We don't generally turn to inspirational humanitarian news for our gossip, but that's where we found sort of an accidental blind item hiding in plain sight over the weekend. According to the OC Register, a 17-year-old Zimbabwean boy named Beloved traveled to the States last year for reconstructive surgery on his face; he had been disfigured in a land-mine explosion when he was 10. The cost: $180,000, which a charity administrator named Jennifer Trubenbach had reportedly wrangled from a "movie star, whose face is a common sight in celebrity magazines." And why won't she name him? Because the next thing she knew, the star yanked the cash:

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to peaks, valleys and pratfalls among the latest new movies in theaters. And finally, after consecutive weekends when we thought God had up and abandoned us with the feral makers of College and Disaster Movie, we have some real films to write about. So read on for our typically expert preview of what's what at the box office, including Coen surprises, Alan Ball atrocities, potential ladyfights, timely new DVD's and one melodrama to rule them all. As always, our opinions are our own; you simply can't fake this kind of refinement, taste and acuity. WHAT'S NEW: So Burn After Reading is good — more admirable than likable, really, with the Coen brothers returning to their parched well of overmatched dolts in possession of objects way beyond their ken. This time it's Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand attempting to blackmail a CIA analyst (a bracingly potty-mouthed John Malkovich) whose "memoirs" they've found lying on their gym's floor; Tilda Swinton and George Clooney join in as awkward archetypes of paranoia and aloof, striving America. If we sound glib, that's Burn for you — a plot- and style-allergic screwball comedy that succeeds primarily as an almost-clean break (even Pitt's character is ultimately a red herring) from two decades of recycled Coen tropes.Alas, it's 20 years too late for some moviegoers, whose Coen aversion will keep Burn and its high-octane ensemble around $16 million for the weekend. That might be enough to surpass the De Niro/Pacino miscarriage Righteous Kill for second place overall, but we don't think anybody will overtake The Family That Preys — or, excuse us, Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. The distinction matters, too: Even with 1,000 fewer screens than Kill, the dude is a box-office witch with a cult following and increasing crossover juice (Kathy Bates!) that'll push Family to $19.5 million in three days. Not that we've seen it — Perry doesn't avail his films to the press — but it's still fascinating stuff; we'll have more on him here later in the day. Also opening: The chatty, mostly misleadingly titled Young People Fucking; Takashi Miike's acid-trip spaghetti Eastern Sukiyaki Western Django; the flashback-y Jewish family drama A Secret; the enviro-alarmist doc FLOW: For Love of Water; and Matthew McConaughey's shirtless adventure Surfer, Dude. THE BIG LOSER: Here and elsewhere, we've made little secret of our disdain for Towelhead, Alan Ball's thoroughly revolting, exploitive, amateurish, illiterate and borderline retarded sketch of molesty, multi-ethnic suburban ennui. It's not worth getting into again — that's what Google's for — but look at it this way: Warner Independent Pictures didn't fold because it couldn't compete; it was poisoned. If you pay money to see this movie, you could be next.

It wasn't just the Lumenick/Ebert skirmish that took nearly a week to reach the states via specially trained Canadian gossip pigeons. Now we're learning more about the fire that threatened Burn After Reading co-star Brad Pitt at his hotel in Toronto — or perhaps "threatened" is too strong a word. Maybe "damaged an adjacent complex while Pitt's security detail freaked the fuck out" might be a little more on point, according to a report:

Our office's crystal ball usually tends to function best on Fridays — and even then, as we handicap new releases in our Defamer Attractions column, it can be a tad hinky. But after a few weeks of painstaking inquiry, we think we now have a handle on some of the fall movie slate's biggest revelations to come. Will Brad Pitt backward-age his way to Oscar immortality? Is Twilight really the best investment for your vampire-movie dollars? Can Beverly Hills Chihuahua live up to its exceptional promise? Follow the jump for answers to those and a few of the season's other pressing questions. Feel free to scan your own tea leaves as well; our own oracle shuddered and crapped out the minute we asked about Australia, so any and all input is welcome. Onward!1. Brad Pitt will win an Academy Award. We know the post-Toronto establishment has all but engraved Mickey Rourke's name on this year's Best Actor Oscar (hell, even Rourke has engraved his name on this year's Best Actor Oscar), but taking both The Wrestler (release date TBD) and Pitt's epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12/25) sight unseen, we'll take the aging-backward-on-other-people's-bodies gimmick over the gritty indie comeback 10 times out of 10. Not that it won't be close: Brad Grey will spend more on his old pal's campaign than Fox Searchlight is probably ready to drop on Rourke's, but Rourke will be the more accessible nominee to the media. Look for dark horse Sean Penn (Milk) to split the field late; Focus Features won't settle for another 0-fer in '08. 2. W. (10/17) will tip the election to the GOP. Opening less than three weeks before Election Day, the film will be too muddled to move the Democrats yet irreverent enough to galvanize the Republican base against Hollywood one more time before voting. Oliver Stone will be recognized as the new Ralph Nader. 3. You're going to miss Don LaFontaine a lot more than you think. Otherwise execrable trailers like this one for The Haunting of Molly Hartley (10/31) acquired bittersweet relevance overnight: 4. The Weinstein Company will muscle its way back to prominence. Harvey had a relatively hemorrhage-free summer, closed out by his $16 million-grossing (and counting) Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Meanwhile, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (10/31) left Toronto with goodwill to spare, the LA immigrant saga Crossing Over (10/24) has Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and others channeling Crash, and the company bumped up The Reader for Kate Winslet Oscar consideration. (NB: The Rourke Factor also reportedly inspired Harvey to finally slot his long-shelved Killshot on Nov. 7.) The Weinsteins being the Weinsteins, of course, the operation could crash at any time, but at least the ensuing conflagration promises Hindenberg levels of spectacle. That's our Harvey. 5. Owen Wilson will emerge from, return to hiding after explaining the trailer to Marley & Me (12/25). That is all.

• Katie Holmes got a visit from concerned ex-boyfriend and former Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson at rehearsals for her Broadway play, a British magazine reported. Jackson had this crazy idea that Holmes has been sucked into an isolating Scientology vortex, but Holmes was still thrilled to see and de-Thetanize him. [Showbiz Spy]

• 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:

And just like that, the Telluride Film Festival is over — the sequestered Colorado tradition known for anointing and/or unveiling awards-season front-runners en route to Toronto and beyond. But with no Juno this year to charm visiting critics and distribution bosses alike, Labor Day came and went instead with rangy early takes on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's long-awaited (and reportedly just long) saga of Brad Pitt aging backwards. While we had pretty much gotten used to the film's stirring Spanish-language trailer, a few closer reads of previews emerging from the Rockies suggest the final result might be a little more complex: Extraordinary digital effects! Romance! And, alas, disappointment:

• George Clooney's ex-girlfriend Sarah Larson may have cheated on the actor when she had a "weekend fling" with a "media mogul," although it appears she's paying for her crime since her new boyfriend is a lowly nightlife promoter named Joey Vanas. [P6]

With the exciting news that Brad Pitt has won his second best actor chalice today at the Venice Film Festival—for what the judging committee deemed his "indomitable spirit both on and off the screen, his effortless embodiment of the American masculine ideal, and the way sucking up to him will facilitate future access to his impossibly fertile and glamorous life partner, Angelina Jolie"—we thought it time to finally time to take a look at the movie which ushered him to victory. We speak, of course, of the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, which had its world premiere tonight at the festival. If Pitt, as Javier Bardem did before him, could win top accolades with a hairstyle this ridiculous looking, then this truly must have been another masterwork from the sibling geniuses. Let's see what the critics are saying. (And yes, spoilers ensue.) · The Guardian uses the word "triumph" and gives it four stars out of five, calling it "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn't be in bigger contrast" to No Country for Old Men, but that the Coens film it most closely resembles is "the divorce-lawyer comedy Intolerable Cruelty." Everyone gets a chance to shine comically, but "Pitt, in fact, gets the best of the funny stuff, [though] has by some way the least screen time of all the principal cast." [The Guardian]· Counterpoint! Variety hated it. Calling it a "dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C.," Burn "tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller," with "with arch and ungainly results." Further, a "seriously talented cast" has been "asked to act like cartoon characters," with everything turned up to a "grotesquely exaggerated extent." [Variety] · Yeesh. That last one didn't go so well. Let's go back to loving it again! The Times Online also gives it four stars. Noting it's the first Coen-penned screenplay since 2001's The Man Who Wasn’t There, they compare it to Raising Arizona and Fargo (yay!) in its "savagely comic taste for creative violence and a slightly mocking eye for detail." Carter Burwell’s score is a "brilliant...paranoid piece of film music," though if the movie lacks for anything, it's "warmth." [Times Online]

• 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]

• 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:

• 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!

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.

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…

Until this week, it was taken as gospel that everything touched by peripatetic partners Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would turn to gold; in fact, newsstand operators were ordered to wear sunglasses when the two released pictures of their Chosen Twins to People, so bright was the babies' gilded glow. Sadly, it looks like the exclusive that People paid so heavily for has resulted in a newsstand baby bump that was significantly less than they'd projected. Says Cover Awards:

• Supposedly, Mary-Kate Olsen could get drawn back in to the Heath Ledger investigation "should new information become available... 'She's somebody they still have their eyes on.'" [The Awful Truth]