Because we at Defamer are committed to documenting every snake-bite, whip-crack, and Nazi-fart on our thrilling journey towards the next Indiana Jones adventure, we now have some important news concerning the movie's first teaser trailer. IndianaJones.com reports the trailer will air exclusively on Good Morning America between 8 and 9 a.m. February 14, then be made available on the official site and at Yahoo! Movies, and preceding showings of The Spiderwick Chronicles on the big screen. [IndianaJones.com]

Trumping the recent online publication of a photo depicting Harrison Ford meaningfully standing atop some crates in a warehouse, Movieweb is offering a sneak peak at Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull's titular Mysterious Artifact, an object whose secret has previously been so fiercely guarded that two unfortunate souls have paid for their spoiler-pushing crimes with their freedom and careers. We must admit that the actual skull (assuming, of course, the photo is genuine) is far more menacing than the bedazzled knick-knack we'd long envisioned.

The latest promotional Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull breadcrumb tossed to fans by morsel-hoarding studio Paramount is MTV's exclusive Indy Standing Atop Some Crates In That Government Warehouse photo, a more than worthy follow-up to previous installments in this series like Indy Sitting In A Chair While Wearing A Fedora and Indy And His Knuckleheaded Greaser Kid Shining Flashlights At Something. We suppose we're to believe that the aging adventure has returned to the Raiders artifact repository to look for the Ark, perhaps in an attempt to knock some good sense into Shia LaBeouf, threatening that if he doesn't get off the dope soon, Dad will pry open a container and let God's unleashed, righteous fury melt that shit-eating grin right off his punk face. [MTV News.com]

· Earlier today, Oprah emerged from her Oprahphagus long enough to welcome the world's fastest clapper onto her show. While we haven't scientifically verified this, we're also betting he's the world's fastest masturbator.
· If you're wondering how one goes about getting kicked off the My Little Pony fan forum, here's a handy primer.
· Since when does Indiana Jones have a bazooka? This probably means that The Beouf will be wielding a flamethrower.
· Paris Hilton spent last night frenching Elisha Cuthbert in NYC. We can think of worse ways to spend a Tuesday night.
· And lastly, looks like we just might have a baby J. Lo by this time tomorrow. Happy happy joy joy (or something).

Awwww...The LEGO Indiana Jones Set comes with an adorable array of little poseable Nazis, and its own tiny, precious Ark of the Covenant. Don't open it though—it'll instantly melt their molded-plastic faces right off! [Gizmodo]

Today, Paramount unveiled its latest attempt to stiffen the whips of Indiana Jones fans that have hung flaccid from their belts since the closing credits of The Last Crusade eighteen years ago, a teaser poster for the much-anticipated™ Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There is, unsurprisingly, no real hint of the mysteries whose premature leaking cost one secret-smuggler his life and another his freedom; still, we appreciate that the titular skull is being presented in an appropriately menacing light as it looms behind Indy engulfed in menacing flames, allowing us to finally shake the misguided idea that the aging adventurer didn't feel up to taking on a quest any more dangerous than the retrieval of a gaudy vase from atop the mantle of a fiend with tacky taste in home furnishings. [IndianaJones.com]

If you're anything like us, every stolen glimpse of pre-release images from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, the movie we're all hoping will effectively erase the years from 1999-2007 from Harrison Ford's IMDb profile, sends a pleasant feeling of warmth through your rapidly engorging naughty areas. Excited by the idea of a fifty sixtysomething Jones holding a whip in one hand and a gun in the other? No? Then how about one of the adventurer and his son, who's apparently fallen in with a crowd of leather-wearing bad seeds, crouching and pointing a flashlight at some unseen danger, looking as if he's about to tell the boy, "Listen, I know that it wouldn't be cool to admit to your no-good greaser pals that you're afraid, but where I come from, it's OK to be scared shitless by a pit full of thousands of snakes. So let the old man wet his pants a little and let's not make a big deal about it, agreed?" If neither photo turns your on, you're pretty much out of luck, because the one of Indy standing near a motorcycle probably won't do it for you, either.[AICN]

As a reward for assisting DreamWorks in the daring sting operation that prevented further leaking of secrets related to the production of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of This Thing My Wife Bought At Liberace's Estate Sale, a grateful Steven Spielberg invited some members of the online press to the Universal backlot for an audience with the national treasure himself. Once there, he informed his awed guests about his ongoing debate with CGI-happy Indy partner George Lucas on their differing filmmaking philosophies. Reports /Film:

Producers are keeping details of the fourth installment of the Raiders franchise close to the vest—one extra who blabbed its secrets to a local paper was famously poisoned to death by what are suspected to have been a plate of bad dates—but even George Lucas can't help but spill a few beans when asked by an MTV News reporter about the crystal skulls that drive the movie's plot:

The unveiling of the name of the next Indy installment—Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—may have rendered many a whip-flinging fanboy perplexed and mildly disappointed, but let's look at the bright side: For one, we can definitively eliminate Indiana Jones and the Pink Ladies of Rydell High from the running. Also, the title's over-specificity does offer us irresponsible internet rumormongers some tantalizing clues about its top-secret plot. MTV News asked a Harvard archeology professor schooled in ancient Mesoamerican cultures to speculate on how the movie's crystal skulls might manifest themselves into thrilling Nazi chases and the exploration of crypts containing a great many creepy-crawly things:

And the official title of the project previously known as Fourth Installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures is...[drumroll, please] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. [sound of crickets, the barely audible scratching of heads, and someone quietly muttering, "Well, they've still got time to change it. Maybe they can save face by saying they just found out it was the title of an Allan Quatermain project that was put into turnaround back in 1988."] [IndianaJones.com]

Spielberg and company have dropped another Indy 4 crumb for their starving fans through the movie's official website, but there's not much exciting in the new video dispatch; about the only interesting thing is how well Karen Allen seems to have held up. Still, we're skeptical about the image: who knows what George Lucas had his ILM people do to her? For all we know, the Marion role is going to be played by a completely computer-generated version imported frame-by-frame from the first film. [IndianaJones.com]

· And with the presentation of this on-the-set video of Harrison Ford dramatically gathering together the pieces of his costume for Indiana Jones 4, we officially bring to a close our Steven Spielberg's Narrowly Averted Rape Day festivities.
· As much as we once counted on him to bring a rational medical perspective to the insanity following Anna Nicole Smith's death, we must admit that CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta does seems like kind of a dick.
· Are we eeeeverrr going to find out if Nicole Richie has to go to jail for five minutes? We're getting a little impatient over here. It's been, like, days since one of those Simple Life girls got locked up.
· Tara Reid enters her Grey Gardens period, and the Fug girls are there.

· These are truly exciting times over at IndianaJones.com. Not only have they treated us to the first photos of Harrison Ford in a dusty fedora taken in nearly 20 years, they've now released exclusive footage of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas drinking champagne and staring at a monitor. (Also while wearing distinctive hats!) Who knows what special surprises the coming weeks will bring cyber-savvy Indy fans?
· Things that Barbara Walters considers "beneath her": interviewing Paris Hilton once she gets out of jail. Things that Barbara Walters is OK with: reading aloud on The View a transcription of a conversation she had with Paris Hilton about finding God while she was still in jail.
· Does no one have the heart to tell Renee Zellweger that boinking a CAA agent is so Hilary Swank in the summer of 2006? It's tragic, really.

Having long ago seized control of the dissemination of Indiana Jones 4 news from the gossip-prone media, Lucas Online'sIndianaJones.com strikes again with another appetite-whetting tidbit: They've released the first photograph of a glassy-eyed Harrison Ford wearing his "familiar" Indy costume while slumped in a director's chair taken since 1989, when a set photographer on The Last Crusade captured the actor reclining with a half-empty bottle of Jameson's following the completion of what he believed would be his last scene as the iconic adventurer, moments before being shooed away with the gently slurred words, "Take your photo, monkey! I'm finally free of this stupid. Fuck-ing. Hat! Never again! I have Oscars to win." Though there have been some concerns that the sexagenarian Ford might be a little too old to convincingly reprise the physically demanding role, the final version of this official inaction photo should completely quell those fears once post-production on it has been completed; to this point, Industrial Light & Magic's best age-reversing effects engineers have only had the chance to remove conspicuous liver spots from the back of the star's lone visible hand, but after the jump, we present a rough cut of what the image will look like once they're finished:

In an interview with MTV News, writer/director Frank Darabont, fresh off shooting upcoming horror flick The Mist, briefly discusses the indignities of even an A-list screenwriting life, revealing how helming a second-tier Stephen King adaptation is preferable to the powerlessness of being subject to the whims of megalomaniacal producers with total script approval:

· Lovable My Name is Earl wrong-righter Jason Lee will tackle the demanding role of perpetually put-upon, tantrum-throwing musical novelty act manager Dave Seville in a hybrid live-action/CGI Alvin and the Chipmunks feature, a project that will certainly be safe for viewing by oddly named offspring Pilot Inspektor. There is no word as to where contractually mandated co-star Giovanni Ribisi will slot into the movie, but he seems a natural for the part of Theodore. [Variety]
· Pilot casting madness! Jeffrey Tambor joins CBS comedy The Captain, Michelle Trachtenberg is in an untitled ABC comedy set in D.C., and Kal Penn will play a hypochondriac paramedic in the ABC comedy The Call. [THR]
· As mentioned yesterday, Battle of Shaker Heights immortal Shia LaBeouf is all but locked up to play Harrison Ford's son in Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' Indiana Jones 4: Please Don't Fuck This One Up By Having The Cute Kid Constantly Saving His Old Man's Ass. [Variety]
· Disney announces that Pixar's gone into production on Toy Story 3, and that their Disney Animation division will go with old-timey, hand-drawn animation for The Frog Princess. [THR]
· Today's American Idol Nielsen domination fun fact: Wednesday night's installment averaged "more than five times the rating" of competition on ABC, CBS, NBC, and The CW. [Variety]

As fans hungrily anticipate the long-awaited fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's big screen adventure series that began with 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark (possible title: Indiana Jones and the Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom), the Internets have been teeming with casting rumors. Most notable among them: that Shia LaBeouf—who'll be fighting Soundwave and his evil boombox cassette-recorder ways this summer in Michael Bay's Transformers—would be playing Indy's son. Slate is now reporting that the rumors are true:

We suspect that the alleged rumor about a possible Fourth Installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures role that Calista Flockhart is attempting to control originated with an Extra reporter who suddenly ran out of questions about Brothers & Sisters after she exhausted, "So when is your new show on?", but we're sure you'll be comforted to discover (as we just did by reading the press release accompanying the above terrifying header and exuberant scare-subject-line: "EXTRA' Item - Calista Flockhart starring in "Indiana Jones 4"????") that the couple's age-inappropriate relationship will not taint prodigal movie star Harrison Ford's long-awaited return from the career wasteland he's been wandering in since the early 90s. Unfortunately, Flockhart's unequivocal denial of the rumor ("It's not true. He's way too old for me." So self-deprecating!) now threatens our favorite imagined Indy 4 plotline, in which the iconic, globe-trotting archaeologist embarks on a quest to retrieve the bread Jesus served at the Last Supper, a blessed carbohydrate that would allow his painfully skinny love interest to finally achieve a healthy weight.

· 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]