Like so many other tropes of the 1980s, the theme of busty-teacher-as-sex-predator that fueled many a teen comedy (and locked-bathroom meditation session) appears to be enjoying a resurgence as well, as THR is reporting that J.J. Abrams will produce the unambiguously titled spec Hot For Teacher for Paramount:

· Question: Why would David Letterman (and untold other horny comedy goons) be envious of a window washer? Answer: Watch the video. [Late Show]

· You'll have to wait until May 20 to get your hands on "Anywhere I Lay My Head," Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, but you can enjoy a sneak preview of her ear-raping rendition of "Falling Down" right now! [AOL Music]

· If you've not yet heard, Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have all taped messages that will air on WWE's Raw tonight, in the hopes of currying favor with the "will readily buy into heavily spun violence-as-entertainment" block of voters. [WWE.com]

· We really can't decide which month of The Texas Polygamist Wives Calendar most does it for us. Oh, who are we kidding. December: You had us at your carefully coordinated ankle socks and sensible man-satchel. [BWE]

· Just in time for Cloverfield's DVD release: J.J. Abrams thinks the best place to enjoy it is at home, just a few steps from the toilet should the shakey images on your 65-inch LCD screen make you want to hurl. [Reuters]

We've already run the advance reviews (what—you don't trust Nicholas Chance, Kid Detective Reviewer?), and given you an exclusive! semi-blurry insider's gallery of Wednesday night's premiere. But with today's opening, everyone can finally check out Cloverfield for themselves—or not, if Godzilla vs. Felicity isn't your thing. (It was totally our thing.) The reviews are in:
· "The doomed Gotham created by producer J.J. Abrams — he with the golden Felicity, Alias, and Lost touch — and his team is almost entirely populated by vapid, twenty-something nincompoops. Oops, I mean attractive, indistinguishable young people who handle cell phones, DV cameras, etc., with ease; call one another ''dude''; don't have anything interesting to say; and, perhaps as a result, don't listen to one another, even in an emergency." [EW.com]

Last night was the premiere of Cloverfield on Paramount's lot, an event they were kind enough to invite us to. Without getting too deeply into the what and the how of it, we'll only say that the movie was the rare release to receive a unanimous thumbs up from Defamer HQ: short, slick, and ferociously sweet.

Paramount has just given the First! Official! Sneak Peek! At The New Enterpise! to Moviefone, a monumental event sure to induce a not-completely-unpleasant combination of heart palpitations and premature flesh-phaser-fire in Trekkies everywhere.

At long last, Cloverfield, Slusho Beverage Corp.'s bold foray into the sci-fi disaster genre, had its first screenings last night. Hours later, members of the fanboy journalist elite lucky enough to have had first, unfettered access to the mysterious creature at the center of all the monument-decapitating mayhem, took to the internets. Below, a round-up of the buzz. [Ed. note: We'll try to avoid spoilers, but promise nothing. You've been warned.]
· If we are to believe the Kingdom of the Fanboys' semi-merciful Lord and Ruler Harry Knowles, it was a watershed moment in giant-fucking- monster-stomping- through-Manhattan cinematic history: "The movie is fucking brilliant. It's what we were told it was going to be. An intimate perspective on an impossibly grand scale human disaster beyond most human levels of comprehension." Slashfilm reminds us, however, that this was a guy who thought the Godzilla remake was peaches. [AICN, Slashfilm]

As much of the geeky-gened moviegoing world tries to decode the mysteries of Cloverfield, obsessively connecting the push-pin dots on bulletin boards covered in maps and radioactive monster imagery, our friends at LAist had the novel idea to approach director Matt Reeves directly. It turns out he was extremely forthcoming, offering oodles of fanboynip, including background on the project's history, its buzzy, pre-Transformers trailer, and even the origins of its ambiguous title that sounds like a margarine brand:

Apparently still suffering from a paralyzing cognitive dissonance each time he tries to envision a Star Trek project that won't feature his name somewhere on the call sheet, William "They Can Have My Tricorder Back When They Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands" Shatner reached out to a sympathetic Extra camera crew as he signed copies of his new novel at Book Soup last night, baffled that director J.J. Abrams persists in denying him even the tiniest of pity-cameos:

The quality of the footage is, to be charitable, shitty; still, that won't stop fans desperate to devour any morsel they allegedly aren't supposed to be gobbling down until tomorrow from scouring the video frame by frame, hoping that somewhere in those blurry shadows lies the utterly terrifying truth about the nature of the cinematic beast Abrams and company will unleash up on the world in January.

Not long after an aggrieved William Shatner went public with the disappointing news that upcoming Star Trek project director J.J. Abrams decided to place the forcibly retired Enterprise captain inside a coffin-capsule and jettison him out into the endless void of space rather than toss him a token, Trekkie-appeasing cameo, another casting bombshell has been announced: Winona Ryder has signed on to play mom to a Young Spock. Variety identifies Ryder's character as a Vulcan—but, if our fading memory of Trek lore serves, wasn't Spock's mother a human? Is Abrams messing with mythology, or was this just a simple error that will result in the mass delivery of severed, pointy ears to the Var offices in protest? Do let us know, or this will torment us all day long. [Variety]

The Trekkie unthinkable has come to pass: William Shatner—the die from which all subsequent Kirk-alikes were cast, the man who gave scores of marginally talented impressionists a bottomless! Source! Of! Material!—has not been asked to join the voyages of the next big-screen Enterprise outing. (Helmed, of course, by noted Lost architect and Cruise-wrangler, JJ Abrams.) He doesn't seem to be taking the news too well:

Kraft launches an investigation into supertopsecret JJ Abrams monster movie Cloverfield's use of the cheese concern's name in the cover-up of a hushhush lower Manhattan location shoot. [Radar]

Apart from filling the lungs of Lower East Siders with acrid smoke and bad memories, J.J. Abrams's recent film shoot is filling neighborhood residents with a fear of an entirely different, and in some ways more crushing, variety.

Internet nerds think they've solved the mystery of J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield project, rumored to be titled Monstrous, about three creatures from Jewish mythology who arrive to destroy the Earth, until [spoiler alert] the military stops them with a giant, red Kabbalah string. [themovieblog.com]

Perhaps the best leading indicator of an inevitable backlash is the creation of at least one hastily conceived mash-up trailer (a meme that never gets tired) for the still-shooting film, an appearance that heralds six more months of feeling like some viral marketing staffer from Paramount has planted a foot firmly on our windpipe, releasing it only long enough for us to wheeze out an affirmative answer to their repeated question, "Don't you see how fucking cool this is going to be? Come on, it's J.J. Abrams!"

Click to view

Audiences who opted to spend their holiday moviegoing dollars on a diet of giant fucking robots and LaBeoufian light comedy were left scratching their heads at a mysterious trailer that ran before the featured attraction, captured above by a cellphone-wielding audience member who managed to avoid MPAA anti-piracy sniper fire. Details were sparse—no title is given (IMDb lists its "fake working title" as Cloverfield), but the trailer tells us it's a J.J. Abrams production set to open January 18.

· Warner Bros. TV and Paramount have thrown giant piles of cash at M:i:III director/Lost creator JJ Abram to lock up his Bad Robot production company for TV and film development deals, respectively. Click through to the link at the end of this sentence to hear the sound of various WB and Paramount big-shots clapping themselves on the back for their amazing, visionary ability to write enormous checks. [Variety]
· Hoping to capitalize on the success of their hit Kyra Sedgwick series The Closer, TNT is in talks with Holly Hunter to go basic-cable slumming in the TNT pilot Grace, sort of a combination between Touched by an Angel and, um, The Closer. Hey, no one ever said there's a correlation between original thought and Nielsen ratings. [THR]
· Pirates 2 takes the ten-day box office record, but fails to set the mark for the biggest second weekend record, only notching a third-place finish in that category. You may now commence vomiting in shock at this disappointing shortfall. [Variety]
· Hold that reverse peristalsis! Pirates 2 rolls up $58 million this weekend at the international box office. [THR]
CBS's Nina Tassler admits that Grey's Anatomy's move to Thursdays may "ding" CSI, is immediately called into boss Les Moonves' office to have the soles of her feet beaten with a bamboo rod for showing even the slightest sign of weakness. [Variety]

Having turned out a handsome, if not record-shattering, third chapter to Paramount's Mission: Impossible series, J.J. Abrams has now been entrusted to reinvigorate one of the studio's most enduring franchises: Star Trek. the Insider's Marc Malkin reports that for his prequel vision, Abrams wants none other than Matt Damon to step in as a youthful, pre-toupeed Captain Kirk:

Something about the arrival of May, be it the fresh, spring air, the nearly daily revelations about the deepening seriousness of certain illegal wiretapping investigations, or the imminent arrival of the summer's first blockbuster, has inspired powerful men to issue heartfelt expressions of their ardor to their friends and collaborators. No sooner had we finished weeping over Ron Meyer's public declaration of friendship with Anthony Pellicano than the waterworks began anew after discovering Tom Cruise's paean to J.J. Abrams, the man whom he handpicked as midwife of his cinematic vision for Mission: Impossible III:, for the Time 100:

· Paramount hands over its Star Trek movie franchise to JJ Abrams for a resurrection, who will write, produce, and direct (with a host of his Lost and M:i3 cohorts) a Trek prequel. Abrams, respectful of Trekkie devotion, plans to adapt this piece of fan art into the story of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock's early, experimental days at Starfleet Academy. [Variety]
· And in other JJ Abrams-related news, Alias and Lost producer Jesse Alexander signs a two-year overall deal with NBC Universal TV Studios. [THR]
· Hollywood NepotismWatch: Ron Howard will direct The Look of Real, and "hopes" that the movie will star his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. Yeah, we think we like the kid's chances of getting the gig. [Variety]
· Gilmore Girls showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino leave Gilmore Girls after Warner Bros TV refuses to play ball on a new contract as the show shifts to The CW for its probable last season. [THR]
·The Lifetime Network enables Shannen Doherty to become professionally bitchy, signing her up for a reality series in which viewers can hire the actress to dump their boyfriends or terrorize other people in their life. Yes, for real. We can't wait. [Variety]