With everyone on High Hoax Alert in the wake of the James Frey/JT Leroy scandals, the credibility of Rupert Murray's documentary Unknown White Male, about a friend of the director who suddenly developed amnesia, is being questioned. [Variety]
12-time Saturday Night Live host Alec Baldwin is in "final negotiations" to star with Tina Fey in her untitled behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show pilot for NBC, which is obviously planning an all-behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show programming block, having already ordered 13 episodes of Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes-at-an-SNL-like-show series, Studio 60. [THR]
Gone Baby Gone writer/director Ben Affleck hooks up brother Casey with a role, ensuring that the family will continue to have at least one actor working in Hollywood. [Variety]
2.1 million watch Dick Cheney's post attorney-hunting interview on Fox News, prompting the right-wing news organization to plan a series of sweeps specials in which powerful Republicans shoot people in the face. [THR]
· It's official: the new Bond girl is Eva Green (tip to horny guys: go rent The Dreamers right now, she may never spend 30 percent of a movie naked again), sparing Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen from having to go through with the sex change operation necessary to play both roles convincingly. [Variety]

Careless copy editors probably don't realize the pain they might have caused with such an avoidable mistake about actor Mads Mikkelsen's role in the Bond franchise. Somewhere in Denmark Mikkelsen's cab-driving father, so recently welling with pride and boasting to anyone who'll listen about how his son will be matching wits with 007, now falls silent when the subject comes up, mumbling ruefully about how quickly Hollywood changes people.

Turns out the cabbie zooming around Copenhagen telling any fare who'd listen that his son was the next Bond villain was right after all: Mads Mikkelsen, the loose-lipped taxi driver's son, has been officially cast in the role of evil genius Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, making him the rare Bond baddie to be arguably hotter than Bond himself (in fairness, Jaws did have a certain lunky sex appeal):

The next Bond movie, Casino Royale, is off to a not-so-great start. True, we have our new 007 and hopefully he's laying off the booze, lest we end up with the rather unrefined image of the superspy flying down the Swiss Alps in a black tie and little else but the other two crucial, pussy-stroking pieces of the Bond puzzle are still missing: the villain and the girl.

Daniel Craig, the next James Bond, is set to take the superspy to new places: blonde, mediocre-looking, unsettlingly blue-eyed places. But as purists are already taking bets as to how quickly he will be replaced (11 minutes into the upcoming Casino Royale's opening waterskiing sequence seems to be the odds-on favorite), Craig is readying himself for the arduous shoot by committing to an oath of sobriety:

· Variety does its best to sift through the continuing fallout from Paramount's DreamWorks acquisition. Paramount insiders deny that Brad Grey #2 Gail Berman's job is already at stake (despite the loud whisper of the moment that she might be axed and replaced by DW producer Walter Parkes, but shhhh, that's just a nasty rumor). And as for the problem of redundancy in jobs across DreamWorks and Paramount, "department heads from both studios were required to turn over names of employees in their division. The lists are being combed over to see which employee is a stronger candidate, the current Paramount employee or the DreamWorks staffer." After five minutes of dramatic head-scratching and thoughtful harumphing, the Paramount list will be run through a shredder and offices will be cleared to make way for the DW staffers. It's nonstop fun and excitement on the Melrose lot! [Variety]
· NBC will air a record 416 hours of Winter Olympics coverage across its many networks, meaning that you, the incredibly bored viewer, might not miss a single minute of people in spandex sliding down ice chutes in a dizzying variety of positions. [THR]
· Reclusive move star Julia Roberts considers returning to her long abandoned career to star opposite Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's War, possibly for her Closer director Mike Nichols. If she's going to hand the twins over to a nanny to go back to work, she's not gonna fuck around. [Variety]
· With just weeks until shooting, the producers of the new, Daniel Craig-starring Bond remake Casino Royale are sleeping with actresses as fast as they can to find a new Bond Girl. [Variety]
· FX has already purchased the cable rights to 2006 summer blockbuster-to-be Superman Returns for a reported $17-25 million. guaranteeing the network first crack at cramming the Bulge of Steel onto the small screen. [Variety]

Despite the fact that Daniel "New Bond" Craig's Munich is a Spielberg film playing in about 1,500 theaters and Pierce "Old Bond" Brosnan's The Matador is an entry from Sundance in January just now making its way into 28, ABC News thinks we should all look at this weekend as some kind of Bond-off between the two actors. Brosnan, however, doesn't want to take the bait:

The news about the new James Bond is certainly exciting, but what about the guys who make a living impersonating Pierce Brosnan's version of the tuxedoed icon? The dye job and the radical plastic surgery aren't going to pay for themselves.

Almost as inevitable as Daniel Craig's thoroughly anticlimactic anointment as the next James Bond were the lazy headlines and ledes that would accompany the "news":

Sony announced that it will end its torturous James Bond Edition of "Just the Tip In" tomorrow and finally thrust the name of the new tuxedo model deep inside the superspy's anxious fans. We've heard that the recent British tabloid chatter is correct: Kate Moss is a skinny-minny coke-whore. We kid! Daniel Craig will be named as the latest Bond, news that we find at least fifty percent less satisfying than the possibility that he porked Sienna Miller. We offer our premature congratulations to Craig, who outlasted a potential Bond field of Clive Owen, Jude Law, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Hugh Grant, Dr. Who, a plate of delicious fish n' chips, a joke about bad teeth, and, of course, Ewan McGregor.

· Joe "Narc and Five Minutes on Mission: Impossible 3" Carnahan will co-write and direct a film about 17 year-old, boy-next-door prodigy/drug kingpin Will Wright. The project is described as a "a crooked coming-of-age tale in the style of Catch Me if You Can." Somewhere, Leonardo DiCaprio is shaving his entire body and re-learning how to make his voice crack. [Variety]
· Warner Bros. is testing a digital film distribution and exhibition system in Japan; if all goes well, movies will be transmitted to the black market over 400 percent faster than previously possible. [THR]
· Warner Independent refuses to release the Strangers with Candy movie over fear that the producers didn't secure all the needed rights; insiders suspect that Warner Bros is still crapping its pants over a $17.5 million hit they took over a similar Dukes of Hazzard issue. We suspect that the movie is too awesome to ever see the light of day. [Variety]
· In the most confusing ratings report we've ever read, it seems that everyone did well on Monday night. [THR]
· British tabloids continue to exhaust the world with talk that Daniel Craig will become the first "Blond Bond," news that would finally crush Hugh Jackman's dream of being the first "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Bond." [Variety]

As efficient as two shots from a silenced Walther P38 to the back of the head and as ruthlessly effective as a story in the trades, a simple phone call ended Pierce Brosnan's reign as James Bond.