· Looks like Ben Silverman isn't the only one who should be updating his resume. After 246 episodes of Deal Or No Deal, last night marked the first time that a contestant took home the million dollar briefcase, which can't be good for The Banker's employment status. Congrats go out to Jessica Robinson but, truth be told, we still don't like her as much as the "I Can Do 200 Of These!" guy. [NBC] · Just the other week, we finally learned why Christian Bale sounded so hoarse in The Dark Knight. Now, can someone please explain why Bale and Kermit The Frog have never been seen in the same place at the same time before? If only Robert Stack were still alive... [ONTD] · Finally, a Friedberg/Seltzer production did the impossible. After failing with Meet The Spartans, Date Movie and Epic Movie, Disaster Movie managed to score a perfect 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. [Best Week Ever] · Everyone over at The CW is crowing that they managed to lure 3.4 million viewers into watching Gossip Girl's second season premiere last night. Those sound like good numbers, except when you compare it to the 7.7 million that tuned into TNT's Raising The Bar. Zack Morris will always be cooler than Serena Van Der Woodsen. [TV Week] · Hey Chauncey, Go Fuck Yourself Buddy: A Mad Men Wishlist. [This Recording]

Until the inevitable reports that the whole thing was rigged to help square up with tax collectors in Michigan, we're more than happy to spread the all-call for a copy of a rumored sex tape featuring Josh Hartnett and an unidentified lady friend in London. The duo was reportedly caught by closed-circuit security cameras during a tryst in a hotel library; a handful of spies gathered around, only to squirm in "awkward silence" as the rendezvous dragged on. Yeah, right — we've known our share of scheming limeys in our time, and that silence was clearly just a front for plotting the inevitable procural and sale of said tape to the highest bidder. And right on cue, the Paramount Pictures of celebrity sex-tape distributors made it clear what those terms might be:

Palin Fever: Celebrities the world over are fired up about potential VP Sarah Palin and eager to weigh in with the fruits of their opposition research. The latest multi-hyphenate to opine is Albert Brooks, writing on the Huffington Post under the barely disguised pseudonym "A. Brooks." "Do we want a president who cannot communicate to their own child that possibly having a baby a year after you get your driver's license is not the smartest thing to do?" asks Brooks. "Is this the new way for women to break the glass ceiling? To have their daughters throw their babies at it?" Perhaps not, but it would sure make for a hilarious summer tentpole at 20th Century Fox! [HuffPo]

Not only does the brand new 90210 make its debut tonight, but today marks the release of "The Block", the first proper LP that New Kids On The Block have put out since 1994's abysmal "Face The Music." And while the group is no longer new (and they're certainly not kids), that doesn't abate Molly McAleer's passion for the NKOTB in the slightest. Find out which of the New Kids was our resident chowd's fave (hint: it's not the same as Diablo Cody's) and what's going on in Los Angeles tonight after the jump.· Ultraviolet Sound at The Viper Room. · "How to Get a Book Published" networking event at Blankspaces. · Paul Weller at The Wiltern. · People of the 20th Century at The Getty.

There's a place and time for discussing the inanity of movie lists — usually early January, right when the radius of critics' annual Top 10 circle jerk is at its widest. But a few prime exhibits pop up throughout the year as well, such as last weekend's Los Angeles Times feature selecting the top 25 Los Angeles films of the last 25 years. While we wouldn't begrudge the contributors' right to close out the late-summer news cycle as energetically as possible (we've all seen what happens when John Horn gets bored), the tactical and intellectual errors that occurred along the way are an unfortunate example of zeal gone horribly wrong. The criteria alone defy rationality: only one film per director, lest "City of Angels specialists such as Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson" overrun the seminal work of, ahem, Michael Ritchie and F. Gary Gray. But even taking the list on its own terms, we just don't get it — Crash? Jackie Brown? Really, LAT? Find our quick, admittedly incomplete corrective after the jump.1. Jackie Brown. Come on. Let's just keep it short: Jackie Brown is not a better film than Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs. No point in fighting or meritocratic debate, like the author wants. It's not debatable — there is nothing to see here but an inaccuracy. 2. Collateral owes its life to Heat. Two things: 1) Stuart Beattie's original script for Collateral was set in New York, hence the cab driving protagonist and subway. It's an LA film by convenience, which is to say, not at all. 2) Michael Mann conceived and executed Heat a "Los Angeles crime saga," and its use of locations — over 100, interwoven on-screen like the geography itself — predated and provoked Collateral's more nocturnal survey by almost 10 years. Heat's superiority here isn't really debatable either. 3. This list is in no particular order, right? Because we know nobody listed Charles Burnett's To Sleep With Anger (#21) as sort of a bottom-rung afterthought to everything from Clueless (#7) to L.A. Story (#20). And Mulholland Drive (#11) is beneath Beverly Hills Cop (#5). 4. If you have to include Fletch, you need to condense the list. Or expand it — a 30-year list would have at least featured the added benefit of Blade Runner, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Decline of Western Civilization and E.T. But a 20-year list would have probably been just fine — and you still would been able to keep Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 5. The least obvious omission is the most obvious. Thom Andersen's three-hour 2004 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself remains an exhaustive, fascinating exploration of LA's history and uses as a big-screen location. As such, considering these selections, we're not surprised it's not included here. So what did we miss?

For months, the rumor mill has been buzzing that Whitney Port of The Hills (she of the goofy mugging and relatively drama-free lifestyle) would be receiving her own, New York-set MTV spinoff. Last night's Hills episode, then, seemed in many cases like a trial run for that series, as fearsome People's Revolution flack Kelly Cutrone sent Whitney to the Big Apple to do some model castings, eventually manipulating the gangly blonde into a date with a shaggy-haired hunk. Does Whitney have what it takes to assume center stage, or is she forever destined to play curious second fiddle to the mothership series' Lauren Conrad? Remarkably (and with the help of videographer Molly McAleer), we were able to get our hands on a classified notes session smuggled from deep inside the bowels of MTV, and the candid reactions from execs Sheryl Rather-Wexler and Kip Finkelberg Jr. may shed some new light on Whitney's primetime viability. Godspeed, girl. [MTV]

Entourage star Jeremy Piven bucked the established order of the fashion world by sporting a pair of white pants after Labor Day in New York City on Tuesday. When asked why he dared to commit a fashion crime this heinous, Piven claimed that his pants weren't white, they were actually vanilla. Piven said, "They're vanilla bean colored — that's what my glam squad told me. Check the catalog."

When you think of opera, be honest, you start to nod off a little bit. Well, David Cronenberg is about to change all that. The director who made the more watchable of the two Crash movies has turned his 1987 cult classic, The Fly, into a full-blown opera. It's getting its US premiere this weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and, for some reason, Cronenberg agreed to tell Defamer all about it. Join us after the jump as the notoriously oddball auteur opines on everything from the Oscar race to who's freakier, him or David Lynch.

While we expect actress Helen Mirren to be both bodacious and bawdy, nothing could have prepared us for the candid interview she recently gave to the British version of GQ, where the Oscar winner opened up at length about her shoplifting problem, her love of cocaine, and her multiple date rapes. The latter revelations are causing the most controversy, because though Mirren says she was assaulted "a couple of times," her attitude toward the touchy issue is royally complicated. Says People:

And just like that, the Telluride Film Festival is over — the sequestered Colorado tradition known for anointing and/or unveiling awards-season front-runners en route to Toronto and beyond. But with no Juno this year to charm visiting critics and distribution bosses alike, Labor Day came and went instead with rangy early takes on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's long-awaited (and reportedly just long) saga of Brad Pitt aging backwards. While we had pretty much gotten used to the film's stirring Spanish-language trailer, a few closer reads of previews emerging from the Rockies suggest the final result might be a little more complex: Extraordinary digital effects! Romance! And, alas, disappointment:

Most celebrities only announce a stint in rehab after undergoing a very public flame-out, so when David Duchovny offered last week (apropos of nothing) that he was being treated for sex addiction, gossip hounds went wild trying to figure out the reasons why. One columnist hot on the case is Fox News gadfly Roger Friedman, last seen trying to put the blame for the Harry Potter delay on star Daniel Radcliffe's magic wand. After a little digging, Friedman got to the bottom of some of the more scurrilous rumors:

Popular actress Lindsay Lohan managed to talk her constant companion, Samantha Ronson, out of an ice cream truck related existential crisis on Labor Day. Ronson bemoaned the fact that the Ice Cream Man did not have a photo of her favorite treat, a Bomb Pop, on his van. Lohan told Ronson to just ask the guy if he has any bomb pops. Ronson replied back, "If there isn't a sticker, then he doesn't have it. That's the code of the Ice Cream Man. A simple — but honest — code." Lohan thought that was the dumbest thing she had ever heard and walked over to the Ice Cream Man while Sam sulked, kicking the concrete below her Chuck Taylors.

We're nothing if not realists, and we know that Disaster Movie's unfortunate timing — opening on the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (and three days before Hurricane Gustav's landfall) — and tepid $7 million four-day opening won't likely kill the spoof franchise the way discriminating audiences might hope. But even as the stakes plunge for its purveyors at Lionsgate, the series represents a boon of potential for stories like this one from Houston, where a noted critic's selfless attendance at a midnight screening offered a revelatory new perspective on the movie's bladder-challenged target audience:

As Esquire once famously teased, "Kevin Spacey Has a Secret," and now, finally, that secret has come to light: he's a good samaritan! Already notorious for a well-intentioned, late-night dog walking that turned ugly in the most homoerotic way, the actor was snapped this weekend in Croatia enacting a "pay it forward" so unorthodox that it would make even a newly R-rated Haley Joel Osment blush. Says The Sun:

A medical professional must have been on hand at the Chateau Marmont to keep popular silver screen star Kirsten Dunst from busting a gut. The Spider Man star was laughing uncontrollably at the antics of Mac pitchman and ex-flame of Drew Barrymore, Justin Long. Dunst was thoroughly impressed by Long's comedic culinary consumption antics, even going as far as to say that Long is way funnier than "that Charlie Chaplin dude." Long reveled in the attention, even going as far as to moonwalk a piece of chicken into his mouth.

Just when we thought America had narrowly averted tragedy over the long weekend, word arrived this morning that voice-over legend Don LaFontaine died Monday of complications from a collapsed lung. He was 68. LaFontaine voiced more than 5,000 trailers and 350,000 commercials in his career, which began by accident in 1965 when he provided a last-minute fill-in for an MGM radio spot. He continued on as an independent artist and eventually joined Paramount in 1978 as head of trailer production — the time during which he became known as the "voice" of the studio and oversaw his favorite trailer, for 1980's The Elephant Man. He had long since returned to independent production, most famously working on-camera last year as a pitchman for Geico. But around Defamer HQ we have our own LaFontaine high point (viewable after the jump), and we're sure he would have agreed if only he could reconsider. May this proud son of Duluth, Minn., rest in peace; if they had any shame, the Republicans just down the road would put off another GOP Convention day in the spirit of quiet remembrance. [ETOnline]

While it's hardly a secret that embattled NBC chief Ben Silverman likes to party, never have his carousing ways received the sort of harsh buzz dealt out this weekend by Nikki Finke, who spent the better part of a blockbuster post detailing how Silverman's antics are about to cost him his job. No, seriously this time! According to a variety of anonymous NBC sources, Silverman is the network's very own Man Who Wasn't There, missing meetings on a regular basis and spending the entire, crucial month of August in Beijing while his colleagues expected him to decamp for a week at most (in all fairness, those Ryan Seacrest remotes weren't going to tape themselves!). However, it seems that the NBC chief's biggest problem is EVP Teri Weinberg, a Silverman protege whose romantic involvement with an NBC showrunner caused upward-failing NBC Universal head Jeff Zucker to step in and terminate that writer's deal:

Rising and shining today after a long, lucrative season of hits and hits and hits — the second richest on record, we're told — what better way to welcome fall than with a hungover glimpse at the Labor Day weekend's multiplex triumphs? Another day off, you say? We're afraid we can't help you there, so for now, behold your Tuesday Morning Box Office: 1. Tropic Thunder — $14.2 million Against not-so-formidable competition, Ben Stiller's little $90 million-comedy-that-could persisted in first place for the third consecutive week. Fun fact: Thunder became only the sixth R-rated film in history to achieve such longevity, joining the seminal likes of The Whole Nine Yards, American Pie 2 and The Passion of the Christ. And a fourth win isn't out of the question this weekend if America stands up to the horror of Nicolas Cage's latest, Bangkok Dangerous. Why doesn't the Special Olympics lobby protest that degradation? Another discussion, another time.2. Babylon A.D. — $12 million While our generally impeccable box-office projections last Friday seem to have misapprehended Vin Diesel's lagging appeal, let's be honest: As butchered, disavowed and dumped-on-the-roadside B-pictures go, Babylon's $12 million take is in no way a reflection of the actor's animated-elephant-epic potential (or lack thereof). We're just saying. 3. The Dark Knight — $11.3 million Three words: Fuck you, Japan. Bonus: The film's cumulative gross tipped $500 million (along with Titanic, the only film to break the barrier domestically); Warners is reportedly using at least half of the money to launch Speed Racer back to its home country in return via the internally developed Batapult™. 4. The House Bunny — $10.7 million Discuss: Between the success of this film, its medium-budget sibling Step Brothers and its lowbrow, high-yield cousin Pineapple Express, Sony Pictures' comedy trifecta is the most underreported story of the summer. 5. Traitor — $10 million Our underdog, all grown up. We're so proud!

Righteous Kill star Al Pacino spent a majority of his Labor Day weekend camping out to be the first line for the annual Malibu chili cook off. Attending the cook off has become an essential part of Pacino's transition from the summer to the fall. Pacino said, "I spend all day basking in the cool breeze off the Pacific Ocean while enjoying some of the finest chili Malibu has to offer. Did you know that James Brolin makes a terrific chili? He does. Talk about your 'hooo-aaaah' moments. Must be the cumin."

· Defamer Decides 2008 followed the DNC travails of Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Steven Spielberg, and poker-playing Ben Affleck. · Jon Cryer, though? Not so much. He'll get back to us about that. · Viggo Mortensen and Kate Winslet were the prom king and queen of early Oscar hype. · Our 90210 anticipation runneth over. And over. And over. · Molls paid a visit to Sunset Junction. So did Kirsten and Justin. · Just so it's clear, Tom Cruise is not on the hook for Valkyrie's injured Nazi extras. · Fitness goddess Jane Fonda saved us from the leotarded specter of Heidi Montag. · To which the bank-bound, White House-minded Heidi naturally replied, "Who's Jane Fonda?" · Steve Coogan and Rainn Wilson dared to voyage to the bottom of the summer box-office. · American Idol added a fourth judge to break those occasional ties that occur when Paula falls asleep. · Nikki Finke said MGM's for sale. Sharon Waxman denied it. It's on! · Righteous Kill was a minimum of five poster tweaks away from us even thinking about watching it. · Webphobe Aaron Sorkin momentously joined Facebook. · Smackenzie Phillips and Andy Dick found dignity behind bars. · And finally, Don Draper's feed followers have almost doubled in the four days since Mad Men TwitterGate. We're just saying.