Last week, rage-tastic The Fighter director David O. Russell was doing "abdominal exercises" with his 19-year-old transgender niece and "asked questions about her transformation." Then, according to TMZ, this happened:

Charlotte York MacDougal Goldenblatt herself has the lead in a new TV movie. Also today: The Biggest Loseer loses, 2 Broke Girls are rich, Julia Stiles gets a plum role, and Lizzy Caplan shows up.

Because there are too many shows about teachers and scientists and artists and hobos out there, one network is boldly doing a show about lawyers. Also today: a doctor becomes a ghost dad and Joe Rogan is back, ladies.

After years of oppression, rich people in LA are at last going to get the treatment they deserve. Also today: Superman has a new mom, Game of Thrones has a new queen, David O. Russell likes lookin' at the ladies, and some Good Wife news.

After a long time away, the one-time celestial teen queen of broadcast television is returning to the small screen. Also today: We might, coincidentally, have a new Juliet; a cult favorite cartoon gets a second season; and, no folks, 30 Rock is not dying. Probably.

• Debra Messing just cannot stay away from the gays! This is what everyone will say about the new pilot she's going to star in, Smash. She'll play a lyricist working with a GAY MAN on a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. This is an NBC sitcom pilot all about a musical! So who cares about the gay guy?? Debra Messing could be doing this show with a ten-pound stinkbug and I'd be excited about it. The Debra Messing part could itself be played by a ten-pound stinkbug and I wouldn't care. (I'd maybe even be more excited?) Let's forget the Grace 2.0 stuff and focus on the fact that Glee has made theater slightly cool for a hot minute and enjoy it. [Deadline]

Well, it's that most wonderful time of the year again. No, not Christmas, the war against which we are fully waging. We mean Oscar season! Some early awards have been given out, so it's time to start the prediction game.

Here's a trailer for David O. Russell's boxing drama The Fighter, a modern Cinderella Man, the based-on-a-true-story tale of a scrappy, over-the-hill boxer who beats the odds. It seems full of that Boston blue collar-gawking that's gotten a bit old.

A mystery hunk is gay. And he's going to announce it to the world on 90210. Also today: David O. Russell storms off another set, Sela Ward is given a gun and a badge, and Dustin Hoffman's new TV career.

Mark Wahlberg finally gets to fight. Jenny Bicks is a writer you should be jealous of. People love a good real-life murder mystery, whether it's set in Aruba or Colorado. And they love Debra Messing too.

Movies get directors, and they also get Matthew McConaughey. The Office actors just got rich, and fat people just got validated, in glorious reality show form.

· Showtime and Stan Lee are indeed developing a drama about the life of a gay superhero, as Hero author Perry Moore hinted back in May. And he just happens to be gay, OK? He's not, like, Poppers Boy or Wonder Trannie. [Variety] · Michael Moore is shifting the scope of his next movie from foreign affairs to the U.S. economy, allowing him to return to the struggling backroads of Roger & Me's Flint, where he's shocked to find the "Rabbits: Pets or Meat" lady has expanded her roadside stand into HARECO—the world's largest bunny-distributing conglomerate. [THR] · Meryl Streep will star in a movie based on Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. Finally! A cat movie from grownups! [Variety] After the jump: Which new dad is going to wish they never even heard the name David O. Russell in a matter of months?· ABC won the night with the Three Hours of Country Music Industry Auto-Fellation You'll Never Get Back Again Awards. [Variety] · Matthew McConaughey's life is about to be made a living hell by director David O. Russell in The Grackle, about a "barroom fighter in New Orleans who hires himself out for $250 to settle disputes." He then dispatches a couple of walleyed Malibu surfers to beat the shit out of the warring parties. [Variety]

Evidently unhappy with the zero-percent residuals trickling in from successful film adaptations of their properties, publishers in recent years have sought a variety of ways to nudge their shares of adaptation profits higher. But where Random House took the initiative in 2005 to offload Reservation Road and other forthcoming titles to the screen in a deal with Focus Features, today we're learning of an even more progressive strategy by Simon & Schuster: The publishing giant has a new packaging deal that will kick back 25% of revenues on adaptations of young-adult titles like its successful Spiderwick Chronicles. But that's not the forward-thinking part — anyone can sign on for a quarter of nothing; it's getting the green light that's hard. Which, shockingly, is where a misanthropic old friend of Defamer enters with one for the kids:

[Photo Credit: X17]

Bad news for film fans but delicious news for those of you who love DVD extras: David O. Russell's political comedy Nailed has been shut down again, for the fourth time. As per Nikki Finke, the trouble-plagued production "was shut down by IATSE on Friday for the same reasons as before: crew not getting paid," though Variety reports that filmmaking is scheduled to resume today for two more days of principal photography. As enticing as the film's synopsis sounds (Jessica Biel has nail shot into her forehead, becomes nymphomaniac) we must concur with Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells, who'd prefer to skip straight to the making-of documentary where the mercurial O. Russell calls Biel a string of nasty names she hasn't heard since Ruthie hit puberty on 7th Heaven.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

[Photo Credit: Flynet]

Here we go again: Nikki Finke is reporting that production on David O. Russell's Nailed has shut down once more as IATSE brass pulled members off the set over "payroll irregularities." "Friday was supposed to be the deadline set for the crew to get paid since there was a promise of a loan being made by then," Finke writes. "But IATSE apparently lost its patience with all the smoke-and-mirror promises so today the union ordered its crew to walk off the production." No word yet from Capitol Films chief and noted yacht renter David Bergstein, who attributed SAG's earlier walk-off to dodgy bridge financing that he insisted had since been resolved. We hear that Russell, meanwhile, still smarting from Cookiegate and his previous work stoppage, is spending his day off calling around for quotes on jinx insurance. [DHD]

All the drama affecting David O. Russell's new film Nailed settled down a bit Monday when production resumed on the South Carolina set. But while the producers squared away their money issues with SAG, which shut shooting down last Friday, our own suspicions about precariously-budgeted distributor ThinkFilm got another look from Variety yesterday afternoon:

We can't imagine how or why, after the ordeals of Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees, trouble could possibly find its way back to the set of a David O. Russell film. Alas, there it is — or, was, rather, in South Carolina, where only three weeks after resident cookie-choking expert James Caan quit the project, both the Teamsters and IATSE are grumpy and SAG reportedly shut production down because of "insufficient funds on deposit with the guild." And that's just the beginning, writes Nikki Finke: