Now that the summer is winding down and Hollywood is mostly through with its seasonal humping of the moviegoing public, it's time to take stock of which studios delivered blockbuster, headboard-splitting orgasms, and which ones sheepishly rolled over, muttering excuses about their performance problems. Today's LAT reminds us that last year's rock-hard stud can be this year's flaccid also-ran, making Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn answer for bonafide flops Poseidon, ATL, The Ant Bully, Misunderstood Visionary M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water and the disappointment-by-about-nine-figures that was Superman Returns. Explains Horn, admirably refraining from blaming too much whiskey for the studio's unsatisfying run:

We're not sure what it is about Sunday newspaper insert PARADE magazine that gets big stars to share some of the most personal aspects of their lives—perhaps they feel the open-door policy of the Ask Marilyn column offers an emotional safe zone not available from more "prestigious" media outlets—but in this week's cover story, Ashton Kutcher gushes about his note-perfect marriage to Demi Moore, his unconditional adoration of his three stepsistersdaughters, and his tight, if slightly strained, rapport with their dad, Bruce Willis:

We thought that after we'd posted a couple of clips of Andy Dick's on-camera, face-licking warm-up for his bravura, hand-biting, boob-fondling, openly urinating performance at the William Shatner roast after-party, we could finally put the whole filthy affair behind us. Today, however, Dick-victimized NY Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller has posted a painstakingly transcribed account of the entire ordeal to supplement the excerpts she put up on her blog earlier in the week, revealing levels of chemically induced crazy previously only hinted at. Just when we try to get out, a cocaine-adjacent Dick grabs the hem of our trousers, starts humping our leg, and keeps pulling us back in:

On Wednesday, SNL mastermind and 30 Rock executive producer put a positive spin on the decision to demote star Rachel Dratch from a lead character to a "wide variety of roles," telling Variety, "The way it's been rewritten, it's a much funnier part." Of course, what he meant to say was, "The way it's been recast, it's a much blonder, more conventionally bimbonic part." Reports today's THR:

· Come on, you already know the words, so say it with us: "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking cake!"
Paris Hilton and the Wiggles turned out for People Who Amuse Those With The IQ Of A Five-Year-Old Day on the Today Show, inspiring the WOW Report to mash-up both appearances into a single segment.
"Kev-IN! How many times I gotta tell you that after I drop the baby, you can't wash off his head wound in the shark tank?!"
JonBenet Ramsey killer John Mark Karr has a MySpace page. Now why would a guy who likes to prey on children possibly want to hang around on MySpace?
· Finally, a Mel Gibson t-shirt with a pleasing design.
· Sweaty, potty-mouthed oil heir Brandon Davis is still dining out on the "firecrotch" thing. It's probably time for him to move on to slandering pubic hair of a different color and prove he's not just a one-hit wonder.

Easily the most important part of any celebrity meltdown involving a messy police altercation is the swift, sweet sting of a judge's fingers on the back of the naughty scofflaw's outstreched wrists. Lead-footed Malibu anti-Semite Mel Gibson finally received his token punishment today after entering a no-contest plea to a misdemeanor drunk-driving charge through his lawyer (naturally, Gibson wasn't present, as there was no way his legal team would allow a dramatic courtroom photo-op or take the chance that their client refer to Lady Justice as Sugar Tit), which included three years of probation, a fine roughly half the star's typical Moonshadows tab, and some obligatory lip service about drying out:

• Everything I Know About Drugs I learned from Hollywood [LAist]

Among our popular local pastimes, few delight more than collecting and trading secret In-N-Out ordering tips you'd never find on the regular menu. Who, for example, could forget the now legendary 100x100 affair, which was directly responsible for four delicious cardiac arrest deaths plus a number of beef-and-cheese poisonings. Now, the Los Anjealous blog offers up several secret secret menu items available to you by merely dropping their names at the counter with a knowing wink:

· Music round-up: Under the Influence of Giants with the Adored at Hollywood & Highland; Silversun Pickups at the Troubadour; Bad Dudes at the Smell.
· The highly underrated (no, we're not being ironic) Galaxy Quest, possibly the only Tim Allen film that doesn't require a lobotomy to be enjoyed, is being shown at the Aero.
· The Henry Fonda hosts Gen Art's multimedia extravaganza Ignite!: Palms & Pearls, where the booze will be free, the art and music spectacular, and the booze free. Clearly you know where our priorities are by now. [via flavorpill]

Inspired by weeks of tragic civilian casualties in Lebanon and Israel, 85 of Hollywood's most influential citizens have finally answered the world's call to decry in list form the violence initiated by terrorist organizations such as, but not limited to, Hezbollah and Hamas by pooling their vast resources to purchase this advertisement in the LA Times. Before the participants in what history will remember as Names Across A Newspaper Page were allowed to join the project, they first were asked to sign a pledge (assistant signatures were acceptable in the cases of individuals tied up on movie sets) that they were, at minimum, "vaguely upset about the Middle East," ensuring that the ad's expression of their "pain and devastation" would be genuine. The ad is pictured here (via this post on Webloggin), and you can safely assume that any industry player not on the roster either forgot to add their name to the end of the chain e-mail and forward it along to everyone in their address book, or is actively funding at least one anti-democratic or terrorist cause.

Every so often comes an interview in which a celebrity manages to shake himself from his censorial bridle gear, and run wild with the "controversial" semi-thoughts ricocheting ever so slowly through his head like video Pong balls. Such was the case with Justin Timberlake's recent taunts of Soul Patrol messiah Taylor Hicks, a PR fire that Timberlake's flack, Little Ken Sunshine, would later feebly attempt to extinguish:

After a nearly month-long cliffhanger following former child actor/current former child actor cliché Haley Joel Osment's possibly alcohol-assisted destruction of a perfectly good 1995 Saturn, TMZ.com reports that Osment has been charged with four criminal counts of DUI and pot possession, including the the very technical-sounding "enhancement of driving with a .15 or higher," as well as a less jargon-heavy, "Well lookee here, did Mr. "I See Dead People" think we weren't gonna find that big old joint in the glove compartment?" accusation. With this impressive array of charges, Osment sets the bar intimidatingly high for fellow preternaturally polished child performer Dakota Fanning's inevitable flame-out, which will need to include the crashing of a monster truck full of heroin into her agency's lobby while wearing a tattered, ill-fitting Girl Scout uniform to equal her predecessor's feat.

Eastsiders, despair, for your Hollywood nightmare, which you'd naively hoped had ended with the almost simultaneous premiere and cancellation of the Silver Lake-set UPN abomination Sex, Love & Secrets may begin anew. According to today's Variety, Jennifer Lopez and FX are pressing even further east on Sunset Boulevard for an Echo Park pilot, "a comedic look at the world of yuppie, Latino and hipster cultures within Los Angeles' Echo Park neighborhood." We don't expect that J. Lo herself will be involved enough to set foot on a location shoot, but should she decide to "see what some of these hippie things look like" during
the filming of a particularly hilarious, cross-cultural interaction between a shitfaced Little Joy's patron and the wise-cracking guy trying to sell him a tamale, be prepared to drive her back west by setting ablaze the [pick two of three: sweatbands/leg warmers/cowboy-boots-and-gym-shorts set] you've dipped in gasoline and hurling it at her and her interloping entourage.

The IRS has finally taken notice of the increasingly elaborate gift bags bestowed upon awards show presenters and nominees, and has issued a warning to anyone who might partake of the big-ticket caviar-facial vouchers and Godiva-dipped cellphones within: Cough up our share, or else.

Warner Bros. and DreamWorks team up for a film version of the musical Sweeney Todd, in which Tim Burton will once again direct longtime muse Johnny Depp, this time with Depp playing the titular singing, murderous barber. [Variety]
The networks are planning a variety of Hurricane Katrina one-year anniversary specials, which should sufficiently break down the public's emotional resistance to the five-year anniversary specials about 9/11 that will follow soon after. [THR]
Hollywood Out of Ideas, Recycling Your Own Work for Fun and Profit Edition: Wes Craven will produce a remake of his first film, Last House on the Left, for Rogue Pictures. [Variety]
· Local nightclub despot Sam Nazarian has finally collected on Lindsay Lohan's bar tab, directing the funds into the purchase of the comedy script College, upon which you should feel free to project your own keg party-related plot. [THR]
· Sid Ganis is re-elected to his post as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, a title he will hold until someone rises up from within AMPAS's ranks and beheads him. [Variety]

Inaugural American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson's Monday night appearance with local hair metal comedy act Metal Skool seems a little too well-photographed to have been spontaneous, despite her almost convincing, "Gee whiz, I was just minding my own business here in my sweater vest and suddenly I'm on stage, chugging Chivas from the bottle, and playing the air-nipples" act, but this video of the possibly choreographed cameo is worth watching just to hear guitarist Satchel's come-on/threat of "I will fuck your skull" in the opening seconds, a line that Simon Cowell will surely appropriate for the next season of Idol. (Video possibly NSFW due to the shouting of various profanities, so be forewarned.)

He's the Crash producer still steaming over a credit dispute that cost him his moment of Oscar glory. She's the Crash producer who places her Best Picture statuette on the mantel, pretends its shiny, bald head is his clean-shaven pate, then loses hours screaming at it for her long overdue payday. Together, they're the entertainment industry's credit-and-payment disputin'est couple, Bob Yari and Cathy Schulman. The latest scene of Bob & Cathy: A Hollywood Love Story, in which the spatting former partners engage in a heated round of mutual invitation-withholding related to the premiere of The Illusionist, a film they worked on together at the time in their backstory before the lawsuits began, unfolds in today's Page Six

Fresh off his success as "Handy Manny," the ominously named, fix-it-guy-of-color recently relocated to the Disney Channel neighborhood, THR is reporting that pitch-crazy megatalent Wilmer Valderrama has hooked Universal with his high concept comedy, PartyBuddies:

We're not exactly sure what connection there is between a white-trash guy whose only contribution to society was the rapid double-impregnation that finally broke the career of a fading pop star and Liberace's rooftop mausoleum of lavish, extreme kitsch, but some event planning visionary obviously connected those dots to decide to host Kevin Federline's Teen Choice Awards party in the deceased entertainer's Hollywood penthouse. The invitation optimistically indicates that the party will rage on from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., but we imagine that Liberace's ghost and the phantom faggle he's having over to cackle at Federline and his friends will quickly tire of the soiree, and the guest of honor's impromptu performance of "PopoZao" will be cut short by a hail of candelbras rained down upon him by the gay poltergeists unimpressed with his musical abilities.

Every so often, significant news events demand that we assist CBS's harried casting department in filling out the significant roles in their inevitable Movie of the Week so that the project can be rushed into production while the story is still is fresh in the public's mind. The capture of confessed, "accidental" JonBenet Ramsey killer John Mark Karr seems like a comfortable fit for Happiness star and creepy go-to guy Dylan Baker; the physical resemblance is certainly there, and the actor's mere appearance on screen will make parents clutch their pageanteers closer, a kind of menacing, dramatic shorthand directors love. And thanks to the AP's fascination with Karr's appearance at the time of his arrest, we can also offer a head start to the wardrobe and make-up departments at this time: