So overcrowded is the summer movie marketplace that the only way to distinguish one's upcoming blockbuster product from the blowing-shit-up competition is to hit the talk show circuit and recreate some of the fun that awaits fickle moviegoers upon their next trip to the multiplex.

When we read Jerry Seinfeld's pre-Bee Movie screening comments about the insects' "perfect society" ("Other insects are just kind of crawling around. They don't have the sophistication of the bee. They have no crime, they have no drugs, they have no rape. A little rape, but it's not that bad.") in today's Rush & Molloy column this morning, we paused, wondered if the joke might result in the kind of controversy that reliably follows any spontaneous attempt at rape-related humor, then decided that the words would probably pass unprotested, for bee-rape advocacy groups are notoriously disorganized. Unfortunately for Seinfeld, other organizations are more vigiliant. Radar collects a smattering of speedy admonishments:

The Defamer Special Correspondent on Cost-Conscious Summer Blockbuster Promotion just beamed us this cameraphone photo revealing the recent whereabouts of the Transformers BigFuckingRobotsMobile first spotted at the Burbank Staples on Monday morning. Dreamworks' economy-class rolling command center was parked outside of the Ca$h Plus near the corner of Alameda and Main (precise coordinates mapped here), where its conspicuous presence undoubtedly enticed dozens of potential ticket-buyers to squirrel away their freshly cashed paychecks until the movie's Fourth of July opening.

Having already blown untold millions of promotional dollars into 300-foot-long, building-sheathing Transformers prophylactics and custom-built Lamborghini-bots that will assist director Michael Bay in his premiere night groupie-acquisition plans, DreamWorks has apparently run through most of its advertising budget, and must now settle for more modest local campaigns for its upcoming blockbuster. While forking over some petty cash to slap some decals bearing Bay's unofficial catch-phrase on an economy sedan (would it have bankrupted them to buy the car new hubcap?) obviously lacks the sizzle of the aforementioned, flashier efforts, the strategy nevertheless did successfully raise the release-date awareness of at least one cameraphone-carrying Defamer operative passing through the parking lot of the Burbank Staples where it was parked earlier today.

Let it never be said that Paramount emperor Brad Grey is not a beneficent ruler: To celebrate the success of partner DreamWorks Animation's Shrek the Third, he's setting his subjects free a day early for the Memorial Day weekend, an act of generosity that should remind everyone on the Melrose lot that the Paramount Pictures logo can be found somewhere on the one-sheet of the latest. record-breaking installment of the previously established DW mega-franchise. Grey's e-mail to the company follows, which stops just short of promising all of his underlings an all-expenses-paid week in Cancun should the opening weekend performance of upcoming co-production Transformers bring still more glory to the Paramount name:

The Second Horseman of the Blockbuster Sequel Apocalypse is now galloping through your local multiplex, so dive behind the candy counter and pray he harvests the souls of that bickering family of four in line behind you. Your weekened box office numbers:

When we first heard about Jerry Seinfeld's big Bee Movie publicity stunt at Cannes (bee costumes, wires over the beach, mobs of gasping spectators, etc etc), the whole affair seemed incredibly reckless: had a strong gust of wind or a Pixar saboteur interfered with the delicate proceedings, the world easily could have lost its finest, semi-retired observational humorist and Porsche collector. As it turns out, our fears were at least partially unnecessary, as THR notes that a far more expendable member of the Bee Movie team volunteered for zip-line-test-dummy duty to ensure the star's safety:

As Shrek, DreamWorks' Great Green Hope for a profitable summer, continues to find himself the bearer of mixed nutritional messages aimed at the roly-poly youth of America, corporate partner/child-obesity public enemy #1 McDonald's has found a workable solution that will allow kids to indulge in guilt-free Shrek Happy Meal snacking:

· Lost's producers officially get three more years to pretend that they have any clue what's happening on that island, as ABC gives the series an advance order for three more 16-episode seasons. As currently scheduled, all loose ends involving smoke monsters, polar bears, and Jack and Kate finally getting it on should be tied up in early 2010. [Variety]
· Did we mention that Spider-Man:3's $227 million overseas was an international box office record? Well, it was! Unless you don't think it should count because it includes a six-day total from some early-opening foreign territories. [THR]
· DreamWorks wins the bidding war for Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones adaptation, committing at least $65 million to the project. Now that the deal is closed, perhaps Jackson's lawyers will calm down about assistants sharing the script. [Variety]
· Fans of the The OC who think the show was mercy-killed prematurely should be heartened by creator Josh Schwartz's pilot season buzz, which indicates that his projects for NBC and The CW are looking like strong contenders for pick-ups. [THR]
· In other pre-upfront pick-up news, NBC has already greenlighted Medium for a fourth season, ensuring that at least one network will have a juggsy psychic on its primetime schedule this Fall. [Variety]

If you are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid DreamWorks' trumpet-eared ogre, it probably has something to do with the rapidly approaching premiere of Shrek the Third, coming soon to every available advertising and tie-in space near you. But a parents' advocacy group is having a hard time reconciling how Shrek and the gang—now appearing on specially packaged Happy Meals, Snickers bars, M&M's, Sierra Mist cans, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, Pop-Tarts, Cheez-Its and Keebler cookies—can also be the faces of the government's new "Get off your asses, lardos!" anti-child-obesity campaign. The AP reports:

Today's THR reports that bite-sized DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, in an act of selflessness that will no doubt be adopted by his peers in the entertainment industry, accepted just a single damn American dollar in compensation last year, having waived a generous stock grant that cleared the way for for the company's president and chief financial officer to pull in $7 million for his services. Now that news regarding Katzenberg's ostentatiously modest salary has come to light, we finally realize why he was so heartbroken by the meager $2.7 million he was granted back in February after some faulty Goodyear heating hoses ripped the very soul out of his $28 million Deer Valley chalet; with a mere one-dollar income, he can obviously no longer afford the extensive vacation home repair project on his own, and soon he'll be forced to turn to his billionaire DreamWorks colleagues for loans, which they'll hand over with the humiliating condition that each restored room bear a commemorative plaque touting their assistance. Each time Katzenberg cries himself to sleep in the David Geffen Master Bedroom, he'll regret his ill-advised act of corporate self-sacrifice.

· After stumbling upon some screeners for its new season, Var's Peter Bart finally discovers The Entourage, which he believes pampers Hollywood's sexy underbelly but neglects the stepchildren. [Variety]
· Starz is suing Disney because it believes that offering its movies for download at places like iTunes and WalMart.com violates their distribution rights, an internet-related legal action that refreshingly does not involve YouTube. (We think?) [THR]
· In a development that all entertainment news outlets will be contractually obligated to refer to as a "Titanic Reunion," Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio will star in a Sam Mendes-directed DreamWorks adaptation of Revolutionary Road, the grandaddy of all suburban angst novels. [Variety]
· While pitching media buyers on his ongoing turnaround plan for his fourth-place network, NBC president Kevin Reilly expresses hope that beloved-but-low-rated series Friday Night Lights and 30 Rock will evolve into this generation's St. Elsewhere and Cheers. However, he had no historical comparison for breakout hit Deal or No Deal, as the brain-smoothing innovations of reality television had not yet arrived to make viewers stupid enough to watch people shouting at briefcases back in the 80s. [THR]
· Grey's Anatomy is still huge on Thursday nights, while Are You Dumber Than This 10-Year-Old We Plucked From A Special-Ed Class? seems to be sliding in popularity. [Variety]

Now that the Oscar ballot deadline has passed, the DreamWorks publicity team can safely shift its focus from designing Dreamgirls ads aimed at reminding Academy voters of frequently latex-hampered thespian Eddie Murphy's mastery of the awards-baiting man-cry to ones like this full-pager that appeared in today's Variety, publicly apologizing for the confusing dramatic license the film may have taken with the Motown story. There's some background on the reasons for the mea culpa here, including a quote from Berry Gordy's public statement applauding the studio for reminding everyone about the difference between movie semi-magic and reality, demonstrating no bitterness that Jamie Foxx's performance as the character based on him wasn't good enough to get an Oscar nomination.

Not content to demonstrate his Democratic kingmaking power by throwing a beachside cocktail party/Hillary Clinton effigy burning for Hollywood Chosen One Barack Obama on the pristine sand behind his Malibu compound last night, DreamWorks activist David Geffen granted the NY Times's Maureen Dowd an exclusive fireside chat, during which the power-mad billionaire stroked an overfluffed white cat while cackling his way through his plans to destroy his presidential-hopeful nemesis. The column is behind a subscriber wall, but here are some of the thoughts Geffen shared with Dowd about Hillary, Bill, the political hot water in which Steven Spielberg finds himself submerged for going along with the Obama fund-raiser, and his luxurious sleeping quarters:

Just in case your assistant has forgotten to pencil it into your calendar, tonight is the $2,300 per person fundraiser/pre-coronation ceremony for Barack Obama that begins at the Beverly Hilton and ends at David Geffen's Malibu compound (the parade from the hotel to the beach, during which kingmaking DreamWorks billionaires Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg will take turns carrying the senator on their shoulders, is expected to be spectacular), where Hollywood's hottest presidential hopeful will officially receive his much-anticipated reacharound from industry players who were able to scare up 20 well-monied Friends of Barry for the event. In an effort to keep out undesirables, only those who've ponied up their tribute will be allowed to join in the festivities. Reports the NY Times:

It's been a day full of big wins for the billionaires of DreamWorks SKG. Earlier, we pointed out that the California Coastal Commission granted David Geffen a much-needed ten-foot buffer between his Malibu Gay Mafia stronghold and the sun-worshipping Untouchables who dare to splay their unsightly forms upon his beloved, but distressingly public, stretch of Carbon Beach. Now word comes that bite-sized mogul and two-time intramural DreamWorks Animation wet t-shirt champion Jeffrey Katzenberg has tasted $2.17 million worth of bittersweet victory in a lawsuit against the rubber-pushing villains of Goodyear, whose faulty, leaking heating hoses did grievous damage to his Park City-adjacent vacation home:

The peace of a Torrington, Connecticut multiplex was shattered Monday night, when an audience in the process of being vaguely disappointed by a 7:00 p.m. showing of Dreamgirls was suddenly jarred out of its immersively underwhelming cinematic experience by the unexpected intrusion of an out-of-control SUV barreling through the wall of the theater. The establishment's owner was predictably shocked by the unplanned intermission:

It's a question threatening to tear Hollywood's most prominent, liberal-kingmaking billionaires apart at the gilded seams: Do they throw a fabulous fund-raiser aimed at continuing the spread Obamamania, the sensation sweeping the industry, or do they fall back into the calming, emasculating embrace of longtime Democratic stalwart Hillary Clinton, a tragically unsexy, but arguably safer, choice? The answer, of course, is, "Why can't we do both? We have so much fucking money that no one can tell us to make up our minds until we're good and ready," but Slate notes that a recent Robert Novak column seemed to imply that the officially unbetrothed Steven Spielberg's hosting of a Clinton event means that he's already decided to abandon DreamWorks partners David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg's desire to call forth from the heavens a deluge of showbiz cash that will carry their beloved Obama to an easy nomination:

Presumably a little frightened by yesterday's LAT story wondering whether the inopportunely timed release of Norbit might make Oscar voters a little skittish about handing over their coveted acting prize to a man who's currently celebrating his craft from underneath a hundred pounds of cellulite-scarred latex, the DreamWorks publicity teams rushed this For Your Consideration ad in the trades today, one which immediately reminds the soul-searching Academy member that beneath those layers of stunt-blubber is a nuanced performer capable of an awards-worthy man-cry.

While the tense relationship between Paramount and DreamWorks has recently been compared to that of the Trojans and the treacherous, studio-hijacking Greeks waiting to be wheeled inside the Melrose lot's fortified walls to slit emperor Brad Grey's throat, in carping to the NY Times about Paramount's annoying tendency to take credit for his studio's hard work, director Steven Spielberg offered a different analogy to describe the dynamic: