In a scene that will surely give the Lost producers too many ideas, all sixteen of the babies who played Aaron on the show's fourth season reunited in one place for a celebratory Hawaiian picnic this past weekend. Like a good episode of the adventure serial, it was packed with confusing revelations — namely, that thirteen of those boy-playing babies were actually girls! What could that possibly mean? Is Aaron a girl? A hermaphrodite? Did he/she commandeer the Black Rock and build the four-toed statue??? WAAAAALT!

We have to admit that while viewing a slideshow of features from Roland Emmerich's quirky London townhouse, we felt a momentary pang of affection for a man whose work had given us such personal and professional displeasure over the years. Seriously — how can anyone stay mad at a guy who has a waxwork of Pope John Paul II under his stairs (reading his own obituary, no less) or who pits a taxidermied zebra against massive Mao murals in his living area or, deliciously, keeps Prince Charles and Princess Diana dolls displayed in his fireplace? More to the point, how was this man responsible for 10,000 B.C.? We have other questions as well — including an open Defamer inquiry into the identity of an unusually sexy bedside photo subject. Help us figure it out after the jump.

Times are tough for our friends in the print media — especially for the staff of the Hollywood Reporter, which has weathered shakeups and a redesign in the shadow of trade titan Variety. Now, from Sharon Waxman, comes word that the Reporter is going on the block (along with other Nielsen publications like Billboard and Adweek) and that one of the higher-ups has been pitching the paper to the New York Times:

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Smokin': Those early estimates that pegged Pineapple Express for a superb $10 million Wednesday opening may have turned out to be conservative. Another box-office observer sends word that the year's biggest stoner comedy/Franco-sex-appeal testimonial in fact raked in $12.15 million in its first day — a fairly staggering figure for an R-rated comedy. Bowing on a Wednesday. In the first week of August. The revised tracking also suggests Express has enough momentum to wrest box-office superiority from The Dark Knight this weekend, but we're not so sure: The same tracking suggested The Mummy 3 would have similar success last weekend (it didn't), and in any case, Express will need all of its five-day numbers — as much as $45 million by some estimates — just to beat Dark Knight's three-day figure. Check out tomorrow morning's Defamer Attractions column, where we'll call our official shot. [Fantasy Moguls]

Que lastima! Has the Johansson-on-Cruz-on Bardem threesome from Vicky Cristina Barcelona been excised? Well, no, although that didn't stop New York's Vulture reporters from declaring, "As die-hard Allen fans who'd love to see one of his movies turn a profit for once, we're sad to report that all threesomes are implied and happen strictly off-camera," which spurred a distraught Gawker to post "Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Big Three-Way Lie." There's just one thing: as the two-thirds of Defamer who've seen the movie can confirm, there is an on-screen threesome in Vicky Cristina Barcelona — albeit a tame, brief one. Details after the jump:

The Dark Knight may have its curse, Transformers 2 may have its star's busted hand and Terminator 4 may face the opprobrium of its own franchise anchor. But another summer blockbuster faces an unfortunate — if totally foreseeable — development of its own. Those viewers who remember Hancock's introductory action sequence may have been too rattled/busy/overwhelmed to have been paying attention to the subtitled conversation of its Asian bad guys, but nothing got past an eagle-eyed blogger who caught the slightly insensitive translation pictured here. Follow the jump for an enlarged image and a summary of one man's! total! outrage!Look, would we have translated the dialect into a little more elegant English, as opposed to the more stilted "Engrish" of Hancock? Yeah, probably. But we're not quite ready for the boycott action proposed by this particularly incensed viewer:

· Meryl Streep is close to signing on to play the lead in Nancy Meyers's next comedy for Universal. Did we burn the Roxette-musical joke already? It seems we did. How about a subtle variation using Ace is Base songs instead? [Variety] · "Newbie scribe" (not as fun to say as "Shia's pinkie") Jason Sullivan should give hope to all struggling, unproduced screenwriters with cars that don't exceed 45 mph: He sold his manchildren-go-to-camp movie to Columbia for six-figures. [THR] · Ryan Seacrest has been named "permanent co-host" of ABC's Dick Clark's New Year's Strokin' Eve. [THR] · Vicky Cristina Barcelona star Rebecca Hall has joined the cast of Dorian Gray. [Variety] · Due to scheduling conflicts, Quentin Tarantino was unable to secure Jesus or Charlie Chaplin for Inglorious Bastards. B.J. Novak and Eli Roth, however, were more readily available. So what are you waiting for, Brad? Commit, already! [THR]

The transcript was bad; the video is excruciating. Nightline host Martin Bashir—famous for interviewing Princess Diana and Michael Jackson—made some fratty/middle-aged comments last week when he was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the Asian American Journalist's Association: "I've never been in an environment with so many beautiful Asian babes in my life. In fact, I'm mightily relieved that the podium covers me from the waist downwards. I've been having trouble all evening." He also creeped out his ABC colleague, 20/20's Juju Chang. He's since said he's sorry (sorry he got caught!) Now that we have the video (full video from AAJA here), which will haunt him via the Internet for years, he'll be really sorry.

Another day, another windfall of remakes, updates and adaptations requiring attention on our End of Ideas scorecard. It could be worse, we suppose, than Natalie Portman allegedly signing on for a graphic horror re-do, or yet another movie-to-TV serialization that could possibly make Dennis Hopper's own new show a folly in comparison. Even staffers at the LA Times are getting in on the recycling act today. It's never been hotter! But we're not here to cast aspersions, we're just here to handicap. As such, read on for your irregularly occurring guide to the latest in retreads — and their varying chances for winning us over.THE TITLE: Suspiria THE ORIGINAL: Dario Argento's 1977 giallo classic planted nubile Jessica Harper in the middle of a ballet academy-cum-witch's coven. Vivid, over-the-top bloodshed ensues. THE REMAKE: Having long expressed interest in a remake, David Gordon Green is reportedly set to follow Pineapple Express with Suspiria — featuring Natalie Portman as his lead. She would produce as well. APPEAL: Strong. Face it — for all its inspired demises and influence, Argento's original doesn't age well. It's saturated from eye to ear with genre cheese that could benefit from a modern reimagining with real cinematography (by Green's brilliant regular lenser Tim Orr, we presume) and a less-manufactured sense of peril. Only downside: Can it compete with the horror of Portman's real-life love interest? THE TITLE: The Conversation THE ORIGINAL: Between the first two Godfather films, Francis Ford Coppola knocked out this extraordinary drama about a surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) paranoiacally ensnared in a murder plot. THE REMAKE: Oscar-winning Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie is on board an AMC TV series with producer Tom Krantz, who has been trying to develop the show for a decade. APPEAL: Zero. Krantz tells Variety that "[t]he issues of privacy and individuality, and issues of spying and listening, are as relevant now as they've ever been. This is the perfect vehicle to tell those stories." Exactly — which is why you broadcast the timeless original on AMC as opposed to embarrass yourself attempting to keep up. Coppola is behind it, though; there's only so much wine he can sell, evidently, to subsidize his nonsense. THE TITLE: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! THE ORIGINAL: Russ Meyer's 1965 saga set the enduring standard for busty-stripper murder rampages. THE REMAKE: Quentin Tarantino, who already did sex-kitten speed-demonry in Death Proof, wants you to pay for a variation on himself and Meyer. Starring Britney Spears. Sigh. APPEAL:: Sigh. It's a little easier to swallow once you remember how well the guy's always done without ever conceiving an original idea. But is this really news, or is he just hedging lest Inglorious Bastards' hype proves unsustainable? After all, the Spears/Mendes/Kardashian rumor mill has been churning since January. This whole mess screams, "Just in case." That said, we've heard worse. (See The Conversation) THE TITLE: "French thriller Tell No One a word-of-mouth hit" THE ORIGINAL: An Aug. 1 enterprise story by Steven Zeitchik of The Hollywood Reporter, spotlighting what has become the art-house sleeper hit of summer. THE REMAKE: An Aug. 7 enterprise story by John Horn of the LA Times, spotlighting what has become the art-house sleeper hit of summer. APPEAL:: Flatlining. Happy as we are to see Tell No One's out-of-the-blue indie traction, Horn's second head-slapper in as many days has us fearing he may need more direct supervision at the Times. At least yesterday's baseless piece "Wednesday is the new Friday in movie releases" was an original. Try harder, John — your paper needs you.

There are a lot of places to start with this clip from last night's episode of Greatest American Dog: for example, though the on-screen chyron gives the dog's name as "Galaxy," we're pretty sure that owner JD variously calls for "Gutsy," "Curtsy," and "Koyaanisqatsi." More entertaining, though, than JD's strange names or his hip-hop/breakdancing routine with a nonplussed Galaxy are the reaction shots from the judges, which run the gamut from open-mouthed incredulity to a suspenseful, physical performance of, "Should I applaud? Yes? Both hands? No, just the one. How will I clap, then? Why, I'll just hit the table in a few sharp strokes like I'm a bad nanny." [CBS]

We have wonderful news regarding Shia's pinkie! (Say those last two words three times fast. It's fun.) Contrary to Star magazine's distressing report, which described a tiny, ax-wielding medieval executioner stationed over the star's left hand just waiting for the word, it turns out he'll be able to keep all ten of his fingers after all. The LAT e-mailed Shia's rep Melissa Kates for confirmation.She in turn responded with two little words—"Totally untrue"—that totally puts him back in the running for that Billy Joel biopic project. (Not to mention all the water he'll be able to wiggle out of his ear after he goes swimming! There's so many uses for a pinkie—and Shia can take advantage of them all!)

James Cameron's upcoming feature Avatar exists not merely to bring a motion-captured Michelle Rodriguez to a wider audience than ever before, but—if we are to believe what he tells us—to singlehandedly revolutionize the way we make, see, and even perceive of the movies. THR braved an interview with the director, who's too busy playing with his new toys to worry about losing his top-grossing-movie title to some gravel-voiced bat-creep. (Besides—by the time Avatar rolls around, the sweeping social revolution that accompanies it will render old notions of currency and spending completely obsolete. We'll be ranking the weekend box office in levels of Braincell Conversion Osmosis, or some other inconceivable economic unit of measurement.) But we digress; let's let Cameron describe some of the really-complicated-sounding rabbits he's got stuffed in his wizard hat:

Hot on the heels of Simple Jack (the fake, controversy-baiting trailer from Tropic Thunder that was eventually yanked) comes the trailer for Teresa: The Making of a Saint, an NC-17 Mother Teresa biopic starring Transformers actress (and parrot lover) Megan Fox. But wait! Could this, too, be a fake trailer, what with its cast made up of Hollywood heavyweights like "Sir Ben Queensly"? Indeed, it's just the latest in Hollywood's brand-new obsession with fake ads for real movies, this one designed to draw buzz for the Vanity Fair-set roman à clef How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, starring Fox as actress "Sophie Maes." Forgive us, but we'd much rather see Teresa than the real movie it's designed to promote — especially if the saintly missionary arrives in Calcutta tossing off Diablo Cody-penned bon mots like, "Fried bologna is the bomb!"

In a scene eerily similar to the film Garden State, Zach Braff started to feel alienated from the crowd at LAX. As Braff headed toward the exit, the crowd started to slowly blur into a sea of shapes and figures. Braff said, "It made me feel like I was really alone in the world. You know, that it was just me with the problem and everybody else was fine and normal." It didn't help Braff's demeanor any when he got a phone call and realized that his mobile phone still defaults to an Imogen Heap ringtone.

Days after implicating Mary-Kate Olsen but months after it began, the DEA inquiry into the death of Heath Ledger has finally wrapped, filing charges against exactly no one. Does it perhaps seem like the U.S. Attorney's Office spent an awful lot of time and money with nothing to show for it? According to TMZ, that's just the beginning — the gossip website alleges that DEA agents essentially used the Ledger investigation as an excuse to talk to supermodels, fly all over the country, and meet people from Hollywood:

Well, it seems as though the SharkDevouringKittenGate scandal that swum up and bit Pineapple Express on its opening day (quick review: the T-shirt James Franco wears throughout the entire movie is accused of being a WOWCH label design from three years ago) has done little to scare moviegoers from these waters, as Nikki Finke is reporting the movie has taken $10 million yesterday; that's some kind of August record, she suggests vaguely while waving away thick clouds of ganja smoke and trying to look like she's enjoying the party. Approached for comment on the wardrobe controversy, meanwhile, Pineapple star James Franco had no patience for the allegations, telling the NY Daily News, "That's ridiculous...We completely created that shirt and that shark. David wanted me to wear a purple Monterey Bay T-shirt with a whale on it. I said I wasn't into the whale shirt, so he came up with his own design, which was the shark."There—all settled. We haven't seen this much fuss over a T-shirt design since VoteForPedroGate, when a City of Industry town hall representative accused the producers of Napoleon Dynamite of decal plagiarism. Frankly, we're more interested in the exchange that followed, when two hot chicks interrupted the interview:

For all the talk about Sir Ben Kingsley's sex scenes with Penelope Cruz and Patricia Clarkson, the new film Elegy arguably features an even more up-front intimacy between the Oscar-winner and Dennis Hopper — Kingsley's sidekick in academia who counsels him through an intense romantic relationship with an ex-student (played by Cruz). We won't spoil it for you; let it suffice to say the role is Hopper's latest in a marathon of work that has seen three films released this year and finds the 72-year-old halfway through shooting Starz' adaptation of the Paul Haggis film Crash. We tracked Hopper down this week to run through Elegy, Crash and the 50-plus turbulent years that preceded them — all in five convenient questions (and a few surprisingly candid replies) after the jump.D: So did you actually call Sir Ben Kingsley "Sir Ben" on set? DH: I did. Absolutely. With pleasure. D: Yet the viewer gets the sense you have the mandate to continually bust his balls, even off-camera. You also share a fairly shocking moment near the end of the film. What was your relationship like? DH: It was all written, really. It was a wonderful relationship that seems very real and honest; you can tell the two men really loved each other and respected each other. I think that my character realized that as professors at the university, Sir Ben was probably a little smarter, a little brighter, a little more removed — but certainly not as worldly as my character, who is advising him on having an affair with a younger woman. My character has had many affairs. It's the one moment my character has an up on him. In my career I never had a part that was really seemed like a real person — the emotion, the give and take between Sir Ben and myself were very honest, I thought. D: Your career is endlessly fascinating: You acted alongside James Dean twice; obviously there's Easy Rider; you've appeared opposite three Oscar-winners in as many films this year alone. Do you ever take stock of how many Hollywood storylines your work intersects? DH: Yeah, sort of. But not really. I think of my career as a disappointment most of the time. After Easy Rider and The Last Movie, not directing anymore was a really devastating affair for me. And for the last 16 years, trying to direct movies and not getting financing has really been very hard on me. I really want to direct. I know that through the years I've been very fortunate to act; Blue Velvet was wonderful. Apocalypse Now. But if you still always think about directing movies, it's a chore. And I had to take a lot of bad movies at times. Out of 150 movies that I've been in, there are maybe 20 that are really good movies. D: You've also got TV behind you and in front of you, including an cable adaptation of Crash. It's obviously a pretty polarizing film; will the series follow that same vein? DH: Well, you'll remember that that was three different stories that sort of all come together in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is still the basis of where it's all happening, though we're shooting in Albuquerque. The writers are the same — Bobby Moresco and Paul Haggis — but the characters are all different. I play a Phil Spector-type music mogul whose always trying to look for the next big move. He's hired a 22-year-old driver from Watts who wants to be a rap star. Their relationship is totally bizarre. But it's wonderfully written and I'm having a good time. D: But does the world really need 13 more hours of Crash? DH: These are different characters. But why do they need it? Why does the world need entertainment at all? Do we need TV? We have it. And we do have series, and they're usually 13 in the first run. This is going to be a good 13. I love it because I've never seen such incredible language, and the things you can do on cable television now you can't even get away with in movies. We had an orgy the other day. For me it's a joy.

After filming a scene for the upcoming season of Desperate Housewives, Eva Longoria Parker took out a stack of bills and began to count out loud at a very high volume. One crewmember asked if Longoria Parker was going to practice her stealth tipping skills, but the popular actress said that her husband is the undercover tipper in their relationship. Another crewmember thought that Longoria Parker might be headed to the Spearmint Rhino to make it rain. Longoria shook her head and said, "Wrong. All wrong. It's my snack money for when I see Pineapple Express at the Americana tonight, dudes. Skittles and James Franco, crazy delicious!"

· We should really watch CNN more often: A spoonful of Big Gay Bitch Anderson Cooper's ultracatty insights into the Lohan clan really helps the hard news go down. [CNN] · Whew—that was a close one. Mary Kate Olsen is officially off the hook after the U.S. Attorney's Office closes the case on Heath Ledger's death. [People] · Gawker urges journalists covering the Olympics to search out the next Tonya Harding. "Why? Whyyy?" Ah—that never gets old. [Gawker] · Mr. Blackwell is at death's door! (Death looks hideous by the way—that cloak is so drab and dowdy.) [ETOnline] · Canadians are not as nice as previously assumed. [Yahoo]