Just in case you haven't yet had your fill of stories about the backbiting between Paramount emperor Brad Grey and the sneaky studio usurpers crouching not-so-quietly inside the DreamWorks Trojan Horse he bought a year ago, the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke reports that skeletal Viacom executive presence Sumner Redstone may have signed Grey's death certificate by letting slip at a cozy power-player dinner party a rather impolitic comment about why Dreamgirls found itself without a Best Picture nomination. Clasping your hand to your mouth while trying to suppress an outraged "Oh. No. He. Did. Int!" is completely optional as you read on:

Today's LAT examines the tensions that have been festering between Paramount emperor Brad Grey and the invading "dream team" that came along inside the $1.6 billion DreamWorks "Trojan Horse" he bought a year ago, whose superior moviemaking experience might enable them to "eventually topple management and grab control." The Times relates Grey's recent upsetting of DreamWorks colleagues team by making unwanted speeches at Dreamgirls' bicoastal premieres, behind-the-scenes efforts made by David Geffen to inject miniaturized DW operative Jeffrey Katzenberg into corporate parent Viacom's executive bloodstream, and a snit that developed over the way the Paramount chief handled the reorganization of the studio after the firing of Gail Berman:

While presidential hopeful Barack Obama seems to have all but locked up the endorsement of DreamWorks' Hollywood kingmaking troika with the announcement of an upcoming fundraiser aimed at perpetuating the spread of Obamamania through the entertainment industry community, Hillary "The Experienced Alternative" Clinton is far from conceding the town to her adversary, setting up her own local opportunity to circle a luxury hotel ballroom, tossing show business blood money in a burlap sack as wealthy diners consume their dinner. Reports Var on the rapidly approaching orgies of political starfuckery:

Hollywood's Christmas Morning is finally here, the time when eager Oscar hopefuls rise at an obscenely early hour, rush downstairs in their footie pajamas, and hope to find the previous year's good career behavior validated with lovingly wrapped awards nominations left under the Academy's gilded tree; those deemed good enough for recognition spend the day fielding phone calls from the media, who ask difficult questions about how it feels to be on the receiving end of the golden shower of adoration offered by one's peers (invariably, it feels good! And it's an honor just to be nominated!), while the snubbed quickly retreat back up the stairs to their bedrooms, where they self-medicate their soul-crushing disappointment by swallowing handfuls of prescription painkillers, sobbing through their publicist's assurances that they're still so very, very pretty, and that in this day of the YouTubes, no one watches the Oscars anyway.

· DreamWorks marketing guru Terry Press is leaving longtime partner Jeffrey Katzenberg after more than a decade of service to start her own company. But don't worry, she's still handling a variety of upcoming DW projects, ensuring that their ambitious Shrek the Third campaign, in which every child buying a Shrek-promoting Happy Meal will be painted bright green at the time of purchase, doesn't have to be overseen by a lesser visionary. [Variety]
· More Viacom corporate upheaval fun! MTV Networks president/COO Michael Wolf resigns after 15 months at the company. [THR]
· Sacha Baron Cohen's recent, insufficiently snuggly, out-of-character interviews make Var chieftain Peter Bart note that while he's clearly a "gifted satirist," he's a little too uncomfortable with the media when robbed of his protective, stinky grey suit. [Variety]
· The Brits love them some monarchs and intimidatingly muscled super-spies, with The Queen landing 10 BAFTA nominations and Casino Royale nabbing nine. [THR]
· A profanity- and Bada-Bing-titty-free Sopranos bow scores A&E the highest-rated off-network premiere in the history! of! cable! Self-congratulatory, full-page ad in the trades featuring James Gandolfini chomping on a cigar while being serviced by a stripper to follow. [Variety]

Today's LAT reports that Paramount Emperor Brad Grey and embattled lieutenant Gail Berman are expected to finally part ways this week, ending a partnership so doomed that early drafts of Grey's press release announcing the TV veteran's puzzling ascendency to his studio's presidency ended with the phrase, "I couldn't be more excited to welcome Gail into the Paramount family, and to eventually fire her long after it becomes apparent that this relationship just isn't working out, after an acceptable interval for saving face." The Times takes a look back at Berman's rocky tenure at the 'Mount, during which her "exclusionary, aloof and non-confrontational" boss made the classically passive-aggressive move of buying an entire movie studio rather than prod her about the slow progress of her development slate:

Paramount/Dreamworks' "roadshow" opening of Dreamgirls was a big success, but will it translate to strong numbers as the film expands to 800 screens, when the studios will need to attract audiences outside of the Gays who jumped at the chance to pay $25 a ticket for a preview during the limited run? [Variety]
Who will star in CBS's untitled legal drama pilot as a quirky, sassy public defender who, despite her quirk and sass, has been hardened by her efforts to make it in a man's world? If you guessed the quirky-n-sassy-yet-hardened Janeane Garofalo, give yourself five dollars. [THR]
Awards Screeners Shocker! The DGA does-repeat, DOES! We know!—allow screeners to be sent out to its members! In a reversal of an apparently nonexistent ban on FYC DVDs, the Guild clarifies its policy on the matter (details too boring to repeat here), leading to much gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair from awards campaigners angry they weren't informed earlier. [Variety]
...And DreamWorks is the first studio to exploit the DGA's new/old policy on screeners for the purpose of pimping Dreamgirls' Bill Condon. See above re: teeth-gnashing and hair-tearing. [THR]
Either it's just a weird typo, or the Reporter was so taken aback that NCIS was the most watched show of the week in primetime that it took eleven question marks to express its disbelief. [THR]

Prince will headline the Super Bowl halftime show; broadcaster CBS has pledged to take every precaution necessary to ensure that the rocker will not try and top Janet Jackson's infamous nipple-display by having one of his background singers yank off his codpiece, revealing that his penis is barely covered by purple junk-armor. [Variety]
Columbia Pictures acquires the rights to 1930's pulp hero The Shadow for Sam Raimi to produce, hoping that by the time a film is eventually released, people will have completely forgotten about the disastrous 1994 version starring Alec Baldwin. [THR]
Steven Spielberg is actively developing two drama series at Fox via his DreamWorks TV label, including one set in the world of fashion written by Ed Burns and wife Christy Turlington. Given Turlington's experience in that industry, it's unclear how the duo will split up the scripting and "just sitting there and looking pretty" duties. [Variety]
· CAA, obviously still disoriented from the recent, baffling defections of Kate Hudson and Hugh Grant, agrees to take on Christian Slater as a client. [THR]
· Unlike other Europeans, Spaniards haven't fallen in love with Sacha Baron Cohen, rejecting both Borat and Da Ali G show. [Variety]

Before a flawlessly put-together mob of angry Gays storms the courtyard of the 8000 Sunset shopping complex to topple the 68-foot statue of Jennifer Hudson they have erected in her honor, the star of Dreamgirls has released several statements intended to counter remarks attributed to her yesterday in a Dallas gay newspaper in which she allegedly called homosexuality "a sin." Her MySpace blog entry puts her current mood at "depressed," and goes on to say that "some paper is saying that I have a problem with gay people. Its just mean and wrong... Anybody that knows me, knows that just ain't true." A second statement, sent to The Advocate (whose current cover features Hudson) and forwarded to us, had this to say:

· Hot on the heels of the launch of NBC Universal's online humor site DotComedy (it's still around a week later, apparently—so far, so good), AOL and HBO announce plans to erect This Just In in January, a novel idea centered around the unprecedented use of blogging technology to explore current events in comedic fashion. [Variety]
The Academy announces the Oscar documentary shortlist, which includes Dixie Chicks film Shut Up and Sing and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Among the snubbed: Wordplay, Who Killed the Electric Car?, and This Film Is Not Yet Rated. [THR]
Warner Bros. suddenly moves up the release of Clint Eastwood's other World War II drama, Letters from Iwo Jima, to late December to put it into awards contention, hoping to snag some of the nominations that may elude his floptastic DreamWorks effort, Flags of our Fathers. [Variety]
· 27.2 million viewers tune in to watch Emmitt Smith stiff-arm Mario Lopez on the way to the Dancing with the Stars championship, while temporary Lost timeslot-filler Daybreak's premiere was "trounced" by Criminal Minds. [THR]
Fox decides that since it might look bad to cancel all of their new shows, they might as well pick up additional episodes of Til Death and Standoff in hopes that they might eventually draw some viewers once American Idol and 24 return. [Variety]

When our network of nightvision-goggle-equipped multiplex spies last reported back to us about the moviegoing activities of two-time intramural DreamWorks wet t-shirt competition winner Jeffrey Katzenberg, the bite-sized, permanently V-neck-rocking mogul was helping Tom Cruise boost his opening weekend gross for M:i:III. Last night, one of our operatives spotted him forsaking his company's own, third-place product, Flushed Away, to take in a screening of the eventual box office champion. Our reporter's tale of conspicuous seat-saving, the audience's possibly self-conscious overreaction to Mel Gibson's image, and Katzenberg's obvious enjoyment of the movie's signature moment follows: [Warning: Mild spoiler included]

The Farrelly Brothers, Hollywood's go-to guys for jokes about the handicapped, team up with Reveille (you know them better as the people who brought you Americanized versions of The Office and Ugly Betty) to adapt I'm With Stupid for NBC, the story of a guy who moves into his wheelchair-bound pal's home for the disabled. [Variety]
Trade Paper Redesign Mania! About a week after Variety got some cosmetic work done, THR unveils its own facelift. Don't worry, we're pretty sure that terrifying image of Rupert Murdoch is just tied to their top story, not a permanent fixture on their homepage. [THR]
· William Morris, always immune to the agenting fads that sweep up their younger, hipper rivals, are eschewing the currently hot relocation destination of Century City to kick it old-school in Beverly Hills, building a new headquarters just two blocks from their current office. [Variety]
Fox's World Series ratings rebound from a Saturday disaster to a respectable Sunday night number, raising hopes that this won't be the lowest-rated Series in history. [THR]
A NY judge orders to trial a case that claims that the idea for the Michael Bay disaster The Island was appropriated from Parts: The Clonus Horror, in which a clone escapes from the secret colony where he was being grown for spare parts. The highlight: DreamWorks' claim that the plaintiffs are "not entitled to any damages because 'The Island' wasn't profitable," an argument that seems to say it's OK to steal if the movie a studio eventually makes is shitty enough to bomb. [Variety]

Halle Berry will star in Class Act, the true story of Terry Cahill, the sixth grade teacher who ran for Congress (and lost) with the help of her students. We were all ready to be uplifted, until we read further and discovered that Cahill is a white woman, and now are instead anxious about the coming protests from the perfectly employable Caucasian actresses whom DreamWorks is obviously trying to keep down. [Variety]
Dave Matthews will make the inevitable foray into acting that all rock stars attempt once they find there are no more co-ed groupies to conquer, appearing with Sissy Spacek in the family drama Lake City. But despite his attempt to separate his music from his new career by being credited as "David" Matthews, his collegiate fans still plan to follow the movie from theater to theater, assembling in lobbies hours before showtime to get high and perform clumsy renditions of his hits on bongos and battered acoustic guitars. [THR]
George Lucas has seen the future of the movie business, and it's not Hollywood's' current, wasteful, tentpole-driven strategy, but one where studios take the $200 million they budget for a single, crappy blockbuster and instead use it to produce 50 or 60 lower-budget, crappy movies. [Variety]
· Ludacris will play an angry elf in Fred Claus, the Vince Vaughn vehicle about the degenerate Claus sibling who nearly ruins Christmas. [THR]
Neal Mortiz's Original sets up two sitcom pilots at Fox, Think Tank and Macho Steve, whose comedic premises you can easily discern from their titles. [Variety]

By our count, the major Hollywood studios have released 107 films featuring computer-animated, talking animals since January of this year, a numbing procession of disappointing, nearly indistinguishable offerings like The Wild, The Ant Bully, Barnyard, A Prairie Home Companion, Over the Hedge, Akeelah and the Bee, and Garfield: Lasagna Inspector that's clogged the multiplex and mostly failed to capture the imaginations of children accustomed to being mindlessly entertained by wisecracking CGI critters. Today's NY Times takes a look at the animation glut currently reaching critical mass, which threatens to confuse—and worse, bore—their core audience, but which for the time being is still producing product that achieves its primary goal: giving grandparents a way to keep this generation of ADHD-addled kids quiet in between Ritalin doses:

Inspired by the guy who executed a chain of trades that turned a single, red paper clip into a house, blogger Matthew Tobey has a grand plan for his used, 20GB iPod Photo. Figuring that if a half-cent paper clip could fetch a Saskatchewan home worth about $119,000, his $150 iPod should net an eventual value of over $3 billion, leaving him to decide on an appropriately pricey final target for his serial swaps:

Scientologists seize control of the Creative Arts Emmys, awarding the prime-time animation statue to The Simpsons over South Park's Tom Cruise-baiting "Trapped in the Closet" episode. Not particularly caring about the other races but wanting to generally recognize excellence in pay TV programming, the shadowy sect decided to give 17 Emmys to HBO. [Variety]
Marlon Wayans will star in the high-concept DreamWorks comedy Pretty Ugly, in which he'll play a "handsome lifetsyle mogul who wakes up hideously ugly because of a curse," and who, for reasons we will not even attempt to understand, must then disguise himself as a Caucasian baby for the remainder of the movie. [THR]
Pirates of the Carribean wins its seventh straight weekend at the international box office, but was edged out by Snakes on a Plane in the UK. [Variety]
Onetime The OC golden boy Josh Schwartz will once again get a chance to prove his gift for climbing into the minds of teenage girls by writing the pilot for a potential The CW series based on the Gossip Girl books. [THR]
While other networks have begun showing episodes of their series on their own websites the day after they air, Fox is dumping the streaming duties on their local affiliates. [Variety]

Warner Bros. and DreamWorks team up for a film version of the musical Sweeney Todd, in which Tim Burton will once again direct longtime muse Johnny Depp, this time with Depp playing the titular singing, murderous barber. [Variety]
The networks are planning a variety of Hurricane Katrina one-year anniversary specials, which should sufficiently break down the public's emotional resistance to the five-year anniversary specials about 9/11 that will follow soon after. [THR]
Hollywood Out of Ideas, Recycling Your Own Work for Fun and Profit Edition: Wes Craven will produce a remake of his first film, Last House on the Left, for Rogue Pictures. [Variety]
· Local nightclub despot Sam Nazarian has finally collected on Lindsay Lohan's bar tab, directing the funds into the purchase of the comedy script College, upon which you should feel free to project your own keg party-related plot. [THR]
· Sid Ganis is re-elected to his post as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, a title he will hold until someone rises up from within AMPAS's ranks and beheads him. [Variety]

We suppose that if a studio is going to spend millions of dollars on a movie premised on its protagonists being flushed down a toilet, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to show pride in the project by erecting a monument to it in the lobby of one of their buildings. But at a place where the sloppy disposal of employees has become something of a trademark, people are going to wonder if that giant commode is hooked up to plumbing strong enough to more neatly eliminate the downsized during the next round of layoffs.

Nestled deeply in the "Surveillance" section of today's Rush & Molloy column in the NY Daily News comes this item regarding Seann William Scott, star of such upcoming entertainments as Coxblocker and Mr. Woodcock, tripping the gay light fantastic with none other than Carbon Beach land baron, David Geffen:

· Thanks to Beverly Hills-fleeing agencies CAA and ICM and reemerging studio MGM, Hollywood has returned to Century City. But there goes the neighborhood already: Entertainment lawyers have descended to suck the life from he newly vital area. Anon, to Burbank, where the suits won't dare follow! [Variety]
· DreamWorks Animation takes advantage of the obscure federal subsidy for the bulk-casting of current and former SNL players in a movie, signing up Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, and Maya Rudolph for Shrek the Third. With the savings realized from the package deal, they've also secured the services of the hilarious Amy Sedaris. [THR]
· Media bigshots like Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger, Sumner Redstone, Tom Freston, and Les Moonves gather at the annual Sun Valley Mogulpalooza, where they will spend their brief vacation whitewater rafting, competing in savage pool-based chickenfights (the Moonves-Redstone pairing is utterly unstoppable), and partaking of the always popular session of bow-hunting human prey. (Again, no one can touch Moonves' compound bow skills.) [Variety]
· Each time the European Union stymies the merger of the music divisions of international conglomerates, the baby Jesus cries. [THR]
· After two months of negotiations, House's Hugh Laurie boosts his per episode fee over $275,000, a modest recompense for his valiant efforts at selling the exact same "no one believes the diagnosis of the prickly, brilliant doctor, then he is proven correct" story week after week. [Variety]