Later today, angel-faced actor Matt Damon, his knees still lightly bruised from his humble reception of the gift of Grauman's immortality, will receive a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, an honor in no way connected to the imminent opening of The Bourne Ultimatum, in theaters August 3rd.

· Typical: Ben's the one running around in the stupid corn costume, but Matt's the one getting all the press.
· Lindsay Lohan's recent streak of trouble calls to mind the heyday of one of Hollywood's most accomplished fuck-ups.
· Just because we feel like Paris Hilton's been a little starved for attention today, here you go.
· Popular Mechanics looks at how close science is to replicating some of Harry Potter's favorite magical toys.
· Here's a list of the six trippiest scenes culled from The Simpsons' long, proud tradition of drug humor. The Guatemalan Insanity Peppers clip is a fine choice for #1.

After almost ten years of creative paralysis brought on by wondering when the Academy repo men would arrive to snatch the Good Will Hunting Best Original Screenplay Oscar from his mantel as punishment for every career-sabotaging choice he's made since 2002, Ben Affleck has decided to stop living in fear and take proactive steps towards winning a second one, phoning partner/lifelong BFF Matt Damon and inviting him on a creative retreat in Hawaii. Reports Us Weekly in their new Procrastinating Screenwriters, They're Just Like Us! feature:

Last week, PR man Ken Sunshine went on Anderson Cooper's little house of 360 right after Larry King's interview of Paris Hilton to help dissect it all. Sunshine was an interesting choice for the program, since Paris Hilton is just the kind of client Sunshine seems to avoid!

· Not only is Sanjaya Malakar bent on destroying American Idol, he's now corrupting Maxim Online's Hot Chick in a Skimpy Outfit of the Day feature. He must be stopped. Vote tonight and end this madness. [via LAist]
· Everything seems great in Jennifer Garner's family life—except, of course, for the small problem of her husband's crack problem: "'You know how as a kid you picture yourself with a tall, handsome husband, and you imagine him cuddling your baby?" she asks. 'Ben is like that, like, on crack.'"
· Fucking-averse HBO series Entourage curiously chooses Ron Jeremy's fuckpad for a location shoot.
· "The floor of the home was covered with a layer of animal feces between 2 and 3 inches deep, authorities said."
· These people are unafraid to ask some uncomfortable questions about the Death Star attack. Charlie Sheen endorsement TK. [via CC Insider]

Once again, the Defamer Correspondent for Anti-Defamatory Awards Shows managed to infiltrate the turreted pink fortress that is the L.A. edition of the annual GLAAD media awards (who says scouring Craigslist at the last minute for dateless and desperate velvet mafioso is a fruitless endeavor?), and brings us yet another exhaustive report from the awards banquet sometimes referred to as the "the Gay Gay Superbowl." We now deliver you to his capable hands:

Ben Affleck's big comeback bid—which was supposed to have culminated in the actor's triumphant return to the Academy Awards dais to accept his second, unshared Oscar for his work in Hollywoodland, thereby blotting out the memory of all Gigliian cinematic transgressions that came before it—alas did not come to pass. Still, that doesn't mean the actor has closed himself off to the possibility of fresh beginnings: In a recent interview, Affleck talked of his recent decision to quit smoking, and, what's more, a first-time experience with colonic irrigation:

Just in time for Valentine's day, Maxim Online brings us The Worst Love Scenes. "Worst" in this instance can mean anything from a lack of chemistry (as demonstrated by Jennifer Lopez's topping of a submissive, semi-comatose Ben Affleck in Gigli) to utter nausea-inducement (Rosie O'Donell's Nip/Tuck scene walks away with first place). But for our money, nothing ever quite comes close to approaching the too-perfect wrongness of the runner-up, the infamous James Spader-Rosanna Arquette scar fucking scene from David Cronenberg's Crash, where a pair of black fishnets and some staple sutures are all that stands in the way of the couple's ultimate expression of their extra-orificial passion.

We here at Defamer love the holiday season for no other reason than the bounty of movie critics' year-end lists and awards it brings us, like decrees handed down from on high from our pull-quote producing, thumb-direction-assigning cinematic sages. The Broadcast Film Critics Association adds another layer of intrigue to the process, dragging things out heightening the suspense by first releasing a list of nominees in every category, and later announcing the winners at the E!-broadcast Critics' Choice Awards—a mini-Oscars, as it were, only with the added feature of having Ryan Seacrest backstage to helpfully offer select Best Actor and Supporting Actor nominees stress-relieving lower back rubs. A partial list of the nominees, from The Envelope:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so send them in before attending to other basic human needs. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you saw a Mac attack a burrito.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so start sending them in more often. Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world hear all about the time you spotted television's Blossom, Mayim Bialik, looking so damn fine she nearly knocked the gay right out of you.

This weekend, actor, director, and oft-photographed househusband Ben Affleck took an important step in reclaiming some buzz for a once-promising career stalled by a blow to the head from James Gandolfini's shovel and ill-advised participation in various, doomed J. Lo-centered endeavors, as Aflleck's turn as Hollywoodland's suicidal TV Superman George Reeves won the best actor award at the Venice film festival. But the The Envelope's Gold Derby blog notes that stay-at-home dad Affleck probably shouldn't start arranging a nanny for Oscar night quite yet:

We don't have a lot of background on the above video (apologies if you've seen it before, but it's new and amazing to us), in which Ben Affleck plops Montreal TV host Anne-Marie Losique in his lap during an interview for Jersey Girl and immediately abandons all promotional duties in favor of the far more important work of molesting the giggling Losique while slurring French-accented come-ons. And, quite frankly, we don't care. Our uncomplicated enjoyment of the following exchange couldn't possibly be enhanced by anything as mundane as "context":

Yesterday, we noted how Ben Affleck recently bemoaned to a reporter at the Venice Film Festival about the ever encroaching eye of the moviegoing public, who allow frivolous external details about the actor's personal life to color their full enjoyment of his screen performances. (Perhaps, though we'd argue that no amount of photos of the actor on a Baby Bjorn-saddled latte run could ever dilute the simple, cinematic pleasures of James Gandolfini whacking him across the skull with a snow shovel.) An amused Defamer reader writes:

Late this afternoon, we are faced with a difficult choice: either stare into the yawning, unblinking void of nothingness that is the pre-Labor Day weekend Hollywood news landscape, or take a moment to soberly contemplate intermittently employed actor Ben Affleck's thoughts on the challenges facing the tabloids-and-paparazzi-plagued practitioners of his craft that he offered at the opening of his latest movie at the Venice Film Festival. Affleck wins the faceoff, if for no other reason than it gives us the opportunity to run this somewhat undermining photo of Affleck applying a punishing headlock to Hollywoodland co-star Bob Hoskins. Transcribes TMZ.com:

Showing a maturity far beyond that of the average seventeen-day-old infant, young Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt decided that curing the polio outbreak in her birth country of Namibia might be too showy an initial display of her powers, and instead opted for the more modest first miracle of assisting a Denver boutique in moving some overpriced t-shirts:

Is there no limit to God's glorious bounty in this, the high era of celebrity reproductiveness? Matt Damon and wife Luciana Bozan have become the proud parents of a baby daughter (having a boy at this point would seem almost unthinkably passe), born yesterday and named Isabella. Says Damon's publicist Jennifer Allen: "Mother and baby — everyone — is wonderful, fine." Within minutes of receiving word of the happy news, homemaker/former movie star Ben Affleck was on the phone with hearty good wishes, as well as a generous offer to make himself available for any questions or problems that may arise in the coming months. Damon soon found that he had to awkwardly remove himself from the conversation, however, once Affleck starting going all new-parent-geek on him, droning on about the exciting new advances in breast-pump technology, and a website that lets you customize your own Baby Björns, "down to the color of the stitching, man!"

· In describing whom her studio hopes to draw to The Break-Up's opening weekend, Universal distribution executive Nikki Rocco inadvertently confirms our suspicion that there is no such thing as "a Jennifer Aniston movie fan": "I would hope we could get the Vince Vaughn fans as well as the romantic comedy audience." [Variety]
· Winona Ryder reunites with Heathers writer Daniel Waters for his Sex and Death 101, news that just made us fondly remember how important the phrase "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" was to our teenage life. [THR]
· This information means nothing to us, but we pass it along anyone because somebody probably finds it important: Don Ienner and Michele Anthony leave posts as heads of Sony Music, bringing to an end the reign of the "longest running management partnership in music." [Variety]
· Katie Couric boldly predicts an end to the "pretentious era" in the network evening news, which she will usher out by conducting her entire CBS Nightly News broadcast dressed in a bathrobe and reclining on a sofa. [THR]
· Casey Affleck does his best to keep his big brother working in Hollywood, throwing Ben his animated family film script Aardvark Art's Ark to executive produce. [Variety]

Emergency room physicians in Cambridge were able to treat Ben Affleck's migraine attack yesterday, but despite their best efforts, were apparently unable to resuscitate his acting career. Reports the Boston Herald: