· Scarlett Johansson will star (with Penelope Cruz) in her third Woody Allen movie, finally cracking the top tier of the pervy director's obsessive lust-objects. [Variety]
· In announcing his attachment to new comedy project Part-Time Pirates for Fox, Click director Frank Coraci officially puts an end to an increasingly annoying era of buccaneer-positive culture: "Pirates are the original punk rockers. Politically and socially with everything going on in the world there's never been a better time than now to revive that spirit. Arrrrrrgh!" [THR]
· Tom Cruise's United Artists greenlights its second film (what, you thought Cruise wasn't serious about this pretending to run a studio thing?), getting into The Usual Suspects business by nabbing an ensemble thriller reuniting Team Soze's Bryan Singer and Chris McQuarrie. [Variety]
· Nielsen terrorist organization American Idol detonates a nuclear weapon that wipes out all television-watching life other than its nearly 30 million Tuesday night viewers. They'll truly stop at nothing to dominate their timeslot. [THR]
· CBS gets the most daytime Emmy nominations, with The Ellen DeGeneres Show squeezing out 12 nods to The View's mere 10. We blame Hasselbeck for the shortfall. [Variety]

· We aren't getting an advanced look at a model of the Oscars set like we did last year, but Swarovski, the ubiquitous crystal purveyors who have never seen a mundane cellular communications device they couldn't jazz up, have previewed the "superbly sparkling Swarovski Crystal Curtain" that will hang on the Kodak Theater stage, valued at "$1 million." A mil? Please. Charlize'll have that much hanging around her neck, and we'll probably be too preoccupied with whatever is jutting out of her shoulder to notice. [PR Newswire]
· Need a leg-up on your Oscar pool prognosticating? EW.com canvases five resident experts, then plots out their opinions on highly confusing Connect Four boards. [EW.com]
· J-Lo Talks to Action News About Oscars! [6abc.com]
· Here's a list of black actors "robbed of their Academy Awards." Why, oh why, must Marlon Wayans' empty mantel suffer at the cruel hands of The Man? [VIBE]
· Approached for advice for 10-year-old Abigail Breslin, Oscar-winning former child star Mickey Rooney responded by saying, "I understand there's talk of a sequel. Can I interest you in a tweaker great-grandfather?" [Reuters]

· Is it starting to feel like ABC's getting a little desperate to squeeze the life out of its hits? They've now signed up Housewives creator Marc Cherry to a four-year, eight-figure deal to stay with the show through its seventh season, during which the only remaining unexplored plotline will involve Eva Longoria and Teri Hatcher waking up to find themselves trapped in each other's bodies. [Variety]
· Today in theoretical WGA strike saber-rattling: A Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. study says a strike, whether "real or de facto," would "not be good news for areas of Los Angeles County with exposure to the business." The LAEDC also recommends that studio executives who find themselves suddenly impoverished by a labor stoppage "burn piles of stockpiled scripts for warmth." [THR]
· The DreamWorks Obamamaia fund-raiser may have raised $1.3 million for Barack, Hollywood blood money the candidate's campaign has no intention of giving back, no matter how pissed off Hillary was by David Geffen's crack about the Lincoln Bedroom. [Variety]
· American Idol producers Nigel Lythgoe and Ken Warwick are tasked with trying to make the moribund Emmy telecast a little more exciting, a goal they hope to achieve by handing Paula Abdul a garbage bag full of prescription painkillers and then sending her out on stage as host and sole presenter. [THR]
· Rules of Engagement's early success following Two and a Half Men leads Var to postulate that audiences might be craving more formulaic, multicamera sitcom crap. [Variety]

· It never quite feels like an Emmys unless there's some royal fuck-up: Daytime Emmys nomination ballots went online minus the talk show category, but was quickly fixed, resulting in only nine ballots being cast incorrectly. [Variety]
· The AMPAS Scientific and Technology Awards recognized breakthrough achievements in processes for archiving and preserving digitally mastered movies, something you may have thought unnecessary, but remember when CDs first came out and were called indestructable? [THR]
· Dame Judi Dench won't make it to the Oscars, thanks to some knee surgery, halving the number of silver foxes on hand as Best Actress nominees. [inthenews.co.uk]
· Will Paul Greengrass pull a best director upset at the Oscars? [AP]
· How adorable! Oscar dressed up with a little pirate hat, eye-patch, and scimitar! By the way, we in no way endorse the highly illegal BitTorrent downloading of all this year's nominees, as facilitated by this handy site. [oscartorrent.com]

Ellen Burstyn has finally commented on the bizarre turn of events that saw her receive an Emmy nomination for a 14-second performance in the HBO movie Mrs. Harris (she lost, to co-star Cloris Leachman). Refusing to downplay the controversial nod, Burstyn only hopes, as any top-of-their-game athlete would, to shave a few seconds off her best personal time at next year's meet. The AP reports:

We realize that stumbling upon an unwanted Emmy statuette on Craigslist is about as rare and momentous an occurrence as, say, wandering into the Hyde ladies room on any given night and hearing a voice that sounds a lot like Lindsay Lohan's shouting, "What the hell did I do with that second baggie?!" Still, for some, the trophy carries a great deal of significance—Jeremy Piven, for instance, who's rarely been seen further than five meters from his own since winning one back in August, even breaking it out to use as an impromptu drum stick whenever the urge calls to hit the skins at a local rock club. That said, we're happy to pass along this most recent posting to the ever growing "los angeles craigslist > for sale > awards > emmys" section:

Andy Cohen, Bravo network's executive blogging yenta, packed more starfuckery action into a single Emmy weekend than most of his peers manage in an entire awards season. Bucking the conventional wisdom that a couple can't bestow upon itself an annoying, hybrid nickname, "Brandy" (Andy + goyische manlover Bruce) dressed up to the nines in spiffy tuxedos and patent leather Gucci flip-flops, then shuffled from ceremony to soirees, later using a handy trail of dropped names and air kisses to find their way back. Some highlights:

• Paula Abdul [YouTube]

While Jeremy Piven had the liver-pampering foresight to arrange corporate sponsorship of his post-Emmy ceremony alcohol needs, guests at the TV Academy's Governor's Ball seeking to distract themselves from the angel-shaped void in their lives through the magic healing power of free liquor were unpleasantly surprised to discover that getting a good buzz on was going to cost them. Kudos-crashing LAT reporter Richard Rushfield overheard at least one gripe from a displeased attendee:

Though NBC's Emmy ratings were shitty, the network at least avoided the shame of hosting the Shittiest-Rated Emmys Ever.
[Variety]
Two shocking developments out of ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live is still on the air (is Snoop Dogg still co-host?), and it's been renewed through 2008. The show plans to celebrate its first 3 1/2 years of existence with the whimsically titled special, Jimmy Kimmel Live's All-Star Salute to Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The fun never stops. [THR]
BET founder Robert L. Johnson's production company for making African-American-centered films, Our Stories, hires its first president and CEO, Tracey E. Edmonds, whose first act was to quickly reject partner Harvey Weinstein's suggestion to change the company's name to Urban Stories so that white people would feel less guilty about ignoring their output. [Variety]
· We're not sure we want to live in a world where someone can set up a movie based on the lives of Elisabeth and Andrew Shue. [THR]
Cruise/Wagner's Paula Wagner cites the "synergy" between her company and the amusement park moneymen who will bankroll their overhead and development costs as the reason for their unconventional partnership, as well as the fact that the diminutive actor has long sought friends who could "sneak him onto the big boy rides at Magic Mountain." That's right, with so many ripe areas to choose from, we go for the hacky height joke. [Variety]

While we merely conjectured that Jeremy Piven might have punctuated his Emmy win by coaxing his new trophy girlfriend into a celebratory three-way with red-carpet tormentors Billy Bush and Ryan Seacrest, how the actor actually spent his post-Emmy hours is coming into clearer focus in today's tabloids. And thanks to the miracle of gossip column product placement, we know that Piven's victory binge was sponsored by the fine folks at M et:

· At Comedy Central's after-party, Jon Stewart looks sad because he fell for Stephen Colbert's "Hey, would you mind holding my loaf of bread while I run off with one of your Emmys?" trick for a second straight year.
Quick, put in a bid on the sunglasses Jeremy Piven wore to the Emmys before he pulls them out of the auction, superstitious that they were responsible for his win.
There is perhaps nothing sadder than watching Tara Reid, who once had an entire series dedicated to her partying skills, denied entrance to an exclusive drinking establishment. She just looks so lost and powerless standing by that unmoved, unfeeling Hyde bouncer while Paris strides right in.
Agent Fashionwatch, Mini Edition: "...Emanuel's kid brother, famous Hollywood agent Ari (bright pink Polo shirt, lobster-print belt, white Adidas sneakers) kept jumping up from his front-row seat to pace and speak urgently into his dorky cell-phone headset." What's an agent got to wear to get some respect from the Daily News?
· Paris Hilton is unhappy that Cher's son claimed to scrub his genitals with Tilex after a sexual encounter with her to avoid contracting a social disease, as she fears this rumor might hurt her exclusive STV medication endorsement with Valtrex.

Those who felt that the three hours of the Emmys ceremony itself wasn't a self-mortification ritual sufficiently harrowing to atone for a year of their TV-watching sins may have tuned in to the supplemental torture of NBC's pre-show coverage, where they could have witnessed obviously tense Emmy nominee (and eventual winner) Jeremy Piven have the following testy exchange with red carpet inquisitor Billy Bush:

Judging from the seemingly endless procession of well-endowed actresses showing off their assets at this year's Emmy ceremony, Hollywood's stylists came to the unanimous conclusion that the perfect way to accessorize a plunging neckline on an exquisitely tailored gown was with a huge pair of breasts. To celebrate the widespread adoption of this red-hot fashion trend, we've put together a short quiz to test your knowledge of the celebrity decolletage on display at last night's awards. Answers are after the jump:

Realzing that adopting a defiant, "Hey, why can't you Kentucky people realize that our plane crash gag had nothing to do with your actual plane crash?" stance in the wake of the controversy over the Emmy telecast's poorly timed, aviation-disaster-based opening sketch (above) would be a PR disaster, NBC has instead issued the inevitable, semi-apologetic press release assuring the aggrieved that the network wasn't trying to score cheap laughs off a fresh tragedy:

Both Var and THR agree: The Emmys took place last night, 24 and The Office won big awards, and HBO extended to six years its run of kicking the broadcast networks' collective asses. [Variety, THR]
NBC soothes the sting of Conan O'Brien's musical ode to the network's current dark days in the Nielsen basement with six Emmy wins, its best showing in years. [Variety]
...but any warm feelings NBC might have derived from its wins were undoubtedly dulled by the fact that no one felt particularly compelled to watch, as the show's ratings we down 15 percent from last year. [THR]
Official Deal or No Deal briefcase inspector Howie Mandel shows he has a strong grasp on the dilemma surrounding this year's swag crackdown by the IRS: "Swag to me means free stuff, and if you pay tax on it, doesn't that kind of negate it?" [Variety]
· The TV Academy handed out four trophies to actors whose series are not returning in the fall, giving the honorees a nice "fuck you" to their networks to place atop their mantels. [THR]

Unsurprisingly, the opening skit of last night's Emmy telecast, in which host Conan O'Brien survives the plane crash that strands him on an uncharted island with the snubbed cast of Lost, didn't go over very well in Kentucky, where just hours before the awards ceremony began, 49 people died in a far less whimsical aviation accident:

Click to view

· AOL struggles to find new reasons to justify its pointless existence in a broadband world by offering downloadable movies from most of the majors, set at the three price points of $19.99, $14.99 and $9.99, or crap, crappier and crappiest. [Variety]
· More online entertainment news—we know, it's too much sexy, you can't bear it. CBS will stream episodes of some of their series, such as The Unit and The Class, in the hope that eyeballs they've lost to computer porn might shift over to some of their shows once they're, uh, done with their computer porn business. [Variety]
· A national janitors' union presents their Golden Broom Awards for the "worst place for janitors to work." (Wouldn't a golden broom suggest excellence in the custodial arts? We would have gone with the Leaky Bucket Awards, but hey, not our gig.) Winners this year include NBC Studios, Universal Citywalk and Warner Music Group. Defamer commentators go wild with "Tom Cruise new career opportunity" jokes. [Variety]
· Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank will put their ambisexual chemistry to the test in P.S. I Love You, a movie we will not see because it is called P.S. I Love You. [THR]
· THR claims this year's Emmys arrive among "a din of disenchantment." Hey, if it makes you feel better, Emmy, we'll check you out. On TiVo. Well, we'll just fast forward to the Conan O'Brien bits and to see if Ellen Burstyn wins The Leaky Bucket the Emmy for her 14-second performance. [THR]

As we pointed out yesterday, there are many things that Emmy winners can do with their gaudy, underutilized statuettes besides placing them upon a mantel, waiting for dust motes to collect upon their once-polished surface. While whimsical honorees might find a cute way for their golden angel to help out around the house, the more practical-minded might realize that Emmy, with the assistance of Craigslist, can also lend a hand with balancing the checkbook: