As we find ourselves winding once again towards the end of another stunning American Idol season—the very fate of the adult-contemporary-radio universe hinging on the name read out by host Ryan Seacrest in the final seconds of its lean, seven-hour finale broadcast—we take a moment to catch up with the some of the also-rans from Idol past. Remember Chris Sligh, Season 6's Guarini-fro'd, Caucasian soul singer? According to Craigslist's Nashville chapter, Sligh will be headlining Thursdays Acoustics for Academics fundraiser at East Cheatham Elementary School in Joelton, TN!

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, our new weekly guide sizing up the latest at the movies. After last week's mixed bag of releases, we have a look at the more competitive box-office environment facing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Forbidden Kingdom and other high-profile openers. We'll also predict the weekend's biggest bomb, choose one smaller standout buried in the pack and lay out a few notable new DVD's for the shut-ins among you. As alluded to last week, our opinions are our own, but they're also right, so you're in luck!

· Quick—take shelter inside this cardboard Tauntaun! It's the Sweded version of The Empire Strikes Back! [YouTube via /Film]
· Videogum wonders where The Strangers, aka The Blair Floppy/Creepy Mask Project, really takes place. [Videogum]
· The Yogurt Elders have spoken: At long last, Pinkberry can hold its head up high and declare itself to be the real thing. [Eater LA]
· The Hoff ordered to pay $25,000 a month in Hasselmony. [USA Today]
· Enjoy these new production stills from Baz Luhrmann's upcoming Ralph Lauren Safari campaign movie, Australia. Check out that Hugh Jackman—now that's how you crack a whip! And don't forget Nicole Kidman—now that's how you cough up blood into a lace kerchief and look frail! [Australiamovie.com, iesb.net]

· See his naughty bits, then see him in the flesh. The Forgetting Sarah Marshall screening at the Arclight tonight includes a Q&A with director Nick Stoller and star Jason Segel.
· We don't know where to begin describing the Bent Festival at the California Plaza, so we'll just let Flavorpill do it: "An international movement attracting musicians, artists, performers, noiseniks and mad scientists, circuit bending typically involves the manipulation of simple electronics — especially those found in children's toys like talking dolls — into avenues of sonic expression that Playskool just wouldn't understand. This year's Bent Festival is LA's fifth and most ambitious to date, with concerts by celebrity benders from all over the world, plus workshops, demonstrations, and parties over three days at two downtown locations." Yes, what they said.
· Western States Motel at Spaceland, Arlo Guthrie at Royce Hall, Oliver Future at Safari-Sams.

After having a Bert Fields-shaped carrot dangled before them, Pellicano trial-watchers will be disappointed to learn the famed Scary Hollywood Lawyer will not be testifying. Reports THR, Esquire: "Co-defendant Mark Arneson, a former LAPD sergeant, planned to call Fields, and the veteran entertainment attorney even showed up to court twice this week to take the stand. But he was never called, and today a spokesman for Fields said Arneson's attorney decided not to call him after all." With a witness list quickly running dry of A-list celebs and Hollywood power-players, we fear we'll soon go back to not caring again. Is there any way we can get someone fun on the stand? Maybe Bruce Vilanch in a "What, Me Worry?" T-shirt? [THR Esq.]

We were admittedly underwhelmed upon hearing that lip sync princess Ashlee Simpson and her guyliner-sporting beau Pete Wentz were planning on tying the knot, but we are somewhat pleased to hear about all the trouble it's causing Papa Joe Simpson. Unsurprisingly, the engagement seems to be the result of Pete "doing the right thing" after knocking up his girlfriend. And in an attempt to turn a sticky situation into a pot of gold, minister-turned-Dadager Joe is allegedly trying desperately to make some quick cash by selling his daughter's story to the weeklies, conveniently timed to coincide with her upcoming album's release:

Noting that two cast members from TV's highest-rated procedurals—CSI's Gary Dourdan and Law & Order: SVU's Diane Neal—would be leaving their series at the end of their contracts, TVGuide.com's Michael Ausiello has reexamined the evidence, and concludes that these seemingly friendly departures were more likely the result of some less-than-amicable shitcannings:

An extremely tense Matthew McConaughey anxiously paced the set of his latest film on Wednesday night. The normally carefree actor has expressed disappointment to his inner circle that the weather in Boston does not allow him to be shirtless as often as he would like. It reportedly has been a few weeks since he was last able to casually stroll about all natural and he feels as if he's going to explode.

The task of turning five seconds' worth of compelling television—the announcement of the latest American Idol oustee—into an hour of Nielsen-trampling entertainment isn't an easy one. And yet they always seem up to the challenge, employing a wide variety of systematic dehumanization techniques to keep singers on their toes and viewers locked in until the very last moment. Take last night's episode, in which trembling, shaved-koala contestant David Archuleta was made to sit backstage for two full commercial breaks as his brothers and sisters stood in huddled groups on the stage. One was safe, the other at risk of being loaded onto Idol-branded freight trains and transported to a karaoke death camp somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

After all her fun-filled DUIs and failures to properly account for them, we expect nothing but the nastiest quotes to drip from jailbird Michelle Rodriguez's mouth. And most recently, she's directing her curse-filled anger towards we, the media. As the SCRAM bracelet-wearing actress tells Latina, anyone who dares to hypothesize about her sexuality and whether she likes girls or boys is just plain "slime":

Note to all potential Paris Hilton BFFs: if you're planning on auditioning to become Paris' next new lapdog, don't even think about standing a chance if you're packing any junk in the trunk. Hilton recently made it clear that should a friend's rear prove aesthetically displeasing to the heiress, she will shun them from her sparkly circle. As she blabbed in a recent radio interview:

Riding high on the wave that was his self-deprecating, actually funny tribute to Meryl Streep on Monday night, Robert De Niro is reportedly surging into Cannes' closing-night slot next month with his undistributed Hollywood satire What Just Happened? Directed by Barry Levinson, written by Art Linson and starring De Niro as a Linson-esque producer beset with divorce and a nightmarish film project, the movie's buzz fizzled after mixed reviews following its Sundance premiere. So what are the odds it'll seal a deal on the Croisette?

While walking the press line at the screening of 88 Minutes, Al Pacino greeted each reporter — even the local Las Vegas affiliates — with the once funny, but now just sad "Hoo-ah!" line from Scent of a Woman. Pacino paused for a moment after being interviewed by a Las Vegas film critic and wondered if this was why he started to act all those years ago in New York City.

You don't become the NBA's all-time scoring leader because you like to pass the ball. That philosophy applies to blogging as well for hoops legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who fired arguably the lowest-percentage shot of his professional life Wednesday with a baffling essay blending identity politics, film criticism and Barack Obama flag-waving. Or, as the Abdul-Jabbar playbook calls it, "Horton Hears a Racist":

In another noisy shot across the studios' collective bow, SAG leadership hinted further at a strike

· The second X Files movie is called I Want To Believe, rendering the project even more inscrutable, but still holding steady at about a decade too late. [Variety]
· Ashley Tisdale has set up a "first-look deal" with American Idol producers FremantleMedia, and is in talks to star in a nose-contingent remake of Teen Witch for United Artists. [Variety]
· The people behind lonelygirl15 have renamed their production company EQAL, and have collected "a $5 million Series A round of financing," or enough money to produce approximately 178,900 lonelygirl15s. Just wait 'til the Series B money comes in! [THR]
· Unfazed by Quarterlife's poor ratings, NBC picks up another online series: Gemini Division, starring Rosario Dawson. Each 50-minute episode will be available for streaming on NBC Universal websites, and only take 3 hours to watch after factoring in buffering issues. [THR]
· A 17-year-old's big break in a Wes Craven film is felled by mono. Mono sucks! [THR]

It's been a rough week for you, the Internet-Enabled Movie Fan with Something to Say. Just a day after noted haimishe Luddite Barry Sonnenfeld's semi-hysterical vision of a Facebook-infiltrated culture in which Big Brother will monitor our every Twittered activity, comes a similarly technophobic EW.com conversation with the creative duo behind the Indiana Jones series (and possessors of 68.2% of all the world's wealth), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Playing a sort of good cop/bad cop routine, Spielberg bemoans the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes, while Lucas tempers all the grumpy-old-man talk by pointing out that the internet is also capable of producing some good things (e.g. an audience who actually cares what Indy has been up to after his 19-year sabbatical). We quietly slip in mid-conversation:

In addition to the regular team of assistants, Jake Gyllenhaal has employed a personal umbrella holder on the set of Nailed. Using his iPhone, the Brokeback Mountain star discovered that there was a slight chance of rain in the forecast for Columbia, South Carolina and did not want to take the risk of getting wet in the short distance between his trailer and set.

As much as we poke fun at Momager/Pimp Dina Lohan for her questionable parenting techniques and famewhore-y tactics to become just as cool and famous as her bankable daughter Lindsay, we secretly can't ignore the fact that having her as a mother might simply be loads of fun. Sure, you don't really have a role model, and you can't expect anyone to pick you up after school, but it's not like you go to school anyway! In Ali Lohan's case, you go to Las Vegas. MSNBC.com reports that Dina and Ali hit the strip to shoot scenes from their upcoming reality show Living Lohan and, from the sounds of it, had a grand ol' Britney Spears-in-garters kind of stay...

A Defamer operative browsing Metacritic happened to notice that 88 Minutes—in which Al Pacino plays Dr. Jack Gramm, an FBI forensic psychiatrist who has (all together now!) 88 real-time minutes to solve his own murder!—has received a Metacritic score of 2. To give you some indication of just how bad that is, 10,000 B.C. got a 34, making Roland Emmerich's exhaustively researched recreation of the Great Mammoth Fur Trade a roughly 1700% better film. But how does it rank against releases of similar or lesser quality?