The Sundance Film Festival this afternoon unveiled the competition lineup for its 2009 incarnation (a/k/a the One You're Boycotting), and it's a sharp crop of international cinema that will no doubt be met with accolades and not just a few bounced checks from cash-strapped indie distributors. Follow the jump for our quick, dirty, reductive and completely arbitrary survey of the fest's hottest titles and trends.

This election year has proved a boon for the chattering class of political pundits, but there are few on cable news who can break things down as well (or as loudly) as comedian Chris Rock. After making a memorable appearance on Letterman in September to rebut Bill Clinton ("Hillary lost!"), Rock showed up at a Barack Obama rally in Tampa over the weekend, and it wasn't to promote Madagascar 2. While joking that he took his children trick-or-treating Friday at John McCain's many houses, Rock critiqued the Republican candidate's own wife-swapping, $100 million bailout of yore. "You want somebody who can relate to what you have to say," Rock continued. "Like if I have problems getting laid, I wouldn't call Brad Pitt 'cause he wouldn't know what I was talking about!" Clip above.

Anne Hathaway chatting on her cell phone in the West Village and then hopping into a cab ... Philip Seymour Hoffman smoking a cigarette and pushing his bike ... Richard Gere and Chris Rock leaving ABC studios ... Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen holding hands ... Jude Law crossing the street ... Dexter's Michael C. Hall arriving at JFK ... Sarah Jessica Parker holding her son's hand as they walk down the street ... Katie Holmes carrying a doll alongside Suri ... George H. W. Bush walking to lunch ... Taylor Momsen on the set of Gossip Girl ... Alec Baldwin holding an iced coffee outside NBC ... Helen Mirren pushing a cart on the sidewalk .. Clay Aiken leaving the Shubert Theater ... and Ivanka Trump outside the Waverly Inn.

Drew Barrymore walking in the West Village ... Alex Rodriguez leaving a workout at the Reebok Gym ... Spike Lee posing for photos outside a hotel ... Julianne Moore carrying a shopping bag ... Kelly Ripa and David Blaine hanging upside down in Central Park for a Live segment ... Blake Lively and Leighton Meester walking around the Gossip Girl set ... Real Housewives' Alex McCord posing on the red carpet at the Metropolitan Opera season opener ... Actor Mark Ruffalo holding hands with his wife as they cross the street ... Natasha Bedingfield and Caroline Rhea leaving ABC Studios in Midtown ... and Chris Rock and Lance Armstrong outside the David Letterman show.

As in his appearance on the View, Bill Clinton offered the most tepid support possible for Barack Obama's presidential ticket on David Letterman's Late Show last night. After repeatedly invoking his vanquished wife Hillary, Clinton said the typical American voter will recall John McCain's heroic torture in a Vietnamese prison camp before deciding to "go the other way" and vote for... whoever that other candidate for president might be. In an inspired feat of booking, Letterman had comedian Chris Rock lined up to follow Clinton and, uh, remind him who won the primary. Video after the jump.

Bad news for Real World cast member-turned Congressional candidate (D-Pop Culture) Kevin Powell: Dave Chappelle totally spaced out on Powell's fundraiser in Brooklyn last night, costing him the crucial Chappelle-fan vote! The comedian was supposed to headline the fundraising show, but never appeared, possibly because he is crazy. Then Chris Rock refused to go on too, in solidarity! And it only got worse for Powell: a drunk journalist, for chrissake, tried to grab the mic and steal the show [UPDATE: And there's a video!]:

An unnamed reality show accused Chris Rock of having sex with a British minor in South Africa where the comedian is touring, according to a court official. The show sent a fake prosecutor to court and told Rock that South African police were going to arrest him; he quickly called his lawyers. The AFP hasn't found the name of the show that pulled the prank. But of course it'll get on TV with no whiff of scandal because ha! ha! Statutory rape! Photo: Getty

As we learned recently, SNL's Chris Farley was far from coddled or loved during his final years by fellow cast members. And now, a new biography on Chris Farley titled The Chris Farley Show will divulge more depressing tales from friends of Farley and how exactly they went about attempting to help the struggling addict get better (hint: they didn't). From former co-stars dishing on his desperate attempts to be loved using prostitutes to anecdotes involving his habit of licking everything from his shoelaces to his wallet, one revelation made by Chris Rock stands out:

The salacious details of Chris Rock's model-smearing exploits with Anthony Pellicano were front-and-center at the disgraced PI's wiretapping trial this morning, when the comic took the stand for less than an hour. It was barely the most appealing Pellicano morsel in Variety today, in fact, with arguably the year's greatest headline — Weiner Gets Served in Pellicano Case — announcing the Huffington Post reporter Allison Hope Weiner's temporary restraining order yesterday outside the courtroom.

Maybe this Anthony Pellicano trial isn't as hopelessly bereft of A-list manure-flinging as we had initially thought. Just a day after Garry Shandling's bitterly frank testimony about former manager Brad Grey—which so riled the Paramount Emperor that the planned The Love Guru ice cream social was cancelled with a company-wide e-mail instructing staffers to, "Go enjoy a cup of Garry Shandling's steaming, fudge-covered horseshit instead"—comes something even better: A tape, which prosecutors say was made by Pellicano and obtained by The Huffington Post, containing a 31-minute conversation between Chris Rock and the private investigator. Rock secured Pellicano's services after the then-separated comedian engaged in a brief fling with what he describes as "a girl with big tits and white pants" back in 1998, who then turned around and accused him of rape. (Interesting side note: He took her to a dinner party at Guy Oseary's house attended by Madonna and Elisabeth Shue!) The charges were ultimately found to be bogus, and were never officially filed.

Comedian Chris Rock features prominently in a recording being used against Hollywood private detective Anthony Pellicano in his trial for wiretapping and racketeering and posted at midnight by the Huffington Post. In it, Rock and Pellicano discuss allegations from a woman Rock once slept with while separated from his wife, who accused him of fathering her child (proven false) and raping her (charges never pressed, hew own lawsuit later dropped). The audio sheds light on the tactics Pellicano used on behalf of showbiz clients like Rock, and includes Pellicano saying things to Rock like, " I want to make [the rape accuser] out to being a lying, scumbag, manipulating, cocksucker, so that all that could ever come back to her is that." The Post is already on the story. A summary of the dialog between Pellicano and Rock, including audio highlights, after the jump.

Full name Christopher Julius Rock III, the perennial jokester and ofter provocateur was born in 1965 in South Carolina and raised in Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy. His father was a trucker and deliveryman who died of a stomach ulcer 1988, and his mother was a social worker. After dropping out of high school due to racially charged bullying (don't worry he eventually got his GED and got to laugh in the face of those bullies when he got rich), Rock worked a series of highly paid, dignified, lucrative fast-food restaurant gigs while he began to experiment with stand-up comedy.

Ah, the 90s—when times were simple, and phones had cords. Two trends we look back on fondly: the brief popularity of collect calling plans like 1-800-COLLECT (when was the last time you made a collect call, while not in a foreign country or incarcerated?) and the innocent sight of celebrities (who would one day sit astride the earth as legends) doing the schlubby crap that defines the workaday life of a not-famous-enough-yet star. So this 1-800-COLLECT ad featuring dead SNL Smirk King Phil Hartman embodies all the purity of that bygone age. And hey, look at who else is in this stupid ad! I guess work is work, until that big break in Nurse Betty comes along. Video [via Best Week Ever] below.

The Washington Post Co. launched a new black culture site this morning called The Root, and Editor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has already made both Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters proud by making a celebrity cry. In a brief, unaired PBS interview posted to the site, Harvard professor Gates informs comedian Chis Rock that one of his ancestors enlisted as a Union soldier in the Civil War and was promoted to corporal. Rock is overcome and starts to cry, though he bounces back with a joke by the end of the video. Also, actor Don Cheadle isn't sure how to handle the news that his ancestors were enslaved by Native Americans instead of white people and Morgan Freeman gasps at a revelation about his white great-great grandfather. The main Washington Post site should be totally jealous of this content!

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in often. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line so we don't lose them) and tell everyone about the time you overheard Matthew Perry having trouble understanding movie trailers.

Hey, so the Vanity Fair Africa issue hit newsstands today! Guest-edited by Bono! We rushed out to get our copy and brought it to the office where we realized that, you know, we're kind of shallow. Isn't Africa kind of last fall? We don't have the attention spans for that stuff. You know what we do care about, though? Celebrities! And with twenty different celebrity-studded covers, the magazine kept up involved for a good five minutes looking at the Annie Leibovitz compositions. Each one blends one subject from the previous cover, so you've got your Don Cheadle and Barack Obama giving way to Barack and Muhammad Ali. Here's a handy guide to who you'll want to look for at the newsstand.

While comedian Richard Jeni's suicide was obviously hard on longtime friend and frequent Houston's dining companion Chris Rock, he made sure to work up to the Acceptance stage of grief before taking a seat on David Letterman's couch so as not to bring down the show with depressing sentiment. Rock then unexpectedly progressed to the little-known sixth stage of the Kübler-Ross model, This Is Sad And All, But I Have A Movie To Promote, eliciting relieved laughs from an audience eager to know that it's OK for everyone to get on with their lives following a brief, uncomfortable talk show discussion of a recent tragedy.

· Premiere offers a gallery of "The 20 Worst Post-Oscar Career Choices." Study this carefully, young Jennifer, lest you go the way of the Fricker.
· Olbermannwatch.com, the Keith Olbermann-bashing blog, has shuttered its windows, realizing they were just helping raise the Countdown host's profile. Perhaps it's time for them to escalate the battle to Phase 2: Distributing this picture of him to everyone in their address book.
· Yay! Thanks, French Ambassador Gerard Errera!
· Chris Rock would like everyone to know that everything on the home front is hunky dory, thank you very much. Always a bad sign.
· Homophobic dirtbag radio host Michael Savage (whose family owns Rockstar energy drink, FYI; adjust your caffeinated-battery-acid consumption habits accordingly) won't be seen around the CAA Death Star after all, as the recent signee to the agency is dumped after word got around about his "I don't like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke" comments re: Melissa Etheridge.
· Famous person sires two babies! Simultaneously! It's a holy sign!

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so send them in as quickly as your little fingers can type them. 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 Eric Clapton folding his underwear in public.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are posted several times a week, so do whatever it takes to get them in. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the night Wayne Brady didn't have to choke a bitch in order to enjoy a fun-filled evening in WeHo with Jai "the first Queer Eye to be eaten if the Fab Five were to get stranded in the Himalayas" Rodriguez.