· Lovable My Name is Earl wrong-righter Jason Lee will tackle the demanding role of perpetually put-upon, tantrum-throwing musical novelty act manager Dave Seville in a hybrid live-action/CGI Alvin and the Chipmunks feature, a project that will certainly be safe for viewing by oddly named offspring Pilot Inspektor. There is no word as to where contractually mandated co-star Giovanni Ribisi will slot into the movie, but he seems a natural for the part of Theodore. [Variety]
· Pilot casting madness! Jeffrey Tambor joins CBS comedy The Captain, Michelle Trachtenberg is in an untitled ABC comedy set in D.C., and Kal Penn will play a hypochondriac paramedic in the ABC comedy The Call. [THR]
· As mentioned yesterday, Battle of Shaker Heights immortal Shia LaBeouf is all but locked up to play Harrison Ford's son in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' Indiana Jones 4: Please Don't Fuck This One Up By Having The Cute Kid Constantly Saving His Old Man's Ass. [Variety]
· Disney announces that Pixar's gone into production on Toy Story 3, and that their Disney Animation division will go with old-timey, hand-drawn animation for The Frog Princess. [THR]
· Today's American Idol Nielsen domination fun fact: Wednesday night's installment averaged "more than five times the rating" of competition on ABC, CBS, NBC, and The CW. [Variety]

Please excuse the somewhat alarmist headline, but given all the stress that unfortunate Winona Ryder situation caused us this morning, Variety's "Inside Moves" column has us momentarily worried about the safety of America's New Big Screen Sweetheart, Reese Witherspoon, who has mysteriously dropped out of a project that was set to shoot in a few weeks:

Madonna has been maximizing her time spent in L.A. by making multiple trips to the Kabbalah Centre, family in tow, for various Purim celebrations and lectures about the latest hi-tech advancements in evil-eye-warding fabrics. But paparazzi captured the singer driving off from once such visits with recently absconded Malawian demi-orphan David Banda seated in her lap, and not safely secured in a rear-facing car seat, putting her in the same, baby-endangering league as Britney Spears:

If the messages flooding into our inbox and IM windows are to be believed, the entire entertainment industry is currently paralyzed with worry that the following rumor of a Winona Ryder overdose, currently being passed along on countless tracking boards and e-mail chains, might be true:

In a suspiciously detailed item that we're sure was not in any way supplied by the baby boutique supposedly offering an estimate (website here! map here!) to decorate a nursery for a possibly forthcoming Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes offspring, TMZ reports that a Team Cruise design-drone was "overheard" discussing plans for a new clone-rearing chamber for the Cruise compound:

· Winning a record $370 million lottery emboldens Steven Colbert to finally tell semi-mummified Viacom overlord Sumner Redstone what he thinks of him. Unfortunately for Colbert, Redstone doesn't realize this was all done in character for his show, and has already dispatched a goon to stab him in the kidneys while the actor uses the urinal at his office.
· Yet another person is suing Mark Burnett for having the same unoriginal idea for a televised talent competition, this time involving Rock Star.
· This is what would happen if you ran Bill Maher through a computer aging simulation.
· Even Henry Kissinger is trying to get into Angelina Jolie's pants.
· It's a well known fact that Jesus Tortillas are the most delicious kind. [via Eater LA]
· We're number three! We're number three!

As fans hungrily anticipate the long-awaited fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's big screen adventure series that began with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark (possible title: Indiana Jones and the Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom), the Internets have been teeming with casting rumors. Most notable among them: that Shia LaBeouf—who'll be fighting Soundwave and his evil boombox cassette-recorder ways this summer in Michael Bay's Transformers—would be playing Indy's son. Slate is now reporting that the rumors are true:

Defamer is committed to connecting those individuals whose budding acting careers have been hampered by their striking resemblance to certain Hollywood superstars with exciting opportunities to finally put their unoriginal good looks to productive use. Just moments ago, this notice from a company handling a stunt marketing campaign for inevitable cyberstalking blockbuster Perfect Stranger dropped into our inbox, which we're happy to pass along to you, the reader who is often interrupted in the middle of a quiet night out by intrusive Catwoman or Striking Distance fans who mistake you for your more celebrated dopplegangers:

· Music round-up: Bright Eyes at the El Rey; Albert Hammond Jr. at Amoeba; The Young Knives at Spaceland.
· It will be absolutely unacceptable to interrupt the architects at tonight's Adventures in Kazakhstan: Competition for Republic Square, a mixed-use project in Almaty, Kazakhstan exhibition at the SCI-Arc Library downtown with "Niiice" and "Sexytime!" comments, as they're really sick of those jokes by now. [via flavorpill]
· Author Susan Seligson will read Stacked, her story of how a woman with 32-DDD breasts navigates a jugs-obsessed culture, at Book Soup. Please, try and make eye contact for at least the moment before she looks down to sign your book.

In shocking news that will be revealed on Friday's episode of ABC group therapy series The View (or right now in wire stories circulating the internets at the speed of light), entertainingly combative TV personality Rosie O'Donnell admits that she's been treated for depression ever since the Columbine shootings, a healing regiment that includes both the use of dangerous, Cruise-bedeviling street-drugs and the therapeutic defiance of gravity:

We'll save you five minutes of reading and give you the Very Important Lesson from today's Scriptland column (motto: "Laboring under the illusion that screenwriters are people, too, since September 2006!") in the LAT about the plucky crusade of a writing team to save their opus from a straight-to-DVD fate: Before you decide to start burning your bridges by publicly complaining about the lack of respect your Jenny McCarthy-featuring, Wiener Wagon-based work of road-trip comedy genius is receiving from the studio that refuses to pay for an expensive theatrical release, ask your agent why he neglected to mention that the executive who bought the script kept using the phrase, "ultimate Blockbuster date night movie" during contract negotiations.

Regardless of what should become of Antonella Barba after her sure-to-suck performance tonight on American Idol, the controversial contestant can take some comfort in knowing she is not without a backup plan: Girls Gone Wild's Chief Operating Titty Inspector, Joe Francis, has issued a press release publicly soliciting Barba's services to the tune of $250,000:

The attached image [full version here] is not, as you might believe at first glance, an innovative initiative by California Child Protective Services to turn over the complicated matter of the custody of Britney Spears' children to an online referendum, an issue made especially tricky by disturbing reports that she's enrolled in Promises' controversial "Tame Your Demons By Embracing Satan, Their Dark Lord And Master" course of therapy. Unfortunately, this is merely the crass work of online advertisers trying to make a quick buck from Spears' pain; perhaps most troubling is that the opportunistic pushers of "free" laptops don't even really care about your opinion on how to solve the custody dilemma, as casting a vote to allow Britney to keep the kids or one ordering their immediate removal from her neglectful guardianship both forward you to the same shady promotional offer—one would hope that making the "right" choice would at least result in an upgrade to something with more RAM or a faster processor.

Fret not, Star Jones's legions of fans: The Daytime Talk Show Gods have heard your hungry cries for a return to a time when we could all rely on a regular dose of Starry-eyed wisdom to help get us through the day. The former Brooklyn D.A. has been hired back by the very network that helped launch her now-legendary famewhoring career:

· Superhero icon Captain America, who somehow survived a near-fatal movie adaptation back in 1990, was not so lucky after being struck by a sniper's bullet in the latest issue of his comic book. [Variety]
· With his homeless-guy-to-stockbroker-bigshot turn failing to bring home that elusive Oscar, Will Smith plans to see if he might have better luck with soft-hearted Academy voters by playing a jailed-crack-dealer-turned-gourmet-chef, optioning the memoir Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, From Cocaine to Foie Gras for what we assume will be an eventual starring, tear-jerking role. [THR]
· Supporting socially moderate Republican presidential hopefuls Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain might—might—not land industry conservatives on Hollywood's right-wing blacklist. [Variety]
· Tim "McWingsy" Daly and Paul "McWho?" Adelstein join the cast of the two-hour, Very Special Grey's
Anatomy episode that may result in a spin-off. [THR]
· Exhausted network rivals take a night off from trying to fight off American Idol, flipping over and offering only token repeat resistance to their inevitable Nielsen buggering last night. [Variety]

A funny thing happened to notoriously sensitive Lady in the Water director M. Night Shayamalan after a round of studio meetings about his new spec script, The Happening, ended without the blockbuster sale he expected: Rather than storm out of the disappointing sessions soaked in tears and wracked with doubt, pledging to cooperate with a tell-all book about how the executives wouldn't know Art if it blew them underneath their desks during a conference call, he instead took their notes, rewrote the screenplay, and ultimately reached a deal with Fox to make the movie. Huzzah! Shayamalan's incredible transformation from Difficult Personality to Humble Cog In The Collaborative Process Of Filmmaking is officially complete! Reports Variety on how the project came together:

The State Department released their annual global human rights abuses report yesterday, and, somewhat astonishingly, everyone's favorite faux-Kazakh cultural ambassador makes a surprise appearance in a chapter devoted to Kazakhstan's offenses:

The cover of the new Us Weekly might be a little misleading on the matter of the Vietnamese baby about to join the celebrated, racially and genetically balanced family of Hollywood orphan-hoarders Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: the baby isn't yet en route to their New Orleans mansion in a satin-lined toddler-crate in the cargo hold of a Federal Express jet, as there's the small matter of the Vietnamese International Infant Export Agency adoption process to be dispensed with.

It seems that CAA's thinly veiled threats about Queen Latifah's probable depression-induced self-immolation should Katie Holmes not get a part in low-budget chick buddy-flick Mad Money convinced its producers to take a chance on the part-time actress/full-time chained-at-home mom, as today's Page Six reports that Holmes will soon head off to Louisiana for the shoot. But knowing that a film set on the other side of the country might provide escape opportunities so enticing that even the best-trained war bride wouldn't be able to resist them, clingy enslaver Tom Cruise will reportedly tag along:

· The genuine Obi Wan Kenobi robe that fetched a disturbing $104,000 from an anonymous, telephone-bidding Jedi fetishist at a costume auction is the item grabbing the most headlines, but Bonhams had such a staggering array of movie-worn outfits for sale that the well-monied perv could arrange perhaps the greatest Hollywood cosplay orgy of all time, featuring Ethan Hunt, James Bond, Evita, an anti-Semitic Scotsman, and Supergirl.
· Some victims of mob violence think that Jack Nicholson's lovable, strap-on-wielding The Departed character didn't really get at the essence of the real-life crime boss on whom it was loosely based.
· Has Oscar made Alan Arkin a sellout? Or does he just love sharing his musical tastes with fellow digital music fans?
· We haven't checked the instructions label on one in a while, but we're pretty sure that this is not a recommended use for a newborn baby.
· That Laguna Beach guy is obviously not nearly famous enough to escape jail time.
· Simon Cowell: Unafraid to speak truth to crazy.