As brand names steadily creep into the plots of your favorite shows, TV writers are getting increasingly vocal about their trepidation in accepting these kind of embedded advertising dollars. Concerned that product placements can too easily come across as hacky, obvious commercials that jar viewers out of the story, a group of prominent showrunners, including Desperate Housewives' Marc Cherry, held a news conference to voice their disapproval at the growing trend:

· The Aero Theatre shows Sunset Boulevard for its series of screenings of critic Kevin Thomas' favorite films. Or AFI hosts a showing of ET at the ArcLight for those who'd like to relive Drew Barrymore's glory days instead.
· Music round-up: Dirty Sanchez (not to be confused with Danny Masterson and the Donkey Punches) at the Key Club; Sick of It All at the Roxy; Minutes Til Midnight throw a record release party at Spaceland.
· NY Times correspondent Alex Berenson signs his novel, The Faithful Spy (which—Hollywood tie-in time, kids—features a CIA agent protagonist with the same name as TV superproducer John Wells), at Vroman's in Pasadena.

Let the distancing of Paris Hilton from the Shitfaced Brandon Davis Firecrotch Diatribe begin! Hilton publicist Elliot Mintz has constructed a clever defense of his client predicated on the assertions that 1) Davis and Hilton are, in fact, distinct, somewhat sentient organisms, and 2) that while Hilton did appear to enjoy her drunken friend's prolonged character-assassinating vagina monologue, she did not actually verbalize any of her feelings about Lohan, Lohan's insufficient net worth, or the approximate length of very sensitive parts of Lohan's anatomy. Damage controls Mintz to TMZ:

Director Ron Howard has been soft-shoeing around the growing uproar over his controversial new movie, The Da Vinci Code. (We hear it has something to do with the fact that it's just a thinly veiled retread of What's Love Got To Do With It?, with Jesus recast in the Ike Turner role.) So leave it to star Ian McKellen to dismiss Matt Lauer's questions of whether or not the movie requires a disclaimer by insisting Christianity's shoddy source material needs a disclaimer instead. From Us Weekly's blog:

Because the Brandon Davis/Paris Hilton firecrotch-slandering video seemed to cry out for some kind of expletive accounting, our pals at Gawker put together a breakdown of all the slurred fun:

Remember all that stuff we said about Superman not being gay? If Warner Bros. marketing partners like Topps aren't even going to bother pretending, why should we? Be proud, our fabulously caped little Queer-El. Be free.

· CBS will pick up only three new dramas and one comedy for the fall season, and is moving Without a Trace and The Amazing Race to Sundays, creating their first-ever (we think) All Jerry Bruckheimer Night. Color us terrified by The Bruck's creeping programming hegemony. [Variety]
· New network abomination The CW will be stitched together almost entirely from old parts of The WB and UPN, adding just two new shows to its inaugural fall season schedule. And one of those is a Girlfriends spinoff, so they're not even pretending to try. [THR]
· The Da Vinci Code will premiere tonight in Cannes to "an unprecedented mix of Hollywood hoopla, fest glamour and worldwide hysteria," and, probably, some pretty fun protests involving flaming effigies of Ron Howard. [Variety]
· Bastard Fox semi-network MyNetworkTV presented its ambitious plans to replace test patterns, infomercials, and public access shows about local bakesales with telenovelas in selected markets. [THR]
· American Idol pulls down great ratings, again. Doesn't that ever get boring for them? How about just one week where it gets a 9 share so everyone has something to talk about? Is that asking for too much? [Variety]

You may recall the story of Joseph Medawar, the "producer" arrested by the feds in September who swindled millions from churchgoing widow-types, promising them a piece of the Hollywood dream—in this case, a TV series about the Department of Homeland Security called DHS. Even as he managed to convince prominent politicians to give it their seal of approval—mostly through the help of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach, who accepted $23,000 to "write the script"—the show never existed, nor would it ever exist. Medawar instead redirected the money towards maintaining his very Prada-clad, meet-you-at-Morton's lifestyle. The LAT now reports Rohrabacher announced he will be returning his screenwriting fee, moments before Medawar delivered a guilty plea:

There was a time when generously betoothed CBS despot Les Moonves would invite the media to an informal chat over breakfast on the morning of his network's upfront, where he granted journalists an intimate opportunity to watch gape-mouthed as he slathered his bagels with a schmear made from the steaming entrails of his enemies (namely, NBC's Jeff Zucker). Today, however, the NY Times' Virginia Heffernan blogs that Moonves may have finally lost his edge:

The online stalkerazzi at TMZ.com knew that if they shot enough video of people stumbling into and out of Hollywood clubs, eventually they'd hit the jackpot. And last night they did, capturing three-and-a-half minutes of oil heir/committed scenester/drunken jackass Brandon Davis throwing shitfaced napalm on the Paris Hilton-Linsday Lohan conflagration by loudly and repeatedly addressing the burning Lohan carpet/drape-matching question (which we hadn't realized was a controversy until now) as a giggling Hilton egged him on. With the zeal of a teenage Klan inductee at the moment he realizes it's OK to drop the n-bomb at his first hate-in, Davis reveals a weird prejudice against redheads by derisively declaring Lohan a "firecrotch" over and over again, occasionally stumbling into spittle-flecked inspiration like "Lindsay Lohan is a firecrotch, she has freckles coming out of her vagina, and her clitoris is seven feet long." That run arrives at the tail-end of the footage, right before the part where you start thinking that taking a shower in hot bleach to atone for watching the entire video might be a good idea. But if you watch only one video of an asshole Mischa Barton ex-boyfriend saying unflattering things about Lindsay Lohan's ladyparts today, make it this one.

As Sony executives distractedly oversweeten their morning coffees while nervously taking in the first round of heinous reviews and reports of a mushrooming international outrage over The Da Vinci Code, Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks took a moment to address some of the concerns in a Q and A with reporters moments before the film had its premiere at Cannes today:

It's a relief to see that Warner Bros. decided to subtly address the Gay Superman issue in their blockbuster's one-sheet rather than just let unseemly questions about his sexual preference linger and shift the focus away from the product. And as we suspected, it seems clear that this won't be the movie where the caped hero grapples with the one supervillain he can't defeat with heat-vision or a powerful blast of icy breath: doubts about his heterosexuality. Yes, Jor-El's kid is suspended above an imposing geological representation of a phallus, but he's merely pausing for a moment before flying away from the peninsula penetrating deep into the "man" of the title, a sure repudiation of any cryptohomosexual agenda. This poster is, of course, merely the first in a series that will more clearly narrate the hero's journey of self-discovery, building to a final, powerful image of Superman flying confidently through the gapingly vaginal Gateway Arch, telling us all we need to know about this latest incarnation of the Man of Steel just before the movie's release.

· Oh yeah, Nicole Kidman got engaged to that country music guy, but this one seems a little more hetero solid than the one Renee Zellweger married for ten minutes not too long ago.
· We didn't get around to getting our Trump fix last night, but apparently Jeffrey Katzenberg showed up to whore for Over the Hedge on The Apprentice, and in return for his cameo got a major reacharound from one of the contestants.
· Here's a list of male celebrities with varying degrees of facial hair growth (with facial hair commentary!) as compiled by USA Today. If you actually click on the link and view the list we will probably lose all respect for you.
· Anyone to whom the phrase "You're with me, leather" means anything in a non-BDSM context should immediately watch this video at Deadspin and be amazed and delighted.

Based on the first reviews trickling in from an eve-of-premiere press screening of The Da Vinci Code at Cannes, this might be a good time for the Imagine assistants to make a busy-work project of re-alphabetizing the office take-out menu binder in anticipation of a possible office-lockdown lunch of shame once their bosses return to LA from their promotional rail tour on the Blasphemy Express. An early Da Vinci Code panning round-up:

In light of the recent disappointing™ and disastrous openings of M:i:III and Poseidon, respectively, LAT columnist Patrick Goldstein examines one of Hollywood's favorite bloodsports, the Monday ritual of flop-tainted executives and producers donning sweaters made of chum and casting themselves into the lunchtime shark tanks at the city's power-eateries:

· Music round-up: Regina Spektor at the El Rey; Rise Against begins a five-night stand at the Troubadour; Cougars at Spaceland.
· Three-time Pulitzer winner (note to Hollywood: it's like an Oscar, but for the less photogenic) Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat, speaks at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
· UCLA's Hammer Conversations brings together Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin with Patton Oswalt (does the dude ever take a night off?) to shoot the shit in front of a live audience.

At the Waterloo station in South London today, Ron Howard proudly showed off his Da Vinci Code-branded Eurostar train to stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou, which will carry the trio from England to their movie's world premiere in Cannes. The train is specially equipped with a state-of-the-art loudspeaker system which will blare controversy-exploiting promotional messages such as "Hey Catholic ! Did you hear how Jesus married a prostitute? Come see The Da Vinci Code and find out more!" and "Everything the Pope told you is a lie!" as they hurtle through the idyllic European countryside, ensuring that they'll be met by throngs of curious moviegoers when they disembark in the south of France.

In a time-nurtured rite of well-intentioned, industry accountability taking, Hollywood will sporadically hold up a full-length mirror to itself, proclaim, "Hey—I'm predominantly white and have a penis!" then sate any momentary pangs of guilt by making a mental note to try to be less so in the future. This discouraging report from the WGA keeps the tradition alive:

TMZ.com reports a clash of the Lohan and Hilton factions at Hollywood club Hyde on Friday night, in which tense words were allegedly exchanged between trips to the bathroom stall and quaintly exhibitionist tabletop dances involving the chugging of overpriced designer vodka-based cocktails. Sadly, dueling publicist statements reveal that no high-caliber firearms were discharged in the course of the dispute:

· Brett Ratner laments that the stories he plants in the tabloids portray him as a "party animal," overshadowing his legacy as America's most extravagantly gifted fauxteur and passion for inept moviemaking, as he allegedly tells no media outlet we can identify, "I'm a serious film-maker and the people I work with know that so whatever is in the tabloids you can't take that seriously. I think, eat, sleep and dream film so that's what my focus is. That's the real me. I love women and I appreciate women but my focus is my work. You got to celebrate. That's the way to blow off steam. It's a hard grueling process and you want people to know that you really appreciate their hard work so I like to throw a few little soiree." [WENN]
· Ratner demonstrates his formidable filmmaking vision by musing about inverting the iconic Game of Death big black guy/little Asian guy fight scene between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bruce Lee for Rush Hour 3, with little black guy Chris Tucker taking on big Asian guy Yao Ming. Minds officially blown, as we would've expected the far more predictable Jackie Chan vs. Shaq battle. [Kaiju Shakedown]
· And if you can't be in NY tonight to see the Portraits by Brett Ratner exhibition, you can get the same feeling of celebrity essences frozen in time by clicking through the gallery on his web site, and imagining the shutterbug wandering your office while muttering "Oh yeah, on that one Pacino thought I was making a really interesting artistic choice, but actually I just kept dropping the camera in the middle of my shots." [Gawker]