Have you heard? Tom Cruise has positively rejuvenated his career with an unbilled, unrecognizable cameo in an R-rated action comedy yet to open! How should he best ride the buzz from his shockingly profane comic role in Tropic Thunder, the likes of which we have never seen him play before? What career move could he possibly make to show discerning audiences that his edgy side is no fluke? Two words: family comedy! That's right, Cruise has decided to forgo the title role in the CIA thriller Edwin A. Salt (perhaps inspired by his gender-blind clothes swapping, he's ceded the part to Angelina Jolie) in favor of a mawkish comedy so cutting-edge that it attracted the director of Drillbit Taylor. Says THR:

We aren't sure if Nikki Finke has confused the continuing exec exodus from United Artists with just another routine bomb and/or anthrax threat, but either way, the 11th floor at MGM Tower is clearing out again: Jeff Kleeman is reportedly evacuating his office as Executive Vice President of Production after less than a year on the job at UA. His departure follows marketing boss Dennis Rice's own flight earlier this summer and an abbreviated period during which Kleeman oversaw the development and/or production of exactly no finished films. Factor in the continuing limbo of Valkyrie, its deep (if closed) pockets and a tense relationship with its partners at MGM, and we can't help but ask once again: Does Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner or any of the skeleton crew left over there actually have a plan for this studio?Look at it this way: If you had $500 million of Wall Street's money waiting to be spent on a few Tom Cruise projects, or maybe on some of these comic-book adaptations we hear are doing OK these days, or even on an annual $30 million rom-com that will land snugly and profitably among the summer doldrums, how fast could you greenlight four to six projects a year? Finke's sources say Wagner herself is the "problem" — as in she, not Cruise, stands to lose the most from a third, fourth or fifth UA project facing the kind of backlash drawn by Lions For Lambs and Valkyrie (the first of which, it bears noting in fairness, actually made money). We sympathize, to a point, but at some point you've just got to pull the trigger — figuratively, of course. After last week's drama, if we heard a gunman was loose in the building, we'd probably give up, too. [Photo Credit: Variety]

Despite all traces of Simple Jack—veteran fake-action-star Tugg Speedman's brazen Oscar-shot playing a stuttering, simpleton farmhand—having been literally whitewashed from the web, activists remain outraged over Tropic Thunder's depiction-within-a-depiction of the developmentally disabled as bucktoothed "retards" incapable of expressing affection without the use of the phrase, "You mm-mm-m-ake my p-p-pee-peemaker t-t-t-tingle." (Sheesh—so touchy.) As threatened, dozens of placard-wielding protesters outfitted in 'Retard'busters T-shirts marched outside last night's premiere in Westwood, giving the proceedings the strangely familiar air of an RGA West strike line. From the AP report:

In the worst news to befall a local chihuahua since Disney cut loose with its trailers for the Beverly Hills breed, we hear today that American Apparel kingpin Dov Charney has lost his dog. Again. Or perhaps the pooch is still missing from that troubling time in April. In any case, Charney appears to finally be getting serious about finding and keeping poor little HedKayce close by — or at least about selling dog shirts. After the jump, find the enlarged billboard photo and a memo scattered far and wide by the inspired guerrilla marketers search party:

Though they've already missed the perfect Mother's Day window, publisher Thomas Nelson, Inc. has just released new information on a parenting guide/cautionary tale penned by Britney and Jamie Lynn materfamilias Lynne Spears and set for release next month. Dubbed Through the Storm, the book will no doubt prove instructive to any stage mother willing to milk her daughters for all they're worth, subsequently ignoring them when their pregnancies/mental breakdowns interfere with a novelty T-shirt sale at Kitson (free out-of-season Uggs with any purchase!). Says Star Magazine:

After getting through a remarkably quiet week without a single controversy or racketeering lawsuit, the Church of Scientology was dealt another bruising body blow with Isaac Hayes's death over the weekend. As much as the Church is expected to miss the singer/songwriter's hot buttered soul and totemic cultural presence, Hayes's "friend" and generally unreliable Fox source Roger Friedman notes in today's touching eulogy how the Church wrung every last cent from subpar live performances after his 2006 stroke. And seeing as such allegations clearly wouldn't be insidious enough to defend his late pal's honor, Friedman stops a gold chain link short of blaming the Church outright for Hayes's death:

As you may have noticed, we have been having some technical difficulties today. Photos have been disappearing indiscriminately from the home page and our video functionality has also been on the fritz. Granted, I'm not an IT person, but I am personally recommending that our hard-working tech team begins to transition away from hamster powered servers to some sort of environmentally friendly, solar-powered webpage-delivering devices (side note: I don't know if those things even exist). Because if Greenzo taught me anything, it's that it's possible to "save the earth while maintainng profitability!" Thanks for bearing with us, we hope to have everything shipshape in no time...

As we noted in this week's edition of Monday Morning Box Office, The Dark Knight managed to withstand a strong rush from Pineapple Express to hold onto the #1 spot at the B.O. for the fourth weekend in a row. While many theories abound as to why this happened (the most-notable being the film's Wednesday opening), you'll find that no one — not Nikke Finke, not Gitesh Pandya and certainly not Paul Dergarabedian — has been able to break down the issue so eloquently and so astutely as our own Molls in tonight's edition of To Do's. Enjoy!

Celebrities' complex relationships to the paparazzi who pursue them—can't live with 'em, evaporate into a puff of smoke without 'em—is the topic of Teenage Paparazzi, a documentary film from Adrian Grenier. The idea came to him as he was snapped by a "14-year-old paparazzo," reports THR—none other than intrepid adolescent shutterbug and celebrity in his own right, Austin Visschedyk: Kid Pap. (He's accompanied by his junior cronie and Porsche-driving chaperone dad in the accompanying CBS News profile.) The movie also explains Grenier's camera-friendly affiliation with puppymill proprietor/presidential hopeful, Paris Hilton:

A VIP host at the Venetian Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas made a quick phone call to reinstate his gym membership after hanging out with actor Ryan Phillippe poolside this weekend. The host was overheard as to have said, "I know that I canceled my membership three weeks. I know that ... Well, I just spent the last twenty minutes staring at the glistening abs of Ryan Phillippe ... He was in a bunch of movies ... Yeah, he was married to Reese Witherspoon ... Great guy, but you try standing next to him when he's not wearing a shirt ... Exactly ... Cool. Personal trainer. She's going to be hot, right? I mean, you can tell me. Okay, cool. See you tomorrow then."

Though J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot has been bumped from this winter to next May, Paramount has released a new sheaf of official character posters to keep the slim-pickings teaser trailer company. And what posters they are: why, who wouldn't recognize the younger versions of... um, whoever that's supposed to be... and, uh, Bones? Wait, and that ten-year-old kid is Chekov? Set our phasers on stunned.

When we last checked in with Sunset Tan's paragons of peroxide, The Olly Girls, they were in the process of being shitcanned from their jobs at the most prestigious tanning salon ever shown on basic cable television. But as the old saying goes, time second season storyboarding sessions heal all wounds. Or do they? After wearing Pauly Shore's patience thin and subsequently being fired from their positions as his bikini-clad housecleaning staff, Holly and Molly —or is it Molly and Holly?— decided to band together in an attempt to win over the leathery overlords who control the business that made them (marginally) famous last year, Jeff and Devin. Rather than going the Al Gore route and pulling together a PowerPoint presentation to showcase the value they can add to the business, the ditzy duo decided the best approach to getting their prestigious jobs as Sales Associates In Training back would be to break out their Crayola markers and start plotting out the X and Y axes on what they called their Happiness Chart. Talk about thinking outside of the bun!While we won't know until next week whether or not The Ollys were successful in their attempt to reclaim their rightful positions as the ultraviolet heirs to the Sunset Tan empire, we're fairly certain that the E! Network's promotional Olly blitz — see their Battle Of The Basic Cable Stars competition video below — means that good things are in store for the blonde bobbleheads. After all, there is only one thing that's more important to the team that runs Sunset Tan than moving a few extra cases of Banana Boat: getting renewed for Season Three. Click to view

Forget the anti-"retard" class rallying against Tropic Thunder — you know who really needs a nationwide boycott on his behalf? Corey Haim, whose long, troubling emotional slip-slide took a sharp downward turn into "exploited batshit crazy" Sunday night on The Two Coreys. But don't just take his perceptive mother's word for it ("I have seen a little bit of a decline in his behavior. I really have"); after the jump have a look at dress rehearsals for his putative comeback, featuring the actor himself as the verbally abusive, word-slurring hat-seeker who discovers terror in his very own bathroom as Judy Haim looks on. It could always be worse, we suppose — Corey Feldman doesn't sing or moonwalk — but when we say "Save Corey," we actually kind of mean it. [A&E]

An Imperial Scout Trooper placed a quick phone call to shore up his ride situation before an advance screening of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In a muffled tone, the scout explained that people have a difficult time understanding what he's talking about a majority of the time. The scout said, "My outfit doesn't have any pockets for my phone; if it did, I would just text message my ride the details back and forth. When I'm in character, it's just too hard to break the illusion." Before going back into the line, the scout trooper realized it was actually pretty fortunate that he was wearing a helmet and gloves while using the pay phone. As he explained to the Wookie who held his place in line, "You never know what kind of germs live on those things, anyway."

As these are the biggest stories imaginable in our plagued and ruined times, we thought we'd wax high school poetic about celebrity jinxes and death curses, and then provide you with a list of some of the best ones right. here. After the jump you can read all about the Poltergeist skeleton hex, the famous Rule of Three, and the Exorcist ailments, among others. There are seven of them, because that is a lucky number. Stay away, ghost of Burgess Meredith!

Until this week, it was taken as gospel that everything touched by peripatetic partners Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would turn to gold; in fact, newsstand operators were ordered to wear sunglasses when the two released pictures of their Chosen Twins to People, so bright was the babies' gilded glow. Sadly, it looks like the exclusive that People paid so heavily for has resulted in a newsstand baby bump that was significantly less than they'd projected. Says Cover Awards:

After two consecutive close calls, The Dark Knight's stunning box-office reign faces
another formidable challenger this week with Tropic Thunder. Not that Ben Stiller's film is necessarily favored to knock the blockbuster off — at least not with its R-rating, its meta-Vietnam theme, and definitely not with Tropic Thunder RetardGate threatening to capsize the film on its maiden voyage.

Dog Days: By August 29, the struggling L.A. Times will have laid off 150 of its employees following job cuts announced last month. Exactly what does the paper plan to do with its diminished resources now that so many of its "non-essential" employees are gone? Why, run a 35-page "Stars With Puppies" slideshow, of course! The Elizabeth Snead-penned feature, entitled, "Do Hollywood stars look cuter with puppies?" (spoiler alert: yes) is full of penetrating insights like, "Ali Simms has never looked cuter than in this photo with a tiny teddy-bear-faced Yorkie puppy." It's enough to drive a terminated employee to drink — or at least eat penis. [Los Angeles Times]

Popular tween superstar Miley "Milerz" Cyrus could've used a little assistance from her partner in crime Mandy "Manderz" Jiroux as the twosome left a Southern California shopping center. Cyrus politely asked for Jiroux to carry at least one of the bags while walking to the car, adding that Jiroux could borrow the "totally sweet" Ed Hardy tank top she got if she carried one of the bags. Jiroux said, "It's either I give you a ride home or I carry one of your bags to the bus stop and we're quite away from Burbank, pumpkin. And you know that I'm going to borrow that tank top either way." Attempting to figure out the distance between the mall and Burbank, Cyrus soldiered on with all of her bags.

Now that Jay Leno has entered the lame duck phase of his relationship with the Peacock network, it appears that he's decided to abuse his position as America's top-rated celebrity interviewer as fuel for his sexual reveries for many moons to come. While interviewing a crestfallen Scarlett Johansson on Friday night about Vicky Christina Barcelona (itself a rather sexually charged subject), noted auto enthusiast Jay figured he'd use the opportunity to engage the voluptuous starlet in some automobile-related foreplay. You see, he had done some research in advance of the chat and discovered that Scarlett told a lad mag that her number one sexual fantasy involved having sex in a car. But while Jay stopped just short of confessing that he has Crash playing on an infinite loop in his 17,000 square foot warehouse / garage, it was clear by reading his clearly flabbergasted guest's face that she's rather looking forward to sitting next to Conan O'Brien the next time she makes her way through Burbank. [The Tonight Show]