In lieu of Golden Globes awards speeches, our East Coasted sibling site posted a memorable video package, via Hollywood Interrupted, fêting messianic Scientology mouthpiece Tom Cruise as he accepted their 2005 Freedom Medal of Valor. Like most of Scientology's sacred babblings, the text was never meant to reach outside eyes; the video quickly disappeared from YouTube, soon to shake off from the temporary effects of the tranquilizing serum plunged into its neck and find itself buried alive beneath a patch of carefully attended petunias on the grounds of Gilman Hot Springs HQ.

What's left of Katie Holmes popped by the GMA studios this morning for a chat with host Diane Sawyer. Sure, this was all under the auspices of promoting Mad Money (opening Friday—but you knew that!), but that didn't mean all other topics were off limits.

[Tom Cruise's wife (Katie Holmes) departing the Good Morning America studios today, New York; image via Splash]

It seems the mysterious disappearance of an usmagazine.com blog post on Katie Holmes's participation in the Boston Marathon (again, we refer you to our conspiracist commenters' take on the matter, including their fascinating yet totally gross "missing toenail" theory) might not have been the result of a squad of Citizens Commission on Human Rights mercenaries having kidnapped the article for a grueling, all-night republishing session. Instead, if Us Weekly arch nemesis OK! magazine is to be believed, it was simply a matter of faulty reporting:

Of the many conspiracies swirling around Mrs. Kate Holmes-Cruise, none have provoked more heated debate lately—more so even than the one claiming she's L. Ron Hubbard's turkey-basted demon-child receptacle—than the question of her involvement in the New York City Marathon. (Our own voiced skepticism in a recent post instantly turned the Defamer comments section into a makeshift headquarters for the growing movement, where Grassy Stain and Magic Nipple theorists swapped information hungrily.) The mystery deepens after the jump:

In case you missed it, yesterday was Katie Holmes's Big Night—an evening to celebrate the Katie of long ago, famous not for suspicious pregnancies and dead-eyed Cruisian servitude, but for the skillful way she was once able to memorize words in scripts, and then perform those words in front of cameras. In other words, it was the premiere of Holmes's new movie, Mad Money. Arriving with her extremely proud, extremely touchy, extremely ever-present husband, Extra was on hand to document every moment of the full-time mom's triumphant return to the silver screen:

What kind of Bizarro Hollywood are we living in, where the Critics' Choice Awards could very well become one of the crowning moments of the 2008 awards season? We've never been so desperately in need of the SAGgies in all our lives! But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First, a round-up of last night's delightfully well-attended Broadcast Film Critics Association honors:
· No Country For Old Men took the most trophies—whose design fittingly looks like some kind of torture device Anton Chigurh might use—including Picture, Director, and Supporting actor. Juno and Hairspray took two lesser awards each. Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie took Actor and Actress, respectively. [AP]
· The last stars to arrive were also the biggest: George Clooney, then Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who managed to pry Angelina away from reporters before she could tell them about her desire to adopt America Ferrera, or any of this year's other Golden Globes orphans. [The Envelope]

When news broke yesterday that the moviegoers of this great nation of ours had voted Lindsay Lohan's dead-stripper turn in "I Know Who Killed (My Career)" as the single worst performance of Anno Domini 2007, our reaction was laced with both sadness and shock. Sadness because we all long for days when the frecklecrotched wonder's biggest problem was her slightly jiggly thighs, shock because we could think of no fewer than six and no greater than seven performances that were CLEARLY worse than Lindsay's. What follows, dear friends, is that list (in descending order, no less)!

We all know by now that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are the most awkward couple in Hollywood, if not the entire world. Last night, Keith Olbermann proves that he too reads InStyle magazine and that he couldn't get enough of their nutty Katie Holmes interview this week. In it, she says that Tom thinks it's hot when she has a security detail. Olbermann and Best Week Ever's Paul F. Tompkins think that this tactic isn't exactly the best way to a woman's heart. (They are correct!)

• Katie Holmes, running as "Katie Smith," finished the marathon in 5 hours, 29 minutes and 58 seconds. Thanks, Scientology! [NYP]
  

Ever since it was reported that irresolvable scheduling conflicts brought on by two years of unemployment prevented Katie Holmes from taking on a seven-figure gig reprising her Batman Begins character in The Dark Knight, we've eagerly anticipated getting a look at her big comeback project, Mad Money, in which Holmes joins up with gal pals Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton to rob the Federal Reserve. (Hilarity, as it invariably does in such high-concept situations, ensues.)

In a refreshing change from the depressing procession of portraits of early-childhood neglect and despair recently adorning the magazine's covers, Us Weekly switches gears to spotlight the development of Suri Cruise, Hollywood's Happiest-Seeming Toddler™. But while raising an 18-month-old genetically engineered by Scientology's top baby-fabricating technicians to unquestioningly obey its parental custodians might seems like an easy task, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes still find themselves needing the guidance contained in Dianetics Chapter XVII Sec (c), "On the Emotional Maintenance and Discipline of Your New Child-Unit." Says Us:

Even though we have credible fears that Suri Cruise is as much android as she is human, we have to admit: that's one damn cute little toddler. So cute, in fact, that Tom and Katie are already able to put her to work hawking clothes for Baby Gap. Hey, those preschool auditing sessions aren't going to pay for themselves. [ExtraTV]

• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and Jada Pinkett-Smith and Will Smith (nice four-some!) are throwing the "Welcome to America" party for Posh and Becks this weekend. "Invitations went out all over Hollywood . . . they were printed on red velvet with tacky gold lettering." [Page Six]
  

Two equally frightening-exciting announcements this morning! How great! How scary!

Yesterday, the august literary journal called the New York Daily News dubbed Lori Culwell's self-published novel Hollywood Car Wash one of its "Sizzling Summer Reads." "It's hot because it's said to be written by a former friend of Katie Holmes who got dropped after she met Tom Cruise. It's cool for the same reason," they write. But even the author herself admits that this might not be, technically, the truth: "Hey, I can't control what they say, can I?" she winks on her MySpace blog. How did the Daily News get such a wacky idea? Maybe it's because many blogs received, and posted verbatim, an email that claimed Katie Holmes had read the book and was incensed.

We knew that we could count on our glory-hole-probing sister site Fleshbot to update us on the much-buzzed-about career of porn up-and-comer Katee Holmes, whose noble plan to honor her famous namesake by offering up her virtue on camera was announced in Page Six earlier this week.

On dozens of Chatsworth sound stages this morning, obscure adult actresses who have misguidedly assumed the bastardized names of exotic automobiles are seething with jealousy over today's Page Six introduction of porn newcomer Katee Holmes to the public, frustrated that they didn't think of the inspired, attention-grabbing stunt of appropriating the moniker of Tom Cruise's virginal war bride first. Unsurprisingly. the Genuine Holmes' expensive new PR team is less than pleased with the ambitious Katee's plan to surrender her maidenhead on camera as a tribute to her idol: