• Angelina Jolie supposedly threatened to leave Brad Pitt because he was never home at their filthy French chateau with the six kids. God knows why. [Sun]

Here at Defamer, we usually announce the latest Hollywood projects in our trade round-up, but today's Variety included mention of an upcoming project that was so balls-out bizarre, we knew it needed special attention. According to the industry bible, Wanted helmer Timur Bekmambetov is prepping an adaptation of Herman Meville's Moby Dick. Naturally, as befits a project of this sort of literary stature, he has brought aboard writers Adam Cooper and Bill Collage (who previously scripted the Justin Long comedy Accepted) to draft the screenplay. Says Variety:

• Jennifer Aniston was photographed holding hands on a Mexican beach with a MYSTERY MAN. He's OLDER. Also, she's just friends (third item) with actor Gerard Butler even though he was totally TOUCHING HER THIGH.

♦ You'd think that for $85,000-a-month, you might shell out a few extra few bucks on a maid. Apparently not. According to the Star, there's no one cleaning up after Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's kids, and their French chateau is a complete pigsty that "looks like a war zone." [Star]
♦ Jennifer Lopez raised $127,000 for charity by competing in the Malibu triathalon. She then flew directly to New York and spent $800,000 on Marc Anthony's birthday party. [MSNBC]
♦ According to the always reliable Joe Francis, Lindsay Lohan is straight. [E!]
♦ Lindsay: Please don't discuss how you're supporting Barack in November. You're embarrassing him. [NYDN]

Donate After Reading: Brad Pitt has famously said he won't marry Angelina Jolie until gay marriage is legalized all over the country, and now, he's putting his money where his mouth is. According to the LAT, Pitt has become the first A-list celebrity to make a major donation ($100,000) to the campaign to fight Proposition 8, which is designed to take away the same-sex marriage rights awarded to Californians this summer. In a statement, he said, "Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8." Your move, Babs! [LAT]

· Now playing: The new trailer for Changeling, your official 2008 vintage Angelina Jolie Oscar Bait™ [YouTube] · For every dollar Nicole Kidman made in 2007, her films made a dollar. You don't need a calculator to guess what that makes her. [Forbes] · This should make Terry Giiliam happy: Warner Bros. plans a January Dark Knight rerelease to coincide with Oscar nominations. [Reuters] · Would Rose McGowan make a better IRA car bomber or executioner? If this was 1971, according to her we might have found out by now. [BBC] · If Jon Favreau had his way, Iron Man 2 would be in 3-D. Whoa! Hold it there, big fella — has anyone consulted Justin Theroux about this? [Collider]

• More on NBC's decision to drop Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from covering the election on MSNBC: Olbermann got a raise out of the deal, Matthews didn't, and NBC chief Jeff Immelt may or may not have be behind the move. [P6]

Amid all the gala premieres and Earth-shattering Paris Hilton controversies gripping Toronto as its film festival gets underway, only one subplot in particular has managed to coax psychoanalysts and romantic advice gurus alike out of their plush-lined caves. And to be honest, we can't believe we didn't think of it sooner: What should exes Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston — both in town with new films — do should they bump into each other on some congested red carpet, or while picking up one of those delicious sausages on Bloor Street? That's heartburn enough — but it doesn't have to be crippling, argues today's Globe and Mail:

• Alessandra Ambrosio just gave birth, but she isn't wasting any time. She's reportedly already looking to sell pictures of her newborn daughter Anja to the tabloids. [P6]

• Madonna probably helped John McCain a bit by showing a video of him alongside images of Hitler, Robert Mugabe, starving children and global warming. Obama was depicted as Gandhi and John Lennon. Luckily for Obama this video has not yet been shown in the U.S. [Times]

• Amanda Beard denies she's dating Michael Phelps because that would be "nasty." Michael, however, isn't commenting on whether or not he's dating Lily Donaldson, or anyone else. [NYP]

Like most other all-night diners in the vicinity, Defamer's Washington Bureau is positively churning with activity a mere 11 weeks from Election Day. Alas, with so many other outlets having beat us to the punch regarding, say, Barack Obama's fund-raising prowess, we're left to cover an arguably more urgent and immediate controversy affecting liberal firebrand Roseanne Barr and her outspoken conservative archrival Jon Voight. And while it seemed like fun from a distance when the comedienne first lobbed mud last Friday, a closer look today has us dodging sallies in every direction.In case it slipped by you last week, Roseanne got off a Jon Voight blast labeling the Oscar winner as both a "used tampon" and "frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu" whose anti-Obama screeds are the bidding of the Republican Party. But Voight's an easy enough target; Roseanne, who's known to blame her worst writing on disgruntled interns rather than 'fess up to blogging under the influence, then took aim at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — and their kids:

• Paris Hilton either added implants to "her A-cup" breasts or wants to spread gossip that she did so she can sell her stupid "push-up" bra. (Yes, you can click the thumb if you need a closer look. Yes, you will feel dirty. But don't you kinda feel that way already?) [P6]

• Roseanne Barr is outraged that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt haven't endorsed Barack Obama, so she's taken them to task on her blog for being evil and vacuous, and for "trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity." [P6, RoseanneWorld]
  

Comedian Roseanne Barr took to her website yesterday and unloaded on everyone. Hey, it's fun! On Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: "jon voight your evil spawn angelina jolie and her vacuous hubby brad pitt make about forty million dollars a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a fuck about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more." And that's tepid compared with what she serves up for Voight himself, George Bush, John Edwards, and his former mistress Rielle Hunter.

If the recent VMAs promo made you wonder "Who's the Brit next to Brit-Brit?", then meet Russell Brand. We asked the British funnyman (and Forgetting Sarah Marshall star) to sit down with us in an effort to prove his pop culture bona fides before hosting the VMAs on September 7. Already a famous ladykiller in the U.K., can Brand prove equally charming as the emcee of MTV's biggest event? We solicited his thoughts on Miley Cyrus, Christian Bale, and hermaphrodite presidents in a bid to find out. DEFAMER: Russell, since American audiences are still becoming familiar with you, we wanted to see how familiar you are with the tastes of the American audience. RUSSELL: Right. DEFAMER: So we're going to give you the Defamer American Pop Culture Literacy Test. I'm just going to throw out famous names and you tell me whether you know them and what your take is on each. RUSSELL: OK!

Have you heard? Tom Cruise has positively rejuvenated his career with an unbilled, unrecognizable cameo in an R-rated action comedy yet to open! How should he best ride the buzz from his shockingly profane comic role in Tropic Thunder, the likes of which we have never seen him play before? What career move could he possibly make to show discerning audiences that his edgy side is no fluke? Two words: family comedy! That's right, Cruise has decided to forgo the title role in the CIA thriller Edwin A. Salt (perhaps inspired by his gender-blind clothes swapping, he's ceded the part to Angelina Jolie) in favor of a mawkish comedy so cutting-edge that it attracted the director of Drillbit Taylor. Says THR:

Angelina Jolie does so much good with her fame, she's almost like Bono, except her accent is more transatlantic than Irish. Or like Princess Diana, but alive. But sometimes, Jolie's fame is put towards evil use. For example, The Wanted. Also: spam. Jolie's name makes a lot of people click on emails. Secure Computing reports that each day, some 2.3 percent of all email traffic contains Angelina Jolie's name in the subject line. Think "Angelina Jolie naked," "Angelina Jolie nude movie," or "Angelina Jolie naked video,"writes InternetNews.com's Andy Patrizio. The 10 most common names associated with spam emails are below. We're glad to see so many people interested in nude movies featuring Barack Obama and George Bush.

• Guests at a Bridgehampton benefit thrown by Gwyneth Paltrow were upset they couldn't mingle with their A-list host on Saturday night, since she was sequestered inside the house and off-limits to partygoers. But the real reason she wasn't mingling with the crowd may have been because she ditched the party early to attend Mariah Carey's wedding bash at LA Reid's house. [R&M, Page Six, Fox411]

BREAKING NEWS: the $14 million People paid for the family pix of the latest batch of Brangelinaspawn was an unconscionable waste of money! Or so the bloghaterati would have you believe. "Sources" are telling a site called CoverAwards that the magazine sold a "disappointing" 2.5 million copies on newsstands, which amounts to just about $6 million in revenue, meaning the American public must have turned violently against Brangelina's nefarious scheme to strip mine their children's cuteness to enrich themselves and the various third world relief efforts to which they donate money. But we're not buying it! Because as the surprising success of NBC's wild $894 million dollar bid for the Olympics is teaching us, ours is a nation that has been longing for shared media experiences. Enough with the market segmentation and experience customization; bring us beach volleyball, bring us a classy speech emphasizing our role in the global economy, bring us a photogenic nine-person megafamily with no birth defects and decent hair, BRING US JOHN EDWARDS' CASTRATED…um…