Taking a break from his campaign to play the Riddler in the next Batman film, Brian Austin Green went to lunch with his gal pal, Megan Fox. During the meal, Green wondered why the Transformers star was lugging around a giant backpack with her instead of her purse. Fox then confessed that the recent earthquakes made her afraid of losing her most valuable possessions, so now she's started carrying them around with her. She then proceeded to list out the contents of the backpack to a shocked Brian Austin Green. It includes: a makeup bag, two designer sweat suits, flip flops, books on Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, a laptop, Michael Bay's ego, a ton of scripts, running shoes, an assistant, four different sets of sunglasses, two Blackberry batteries, a lead paper weight, Mad Men season one on DVD and some tadpoles she caught down by the river. Green was rather impressed by Fox's ability to carry on all that weight, but was still a wee bit weirded out by the backpack.

He speaks! In the midst of fending off the rumors swirling about his job security, NBC head honcho Ben Silverman has taken time out to become a recurring Olympics correspondent for Ryan Seacrest's morning radio show on KIIS-FM. Broadcasting & Cable has the scoop (not to be missed is Silverman's quip about his Chinese tour guide: "Her name is Fun Fun, so you can imagine how much fun-fun Fun Fun is"), but with the help of Molly McAleer, we've assembled some of Silverman's most enthusiastic moments in the video after the jump. Who knew that Silverman and Seacrest were so well-versed about the gay goings-on in West Hollywood? [Broadcasting & Cable]

Manny Farber, 1917-2008: One of the liveliest, stroppiest and most influential film critics the medium ever knew, Manny Farber died in his sleep Sunday night at the age of 91. Before giving up criticism and teaching for an equally (if not more) accomplished painting career, Farber elevated popular conceptions of B-movies and other forsaken cinema in seminal contributions to The New Republic, Time, The Nation and ArtForum. His prose read almost three-dimensionally — decades' worth of proper nouns and principles, infinitely folding over and burrowing into each other, mimicking those subjects chronicled in his 1962 essay "Termite Art vs. White Elephant Art" (and later gathered in his classic anthology Negative Space): "Good work usually arises when the creators... seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or anything... It goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity." Ray Pride's lovingly assembled obit is a must-read today, as is Franklin Bruno's own Farber study from 2004 — no thumbs up or down around here, we're afraid, and no stars, Tomatometers or numbers. Just words, virtually all worth giving thanks for. [GreenCine Daily]

It's been less than a week since Allison—Intervention's computer-cleaner-inhaling breakout sensation—first huffed her way into our hearts, but you can already feel the profound effect she's had on the social landscape: Wander into a Staples, for example, you'll quickly notice laser-printed signs at the register warning customers "FALCON DUST-OFF NOT FOR RECREATIONAL USE." Why, right here at Defamer HQ, we've been delighting in the cortex-smoothing, color-enhancing effects of the affordable aerosol stimulant sitting under our noses all along. (We apologize for any recent deterioration in the quality of the posts, however, and promise you that gurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr dooooooodle dooooooodle doooooooooo....MAN that's good stuff!) Anyway, because the only thing better than an old fashioned YouTube huffer meme are the inevitable remixes that follow, we're thrilled to present this uplifting, toe-tapping take on Allison's memorable peaking catchphrase—"I feel like I'm walking on sunshine!"—which she delivers with all the head-swiveling pizzazz of The Facts of Life's Cousin Geri.

While The Hills star Audrina Patridge launched an exciting, product placement-filled blog during her summer vacation, costar Heidi Montag has mostly laid low, content to let boyfriend Spencer Pratt soak up the slings and arrows for a few months. Now, with the season four premiere set to air on MTV tonight, Montag has emerged like a gator from the water, opening her fearsome jaw not to chomp on some unlucky water fowl but to let fly the synthesized tones of her brand-new single, "Overdosin'" (excerpted after the jump!). Says Us Weekly:

· Voltron: Defender of the Universe, a movie based on the greatest single achievement in Toy-Commercial- Loosely-Dressed -Up-As -Saturday-Morning -Cartoon History, has been put into the dreaded turnaround until a more affordable means of convincingly depicting giant fucking robot lions is devised. [Variety] · "Plunging sales, recession fears and spiking gasoline prices" are being blamed for GM's decision to pull out of sponsoring this year's Oscars, a polite way of saying, "Look—50-year-old gay men just don't buy heavy-duty trucks." [Variety] ·The Banana Splits—your grandparents' favorite cartoon rock band!—are making a big comeback in a "multiplatform effort" that will put them front and center on your cellphone wallpaper or something. [Variety] ·Cowboy Curtis Investigation is official: Lawrence Fishburne has signed on as the lead on CSI! Turn the black light on the Playhouse—there's bound to be some kind of evidence on Chairy's upholstery. [THR] ·Freaks and Geeks/Bones star and screenwriter John Francis Daley and his partner Jonathan Goldstein have been hiring to rewrite Burt Dickenson, Most Powerful Magician on the Planet Earth. Obviously, Judd Apatow was born with a talent-divining rod in his pants. [THR]

The soul-deadening imposition of commercial brands on your moviegoing experience got even more shameless this morning when the oft-overlooked ring of Hell know as "brandcameo" unveiled the winners of its fourth annual Product Placement Awards. You could probably guess at least most of the heavyweight competitors — your Apples, your Fords, your Manolos — from a glance at the last year's worth of releases, but that doesn't make the year's findings any less remarkable in context: The surveyors counted an average of 22.1 brands in each of the 20 films this year to have a No. 1 weekend at the box office. That number is down from 2007, when an average of nearly 25 brands were counted among the year's 32 top releases. The dollars aren't disclosed, but follow the jump for a depressing if fascinating array of blockbusters for sale, the brands that bought them and the ultimate recognition of their unholy unions:

Producers for the new 90210 love to release their casting information in teasing increments: Tori's in! No, she's out — but Shannen's back! Also, there are some other actors on the show, maybe (but still no Lucille Bluth)! Now, though, their latest bit of stunt casting has emerged through a source at Nylon, and the idea reeks of hipster verisimilitude and Pabst Blue Ribbon:

We've been made vaguely aware that there recently existed some sort of romantic entanglement between preternaturally unlucky in love Friends star Jennifer Aniston and female-anatomy-as-human-amusement-park-rhapsodizing troubadour John Mayer—and that it has ended, badly. Our condolences go out to both of them, but particularly to Aniston, about whom we're really starting to believe that one-eyed Gypsy woman who grabbed us on a Melrose sidewalk, wagging a gnarled finger in our face as she warned: "Mark my words—Jennifer Aniston will die alone!" before vanishing into a nearby alleyway.In any case, an emotionally agitated Mayer was approached on the streets of Manhattan by reporters hoping for a word on two on the breakup. Mayer then offered them more material than they had ever hoped for, turning the tables on the stunned-speechless gossip hounds by insisting they print the truth (for once!), instead of spinning scurrilous hearsay into cover line gold. Unfortunately, he sticks around about two minutes too long; by the time he offers, "I don't waste people's time...I'm just being honest, yo....Let's poll the people around us and see if my theory is right that 20% of them would have liked to have dumped Jennifer, too—they just didn't have the guts!" things just start getting uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Notoriously camera shy star Mary Kate Olsen appeared to be even more camera shy than usual while out in New York City over the weekend. It appeared that Olsen was second-guessing her decision to let her new beau leave the house wearing that ridiculous hat. Upon entering the eatery, Olsen politely asked if he would remove the hat, saying that it made him look like the long-lost fifth member of the Be-Sharps. The man responded with a clear and firm "No way. I'm trying to bring back the barbershop look. These things are going to be flying off the shelves in Urban Outfitters in three months. The straw skimmer hat is here to stay, kiddo."

It's been a rough few months for Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe; not only was his sixth Potter film delayed until next year (causing a Time Warner headache), but blame for the hasty move fell on his bare shoulders. Now, though, Radcliffe has played his trump card: a sympathy-inducing medical condition that would make even Voldemort lay off the kid for a while. Says the NY Daily News:

Big ups to The Dark Knight, which surpassed the first Star Wars film over the weekend to become the second-highest-grossing film ever. Sort of, anyway: That number-two figure on which the industry has had its eye for the last month since TDK's release — $471 million, still a cruise ship shy of Titanic's $600 million — remains quite the impressive number domestically, but isn't really threatening anyone globally. It's a bit of an open, underreported secret, but after the jump, behold the only number that really matters: your 19th-highest-grossing film of all time — only $64 million behind Finding Nemo!

Katherine Heigl paused for a moment on the red carpet for the Hot in Hollywood event on Saturday night to admire "the girls". The Bride of Chucky star had forgotten just how awesome the girls were and that the dress really put them on a golden platter. Heigl said, "Joshua always talks about how great they are, but what's that saying? You can't see the forest from the trees. I thought I was only seeing the trees, but apparently, I have a magnificent and lush forest here."

Congratulations are in order for Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, who married Saturday night in an intimate ceremony held on the grounds of their California home. The brides both wore Zac Posen and exchanged handwritten vows promising to love each other "in sickness and in health, for as long as no pesky cameramen get in the way." Attendance was capped at 19, all the better to exclude potential wedding crasher Barbara Walters. Still, the lesbian goddess giveth with one hand while she takes away with the other, for no sooner did the two marry than details of a sapphic Hollywood breakup emerged involving the famously "gone gay" Lindsay Lohan.

Having paid tribute this weekend to Michael Phelps's historic athletic achievement with a record-shattering of your own in the 200-liter grain-alcohol-medley, your soaring national pride has likely given way to the agony of hangover defeat. Have some box office number; they're full of electrolytes: 1. Tropic Thunder - $26 million Putting controversy aside for a moment, Tropic Thunder—Ben Stiller's $90 million satirical homage to movie star narcissism, context-reliant flatulence, and Down Syndrome humor—finally succeeded in doing what no other movie released in the past month could: It unseated The Dark Knight from its topmost perch. Still, we'd caution the director and star that it might be a little early to throw a pair of shredded stump-hands into the air and claim victory, as that puts Tropic's take somewhere between that of Pineapple Express and Step Brothers— both of which managed to go full retard at a fraction of the budget. What Tropic needs now to inch its way into the black is a strong overseas showing—which is not entirely out of the realm of possibility, considering the French critical elite have already touted movie-within-a-movie Simple Jack (L'imbécile Jacques) as the greatest sad-clown cinematic achievement since Jerry Lewis's The Errand Boy.2. The Dark Knight - $16.79 million It's now official: Another $16.79 million makes The Dark Knight the second-highest-grossing film of all time behind Titanic, and ahead of the first Star Wars. The staggering take—$471.5 million earned domestically—means that every man, woman, and child above the age of 13 has now paid to see this movie an average of 11 times, where they gleefully mouth along to The Joker's numerous soliloquies about the joys of anarchy. 3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars - $15.505 million Registering a paltry 18% Tomatometer score, this subpar animated release from George Lucas—the one the legendary filmmaker warned us "not to get your hopes up about; we just thought it would be fun to make a really shitty-looking CGI movie that would continue to erode the fond memories you have of the last good thing I did about 30 years ago"—fell way short of the $19 million we predicted would be spent by franchise diehards looking for something to fill the long, empty days since ComicCon ended. Most came away deeply disappointed, and at times downright confused—particularly by the extended Black and White Cantina Ball sequence overseen by its effete slug-host, Capote the Hutt. 4. Mirrors - $11.125 million We realize Kiefer Sutherland doesn't make particularly good movies, but we're glad he makes them all the same. Mirrors seems a perfect example of the late '00s Sutherland oeuvre: A movie that takes the scariest single moment from any thriller—closing the bathroom medicine chest to reveal a shadowy figure lurking behind—and stretches it to feature length. Watch out behind you, Kiefer! The ghost has a knife! 5. Pineapple Express - $10 million There's several ways to interpret the surprisingly precipitous 57% drop in Pineapple's weekend receipts, but we're guessing it's because stoner comedies don't do well when it comes to repeat business, due to general demo inertia. If you could spend the weekend curled up with a Graffix bong and the pungent scent of God's vagina, you'd probably skip the multiplex crowds, too.

What should have been a festive weekend for Joan Hyler took a gravely downbeat turn late Friday when the veteran talent manager/agent/producer was struck by a car in Malibu while parking her own on the Pacific Coast Highway. Hyler was hospitalized in critical condition the night before her client Portia de Rossi's marriage to Ellen DeGeneres; she remains listed as such in the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center's intensive-care unit. Details are still thin, but reports this weekend noted that Hyler — whose list of former clients at William Morris includes Madonna, Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol — was hit and thrown by a passing car at an undisclosed location on the highway. She was apparently en route to a party, "clutching a piece of paper with a friend's address on it" when the accident occurred; the friend and Hyler's family were notified almost immediately. Her family has since established a series of regular updates on the hospital Web site (membership required, alas), documenting her progress as evident but expectedly slow:

Looking to recover from his recent split with actress Isabel Lucas, Adrian Grenier headed to the beaches of Malibu with his trusty acoustic guitar. A gaggle of women quickly circled around the hunky environmentalist as he began to bear his soul with some recently penned tunes. One woman was really impressed by the songs and suggested that he pursue his music for awhile. Grenier told the woman that he had weighed his options numerous times and is "thisclose" to hanging it all up and just riding the rails with a song in his heart. The woman replied, "That's so deep."

Remember that curious mini-trend of mogul wives and their literary ambitions? Not everyone has the talent to make it, despite their connections. A tipster forwarded us the manuscript for a chick-lit novel of dubious quality by actress Leslie Zemeckis—wife of Oscar-winning producer and director Rober Zemeckis, who's responsible for Back to the Future, Polar Express, and Forrest Gump. Leslie's manuscript is about "3 friends and their schemes to get on, stay on and survive the red carpet." But: the reader's report from this particular publisher says, "The writing that underscores Walking the Red's derivative plot and characters is cliched and unpolished. Grammatical errors appear occasionally. Zemeckis' obsessive cataloguing of the designer clothes her characters wear and the expensive things they own quickly grows exhausting, as do her attempts at name-dropping..."

· We said goodbye to Bernie Mac, yet another untimely casualty of the Billy Bob Thornton Co-Star Curse. · We also bid farewell to Isaac Hayes and dusted his house for Scientology's fingerprints. · If it wasn't bees afflicting MGM/UA, then it was the co-owner walking out after two years. Tough week! · Culture maven Russell Brand and Tropic Thunder screenwriter Etan Cohen nobly fielded a few of our questions. · Britney Spears's inspiring trip down the comeback trail will surely provide the basis of her mother's next candid child-rearing guide. · Retard Enemy #1 Tropic Thunder faced premiere protests and network inquisitions. · If they're just going to fake the Olympics anyway, we might as well get to work on the made-for-Defamer drama The Michael Phelps Story. Here's your star. · While Christian Bale was cleared of kin-assault, ex-007 George Lazenby vigorously denied his wife's kid-sousing allegations. · Presumed Clone Wars "crack whore" Ziro the Hutt just turned out to be gay. Sorry about the misunderstanding, Mr. Lucas! · Tori Spelling soothed her 9021Woe with a helpful dinner-party toilet tutorial. · Barack Obama texted George Clooney for the appropriate response to a new Obama art exhibit. · "Anybody remember a screenplay about Rudolph Valentino?" · You'd think Warner Bros. might tell the corporate cousins at EW they're pushing Harry Potter back before it makes their next cover. Alas. · If Scarlett Johansson's Tonight Show sex fantasies aren't doing the trick for you, try the ScarJo Threesome Sweepstakes. · Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman: The Butch and Sundance of NBC.

· Any chance you happened to catch the kayaking event during the Olympics earlier today? We're not sure why paddling down a Lazy River that exists entirely within the confines of the Bird's Nest is an Olympic sport, especially after seeing this video of a man who can jump on eggs without breaking them. Face it, not even Michael Phelps could pull that off. [YouTube via AOTS] · For those of you desperate for a Bret & Jermaine fix while awaiting Season Two of Flight Of The Conchords, their new music video for "Ladies Of The World" ought to suffice. [MySpace] · Cinephiles rejoice! Criterion will be releasing Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket on DVD and Blu-Ray in November. [Criterion via Skeet On Mischa] · Janeane Garofalo and SNL's breakout rookie Casey Wilson are doing a shot-by-shot remake of Tango & Cash. We're not exactly sure why, but we sure hope they keep it up. [CC Insider] · Twilight will take that pre-Thanksgiving slot that Harry Potter just vacated, thankyouverymuch. [Variety]