Brad Pitt has exposed himself in W—and we do mean exposed, Chuck Close's unforgiving photos highlighting every worry line to sprout across his iconic face since undertaking fathering duties to a knife-obsessed Cambodian mercenary.

It regrettable quote day! Josh Broslin called Russell Crowe an "asshole;" Lily Allen defended cocaine; Sumner Redstone bragged about sex and 30 Rock's Rip Torn insisted the ground was drunk, not him.

• Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick may seem really happy and content with life, but it's just a carefully-constructed façade that is now crumbling to pieces because Broderick can't stop himself from cheating. Or at least that's what the Star is claiming after it caught sight of SJP socializing with a real estate broker, something you wouldn't even think of doing unless you were planning to leave your husband and move out on your own, right? [Star]
• Peter Cook has filed charges against Christie Brinkley for refusing to hand over son Jack's passport so the two can go on a school trip to Egypt. [P6, OK!]
• Disgraced Lehman CEO Dick Fuld and his wife Kathy needed help using JetBlue's check-in kiosk in Palm Beach, poor things. [P6]
• Paris Hilton says she's not a slut because she's only had sex with "a couple of men," which, by that standard, means you're still a virgin. [The Sun]

A note taped to Defamer HQ's door greeted us this morning — not an eviction notice as we feared, but rather just another Weinstein news dump announcing Inglourious Basterds' [sic] eyebrow-raising late-summer '09 release date.

The rumor we heard about Brad Pitt knocking up Angelina Jolie isn't the most reliably sourced, but it is the most adorably sourced.

Though we were enamored of the backwards type and deer-in-headlights look that distinguished the poster for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, others found it terribly generic. Now, Slashfilm presents Paramount's alternate take.

A few months after Brad Pitt's security detail evacuated him from a perfectly safe Toronto hotel, TMZ sends late word that the actor is once again not threatened by an emergency near his L.A. home.

This isn't an easy time for Dan Loeb. (The billionaire hedge funder was forced to start renting his Gulfstream jet by the hour recently.) But hopefully he'll get a chance to enjoy the big day: He turns 47 today. Others celebrating: Katie Holmes is turning 30. Brad Pitt is 45. Steven Spielberg is 62. Christina Aguilera is turning 28. PR guru/filmmaker Dan Klores is 59. Randi Weingarten is 51. Memorial Sloan-Kettering chief (and Nobel Prize winner) Harold Varmus is turning 69. Keith Richards is turning 65. Model agency owner Faith Kates is turning 51. Ray Liotta is 54. Former Miss USA Tara Conner is 23. And troublemaking rapper DMX is turning 38.

• Is Jennifer Lopez getting ready to say goodbye to Marc Anthony? She neglected to wear her wedding ring to a premiere last week, which obviously means her marriage is now "at a breaking point." [Us, The Sun]
• Jeremy Piven is heading home. Just two months after arriving on Broadway (and after showing up late to performances and skipping matinees), he says he now plans to return to LA because he's suffering from some sort of "mysterious mercury ailment." [NYP]
• Good news for anyone going to the inauguration: Alec Baldwin says he plans to stay home and watch it on TV. [MSNBC]

Royal Tenenbaums director Wes Anderson doesn't typically work with two-time Sexiest Man Alive winners (keep trying, Schwarzbaum!), so to imagine what the director could do with Brad Pitt doesn't come easily.

We weren't aware that Jennifer Aniston's new dogcom, Marley & Me, was in urgent need of sexing up, but consider us duly apprised. So what is there to say about these new GQ pictures?

As all of America has no doubt been made aware of during her press tour for Marley & Me, Jennifer Aniston hates talking about Brad Pitt.

• Jennifer Aniston posed naked on the cover of GQ and inside said boyfriend John Mayer is "extraordinary" with his instrument, but couldn't name his big hit song: "Did not know much about him before I met him. I'd heard ... you know, uh 'Your Body' – that song."

We noted with some apprehension Angelina Jolie's seeming encouragement of son Maddox's growing fascination with guns, knives, and various other lethal things you can hide in a pocket.

