More on NBC's Layoffs 2.0: Corporate hatchetman Jeff Zucker says that the 700 pinkslips they're expected to hand out aren't some kind of punishment for Aaron Sorkin's inability to singlehandedly save their primetime schedule from fourth place. OK, he didn't mention Sorkin specifically, but we know what he was getting at. [Variety]
The Academy releases its list of the 61 countries that successfully submitted work for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, including first time entrant Kazakhstan—which will require its representative filmmakers to spend any acceptance speech time decrying the cultural inaccuracies contained in Borat. [THR]
Still more on Layoffs 2.0: NBC president Kevin Reilly thinks that the company's bold decision to fire a bunch of people may look "fairly drastic right now," but will seem "forward-thinking" once all of his competitors catch Downsizing Fever. [Variety]
· The Project Runway finale sets a Bravo ratings record "by a huge margin," topping the previous marks set by Runway's season premiere and a very special 2004 episode of Queer Eye in which Kian nearly came to blows with a homophobic fraternity brother who misunderstood what the makeover-specialist meant when he said, "Take off your shirt, it's time for your manscaping." [THR]
The Jim Henson company hires Ahmet Zappa to write a treatment for a Fraggle Rock feature film. We refuse to get excited until we hear that Dweezil is doing the music. [Variety]

From the "If we told you we made this up, you'd accuse of being really high" file, today the MPAA is announcing a new program in which it will seek to re-educate the movie-downloading terrorist cells represented by our local Boy Scout troops about the importance of "respecting copyrights," hoping to turn the little knot-tying, merit-badge-hoarding pirates into a beige-clad army of pro-industry good. From the MPAA's press release:

Today's Page Six supplies this partial accounting of items left behind by Lindsay Lohan upon finally terminating her long-term, fun-filled residency at the Chateau:

Yesterday, we expressed curiosity as to who might have leaked the story about Vegas casino boss Steve Wynn damaging his $139 million Picasso right before selling it. Witness to the event Nora Ephron claimed it was "very clear" who talked to Page Six, but she did not ID the leaker by name. We have our suspicions, and we admit to throwing out another Ephron quote a little disingenuously — the one where she told one of her sons about it, but that it wasn't a violation of the secrecy pact because her son is "completely trustworthy."

Remember back in June of last year, when Microsoft and CAA dispatched an impressively armored battalion of messengers carrying the scripts for a movie adaptation of Halo to the studios, telling executives to read the scripts at lunch and commence an afternoon bidding war, or have face their faces fragged off by a grenade launcher? As they say: Good times. After the initial, "Hey, Brad, there's a guy in a green exoskeleton here to see you" giddiness wore off, some bad, backlashy buzz quickly mounted, but Fox and Universal eventually decided to team up and throw some money at the project. Today, Variety reports that the two studios have bailed on the project; depending on whom you believe, Halo was either getting too expensive (the go-to excuse for this supposed New Era Of Responsible Blockbuster Spending we're now living in—completed here with an invocation of the Two! Hundred! Million! scare number) or Fox and Universal were trying to squeeze executive producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh (and Microsoft) out of some profit participation. In the meantime, preparation for the film continues as they hunt for a new distributor, but we hope Microsoft and CAA refrain from ordering a second studio invasion by their costumed army; the once-intimidating warriors will seem more than a little pathetic crawling into potential financers' offices, removing their helmets, and begging executives to fill them with money.

In the interest of easing our way into this Friday morning (sssssh, please don't speak above a whisper until about noon), we'd like to share the Fast Hugs blog's excavation of this vitally important cultural artifact from 1986, How Can I Tell If I'm Really In Love, a star-studded PSA that aimed to better inform the sexually awakening children of the 80s when it was totally OK to finally "do it." Blueballs alert: This is just Part I, where the sage advice eventually to be delivered by a reclining Ted "Sam Malone" Danson (assumed topic: how to know when it's time to take that drunk Red Sox groupie home), Jason "Derek Taylor" Bateman (topic: On Getting Ricky Stratton's Sloppy Seconds), and Justine "Mallory Keaton" Bateman (topic: "I made Nick wait until the third date. Here's how you can hold off your horny, monosyllabic boyfriend too.") is only teased, leaving us to wait in tense discomfort until they finally put out in Part II.

· Retiring, media-shy actor James Woods on the current state of Hollywood cinema: "I look at movies and they're all so f@&^ing terrible. People ask, 'Why aren't movies more successful?' It's really a simple answer: It's because they stink. Three simple words: Because they f@&^ing stink. That's four words, but you can't write the f@&^ing word. They stink, they stink, they stink, what's wrong with you? They stink. Do better movies. ... Finally, I saw a good movie - 'The Departed." And look what it took: It took Marty Scorsese, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, (screenwriter) Bill Monahan - and it's based on another movie."
· Haley Joel Osment today pleaded no contest to drunk driving and drug possession charges stemming from the involuntary carslaughter of his 1995 Saturn, thus completing his long journey from adorably creepy "I see dead people" kid to former child actor clich .
Arrested Development fans with too much disposable income still have another four days to bid on GOB's segway. Bid now, and bid high—this irreplaceable piece of AD history will get you crazy, crazy laid.
America's Next Top Porn Model's director on Tyra Banks' hypocritical judgment of how adult-film doppleganger Tyra Banxxx makes her living: "I find it funny that a beautiful girl like Tyra Banks who made her career by walking the runways showing off her tits and ass would criticize a girl for making her living showing off her tits and ass. I really don't see the two career choices being polar opposites."
Necktastic Project Runway winner Jeffrey Sebelia becomes possibly the first reality show contestant in the history of the form not to blame seeming like a dick on malicious editing.
· Those NBC layoffs really could have been a lot worse.

We don't watch Ellen enough (read: ever) to know whether or not the show is wrapping up an Ellen Under Extreme Duress theme week, but they've apparently tried to top Monday's stunt, in which a cruel hypnotist made her cry by mentally force-feeding her a wad of hairy chili-licorice, with a segment today where the show's sadistic producers try to generate great daytime TV by having their host sexually assaulted by a 20-foot anaconda. And they almost pulled it off—DeGeneres seemed genuinely distressed by the serpentine tail curling around her nether-regions, at least at first; unfortunately, once the animal handler let her off the hook by revealing that crotch-invading reptilie was a female, the look on Ellen's face let us know that the sexual jeopardy of the situation had been all but extinguished.

· Music round-up: ArthurFest '06, featuring Devendra Banhard, Comets on Fire, Fiery Furnaces, and way too many other bands to list, begins at the Palace Theater; Damien Jurado and Rosie Thomas at the Hotel Caf ; and Lyrics Born at the El Rey; Badly Drawn Boy at the Troubadour;
· Twist your body into uncomfortable positions while filling a space soon to house frozen seafood with your "simulated laughter" at the Laughter Yoga event at Cold Storage.
· The ArcLight plays host to the 10th annual Hollywood Film Festival, with a private showing of Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film, a documentary that the late Thompson would almost certainly want you to crash. Guests lists are so fascist.

Ever since yesterday's Variety opened our eyes to the heart-wrenching plight of industry event attendees who find themselves idling in their cars for unacceptably prolonged stretches of time due to a widespread valet understaffing crisis, we've hardly been able to think about anything else. But in an attempt to be a part of a solution rather than merely a helpless observer of this tragedy, we're spotlighting this comment from yesterday's post, in which a reader who attended the Fulfillment Fund gala cited for its shocking parking problem describes their organizers' novel way of speeding the deep-pocketed through long valet lines:

In what seems like an unanticipated consequence of yesterday's National Enquirer report that choke-happy Grey's Anatomy surgeon Isaiah Washington may have let slip a gay slur directed at the sexual preference of a castmate (well, two slurs, as long as we're keeping track) while in the process of trying to strangle the smirk off Dr. McDreamy's face, actor T.R. Knight has outed himself to People, apparently ending minutes of controversy surrounding the identity of the target of Washington's insult. We hope that the network or the show's producers try to get their hot-headed cast member some help for his rage issues, before a thoughtless remark about the set "being full of skinny bitches" made during his next blow-up prompts devastatingly thin co-star Ellen Pompeo to reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair that she's long struggled with an eating disorder.

If not for the incremental updates on their wedding progress offered by the celebrity glossies, we probably would have forgotten that indefinitely engaged partners Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had any concrete plans to supplement the 2004 signing of her billion-year personal services contract with a more formal commitment ceremony. Luckily, we have outlets like Us to provide crucial details of the supposedly imminent nuptials, such as which designer has been awarded the honor of designing Cruise's Scientology war bride's dress:

In every outpost of the NBC Universal empire, just a little while ago anxious employees were huddled around closed-circuit broadcasts of their fearless leaders' "town hall" meeting explaining the corporation's new, streamlined, and more cost-conscious push into the digital media age enabled by the immediate, selfless sacrifice of 700 or so of their jobs. We asked one LA-based operative stationed inside the rapidly shrinking NBCU 2.0 family to briefly describe what was covered in Jeff Zucker's you're-all-firedside chat:

One of the main benefits of blogging is that one can take potshots at celebrities from the anonymity of the interwebs. But what happens when the blogger is as famous as the celebrities they mock (oh, who are we kidding, we're thinking 1/100th as famous and we're still being generous)? Well, this.

Now we know the real reason that Sumner Redstone almost cried the night he fired Tom Freston: Freston's golden parachute just cost him $59 million for that one year on the job, plus millions more in consultant fees, deferred compensation, and his 401 (k). That's not just fuck-you money, that's fuck-you-and-everyone- who-looks-like-you money. [Variety]
Demonstrating its mandate to get faster, cheaper, and stupider, NBC orders 10 more episodes of 1 vs. 100—but then seemingly ignores orders from the corporate mothership by picking up six more scripts for newly verboten, expensive 8 pm drama Friday Night Lights. Maybe they fired the guy who's supposed to read the memos from Jeff Zucker. [THR]
John Cusack heads back into Grosse Pointe Blank territory by starring in, writing, and producing the dark political satire Brand Hauser: Stuff Happens, the story of an assassin sent to kill a Middle Eastern oil minister. The movie is set to shoot this month in Bulgaria, which probably tells you all you need to know about the budget. [Variety]
Focus Features buys the drama Underdog from Gideon Yago. Yup, exactly the Gideon Yago you're thinking of while shaking your head and asking, "The MTV kid? Seriously?" [THR]
Now that CBS has bored you so profoundly with endless procedural dramas and flavorless comedies that you can't even be bothered to change the channel, they're now going to try to slip in some edgier shows. Watch out, they're throwing out the rule book! Schlubby sitcom husbands might soon be able to pull only semi-hot wives! [Variety]

Between Kazakhstan's president's White House summit to discuss the culture-tarnishing scourge represented by Borat, yesterday's currency snafu, and today's comically conciliatory attempt to invitate Sacha Baron Cohen to their modern, non-women-enslaving country, it now seems clear that 20th Century Fox has purchased (or, at the very least, rented out) the entire Central Asian nation for the purpose of publicizing their upcoming movie. Reports the AP:

It really does get easier for a network to get rid of shows once they've popped their cancellation cherries. And this is largely a philosophical question, but is a show truly "canceled" if it never makes it to the air? It seems like "aborted" might be the more accurate term, but that word makes for far more unsavory headlines.

The media world is still awaiting NBC Universal executioner Jeff Zucker's "town hall" meeting with his employees, in which he will calmly bar the doors to the "hall," step up to the podium, and then announce that 700 or so (or 5%, for you percentage junkies) of his beloved underlings aren't getting out of their meeting alive. But once the blood is mopped from the floors and the guillotine baskets are cleared of severed heads, how does this affect you, the person who doesn't particularly care about corporate streamlining enabling a faceless multimedia conglomerate to take bold, more cost-efficient steps (cutely named NBCU 2.0) into the brave new digital world? The WSJ reports on the revised mandate given to NBC Uni's fourth-place TV division (sub. req'd.):

Not only are The Break-Up sweethearts (now available on DVD!) Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn not, as previously reported, broken up, they are so committed to their not-at-all-suspicious partnership that they've supplemented a recent Oprah appearance reaffirming their undying mutual devotion by having their lawyers personally deliver cease-and-desist papers to media outlets who might have hinted that Vaughn's commitment to their relationship (have we mentioned the movie is available in the exciting new HD DVD format?) is less that total. Retracts Page Six:

Earlier in the week, we asked our dear readers to identify the "friend" photographed with Anderson Cooper in Sunday's New York Post and boy, did you all come through. Well, one reader did, anyway.