Congratulations to Amanda Lucas, daughter of franchise-ruination-hastening Hollywood superproducer George Lucas, for having successfully completed her first public, mixed martial arts competitive bout in Auckland this weekend. From /film.com:

Remember last month when we took a moment to consider the potential back-end windfalls for Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford should Indiana Jones 4 turn when Indiana Jones 4 turns a profit? "Crystal Skull will have to generate around $400 million for Paramount for the studio to make its money back and earn its distribution fee," Claudia Eller wrote in the LA Times. "Only at that point will Lucas, Spielberg, Ford and smaller profit participants, including screenwriter David Koepp, begin collecting their portion. Paramount will take 12.5 cents from every dollar thereafter, while Lucas and company will earn 87.5 cents." With the worldwide total pushing $332 million in five days, the film could drop 75% percent globally this weekend and still be pouring money on the principals by Sunday night. A more likely 50% drop would still split $86 million among them — with another solid month of box office ahead. Elsewhere in percentages: The likelihood of Indiana Jones 5 climbed to 100% while we wrote this.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been unveiled at last for international critics, and with most verdicts coming in mixed to above-average, our discriminating tastes still found much left to be desired. Defamer editor Seth Abramovitch and senior editor S.T. VanAirsdale attended yesterday's screenings in Los Angeles and New York, respectively, after which the slow process of psychological reckoning and franchise restoration began the only way they knew how: via instant messaging.

Hard as it is to believe, after what seems like 19 endless years of false-starts and "Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom" jokes, we are less than one month away from seeing the fourth chapter of the Indiana Jones saga. The adventuresome archaeologist enters a far different Hollywood from the days when he first planted sunbeam-focusing scepters in secret map rooms, however; studio sash-tightening has required its makers to defer their fees in exchange for that venerable Hollywood trade-off, a piece (and in this case, a gigantic piece) of the back-end. The LAT breaks down Crystal Skull's financial model:

It's been a rough week for you, the Internet-Enabled Movie Fan with Something to Say. Just a day after noted haimishe Luddite Barry Sonnenfeld's semi-hysterical vision of a Facebook-infiltrated culture in which Big Brother will monitor our every Twittered activity, comes a similarly technophobic EW.com conversation with the creative duo behind the Indiana Jones series (and possessors of 68.2% of all the world's wealth), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Playing a sort of good cop/bad cop routine, Spielberg bemoans the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes, while Lucas tempers all the grumpy-old-man talk by pointing out that the internet is also capable of producing some good things (e.g. an audience who actually cares what Indy has been up to after his 19-year sabbatical). We quietly slip in mid-conversation:

As if George Lucas' forewarning that Indy 4 just won't be all that great weren't enough to lower our expectations, now we learn that heir to the throne Shia LaBeouf filmed most of his scenes while injured. As the star told MTV News, "I pulled a rotator cuff in my hip...because the injury got worse and worse while filming, I pulled my groin also." And not only did Shia gimp his way through scenes, recent reports suggest that he may have been high as a kite while filming. A recent blind item suggests Harrison Ford and his Mini-Me made a habit out of puffing the green dragon in Shia's trailer and even had code names for being stoned.

Poor Frank Darabont. The much-loved(ish) writer/director of The Shawshank Redemption has had a rough few days. First, in a stroke of George Clooney-esqe fate, he found that he would not be getting screenplay credit on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As he says, "I know there are some common elements to what I gave Steven [Spielberg] and what was eventually shot, but I guess not enough to warrant credit. It's clearly a disappointment, especially after Steven loved my script." Notice that Darabont goes out of his way to not mention George Lucas. Apparently there's some tension between the two. When asked if he'd ever work with Lucas again, Darabont coldly replied:

George Lucas is still traumatized by the sullen faces of Star Wars fans who filed out of the first preview screenings of The Phantom Menace, and, spotting its jittery director standing by the exit, spit, "You ruined Christmas, my childhood, and Life Day!" before whipping their crumpled comments cards at his head. So it's not terribly surprising to learn that the producer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is taking a far more tempered, "Hey, Indy fans: Let's just try to remember this is just a movie...and the originals weren't even that great to begin with!"-approach to his latest revisiting of a devoutly worshiped franchise:

Who's the richest billionaire in the Bay Area? No surprise here: Oracle founder and yachting enthusiast Larry Ellison, is the 14th wealthiest in the world (which must grate on him something fierce) with $25 billion. Trailing him are a trio of Googlers, Larry and Sergey with almost $19 billion each and CEO Eric Schmidt with $6.6 billion. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire is pegged at $1.5 billion and outgoing eBay CEO Meg Whitman, one of only 99 women on the list, has $1.3 billion. Other local billionaires include Steve Jobs, Charles Schwab and George Lucas. Grab the full list from Forbes.

Awwww...The LEGO Indiana Jones Set comes with an adorable array of little poseable Nazis, and its own tiny, precious Ark of the Covenant. Don't open it though—it'll instantly melt their molded-plastic faces right off! [Gizmodo]

Growing tired of your bootlegged Betamax copy of The Star Wars Holiday Special, but still looking for some Yuletide Yoda cheer? Here's a gallery of every Star Wars Christmas card sent out by LucasFilm since the '70s, including this year's pop-up edition, featuring a choir of caroling Stormtroopers. Merry Life Day, everyone! [Slash Film]

As a reward for assisting DreamWorks in the daring sting operation that prevented further leaking of secrets related to the production of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of This Thing My Wife Bought At Liberace's Estate Sale, a grateful Steven Spielberg invited some members of the online press to the Universal backlot for an audience with the national treasure himself. Once there, he informed his awed guests about his ongoing debate with CGI-happy Indy partner George Lucas on their differing filmmaking philosophies. Reports /Film:

Producers are keeping details of the fourth installment of the Raiders franchise close to the vest—one extra who blabbed its secrets to a local paper was famously poisoned to death by what are suspected to have been a plate of bad dates—but even George Lucas can't help but spill a few beans when asked by an MTV News reporter about the crystal skulls that drive the movie's plot:

Chewbacca, Boba Fett, and many of the other characters you treasured until George Lucas decided to embark on his misguided prequel odyssey were at NASA today, to present the space shuttle people with Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber, scheduled to take a six million mile trip in October on Discovery. [starwarsblog]

· We don't even know where to begin with this one: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is set to star in Disney's Witch Mountain, a follow-up to one of the most formative moviegoing experiences of our distant youth, Escape to Witch Mountain. Don't mess with Tony and Tia, Rock: They fuck you up good. [Variety]
· Tim Burton's "could you turn the human-intestinal-pudding shots down a smidge?" Sweeney Todd gets a December 21st release date. [Variety]
· George Lucas hired white-hot screenwriter John Ridley to write the script for Red Tails, a WWII drama about the color-barrier-shattering Tuskegee Airmen, feared by the Germans for their deadly, X-wing-mounted laser rifles. [Variety]
· Social networking websites gone public! Analysts suspect sites like Classmates.com could do well on the stock market, backed by irresistible marketing campaigns like, "Can you believe SHE married HIM?" [THR]
· Innovative agents Michael McConnell and Ben Press are suing the agency for being "unfairly chained to their jobs." Both suits cite the heavy, iron chains soldered to their ankles and tethered to their desks as irrefutable proof. [THR]

· These are truly exciting times over at IndianaJones.com. Not only have they treated us to the first photos of Harrison Ford in a dusty fedora taken in nearly 20 years, they've now released exclusive footage of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas drinking champagne and staring at a monitor. (Also while wearing distinctive hats!) Who knows what special surprises the coming weeks will bring cyber-savvy Indy fans?
· Things that Barbara Walters considers "beneath her": interviewing Paris Hilton once she gets out of jail. Things that Barbara Walters is OK with: reading aloud on The View a transcription of a conversation she had with Paris Hilton about finding God while she was still in jail.
· Does no one have the heart to tell Renee Zellweger that boinking a CAA agent is so Hilary Swank in the summer of 2006? It's tragic, really.

· Celebration IV at the L.A. Convention Center has officially kicked off. Their blog already has some sneak preview video up, including the above, utterly adorable session of the Jedi Academy, in which a group of half-pint Yodas-in-training (so much for the widely held misconception that Star Wars fans don't have sex) face off against Darth Vader. Those kids are to be commended for their bravery—we would have soiled our cloaks at that age. [Celebration IV Blog]
· Oh no! Jabba the Neck Wattle has enslaved Queen Amidala! [theweeklydonut.org]
· 75 "underground artists" were approached to decorate their own Darth Vader helmet, in something called The Vader Project. [LAT] [CIV Blog]
· While George Lucas won't be in attendance, Carrie Fisher is scheduled to make an appearance. This is a great opportunity for you to demonstrate just how much thunder you're packing by whipping off your belt during your pitch for Episode VII: A New Bulge. [THR]

It's hard to believe, but May 25th marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first installment in George Lucas's career-defining, not-at-all-silly epic space opera, making it as good an excuse as any to push through some civic legislation designating it Star Wars Day in Los Angeles. Our friends at Curbed LA snagged a copy of the resolution:

· The man who gave us Jar Jar Binks (and who glued two hair-danishes to Carrie Fisher's head and gave Hayden Christensen a career) knows a "silly" movie when he sees one.
· We're stunned that yesterday's Hasselhoff parody video is placing a weak eighth on the Hoff Viral Video charts. And this mash-up is still too new to chart, but we think it's a comer.
· Rub a 20-year-old lamp and a studio genie will bring you $1.6 million.
· Hamas decides there's a better way to call for an Islamist liberation of Jerusalem than through a Militant Mickey Mouse character.
· Please pardon us for a minute, but: OMG OMG! Cameron TOTALLY KISSED JUSTIN! OMGOMGgonnadie! There, now that's out of our system.