Take that! In the game of tabloid one-upmanship that is Brad Pitt vs. Jennifer Aniston, Pitt has now issued his own volley meant to counteract Aniston's recent, attention-getting John Mayer praise (he thinks thoughts!). While talking to E!'s Giuliana Rancic at the Benjamin Button premiere, Pitt extolled on Angelina Jolie's beauty. "I get up some mornings and gasp," he said. Sadly, the simple remark ratcheted Aniston's Uncool-ometer from "Just Chillin'" to "Bogus." [E!]

♦ Either Mariah Carey is pregnant or she's determined to do whatever it takes to stay in the spotlight. The diva was spotted looking "ebullient" on her way out of an OB/GYN's office in LA, where she was greeted by a cheering entourage and seen clutching "what looked like a sonogram." [P6, Mirror]
♦ Kate Moss skipped champagne and wore a loose dress to a Vogue event in China, which means she must be pregnant, too. [The Sun]
♦ In an upcoming issue of O, Oprah says she's "fallen off the wagon" and now weighs 200 lbs. But she blames it on her "out-of-balance thyroid," which gave her "a fear of working out." [AP]
♦ Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich watching soccer at Nevada Smith's in the East Village with girlfriend Dasha Zhukova? We can hardly believe it. [P6]
♦ Steve Schwarzman insisting on remaining centerstage at yesterday's Vanity Fair photo shoot? That sounds likely. [P6]

Did People cut a sneaky deal with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to get photos of the couple's newborn twins? Absolutely yes, the New York Times said last month. Today? Absolutely not, says the Times.

Brad Pitt still has some work to do in New Orleans before he can attend to those areas of America hardest hit by the ravages of UncoolGate. Meanwhile, the woman who started it all—this week's EW covergirl, Jennifer Aniston—emerges a stronger woman, if forever a far less trusting magazine-profile subject:

Hypersexual lesbian temptress Ellen DeGeneres usually keeps her daytime chat show somewhat neutered, but today's Brad Pitt interview (beamed via satellite from New Orleans, where he was busy building homeless shelters using only the telekinetic energy stored up in each ab) really brought out the gay.

When you're done opening presents (slippers, again?) and eating your goose (not much meat, mostly fat) what will you do on Christmas? If you're like the rest of us gurgling popcorn stuffers, you'll go see one of the big ticket, Oscar-scented movies that are dancing on the screens down at your local multiplex. Australia, the Baz Luhrmann epic, will have been out for a month at that point, and its expensive glossy brother in arms, the life-in-reverse special effects vehicle The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, will have just come out that day. You'll spend a bundle on tickets and parking and snacks, and will it have been worth it? And, actually, will it have been worth it for the studios? Right now, the outlook seems pretty hazy. Australia cost a rumored $120 million to make, and Button is whispered about in the $150 million range. Which is astronomically expensive for movies that seriously hinge their box office receipts on resoundingly positive, ground-swelling reviews. There is always the potential for these films to be the next Titanic or Forrest Gump—darling little Oscar smashes that eventually became reviled bits of pop culture schmaltzery—but that's quite a gamble to take. It wasn't too long ago that the real things to see on Christmas were the Lord of the Rings films, big lush works of terrific filmmaking that they were. But those were exceptions to the increasingly depressing rule of large, painterly studio gambles being, for the most part, crap. So we wonder, then, why the Buttons and Australias of this world are still getting made, when the last four Best Picture Oscar winners were far smaller—and, most importantly, cheaper—in scale. Big budget box office thumps like The Last Samurai ($140 million) and Memoirs of a Geisha ($85 million) should have been the death knells of this creaky old idea of Holiday Prestige cinema. (Plus, nobody likes the Japs!) But here we're faced with Button, an FX-laden Magical Negro-besotted bit of Gumpery (though, Variety liked it! even if it's a bit "remote"), and Australia, a not that bad epic about a faraway land that, as a commenter astutely put it, is basically Canada with weirder mammals. In the core of my gooey heart, I hope they're both huge successes, because I sort of mourn the idea that the studios can make big, expensive, good dramas, but something tells me they won't win out in the end. We'll make early calls for Revolutionary Road (still studio, but way smaller), Slumdog Millionaire (a "specialty" studio pick-up), The Wrestler (tiny) instead.