Disney announces that it lay off 160 employees from their feature animation unit (Pixar workers are safe) in the next couple of weeks, generously offering newly superfluous employees an opportunity to spend much more time with their families during the holidays. [Variety]
Comedy Central orders six episodes of the Amp'd Mobile-originated animated comedy series Lil' Bush: Resident of the United States, a move that will surely send basic cable copycats scrambling to misguidedly snatch up the rights to whatever wallpapers and ringtones they find on their children's cellphones. [THR]
Foreign audiences once again prove they're not interested in seeing any film (not even the one with the rats going down the toilet!) but Casino Royale, which takes the international box office crown with $44.7 million, raising its worldwide total to $312.4 million. [Variety]
CBS extends David Letterman's contract through 2010, ensuring that Letterman will remain on the air longer than Jay Leno, who will be replaced on the The Tonight Show by Conan O'Brien in 2009 unless he discovers a way to quietly dispose of his youthful usurper. [THR/AP]
· Kevin Spacey finds a leading man for his MIT card-counting pet project 21, relative unknown Jim Sturgess. Spacey will produce, and may opt to play the lead's mentor himself. Please, no "Spacey mentors up-and-coming actor" jokes. You're far too classy for that. [Variety]

Sunday's NY Times explored Warner Bros.' outwardly inscrutable decision to hand over the reins of holiday "tear-jerker" We Are Marshall to Charlie's Angels fauxteur McG, whose seizure-inducing directorial gifts and well-documented fear of flying would appear to be fundamentally incompatible with a project requiring a heavy reliance on gimmicks like "story" and "emotion" and which prominently features a phobia-flaring plane crash. In the article, McG (given name: not actually McG) bristles at length over the baseless perception that he's artistically limited to the attention-span-destroying aesthetic established in the Angels movies:

George Clooney, Danny DeVito's limoncello pusher, has his own reason to throw back a few rounds of the potent, amnesia-inducing yellow liquid: His longtime porcine companion, a 300-pound potbellied pig named Max, has finally succumbed to a series of swine ailments and passed on to the pearly pigsty in the sky:

Over the weekend, a reader sent along this clip from the first sketch of the first-ever epuside of The Chris Rock Show, which unexpectedly reveals the comedian's incredible powers of prophecy in matters involving desperate, cash-strapped double-murderers seeking to exploit their former crimes for financial gain. The money shot comes right at the end of the video, so stick with it for the interminable, attention-span-stretching minute or so it takes to get there.

In case you missed your local news report on the fatal Saturday night car accident in Beverly Hills involving former Prison Break actor Lane Garrison, we pass along CBS's recounting of the sad incident:

As you contemplate the possibility of scalding yourself to death under the "hot" tap on the office Sparkletts cooler, remember this: You are one Monday closer to your holiday vacation. Hang in there as you contemplate the weekend box office numbers:

· Britney Spears, as we've never wanted to see her before. Her high school book report up for auction. Her Paris Hilton men's room sit-in. The allergy question. But what about the children?
· Lindsay Lohan acknowledges there may be a problem, joins AA. Leslie Sloane Zelnick, meanwhile, reprimands the naughty media for how unfairly they've treated her darling, troubled client.
· Dark Days for Kramer: Michael Richards drops into Jesse Jackson's radio show. Some confusion over whether or not he's responsible for all the world's wars.
· Is NBC about to get zhuzhed?
· Mel Gibson does some Christmas shopping, and his movie gets some bloody good reviews.
· Snoop Dogg still Burbank's most wanted.
· The Agent Dance: CAA loses Kate Hudson to Endeavor, and Hugh Grant to the universe.
· The Kazakh Madonna-sister-whore complex claims another doomed celebrity marriage.
· Astronaut Jones violates parole.
· Danny DeVito has no regrets about his drunken View appearance, save maybe sleeping with Barbara Walters.
· The Dakota Fanning rape movie buzz starts building to its inevitable, forced-sex-on-a-minor frenzy.
· Everything Lindsay Lohan always wanted to know about cocaine, but was too afraid to Blackberry her dealer and ask.

· The Michael Richards Apology Tour is finally making a stop where he gets to say he's sorry in person to the people he actually menaced with his racist harangue about inverted forkings.
We recommend that if you think you might be offended by a pit bull vomiting after humping another pit bull, you instead opt for this adorable hamster video.
How did DeVito get so drunk before his appearance on The View? The Cloonster tells all.
· Tom Cruise buys a place near the UK mothership, and is almost certainly not going to be paid to sing anything.
· This is a slideshow consisting of nothing more than photos of Britney Spears with black bars placed on various parts of her body. Sound stupid? Yup, it is. But you're just bored enough to go through every single one, we know you are.

For a second straight day, we find ourselves bookended by stories of Lindsay Lohan's alcohol-related travails in the morning, and her publicist's fiercely protective, retainer-enabled statements in the afternoon. People reports that Leslie Sloane Zelnick, the well-remunerated protector of Hollywood's most prolific underage drinker's reputation, has confirmed the surprise that Page Six had already ruined for the actress's adoring public: that Lohan has been trying out some AA meetings for size. Zelnick once again urges the media, which has taken a baffling interest in her reclusive client's quiet personal life and infrequent public appearances, to back off:

Friday
· Hey, everybody! It's a John Waters Christmas! With Jonathan Richman! You know you're so there.
· Music round-up: Blood Brothers and Trail of Dead at the Henry Fonda; The Fray at the Troubadour; Mark Eitzel at Spaceland.
Saturday
· Future Defamer trophy wife Amy Sedaris (we're showing up with our Kazakh bride-sack, don't try to stop us) is at Dutton's in Beverly Hills to sign her latest book, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.
· More music: The Sounds and Shiny Toy Guns at the Wiltern; The Dears at the El Rey; Sea Wolf at the Troubadour; Jonathan Richman at Safari Sam's.
· In a basement in Chinatown located in the alley behind the seafood restaurant: Thought Bunker! Fight with words! Nudity! It already sounds pretty good, but a better explanation is here.
· Brendon Small, Ron Lynch, and Craig Anton host the Tomorrow Show at the Steve Allen Theater, a variety show on [insert name of violently mind-altering substance here].
Sunday
· Lavender Diamond, the Tyde, and Winter Flowers play Smiths and Morrissey covers all night at the Echo. We suppose we are now compelled to say something like "get your Moz on."
· The Nutcracker, a ballet we have not only heard of but have actually seen (OK, it was a class trip in the third grade, but still), is at the Wilshire Theater.

With the holiday season now officially upon us, Variety reports on this year's expected entertainment industry gift-giving climate, and for a second straight year, things don't look good. Bosses can expect their desks to soon become cluttered by cards reading, "A donation has been made in your name to the William Morris Agency Association for the Advancment Of Agent Peoples," while those who've endured a year of blunt objects crashing off their skulls as they attempt to roll calls have another season of Chinatown-back-alley-quality electronics and edible lottery tickets. The disappointment from the downwardly-trending Hollywood gifting culture is enough to make one teary-eyed for the relatively heady days of freely exchanged baked goods:

As Britney Spears continues on her gum smacking, vagina-flashing, Jager-Bomb-slamming party exploits with "Auntie Paris" (as her children have been explicitly instructed to now refer to the new blonde lady in their lives who keeps ashing into their plastic Cheerios containers), suddenly Kevin Federline comes off looking not so bad. He's kept a low profile in the three weeks since the break-up, surfacing only in some wholesome Thanksgiving photos at Shar Jackson's house with nary a cornrow or wayward nutsack in sight, and now the Us Weekly blog informs us he's keeping busy with a reality show project in the works:

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so send them using whatever Blackberry-in-a- bathroom-stall means necessary. 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 the entire cast of Heroes forced into wearing dorky promotional swag and sticking together on a field trip to a Dixie Chicks concert.

Join us in bowing down before this week's sponsors, whose high-quality wares we heartily encourage you to purchase for your loved ones this holiday shopping season. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and have us call your wares "high-quality" in a post similar to this one, see this page.

NBC demonstrates its ongoing commitment to struggling, behind-the-scenes- at-sketch-comedy-show programming, picking up 30 Rock for a full season after last night's ratings spike. [Variety]
The Office's John Krasinski join George Clooney in the romantic comedy Leatherheads, in which the two stars try to convince audiences that Renee Zellweger is sexually desirable enough to fight over. [THR]
Columbia and Scott Rudin acquire the screen rights to a still-unpublished "new take" on Cleopatra by biographer Stacy Schiff and producer Scott Rudin. Even though the book centers on Cleopatra as a "a firm ruler and military tactician" rather than as a sexbomb seductress, we wouldn't be surprised if the studio quickly determines that Angelina Jolie is "firm rulerish and tactician-y enough" to send out a big offer. [Variety]
Grey's Anatomy leads ABC to a Thursday night ratings win against the token resistance of CBS's CSI rerun. In other news, no one is watching The OC anymore. [THR]
· The Producers Guild will give Jerry Bruckheimer their Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television, celebrating the superproducer's unparalleled ability to land procedural after procedural on CBS's primetime schedule. [Variety]

Reviews have already begun to trickle in for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, and the question on everyone's lips becomes: Will audiences set aside any problems they might have with Gibson's anti-Semitic outburst if the director graphically eviscerates enough Mayans?
[Warning: Some spoilers below.]
· "[A] two-hour plus torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say 'duck' when the film opens on Dec. 8...If you've ever wondered what it would be like to see heads and hearts removed without anesthesia, then this is the movie for you." [FOX411]
· "'There are gruesome, lingering shots of people having their faces torn off, their hearts ripped out, and worse,' noted one AintItCoolNews.com reviewer who said he loved the film but was 'shocked' by the violence. 'Mel Gibson may be an anti-Semitic, alcoholic, gore-obsessed maniac, [but] he is obviously an extremely talented director and I highly recommend his 'Apocalypto'.'" [MSNBC]
· "[T]he first thing seen is a freshly detached human head being bounced down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below. Only then does it dawn on the shackled prisoners what's in store for them. At the summit preside dissolute royals as well as a high priest who, time and again, plunges a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tears out his still-beating heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought." [Variety]
· He removes pumping hearts from heaving chests, lops off sacrificial heads and bounces them down the Mayan Temple steps. Blood spurts out of an artery at a 90 degree angle. Much of the mayhem and carnage is hard to take. [Risky Biz]
· "[Y]ou'd better not be gore-shy, because Apocalypto is one brutal and bloody ride." [Rolling Stone]

The November ratings sweeps period is over, and, as expected, nearly every network is claiming their own share of victory: CBS in total viewership, ABC in the coveted™ 18-49 demographic, and NBC in maintaining Studio 60's level of 7.5 million or so incredibly affluent, upscale fans, a moral triumph much more satisfying than the hollow wins trumpeted by their better-rated rivals. Not exactly pleased with the results is Fox, which has resigned itself to waiting for Simon Cowell and Kiefer Sutherland to once again rescue them from the rest of their schedule. Reports the LAT:

Irrepressible Bravo executive Andy Cohen has found himself embroiled in a controversy of his own making, after having responded on his blog to viewers' concerns about Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi's provocative outfits with a dismissive and bizarre leapfrog of logic that somehow managed to twist those criticisms into accusations of anti-Semitism. Loyal readers might have been able to tell that this was yet just another example of Andy being Andy, delightful precisely because he's willing to type out the first thing that pops into his head—no matter how nonsensical or potentially incendiary—and publish it on a corporate website. But based on reader feedback in today's apology post, not everyone was laughing:

Not content to merely accept the explanation "because flashing her exposed cooter to the swarm of paparazzi photographing her exit from Paris Hilton's car seemed like it would be good for business," the brave investigative journalists at E! Online decided to explore other possibilities for the serial vagina-revealer's recent experimentation with a panty-free lifestyle. Excerpts from their yeoman's work in this matter follow:

Following up yesterday's item about Lindsay Lohan's alleged attendance at a local AA meeting earlier this week, Page Six today reports on Lohan's delightful, possibly champagne-fueled antics at Wednesday night's GQ Men of the Year party (apparently, she's still just window-shopping for the right alcohol recovery program), where the actress threw a tantrum upon encountering a former assistant now in the employ of a peer with an enviable lack of an image problem: