Joshua Newton, the director of Iron Cross, forced Variety to spike a critical review of his film from the web because he'd purchased a $400,000 Oscar campaign in the paper. But that wasn't enough—now he's considering suing.

Eking out a 16th minute, housefrump-turned-household-name Susan Boyle sits with Today to voice soundbits with all the enthusiasm of a funeral director. Once more, with feeling, Suze! And Cowell, send her to Lee Strasberg, stat!

You knew it was bound to happen: Oliver Stone's gauntlet-throw to chronicle a sitting president by Election Day would be one-upped by an ambitious upstart determined to develop, produce and release a film about a campaigning candidate by the same time. And just like that, from a Defamer operative, comes Juneau, the untold story of Bristol Palin, her babydaddy and one Alaskan governor/vice-presidential hopeful to rule them all. Who knew the sleeper hit of the season would come out of the GOP Convention and not Toronto? Even Roger Ebert is into it! Let the bidding war begin.

Kudos to Focus Features' marketing department for injecting some sex into Atonement's For Your Consideration ad campaign by choosing this signature image of Keira Knightley, in which the actress emerges sopping wet from her family estate's fountain in a clingy, see-through slip, as the one that best represents the candidacy of both their critically beloved literary adaptation and director Joe Wright. Sure, the awe-inspiring tracking shot of a war-torn Dunkirk might have been an option that more vividly illustrated Wright's technical skills, but sometimes voters just want to break up the monotony of flipping though the trades by gawking at half-naked ladies.

As proven by the For Your Consideration ads taken out in today's Var (click the image for a bigger version you can actually read), whether you're contractually obligated to promote a respected actor's performance in an otherwise forgettable FBI thriller or a moody, serial-killer-related period drama that never quite found traction at the box office, "Nothing Short Of Astonishing!" is this awards season's must-have pullquote.

So blinded were we by the ostentation of Paramount's eye-catching, two-page, "We made so much money last week that Brad Grey is buying everyone solid-gold robots" spread for Transformers that we completely missed this far more subtle ad lurking in pages of Variety this morning.

Readers of the hard-copy of today's Variety were greeted by a promotional cover needily advocating the Emmy-worthiness of the entire Grey's Anatomy ensemble, including recovering castectomy patient Isaiah Washington, whose vaguely menacing photo is separated from that of nemesis T.R. Knight by a five-actor buffer.

If NBC or Warner Bros. recently ponied up for a For Your Consideration ad for Matthew Perry's fine Studio 60 work (if nothing else, he showed consummate professionalism in not walking out when Aaron Sorkin forced that "hallucinating a drug-addled staff writer alter ego" storyline on him), we completely missed it, but we were heartened to see that TNT wasn't too cheap to pimp its drama The Ron Clark Story in today's trades. Unfortunately for Perry, TNT didn't quit while it was ahead on the "captivating performance" pullquote, instead diminishing his chances by including blurbs damning him with faint "solid!" and "likeable, kind of!" praise. And, of course, things always could be worse, had the network dug up a review describing their original movie with the words, "By its third act, no longer a 'made-for-basic-cable drama about Matthew Perry playing a teacher,' this story evolves into one about Matthew Perry playing a person."

If you need an example of how desperate networks become during awards season, look no further than today's For Your Consideration ad for The L Word (click above for the full version), in which Showtime demonstrates it craves Emmy legitimacy so badly that it's conspicuously de-emphasizing the show's lesbian spirit in a transparent, misguided attempt to increase its appeal to voters. Even worse than the cynicism behind this strike at the program's Sapphic core is that the ploy could easily backfire, driving away viewers who fear that Showtime has suddenly removed all the hot-girl-on-even-hotter-girl action that made the show popular in the first place.