· We assumed that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pulled off this height-levelling illusion by having the bride stand in a two foot hole hidden beneath her wedding dress, but the WOW Report's X-ray technology seems to disprove our initial hypothesis.
Silly Maldivians! If the newlyweds weren't talking to the Italians who built them shrines, what makes you think they're going to want to chat with you?
If A-Gold is worth $4 million a script, we bet the J-Lo can get at least twice that amount for her scribblings.
Denzel Washington might be harboring an inappropriate crush on Man on Fire co-star Dakota Fanning. [fourth item]
· We could care less what this "scientific study" says; in our heart of hearts, we know we're living in the most coketastic city in the entire world. On that note: See you Friday! (Yup, we're working, even if you're not.)

We allowed ourselves to become so consumed with the trivial matter of Michael Richards' repeated, angry deployment of a certain racial epithet in the hopes of silencing some hecklers expressing their dissatisfaction with his comedy act that we've neglected our solemn duty to join the world in celebrating the glorious union of two individuals who've played a significant role in all of our lives over the past 18 or so months. By now we assume you've already had your fill of stories of hackneyed serenades, inventories of the various outifts Giorgio Armani provided for the ceremony, and the petty complaints of turncoat townsfolk who once built shrines to the visiting couple, so instead of rehashing more of the same, we instead bring you this exclusive photo essay that we personally—personally! assembled from images provided by wire service photographers our network of spies to tell the story of Katie Holmes' final moments of pre-nuptial freedom.

With the marriage of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes set to take place in Italy just a few hours from now, it's finally sinking in: There is really nothing any of us can do to help her, other than hope that as we speak, a ragtag commando group comprised of Holmes ex-boyfriends Joshua Jackson, Chris Klein, and the sweet kid from fifth grade who's now a claims adjuster in Toledo are quietly scaling a turret at Odelschi Castle, making a last-ditch effort to save their former love from her absurdly well-guarded cell. Unfortunately, even this crazy rescue fantasy of ours ends in Klein tripping over his own feet while attempting to dance through a seemingly impenetrable lattice of alarm-triggering lasers, a tragic act of clumsiness that results in the brave trio's public hanging at tomorrow's wedding reception. In short: Goodbye, forever, Katie. We'll always have Wonder Boys and that thirty or so seconds from The Gift. Enjoy this final round-up, for the next time we speak of the couple, it will be as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Cruise:

This Saturday, the Odescalchi Castle on Italy's Lake Bracciano will for one magical evening be transformed into the fairy tale palace where Katie Holmes will finally take Tom Cruise's supple hand in marriage (as stipulated in paragraph 68c of her billion-year contractual commitment), with a gathered crowd of Hollywood's greatest luminaries looking on in polite, incredulous bemusement. As the media coverage builds to a cacophonic crescendo, we help you wade through it all with a Countdown To Eternal Servitude round-up:
· The local businesses of Lake Bracciano are milking their moment in the spotlight for all its worth, with one local eatery introducing menu items such as "'Vanilla Sky' spaghetti, 'Last Samurai' filet with mushrooms and, for dessert, the Suri tart with chocolate sauce." The latter was directly responsible for an uncomfortable misunderstanding involving Tom Cruise and his in-laws, when the actor came bounding into the lobby of their hotel, gleefully announcing with a face smeared in a sticky, brown substance, "Hey, guys! Guess what I just ate! Suri!" [USA Today]
· A late night visit to Rome's city hall last night wasn't for a quickie marriage license—it was to meet Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni, described as "a big movie buff." Tom reportedly was more than happy to oblige Veltroni's request to recreate his favorite sequence, and proceeded to delight the Mayor and his staff by sliding down the grand building's marble halls in nothing but a dress shirt, briefs, and a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses. [AP]

With precious few days remaining before sufficiently convincing Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes stand-ins distract the media at a staged wedding ceremony in Rome on Saturday long enough for the real couple to complete their marriage vows on the Betrothal Deck of a Scientology-owned yacht in front of a phalanx of sailor-suited, tazer- and fishing-net-wielding witnesses (they've learned more effective bride-retention techniques after Penelope Cruz proved to be both quick and a superior swimmer), the tabloids are scrambling to discover the decoy event's star-studded guest list. Today's Page Six reports that onetime Cruise nemesis and postpartum depression sufferer Brooke Shields has made the cut, whom Holmes quickly befriended after the serendipitous discovery that Shields gave birth to her second child just a few doors down from where her own delivery of Suri allegedly took place:

At this rate, the tabloid-inflated potential price of Britney Spears' sex tape should reach $350 million by the end of the week. And it will be worth every penny if we actually see K-Fed and Brit-Brit getting frustrated by their inability to remember which chess pieces "go all diagonal, y'all," sweeping them off the board, and then getting back to the monkeysex.
We imagine it does not surprise you in the least that the ways in which four-legged thespians can break into the business are virtually the same as those available to their bipedal, human counterparts.
Variety launches The Knife, a blog about the places where the entertainment industry likes to eat, leading off with today's report on Mozza, the Mario Batali restaurant that promises to be clogged with obnoxious power-eaters for months to come. There's also a post about Owen Wilson's shitty waiting skills.
Katie Holmes is in Rome! Cruise is seen leaving his hotel! Maybe this thing is going to happen after all.
· Our porny, pervtastic sister site Fleshbot is tricking its readers into taking their clothes off. Our personal ethics forbid us from trying to pull the same scam on you, but feel free to participate in their dirty game. [link NSFW]

Yesterday, we noted that Katie Holmes' unimpressive turn in Thank You For Smoking was virtually the only one not pimped for awards consideration by Fox Searchlight on their screener for the film, but today Page Six reports that "sources close" to Holmes (read: scrambling publicists) claim that the decision to leave her off the list was her own:

With this Saturday's alleged betrothal of fledgling studio mogul Tom Cruise to Katie Holmes, the woman he personally—personally!—enslaved for the purpose of being the incubating vessel in which he would grow a daughter produced from the DNA culled from the finest physical specimens of the army of drones who dust his legendary collection of vintage e-meters at his Beverly Hills compound, the gossip columns are ensuring that no aspect of the couple's last-minute preparations will go unreported. This morning, The Scoop, obviously assisted by a lingerie-shop proprietor eager to have her boutique become the "It" shopping destination for actresses treating themselves to some lacy underthings before dazedly processing down the aisle and towards the final step of their self-nullification, details items allegedly purchased by Holmes in anticipation of her wedding night:

· While we're not the particular flavor of nerd whose superhero Underoos are suddenly stretched tight with fanboy tumescence over a leaked movie trailer showing incomplete footage from Spider-Man 3 (warning: a Venom cameo may cause spontaneous webjaculation in the excitable), we appreciate that some of you might want to see the clip which TMZ reports has Sony scrambling to repair the leaks that allowed it to escape onto the wilds of the internets in its premature.
· Tom Cruise is already in Rome, making sure that all of the bride-retention mechanisms he's arranged for this weekend's wedding ceremony (Holmes-sniffing Dobermans, tranquilizer-gun equipped snipers accurate at a range of 300 yards, well-disguised perimeter bear traps) are functional and ready to make sure his big day stays special.
· Giving away money or time has never been quite so hard for obscenely rich people in Hollywood.
· We are still officially undecided about the Team Pam vs Team Karen question, but we expect to make up our minds before The Office's writers do.

A reader just submitted this scan of the Thank You For Smoking awards screener, lamenting that the conspicuous absence of Katie Holmes among those offered For Your Consideration (an omission made even more glaring by the inclusion of pretty much everyone else who spoke a line in the film) almost certainly ruins her chances for a "Least Convincing On-Screen Fucking of the Year" nod at the Independent Spirit Awards. While disappointing, it's not surprising that Fox Searchlight hasn't chosen to back the actress's performance, defined by the scene of clumsily executed, well-clothed carnality that famously and mysteriously disappeared from the movie's Sundance screening ; executives there are probably as put off by the idea of Holmes' Cruise-era, contractually mandated, one-cursory-mating-session-per-billion-years sexuality as we all are, and don't want her baggage tainting the other deserving candidates from their film.

Katie Holmes meets with California Senator Barbara Boxer to discuss the possibility of a Democrat-controlled Congress forcing through a bill nullifying billion-year contracts signed while actresses were under career duress.
· Britney's first husband (for like three hours) speaks out! And what he has to say about Kevin Federline will shock and amaze you. OK, he calls him an idiot. Skip the story and get on with your afternoon.
· TMZ and the tabloids are really wearing out LA court clerks with their constant requests for divorce filings.
Levert: also dead.
· Which Nicole Kidman character are you? We'd take the quiz ourselves, but we're afraid we'll wind up being the one with the fake nose who drowned herself.
· Pinkberry in crisis!

Over the weekend, a sharp-eyed reader, somehow not completely numbed into sensory failure by the recent proliferation of election season TV ads, noticed a striking similarity between a baby in a commercial for Prop 87 and Suri Cruise, the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes offspring suspiciously withheld from public view for several agonizing months following her alleged date of birth. A trio of possibilities instantly present themselves: a) a politically sympathetic Cruise lent his daughter to the cause (or, perhaps, is putting her to work to help fund his next movie project); b) the Prop 87 folks used the same casting agency employed by Cruise for the Vanity Fair cover shoot, who mistakenly supplied the same talent despite his insistence that the infant be permanently retired at the conclusion of the VF gig; c) all adorable newborns wearing fashion-forward baby toupees look alike.

· Tom Cruise hires a firm called Along Came Mary (please, hold your jokes until the end) to plan his wedding, who will be charged with the difficult task of working some pretty awkwardly written vows into their ceremony.
Breaking: Reality television producers may supply alcohol to their contestants, hoping that shitfaced contestants make for better TV.
The Stallion has a Butterscotch Butt-Double.
Were it not for Brad Pitt's ability to elude drunken Dutchmen on his bicycle, rampant anti-Americanism in Europe may have deprived film history of Ocean's Twelve.
· It's finally happened: Jesus Christ has come out against both stem-cell research and Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic comments.

Mere seconds after we'd posted our earlier item about Tom Cruise's circling of various projects in which to possibly make his splashy return to the ranks of working actors, we saw that Us Weekly has gone truly, madly, deeply exclusive with the news that Cruise has finally picked the day on which he will make an honest war bride of the woman he plucked from a promising acting career, quickly imprisoned within the walls of his impenetrable Beverly Hills compound, and ordered impregnated by his finest team of genetic technicians. Let the world observe a day-long moment of silence for Katie Holmes on November 18th, the date on which she will ceremonially turn herself over to her couch-brutalizing captor:

If not for the incremental updates on their wedding progress offered by the celebrity glossies, we probably would have forgotten that indefinitely engaged partners Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had any concrete plans to supplement the 2004 signing of her billion-year personal services contract with a more formal commitment ceremony. Luckily, we have outlets like Us to provide crucial details of the supposedly imminent nuptials, such as which designer has been awarded the honor of designing Cruise's Scientology war bride's dress:

If you're struggling with the epic decision of what Hallowe'en costume to wear this year — slutty schoolgirl, slutty pirate wench, Paris Hilton... too many options! — then let the kind folks at Celebrity Baby Blog make your life easier. They've sifted through the annals of Hollywood parentage and come up with a short list of which stars and their progeny might make timely costumes, either to deploy with the aid of an actual child, or for you to force upon your most gullible, easily influenced friends.

· By now you may have already seen this video of David Cross showing his appreciation of Jim Belushi's "music" by hopping on stage during one of his "concerts." If so, watch it again. It really rewards a second viewing. If this is the first time, cherish this special moment. [via GoldenFiddle]
· OK, George Michael, you're on notice: Pass out in your car with some drugs just one more time and we're going to start saying you might have a problem.
Page-pampering Florida Congressman Mark Foley (no, not the Focus Features guy, how many times do we have to correct you on that?) checked into rehab today, possibly in Clearwater, which set off Wonkette's Scientology alarms. We're just going to assume that his possible ties to the Church are merely related to pandering to a large South Floridian constituency, and that he's not currently trying to sweat out his pedophilia in a Hubbardian sauna.
As Copyranter points out in regards to an ad featuring an image of ET's Mary Hart, there's a fine line between photo "retouching" and the "the wholesale erasure of twenty years of aging."
After removing the twenty-pound false stomach she wore for all nine (or was it ten?) months of her fake pregnancy, Katie Holmes now seems skinnier. A real headscratcher, that.

· Now that Tom Cruise's team of genetic technicians have successfully engineered a baby molecularly stable enough to stay constituted for the duration of a major magazine photo shoot, they've moved on to bigger challenges, like manipulating the genes that have allowed Katie Holmes to grow a full foot since the beginning of September. [via CityRag]
· "Sexiest Woman Alive" Scarlett Johansson laments that her internal organs don't attract the same kind of attention as her most conspicuous external features.
Who says that comic book fans have too much time on their hands? [via BoingBoing]
Don't miss Wonkette's compelling coverage of the revelations that Rep. Mark Foley might be a Pedophile-American. Especially this post, with YouTube of ABC's Brian Ross narrating a disturbing IM exchange.
· Tomorrow is National Steve Guttenberg Day! It's probably too late to Netflix yourself a mini Guttenberg film festival, but here are some other suggestions on ways to celebrate.

Lest you think that unemployed megastar has nothing better to do but man the funnel cake cart at Magic Mountain and wait around for Brad Pitt to destroy him, Us Weekly helpfully reminds us that America's Most Suspicious Fiance still has an imminent billion-year commitment ceremony to plan, a truly massive undertaking that undoubtedly consumes all of his available time. While Cruise has apparently delegated the trivial task of centerpiece flower-selection to his war bride, he's personally—personally!—handling more crucial matters, like auditioning new, more Caucasian-looking Suris (even he wasn't immune to criticisms that the original model was a little too Asian) for the event and testing the special "bridal collar" with which Holmes will be fitted following the exchange of vows, ensuring that it will deliver the necessary, paralyzing voltage should she attempt flight while he's busy with guests at the reception.

A mere 15 months after a whirlwind fake courtship resulted in an almost instantaneous, indefinite engagement and a mysterious pregnancy that resulted in the cutest set of rented babies that you're ever likely to see in the pages of a national magazine, Tom Cruise is very nearly ready to make an honest woman of Katie Holmes. Us Weekly reports that Holmes' "dream wedding" is just "days away," happening "soon," "in the next three to six weeks," or during the even more tantalizingly vague timeframe of "the early fall." We're sure she's eager to finally get this next step out of the way, as the billion-year commitment to her soulmate won't feel truly official until Cruise smears some wedding cake on her face, flashes his trademark smile, then whispers in her ear, "Don't even try to run. There are snipers everywhere. There is no escape."