Movie tough guy Jason Statham is just the latest celebrity to jump on the mystery stain fad. The Death Race star was spotted leaving popular Italian eatery Café Med with a rather large wet spot on the front of his t-shirt. Statham deflected any questions about the stain with the classic grade school defense, "That's for me to know and you to find out." Statham saw that interest in his stain was being to dwindle once he left the restaurant.

The death race is nothing new to the American experience, but the latest installment of Death Race strikes at the heart of futurist visions of an online video utopia. In this remake, which opened in theaters last Friday, digital technology quantifies all that rests in its path. It's not just video that gets blown to bits. It's also our standards. For entertainment, the ruthless measurement of content's mass appeal leads to the ultimate in mathematical reductionism — monetization, as YouTube's product managers might put it. As such, Death Race is more mockumentary than science fiction. Because its dark, profit-driven Web-video future is not just inevitable. It's already happened.The theme of people killing people with cars has been explored as fantasy in American motion pictures for years. The car chase is at the very core of popular cinema. Just as the camp of Ben Hur's chariot race was dispensed with in the first scene in Rome's arena from Gladiator, so does Death Race dispatch with the camp of Roger Corman's earlier production, Death Race 2000. Then, "T-video satellite" broadcast the race. Now? Choose from a hundred different angles and follow the driver you most closely identify with, all for the low, low price of $99 a heat or $250 for the full package. Mario Kart-style power-ups on the track complete the illusion of "interactivity," allowing viewers the visceral feeling that they alone decide who lives and who dies — just like in a videogame. The stargazing optimists at our sister site io9 noted that buried beneath the subtext of Death Race's villain, a prison warden played by Joan Allen, lay the hungry heart of a pageview baiter:

Welcome back to another edition of Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to the latest in abandon, excess and best-kept secrets at a theater near you. We're looking at an unusually busy — and maybe even unusually good — week for mid-August, with four new releases opening wide and Tropic Thunder looking to hold fast to No. 1. And while all the congestion is bound to squeeze at least one player out, a romantic opening at the art house is one of our favorite underdog selections to date. As always, our opinions are our own, but with this kind of unparalleled taste and accuracy, would you really want it any other way? WHAT'S NEW: Or perhaps, rather, "What isn't new?" Moreover, it's a fascinating week of studio test drives for stars of varying magnitudes, with Jason Statham vs. Anna Faris vs. Rainn Wilson vs. Steve Coogan vs. Ice Cube and all of them forced to open against a Tropic Thunder crew looking for payback after last week's disappointing take. It's not an even playing field, but Universal's updating of Death Race 2000 — now known simply as Death Race, for action fans afraid of big numbers — has the best advantage with Statham's bankable, monosyllabic heroism set for a $17.5 million take.We're pulling for Faris, meanwhile, as sharp and enduring (and continually underrated) a comic talent as anyone churned out of the Apatow stable, yet whose The House Bunny may not have the legs it needs to hop over The Dark Knight and into third place. The hell with it — we're calling for $11 million, which should narrowly surmount Batman by about $750,000. The Weinstein touch will do pretty much what you expect for Ice Cube's PG-rated (and Fred Durst-directed) The Longshots, nudging it only slightly over $6 million. Coogan's mixed-reviewed Hamlet 2 — which Focus bought this year at Sundance for $11 million — won't break the Top 10 in limited release. Also opening: The Tori Spelling-starring Lovecraft adaptation Cthulu; the revealing (if slightly precious) documentary Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer; and the wasted Germs/Darby Crash biopic What We Do is Secret, hands down the most dreadfully misconceived LA rock film since The Doors. THE BIG LOSER: It's not like we're not pulling for Rainn Wilson in The Rocker or anything, but seeing Fox set him up as the next Jack Black in his first real leading role — a flabby, flamboyant man-child drummer who reclaims his dream of rock stardom by joining his nephew's band — only to have him crash with maybe $5.5 million tops? It's almost enough to make us wish for his return to those not-too-long ago Bob Shaye glory days. Or at least a new season of that sitcom in which he seems to excel.