Last Sunday's LAT ran a story about Ryan Kavanaugh, a 33-year-old middleman between Hollywood and the secretive and incredibly confusing world of hedge funds. They reported that Kavanaugh, a former dotcom financier with a long list of EP credits to his name, would sell the private investment groups on "slates" of movies, investing hundreds of millions in a dozen films at a time (to lessen the impact of any single stinker). Of course, this is Hollywood, where stinkers come in biblical proportions, and their investment quickly dwindled to barely the value of a concession stand Combo Pack. Now, armed with Scary Hollywood Lawyer Martin Singer, Kavanaugh is fighting back, claiming the entire piece was planted by his publinemesis Mike Sitrick, who is currently suing Kavanaugh for "allegedly mismanaging a multimillion-dollar investment."

As invigorating as an hourlong, cold Monday morning shower following two sleepless days of binge drinking, your weekend box office numbers:

The weekend of reckoning has finally arrived for Evan Almighty, aka The Most Expensive Comedy Story Ever Told, an occasion marked by dozens of nervous Universal executives kneeling before makeshift shrines and praying that their religious marketing partners are going to deliver the arkloads of Christians they promised. And while the reviews have not been kind, they have most certainly been creative, taking full advantage of the movie's biblical themes in trumpeting, amidst Almighty's zoological bounty, the arrival of the summer's biggest turkey. A smattering of memorable headlines:

Demonstrating once again that invoking the sacred phrase "Passion of the Christ money"
will help even the most committed of Hollywood heathens find God faster than a persecuted heiress marching towards her maximum-security Calvary Hill, Universal is contracting some Real Live Christians to help them sell Even Almighty, The Most Expensive Comedy Story Ever Told, to the "religious" audience. The LAT reports on how the studio plans to get arm-deep into America's church collection boxes:

· Universal is partnering with environmentally conscious marketers to promote Evan Almighty, culminating in a spectacular stunt in which the studio will flood its Universal City theme park, washing away thousands of tourists to emphasize the film's uplifting, "green" message that God will kill us all if we don't take better care of our planet. [Variety]
· Michael Moore seeks out, receives free publicity for upcoming film about the American health care system. [THR]
· The details of the project are unimportant to us, but let it be known that Jennifer Connelly, whom we would pay to watch folding laundry or waiting in line at the DMV, has taken on a new movie project. Unfortunately, the husband is also involved. [Variety]
· CBS Corp despot Les Moonves calls Dan Rather's critical remarks about successor Katie Couric's "dumbing down" and "tarting up" of his beloved evening news broadcast "sexist." Expect the mouthy ex-anchor to be found dead of an apparent heart attack by the end of the day. [THR]
· The ratings for Sunday night's Sopranos finale are in, and its average of 11.9 million viewers easily surpassed the mark set by HBO sibling Sex and the City's controversial last episode, in which the sassy, shoe-loving ladies were unexpectedly whacked by a vengeance-obsessed Mario Cantone. [Variety]

Because we at Defamer at committed to keeping you informed of any disaster, whether man-made or natural in origin, currently besetting your peers, we pass along these two reports of the raging fire possibly still in progress over on the Universal lot:

• The Most Absurd Deleted Scenes of All Time [Cracked.com]

Today's LAT details the budgetary problems affecting Bruce Almighty sequel Evan Almighty, which threaten to saddle the movie with the unwanted distinction of becoming the most expensive comedy in history. According to the Times, even without Bruce star Jim Carrey and his massive salary, the Evan production could reach a $175 million budget, as uncooperative weather during shooting, the logistics involved in scheduling predatory animal actors so that they don't accidentally devour their tasty, lower-billed co-stars during their downtime, and the expense of convincingly staging Biblical disasters have all driven costs heavenward. Still, Universal executives Marc Shmuger and David Linde think they've got everything under control: