Because we couldn't live with ourselves if we sent you off for the weekend without knowing whether or not Britney Spears is actually going to travel to Namibia for the birth of her next child, we pass along this Official Publicist Denial from the AP's follow-up to their earlier story:

Defamer has exclusively received what may be the first* documented sighting of the Miracle Baby, the heretofore suspiciously unseen newborn daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Writes an operative:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw Dylan McKay brooding in the Target toy department.

Join us in our brief expression of our undying devotion to this week's sponsors, a collection of incredibly generous corporate interests who want nothing more than to bring joy to all our lives. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and help ease the world's suffering, see this page.

· Var declares this summer "most competitive weekend," meaning that no one is really that excited about seeing new releases Lake House, Nacho Libre,
or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and will probably just wind up going to Cars again. [Variety]
· Sigourney Weaver is in negotiations to join the budget-conscious cast of Matthew Fox, Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, and Forest Whitaker in the blandly titled presidential assassination thriller Vantage Point. [THR]
· Josh Hartnett seeks to continue his unquestioned dominance of movies with titles including multiples of 10 and forms of the words "days" and "night" by looking to star in the Sony horror flick 30 Days of Night. [Variety]
· THR says that Hollywood's love affair with sappy romantic dramas is over. Well, over once The Lake House tanks this weekend. [THR]
· Philip Seymour Hoffman, whom we wouldn't mind seeing in about 10 movies a year, will star in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead before moving on to shoot Charlie Wilson's War with little-known character actors Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. [Variety]

In what is either a sign that the Namibian Minister of Tourism learned valuable lessons about manipulating the media during Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's stay in his country or a clear indication that the world has gone completely, feces-smearingly insane, the AP reports that a government official claims that Britney Spears is "considering" having her next baby in the red-hot African nation:

Wherein we invite our readers to risk instant paralysis by diving head-first into the shallow end of humpy E! gossip-lifeguard Ted Casablanca's blind item pool and guess the hopelessly obscured identity of this week's unnamed celebrity. Today's item once again concerns that time-honored fascination of the gossip-hungry public, the supposedly straight guy who secretly prefers the company of men. For sex. Lather yourself up in One Diva-Damning Blind Vice:

The interview concluded with a tearful, gum-smacking appeal to the media for her privacy, and a kiss-off to Madonna and Kabbalah ("She's a very smart lady.") It wasn't all dispiriting, however, as at one point Spears revealed her enthusiasm for interior redecorating— which she terms "redoin'!"—and an obsessive compulsive passion for cleaning, divulging to Lauer, "Yes, I have a maid that comes once a week, but she slacks a little bit." The lazy employee is kept on staff, however, as she speaks no English, making her a handy scapegoat for the star's various troubles. When questioned by concerned authorities about her latest baby bobbling mishap, Spears always has the option of turning to the cleaning woman and saying, "But you were the one who tipped the high chair over when you were waxin' the floors. Didn'tcha, Consuela?" to which the unilingual domestic will inevitably nod enthusiastically.

In an embarrassing mix-up that will almost certainly result in the firing of several editors, Forbes magazine today mistakenly republished the results of its 2001 Celebrity 100 list as its new, 2006 version of the world's most influential famous people, a five-year-old data set which proclaimed then-universally-beloved megastar Tom Cruise the most powerful celebrity in the world. That 2001 report boasted that Cruise had "never been hotter" following the $215 million Mission: Impossible II raked in at the domestic box office, lauded his attempt to "tackle something with more weight" by signing up for Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, a complex psychodrama that will "test the limits of the legendarily intense actor's chops in a new and exciting way," and credited his quiet, private devotion to the "somewhat controversial" religion of Scientology with getting him through the difficult dissolution of his marriage to "soulmate" Nicole Kidman "without missing a beat," all tragic reminders of the recent erosion of Cruise's once-immense popularity.

· If it were not preceded by the redemptive story about April Scott landing the role of Daisy Duke in the straight-to-video Dukes of Hazzard prequel, this would've been the saddest thing we read all day: "Scott...is best known as one of the models in NBC's hit game show Deal or No Deal."
· This one's high-concept enough where we probably don't need to say more than this: A blog written by a Romanian cat explains why Madonna is the Antichrist.
· A History of Angelina Jolie: "1989 Begins modelling. Feels full and sensuous lips are much better fit for modelling where it's totally acceptable —nay, required!— to sexualize 14 year-olds. Hollywood is so stingy with good roles for natural born Lolitas."
· Would you be disappointed if we went back to cats again? What if they're Hitler Cats? Yeah, we knew you'd see it our way.

In just about every successful actor's past is an embarrassing herpes medication ad, cheaply produced local used car lot commercial requiring the use of a cowboy costume, or regrettable double-penetration scene in a movie they've been sworn would never been seen outside of Hungary. Hey, everyone's gotta eat. An eBay entrepreneur is attempting to sell a rare piece of Vin Diesel's pre-Hollywood history, a 1989 Sisley clothing catalogue featuring a very young Diesel modeling some underwear, striking a dramatic pose that showed early signs of the incredible presence that would one day propel him to being upstaged by a duck in a Disney movie. The bidding has quickly climbed from $5 to $28.99, still a great value for an item described as having "no stains," a pristine state that can quickly be reversed by the excited auction winner once the catalogue arrives.

The nationwide search for the girl to play Tracy Turnblad, the plump and perky lead in the big screen adaption of Hairspray: The Musical, is finally over. 17-year-old Nikki Blonsky was ambushed by Access Hollywood's cameras at her job at Coldstone Creamery, where she received the life-changing news that she had been plucked from obscurity to star opposite John Travolta in a muumuu:

· The Aero hosts the LA premiere of director Walter Hill's four-hour miniseries, Broken Trail (logline: Robert Duvall, Thomas Haden Church, and five Chinese orphans driving horses from Oregon to Wyoming), with Hill conducting a discussion between the first and second parts of the film. Did we mention the five Chinese orphans? OK, good.
· Music round-up: Eagles of Death Metal at The Music Box at the Henry Fonda; Sound Team at the Troubadour; The Walkmen at the El Rey.
· Brian Finkelstein invites audience members to get on stage at Spill Your Guts the UCB Theatre and tell their true stories, then be judged on the entertainment value of their tales. Think of it as confession, but at the end the priest and his pals get together and decide who has the funniest sins.

Those who feel that potty-mouthed oil heir/goodwill ambassador to Hollywood nightclubs Brandon Davis' media caning following his instant-classic Shitfaced Firecrotch Diatribe was not sufficient punishment for his pube-denigrating transgressions will be delighted by the following NY Observer report, in which Davis returned to the scene of his crime and was promptly issued the clubmonkey equivalent of being publicly urinated upon:

The LAT approached Peter Billingsley—the irrepressible, Red Ryder BB Gun-coveting scamp Ralphie from A Christmas Story—to find out how he managed to bypass the dark paths trod by so many of his young actor peers, and instead carve out for himself a successful career as a movie producer. Yes, in just five easy steps, you too can circumvent an adulthood doomed to crystal meth-fueled dry cleaner hold-ups, and achieve your former child star potential:

Forgive us in advance if this turns out to be old news we haven't stumbled across before, but today the Hot Blog posted a copy of a memo from South Park creator Matt Stone addressing the MPAA's notes for South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Stone calls it his "favorite memo ever" in his postscript (the image here is only partial, but you can see the whole thing at Hot Blog), probably because he and cohort Trey Parker made the censors consider bizarre sex acts they'd probably never encounter unless they decided to hand out ratings for obscure foreign porno films starring a very specifically talented Winona Ryder lookalike.

Because you absolutely, positively must know where your favorite Just Like Heaven cast member is eating her lunch right now, we pass along this horribly invasive, in progress sighting submitted by an operative on the ground at The Grove:

Jeremy Piven's bathroom line-cutting nemesis, Stephen Dorff, got up close and personal with the UK's Observer Woman magazine, Sky.com notes, offering a refreshingly candid window into a childhood chock-full of guilty, girlish pursuits:

· Because Warner Bros. knows that a new generation of moviegoers should get the chance to hear a newer, hipper marble-mouthed muscleman declare the purpose of his life is "to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of the women," they've charged Boaz Yakin with writing and directing a remake of Conan the Barbarian. We get the feeling Vin Diesel's phone is going ring any minute now. [Variety]
· Nielsen Media Research has pledged to start tracking programming viewership on cell phones, iPods, or whatever future platform people might use for their Deal or No Deal fix. [THR]
· Paramount and Steven Spielberg are developing a sci-fi movie for Spielberg to direct, concerning" a group of explorers who travel through a worm hole and into another dimension," a plot idea apparently not adequately addressed by scores of Star Trek episodes spanning several different series and four decades. [Variety]
· Pretty boy shingle fight! Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt's respective production entities leg-wrestle for the rights to the Max Brooks zombie book World War Z, but in the end, Pitt's team's superior lower-body strength triumphs. [THR]
· Comedy Central will finally air the "Lost Episodes" of Chappelle's Show as part of a new block of original programming on Sunday nights, perhaps signalling that they've finally given up all hope of getting Dave Chappelle to honor his contract. [Variety]

Just days after he defended himself in a New York tabloid against a fruit-salad head wardrobe stylist, the worlds of fashion and Alec Baldwin collide yet again, with spectacular results. In a war horn-trumpeting headline that reignites their longstanding feud with the actor, today's Page Six taunts, "ALEC: TOO OLD AND TOO FAT." For what, you may ask? Playing disco-era fashion superstar Halston in a movie about his life: