Sydney Pollack, the director, producer and actor whose 1985 drama Out of Africa earned him that year's Best Picture and Director Oscars, died today at his home in Pacific Palisades. He was 73. He had suffered from cancer for more than a year, completing his final film — the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry — in 2005. Pollack worked at the helm of benchmarks in three decades including They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (for which he earned his first Oscar nomination), The Way We Were, Three Days of the Condor and Tootsie. He found his most significant acclaim after directing Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Out of Africa, going on to work with Tom Cruise (The Firm), Harrison Ford (Sabrina, Random Hearts) and Nicole Kidman (The Interpreter) in the years that followed.

· Archie put up a good fight, but it was grungemo disciple David Cook who reigned
Idol supreme.
· The Cannes Film Festival and the rest of the world thrilled to the launch of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of Holy Shit This Sucks.
· Paramount's newfound riches underwrote The 'Ow Shia's Balls' Jungle Coaster.
· Meanwhile, hairless Harrison Ford flies a mean Beaver.
· Denise Richards: It's Complicated. Is it? Is it really though? We guess when it gets into prostitute-tranny-infected semen territory, it is a little.
· Sex and the Shitty. Sex and the Shiksa. Sex and the Leaked-Sceney. Everything but the "City!"
· Naughty, naughty Miley.
· Cannes also welcomed an angry Spike, a controversial Che, an immodest Gwyneth and a snog-happy Lindsay.
· Who in the world is Jodie Foster shacking up with? It's the game taking America by storm!
· A tank top-doffing, pregnancy-budgeting Angelina Jolie drew raves from film critics as well as from homemade-heroin-tape viewers. Brad Pitt attempted payback by aging backwards in Spanish.
· Celebrity momabler Dina Lohan gets the TV show she deserves. Ali Lohan impresses David Letterman with her agreeability.
· The Bachelorette passes up a real gem. Awoooooo!
· Dissatisfied with MGM's lack of support, Tom Cruise went door-to-door via Google.
· Whose casting was stuntier: Jake Gyllenhaal's as a Persian prince, or Richard Dreyfuss's as Dick Cheney?

· We're sure Karen Allen is telling a very interesting story about how her involvement in the new Indiana Jones movie came about, but we're way too distracted by Sherri Shepherd's ghetto-not-so-fabulous sartorial homage to the legendary adventurer. [The View]
·The name's Jonas. Nick Jonas. Codename: Mooseknuckle. [Just Jared]
· LAist interviews local music legend—and Hotel Cafe Records artist—Jim Bianco. (Who we look like, according to about a half-dozen random people who've come up and told us so on the street.) [LAist]
· Nailed's EKG delivers a steady, ear-piercing shriek, as the production is shut down yet again. [Deadline Hollywood]
· The LAT details everything they observed backstage leading up to Wednesday night's historic American Idol finale. (Spoiler alert: They caught Syesha tucking in the men's room!) [LAT]

Nobody plays a better, more spirited prank than Defamer videographer and resident chameleon Molly McAleer. For vivid proof, look no further than her delivery of this weekend's To Do's, never missing a beat while hiding from co-star and BFF Kendall — right in plain sight! Natural wonders never cease, but our work week does, so read up and head out:

We love Dirt Sandwich, Defamer videographer and ToDoLogist Molly McAleer's weekly exercise in gossip-TV trash-compaction, for so many reasons. Among them, it gives us a chance to spend some time with Harvey Levin and his team of dude-monkeys over at TMZ, who find not-very-funny things (dental floss, Howard the Duck 2) ABSOLUTELY HYSTERICAL!!! Also in this installment: Charlize Theron in Secrets of the Casting Couch! Shayne Lamas wields a rod! And more cancer! Enjoy.

The ongoing, skull-melting hallucination yielding visions of Werner Herzog micromanaging Nicolas Cage's masturbation technique abated slightly today when, at a Cannes press conference for his new film Chelsea on the Rocks, director Abel Ferrara raised his first public objection to duo's planned remake of his 1992 effort Bad Lieutenant:

In case you hadn’t heard, Europe is expensive. Coffee costs five bucks, the dollar is like a penny, and it takes a lot of money to look as cheap as Victoria Beckham. And apparently, having a kid over there will set you back about $10 million. That is, if you’re Angelina Jolie and you’re giving birth to the world’s most important children, The Chosen Two. According to Life & Style, Brad and Angie are set to push out their newest soccer team members in France, where they’ll spend up to $20 million dollars on “birthing costs,” including every new mom’s standard requirements like helicopters, villas on the Riviera, and a fleet of nine cars. The full breakdown on just how expensive it is to have a kid when you’re Brangelina, after the jump.

We'd like to take this moment to treat our sponsors to a photo of us suggestively chewing on the bottom of our T-shirt, wearing nothing below the belt but a pair of red lace panties. Why? 'Cause they're hot! Are you hot? Then you should probably go here, where you'll find information on everything you need to do to receive your own special delivery.

As we combed through your touching condolences in the comments section under the post noting that Jodie Foster may have left longtime companion Cydney for Tell Me You Love Me showrunner Cynthia Mort, we came across one remark in particular that, while admittedly just a rumor, seemed to us intriguing enough a possibility to float among you, the all-knowing Defamer readership. It read:

Having barely recovered from the aneurysm-inducing shock of seeing America's Multi-Platform 3D Tween Sweetheart Miley Cyrus splayed nakedly across the pages of Vanity Fair—wet hair, Kool-Aid lips, and a look of seductive defiance that practically dares the observer to prove their stamina—emerges yet two more photos of a similarly suggestive, naked, and seemingly wanting-it-bad vein. In this suite—rumored to have been clearly marked "For Nick Jonas's Eyes Only," a restriction that went virtually ignored by the boundary-oblivious MySpace community—Cyrus gnaws hungrily on her own T-shirt. The intention? Clearly to drive its intended boy-band-member recipient, widely rumored to be a rabid garment-consumption fetishist, wild with desire.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

What's the only thing that could top a movie trailer featuring Brad Pitt aging backward? How about that same trailer featuring Pitt aging backward — en español? A sharp-eyed tipster today sends us our first glimpse of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the David Fincher-directed, Fitzgerald-inspired adaptation starring Pitt as a man whose life enters a complicated succession of romantic and historical phases when he ages in reverse. The English-language trailer is presently screening in advance of Indiana Jones 4, with an online launch expected in the weeks ahead; meanwhile, we'll take our grainy, "proximamente" Oscar bait where we can get it. [YouTube]

Tudors star and full frontal nudity club member Jonathan Rhys Meyers seems to have followed that old dictum: when in China, do as the Chinese do. Even when it means eating a hearty meal of juicy dog meat. As Radha Mitchell, his co-star in The Children Of Huang Sui, bloopered to reporters:

With his dreams of an eye-patched, SS-uniformed Oscar statuette slipping through his Hitler-hunting fingers, and his billion-year war bride having successfully sanded through her reinforced-leather ankle restraints and hightailed it to the Great White Way, Tom Cruise has responded to the steady unraveling of his meticulously constructed, intergalactic Camelot in the only logical fashion: by attempting to reclaim his own image. Beyond the "Take Back The Tom" campus marches planned around the country (ours meets at the Celebrity Center quad at 10), the NY Daily News is reporting that reps for the UA minimogul have fired off a Scary Hollywood Lawyer letter to millionaire-baby-outfitter Petit Trésor. Claiming they told Life & Style that the couple bought Suri $400,000's worth of high-thread-count swaddling cloths and ruby-encrusted platinum rattles (or enough to feed, heal, and clothe every child in Africa until 2069), the letter asserted that the sum was "simply false," "violates our clients' rights of privacy," and that the couple would therefore "request that you no longer use our clients as part of your public relations and marketing efforts."

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

As we established previously, little is happening movie- or industry-wise at the Cannes Film Festival; even Croisette-weary NY Times critic A.O. Scott is officially on the record now with his ambivalence about this year's crop. As such, we lead today's fest news round-up not with the general befuddlement over Synecdoche, New York or continued rapture around Che, but with the only story worth our consideration as the event slumps, thuds and dies until a phoenix-like restoration in 2009: OMG Is Lindsay, like, totally kissing Samantha Ronson? More press conference photos shameless paparazzi indulgence after the jump.

According to reports in everyone's favorite trusted supermarket tabloid, Britney Spears is allegedly deep in planning mode for Comeback #487. Sources tell the National Enquirer that Spears is shelling out up to $10 million on what sounds like a very tasteful, classy-by-way-of-Louisiana string of song-and-dance shows at The Palms, one of K. Fed's favorite places to sink into debt play the big baller. Where Spears is coming up with all this cash, considering most of her dough is currently going towards her father's daily rate for babysitting, is still a mystery. But based on the description of her latest plan to "jump-start her career," we're not so sure these shows will do much aside from force us to remember Britney Spears Comebacks number 1 through 486:

Defamer Attractions returns today with another round of movie scanning for your Memorial Day weekend. We already know you're planning at least two excursions to view Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (once out of drunken impulse, and once to make sure that really was the ending you saw before blacking out), but Indy alone does not a holiday make! At least one of the poor bastards sharing this opening weekend is bound to tank the worst, and yet another is a fine bit of foreign-language counterprogramming worth your consideration. And of course we've got a few new DVD choices for the agoraphobic, hungover and/or the cheapskates among us. As always, our opinions and projections are A) our own and B) impeccably fail-safe. Where should we start?

Yesterday, Charlie Sheen's camp accused Denise Richards of having exploited her children for her own publicity-whoring needs—and re-addressed the time Richards allegedly paused from hurling ambisexual- jailbait- porn-junkie accusations long enough to request a sperm donation of her ex. Now, the star of E!'s Denise Richards: My Undiagnosed Bipolarism Is Complicated is firing back. Talking to Page Six, the actress provided recent SMS evidence suggesting there may be more to her cancer-wishing, tranny-positive ex-husband than meets the eye:

Oh I can hardly believe it! Such language! No, not from the mewling hormone vessels (ack, remember those days?) on Gossip Girl, but rather the people who recap the episodes. The Calendar section of the LA Times recently made a funny (and possibly optimistic about teen sex) blunder while quoting the show in a next-day postmortem. Jenny, our littlest sexbot, was talking about her secretly homo boyfriend Asher and said "Is that why we went to third?" To which one of her silly friends replied "You went to third?" (Now, tell me because I'm curious, what is third to you? To me that means taking a ferry to fellatio farms or a caravan to cunnilingus corners, but I could be off.) Anyway, the LAT recapper, Jon Caramanica, thought they said "dessert" instead of "third." So his write up read: "Is that why we went dessert?" "You went dessert?!?!?!" As if they'd just been scarfing down fried macaroni and cheese and the Navajo chicken sandwich at Cheesecake Factory and then they'd gone for the cake. I guess it still works, actually. [From Regret the Error]