walls of an asylum, which in turn caused her grandfather to take his own life a week later. Her mother then contracted the social disease. McCormick herself—while playing the perfect all-American girl on screen—was also secretly terrified that she too had caught it, counting down her last moments of sanity as she brushed her hair an obsessive 100 times. If that hasn't ruined The Brady Bunch for you forever, perhaps you'll be just as thrilled to learn that McCormick came thisclose to losing her virginity to Barry "Greg" Williams, that she also harbored a crush on her gay father, and that a casually tossed off comment about having kissed Jan (and liking it) has led to her estrangement from Eve Plumb. Harsha, harsha, harsha! The interview: Click to view

You know how you've been writing, editing and rewriting your fan letter to Ringo Starr for the last decade, only to stand at the mailbox time and again, reeling at the note's inadequate expression of how deeply his work and spirit have sustained you all these years, thus pushing you back to your desk for another few months of wistful, Proustian polishing? Believe us, we relate. As such, Starr's disclosure Tuesday that he will neither accept nor return fan mail after Oct. 20 has lit an epistolary fire under our ass to finally put this thing to bed. It's exactly what we needed — especially in the stern, slightly schizophrenic terms Starr bellows in his videotaped warning after the jump.Frankly, we never would have started this had Ringo not previously evinced such determination to satisfy his devotees; we're reminded again this morning of his guest spot long ago on The Simpsons, in which the minor Beatle spent the better part of 20 years waiting to thank Marge for her painted portrait of him. But between his erratic, ongoing tour schedule and the lingering bitterness over those cheeky vandals who decapitated his likeness last April at the Beatles' topiary in Liverpool, poor Ringo's goodwill is simply spread too thin. That doesn't mean he doesn't wish you a lifetime of peace and love, he says here — just keep it to yourself. Oh, all right, Ringo. If you insist.

· For the record: Peter Cook did NOT have a $3000-a-week internet porn habit. He had a massive hole in his self-esteem that needed to be plugged with $3000-a-week's worth of life-affirming online flirtation. [ABC News] · Marcia Brady always seemed like she had it all, but it turns out she battled a cocaine addiction and was severely depressed. Yeah, yeah—get in line, Marcia. [CNN] · Alan Cumming would like to know why America is so content with mediocrity, to which we reply, why is he so content with Son of the Mask and Tin Man? [HuffPo] · Well we finally have a comedy one-sheet motif to replace the guy's-head-on-color-background popularized by The 40-Year-Old Virgin: It's now all about male/female stick figures and bathroom door symbols. [Cinematical] · We hope those rims weren't Hamburgled. [Plan9]

In these rapey-sequel times, it takes a real man to stand up against the bloated revivals of franchise whose glories are long past. And while we'll assume that there is more to the implosion of Lethal Weapon 5 than just one jilted director's story, we'll take Richard Donner's perspective for now as some of the most reassuring news we've heard since doctors disclosed that Indiana Jones would recover from his violent auteurist tag-teaming last week. Saving it from Joel Silver's own heat-seeker makes it all the better.The film would have been the first installment in the series since 1998, when Lethal Weapon 4 grossed $285 million globally for Warner Bros. Original Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black had a script out to Joel Silver, who wanted Black to direct after their collaboration on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The rest is speculation — which is just fine with Donner, who is on the outs with Silver and hypothesized that Mel Gibson vetoed the project himself out of loyalty to his six-time director:

Blergh: The New York Times is as fed up with the lack of 30 Rock as we are, noting that Tina Fey "is about the hottest star in show business at the moment" thanks to those Emmy wins, American Express commercials, and Sarah Palin guest spots, and yet the third season of the rating-challenged sitcom still hasn't yet premiered to take advantage of Fey's heat. Embattled NBC head Ben Silverman takes the blame: "If we knew then what we know today about how hot Tina was going to be, would we do it differently? Maybe." The "business juice"-quaffing Silverman then announced plans to incorporate Fey into several of his struggling new series; expect a new, Palin-like voice for KITT on Knight Rider and a Kath & Kim & Liz Lemon crossover to thrill audiences before 30 Rock's season premiere sometime in the year 2011. [NY Times]

Though it's been reported that Kendra Wilkinson is on her way out of Hugh Hefner's harem, there's one person that isn't getting into the Playboy Mansion under her watch, and that's footballer Tom Brady. One last night's episode of The Girls Next Door, Wilkinson was told that she'd have to wear the New England Patriot's jersey for a special charity flag football game, and the look of utter revulsion that passed across her face was impressive for a woman regularly tasked with resuscitating the 82-year-old Hefner's nether regions.It seems that San Diego native Wilkinson still hasn't forgiven Brady for beating her beloved Chargers in the AFC championship, and she'd rather go naked (a simple proposition!) then wear the number of the noted Gisele diddler. Lucky for Wilkinson, then, that the Chargers won't be playing the Philadelphia Eagles, where her rumored secret fiance Hank Baskett is a wide receiver. Meanwhile, we await the sports affiliations of brand-new Girls Next Door Karissa and Kristina Shannon, though we do hear that the twins are no strangers to "unnecessary roughness." [E!]

So Molly isn't quite convinced by Tara Reid's recent claims that the weak economy and Hollywood labor disputes were responsible for the career drought that forced her to take gigs as a shot girl Down Under. (She recently said, "I totally plan to go back into acting once the strike stops. The economy is so bad right now that people are afraid to put money back into acting. Even the shows that seem new, they really shot six months ago. So when it's all back up again, I will go back into it. That's my heart.") Honestly, though, we're not entirely convinced this girl doesn't have one Rourkeian comeback in her. We're pulling for you, Tara! What's to do is after the jump:· Tina Turner at the Staples Center · Monday Night Live at the Grand Ave Night Club (Crash Mansion) · Career Fair at UCLA · Pendulum at the Mayan

Defamer's enduring fascination with Attack of the Show host Olivia Munn, and her ongoing explorations of the strange worlds lying towards the far reaches of her personal shame-threshold, continues: In her latest escapade, Munn communes suggestively with a variety of aquatic wildlife. Surely you require no more explanation that that, but we'll offer some anyway: Says the AotS website:

When Angelina Jolie first came to national attention, it was as a brother-kissing hellion married to Billy Bob Thornton, making her current transformation into near-holy do-gooder all the more unlikely. However, fans of old Angelina need not worry — though the actress has recently made headlines for acts as mundane as scarfing Hot Pocket calzones, she now tells W that she's passed on one of her craziest habits to seven-year-old son Maddox: buying knives!

Click to viewBoomp3.com Popular movie star Lindsay Lohan was all smiles as she made her way into a Diesel Party in New York City over the weekend. When asked why she was so excited, Lohan admitted that she couldn’t believe she was attending the event with her personal style icon, Cory Kennedy. Kennedy mumbled something about being equally excited about hanging out with the beaming Lohan. Lohan hoped that the mutual apperance together would lead to bigger and better things such as a stock market upswing and Kennedy’s endorsement of Lohan’s leggings line. Lohan said, “It means a lot to get Cory’s endorsement on a product and hopefully, at the end of the night, she’ll sign off.” [Photo Credit: Flynet] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Not only is Joseph Gordon-Levitt a gifted young actor, he's also a budding filmmaker in his own right: Perhaps you recall his fine work in Pictures of Assholes, a short documentary in which he attempted to delve into the unknowable psyche of the paparazzi. His latest project, currently screening in YouTube-directed browsers everywhere, is a political memoir, tracing his roots back to his years as an impressionable young MTV watcher, through the last eight rancorous years, to his present-day love affair with a man from Honolulu. Say what you will about this Obama rhapsody: it's a gritty affair, more likely to feature repeated shots of a cow relieving itself than the flossy celebrity dance-offs favored by some of his peers. The choice is yours. It's after the jump:

Perhaps upset that Elisabeth Hasselbeck has usurped her crown as the most reviled woman ever to spout off on The View, Star Jones has warned the upcoming issue of Essence, "Star is back!" Batten down your hatches accordingly, then head into the mind of Star for her thoughts on everything from her gastric bypass ("If I had just been honest, there would not have been a backlash") to her pining, gay ex-husband ("I'm not in love with him") to...oh hell, we're just delaying the good stuff: Star slinging shit at the ladies of The View, who she deems "hateful"!

Virgin Records: If you thought inflation at the gas pump was bad, try entering the market for deflowering virgins; Natalie Dylan, who put her first time up for auction last month, has reportedly received bids ranging from $1 million to $3.8 million. Her pimp manager said more offers were expected, and that the highest bidder won't necessarily be the winner; charm, looks and someone who "seems intelligent" are among the criteria required from potential suitors. Assuming she'll take bids via text message and doesn't object to layaway, we might have just the guy for her. [Scandalist]

A highly placed Defamer operative tells us TMZ has gotten the details of the Brian and Gigi Grazer divorce (he gets the freedom to personally pinch-test whomever he pleases, they say, she gets $1,000,042 a month)—wrong. For starters, they don't even own a home in New York. Read the details after the jump: