Unless you're a fan of both mixed martial arts and directors who employ frenetic quick cuts as a means to hide razor-thin plots, you've probably never heard of Sean Faris, the 28-year-old star of this spring's Never Back Down. Seems as if Sean is conscious of this fact and, like any other enterprising young actor trying to make a name in Hollywood, he's actively taking steps to change that. You know, get out on the town, do a little presenter work at the Young Hollywood Awards, network a little. However, all of his good intentions went astray at the end of the evening when he made the all too common mistake on hitting on one of the other presenters. Usually, this would be a "no harm / no foul" kind of situation; however, in this instance, the presenter he was hitting on was 12-year-old Abigail Breslin and the incident was captured by the all-seeing, all-knowing eye of Harvey Levin.

Clearly committed to the same, ridiculous hairstyling tactics that helped to win Javier Bardem an Academy Award for No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers put the supporting pretty-boy superstar of their next effort, the Venice Film Fest-opening Burn After Reading, in a License to Drive-era Haimdo. The wardrobe choice is guaranteed to lend even further realism to Brad Pitt's already brilliantly realized performance as a dimwitted gym employee. After the jump, via firstshowing.net, are your first looks at Pitt's Burn co-stars, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and John Malkovich, plus a plot synopsis for the spoiler-resilient:

Why did the Church of Scientology buy a channel on YouTube? Well, remember how a video of Tom Cruise babbling about Scientology cropped up on YouTube? And how the Church got the video taken down so we put it on Gawker and then another copy stayed on YouTube? Well the Church tried to fight its critics with a regular user account, but that didn't work; the organization had no more visible cred than the anonymous people accusing it of suppressing free speech. So now the Church bought themselves this fancy channel stocked with 82 videos about their religion. Most are just bland, and some are delightfully creepy, even if they lack the star power of Tom Cruise. But I'm not allowed to show them here.

Once great filmmaker Quentin Tarantino filled actors Rob Schneider and Ian Ziering with a false sense of hope at a cocktail party last night. Tarantino talked to the guys for what seemed to be hours about how he had written a couple of parts in his latest script that they'd be perfect for. Yet when Schneider and Ziering attempted to follow up on the project the next day, the number they called had been disconnected. Schneider was not too upset about it, stating that he could just worm his way into another Adam Sandler film. However, Ziering took the news a bit too hard. He stated that he stopped getting his unemployment checks recently, and since he wasn't getting any callbacks regarding the 90210 spin-off, Ziering explained that he may have to pick up a shift at Peets' Coffee in Glendale.

Hey, where's Kristin Cavallari? And Jason Wahler? And that one chick with the huge cans? Oh, hi there! In case you hadn't noticed, Molly is out sick today, which leaves your Uncle Grambo the pleasure of being your host for this week's installment of "The Hills: Words Of Wisdom." Truth be told, I have never seen an episode of the show, which leaves me relatively unprepared to contextualize the goings-on of this band of famepires. While I harbor no doubts that a fair number of Defamer readers actually enjoy The Hills (regardless of whether you like it as a show or as a cultural phenomenon), I'm guessing (hoping?) that most of you are not watching this to catch up on the plot summary. Rather, you're watching it for the same reason that I do, which is because it enables us to wallow around in the schadenfreude like a pig rolls around in mud on a hot summer's day. So, with that, please enjoy this week's episode (crafted lovingly, as always, by Molly McAleer). [MTV]

When you're Daryl Gates, the former Los Angeles police chief during whose 14-year term both the SWAT team and the Rodney King fiasco entered the nation's consciousness, you might edge toward a lower public profile when you hit retirement. As Rachel Abramowitz notes today, however, law-enforcement was but a mere stepping stone to putting the likes of Keanu Reeves and his director in their places on film sets:

We're so confused. An extra day's digestion of the Miley Cyrus/Vanity Fair photo "scandal" hasn't cleared much up for us in the way of morals, betrayals, exploitations and career management of the young Hannah Montana star, but the public meltdown has alerted us to a more basic truth that is helping guide us through the fog of outrage. This isn't about Miley Cyrus without a shirt on or if she's been seen somewhere in her lingerie, or if her father dropped the ball.

If a single, still image of Tom Cruise's reunion with Oprah Winfrey was enough to get our salivary glands going overtime, a video promo of Friday's history-making interview would almost certainly require us to surrender all control over bodily functions and social decorum. And so it went, our pulse quickening and pants filling with each progressively teased hardball: "Do you feel you've been misunderstood?" (Prediction: "No.") "How's Kate's family accepting you?" ("Great!") "True, not true?" ("True! No—wait! Not true!") "Do you regret saying that?" ("Regret is a suppressive emotion.) "This is to clear up everything." ("I'm already clear.") Just three more days!

· Even though their new record is less than impressive, we still recommend going to see The Breeders at the El Rey (oops!) at the Glass House out in Pomona because, well, Kim Deal is about as cool as they come. Also, Mudcrutch (featuring Tom Petty, Tom Leadon, Randall Marsh, Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench) at the Troubadour is a great option. Or, if neither of those sound enticing, we still recommend seeing She & Him, especially if you messed up and didn't go last night like we told you to.
· Hollywood Improv provides a night of chuckles w/ host Rob Delaney, Nick Kroll (Best Week Ever), Jen Kirkman (Acceptable TV, ASSSSCAT), Chris Hardwick (Hard & Phirm, G4's Attack of the Show) and more.
· Giulia D'Agnola Vallan presents and signs the new biography of director John Landis, with Landis on hand to sign as well at Dark Delicacies.

Former reality TV star Kristin Cavallari's publicist reached a near breaking point at the Scarlet series launch party Monday night in Hollywood. The publicist began to wonder what it is she's getting paid to do: advise and help increase her client's media exposure or hold her purse while she flirts some guy from the CW while ignoring the important media outlets like The Insider and Inside Edition. It was then that the publicist wished that she had been offered a course in college about how to mask one's contempt for their future clients. That would've been much more useful than the nine credits she wasted taking science classes.

· Mel Gibson has signed on for his first acting job since Signs and We Were Soldiers back in 2002. In Edge of Darkness, a feature based on a BBC miniseries from the '80s, he'll play "a straitlaced police investigator whose activist daughter is killed, probably by the Jews." [Variety]
· Could one-half of the lusty network coupling responsible for siring struggling, bastard offspring The CW be missing their former identity? Warner Bros. just launched TheWB.com, where you can catch streamed episodes of old programming and newly launched online series. [Variety]

Gwyneth Paltrow's bid to reestablish herself both as a commercially viable actress and a MILF-y sexpot reached new heights last night on The Late Show With David Letterman. After running into the Ed Sullivan theater looking like she just got done with a spinning class at the Equinox Gym, she entered David Letterman's notoriously chilly environs wearing a sleeveless top that was scantily cut down to there. After dispensing with the formalities (Dave complimented her towering heels, asked how the kids were, blah blah blah), Gwyneth launched into a story about how she had trouble performing a certain scene while filming Iron Man because she had recently injured her knee. While Dave feigned interest in the story of her damaged joint, Gwynnie recognized his lack of interest and decided to do something about it. Namely, she gave his knee (and a bit of his thigh) a nice little rubdown. While we can spout off a number of instances over the years where Dave has been kissed, hugged and even flashed by his guests, we believe this is the first time a guest has ever dared touch Dave's leg for this length of time. More pix of Gwyneth, including the lacy see-through getup she wore to an Iron Man screening last night, after the jump.

As we write this, recent CSI casualty Gary Dourdan is likely recovering from an even gnarlier Coachella hangover than most: TMZ reports the actor was discovered by Palm Springs police asleep in his car at 5:21 a.m., upon which he was arrested on "suspicion of possession of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and prescription drugs," otherwise known as the bare minimum required to make a Jack Johnson set seem remotely exciting. His genuinely pained mugshot—we seriously can't stare at it for more than a few seconds—is pictured above. Developing...

Here's a first glimpse at Jim Carrey on the set of I Love You Phillip Morris (from the team who wrote Bad Santa, the movie is based on a true gay prison love story and was pitched as Catch Me If You Can meets Brokeback Mountain), in which Carrey's character appears to have been vomited upon by a Versace Medusa logo. It also features him grabbing a generous handful of actor Rodrigo Santoro, who was required to butch things up significantly since playing 300's chainmail-swimwear-fetishist Xerxes.

John Cusack's meander through his second-consecutive anti-war film is coming under heavy fire at the Tribeca Film Festival, where War, Inc. bowed this week to the kinds of reviews that made his previous Iraq entry — the $50,899-grossing Grace is Gone — positively shine in comparison. While he and his agent sift around for a more reliable rom-com follow-up, our preliminary poke through the wreckage yields yet more smoldering evidence that Iraq is officially over as a dramatic subject. We piece together the eyewitness testimony after the jump:

An extremely paranoid Lindsay Lohan could barely sit still as she was having her nails done in West Hollywood Monday afternoon. Lohan constantly checked over her shoulders and all around the salon for fear that the employees were talking behind back in their native tongue. Lohan asked the woman who was doing her nails if they were talking about her, but when the nail technician attempted to calm the Mean Girls star down, Lohan excused herself for a cigarette and never returned.

For groupies for whom semi-regular MySpace blogspot postings offer not nearly a wide enough window inside the constantly churning, impossibly creative mind of Diablo Cody, exciting news indeed: the Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter and former Lady of the Pole™ has started a Twitter account! In just a little over a month, her follower fanbase has ballooned to 68 and counting, inspiring the most recent update, "Now that all these folks are following me, I'm tempted to be super obscene."

The Cannes rumor mill is whirring at full speed again today as the trades pick up whispers that the Julianne Moore/Mark Ruffalo drama Blindness is likely to occupy the opening-night slot. The Toronto Star is saying it's a done deal, but it's not official, and we're not so sure; with barely two weeks remaining before the May 14th opener, word over the Defamer transom suggests that Blindness is bad enough to make festival programmers wait — and make distributor Miramax stall — before committing the plum spot to a stinker.

If your last glimpse of Universal's Land of the Lost movie—featuring Will Ferrell smoking a butt by the La Brea Tar Pits—left you a little underwhelmed, we think this official first leaked image should help ease concerns that a beloved Saturday morning memory of your youth is about to be gang-raped by Hollywood. In it, the part-reptilian/part-insectoid/all-badass Sleestaks of the original are shown to have made the transition to big-screen Ferrell buffoonery largely intact. Director Brad Siberling explains why:

While we wait for Paul Thomas Anderson to reissue a There Will Be Blood DVD edition that his masterpiece and its fans deserve, we can take comfort in the imagination of said fans around the Internet. We've learned that today, for example, is the first-ever International Talk Like Daniel Plainview Day, honoring Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis's eminently quotable anti-hero for the ages. "If you've ever heard about 'Talk Like A Pirate Day,' this is essentially in the same vein," write organizers Harrison Simon and Donald Polaski. "Also, do your best to drink a milkshake, preferably someone else's." Some sample quotes follow, but we will probably default to taking our dates to the Peach Tree Dance. I said, get liquored up and take 'em to the Peach Tree Dance! Bastard in a basket! I'm finished. [Facebook]