With Sean Penn very ably handling the situation in New Orleans, Bruce Willis is freed up to launch his own search...for Italy's greatest beauty!

· Universal and Paramount's international distribution split is amicable, but now they've got to figure out how to divide up custody of their favorite fifteen children (foreign markets). Yeah, we're getting tired of the divorce metaphor too, but it's pretty hard to get psyched about international distribution entities. [Variety]
· Rupert Murdoch continues to base his internet acquisitions on the advice of his 16 year-old nephew, as News Corp. follows up its recent MySpace purchase with a $650 million buy of videogame-related company IGN Entertainment. Hey, Rupe, stay the hell away from Gawker Media. Nick Denton doesn't give us any stock options. [THR]
· Natural disaster and untold suffering prove huge for the networks, as Hurricane Katrina coverage results in some nice Nielsen numbers. If only there were a way to flood a major city every summer... [Variety]
· Hilary Swank hires producer Mark Burton to help run her and househusband Chad Lowe's production company, Accomplice Films, and to make sure Lowe doesn't eat too many cookies while she's out working. [THR]
· The Weinstein Co. hires "colorful kung-fu specialist" Bey Logan to oversee its Asian acquisitions and co-production operations, assisting the Brothers Weinstein in more efficiently plundering the cinematic booty of the Far East. [Variety]

Wherein we invite our readers to step into humpy E! emperor Ted Casablanca Coliseum of Gossip and join his weekly blind item in full gladiatorial combat. After a week in which Casablanca seemed to embark on his Labor Day holiday without leaving one of his patented, brain-smoothing celebrity riddles behind, he returns to form not with a rote "starlets doing blow" or "all straight actors love a little cock" item, but with a twisted tale of child-care cheapness. Take a romantic walk on the beach with One Cheap-Ass Blind Vice:

Join us in welcoming brand-spanking-new baby brother blog Deadspin into the baby-eating cult family, the Gawker Worldwide Blogging Concern's sports-obsessed gift to reduced workday productivity. New editor Will Leitch (of The Black Table and Gawker guest-editing fame) explains the blog's mission thusly:

From today's Page Six, the Curious Case of the Paparazzo and the Out of State Plates, in which a celebrity shutterbug spent a few nights in a Pasadena jail after being caught with fake Virginia license plates on a California rental car, then blamed a local television production for inadvertently tagging the vehicle:

Where the Truth Lies director Atom Egoyan lost a valiant battle with the MPAA ratings board yesterday over scenes of "explicit sexuality" in his film. (Cough cough three way!) The bad news: WTTL will have to carry an NC-17 rating (or go out unrated), which may prevent some theaters from showing the movie. The good news (unsexy version): Distributor ThinkFilm will probably receive scads of free publicity from the movie's soon-to-be famous menage a trois. The good news (sexy version): The released version will carry Egoyan's original group-sex vision:

We suppose that this is what Courtney Love's daughter Frances was talking about when she said, "I don't really like her hardmetal stuff, or when she doesn't brush her hair." Courtney gives more good face here.

· In probably the strangest hurricane relief idea we've seen, journalist Mark Ebner has pledged to legally change his name to "Ron Bon Jovi" if he receives a valid $100K bid in his eBay auction. (Admittedly, going with "Rico Torres" probably wouldn't bring as many bids.) The proceeds from the potential name change will go to the Red Cross. By comparison, Kathy Griffin's charity auction of a night out in Vegas seems a lot less interesting—and you have to hang out with her.
· Goldenfiddle recounts Jared Leto's less than moving tribute to Katrina victims on last night's Conan O'Brien. Also, the blog's not a fan of 30 Seconds to Mars's brand of "LA neo-garbage" rock.
· In an effort to meet their quota for casting ex-Happy Days stars, the folks at Arrested Development have filled the spot left by Fonzie's departure with Chachi.
· With Bob Denver's passing, finally the truth can come out: He preferred Mary Ann to Ginger. Also, he didn't love it when fans swatted him with their hats, no matter how hilarious it was when the Skipper did it.

· Watching the 24-hour hurricane coverage probably makes you want to chug a bottle of wine, so why not drink to benefit the relief effort? The Colorado Wine Company is donating half its sales from tonight's tasting to the Red Cross. Every little bit helps.
· Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of 'SMiLE' is being screened at 7 Dudley Cinema at Sponto Gallery, a documentary about the Beach Boy legend's decades-long struggle to get John Stamos to play the bongos on "Kokomo." Or about Wilson's efforts to finally release the SMiLE opus. One of those. Dismiss Stamos's musical gifts at your own peril, however.
· Hump Day Music: The Retribution Gospel Choir (featuring Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters) at Spaceland; Dub Club at the Echo; for those of us who at one time in their lives worshipped at the shredding altar of Vernon Reid, Living Colour at the House of Blues in Anaheim.

Next week's issue of Teen Vogue, your go-to source for fashion-focussed chats with the offspring of famous, emotionally unstable musicians, features one Frances Bean Cobain's first ever interview, in which she holds forth on mother Courtney Love's sense of style:

From the "Aren't these crazy Hollywood types five flavors of nutty?" file, Sharon Waxman of the NY Times profiles screenwriter Tom Benedek, who has taken to artistically repurposing his unproduced screenplays by firing bullets into them and photographing and/or bronzing the results:

Hollywood's annual late summer slowdown and the party-dampening post-hurricane atmosphere have taken a predictable toll on the movie premiere circuit. (To wit: VPage is covering the Williams sisters.) Still, studios with product to release must soldier on and shuffle through their red carpet song and dance, aware this is probably not the best time for crab cakes and chocolate fountains. An operative submits this report from last night's Thumbsucker premiere at the Egyptian, complete with a self-conscious admission by a rep that partying under such circumstances is "uncomfortable." You think?

Sometimes Hollywood cares too much: Fresh off a bummer of a premiere for The Man, the producers of the Eugene Levy/Samuel L. Jackson comedy think that a special screening of their movie will help to lift the spirits of the victims of Hurricane Katrina:

· After 24 beautiful years of blissful marriage as co-owners of international distribution unit United International Pictures, Universal and Paramount announce their divorce, opting to finally follow their own overseas paths. Yes, we're as emotional and broken up about this as you are, and we'll never believe in love again. [Variety]
· Breakout Project Greenlight star Andrew Rona (come on, you remember him—the Dimension exec who dished out so much tough love to Gulager and company?) has been named president of production at Focus Features' genre label Rogue Pictures. [THR]
· Billionaire Rupert Murdoch turns to a pal, a billionaire Saudi prince, to help him stave off a possible hostile takeover bid of News Corp. It's so heartwarming when you can count on your friends to help you keep control over your multimedia conglomerate. [Variety]
· Big Brother beats even hurricane coverage in the Tuesday ratings, once again demonstrating people's seemingly unquenchable thirst for televised misery. [THR]
· Judy Davis signs on for Lifetime's latest tearjerker, Dead End, the three-hanky story of a mother-son serial killer team. We can only assume that the killer mom also struggled with bulimia. [Variety]

Today's LAT profile of small-time manager-producer Bob DeBrino paints a portrait of an interesting enough character doing his best to get off Hollywood's fringes and into the action—he drives around in a flashy Corvette, throws scripts over Nick Nolte's wall (oh, if we had a nickel for every time we tried that trick!), and is trying to help a possibly mobbed-up jailbird cousin get a career in the biz, etc etc. We're far more intrigued by his battle plan for new client Jose Canseco, baseball's blacklisted roid-monster, who's trying to parlay his recent season in Surreal Life semi-fame purgatory into—sigh, what else—a career as an action hero:

Yesterday, much of the world snickered at a report that actor/rescue vigilante Sean Penn's hastily deployed dinghy immediately sprung a leak after its launch. Today, Rush & Molloy allow a member of Operation: Penn Saves to refute the claim that their boat wasn't up to their well-intentioned mission of mercy, it was simply overcrewed:

Pity Brandon Routh, the actor plucked from obscurity, liberally greased up, and squeezed into Superman's blue tights by director Bryan Singer. Warner Bros. is spending untold millions on the Superman comeback movie, Routh's Big Break, and all anyone can talk about is how painstakingly the costume department calibrated the Man of Steel's package:

Nicolette Sheridan is going to have to try a little harder if she hopes to break the hammer-lock that Desperate Housewives co-star (and fellow Emmy snubee) Eva Longoria has on the gossip rags. A simple nip-slip (even a double-slip, admittedly a nice touch) isn't going to get the job done, especially with Longoria's flacks working so hard to establish her as Hollywood's leading media whore. Sheridan would need the equivalent of five simultaneously exposed nipples to compete with a single week of Longoria's red carpet output.

In the grand tradition Dancing with the Stars, where people you sort of recognize were asked to perform acts of physical grace for which they were particularly ill-suited, Fox will soon present Skating with Celebrities, in which a similar caliber of has-been will be placed precariously atop metal blades and sent crashing repeatedly to the chilly surface of an ice rink. It sounds like Fox is hoping to convert those spectacular accidents to ratings points; think NASCAR, but with Willis, not an automobile covered in Pennzoil ads, spinning out of control into the stands and killing a handful of spectators. From the AP:

· Gallery of the Absurd presents a vision of the future so chilling that it would make Nostradamus's testicles retract in horror. Click at your own risk.
· Hey, unicorns!
· Our pals at TV Gasm are giving away a highly coveted, rare Emmy screener for Riding the Bus with My Sister, the Rosie O'Donnell MOW that arguably did more harm to the mentally challenged than a suicide bombing of a short bus depot.
· "I ASKED LARRY KING howcum he's gotten so many beautiful brides, despite the fact that he's got a face like a cluster of baboons' assholes—"Who else is gonna pay for Prada kotex?" he replied.." The League of Bastards makes its case to take over for the just-retired Army Archerd at Variety.