The beginning of May brings us so many things to celebrate: warm weather, late sunsets, flip-flops, May-he-co. It's also the start of the summer movie blockbuster cash-grab. To commemorate it, we've provided our humble predictions for the summer's obnoxious hits, laughable misses, erstwhile sleepers, and inevitable trends.

Ah, the buzz cut: that sometimes-risky, sometimes-successful ‘do usually sported by male celebrities when it's required for a role in a military/secret agent/futuristic film or because they need a quick way to change their public image. But no matter what their reasons are for taking the razor to the scalp, the look has roughly a 50/50 chance of working. Two of the most recent stars to shave it all off are Jennifer Aniston arm candy John Mayer and new member of the Movie Press-Generating Lawbreakers’ Club Josh Brolin, and while Mayer irritatingly manages to pull the look off despite his big head ego, Brolin’s close cut reveals a bit too much skin. Which immediately made us reminisce on buzz cuts of the past, both the bad (Hey, Jude), the good (pre-Scientology Tommy C.), and the very ugly (Attack Of The Killer Umbrella-Bearers):

Even though we’re a day late on this, Dark Knight’ s “ironic” lingerie model Maggie Gyllenhaal appeared on Letterman Wednesday night and charmed the pants right off Dave with talk of everyone's favorite celebrity topic: drugs. Speaking in her standard sweetly candid tone, Maggie told a tale of a nurse whose number we’d really like to get a hold of — seems this kooky practitioner who aided Maggie with a broken toe is more than eager to push bundles of those morphine-patches-disguised-as-"painkillers"—Percocets—on her patients.

"Mr. Ledger's death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive... He's just a clown painted on black velvet, but he's also some kind of masterpiece." [Times]

Midwesterner in NYC posed this question in the previous thread. It's as good as any ideas I've got. Thoughts? Will Ledger get that posthumous Oscar nod? Opinions? Bueller...?...Bueller...?

Saul Hansell quoted Digg CEO Jay Adelson defending the Associated Press (of which Hansell's publication the Times is a member). TechCrunch's Michael Arrington freaked out, natch. Adelson then attempted to further explain his complicated position, trying to be diplomatic. Yawn. As we've said before, and will say again, exercise your fair use rights under the law and shut up, because giving the AP attention just feeds its argument and therefore reinforces its position. Moving on:

The stress of playing one of the most legendary characters ever in one of the most hotly anticipated sequels ever didn't contribute to Heath Ledger's death in January, says the Dark Knight star. "Christian Bale has called rumours that Heath Ledger's role as The Joker contributed to his death 'ridiculous.' Ledger, who died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in January, was urged to seek help by crew on The Dark Knight after he reportedly became too involved in his character."

In a savvy bit of viral marketing set to reclaim Warner Bros.' Dark Knight campaign from the near-disaster of votive-and-flower-ready Why So Serious? multiplex displays, Batman fans are encouraged to stopwhatthey'redoingRIGHTNOW and allay their post-Ledger apprehensions at IBelieveinHarveyDent.com. There, Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent — a/k/a eventual Caped Crusader nemesis Two Face — exhorts visitors to join his campaign to "join the fight for Gotham."

It's probably too early for Warner Bros. to start rolling out the promotional stunts, but we can think of worse ways to build buzz for Dark Knight than by releasing swarms of actual bats around the city. And even better if they're bold enough to do it indoors. [Curbed LA]

· Not only do we now have video to better illustrate yesterday's Homer vs. Ancient Fertility God post, we also have a link to this delightful animated image of what he was planning on doing with that donut. [via BoingBoing]
· Like, in the Batman movies, maybe Two-Face will actually be an evil manifestation of Harvey Dent's repressed homosexuality? [Laughs] Now, that's interesting. Sure, maybe so.
· But as far as we know, no one's yet had a chance to confront Heath Ledger about the Joker as evil manifestation of repressed homosexuality.
· We take back what we said the other day, because now Courtney Love has never looked better.

· We're not going to do Warner Bros.' job for them, but if you go here, here (do a Ctrl-A on that one), here, and then here, you can figure out what the above picture is all about. Congratulations, you've successfully completed a viral marketing campaign.
· Only five felonies? Sizemore's totally losing his edge.
· Polanski throws a tantrum at Cannes, disappointed that the lapdog press didn't whip up some more challenging questions about hot-tube rape.
· "Tripping over a chihuahua" is the new "took two months' worth of prescription painkillers."
· If you plan on ever getting another good night's sleep, don't watch this.

While our reports of on-set mishaps are generally limited to the greater Los Angeles area, we are happy to field such dispatches from our far-flung operatives whenever the export of Hollywood's movie magic disrupts their workdays. A pair of Chicago-based tipsters have let us know about a fire that broke out on the Windy City location shoot of upcoming Batman sequel The Dark Knight:

As Katie Holmes gets set to star opposite Queen Latifah in Mad Money—the all-gal, low-budget buddy comedy that promises to do for her career what Taxi did for Jimmy Fallon's—comes the announcement that Maggie Gyllenhaal will be taking over as The Dark Knight's D.A. Rachel Dawes, the role Holmes originated in Batman Begins:

· Generally satisfied to produce movies that explore the lighter side of blowing shit up, Jerry Bruckheimer (and Disney) have acquired the movie rights to Mark Bowden's Atlantic Monthly terrorism article "Jihadists in Paradise," plunging Bruck into much darker explosion-related territory. [Variety]
· The team behind Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight continues to make impeccable casting decisions: after allowing Katie Holmes to "walk away" from reprising her character from Begins, they're close to signing up Aaron Eckhart to play Two Face. [THR]
· Al Gore will attempt to reverse global warming through a single day of simultaneous, worldwide rock concerts, a solution that climatologists have already dismissed as rooted more in the former Vice President's passion for the music of John Mayer than in proven science. [Variety]
· Various Fox entities (FX, 20th Century Fox TV, Fox Broadcasting) team up to shower Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy in cash for his showrunning/developing services. [Variety]
· Var thinks that Fox News Channel's right-wing Daily Show knockoff The 1/2 Hour News Hour feels like something "enterprising high-school kids with a video camera could replicate." [Variety]