· As the promotional push hits full stride , we're all starting to learn that a little Borat goes a long way. Is this the beginning of the Kazakh-lash?
· One moist-eyed appearance on Oprah, and the world suddenly seems okay with Madonna's adoption of David Banda.
· Is it a really a roast if Courtney Love fails to vomit on the guest of honor?
· Ben Stiller in needlepoint just one of the many surefire visual gags to have audiences in hysterics in next Farrelly Brothers movie.
· Nkululo Mnisi, a child amputee extra in Blood Diamond, is still waiting on those prosthetic limbs Warner Bros. promised him, or so someone would like you to think.
· We imagine the name Paris Hilton will figure heavily into whatever task Rush Limbaugh will be required to perform for eternity in the Seventh Rung of Hell.
· The Hollywood Executives' Guide to Putting Dead Weight Down: Nina Tassler on Smith. Brad Grey on Cruise.
· Tom, meanwhile, has a full and active development slate of dramatic projects.
· "Tell us what you don't like and really don't like about Studio 60..." They should have just asked Defamer commenters.
· A E! camera crew breaks all sorts of laws just to get a better shot of Brad Pitt's ravenous rear end.
· Brian Atene: A star is born.

· It really wouldn't be Halloween weekend on Hollywood Boulevard without posted threats warning against the illegal use of silly string. The firing of automatic weapons, however, is acceptable when a critical part of one's costume. [pictured]
Whew. For a minute there, we were worried that we* were the only ones who noticed that Jeri Ryan has huge breasts.
The dog-bites-man of entertainment reporting: South Park offends someone.
You'd think that a room full of Marines would want to party with Jenna Jameson, but you'd be wrong.
· Brad and Angelina are treating India like their private helipad. Can't they buy themselves an orphan, quickly escape to America, and stop stirring up trouble?
· Pussycat Doll hopefuls seem to have that not-so-fresh feeling.

You'd think that in a town where a significant percentage of the population spends the other 364 days of the year slicing, injecting, and restuffing themselves beyond recognition, by the time All Hallow's Eve rolls around, they'd have no energy left for yet further modifications—but you'd be wrong. Something about L.A.'s highly plasticized nature, paired with the bloodcurdling showbiz tales of terror we all know so well, make Hollywood and Halloween a nearly perfect complimentary pairing, resulting in a holiday of heightened horror: Hollyween. In honor of your pre-Hollyween weekend festivites, a round-up:
· The LAT details how the studios have been cashing in on a healthy chunk of what has become a $5 billion-per-year industry, through the licensing of their characters to costume manufacturers. Long ago having outgrown the Disney character kiddie-sector, you can now buy fully authorized costumes of all your grown-up screen favorites, including a Nacho Libre Spandex get-up sure to give everyone at your office party love-handle-related nightmares for weeks. [LAT]

Friday
· Skylight Books goes porny by hosting adult star Nina Hartley's reading and signing of Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex. Note: Skylight is not *that* kind of bookstore, though we're sure they'll pretend not to be offended if you ask where the booths with the naked ladies are.
· Music round-up: Jon Brion at Largo; Heavens at the Troubadour; KMFDM at the Henry Fonda.
· The Discount Cruise to Hell trick-or-treat bash promises lesbian burlesque, zombie go-go dancers, and both costume and bloody underwear contests. And, you know, booze, because you've got to have a few in you before the underwear gets bloodied enough to be entered in a contest.
Saturday
· General-use rockstar and reality-TV ubiquity Dave Navarro hosts a Halloween Lingerie and Costume Ball at the Highlands club in every tourist's favorite Walk-of-Fame-convenient mall, Hollywood and Highland. We've always felt that skimpy lingerie makes an acceptable substitute for a creative costume.
· "Over 200 porn stars" mingle with ticket-buying civilians at the Heaven and Hell Halloween Party at the Henry Fonda, where the Beastie Boys' DJ Hurricane will be spinning.
Sunday
· Pere Ubu performs a live underscore of Roger Corman's sci-fi classic X, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, an event with no explicit porn industry tie-in that we can see, other than the liberal use of the letter "X."
· A little more music: OK Go at the Troubadour; Ladytron at the Glass House in Pomona;

A crucial, if not always enthusiastically embraced, part of our jobs is reading the occasional, anonymously proffered e-mail (in this case, one actually from "Joe Anon") titled NEW SEXTAPE and following the provided links to a hastily designed Tripod site, where we must then grudgingly evaluate the self-published claims of surreptitiously obtained footage of a famous person engaged in a sex act that they'd rather not be seen by the public. Normally, we might have dismissed the story told on Scenes from a Car as an outright hoax, but in a world where former Saved by the Bell stars can pretend they have nothing to do with the release of amateur pornography involving their fecal besmirching of some tragically underpaid accomplices, all things are possible in the sex tape game. And so even though it might bear an uncomfortable similarity to a cherished, apocryphal (we assume) story about a still-mic'd Sylvester Stallone getting oral favors in his trailer, we still pass along these nameless entrepreneurs' claim to have proof of what receiving fellatio from a "seven-figure-per-film" actress sounds like, for your investigative/debunking/Friday-afternoon-jollies-obtaining pleasure:

While we are not particularly ashamed to admit that we long ago drank the fermented-horse-urine flavored Kool-Aid and that Borat had us at, "Hello, is it now time for make sex with your sister?" we can nonetheless still see why Fox might be afraid that the movie's buzz has outstripped its overall awareness, especially in parts of the country where the ersatz-Kazakh instigator may have narrowly averted a fatal lynching during filming. Inevitably, the studio's prolonged press blitz is draining all the fun from the rape, incest, and Jew-down-the-well jokes that made us fall in love with the incorrigible, sibling-schtupping scamp in the first place, as illustrated by this meet-cute with a CNN reporter:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, which we try to post several times per week. (Spaced out at utterly random intervals—the better to keep you all on your toes.) So send those suckers in, and send them often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world know about the time you spotted an alleged McChoking victim speeding down the 101.

Michael J. Fox has spoken out in response to Rush Limbaugh's recent accusations that he was exaggerating the symptoms of his Parkinson's disease in a political endorsement TV spot for a candidate who is in favor of stem cell research. Sitting down with Katie Couric—whom, we'd be remiss in failing to point out, would be the actor's mirror image were he to indulge his innermost businesswoman-drag fantasies—Fox explained that the problem was too much, not too little, medication:

Please join us for the regularly scheduled break in which we pamper this week's sponsors with slowly fanned palm fronds and hand-fed grapes, hoping that our constant, loving attention leads to higher advertising expenditures in the future. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and one day have your toughest muscular knots kneaded out by our strong hands (note: happy endings are reserved for those willing to fund a site takeover), see this page:

New Line is the latest studio to prove that any pitch in the form of "Will Ferrell is a(n) [occupation for which Will Ferrell seems hilariously ill-suited] is an instant greenlight, signing up the actor for Semi-Pro, in which Ferrell will put on the ball-huggingest pair of shorts ever conceived by a wardrobe department while portraying "Jackie Moon, the flamboyant owner-player-coach of the fictional Flint, Mich., Tropics in the final year of the American Basketball Assn." Woody Harrelson will co-star, though it's not clear if he's playing the complimentarily dim-witted sidekick or Ferrell's cocky rival. [Variety]
Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and Arrested Development writer Richard Day are adapting the BBC series The Thick of It for American television, apparently hoping to find some way to translate the wholly foreign concept of "bureaucratic ineptitude" in British governance to the flawless law-making processes of Congress. [THR]
The Weinstein Co. claims that NBC and The CW are refusing to air commercials for the Dixie Chicks documentary Shut Up and Sing because they criticize the president, a burgeoning censorship controversy that should cripple Harvey Weinstein's efforts to raise public awareness of their free-speech-centered film. [Variety]
ABC orders four more scripts from Help Me Help You, The Nine, and Men in Trees, while NBC orders three more from Studio 60; we'll leave it to you to figure out which series the networks actually want to nurture with a show of faith, and which ones they're hoping will write themselves out of a full-season episode order with further sketch-comedy musings on Nancy Grace's inadequacies as a cable news journalist. [THR]
Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Faux Snuff Films Edition: Rogue Pictures is remaking Faces of Death, the cult horror flick supposedly depicting the actual deaths of its accidental "stars," promising enough gore and shock value for a YouTube-desensitized generation no longer stirred by endless replays of "trampoline basketball." [Variety]

Perhaps feeling that he's gleaned all the horndogging wisdom longtime mentor and occasional make-out coach Robert Evans has to offer him, preternaturally hacky Rush Hour fauxteur Brett Ratner has now invited a Hollywood legend whose hot-tub-hosted appetites were even more outsized than those of his beloved teacher to work with him on the latest installment of his signature franchise. Today's Variety reports that fugitive director Roman Polanski has been written into Rush Hour 3, currently shooting in Paris, and will play the part of a policeman who will try to interfere with stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker's efforts to bicker with one another while crashing a variety of comically undersized French automobiles. Var explains how Ratner recruited Polanski for the role:

For some reason, rear-entry-popularizing spoken-wordsmith Snoop Dogg and airports don't mix; perhaps it's the airports' fault, stemming from their long-standing and well-documented biases against people who carry firearms and large Ziploc bags of weed on their person. Whatever the case, in an unfortunate turn of events that hearkens back to a Bobby-and-bodyguard pile-on incident at Heathrow last spring, the rapper was arrested yesterday at the Burbank airport on suspicion of illegal drug and gun possession:

A sharp-eyed reader trying to watch some CNN video coverage of the deadly, still-spreading wildfire that has tragically claimed the lives of several firefighters noticed this unfortunate placement of an ad for Catch a Fire. Sadly, CNN.com users hoping that the website had helpfully supplemented their interest in the ongoing conflagration with a related Hollywood offering will be inevitably disappointed, as Catch a Fire (in theaters today!) seems to be a drama about terrorism in Apartheid-era South Africa, not a buddy movie about brash rookie fireman Derek Luke learning the ropes of wildfire-suppression from grizzled, seen-it-all captain Tim Robbins. Contextual advertising technology may have failed us again, but at least it's aided the development departments of studios who will be more than happy to fill this void in the entertainment landscape.

After two full days of huddling with the finest minds from both the INS and the International Congress On Black Market Orphan Commerce for a summit addressing what to do about Defamer associate editor Seth Abramovitch's recent purchase of a toddler at a Parisian babymonger's stall, a difficult solution was reached: Early this morning, an orphans'-rights group stormed Seth's apartment and snatched little Henri (aka "Andy Roddick") from his makeshift bassinet (a repurposed Los Angeles County recycling bin fitted with a canopy constructed from the pages of a three-month old issue of Us Weekly), beginning the first leg of the child's long journey back to his lavishly appointed veal crate in the City of Light's finest orphan bazaar, where he will patiently await purchase by a childless French couple who will refrain from harming his emotional development by giving him the name of a professional tennis player they sexually desire. Seth, of course, is devastated, but I've assured him that the best way to deal with such a profound personal loss is to throw himself into his work, and I've promised to read as many wailing "HEEEENNNRRIIII!!! :-( :-( :-( " instant messages as it takes to get him through this difficult period.

At least this time the feet are flat on the ground.

· Pwop! Pwop! Pwop!
· Daaa-da...Daaa-da...
· SchwooPOP!
· CHWOOSH!...AAAAAHHHHH!!!!
· Firoozzahedi.

Sometimes, the pressures of working on a Big Important Picture get to be just a little too much; it then falls to the star to help loosen the mood of a challenging production, using anything and everything at their disposal to raise the spirits of cast and crew. And while George Clooney is considered a master of the genre, concocting elaborate ruses that can take months to unfold, his frequent Oceans co-star Brad Pitt tends to go for the easier laugh:

· Thursday night music: Robyn Hitchcock & the Venus 3 performing with R.E.M guitarist Peter Buck at the Key Club, Matt Pond PA is at Spaceland, and Jamie Cullum plays the Wiltern.
· For people who want to live out their very own Crash fantasies (the scar-fucking Crash, not the racists-falling-down-stairs Crash), Art of Bleeding: Halloween Highway at the Steve Allen Theater offers a "cautionary tableau of automotive carnage." We wonder what Steve Allen would have made of all this gearshift penetration.
· Sarah Silverman, Todd Glass and Al Madrigal are scheduled to perform at the High Times Comedy show at the Hollywood Improv tonight at 8. Organizers tell us there's a "tasty" fan-appreciation surprise for anyone who shows up.
· American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre presents a vampire double feature, starting with the 1967 Roman Polanski film, The Fearless Vampire Killers, and followed by Bela Lugosi in Return of the Vampire.

A Defamer operative just sent in this truly amazing sighting of noted red carpet hydrationist and star of Jackass Number Two, Steve-O: