· 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]

· Ever wonder what it looks like when someone drives a car into a swimming pool in Woodland Hills? Wonder no more, thanks to the LAFD's Flickr stream. [via Blogging.la]
·Does PostSecret need a little help with the "secret" part of its mission? Gawker thinks so, and maybe Christian Slater, too.
· Who's making network TV programs? You are! And if you're the one who came up with that Are You Dumber Than A Fifth Grader? show, you're fucking fired. Gather your things and wait for a security officer to escort you off the Fox lot.
·Larry Birkhead: Entourage day-player.

Unlike fellow pretty-faced, effeminate American Idol top 12 finalist Sanjaya Malakar, Mario Vazquez legitimately seemed to belong there two seasons ago, and he shocked the world by pulling out just days before they were about to compete, citing "family reasons." Now, a scandalous lawsuit brought against the singer, FOX Entertainment, and Fremantle Media accuses Vazquez of having "sexually harrassed" the show's assistant accountant:

· Superhero icon Captain America, who somehow survived a near-fatal movie adaptation back in 1990, was not so lucky after being struck by a sniper's bullet in the latest issue of his comic book. [Variety]
· With his homeless-guy-to-stockbroker-bigshot turn failing to bring home that elusive Oscar, Will Smith plans to see if he might have better luck with soft-hearted Academy voters by playing a jailed-crack-dealer-turned-gourmet-chef, optioning the memoir Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, From Cocaine to Foie Gras for what we assume will be an eventual starring, tear-jerking role. [THR]
· Supporting socially moderate Republican presidential hopefuls Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain might—might—not land industry conservatives on Hollywood's right-wing blacklist. [Variety]
· Tim "McWingsy" Daly and Paul "McWho?" Adelstein join the cast of the two-hour, Very Special Grey's
Anatomy episode that may result in a spin-off. [THR]
· Exhausted network rivals take a night off from trying to fight off American Idol, flipping over and offering only token repeat resistance to their inevitable Nielsen buggering last night. [Variety]

A funny thing happened to notoriously sensitive Lady in the Water director M. Night Shayamalan after a round of studio meetings about his new spec script, The Happening, ended without the blockbuster sale he expected: Rather than storm out of the disappointing sessions soaked in tears and wracked with doubt, pledging to cooperate with a tell-all book about how the executives wouldn't know Art if it blew them underneath their desks during a conference call, he instead took their notes, rewrote the screenplay, and ultimately reached a deal with Fox to make the movie. Huzzah! Shayamalan's incredible transformation from Difficult Personality to Humble Cog In The Collaborative Process Of Filmmaking is officially complete! Reports Variety on how the project came together:

· Miami Heat center and Kazaam star Shaquille O'Neal will star in a six episode ABC reality series this summer in which he will help fat kids in Florida lose weight, explaining to them that it's only acceptable to carry around extra pounds if you're a multimillionaire basketball player who needs a protective layer of fat to protect oneself from the violent, uncalled fouls of undersized opponents. [Variety]
· Foreigners prove that awkward dubs or subtitles don't interfere with one's appreciation of Nic Cage's fiery-headed High Art, delivering Ghost Rider to a third consecutive weekend atop the international box office. [THR]
· The NAACP recognizes Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington with an Image Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series Whose Well-Publicized Episodes Of Troubling Homophobia We Will Happily Ignore. [Variety]
· Sony thumbs its nose at American moviegoers, announcing that Spider-Man 3 will premiere in Tokyo three days before its U.S. bow. On the bright side, jilted Stateside Spidey fans will probably be able to download pirated, camcorded copies of the movie a couple of days earlier than usual. [Variety]
· Fox's The Winner debuts in third-place in the 18-49 demographic, but scores first with its target audience of 32-year-old men who might eventually wind up molesting their 14-year-old best friends. [THR]

· Hollywood Out of Ideas: Let's Turn Those Mildly-Amusing-At-Best Geico Cavemen Commercials, Which Themselves Are a Rip-Off of That Old Phil Hartman SNL Sketch, Into an ABC Sitcom Pilot edition! [Variety]
· Warner Bros. is turning the Valerie Plame-C.I.A. leak debacle into a feature. You can start plotting your dream cast now, but Warner is hoping Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby will all be played by Eddie Murphy, in his next Oscar-courting role. [Variety]
· With Grey's and CSI in reruns, Fox tramples the rest last night with Idol and strongly showing Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, leading the network to immediately explore possible spinoffs, including Are You Drunker Than Paula Abdul?, and Are You Gonna Eat That? starring Randy Jackson. [Variety]
· In an effort to "minimize children's exposure to violence," the FCC wants broader powers in regulating TV content. In other words the actual CSI decapitation would be subject to censoring, and not just the skullfucking that follows it. [THR]
· TV Land has hired Bill Clinton to address their advertisers at their March 23rd upfronts in New York, who is expected to tell the gathered crowd that in his moments of doubt, he would regularly turn to old episodes of Simon & Simon, where the wisdom of P.I. siblings A. J. and Rick would invariably guide him through his darkest hours. [THR]

For the millions of you patiently awaiting the DVD release of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, either in anticipation of adding the film to your home video library, or merely to see if your slavery-endorsing and/or urinal-peek-a-boo scene might have by some miracle been excised from the final version despite a judge having ruled otherwise, March 6 will be the magic date to circle upon your calendars. The matter of how much, meanwhile, is looking to be a very nice suggested retail price of $19.95. Slashfilm.com has seen an advance copy, which is purposely designed to look as though you may have bartered for it from a toothless Kazakh street urchin for a bottle of goat urine: "[There's] not a word of English on the packaging...[It looks] color-copied...complete with off color tones, slightly blurred company logos, blurry text and moire pattern/lithographic scans." Whether the "HILARIOUS DeeVeeDee EXTRAS" touted on Borat's official website will maintain the illusion remains to be seen, though we're indifferent as to whether or not Ken Davitian's commentary track comes from him or in character as producer Azamat Bagatov—as long as we get some kind of insight into just how stimulating Sacha Baron Cohen's proboscis felt when he lowered his feculent taint upon it.

· But how did yesterday's 416 point stock market bed-shitting affect the faceless multimedia corporations behind your favorite entertainment products, you ask? Disney was hit the hardest with a 6% fall, followed by Time Warner at 4%, and 2-4% drops by News Corp., CBS, Viacom, and Sony. [Variety]
· Kelsey Grammer's Grammnet Productions throws away a 15-year relationship with Paramount for a one-year fling with 20th Century Fox TV's younger, hotter piece of studio ass. [THR]
· Fox's Fifth Graders Humiliating Morons draws a depressingly huge 26.6 million viewers in its American Idol-boosted premiere. Realizing that the series' initial numbers might be a little inflated by its lead-in, the network hopes to continue to hold that audience's interest by adding an element to Fifth Grader in which the show's precocious ten-year-olds kick its contestants in the genitals after each incorrect answer. [Variety]
· Oscar winner Alan Arkin will join Little Miss Sunshine co-star Steve Carell underneath the Cone of Silence in Warner Bros. Get Smart movie adaptation. [THR]
· Robert Downey Jr. signs on to play "Kirk Lazarus, the greatest actor of his generation and a four-time Oscar winner" in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, but there's no mention if that's the role that Tom Cruise was reportedly hoping to land to extend his buddy time with Stiller past Hardy Boys. We'd hate for Downey to get blacklisted at Cruise's United Artists for stealing a role away from the new mogul. [THR]

Antonella Barba, the comely Jersey girl who managed to squeak into American Idol's top 12 female finalists, only to torture tens of millions with her ear-punishing rendition of "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," has sparked a wave of internet controversy (funny how it always happens to the ones America wants to bang the most), involving a series of leaked photographs featuring Barba alternately sitting on a toilet and clutching her own breasts on a beach. A second batch of far more graphic photos then made the rounds (NSFW), this time of someone purported to be Antonella performing oral sex on a faceless recipient. Since then, the world's foremost blowjobologists have been brought in to authenticate the photographs. The verdict: It's not Antonella. Even co-auditioner and best friend Amanda Coluccio, after carefully examining the fellative evidence at hand, has weighed in:

· Universal signs up Robert De Niro's Tribeca Prods. for two more years, allowing them to go forward with Little Fockers, the third Meet the Parents movie. They're planning to bring back all the main cast members from the previous installments—even Teri Polo, admirably choosing loyalty over the cynical temptation to replace her with a cheaper, middle-tier CBS sitcom wife. So far. [Variety]
· George Clooney and Cate Blanchett are in "negotiations" and "talks," respectively (don't mix them up or someone loses his job!), to voice characters in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation adaptation of Roald Dahl story The Fantastic Mr. Fox. [THR]
· According to someone in attendance at Hillary Clinton's trip to the CAA Death Star yesterday, the senator was "incredibly well-received," especially after promising that if they use their evil influence to deliver her the Hollywood endorsement, she'd publicly support the Creative Artists Infant-Consuming Decriminalization Act the agency's partners have had trouble pushing through Congress. [Variety]
· Desperate producers hope that having Idol winner Fantasia Barrino announce she's taking over the lead in the the struggling Broadway version of The Color Purple while making an AI appearance last night might help sell some more tickets. [Variety]
· The unthinkable has happened: American Idol was not the most-watched show on television last night. Though they didn't directly compete, Grey's Anatomy actually pulled in the more viewers. Please immediately head for your place of worship and pray for salvation, as the end of days is surely nigh. [THR]

· Jesse Jackson lets the industry know that it can't fool him with Oscar nominations (and likely wins) for Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, and Eddie Murphy, as he sees right through this obvious stalling tactic putting off an oft-promised dehonkification of Hollywood. [Variety]
· ABC might not be revealing exactly what their Grey's Anatomy spinoff will be about, but they're conceding this: Taye Diggs is going to be in it. We're sure they'll find something for him to do involving cradling the adorable, sickly babies Dr. Addison just saved from tragic demises. [THR]
· Fox plans on giving Steven Spielberg's On the Lot reality competition a leg up by premiering it after one of the last American Idol installments of the season, hoping that viewers will stick around even when they figure out that Ryan Seacrest won't be showing up to console the losers. [Variety]
· Today's evocative verb referring to what Idol did to its competition last night: "tramples." [THR]
· The stunt-casting of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter as president and VP in a bit dramatizing every liberal's most disturbing nightmare helps the premiere of Fox News Channel's Daily Show knockoff The 1/2 Hour News Hour to big debut ratings. [Variety]

· Generally satisfied to produce movies that explore the lighter side of blowing shit up, Jerry Bruckheimer (and Disney) have acquired the movie rights to Mark Bowden's Atlantic Monthly terrorism article "Jihadists in Paradise," plunging Bruck into much darker explosion-related territory. [Variety]
· The team behind Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight continues to make impeccable casting decisions: after allowing Katie Holmes to "walk away" from reprising her character from Begins, they're close to signing up Aaron Eckhart to play Two Face. [THR]
· Al Gore will attempt to reverse global warming through a single day of simultaneous, worldwide rock concerts, a solution that climatologists have already dismissed as rooted more in the former Vice President's passion for the music of John Mayer than in proven science. [Variety]
· Various Fox entities (FX, 20th Century Fox TV, Fox Broadcasting) team up to shower Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy in cash for his showrunning/developing services. [Variety]
· Var thinks that Fox News Channel's right-wing Daily Show knockoff The 1/2 Hour News Hour feels like something "enterprising high-school kids with a video camera could replicate." [Variety]

Those duped Borat movie frat boys have been dealt yet another massive blow in their ongoing legal battle against the makers of the film. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Biderman—the same judge who tossed their motion to have the scene featuring their bonehead pronouncements on women, Jews, and slavery nostalgia cut from the movie's DVD release—has now rejected their case outright, THR Esq. is reporting, in a legal decision that might affect the outcome of the scores of other victim/stars hoping to make benefit of glorious lawsuit settlement:

· The comedy spec Space Invader, concerning a love triangle on a space station, is the beneficiary of the "Get me a fucking script about a crazy astronaut! Now!" frenzy gripping studios in the wake of the Lisa Marie Nowak story, selling to Fox Atomic (with Will Arnett attached to star) after receiving "several" bids. We assume that the first note for the rewrite will involve the addition of a set piece involving a malfunctioning adult diaper. [Variety]
· TV studios prepare for a potential writers strike by making a lot of noise about stockpiling scripts and accelerating production schedules of existing series, hoping their counter-threat of cutting short Kiefer Sutherland's hiatus might pressure the WGA to sprint to the negotiating table. [THR]
· Analysts and media companies alike are vexed about the maddening imprecision of measuring how many people are watching their "Dick in a Box" videos online. [Variety]
· Poison's Bret Michaels will star in yet another Flavor of Love spin-off, Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, for VH1. With Michaels and C.C. DeVille now both VH1 reality stars, when will Poison's overlooked rhythm section of Bobby Dall and Rikki Rocket finally get a chance to shine on basic cable? [THR]
· American Idol grinds the bones of its competition to dust, scattering the remains of its vanquished Nielsen foes to the primetime winds. [Variety]

• Comedy Central and TVLand head downtown to Hudson Street, although that may just be a plot by Viacom to make mass layoffs easier to handle. [NYP]
  

· Paramount will enable the on-screen reunion of The Departed's Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon, who will star as pugilism-loving, Massachusetts-native half-brothers Micky and Dicky Ward in the boxing drama The Fighter (if they like the script), though it's unclear from the story which actor will be the "Rocky-like" boxing champion and which the "boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded in life after nearly being KO'd by drugs and crime." [Variety]
· VH1 and BET are jointly developing the hip-hop drama series Wifey; if picked up, the show would air at the same time on both networks through its first season in an attempt at "broadening the audience," an unusual arrangement transparently aimed at sparing white viewers the inconvenience of having to find BET on their cable channel guides. [THR]
· Jennifer Hudson's not the only discarded Idol contestant to shake off the public humiliation of rejection and do something with her life. [Variety]
· American Idol and House win Tuesday for Fox. Sure, we could just copy and paste that blurb in every Tuesday trade round-up item for the remainder of the television season, but we prefer to marvel anew each week at Idol's ritualistic Nielsen humiliation of its doomed competition. [THR]
· Michael Bay screens footage of Transformers in NY for attendees of a toy conference, noting to an impressed crowd that the movie's plot was derived entirely from the copy on the back of the original toys' packaging, and even going so far as to explain that Bumblee's dramatic arc was constructed to demonstrate a character of 8 Intelligence and 10 Courage. [Variety]

Relentlessly upbeat and intermittently intelligible center American Idol judge Paula Abdul is still explaining (and using almost exactly the same words) how her slurred, nonsensical, and sometimes unconscious appearances on national television are the result of a somewhat sideways view of life, and not, as many assume incorrectly, a predilection for straight-up Xanaxtinis:

Last year brought us the death-masks formerly known as Kenny Rogers and Barry Manilow, but this year, rumors have been swirling about a ratcheting up of has-been guest star power on American Idol. According to Reality TV Magazine, the freakiest face of all just may be dropping by Idol's CBS Television City studios: Michael Jackson has reportedly been having clandestine meetings with the show's producers, and in a recent promotional conference call with the media, Idol EP Nigel Lythgoe, dropped this unsubtle hint into the proceedings:

The news may seem somewhat anticlimactic after word surfaced last week that Tom Cruise was talking to longtime friend and occasional impersonator Ben Stiller about bolstering Cruise Industries' comedy brand (which had languished since the actor's slapstick turn as a hapless hitman unable to kill a single cab driver in Collateral) by teaming up on the kind of buddy picture for which Stiller is well known, but today the trades are ablaze with word that the two actors will indeed join forces for Fox's Hardy Men.