The entertainment industry is predictably enthusiastic about the Democratic gains in this week's elections, especially MPAA head Dan Glickman, who expects that his organization's agenda will be immediately adopted by the Hollywood-loving, liberal legislators that now control Congress. [Variety]
ABC wins Wednesday with Dancing with the Stars and Lost, while a special Wednesday night airing of The OC doesn't manage to improve on last week's "horrible start." We suggest more cagefighting with Chino. [THR]
Call it a "vote of confidence" or "a desperate move to save a poorly rated show," but ABC is moving Men in Trees to the well-protected post-Grey's Anatomy timeslot on Thursday nights. [Variety]
Time Warner pulls out of China, searches for a more hospitable place in which to insert its throbbing cinema operations. Yeah, we're not proud of that one, but it is what it is. [THR]
Believing that American Idol also-ran Kellie Pickler's adorable inability to pronounce the words "calamari" and "salmon" is sufficient evidence of comedic talent, Fox is now developing a sitcom to take better advantage of her photogenic bimbitude. [Variety]

Because a gender-ineligible commenter responded to our earlier post about the MPAA's Boy Scout re-eduction efforts by expressing a wish to wear an official "Respecting Copyrights" merit badge "while defiling copyrights left and right," we're posting the art for the actual patch, made available along with the Scout curriculum over at the MPAA's official site, right here for your clip n' save convenience. And no, that's not our attempt at satirizing what we think it should look like; apparently, the MPAA and the Boy Scouts allowed a kid who has yet to achieve his Design for Propaganda merit badge have a crack at the task.

From the "If we told you we made this up, you'd accuse of being really high" file, today the MPAA is announcing a new program in which it will seek to re-educate the movie-downloading terrorist cells represented by our local Boy Scout troops about the importance of "respecting copyrights," hoping to turn the little knot-tying, merit-badge-hoarding pirates into a beige-clad army of pro-industry good. From the MPAA's press release:

The MPAA introduces its latest agents of movie pirate doom: Lucky and Flo, the two cutest, DVD-sniffing black Labs you've ever seen! The pups can't distinguish between pirated and legitimate disks, and can also be thrown off the trail by traffickers clever enough to pack dummy boxes full of frisbees in the same shipment as their contraband product. [Variety]
Certified series-killer Rena Sofer gets recurring roles on both 24 and Heroes, but we imagine the cancellation curse that accompanies her casting will only be strong enough to take down Heroes, the newer, weaker show. [THR]
Dreamy-eyed hunkbot Jake Gyllenhaal will join pointy-chinned ingenue Reese Witherspoon in New Line's Middle East political thriller Rendition, which we fully hope will evolve into a romantic comedy so as not to waste the crippling adoreableness of its leads on weighty matters. [Variety]
Rob Cohen cleverly deleted Stealth from his resume before going in for a meeting about helming the prison movie Scared Straight, tricking New Line into giving him another opportunity to direct. [THR]
FX's relentless pursuit of the self-consciously edgy leads it into a deal with Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy for 4 oz., a drama about the "metamorphosis of a married sportswriter who is a transsexual." [Variety]

Forgive us in advance if this turns out to be old news we haven't stumbled across before, but today the Hot Blog posted a copy of a memo from South Park creator Matt Stone addressing the MPAA's notes for South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Stone calls it his "favorite memo ever" in his postscript (the image here is only partial, but you can see the whole thing at Hot Blog), probably because he and cohort Trey Parker made the censors consider bizarre sex acts they'd probably never encounter unless they decided to hand out ratings for obscure foreign porno films starring a very specifically talented Winona Ryder lookalike.

Ever on the lookout for new and cutting edge methods with which to curtail the proliferation of pirated materials, the MPAA is licking its chops at news of two British Labradors who have been successfully taught to sniff out DVDs in airport packages:

· Sirius' one-time, $225 million stock payment to Howard Stern contributes to the company's $459 million loss. Still, the company's stock rose six percent, supporting the perceived value to satellite radio of having porn stars ride orgasm-inducing machinery. [Variety]
· An MPAA study claims that piracy cost the film industry $6.1 billion last year. But not having read the report, we don't know if that total counts every time someone illegally download Deuce Bigalow or Stealth for a goof as a lost DVD or ticket sale. [THR]
· Emma Roberts will star in the Fox teen flick Rodeo Gal, which writer Katie Wech will "rewrite and tailor" for Roberts, i.e., make sure there's a juicy cameo for Aunt Julia. [Variety]
· ABC yanks the once-promising, much-troubled Commander in Chief for the rest of the season. [THR]
· ABC's alternative programming chief describes the upcoming Summer Share as "'The Real World' meets 'Laguna Beach' for adults." We love it when a pitch lets you know you'll never have to watch a show. [Variety]

Has it truly been 13 years since Sharon Stone first uncrossed her legs into our hearts in Basic Instinct? Alas, it has, but the wait for the sequel, delayed for years by legal squabbling between Stone and her producers, is soon over. What's better, the NY Daily News reports that Stone's sex scenes are so over the top in the UK-set Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, it makes her performance in the first film look like Nanny McPhee with an ice pick (and for both you Instinct purists out there, spoiler alert):

With the kind of David vs. Goliath spirit that turned Super Size Me into a Sundance festival hit and a giant pain in McDonald's ass just a few years ago, many eyes are on Kirby Dick's 2006 Sundance doc offering, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which takes on another unchallenged American institution: the MPAA's ratings system.

Over at Slate, fully cybernetic BoingBoing futuro-blogger Xeni Jardin files a report on the start of every file-sharing geek's favorite time of the year, the annual kick-off of the awards screener piracy season. A handful of awards hopefuls are already burning up the BitTorrent wires, courtesy of either Academy voters or others with the opportunity to feed the piracy pipeline:

· ABC's Steve McPherson and CBS's Nina Tassler cram into their diving bells and explore the strange depths of the summertime alternative-programming ocean, a murky place which previously yielded creepy, luminescent creatures like Dancing with the Stars, and return with the same idea to run English-language "telenovelas" multiple times a week next summer. [Variety]
· The large picture of Tom Freston front-and-center on THR's homepage is seriously freaking us out. Make it stop! He's supposed to be the laid back Viacom president, not the creepy, intense one! [THR]
· The Writers Guild has fallen in love with NBC's soon-to-be new Thursday night comedy lineup, giving The Office and My Name Is Earl three nominations apiece for the WGA Awards. [Variety]
· MPAA head pirate hunter Dan Glickman is "encouraged" by the Chinese government's raid of black market DVD shops in Beijing, but urges them to continue their anti-piracy progress by "running over the fuckers with a tank next time." [THR]
· Fox signs a three-year first-look production deal with the producers of Wedding Crashers, Tapestry Films. Fun fact we didn't know: They also produced 15 Olsen twin movies. [Variety]

· Networks and studios mull possibility of "suing the living shit" out of TiVo for allowing users to transfer recorded programs to their iPods or PSPs, at least until they figure out how to cut themselves in on the action. [Variety]
· Testifying before a panel of Senators at the Museum of TV and Radio in Beverly Hills, MPAA head Dan Glickman blamed the Chinese government's restrictions on foreign entertainment product for creating "a marketplace vacuum that pirates are only too happy to fill." Glickman then implored the Senators to launch an immediate nuclear strike on the nation to "wipe out Chinese counterfeit DVDs...forever!" [THR]
· Confident that housewives will welcome a break from the relentless presentation of cheap, made-for-TV movies about domestic violence and eating disorders, Lifetime shells out over $1.35 million an episode for Medium reruns. [Variety]
· Hillary Clinton's presentation of an award to the most powerful woman in the world (Oprah, duh) brings welcome buzz to the International Emmy Awards. [Variety]
· NBC Universal demotes struggling network Trio to broadband, still working on the technology that will allow them to upload struggling president Kevin Reilly onto one of its new servers. [THR]

Roughly every five years since primitive man first scrawled a scene on his cave wall depicting his pets brutalizing each other with household items, a "new" study arrives at the same, inevitable, ACME-explosive conclusion: Cartoons are too violent and/or too dirty. But don't blame the MPAA, says president Dan Glickman. Blame yourselves! Blame society!

First ballot Hall of Defamer crackpot and former MPAA head Jack Valenti defends the movie ratings system in the opinion pages of today's LAT, arguing that the current G-through-NC-17 guidelines are far superior to the clenched-sphincter, Puritan absurdities of the infamous Hays Code:

Somewhere in cine-Musketeer heaven, Jack Valenti is quietly weeping. He's still alive? Oh. Well then, to paraphrase the President, he must be doubly weeping from the ground. Dan Glickman, his 'meh' successor as head of the MPAA, has admitted the unthinkable: he needs help. From today's Variety:

· NBC surprised and angered other networks by launching its preemptive hurricane benefit strike while they planned a cooperative, cross-net event, and they worry the NBC Friday concert will dilute the talent pool and audience for the relief effort. [Variety]
· NBC dispatches its own private security team to New Orleans to keep protect its employees reporting from the lawless post-Katrina city. [THR]
· When not bickering or competing for viewers with benefit specials, media conglomerates donate money to aid Katrina victims and establish matching gift programs for employees. [Variety]
· THR reviews MPAA sultan Dan Glickman's "rocky" first year on the job. Replacing the legendary Jack Valenti hasn't been easy, and Glickman still isn't quite comfortable adopting his predecessor's nightly ritual of bathing in the blood of movie pirates. [THR]
· The Weinsteins completely disregard Jessica Alba's rocking body and pouty, sultry lips, signing her to star in the psychological thriller Awake based only on her hard work and acting talent. Hayden Christensen will unconvincingly portray her husband. [Variety]

How many times does the MPAA have to tell us to respect copyrights? Another camcorder-wielding, one-man piracy sleeper cell has been accused of trying to destabilize the entertainment industry, but his greatest crime might be his horrible taste:

· If Marilyn Manson couldn't kill our Rose McGowan fantasies, then the merely wrinkly Al Pacino is hardly a threat.
· By the time you reach the end of this LA Times trend piece, enough time has elapsed that being a hipster is cool again.
· Jude Law's nanny refused a three-way, presumably on the grounds that it "wasn't adulteryish enough."
· Japan's version of Manny "The Copyright Respecting Stuntman" Perry is hella creepy: "...major Japanese film distributors have cooperated to produce an animated short film that is being screened throughout the country showing a girl shedding tears that turn into skulls, as an announcer says, 'Films are stolen, and so are impressive moments. Precious things are being tainted.'"
· Massachusetts fishermen catch Jabberjaws!

· The Supreme Court bitch-slaps Grokster and file-sharing services back down to a lower court, ruling that the companies can be held liable for their users' acts of copyright infringement. Stay tuned for the press release in which MPAA pirate hunter emeritus Jack Valenti compares file-swapping to the trading of molested children on the Russian black market. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas XXXIV: The New Paramount relapses into its remaking ways, planning a new version of 1973's Donald-Sutherland-humping-Julie-Christie classic Don't Look Now. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas XXXV: Warner Bros. and Jennifer Garner to remake the 2004 Japanese hit Be With You. You know, after she pawns the baby off on stay-at-home partner Ben Affleck. [Variety]
· Well, at least it's not a remake: Fox plans to bring video game Max Payne to your local multiplex. [THR]
· Tomorrow's snubs today: Paul Giamatti's soon-to-be acclaimed voice-work in the animated Amazing Screw-On Head to go criminally overlooked. [Variety]

· The MPAA recognizes longtime chief Jack Valenti by renaming its DC headquarters in his honor. Valenti celebrates the occasion in appropriate (and surprisingly touching) fashion, scrawling his name on the building's cornerstone in the blood of a freshly-slaughtered fourteen-year-old who'd illegally downloaded a bootlegged copy of Batman Begins. Valenti then hastily renamed the building the "Jack Valenti 'Take That, Pirate Motherfuckers' Centre at Respecting Copyrights Plaza," removed his shirt, and challenged all comers to a best-of-three-falls Ultimate Fighting bout. [THR]
· "Stringer fingers electronics slump"— We really want to imagine this headline's intentionally filthy, but are having a hard time imagining a body part that corresponds to "electronics slump." [Variety]
· Martha Stewart plays it coy, refuses to reveal her Apprentice dismissal catchphrase. Our vote goes to "Bite the doily," but she should feel free to invent a punctuating hand gesture. [THR]
· Fox reality incubus Mike Darnell takes American Idol to the next, logical step, planning a spin-off in which celebrities warble out-of-key karaoke songs for charity. [Variety]
· The Jeff Zucker suicide watch begins in earnest, as the tarnished NBC golden boy admits that his network took an even bigger pounding than expected following the upfronts. CBS rival Les Moonves buys his entire staff cupcakes to celebrate. [THR]