As we find ourselves nearing the humpday of Superman Returns' paradigm-shifting, seven-day opening weekend, we thought it only fitting to continue to pour on the Superman coverage ad nauseum until your faces runs green as Kryptonite and you start fantasizing about taking a five-year break from the planet yourselves. Having already covered the topic of Superman's hair through the years, we move onto the less vital but no less fascinating topic of what Dean "Oh, yeah! He played Superman, too!" Cain thinks of his updated, big budget counterpart.

· Bedroom Walls do an in-store at Amoeba Music; obscure art-pop outfit Radiohead tries to fill the seats at the Greek; The Like at The Roxy; Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins at Spaceland.
· Our pals from Employee of the Month are putting on a show of their new sketch comedy at the Westside Eclectic Theater in Santa Monica. You will laugh until severe organ failure, so attend only if that kind of thing is appealing to you.
· The Redcat Theatre hosts the Don't Knock The Rock festival, featuring rock films, live rock bands, and four other kinds of rock-related goodness we are too lazy to list here.

Paramount's late December acquisition of DreamWorks is truly the gift that keeps on giving, as 44 more newly redundant employees will be officially pinkslipped this Friday. We pause to remember the fallen by sharing today's oddly poignant (well, maybe just to us) e-mail blast announcing the imminent folding of the DW publicity department:

Just a few hours after the last showtune rendition had been expertly high-kicked by Hugh Jackman and the wedding reception cleanup crew had begun packing her father back into his shipping container, radiant bride Nicole Kidman and her new husband Keith Urban boarded a jet headed towards the most remote, private location they could think of for their honeymoon—a resort in sunny, tropical Tahiti. The very same resort, as a matter of fact, where telephoto-lens-seeking-missile Eva Longoria happened to be checking in with boyfriend Tony Parker:

Earlier today, the interwebs were briefly atwitter as a teaser trailer for Michael Bay's Transformers was "leaked" to YouTube, promptly removed, then reappeared on the official site. We're sure that the folks at DreamWorks have no idea how such a buzz-building leak could happen!

Sorry, Bryan. Variety will only spell-check your name if your movie breaks $25 million on its opening day.

· Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman will star in the Rob Reiner-directed comedy The Bucket List, about "a wish list that two terminally ill men try to fulfill before each kicks the bucket." Hey, you don't want to fuck up a perfectly good high-concept idea by getting cute with the title. [Variety]
· Charlize Theron "lures" British director Alan Parker out of a five year hiatus to helm her "passion project," Ice at the Bottom of the World. And by "passion project," we of course mean the chance to land an Oscar nomination by playing a heroin addict with an appropriately edgy multi-racial child. [THR]
· As usual, the second half of the year will shift from superhero movies to biopics and "earnest topical movies," so get all of the fun out of your system before the serious, Oscar-baiting shit takes over. [Variety]
· Leo DiCaprio finds a way to use development funds to bankroll several months of heavy hallucinogen use. [THR]
· Paramount buys the pitch Frenemies, about two friends who become enemies. See above re: not getting too cute with titles for high-concept ideas. [Variety]

Following a long, steady build-up, the wide release of Superman Returns yesterday came as welcome relief to fanboys (and girls) suffering from serious cases of Superblueballs. Most of them got in the old-fashioned, opening night way: buy tickets in advance, show up early, take place in line, make girlfriend buy popcorn. But as a Defamer reader who caught a Century City screening last night can attest, the famous can always find a way to skirt inconvenience:

It's long been standard entertainment industry practice for creative types to dress down in meetings, perhaps because writers or directors can more easily accept the dismantling of their artistic visions when notes like, "Is there any way that the character of Miguel can be less, I don't know, Hispanic-y?" are delivered by someone with the authority conferred by a more expensive wardrobe. Then one day, a suit across the table secretly envied the casual look of the poor slob he was about to mind-rape, self-consciously showed up to work the next day wearing designer jeans and loafers without socks, and the next thing you know, everyone in California is wearing goddamn flip-flops everywhere they go—movie premieres, formerly dressy coke parties in the Hills, funerals, wherever—and within minutes we have Mass Adoption Of A Hollywood Trend. In today's NY Times, Sharon Waxman reports on the flip-floptimization of our world, with the requisite quote from a well-known producer-type who's seen the ultra-casual footwear out in the field:

A Defamer operative on the Paramount lot just BlackBerried in a report of a large power outage at the studio, with all the fire trucks, ambulances, and mass milling-about by unplugged employees one might expect from a sudden blackout:

We marveled yesterday at the cool proficiency with which ABC managed to blot out any trace of recent Barbara Walters' Shit List topper Star Jones from their website. (For those who still care, Jones swats back in today's NY Daily News, with more to come on Larry King Live tonight.) Several readers wrote in to inform us, however, that Jones' bio lives on at its original abc.com URL, a slightly modified version of the same bio that appears on StarJones.com. The last lines would indicate the information is somewhat out of date:

Realizing that having a spotlight thrown on her regrettable estrangement from the superproducer father that made her an international icon of nepotism-derived semi-fame during the last week of his life might be a less than optimal development for her image, Tori Spelling took some time out of her busy grieving schedule to give her side of the story to Us Weekly. The mag was more than happy to dry her tears, give her a big hug, and roll the tape recorder as tales of her "bitter feud" with her family spilled out in the presence of an approving publicist. Us teases its coverage of Tori's Story with the heartbreaking! exclusive! tale of how her mother withheld the news of her father's death:

· We're entertaining plenty of theories on why 24's Mary-Lynn Rajskub was kissing Rush Limbaugh, but our clear-cut favorite is this: She just happens to like hearing-impaired, Republican fat guys who are developing an addiction to magic boner pills. Different strokes, and all that.
· And just like that, any burgeoning sexual attraction we might have been experiencing for the pregnant Britney Spears disappeared in a puff of purple smoke. We'd still totally do the octopus, though.
· Hey, the chick from Lost got married! No, not the cute, occasionally tomboyish one that Sawyer and Jack are fighting over. No, not the really hot one who did her brother. NO, not the Korean one. The other one. Yeah, the one who keeps cockteasing the smack-addicted Hobbit.
· TVGasm adds a passive-aggression meter to Barbara Walters' televised execution of Star Jones, hilarity ensues.

Defamer is committed to keeping its readers apprised of amazing opportunities to acquire unique pieces of television history through the anonymous, online swap-meet known as Craigslist. Today's featured item, which we hope is not cynically trying to profit off the sudden loss of series creator Aaron Spelling, is a piece from the incredibly valuable Dylan McKay collection:

Like a crack team of road pavers steamrolling over every last Star Jones-shaped lump in the asphalt, ABC is to be commended at how quickly and efficiently they managed to erase any memory of the undignified former co-host from all official materials. Today's opening credits on The View featured neither her image nor her name, and now, as the Us Blog points out, the View website has performed yet another surgical reduction procedure on Jones. The people behind Jones' website, on the other hand, have been slower on the draw: The About Star section still lists her as "currently a co-host of The View." The section marked Enjoy "The View," however, appears to have been tampered with, as it now brings you to a recipe for "Star's 'All Star Macaroni & Cheese,'" an orgiastic, five-cheese pasta medley which shall provide small comfort food companionship in the coming long, empty days of unemployment.

· Music round-up: See if Cat Power makes it through her whole set without a meltdown at the Ford Amphitheatre; Jamie Lidell does an in-store at Amoeba; Built To Spill start a multi-night stand at the Troubadour.
· Local TV-free emcee hero J. Keith van Straaten hosts yet another installment of What's My Line? Live On Stage, this week with a panel including comedian Marc Maron and hottie writer/former Win Ben Stein's Money hostess Nancy Pimentel.
· Everyone knows that An Inconvenient Truth is, like, totally last week's green documentary, and all the cool kids are, like, way more into Who Killed The Electric Car? right now. Seeing it tonight at the NuWilshire is the only way to stay on the cutting eco-edge. [via Flavorpill

With Superman Returns reaching wide release today, it won't be long before the public finally learns that the Gay Superman Question was just a ruse perpetuated by the cryptohomosexual-agenda-obsessed media, and discovers for themselves that this latest incarnation of the hero is, in fact, a pretty obvious Jesus stand-in. But as the final blows are landed to the immobile flank of this particular dead horse, we're happy to share with you the Daily Ramblings IMDb mock-up for the still-unrealized Gay Superman Returns film, complete with nice details like a dream cast of Erick McCormack, Kathy Griffin, and Nathan Lane. Enjoy.

Details are somewhere between spotty and nonexistent, but we've received a couple of reports about a fire on the Paramount lot a little earlier this afternoon. All we've heard is that the fire was on a sound stage and that fire trucks (real ones, we hope, and not the "movie magic" kind) were called onto the lot to extinguish it. As far as we can tell, there is no truth to the rumor that the incident was a totally forseeable result of studio head Brad Grey's misguided "Burn Down Stage 21 Ice Cream Social" event, and we obviously welcome reports from those with any information on whether or not every Paramount employee should be quickly—but calmly!—evacuating their place of work.

Even Brett Ratner knows that the only real way to gauge fanboy reaction to one's handling (or in his particular case, highly lucrative mangling) of a beloved superhero franchise is to take in a late, opening night screening at Hollywood's Geek Temple, the Chinese Theatre, where one can properly observe which cinematic moments cause obsessed audience members to soil their hero-themed footie pajamas with delight. We've received a couple of reports of Superman Returns director Bryan Singer (uncharitably pictured at left trying to avoid the icky, old-man advances of cast member Frank Langella at the official premiere) dropping by last night's inaugural showing at the Chinese, where the director, unlike his successor on the latest X-Men film, was smothered in Superfan love:

In the spectrum of embarrassing public celebrity moments, nothing comes close to the perennial classic Famous Person Falling Down. Failing accidental injury, however, you can never go wrong with the nearly as satisyfing Celebrity Mistakenly Overestimating Their Own Importance. The following Ashton Kutcher sighting sent in by a Defamer operative is about as perfect a specimen of the latter category as could possibly exist: