Even before we knew what "smokin' somethin'" meant, we knew that the creators of The Smurfs were smokin' a little somethin' somethin'. After all, anyone who would create a world inhabited by little blue men who spoke in a a trippy language and lived in magic mushrooms had to be one of those "Mary Jane smokin' hippies" that our parents always warned us about. So after seeing some stills from the upcoming Smurfs movie, we're enthralled to see that the French animators who are making the film sure seem to be smokin' somethin' too. Seems as though this adaptation will finally tell the tale the way it was meant to be told: darkly.

According to an extensive New York profile out today, Heath Ledger spent his final days deeply engrossed in researching and writing a script based on the life and death of Nick Drake. In case you missed the whole Drake resurgence of the late `90s (spurred by Volkswagen's usage of his song "Pink Moon" in a now-classic advert), he was an English singer-songwriter who battled insomnia and depression before overdosing in his bed at age 26. Sounds sickeningly familiar, right? According to the piece, Heath's last weeks involved saying goodbye to the Nice Guy character he'd played publicly since the birth of his daughter Matilda and falling into another role altogether: a depressed, masked public figure who, consumed with writing the Drake screenplay, just might have got too close to his subject.

· Music roundup: The Pity Party at Spaceland, The Happy Hollows at the Echo, Iron Maidens (plural!) at the Key Club.
· Celebrate some of the quirkiest and most independent programming ever to hit public access television at the Paper Tiger Television 25th Anniversary Party at the Red Cat.
· Grab your PixelVision2000 and head over to the 17th Annual Fisher Price Toy Camera Festival at the UnUrban Coffee House, paying tribute to the best of the low-budget films shot exclusively on toy cameras.

It's tough out there for Neil Patrick Harris. First, the evil geniuses behind Harold & Kumar force him to film scenes atop a sparkly unicorn. Now, those nefarious producers at PBS have cast him on Sesame Street as a character called The Shoe Fairy. After telling Conan's audience that he "loves puppets!" and misunderstanding their muffled laughs, Harris goes on to give us a sample of what those sneaky writers put in his script:

Christopher Walken, beloved star of True Romance, and, more recently, testicular-imagery-laden competitive table tennis spoof Balls of Fury, showed up in person Friday night to collect his Hasty Pudding Man of the Year award from the famous Harvard dramatic club. The appearance took full advantage of the multi-talented icon, with Pudding members requesting that Walken perform a song from Hairspray, intone his "more cowbell" catchphrase from the classic SNL skit, and, in a scenario that perhaps skirted the boundaries of good taste, reenact the Russian Roulette scene from The Deer Hunter using a Super Soaker filled with strawberry jam.

Writes Page Six: "WHICH recently divorced fashion editor is rumored to be spending more time in Los Angeles these days? Word is she's taken up with the recently jailed Kiefer Sutherland." The only divorced fashion editor we know is that lady The Devil Wears Prada is based on—Meryl Wintour or whatever. We hope it's not her! [NY Post]

With the shocking news that Vanity Fair—traditionally the host of the most extravagant, starfuckiest soirée of Oscar seasons—would not be holding their annual festivities, Hollywood's society set was instantly thrown into turmoil over fears that the entire Oscar party circuit would tumble like Mexican Train Dominoes. Thankfully, those fears were for naught:

Another day, another celebushoplifter. But this time it's Britney, y'all! She was spotted on Saturday leaving Fred Segal's in Beverly Hills wearing a $200 black long-sleeved shirt she hadn't paid for. But just when when we were about to accept her into the Winona Ryder School of Hard Knocks (as opposed to the more pedestrian Bai Ling School of Batteries), we read the article a second time and came across this disheartening detail: "She has previously been accused of swiping a disposable lighter from a garage last December and a wig from a sex shop last year." This got us thinking. While we know that we already made a Hedy Lamarr joke last week in reference to Bai Ling's arrest, we think it's high time to to compare and contrast Britney's falling and Hedy's fallen stars.

What is Hayden Christensen, an actor who's had to bat away rumors about his sexuality, doing on a magazine quite as gay as Details? Last week, the Jumper star wandered the streets of Manhattan with his co-star, Rachel Bilson, providing heterosexual photo opportunities. All that hard paparazzi-enticing work, thrown away for one lousy magazine cover. Unless this is all part of his handlers' plan: encourage speculation in the celebrity weeklies of a relationship between the prettyboy actor and his female co-star; but leave enough coded language and imagery for the gays to believe there's still hope. In the business of celebrity image-making, this is the equivalent of the evangelical dog-whistle, or Mike Huckabee's floating cross commercial, an appeal designed only to be picked up by the target demographic. If so, it's working: despite awful reviews, Jumper was the weekend's highest grossing new release. (After the jump, the reason why the Jumper star keeps the audience guessing: his fans, who have filled Youtube with dreamy tribute videos, can't handle the truth.)

· Variety floated the days-old AICN rumors about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus this morning. Namely, they re-report that Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell have all signed on to play the role in which Heath Ledger was originally cast. Reps for Cate Blanchett, meanwhile, have yet to confirm her involvement, but it's widely assumed she'll also throw her interpretation into the ring, and walk away with the picture. [Variety]
· The ACE EDDIE Awards give top editing honors to The Bourne Ultimatum and Sweeney Todd. The best reality show editing went to an episode of Cops (for real!), though the winner's acceptance speech was tragically cut short when he triumphantly waved his Golden Scissors trophy above his head and lost his grip. [Variety]

Despite the recent appearance of Lindsay Lohan's Sober Face (not to mention her Sober Nipples), there are a few disturbing indications that the Ghosts Of Cokepants Past are re-entering her life. The all-knowing, all-seeing eyes of TMZ caught Lohan enjoying the sabbath with some close friends at Villa last night (we're guessing they weren't watching the NBA All-Star Game). But when it came time to call it an evening, Lindsay's posse pulled a page from the Scooby Doo playbook in an attempt to fool the paparazzi into thinking she had already left the club: namely, they created a diversion.

When you think about it, there was really nowhere else for Matthew McConaughey to go with his career besides fragrance pitchman. Having already drained Hollywood of every last romcom spec requiring frequent toplessness of its male lead, the Texan matinee idol is now veering into entirely new multi-million-dollar payout realms to further explore his torso-exposing art.

We think most of us are in agreement that Where the Wild Things Are—as far as sacred texts go, basically the Koran of childhood—was in safe hands with Spike Jonze, a filmmaker we fear may have at some point been beaten with a genius stick as hard as Kanye gets it with a shovel in his latest Jonze-helmed music video. (It bears noting that he co-wrote the screenplay with McSweeney's founder/ co-genius Dave Eggers, offering further promise that Things won't follow the same road as any number of Seussian big screen disasters.)

Considering that she once celebrated her birthday by hosting parties in five different cities, Paris Hilton has set the bar pretty high when it comes to self-indulgent birthday parties. So when it came time to celebrate her 27th birthday, she did what every slutty heiress would do — take the stage with The Pussycat Dolls in hooker clothes, of course! But while Hilton played quick change artist (alternating between a "sexy" cop and a a "sexy" lingerie model), there was one newly sober and newly naked star who wasn't allowed to attend the festivities.

Ease the bitterness of having to work on President's Day with the knowledge that 1) Grover Cleveland always made his first and second assistants roll calls on Washington's birthday, and 2) the names Roscoe Jenkins, Hanna Montana, and Juno appear nowhere in the weekend box office numbers:

Click to viewAh, President's Day. We cannot think of a greater way to celebrate the memory of Millard Fillmore and James Garfield than to spend the next ten or fifteen minutes (hours?) rifling through New York's nude photoshoot with Lindsay Lohan. Just last week, we were celebrating Lindsay's new Sober Face, but even we must admit that it pales in comparison to her new Sober Nipples. Which, we might add, are on full display (!) in two of the spread's ten slides. As far as career rejuvenation stunts are concerned, we are predicting that this tastefully titillating homage to Marilyn Monroe's "Last Sitting" is poised to sit alongside Drew Barrymore's role in Poison Ivy in the pantheon of greatest breast-baring comebacks of all-time. A few of the tamer (but still NSFW!) selections follow after the jump; the rest can be found in this week's edition of New York. You have been warned.

· Mark Lisanti, our founder and fearless leader of four years, packs it in for bigger and brighter things, as we, along with the Chinese Theater Justice League, bid him a fond farewell.
· Alas, poor Grazerhead! We knew him, Russell Crowe.
· WGA Scribeapalooza II: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off proves a rousing success: The strike, she is no more.
· Meryltom ClooNiro urges you to JUST TALK.
· What they did over their strike break: Forgot what the hell was going on on their show. Worked at a fast food restaurant.
· This is your flack. This is your flack on beta-carotine-rich drugs.
· Spielberg pulls out of the Beijing Olympics. Fine, Spielberg. See if China cares.
· Our first glimpse of Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull.
· Gasp! An exec let some underling take the blame for something shady he did! It's right there in that e-mail! We know!!
· We don't know about you, but we like to start our mornings with a hot cup of coffee, a beloved screen icon, and the c-word.
· The Fall of the Fanning Dynasty
· Paris Hilton's baby brother is all grown up and sobering up in a holding cell.
· Mel Gibson sued for not giving his screenwriter his fair share of the Jesus-snuff-movie millions.
· Kanye West wins Artist of Eternity!
· Roy Scheider takes the Blue Thunder express to the hereafter.
· Just what Ben Silverman needed: A mountain of fuck-you money.
· Who's up for some Drunk Lindsay Bingo?

[Mood: Unsettling mix of trouser-soiling fear and misguided hope. Song: "The One Where Everyone On 'Six Feet Under' Dies" by Sia]

Just when you thought that it was finally safe not to watch American Idol anymore, another (curiously well-timed) Idol scandal is beginning to break, one that will surely pique everyone's interest in the show once again. Seems that one of Idol's final 24 contestents, Carly Smithson, is a professional singer who recorded an album that was released by a major label back in 2001. With that being the case, you must be curious as to why you've never heard of her. Well, that's because her debut album was recorded under her maiden name (Carly Hennessy) and was a colossal flop! Still, she was a professional, people, which means we have an Official Scandal on our hands. However, if Fox's latest attempt to goose ratings fails to catch on, we're fairly confident that it's only a matter of days before the network begins leaking photos of a wet t-shirt clad Simon Cowell frolicking about in a water fountain to an adoring public. That'll get 'em. [Reuters]

· In this clip from the increasingly depressing Celebrity Rehab, we learn that Brigitte Nielsen's husband doesn't exactly have a firm grasp on the English language. Either that or heavy bouts of boozing really give Brigitte a wicked case of the munchies.
· Never got around to seeing Cloverfield: The Movie but still want to see what the monster looks like? Then take a gander at the toy that's going to retail for $99.99! Why so pricy? Batteries ARE included. [Slashfilm]
· Anne Hathaway's armpits are positively resplendent (if you're into that sort of thing). [Goldenfiddle]
· Lily Allen has gone goth. Didn't see that one coming. [Daily Mail]
· How can this be? CBS decided to renew NUMB3RS but left How I Met Your Mother precariously perched on the bubble. Inconceivable! [TV Decoder]