• There was no shortage of drama at the Grammys last night. Chris Brown and Rihanna were both no-shows after Brown was arrested for allegedly assaulting the R&B singer. Usher failed to appear, too, flying down to Brazil to be with his wife, who suffered complications from a plastic surgery operation. One person who did make it to the show was M.I.A., who performed on stage with Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, T.I., and Kanye West despite being nine months pregnant. [NYP, People, EW]
• Courtenay Semel says she's been cut off by her dad, former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, and is now trying to land a reality show to pay the bills. [NYP]
• Salman Rushdie's new girlfriend is Pia Glenn, who's 29 years his junior. [R&M]
• Peaches Geldof and rocker Max Drummey are said to be divorcing after just six months of marriage. [The Sun]

Jay-Z and Beyoncé lounging aboard a yacht off St. Barts ... Lindsay Lohan hanging out on the beach in Miami ... Adrian Grenier swimming with dolphins in Australia ... Eddie Murphy strumming the guitar off the coast of St. Barts ... Gerard Butler out on the town in South Beach ... and Paris Hilton on Bondi Beach in Australia.

We're not sure which of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief we've hit in our consideration of Beverly Hills Cop 4. Denial and anger seem ages ago, as does bargaining. And a script review appearing online today has us skipping depression altogether for what we suppose is something akin to acceptance — if you call "believing there is actually a studio cynical enough to greenlight this with Brett Ratner behind the camera" acceptance, or if that just throws us back to the beginning again. Help us sort it out, will you?

This is a clip from Eddie Murphy's standup special Delirious, recorded in Washington, DC in 1983, back when Eddie Murphy was funny. He is joking about the first black president, who, back then, was going to be Jesse Jackson, but the joke still works. It works so well, in fact, that it is basically the only joke about The First Black President. The L.A. Times sent a reporter out to the comedy clubs this weekend to watch black comedians make their black comedian jokes about Barack Obama, the new black president.

♦ Madonna's neighbors in her Central Park West building aren't happy that she has turned her seventh-floor apartment into a music studio. (It was originally supposed to be an office for Guy Ritchie.) Now she stays up all night blaring music and practicing for her shows. [NYDN]
♦ Alex Rodriguez is thinking of following Madonna on tour next month when she plans to make stops in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. [R&M]
♦ Is Jennifer Aniston secretly leaking pregnancy and marriage rumors about herself to the tabloids as a way to steal attention away from Brangelina? [MSNBC]
♦ Friends of Padma Lakshmi want everyone to know she is not a gold digger. She's a "hard-working, self-made woman" who just happens to only date extremely wealthy, older men. [P6]
♦ Peaches Geldof and Max Drummey's 97-day-old marriage may already be on the rocks. [The Sun]

During this year's NBA Finals, a courtside power summit at Staples Center provided stirring insight into the intimate camaraderie between Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eddie Murphy. (You might recall Sylvester Stallone joining in when Katzenberg visited the men's room.) We're learning even more today about that alliance, which, in addition to Spielberg's orotund ref-hating, influenced detente in ways not seen since Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill converged at Yalta. The stakes: Peace between directors Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood, who had feuded over representations of African-American soldiers (or the lack thereof) in Eastwood's films. Lee remembers it like it was yesterday:

The day's fastest-spreading casting rumor intrigues as much for its potential for on-screen carnage as its requisite off-screen tragedy: The man who originated Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street has Billy Bob Thornton pegged to portray the razor-fingered villain in a planned remake. Robert Englund doesn't sound too upset about it, either, informing JoBlo that the Michael Bay-produced reimagining would treat Wes Craven's original with the hacky, high-gloss dignity it deserved 25 years ago. Englund stopped short of suggesting he'd join the film, of course, lest he subject himself to Thornton's infamous scythe-handling clumsiness. Nevertheless, his overall support reminds us what a fertile period it is for the villain in American cinema — and how '80s/'90s-era schlock could stand to benefit from an A-list talent injection. We consulted our own casting department for five ideal remakes, and the stars who might push them over the top:

After the unfortunate reception for The Love Guru, it's just too easy to write off New Line's prospective Austin Powers revival (which Mike Myers is reportedly working on for New Line with former series collaborator Mike McCullers) as yet another ill-advised folly belching the black smoke of Myers's career. In fact, taken as merely a part of the larger phenomenon we at Defamer like to call The End of Ideas, the Powers franchise is but a speck of the shit on Hollywood's collective bathroom wall — a tableau diligently studied today by the haz-mat crew at Entertainment Weekly.

Variety reports today that 20th Century Fox and Hallmark have reached a landmark licensing agreement granting the greeting card giant exclusive use of the studio's library. While Hallmark has already issued cards for properties like Napoleon Dynamite and has its eye on major titles including Futurama and The Sound of Music, Defamer wrangled a hold of mockups for Hallmark's "Turbulence at Fox '08" line — a selection celebrating the beauty and joy of life through Fox's bumpy year at the box-office. Follow the jump for a glimpse at warm greetings to come by way of Manoj Night Shyamalan, Eddie Murphy, The X-Files and others, and feel free to suggest your own heartfelt pairings as well.

It's that time of year again, when Hollywood's biggest stars harvest their multiplex crops, drop the hammer on their mums and size up their places among Forbes's annual list of highest-paid movie stars. As we've come to expect, it's Will Smith's world, with the megastar and noted Scientology-school patron raking in $80 million since last June; the remainder of the list comprises mainstays like Johnny Depp ($72 million) and Leonardo DiCaprio ($45 million) along with slip-sliding shockers including Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers, each tied at $55 million thanks in large part to the Shrek franchise's enduring success.

Patrick Goldstein is getting kind of good at this blogging thing! After a busy week tipping the world off to the wit and wisdom of censor nonpareil Joan Graves and catching Alan Horn sharpening his ax for Where the Wild Things Are, he spent Monday afternoon taking on the Eddie Murphy Problem. "Murphy has pulled off an almost unprecedented achievement with Meet Dave," Goldstein notes. "He's delivered a movie that even 20th Century Fox couldn't market."

We needed a little time today to digest our feelings after the miserable box-office showing of Meet Dave, whose free-fall over the weekend resulted in the ugliest opening of Eddie Murphy's career. Not having seen it, we have to assume that $5.1 million gross aside, the film is at least superior to Norbit (not to mention Vampire in Brooklyn, Pluto Nash and a sprinkling of other Murphy misfires over the years). We'd even venture to say it'll be better than Beverly Hills Cop IV, the PG-rated abomination to which Murphy and Brett Ratner are attached for Paramount. Certainly it's better than The Love Guru, whose own beleaguered comic icon Mike Myers nevertheless had flowers and a thank-you note on Murphy's porch by sometime Sunday afternoon.

Four ways to jump start your Monday morning: 1. Moisten fork prongs with mouth. Place end of fork between teeth, press prongs into nearest wall socket. 2. Fill microwave-safe cup with water. Microwave for 2-3 minutes (times vary). Remove cup, pour contents directly onto eyeballs. 3. Have a co-worker hold a duct tape gun to your left ear. Spin in counter-clockwise circles until your entire head is mummified inside a sticky cellophane prison. See how long you can last without breathing before slicing open at mouth. 4. Read the box office numbers!

Welcome back to another week of Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to the fresh hell of what's new at the movies. After taking a Hancock holiday weekend to find ourselves, we're back in full-on summer anguish mode as yet another massive comics adaptation hits theaters, Brendan Fraser goes a-spelunkin' and Eddie Murphy returns with... we don't even know. But! We also have our eyes on a few alternatives both at the theaters and in the comfort of our air-conditioned caves, so all is not lost. As always, our opinions are our own and elegantly spot-on — which, of course, you've come to expect and we're happy to oblige!

There's a reason publicists are accustomed to marking the star of Meet Dave on Hollywood guest lists as "Murphy, Eddie; +/- 1," and never was it more apparent than at yesterday's premiere, where the PG-13-ghettoized actor was a last-minute no-show. A frustrated insider took to the DataLounge message boards to vent:

Is it possible that one of Hollywood's biggest comedic stars — who has had handlers and publicists coddling him with tales of his own greatness for years — has actually developed some self-awareness? Shocking as it may seem, it sounds like that's what's going on with Eddie Murphy. For example, why is he making a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie? Not because of something so crass as money, but because "the third Beverly Hills Cop was horrible! I didn't want to leave it like that. The first two were cool and the third one was shitty. [Let's] get the franchise fixed again, clean up this old mess and do a good movie."

· We suppose deep down we always knew Barbara Walters slept with every one of her subjects, but some kind of psychic safety-net always omitted Ellen DeGeneres from that list. [Ellen]
· The Rocker trailer features more flying cymbals to the crotch per minute than any comedy in history! [Variety]
· Among the amazing revelations in this Lou Ferrigno interview: CBS changed Bruce Banner's name to David because they thought Bruce "sounded too gayish." [USA Today]
· Blinded By Thongs is now what we plan on calling that band we've been meaning to start since high school. [The Smoking Gun]
·"There's a SIG alert on the 405, apparently a multicar pileup caused by...this can't be right...Eddie Murphy's giant head?" [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

Steven: The thing of it is, in this new internet era, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. One second they're clamoring for the next Indy adventure...
Eddie: Well, no one was "clamoring" for another Axel Foley adventure, per se...
Steven: The next they're accusing you of having killed the franchise. Have you seen Crystal Skull?
[Murmurs of affirmation.]
Steven: I mean, it's not like it's even close to the worst of the four, was it?
[Beat. Crowd noise.]
Eddie: Hustle, Pau!

It looks like there's nothing anybody can do to stop a fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, which Paramount is reportedly pushing to a 2010 release date and which should finally fulfill that looooong-standing global demand for an Eddie Murphy/Brett Ratner collaboration. But as hammy, craven and sadistic as the project seems at a glance, and although it's likely bound for a dispiriting PG-13 script, we find our tortured souls compelled to give this one a chance; follow the jump for a half-dozen reasons why we could think of worse news to wake up to on a Thursday. Feel free to add your own; we need all the reassurance we can get.

We want to feel bad for Eddie Murphy's ex Tracey Edmonds after hearing about Murphy's "bossy and physically intimidating" behavior just before his recently canceled nuptials, but really? Any girl worth her hair extensions should know by now that Eddie isn't exactly the fuzzy wuzzy teddy bear type, all gung-ho about treating his women right. And by "his women," we certainly don't mean Mama Murphy, who the former funnyman insisted accompany the pair on their honeymoon. Um, a momma's boy and a domestic-abuse-case waiting to happen? Splitting was the wise choice, Tracey! Now all you've gotta do is hang tight until that other Tracy (Morgan) officially hits the market. [NY Post]