Today Show anchors: what will they do next? If it's not Meredith Vieira offering to polish Colin Firth's nob, it's apparently Ann Curry giving a back massage to Aaron Eckhart's broken back. Saucy!

Aaron Eckhart has strong views regarding life in outer space. The Battlefield:LA star considers himself a realist, and therefore he does not believe in life elsewhere. Little does he know Lopez has some extraterrestrial hijinks in store for him.

Alex Blagg interviews Aaron Eckahrt and fellow Battle: LA cast members about the most important part of the film: Aaron's chin. Alex chinquires on Aaron's asking price for the impressive bone, as well as the alluring powers it holds.

Here's a trailer for Rabbit Hole, the dead-kid drama based on the Pulitzer-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire. Nicole Kidman steps into the role that won Cynthia Nixon a Tony on Broadway, plus Aaron Eckhart shows up for some moping.

• Down-and-out former pageant queen Carrie Prejean must be getting really desperate: She's turning to Donald Trump for career advice. Trump suggested she "become a major porn star," make tons of cash and then "give it to worthy causes." Clearly, it's this type of forward thinking that has made Trump the business titan he is. [P6]
• Nic Cage's lawyer now says the countersuit by the actor's former business manager—Samuel Levin claims he warned Cage about his "compulsive, self-destructive spending" years ago—is "ridiculous." As for Cage himself, he's in Somalia right now facing down evil pirates since he's under the impression that his life is one big action movie, but says he'll sort everything out once he gets back to the States. [P6]
• Lou Dobbs is taking a vacation now that he's no longer with CNN. Mexico is not on his travel itinerary, in case you were wondering. [NYP]
• Larry King's 10-year-old son is the luckiest boy in all of Los Angeles today: He's been signed to host his own cable TV show. Ain't nepotism grand? [TMZ]
• Amy Winehouse's dad says his daughter's new breast implants are leaking, which is why she's been in the hospital recently. But presumably that's to be expected if you poke yourself with needles all day, no? [Sun]

The return of Sex and the City, the not-return of Matthew Perry. Strange movies and people win strange festival awards, and Slovenia finally gets some sunshine.

Liza Minnelli turns 63 today. Darryl Strawberry is 47. James Taylor is turning 61. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is turning 62. Playwright Edward Albee is 81. Pete Doherty is 30. Author Dave Eggers is turning 39. Publicist Ken Sunshine is 61. Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, XXX) is 60. Al Jarreau is turning 69. Actor Aaron Eckhart is 41. Novelist Carl Hiaasen is 56. SportsCenter anchor Steve Levy is 44. And the most famous male porn star in history, Ron Jeremy, is 56 today.

Aaron Eckhart: Hey, maybe Two-Face had a twin! Anyone? [MTV]

· Vin Diesel AbandonedFranchiseWatch: XXX: The Return of Xander Cage will reunite Vin Diesel with director Rob Cohen for another helping of the Xtreme actioner no one remembers or wants! [Variety] · Aaron Eckhart will head his first action movie in Battle: Los Angeles, playing a marine platoon leader fighting an alien invasion of our fair city. Don't use the rubber bullets, Aaron—it'll just be a P.R. disaster for your department when the footage winds up on the news. [THR] · Innovative Artists has "undergone the most significant overhaul in the agency's 26-year history." And what do these sweeping changes entail? Everyone gets a title! Watch out Hollywood: The Vice Associate Director of Scripted Reality Affairs is on line 1, and she sounds angry! [THR] After the jump: Which on-the-cusp-of-It-boy-status actor is partaking of It Boy ritual, "one for them, one for me?"· Twilight star Cam Gigandet and Jena Malone will star in indie drama Five Star Day, which THR celebrates by locating the two worst photos of these two actors ever taken. (Malone fares way worse.) [THR] · The SEC has a few questions for Mark Cuban, who sold 600,000 shares search engine Mamma.com Inc. after receiving a hot insider tip that allowed him to save $750,000 by dumping his stake in the company. Just for fun, we entered "Mark Cuban Insider Trading" in Mamma. Nothing much turned up. Whatchu hiding, Mamma? [Variety]

After a handful of outlandish Batman 3 casting rumors recently trickled online in a impressionistic stream of semi-consciousness, we may have found one that not only can't be attributed to a fanboy crack binge, but may actually be... true? And for the six of you who haven't yet seen The Dark Knight, spoilers follow, so consider skipping ahead: Aaron Eckhart, whose Two-Face/Harvey Dent ended up as killed as any TDK character got without going through the necessary franchise terminus of burial/cremation/being chopped into pieces, confirmed this week that, yes, his villain is dead, and no, he will not be returning in any forthcoming Batman sequels. That is, Eckhart added, if there are any Batman sequels to be made at all — at least with Christopher Nolan overseeing things:

While most of the punditocracy is demanding that Sid Ganis engrave Heath Ledger's name on the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor before the month of July comes to a close, the notoriously contrarian ESPN talking head Skip Bayless isn't quite convinced. During today's episode of their afternoon gabfest 1st And 10, Bayless got into a heated argument with the equally opinionated (read: full of shit) mouthpiece Stephen A. Smith about whether or not The Dark Knight was better than Tim Burton's Batman. As these conversations generally go, the topic of conversation quickly switched to Heath Ledger's universally lauded performance as The Joker. That is to say, universally lauded by everyone but Skip Bayless.

Star Jones eating lunch outdoors at BLT Market .. Kirsten Dunst with coffee and a cigarette downtown ... Kanye West chatting on his cell in the West Village ... Rachel Bilson cooling off with a smoothie ... 50 Cent showing up to court in Islip, NY ... Aaron Eckhart coming back to his hotel after a sweaty afternoon jog ... Heidi Klum leaving her Village apartment building with zebra print luggage ... Richie Sambora showing up in Midtown with his daughter ... Meg Ryan taking a solo stroll through SoHo ... and Pink licking her arm during an outdoor lunch at Cipriani Downtown.

Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal dropped by the Today Show this morning to shill a movie, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Eckhart earnestly related to host Matt Lauer a story about their deceased costar Heath Ledger which he'd told Ledger's mother — namely, that friends were passing around Ledger's iPod as a form of remembrance:

After surviving months of Dark Knight hype, viral outreach and tastefully overblown praise for late co-star Heath Ledger, Defamer finally got its chance at a screening Tuesday to see what all the Bat-fuss was about. And as editor Seth Abramovitch and senior editor S.T. VanAirsdale discovered in their second installment of Defamer Instant Reviews, not everybody is ready to validate its Second Coming status quite yet. Is it good? Absolutely. Is it the best film of the summer? That's where things get complicated — on AIM, of course, because this watershed cultural moment deserves no less.

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart showing up at the Today show to promote Dark Knight ... John Mayer hamming it up for the cameras downtown ... Natalie Portman carrying a doggie bag in the Village ... Kanye West with a Louis Vuitton backpack waiting for his car ... Gabrielle Union crossing the street on Central Park South ... Heidi Klum leaving her West Village apartment in a hurry ... Everybody Love Raymond's Brad Garrett at Columbus Circle with a female friend ... Whoopi Goldberg taking a walk near her apartment in SoHo ... Restaurateur Drew Nieporent sitting in the first row at the All-Star Game last night ... Kelly Osbourne leaving a lunch downtown ... Kimora Lee Simmons arriving at a party to promote Fabulosity, her newest clothing line.

We're seeing The Dark Knight next week like everybody else, but since David Letterman has already wrecked everything for us, the hell with it: SPOILER ALERT. Like, seriously. The screenshots that some douchebag smuggled out of a press screening and pollenated our inbox with this morning aren't going to shatter the Earth, but they'll warrant crossing at least two items off your list of "Twists I Can't Wait to Totally Ruin By Seeing Them Before the Movie."

In case you haven't heard yet that The Dark Knight is going to be the Darkest! Batman! Ever! (complete with a mourned actor doing all kinds of posthumously hype-worthy things that no one will shut up about), Aaron Eckhart showed up in the LA Times's summer film preview Sunday to reinforce the company line that "people will be surprised" at the bleak turns his own Harvey Dent character endures en route to becoming Two Face:

When news that Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer got together for a "touchy, feely" lunch date and dinner in Miami over the weekend broke, the entire community of celebrity observers and glossy magazine readers let out a big ol' collective yawn. Aniston has been linked to (and we're roughly estimating here) seven hundred or so possible paramours since her split with Brad Pitt, and Mayer has pulled what Liz Phair would call the all-too-common "fuck and run" on so many starlets that he earned Us's "Cad of the Year" award. But just because the gossip is yawnworthy doesn't mean there isn't a larger issue here: mainly, is Aniston really dating or trying to date all these guys-of-the-month, or is this charade her publicist's idea of spinning her post-divorce life into an unglamorous version of Sex And The City?

Have things really gotten so rough for Jennifer Aniston that she's gone from dating cokehead models to taking movie roles just so she can date the leading man? That's what this article on Jen's new relationship with Traveling co-star Aaron Eckhart seems to be implying. According to the Daily Mail, Eckhart "personally requested Aniston for the part...and Jen's entire reason for doing this movie was Aaron." Before we got carried away imagining the potential for very cute little blonde Ecklets with rhinoplastic trust funds, we tried to figure out if this "rumor" had any substance.

Many, including us, have been wondering out loud how Warner Bros. plans on addressing the unique (and thankfully so) marketing problem currently facing The Dark Knight: Namely, what to do about a campaign that took fiendish pleasure in showcasing Heath Ledger's singularly bleak and twisted take on iconic Batman villain the Joker. Slate now reports that the studio's plan, in place since the beginning but perhaps being ushered in more hastily since the actor's death, is to shift the focus over to the film's other featured villain: