As Nip/Tuck's long suffering Julia McNamara, Joely Richardson has for four seasons now been subjected to the bizarre and often sadistic whims of that series' writing staff, including a major arc this season in which we follow the stay-at-home plastic surgeon's wife carry a baby she knew would be born with flippers for hands to term. Richardson now finds herself reluctantly having to abandon her deformed TV child to tend to the needs of her actual child, as the London Daily News is reporting that Richardson has alerted producers that she would need to take leave from the series in order to accompany her teenage daughter back to England for a series of serious medical procedures to treat a circulatory birth defect:

If you are anything like us, your wall calendars are currently covered in a series of large, red Xs ending at yesterday's encircled date, with the words "Rosie's Big Nip/Tuck Sex Scene!" enthusiastically scribbled within. The steamy encounter between Dr. Christian Troy and O'Donnell's lottery-winning lipo patient, Dawn Budge (video above), answers many of our lingering erotic questions relating to the current title holder of Loudest Voice on The View. Namely: 1. What's the going rate for ten minutes of coming into naked contact with her? ($420,000.) 2. Does she talk during sex? (Yes, about mac and cheese.) And, finally, 3. Is an invasive procedure like liposuction guaranteed to make a noticeable difference in the contour of your jiggly lunchlady arms? (Apparently not.)

Yesterday's LAT audited FX series Nip/Tuck's attention-grabbing decision to have two of its characters respond to emotional enturbulation by seeking solace in the welcoming bosom of L. Ron Hubbard*, an instantly controversial storyline that creator/provocateur Ryan Murphy and network executives insist is rooted in a genuine curiosity about the religion, not a cynical attempt to court publicity or for e-meter-related gag potential. (Accordingly, their choice to cast Tom Cruise nemesis and postpartum antidepressant street-drug prescribee Brooke Shields as a psychiatrist was purely coincidental, based solely on the fact that the actress had always "felt psychiatristy" to Murphy.) But for someone who's obviously taking great public pains to present Scientology in a non-judgmental, unbiased light, FX's president still sounds a little spooked by the Church's possible overreaction to their ecumenical explorations:

The MPAA introduces its latest agents of movie pirate doom: Lucky and Flo, the two cutest, DVD-sniffing black Labs you've ever seen! The pups can't distinguish between pirated and legitimate disks, and can also be thrown off the trail by traffickers clever enough to pack dummy boxes full of frisbees in the same shipment as their contraband product. [Variety]
Certified series-killer Rena Sofer gets recurring roles on both 24 and Heroes, but we imagine the cancellation curse that accompanies her casting will only be strong enough to take down Heroes, the newer, weaker show. [THR]
Dreamy-eyed hunkbot Jake Gyllenhaal will join pointy-chinned ingenue Reese Witherspoon in New Line's Middle East political thriller Rendition, which we fully hope will evolve into a romantic comedy so as not to waste the crippling adoreableness of its leads on weighty matters. [Variety]
Rob Cohen cleverly deleted Stealth from his resume before going in for a meeting about helming the prison movie Scared Straight, tricking New Line into giving him another opportunity to direct. [THR]
FX's relentless pursuit of the self-consciously edgy leads it into a deal with Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy for 4 oz., a drama about the "metamorphosis of a married sportswriter who is a transsexual." [Variety]

THR's Ray Richmond reports that the website of TV writer/producer Matthew Carnahan was hijacked by hapless "Middle Eastern extremists," who replaced Carnahan's homepage (still down the last time we checked in) with these rather unpleasant images of death and strife from the region and the message, "If You Stop War We Will Be(sic) Stop Hacking." But while the man who will soon broker on-set peace between real-life couple David Arquette and Courteney Cox-Arquette on FX's upcoming Dirt undoubtedly has valuable insights into the crisis in the Middle East, Richmond points out that the hackers probably meant to target Matthew Michael Carnahan, the next entry down on the IMDb search page, the writer of terrorism drama The Kingdom. Then again, this could all just be a ploy by edgy publicists at FX to stir up some viral buzz for their series, "The outrageous celebrity tabloid workplace comedy the terrorists don't want you to see."

Courteney Cox and David Arquette, having put in about as much stay-at-home time with baby Coco as can reasonably expected from a celebrity couple derailed from their one-and-a-half thriving careers by the drudgery of parenthood, have decided to go back to work:

· Variety does its best to sift through the continuing fallout from Paramount's DreamWorks acquisition. Paramount insiders deny that Brad Grey #2 Gail Berman's job is already at stake (despite the loud whisper of the moment that she might be axed and replaced by DW producer Walter Parkes, but shhhh, that's just a nasty rumor). And as for the problem of redundancy in jobs across DreamWorks and Paramount, "department heads from both studios were required to turn over names of employees in their division. The lists are being combed over to see which employee is a stronger candidate, the current Paramount employee or the DreamWorks staffer." After five minutes of dramatic head-scratching and thoughtful harumphing, the Paramount list will be run through a shredder and offices will be cleared to make way for the DW staffers. It's nonstop fun and excitement on the Melrose lot! [Variety]
· NBC will air a record 416 hours of Winter Olympics coverage across its many networks, meaning that you, the incredibly bored viewer, might not miss a single minute of people in spandex sliding down ice chutes in a dizzying variety of positions. [THR]
· Reclusive move star Julia Roberts considers returning to her long abandoned career to star opposite Tom Hanks in Charlie Wilson's War, possibly for her Closer director Mike Nichols. If she's going to hand the twins over to a nanny to go back to work, she's not gonna fuck around. [Variety]
· With just weeks until shooting, the producers of the new, Daniel Craig-starring Bond remake Casino Royale are sleeping with actresses as fast as they can to find a new Bond Girl. [Variety]
· FX has already purchased the cable rights to 2006 summer blockbuster-to-be Superman Returns for a reported $17-25 million. guaranteeing the network first crack at cramming the Bulge of Steel onto the small screen. [Variety]

· Unlike the Hollywood whorefests at Sundance and Toronto, the four-day Telluride Film Festival is still about the "love of cinema" and its lineup is shrouded in secrecy. Boo! We think a frustrated acquisitions exec just crapped his pants. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, the completely unsecretive Toronto fest announces its lineup. [Variety]
· FX picks up third season of Rescue Me, allowing us still more time to put off finally checking out one of the episodes piling up in the TiVo. [THR]
· Var uses the phrase "urban suspense thriller" twice in four sentences to describe potential Jodie Foster vehicle The Brave One. In addition to its apparent suspenseful, urban qualities, vigilantism is involved. [Variety]
· National Lampoon taps Diedrich Bader and Nicole Eggert, the spiritual heirs of John Belushi and the vintage Chevy Chase, for National Lampoon's Cattle Call. [THR]