What event was so important that Tom Cruise insisted on throwing his busting-at-the-uteral-seams contractual concubine Katie Holmes onto a 14-hour flight to Sydney so that they could be there in person? It was the memorial service for Australian media mogul Kerry Packer, whose son James, now in charge of the family's billions, is reportedly becoming more and more swept up in the intergalactic glamour of Hollywood's celebrity Scientologist set. But Cruise wasn't the only megalomaniacal alpha-star on hand:

As Paul Walker Week draws to a close here at Defamer, we'd like to spotlight PopWatch's interview with the newly ubiquitous actor, who finally answers the burning question about what it's like to be the world's most famous virtual cunnilingus back-of-head model:

Gossip Fodder blog notes that at a recent press conference for his new movie Candy at the Berlin Film Festival, Heath Ledger was asked what George Clooney might win at the Oscars. Ledger reluctantly admitted Clooney deserved the Best Supporting Actor trophy for his work in Syriana, which, of course, is the category his Brokeback co-star Jake Gyllenhaal is competing in. The festival website offers video evidence (the Jack Twist diss occurs precisely at 14:30). A partial transcript of his response:

Hollywood 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 the world know you saw Judd Nelson shopping for sex toys, but didn't recall his vibrator scene in From the Hip.

It's time to express our undying love for this week's sponsors, whom we believe are all equally deserving of recognition in the category of Best Supporting Advertisers. If you'd like to throw on a tux and join us in our weekly kudofest, see this page.

With everyone on High Hoax Alert in the wake of the James Frey/JT Leroy scandals, the credibility of Rupert Murray's documentary Unknown White Male, about a friend of the director who suddenly developed amnesia, is being questioned. [Variety]
12-time Saturday Night Live host Alec Baldwin is in "final negotiations" to star with Tina Fey in her untitled behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show pilot for NBC, which is obviously planning an all-behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show programming block, having already ordered 13 episodes of Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show series, Studio 60. [THR]
Gone Baby Gone writer/director Ben Affleck hooks up brother Casey with a role, ensuring that the family will continue to have at least one actor working in Hollywood. [Variety]
2.1 million watch Dick Cheney's post attorney-hunting interview on Fox News, prompting the right-wing news organization to plan a series of sweeps specials in which powerful Republicans shoot people in the face. [THR]
· It's official: the new Bond girl is Eva Green (tip to horny guys: go rent The Dreamers right now, she may never spend 30 percent of a movie naked again), sparing Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen from having to go through with the sex change operation necessary to play both roles convincingly. [Variety]

Halle Berry has managed to turn a regrettable post-Oscar career move the cinematic equivalent of scoopable litter known as Catwoman and turn it into a cottage industry of award collecting and self-mocking good PR. First she shows up at last year's Razzies to collect her award, announcing, "I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit." Now, those ivy and crimson-clad cross dressers of Harvard's Hasty Pudding club are still flogging a dead feline:

Oscar triple-threat George Clooney's nominations aren't just good for him, they're a boon to people trying to turn a quick buck by digging around in the dark corners of his career. A memorabilia collector seems to think the media attention Clooney's getting in the lead-up to the awards ceremony means that the actor's infamous Batgimp suit from the franchise-killing Batman & Robin could go for $100,000:

Today's LAT reports that Universal chair Stacey Snider, whose contract with the studio expires at the end of the year, has told boss Ron Meyer that she wants to play the field before possibly re-committing to him, and has given her lawyers the go-ahead to chat with Paramount about a new job. According to the Times, however, the job in question is not embattled, slow-starting president Gail Berman's (as pretty much everyone in the entertainment industry has been whispering for weeks now), but one to run DreamWorks. Paramount Emperor Brad Grey wouldn't discuss whether or not he's hot for Snider, but publicly defended Berman's job security:

We almost feel sorry for erstwhile Most Powerful Man in Hollywood Michael Ovitz, who's learning the hard way that making one teensy-weensy paranoid comment to a national publication claiming that a secret society of powerful homosexuals is trying to destroy your career can result in a lifetime of watching your back. Says Page Six:

· Britney Spears on: not being bitter, ambivalent police offers, doing great, missing the road and being on stage, boredom, and the lack of wow in pop. Yeah, that about covers it.
· We find the Olsen twins a little unsettling in general, but now the Gilded Moose has figured out why their new modeling gig bothers us.
· Lisa Marie Presley marries, this time opting not to go with a child-actor-collecting, skin-bleaching, nose-hole-wheezing freak. Which, of course, means that we couldn't care less who the dude is.
· The pusher who started us mainlining unicorns insists that it's time we graduate to freebasing cuppycakes.

With Eight Below opening this Friday and Running Scared bowing the following weekend, rising cinemannequin Paul Walker will soon have twice as many movies in theaters as fading legend Harrison Ford, a sure signal that he's on the verge of the kind of megastardom that has eluded other once-promising, twice-pretty actors like American Pie's Chris Klein. Shockingly, however, the LAT notes that Walker was not the first choice for either of the upcoming films, and in an even more startling revelation, reports that his reps suggested that future employers view Jessica Alba jiggle-flick Into the Blue to get a taste of the actor's talent. As if this incredible gamble wasn't enough of an obstacle to joining Eight Below's cast, Walker then had to brave director Frank Marshall's grueling canine gauntlet to nab the gig:

While we can respect Larry McMurtry's point of view, we came away from Brokeback Mountain with a completely different message than the screenwriter's tidy summation a far more rambling and sissy-friendly analysis that likens life to a one-person line dance in a moutainside meadow filled with sparkly (though empty inside due to unresolved father-son dynamics) sheep. Still, the beauty of a great piece of art such as Brokeback Mountain is that it's really open to any issues interpretations you might bring to it.

· A lot of Thursday night music: The Business Machines at Three of Clubs (free!); Dengue Fever at Tangier; Otis Taylor at Hotel Caf ; 50 Foot Wave at Silverlake Lounge.
· The Manhattan Monlogue Slam hits Ivar again, with celebrity judges Ileana Douglas, Arleen Sorkin, and Brain Robbins either crushing or propping up the dreams of some aspiring actors.
· Comedian Jimmy Pardo does the live talk show thing at the UCB Theatre, where ejected first-season American Idol judge Brian Dunkleman will be forced to answer The Ryan Seacrest Question for the ten-thousandth time. Or, at the very least, The "Is Simon Cowell Really That Big An Asshole?" Question.

Careless copy editors probably don't realize the pain they might have caused with such an avoidable mistake about actor Mads Mikkelsen's role in the Bond franchise. Somewhere in Denmark Mikkelsen's cab-driving father, so recently welling with pride and boasting to anyone who'll listen about how his son will be matching wits with 007, now falls silent when the subject comes up, mumbling ruefully about how quickly Hollywood changes people.

Perhaps feeling the hot breath of gay cowboy up-and-comer Heath Ledger on his neck in the Best Actor race, award frontrunner Philip Seymour Hoffman will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to add to his lead by revealing The Personal Demons He Vanquished On The Path To Oscar Glory:

The Franklin Avenue blog has stumbled upon a couple of curious graffiti renditions of soon-to-be defunct netlet UPN's original logo (replaced by the one here a few years ago) in the vicinity of Sunset Blvd. and Western Ave. It would be nice to think that some touchingly committed fan of Girlfriends decided to immortalize his love of the kind of sassy, urban-targeted situational comedy that might by stifled by The CW merger by tagging a couple of signs with the retro logo, but it's probably nothing more than a territorial warning by a gang ready to gun down anyone caught flashing old-school Michigan J. Frog signs on their Hollywood turf.

· Sony, Paramount and Warner Bros. are cutting back on movie releases for the Sony PSP handheld video game system, turning fans of squinty-entertainment to the downloadable promise of the video iPod. [Variety]
· American Idol and House beat NBC's Olympics coverage by a wide margin in the ratings. Health officials now express concern that audiences will soon choose watching the reality show over doing anything else, including eating and breathing. [Variety]
· Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky gets first-look shingle at Universal, nearly passes out fantasizing about the possibilities of big budget Jared Leto-getting-his-arm-sawed-off sequences. [Variety]
· Pilot season casting frenzy: Teri Polo in CBS' Welcome to the Jungle Gym (get it?), Connie Britton in NBC's Friday Night Lights, and Daryl Sabara in TBS' Boy's Life. [THR]
· CBS and NBC shake up their schedules, with CBS moving Out of Practice and Courting Alex (the who now, what now?) to Wednesday, and NBC extending a show we've heard of, The Office, to May. [THR]

• Tom Cruise on Oprah: The Way It Should've Been [Best Week Ever Blog]

Fleshbot, Defamer's answer to the older, pervy brother who lends you his stack of Cheri magazines but then ruins it by insisting you tell him which pages got you off the most, has alerted us to the surfacing of that rarest of celebrity sex tape creatures, the two-headed breed. Don't get too, excited, though
the two celebrity heads in question belong to Kid Rock and newlywed/newly arrested ex-Creed frontman, and general fuck-up-about-town, Scott Stapp. Reports AVN: