Both The New Yorker and the LAT are online with stories about a recent meeting between the torture-happy producers of 24, military officials, and actual interrogators organized by the Prime Time Torture Project of advocacy group Human Rights First, in which the show's writers were politely asked to consider (they're anti-torture, so no defibrillator paddles, bamboo shoots, or knotted ropes suitable for repeatedly striking a truculent story editor in the genitals while sitting naked upon a bottomless chair were used) more accurately depicting the use of physical coercion in intelligence gathering on their hit series. From the LAT:

· More on Rupert Murdoch's "Borat boo-boo," a slip-up weird beyond its inherent inaccuracy because News Corp. neglected to mention a Borat sequel while it was bragging about how much the original film had boosted its quarterly earnings, and for Fox's previous bitching that Bruno was too expensive for the studio to purchase. [Variety]
· Julia Roberts will star in the ensemble drama Fireflies in the Garden, which "explores the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced with an unexpected tragedy," shorthand for, "My Oscar is feeling a little lonely all by itself up on that mantel." [THR]
· "I've finally admitted to myself that I am afraid of my own lawyer." Var's Peter Bart looks at how entertainment lawyers have scared the town shitless. [Variety]
· ABC wins Thursday night with another great Nielsen performance by Grey's Anatomy, which is on such a roll that the network is considering making public at least one ugly feud from the Grey's set each month. [THR]
· In a completely unsurprising move, Disney is making a big-screen spinoff from its wildly successful TV movie High School Musical. [Variety]

Almost completely lost in the media chaos following Anna Nicole Smith's death was the fact that soon after News Corp. potentate Rupert Murdoch shocked—shocked!—the entertainment industry by bragging that his 20th Century Fox division had locked up Sacha Baron Cohen for a Borat sequel, the studio had to very delicately inform the world that while Fox loves and admires Cohen and would like nothing better than to lavish millions of dollars upon him for such a project, things were not quite as contractually finalized (the phrases "casual discussions" and "too preliminary to discuss" figured in the statement) as the boss might have erroneously hinted. Following such a public backtracking off a blockbuster announcement, it's not too hard to imagine that an embarrassed Murdoch's vague order to "Make this go away. I don't care how," being taken by an overeager underling as an opportunity to demonstrate his skill in creating the kind of media smokescreen only achievable by the mysterious and unexpected passing of a troubled celebrity.

· Mark off May 22, 2008 on your calendars, for that's the day that Indiana Jones 4: Short Round, I'm Really Getting Too Old For This Shit hits theaters. Warner Bros. blockbuster hopeful Speed Racer is also scheduled to open over that long Memorial Day weekend, but we bet the movie will be mysteriously stricken by "post-production problems" that force a move to a safer release date. [Variety]
· The publicists responsible for making sure that every Borat appearance was accompanied by a trashy throng of Kazakh prostisisters and death threats from the president of the constantly mocked Central Asian nation saw their hard work rewarded at yesterday's Flackies, the awards celebrating achievements in the promotional arts. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning makes a bold move to combat being typecast as a preteen rape victim, joining her sister Elle in portraying disabled twins in the drama Hurricane Mary. Look for the ambitious elder Fanning to muscle out her sister to better showcase her acting chops by playing both parts herself. [Variety]
· American Idol plunges from 33.1 million viewers on Tuesday to just 27.6 million on Wednesday, a slide that's temporarily reduced its level of domination of primetime competition from "utter destruction" to "a pretty rough ass-kicking." [THR]
· Borat boosts News Corp.'s studio division, but MyNetworkTV, barely beating public access bulletins about winter-weather school closures in most markets, has clearly shit the financial bed. [Variety]

Speaking at a media conference in NY, Rupert Murdoch was apparently so overcome by the rush of updating the press about the latest phases of News Corp.'s ruthless plans for global takeover (there's nothing quite like basking in the shocked gasps of an audience that's just been told that an army of MySpace predators has been dispatched to infiltrate the day care center at Viacom headquarters) that he let slip that Sacha Baron Cohen will return to Fox for a Borat sequel. The Financial Times reports that Murdoch claimed Cohen will regrow his mustache and don his famously unwashed suit once he's done shooting Bruno:

· CBS's Les Moonves agrees to a skittish Harvey Weinstein's request for a last minute edit removing the word "terrifying" from a Hannibal Rising commercial, which Weinstein apparently feared would induce mass panic in potential ticket-buyers for his film. [Variety]
· Columbia Pictures is about to pick up the script You Don't Mess with Zohan, about a Mossad agent who fakes his death to become a hairdresser in NY, from Judd Apatow, Robert Smigel and Adam Sandler. Sandler, of course, will play the blow-dryer-wielding spy. [THR]
· Tommy Mottola and Biggest Loser producer David Broome are putting together a "grittier take" on the America's Next Top Model formula for TLC starring Petra Nemcova, in which eliminated models are force-fed cocaine until their weakened hearts explode instead of sent home. [Variety]
· Following American Idol's latest Nielsen-dominating performance, Fox's desperate competitors are seriously considering having Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell killed. [THR]
· Var produces some important service journalism for its Grammy-attending readers, warning that the closure of parking lots at the Staples center will likely result in huge traffic jams and the mass inconveniencing of limo passengers. Save yourself a headache by commissioning a helicopter for the night. [Variety]

· British exhibitors yank Night at the Museum from theaters to punish Fox for violating the sacred DVD release window, further threatening to have Ben Stiller drawn and quartered should he attempt to promote the DVD on British soil. [Variety]
· With no American Idol to contend with, ABC makes Thursday night its Nielsen bitch. [THR]
· Penelope Cruz will supplant Scarlett Johansson as Woody Allen's chesty object of age-inappropriate lust in his next film, which will shoot in Barcelona this summer. [Variety]
· After failing to agree to a "workable content-sharing agreement," Viacom demands that 100,000 clips featuring its content be immediately removed from the YouTubes, a move that could make embeddable video of The Hills tragically hard to come by. [THR · Producer Dino De Laurentiis threatens that if his Hannibal Rising prequel is a success, he can take the character even younger in future installments like Hannibal Lecter: Cannibal Baby. [Variety]

Defamer is committed to informing its readers of exciting opportunities to be humiliated by television networks desperately trying to fill out the non-American Idol portions of their primetime schedules with similarly intellectually challenging fare. And in the service of this noble mission, we direct you to Craigslist's virtual casting office, where the drive to recruit those soon to be flummoxed by an inability to retrieve facts once readily recoverable from their ten-year-old minds is in full swing:

If you stopped watched American Idol after the audition rounds, you'd be forgiven if you somehow mistook the reality colossus as the search for America's greatest schizophrenic. (Symptoms: "delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized behavior, dressing inappropriately, crying frequently...") Once the parade of psychotics passes by our TV sets and back into the crazy jungle, however, the cream eventually does begin to rise to the top—whether through pure talent, or with the help of a story about one's father's botched murder-suicide attempt. Jennifer Hudson definitely fell into the former camp when she stumbled onto the Idol stage in Season 3, but perhaps her current dizziness from trying on Oscar gowns has given her temporary amnesia regarding just how long-range and accurate 19 Management's sniper-fire can be:

· In a town hall meeting on the Fox lot yesterday, network president Peter Liguori delivered an ultimatum to his showrunners, threatening that those who don't staff and cast their pilots with diversity in mind might find themselves without a series pickup. Said Liguori, "We think as a network, it's the right moral thing to do," Liguori said, moments before announcing the positive example to be set by his always-virtuous alternative programming department, which is rushing Who Wants To Hire A Black Staff Writer? into production. [Variety]
· A little more on the CAA gas explosion. [THR]
· Sad news: Aardman and DreamWorks Animation end their "troubled six-year partnership," finally deciding that a mutual love of Claymation is just not enough to make a Hollywood marriage work. Also, it didn't help that Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Flushed Away kind of bombed. [Variety]
· Speaking of pilots, Var lists all the current pilot pickups in one handy place, letting you know to whom you can direct your production resume. [Variety]
· Perhaps fearing that the American Idol Nielsen Death Star might vaporize them if they dared switch the channel after the show, audiences stuck around in mind-boggling, record numbers for House, which drew in 27.7 million viewers last night. [THR]

In a development that should shake the world of hugely popular televised karaoke competitions to its very, off-key-warbling, deluded-contestant-abusing core, Us Weekly reports that rocker-turned-general-use-famous-person Courtney Love has received The Call from American Idol's producers, inviting her to hold forth on the lack of musical ability on display at the planet's favorite talent show of the damned:

· Sundance hands out its awards, with Padre Nuestro winning the dramatic competition's grand jury prize, the John Cusack-starring Grace is Gone winning the drama audience award, and Brazilian corruption film Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) taking the documentary jury prize. [Variety]
· Will Arnett joins Will Ferrell's ABA basketball comedy Semi-Pro as a "hard-drinking sports commentator," probably reducing the chances that audiences will get to see him in knee-high tube socks and nut-hugging shorts, but increasing the chances he will appear in a mustard-colored sportsjacket while openly swigging from a whiskey bottle at courtside. [THR]
· CBS is forced to cancel Armed and Famous after American Idol's Nielsen death ray disintegrates its audience, while ABC moves fledgling Knights of Prosperity out of Idol's competition-annihilating path. [Variety]
· Night at the Museum holds off Pursuit of Happyness to continue its five-week reign atop the international box office. [THR]
· Hoping to lock up the coveted Ron Silver endorsement, Rudolph Giuliani plans to visit L.A. to raise money for his exploratory committee for a 2008 presidential run. [Variety]

· Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni sign on for two more years of Law & Order: Sexy Victims Unit (that's what it's called, right? We get so confused.), getting pay raises that catapult them into the rarefied territory of Charlie Sheen-level remuneration. [Variety]
· Fox files a subpoena trying to uncover the identity of the scofflaw who posted entire episodes of The Simpsons and 24 on the YouTubes; if successful, parent company News Corp. will petition to have the pirate punished by being locked in a MySpace chat window with a known sexual predator to teach him (or her) a lesson about abusing the power of the internet. [THR]
· Eddie Murphy is in talks to star in the Paramount comedy NowhereLand, though it's unclear from the project's brief description where the star's contractually mandated opportunity to disappear into a latex fat suit will come. [Variety]
· The American Idol Nielsen h-bomb flattens competing network Nagasakis and incinerates the minds of 36.9 million helpless TV victims. [THR]
· Condo-hopping dealmakers compete to make thrilling Sundance acquisitions into the wee hours. [Variety]

· Yesterday's Oscar nominations lead studios to adjust the release strategies for their recognized films, with Warner Bros. expanding The Departed from about 100 to almost 1500 screens and adding more showings of Iwo Jima this Friday; meanwhile, a despondent Paramount will fight the urge to yank Dreamgirls from theaters over its Best Picture snub. [Variety]
· A re-energized Harvey Weinstein continues his Sundance "feeding frenzy," "gobbling up a smorgasbord of films," bragging, "At this point, I'm buying shit just to piss off Sony Pictures Classics. Fuck, I'm good." [THR]
· American Idol continues to crush the hopes and dreams of rival network execs, pulling in 32.6 million more viewers even when hampered by the State of the Union address. [Variety]
· Dreamgirls' failure to be included in the Best Picture race deprives Oscar handicappers of the reliable predictive strategy of picking the most-nominated film to win the big prize, throwing the entire race into utter, wide-open chaos. [THR]
· Former MPAA head Jack Valenti defends the organization's pilloried ratings system, noting that surveys reveal that it serves its intended purpose of helping parents shield their children from exposed breasts while simultaneously allowing them maximum exposure to graphic violence. Also, a white elephant is mentioned, whom Valenti credits with originally dictating the ratings guidelines to him. [Variety]

· Columbia Pictures and David Koepp, writer of the first Spider-Man's script, have begun the process of trying to agree upon on the presumably huge number that would bring him back to do the screenplay for Spidey 4. [Variety]
· Foreign moviegoers' love affair with Ben Stiller shows no sign of slowing down, with Night at the Museum topping the international box office yet again with $14.4. million. [THR]
· At the TCAs, Peter Liguori says networks are feeling the "chilling effect" of FCC indecency rulings, and that the "regrettably restrictive" climate they've created could stand in the way of his dream of one day hearing House call one of his medical underlings a "a total fucking incompetent." [Variety]
· HBO picks up the Lily Tomlin drama 12 Miles of Bad Road to series, and orders 40 (!) more episodes of the Gabriel Byrne therapy comedy In Treatment, bringing its commitment to the show to 45 half-hours. [THR]
· A high-level Italian court rules that the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted movies and music isn't a crime if the downloader doesn't profit from it, prompting the MPAA to announce its intentions to lobby Congress to immediately invade Italy before it becomes a safe haven for the pirate menace that threatens to bring down Hollywood. [Variety]

· Al Pacino will play flamboyant artist Salvador Dali in Dali & I: The Surreal Story, a project which should provide the actor with an exciting opportunity to dramatically wave around a paintbrush while shouting, "Melting clocks! Hoo-ah!" [Variety]
· Robert Redford "came out swinging" at Sundance's opening press conference, taking shots at the Bush administration and decrying those who would use his swag-suite-riddled festival as a film buyer's market instead of a pure time for appreciating independent moviemaking, then jetted off to shoot his Tom Cruise movie. [THR]
· United 93's Paul Greengrass will write and direct movie about life in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion for Working Title and Universal, right after he finishes up the latest Bourne flick for Uni. [Variety]
· ABC and CBS score big ratings numbers on Thursday with Grey's Anatomy and CSI, Smallville, while Fox gets a reminder about the disaster that is their non-Idol schedule, landing right back in the Nielsen toilet on a night without Simon Cowell. [THR]
· Var's Peter Bart takes the temperature of Hollywood's pol-fuckers, looking at the state of Obamamania, Hillarymania, Edwardsmania, and Goremania. [Variety]

After a one-year hiatus in which Russians were granted the honor of being 24's Ethnic Group Hellbent on Wiping Out Our Nation, Muslims find themselves cast as the [spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the premiere] nuke-detonating fanatics charged with bedeviling Jack Bauer and his CTU pals this season, prompting an American-Islamic relations advocacy group who once pleaded with Fox to give them a break to renew their protests over Muslims' portrayal on the show. The AP reports that Fox issued a statement late Wednesday night answering the criticism, reassuring concerned parties that they're committed to dramatizing that true believers of any background are capable of depopulating Cerritos with an improvised nuclear device:

· The second night of American Idol is only slightly less huge than the first, pulling in 36.9 million viewers between 8-10 p.m. This thing's ready to burn out any second now, we can feel it. [Variety]
· Actor Matt Dillon is assimilated by the CAA agent-Borg, voluntarily entering their blood-draining embrace after being dazzled by their shiny new Century City headquarters. [THR]
· CBS picks up the 15th and 16th editions of Survivor, which will both air in the 07-08 season. Publicity-attracting concepts for the planned installments haven't yet been announced, but insiders expect a new, human sacrifice element to be added to the tribal council segment during one of the upcoming cycles. [Variety]
· Kyra Sedgwick signs a new deal with TNT that will keep her on The Closer through its seventh season, grant her a producer title, and pay her a reported $250,000-300,000 per episode. For a basic cable show? Really? [THR]
· In news as surprising as American Idol's ratings, Apple sold a lot of iPods over the holidays, solidifying the music player as the leading gift for those who couldn't be bothered to think of something original to give their loved ones. [Variety]

We realize many of you lead busy and somewhat fulfilling lives, and, despite how much you might have wanted to, that it was simply unrealistic to drop everything in order to attend Madame Tussauds Las Vegas's premiere of their brand new wax likenesses of Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell. This gallery of photos from the event, however, provides the next best thing to being among the first to witness the unveiling of the greatest single paraffin-related endeavor for the American Idol stars since the two celebrated the premiere of their blockbuster show's sixth season by booking themselves into the W's Bliss Spa for a day of full-body depilation and pampering.

· Kicked in the ass by the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the MPAA is trying to "demystify" the movie ratings system, making ratings rules public on its web site and disclosing previously guarded information about the composition of its shadowy Classification & Rating Administration. Also: they'll introduce a new way to warn parents that certain R-rated movies contain too many pairs of exposed breasts to ever be viewed by impressionable children. [Variety]
· After wasting valuable pre-production time looking for a "Gwyneth Paltrow type" to play a supporting role in the upcoming Iron Man movie, Marvel Entertainment decides to throw enough money at the real deal to get Paltrow to consent to play a superhero's personal assistant. [THR]
· Embracing its corporate mandate to get cheaper in the first hour of primetime, NBC orders six episodes of celebrity improvisation series Thank God You're Here; to balance its responsible order, president Kevin Reilly plans to announce he's given an Aaron Sorkin-penned drama set behind the scenes at a celebrity-improv comedy show a four-season pick-up. [Variety]
· In further NBC pick-up news, the networks gives The Office, My Name Is Earl, and Law & Order: The Sex Victims One full-season orders for next year. [THR]
· Fox picks up 11 episodes of the reality show When Women Rule the World, in which 12 attractive women are given a society to run, and get to trade insufficiently productive man-slaves for supplies crucial to the expansion of their Amazonian utopia. Fox president Peter Liguori calls the series "an important opportunity to explore the societal implications of allowing a dozen hot, drunk chicks to order around a bunch of shirtless out-of-work actors." [Variety]