Friday
· Music round-up: Earlimart plays the Friday Nights at the Getty show at, er the Getty; Razorlight at the El Rey; Rodney Bingenheimer is honored at the Henry Fonda featuring Redd Kross and The Donnas.
· Kozik: Death to False Vinyl reveals a new collection of Japanese Imperial Court dolls at Gallery 1988 on Melrose. Come on, who doesn't love an nice exhibition of Gosho?
· The Highlands hosts a live comedy benefit for three-year-old bone cancer victim Olivia Boodey, featuring Dane Cook, Sam Tripoli, and music by Jim Jones. More info here.
Saturday
· Bespectacled talk show interrogator Greg Proops brings his legendary Chat Show to Largo, where he'll trick Drew Carey and David Palmer into revealing all their darkest secrets, then quietly escape into the Fairfax Avenue night.
· More music: Sebadoh at Spaceland; Do Make Say Think at Troubadour; The Cassettes at Hotel Café.
· In Hollywood, accepting a duffel bag stuffed with a million dollars to finance your indie movie in exhange for offing a dude is a no-brainer. In the Red Weather Theatre's Noblesse Oblige at the Stages Theatre Center, it's not quite as simple a transaction.
Sunday
· And still more music: Mountain Goats at the El Rey; Minutes til Midnight at Spaceland; Panther at the Smell.
· Author Daniel Hurewitz reads and signs Bohemian Los Angeles, a history of L.A.'s boho culture in the first half of the 20th century, at Dutton's.
· The Sponto Gallery and Hollywood Escapes celebrate 50th anniversary of filming in Venice by taking you on a magical mystery bus tour of Santa Monica and Venice locations where the films were shot. Hours of fun for beach-adjacent movie nerds!

Not content to let his comments in yesterday's THR about how out of touch critics are with the tastes of mainstream audiences stand on their own, a defiant Wild Hogs producer Brian Robbins took the skirmish to the pages of the trade papers for a second straight day, buying this two-page spread in both Variety and the Reporter to once again declare his triumph over cinematic elitism. An earlier version of the ad, in which Robbins was depicted sodomizing a comically oversized rotten tomato, was rejected for its potentially offensive content.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in like you mean it. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the most recent time you spotted Tony Hale purchasing a DVD of his own work:

Please hide in the closet and watch quietly as we make love to this week's sponsors in an intimidating number of exotic positions, ranging from the Angry Water Buffalo to the Backwards Ski Lift. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and be freaked until the point of collapse by the world's most affluent and sexually adventurous readers, see this page.

· Var chief Peter Bart pens yet another memo to Tom Cruise, this time encouraging his successor at United Artists to ignore the skepticism of the press, take a big swig of some Oprah-endorsed positivity Kool-Aid, and realize that he's not the only one in this town trying to figure out how to run a studio. [Variety]
· Spunky test-pattern alternative MyNetworkTV will kick of a new schedule on Monday, shifting its focus from cheaply produced telenovelas that no one wants to watch to low-cost reality programming audiences will be eager to ignore. [THR]
· Clint Eastwood may direct and Angelina Jolie is in talks to star in The Changeling for Universal, the story of a woman who suspects that the abducted son that's eventually returned to her is not actually her child—material that the actress instantly connected with because of a paranoid fear she's been harboring that careless partner Brad Pitt lost Maddox at a Ralphs a year ago and has been trying to pass off another Cambodian orphan as their beloved tyke ever since. Imagine's Brian Grazer is also on board to superproduce the shit out of this one. [Variety]
· ABC elevates Ellen Pompeo to $200,000 per episode, while Grey's Anatomy co-stars James T. Pickens Jr, Chandra Wilson, Justin Chambers, and TR Knight are expected to get raises to $125k. No word on whether Isaiah Washington's successful completion of gayhab will earn him a similar reward, but should he be passed over on this round of renegotiations, he plans to recoup some of the withheld salary bump by stealing Knight's lunch money each day. [THR]
· USA pays $11 million for the rights to air Borat for five years starting in 2009, a relatively low sum due to the fact that the network will be forced to pixelate Ken Davitian's hairy, suffocating anus during the movie's iconic wrestling scene. [Variety]

As Katie Holmes gets set to star opposite Queen Latifah in Mad Money—the all-gal, low-budget buddy comedy that promises to do for her career what Taxi did for Jimmy Fallon's—comes the announcement that Maggie Gyllenhaal will be taking over as The Dark Knight's D.A. Rachel Dawes, the role Holmes originated in Batman Begins:

Ever since the news broke a couple of days ago that a long-depressed Rosie O'Donnell has been treating her illness with the expected course of pharmaceuticals and a more radical "inversion therapy," we've been anxiously anticipating the host's promised demonstration of her controversial blues-ameliorating apparatus on today's installment of The View. We're sure you'll be just as transfixed as we were by this brief clip of O'Donnell climbing into her trusty therapeutic swing, in which she spends portions of each day allowing gravity to more evenly distribute the melancholy humours that have been darkening her aspect since the tragedy at Columbine. So: Enjoy.

When a judge sent Courtney Love to rehab in the summer of 2005 after violating her probation with various drug and assault pleas, she chose Newport Beach's Beau Monde Programs, where she spent three months being pampered back to sobriety through a full immersion into its rigorous 12-step program. ("Step 1: Slip into this luxurious robe. Step 2: Choose Shiatsu or traditional Swedish..." etc.) Beau Monde is still waiting on payment for her $181,286 bill, and filed a complaint March 1, available for your perusal, in addition to a copy of her signed admission agreement, at The Smoking Gun. Addressed to Love's criminal lawyer, Howard Weitzman, and Warren Boyd, her "personal addiction counselor," it's now up to her overworked team to figure out the best way to settle this unpleasantness, short of forcing her to sell off the rights to "Rape Me" to Progressive Auto Insurance for their edgy new "Don't get raped. Choose Progressive." TV and print campaign.

Realizing that the millions of purchasers of the shopping-mall-quality artwork of Thomas "The Painter of Light" Kinkade who spend their weekend nights avoiding the multiplex in favor of staying home to stare contentedly at the quaint tableaux upon which they've just spent hundred of dollars represent an untapped market for their cinematic product, the visionary executives of Lionsgate have announced that they're adapting Kinkade's "The Christmas Cottage" painting into a feature to be released around the holidays, according to Variety.

Over in Tokyo, one of the last places in the civilized world where leading juvenile cancer patient collector Michael Jackson can make occasional public appearances without having a firehose turned on him by child protection groups, the erstwhile King of Pop followed up a $3500-per-pump handshake party with a more affordable, $130 event for his less affluent devotees. Unfortunately, Jackson, worn down from a new round of experimental cosmetic procedures that have inflicted him with gigantism and rendered him even more distressingly waxen and ghoulish than usual, quickly tired of the high-pitched adulation offered up by the mesmerized throng and decided to cut short the appearance. Greedily snatching up the three local youngsters he'd been promised as tribute, he stormed off towards a Neverland-themed suite reserved for him at a nearby love hotel, a retreat that was hardly impeded by the brave young man who tried to restrain him until he fulfilled his entire personal appearance obligation.

· Another little piece of our teenage innocence is torn from us as Eddie Van Halen heads off to rehab. We always thought Michael Anthony would be the first to go, what with that Jack Daniels bass and the constant whiskey-chugging on stage. We blame David Lee Roth, somehow.
· Anna Nicole: The lovingly crafted, hand-sewn finger puppets. It was only a matter of time.
· This depression stuff is really affecting Rosie's blogging. All she can say to the Idol guy's angry response to her weightism/racism charges is a weak, " well.../what can u say really/from the coca-cola red couch/i call it as i see it/nigel l - sam r/same same same/1985 - 2007/blah blah blah blah/blah blah blah blah."
· Happy third birthday to Thighs Wide Shut, whose celebratory post will completely overload your already blog-addled brain.

Try as we might to hold on tight as the The Great American Anna Nicole Coaster takes us on its shriek-inducing journey, there really is no point, as there is always another 360° plunge lying ahead that you never quite saw coming. Case in point: this Phoenix New Times story about Marshall Soto, allegedly the 5-year-old product of an affair Smith had with Johnny Soto, a handyman from the Tohono O'odham Nation she met during a stay at the Sanctuary Resort and Spa on Camelback Mountain. To call the article a must-read is an understatement. An example:

The WOW Report gave today's NY Times piece (which we mentioned a little bit earlier) about recently "voluntarily resigned" First Look Studios CEO Henry Winterstern a once-over, and isn't necessarily buying that the combination of his great taste in expensive office furnishings and poor choice in movie projects was the reason for his hasty departure from the company, passing along this gossip about what might have gotten him ousted:

· Music round-up: Saturday Looks Good to Me at Spaceland; Dirty Little Secret at Safari Sam's; Bright Eyes at the El Rey for a second night. (Hit up your preferred scalper or Craigslist, kids!)
· It's All Things Celluloid at the Echo Park Film Center tonight, where co-founder Ken Fountain screens 16 mm and Super 8 "oddities" from their private collection. Do these include "snuff films"? Show up and find out for yourself!
· Aimee Liu signs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders at Borders in Torrance. Yeah, it's a little far, but it's a small distance to travel to better understand what your favorite cadaverous starlet is going through.

Though derided (or celebrated, we suppose, depending on your perspective) as "archaeo-porn," the James Cameron-produced documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which makes the kinds of whimsically blasphemous claims (you know, Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, had a kid, etc etc) that so delight Christian groups already predisposed to think that televisions are devilboxes that flicker with programs broadcast directly from the thorny member of Beezelebub himself, was quietly a big hit for Discovery Channel on Sunday night. So why hasn't Discovery been trumpeting their huge ratings win to the Heavens, you ask? Because they're classy that way, reports TV Week:

In what could point towards a slackening of the once-rigorous standards for recruitment into their Celebrity Goodwill Ambassadorship grooming programing, American Idol survivor and recent Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson was invited to address the U.N. yesterday. She wasn't there to tattle to the Committee on Human Rights Violations about Simon Cowell's Geneva Convention-violating treatment of fellow Idol contestants, however, but rather to represent ladies' face-painting giant Avon (she's their new spokesmodel!) on International Women's Day:

Today's NY Times chronicles the "classic Hollywood tale" (keywords: hubris, quick rise, sudden demise) of First Look Studios' Henry Winterstern, who arrived in town a couple of years ago with nothing but a crazy dream about making it in the showbiz and one of those huge bags of hedge-fund cash that's so popular with the kids these days, dumped the contents of that bag on the floor of a fancy office in the new CAA building, then proceeded to light it on fire, a business plan that earned him a"voluntary" resignation from his job on Friday. And now, the Telling Anecdote indicating that Winterstern's priorities might have been in the wrong place:

Normally, we'd be content to allow you to take the crash course in crowd-pleasing moviemaking offered by CNN.com's always edifying Story Highlights box, then send you on your way to get started on an incredibly lucrative career producing the kind of sure-fire hits that result from the combination of big-name stars, latex fat-suits, and middle-aged men falling off of motorcycles. But we thought that producer/director Brian Robbins' stirring defense of Norbit earner Eddie Murphy's talents bears a moment of your time, if for no other reason than it provides something of a bonus lesson in how to defend your talent against snobbish accusations that farting through a pair of grotesquely dimpled rubber buttocks isn't a valid demonstration of craft:

Former Prison Break actor Lane Garrison, who, we think it's safe to say, is probably having a worse year than you, found out the charges being filed against him for accidentally killing a teen after plowing his SUV into a tree while allegedly impaired by a generous, Beverly Hills high school party-sized serving of Grey Goose and blow. Reports the LAT:

• Sharon Stone Speaks at University Event [AP]