As we all know by now, Harold and Kumar 2 features Neil Patrick Harris on a unicorn, a decision equivalent to the producers reaching into our wallet personally and removing the 11 dollars from its musty confines. Revealing some details of the not-particularly-closely-guarded plot to nymag.com, Harris says: "It's the very next day, so I'm still the same Neil Patrick Harris you saw before. I have not attempted rehab. I might have gone on another bender since you've seen me. Maybe not on the same drug. Maybe a new drug." Asked about the unicorn, he added, "It was a little hard.... I had to ride it without a saddle, and it was in a green-screen room, and I had to ride it up a ramp and turn around. And this unicorn is very unfamiliar with a crew and green screen, and you don't have a saddle to hold on to. So there was lots of calming, nurturing touches.... It was very Horse Whisperer-y." Towleroad already burned the barebacking joke, so we'll just leave you with a wish of being greeted tonight by NPH-on-a-unicorn dreams. [nymag.com]

As a director, Rambo auteur Sylvester Stallone is as ruthless as he is brilliant; dare to defy him, and you can be sure that when you show up to work the next day, you'll suddenly be listed on the call sheet as "Unknown Hostage Devoured By Man-Eating Pigs #3" or "Mercenary Landmine Victim": "One extra whose role as a mercenary consisted of a silent march through the jungle convinced the sound department to outfit him with a mic. 'He delivered this rambling monologue about his life back in Colorado, when he had no lines at all' says Logan. When Sly saw the rushes, he was furious. 'Boom! That guy got blown up instead.'" [Complex]

After hearing reports that Britney Spears's manager Sam Lutfi was playing drug dealer for his mentally unhinged client, we immediately flashed back to the analogy section of the SATs when we realized that Sam Lutfi : Britney Spears :: Howard Stern : Anna Nicole Smith. For the first time in our lives, we're on Team Lynne Spears for banning the Lufti from the Spears Unit. If only Anna's southern dumb belle of a mother had written a scathing note to a judge like this one Lynne submitted as part of a restraining order filed against Lufti:

Our appetites whetted with the release of the upcoming Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue cover featuring ten of today's most desirable starlets in a variety of glamorously uncomfortable poses (sooo much better than last year's shoot featuring four overexposed comedians and some hotly buzzed penguins whose careers quickly nosedived), we delved deeper into VanityFair.com's stash of preview goodies. It was there that we discovered Renée Zellweger starring in the most amazing piece of video that we've seen in at least the last twelve hours.

· Mattel joins fellow toy manufacturer Hasbro in leaping into CAA's embrace, turning over brands like American Girl, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price to the agency for potentially lucrative Hollywood exploitation. First order of business: attaching artificially smooth client Nicole Kidman to a live-action Barbie project by convincing her that another round of full-body laser resurfacing should erase any concerns about being far too old for the part. [Variety]
· The show will go on! cries Academy president Sid Ganis, reassuring the nominees assembled at yesterday's Oscar luncheon that they'll get the recognition they deserve whether or not the strike is resolved by the end of February. "The Oscar exists to shine the brightest possible light on you and your work, and it would be such a terrible shame, through no fault of yours and no fault of ours, if the current conditions prevented us from shining that brightest possible light." [THR]

Trumping the recent online publication of a photo depicting Harrison Ford meaningfully standing atop some crates in a warehouse, Movieweb is offering a sneak peak at Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull's titular Mysterious Artifact, an object whose secret has previously been so fiercely guarded that two unfortunate souls have paid for their spoiler-pushing crimes with their freedom and careers. We must admit that the actual skull (assuming, of course, the photo is genuine) is far more menacing than the bedazzled knick-knack we'd long envisioned.

Didn't Mariah Carey ever hear of a lil' success story called America Ferrara? If not, will whomever is responsible for tanning, plucking, and waxing her 24/7 please remind Mimi that you gotta get ugly to get your hands on a little gold man. Currently filming the (we predict straight-to-DVD) movie Tennessee (that's Mimz on set above) Carey plays a southern waitress with some grooming problems. Like, she's not pretty. But Mariah is! Or so she thinks!

On this second day of the New Era of Cautious Optimism ushered in by Friday's "informal" bargaining session between Writers Guild negotiators and studio CEOs—when WGA West president Patric Verrone's repeated striking of Disney's Bob Iger with a foam EncounterBat™ led to a critical, tearful breakthrough on the matter of streaming video payments— the LAT reports that the Guild's West Coast board has "reacted favorably to the outlines of a pending agreement" between the warring factions. Still, they refuse to uncork the Moët until everything they've fought for is actually in contract form and put to a vote that could—dare we say it? yes, we will dare—happen as early as this weekend:

Now for a long-overdue Angelina TattooWatch update: With whispers of a twins pregnancy, Jolie's lower-belly tattoo will likely be exposed to more distention than ever, requiring perhaps a lengthening of its current sacred text. (May we suggest, "Aniston! Pregnant me again—only this time it's twins! :D" surrounded by a Chinese fertility dragon?) Meanwhile, we defy you to differentiate the real back tattoos from the temporary ones added for her role as Fox, the assassin with a soft spot for semiautomatic artillery and adorable Third World orphans, in the upcoming Wanted. [Daily Mail]

First things first: How about that Matthew McConaughey's new haircut? Appearing on The Today Show to promote Fool's Gold (formerly Romancing the Stoner), the shirt-averse movie star unveiled a jarring new squaredo. Once we adjusted to the thought of McConaughey being robbed of the luscious, starfish-and-seaweed tangled manlocks that for so long have defined his freespirited, shaka-sign-delivering attitude, however, we were able to focus on what he was actually saying to a very giggly Meredith Vieira. (God she loves her job!)

For those of you requiring context for the disturbingly violent cross-network brawl between Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart you're about to witness, a feud recently erupted between O'Brien and Colbert over their dueling claims of having made Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee candidacy viable (ignoring, of course, The Chuck Norris factor).

Since the MPAA tried to ban screeners of Oscar-nominated films over piracy fears in 2003, the risk of those screeners leaking to the Internet has actually fallen, according to research by journalist/programmer/dot-com founder Andy Baio. But a month before the ceremony, all but six of this year's 34 nominated films have been leaked online. Below, how movie studios' fear of piracy (okay, "stealing") was the best thing that happened to pirates. Plus, how a studio's fear of piracy kills a movie's Oscar chances.

· As a couple of different people have now pointed this out to us, we feel compelled to share: Before Matt Damon was fucking Sarah Silverman, he was all over Scotty's ladyfriend in Eurotrip. [via Lindsayism]
· Robert De Niro has come down with Obamamania.
· Learn all about new Britney Spears lawyer Adam Streisand's not-so-secret connection to another, much more famous Streisand! Yes, it's the one you're thinking of!
· Turner Classic Movies dares the WGA to stay on strike.

There are two ways of looking at 20th Century Fox's decision not to air an ad for The Happening during the Super Bowl last night (Ed. Note: teaser trailer removed by the request of 20th Century Fox). The first is that the company made a financially savvy decision by choosing not to blow $2.7 million on a thirty-second advertisement (like all those other studios did). The other is that the studio is feeling a bit gunshy on the financial prospects of Night's first film since the unmitigated disaster that was Lady In The Water. And as for which theory we think holds more water? We're going with the latter.

Life behind the gleaming walls of the CAA Death Star, it should hardly surprise you to hear, is not all baby-buffets and games: Being the most powerful agenting force in the universe means that daily, high-stakes deals negotiated by employees with Vader-sized ambitions will occasionally require the building to fold in on itself and munch on one of its own. Which is precisely what happened to TV packager Michael Camacho after getting his hands a little to deeply inside the Oprahphagus. From Deadline Hollywood Daily:

Earlier this afternoon, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences welcomed awards hopefuls to its annual luncheon, where nominees are free to mingle with both colleagues and competitors in a low-pressure environment, enjoy a delicious meal, and generally bask in the glow of their potential Oscar glory. Perhaps infected with the giddy spirit of cautious optimism spreading through the industry following the new round of rumors about an impending, Oscars-salvaging deal between the WGA and AMPTP, today's event seemed like little more than a high-wattage nice-off to see who could offer the most vigorous reacharound to his or her peers, according to the LAT:

Although we did recently declare a temporary moratorium on burger phone jokes, it is worth noting that a blogger who goes by the handle of Big Ross recently got his hands on a copy of Diablo Cody's first post-Juno script, entitled Jennifer's Body. Megan Fox (Transformers) and director Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux) are attached to the horror/thriller about a cheerleader who somehow becomes possessed by a demonic spirt which compels her to start offing all of the dudes at her high school. And while we haven't actually seen the script ourselves, from what Big Ross describes, we feel pretty safe declaring that Diablo's streak of consecutive Oscar nominations will come to an end at one.

[Warning: Some spoilers ahead.] There's been an ongoing There Will Be Blood debate over here at Defamer HQ, with one faction having emerged from the P.T. Anderson masterpiece convinced what we had just witnessed wasn't just a searing allegory encapsulating the epochal struggle between American capitalism and religion, but also some very kinky oil-prospector-daddy on boy-of-the-cloth goings-on. (OK, fine. That faction was us.)

· Music round-up: Vampire Weekend at Amoeba; The Pity Party at Spaceland; Pinhead Gunpowder at the Troubadour; Dan Crane (Air Guitar Nation's Bjorn Turock) at the Silverlake Lounge.
· The proprietors of Barney's Beanery are encouraging engagement in the political process through alcohol consumption, hosting a Super Tuesday Countdown Beer Vote event today and tomorrow during which support for the various candidates is demonstrated by Bud Light and Sam Adams purchases.
· Kung-fu movie historian Dr. Craig Reid joins photojournalist Justin Guariglia at the Ben Maltz Gallery to discuss Guariglia's new exhibition, Shaolin: Temple of Zen.

Despite seemingly insurmountable handicaps—the loss of his striking writers, an inability to find guests willing to risk being considered WGA-undermining picket-line crossers, and a hated timeslot nemesis working at full strength due to his own Guild side-deal, Jay Leno has, amazingly, continued to win the battle of late night since everyone returned to work in early January. Today's NY Times attempts to unlock the secrets of Leno's crazy-making success, noting that despite the lower quality of available seat-fillers, he's been able to do the same show he's always done by maintaining his usual output of tepid monologue jokes. Asked about Leno's ability to crank out dozens of gags per night without the benefit of his absent staff, defenders cite his impressive talent for passing off his stale, unfunny material as fresh: