We admit there's not a whole lot of shattered Earth to be found in Sunday's NY Times survey of the limping, lethargic new/old MGM (i.e. deep library, shallow future). Hats off to chairman Harry Sloan, though, for abandoning the low-energy talking points early on in the process and getting straight to the bitchslappy good stuff — whacks at his own new premium-cable partners ("If you don't have a major summer and a Christmas picture, you're not a player at the studio level. ... The best you're going to be is Lionsgate") and theatrical pals ("I thought I was making a deal with the guys who'd just come off Oscars for Chicago, Gangs of New York and Aviator," he said of the Weinstein Company. "Instead they went to the festivals, picked up movies and arbitraged MGM's deal on Showtime").

Amid all of Tuesday's post-holiday hustle and bustle, we regrettably overlooked perhaps the most profound news item of the day: Harvey Weinstein indirectly hopped in the Valkyrie fray at Cannes by picking up US theatrical/DVD rights to Operation Valkyrie, a 2004 German retelling of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It's the same film Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer made (or are making, with worse accents) only to see it bumped twice to a Feb. 2009 release-date Siberia by Cruise/UA's partners at MGM — oddly the same folks with whom The Weinstein Company shares its own distribution deal. Small world, eh? It gets even weirder — kind of.

You tell us what's more frightening about MGM boss Harry Sloan's recent proclamations from Cannes: A) That the guy freely admits both Robocop and the Brat Pack-slays-the-Communists epic Red Dawn are up for remakes at his studio, or B) Sloan's public support of Tom Cruise, Valkyrie and United Artists has winnowed to the point of "clanking endorsement." Oh, who are we kidding? Valkyrie trumps everything:

It was only a matter of time before Cale Boyter, MGM's recently added executive VP of production, joined Mary Parent in aggressively reestablishing the studio as the roaring monolith the world has long prized. Indeed, Boyter's first announced project is a bold step away from Valkyrie and other debacles threatening the mantle of The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, 2001: A Space Odyssey and others. Or, in short, Hot Tub Time Machine:

· By the WIND, people. Get your minds out of the gutter! Bonus besteverness? Directed by David Fincher. [Creativity Magazine]
· Nerds rejoice! Guillermo del Toro has finally signed on to direct the long gestating LOTR prequel, The Hobbit. He will be spending the next four years (!!!) in New Zealand alternately shooting the film and polishing Peter Jackson's Oscars. [Variety]
· Speaking of hobbits, Elijah Wood's latest movie includes his first on-screen sex scene. Disturbingly, the scene involves spaghetti. No word yet if spaghetti sauce is also involved, but if it were, we hope they used Trader Joe's Organic Vodka Sauce. That's our fave. [Thighs Wide Shut]
· And since we've clearly got sex on the brain, here's video of a topless Mischa Barton straddling what looks to be the poor man's James Van Der Beek. The footage comes from some movie that, thanks to the magic of The Internets, you never have to actually see! [Egotastic]
· And lastly, Amy's Robot asks what could be the most important question of our times (or, at least, the last few hours): "Are you aware that Tina Fey's husband looks like this?" Actually, we did not. [Amy's Robot via Fimoculous]

Michael Cieply's latest dispatch from the Tom Cruise beat inventories the wreckage from the mid-air collision that is Valkyrie and United Artists, including exclusive interviews with hobbled pilots Paula Wagner and Bryan Singer. For Singer's part, he's fine to let the film speak for itself if and/or when it's ever completed and released. But for Wagner, Cruise's UA partner and designated press scold, skeptics like us just! Don't! Get it!

While most of us fled the office to enjoy early spring, Sumner Redstone spent another relaxing weekend watching his corporate children at Viacom gouge each others' eyes out. And this time around he got his money's worth, with Paramount finally breaking free from CBS/Showtime to start its own pay-cable and VOD service with MGM and Lionsgate. It's an untidy, somewhat shocking scenario that we (and seemingly the rest of the Web) can't yet make sense of, but join us after the jump to parse the winners and losers at a glance.

As we put this week to bed, it's time to reflect, project, deflect and genuflect on the week that was...
· Big week for Gorgeous George Clooney. His passion project, Leatherheads,
disappointed at the box office (twice!), he was on the receiving end of a threatening phone call and his sand-loving girlfriend turned his bachelor pad into Yankee Candle outlet. Ah, who are we kidding? He can still pull digits with the best of 'em.
· Ellen Page butched it up on Leno and may (or may not!) have dissed Hanoi Jane.
· Certainly, Tom Cruise has had better weeks. MGM tried to spin Valkyrie's second release date pushback as a B.O. ploy, but we knew better.
· Artie Lange and Charlton Heston both had shitty weeks, too. Artie resigned from the Howard Stern Show and Charlton, well, he died.
· The hackiest hack that ever hacked, Uwe Boll, found himself on the wrong end of an online petition that might just end his career (fingers crossed!). Howevs, he was able to leverage the power of the internet to fight back ... twice!
· It was Musical Chairs week at Hollywood's biggest talent agencies. Bob DeNiro bolted from CAA (spurring a hilarious poison pen post from the Death Star), Nick Stevens led one of "the biggest agent migrations in years" when he bolted from UTA to Endeavor and a finch with a mean streak wreaked havoc at CAA shortly after Ashton Kutcher became the agency's newest client.
· Teri Hatcher and Clint Black learned that they're both better off sticking with their day jobs.
· After publicly (and somewhat shadily) announcing that he and his wife were victims of an alleged extortion attempt by his nanny, Rob Lowe displayed the keen ability to turn an adjective into a noun when he coined the term "false terribles."

Yesterday, the troubled Tom Cruise/Nazi vehicle Valkyrie got pushed back — for a second time — from October to February 2009. MGM is painting the film's new release date as a golden holiday-weekend opportunity for the $90-million-plus historical drama, but it goes without saying this is beyond bullshit; no amount of spin from any of MGM boss Mary Parent's necktied monkeys can reclaim whatever traction Valkyrie might have had once upon a time. Its Cruise/Bryan Singer pedigree took its first hit when it was pushed back from summer '08 to fall ("Better Oscar chances!" we were told as Singer's reshoots pushed his budget and his star past their respective limits), and it now threatens to overtake Charlton Heston as this week's highest-profile celebrity casualty. "Valkyrie is dead," wrote David Poland at The Hot Blog. "There is no such thing as a good movie that gets moved from summer to fall to spring."

The craziest movie star in America is playing a Nazi colonel with one eye, one hand, and three fingers who tries to bomb the Fürher and take over the Third Reich, but instead kills everyone in the room but Hitler, and eventually dies by firing squad. What more could America want on PRESIDENTS' DAY WEEKEND?

In a rumored attempt at brokering the type of fragile, public peace not seen since the Camp David accords 30 years ago, Tom Cruise and Sumner Redstone apparently had lunch together Thursday at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge. Or so report spies for The Wall Street Journal and Page Six, alluding to the star's blockbuster drought since leaving Paramount. We didn't believe it at first, but when you think about it, wouldn't those soon-to-be-vacated DreamWorks offices at the 'Mount make a decent home for Cruise's fledgling United Artists revival?

The first New Line refugee has officially landed at MGM, where new president Mary Parent hired ex-NL development exec Cale Boyter to help iron out the resurgent studio's forthcoming production slate. The move signaled the latest hint that MGM chief operating officer Rick Sands — whose short-lived emphasis on library outsourcing and new media development was made essentially irrelevant by Parent's own recruitment two weeks ago — is himself looking for a new gig.

From The Wall Street Journal: "Microsoft said that NBC Universal Inc., Walt Disney Co., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Showtime Networks Inc. have agreed to contribute entertainment content to the software maker's Xbox Live and MSN online services. The deals were slated to be announced during a speech by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on the opening night of the Consumer Electronics Show."

How in the great and powerful Oz's name it took this long to get the Munchkins a star on the Walk of Fame is beyond us, but today, that wrong was reversed, as seven of the nine surviving diminutive residents of Munchkinland were finally granted their rightful plot on Hollywood's legendary urine-stained road. (They've been especially busy around town lately, with three of them—Jerry Maren, Mickey Carroll and Karl Slover—handing out Dunkin' Donut Munchkin hole treats along with their support to WGA picketers outside NBC.)

· Gerard Butler, still red-hot following his career-making, washboard-ab-spotlighting turn in 300, will join Jodie Foster and Abigail "Im in Dakota's career, steelin her rolez" Breslin in the family adventure film Nim's Island, based on the popular children's book. [Variety]
· Out-of-work and aspiring comedy writers, it might finally be time to pull the ripcord and float to the safety of law school: the networks ordered precious few comedies for the new season, are terrified of the expense of still-faddish single-camera shows, and want to squeeze the life out of established sitcoms for fear of a writers strike. Get out while your LSAT scores are still valid. [THR]
· MGM is dangerously close to getting into the Rob Schneider business. [Variety]
· ABC declined to pick up their Mr & Mrs Smith adaptation, triggering a contractual option that will allow studio Regency TV to start shopping the Alphabet's sloppy pilot seconds to other networks. [THR]
· Mexican filmmaking BFFs Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu have signed on to do five movies with Universal and Focus Features, establishing a production company called (really) cha cha cha. [Variety]

· ABC acquires the rights to a "special" described as a "real-life version of The Queen" drawn from "hundreds of hours of footage" of the monarch and royal family, or as such a project was once called, a "documentary." [Variety]
· King of Queens' Leah Remini will star in the "groundbreaking" web series In the Motherhood, the story of three mom girlfriends who struggle to find novel ways to incorporate the fine personal grooming and telecommunications products of joint sponsors Suave and Sprint into their hilarious adventures in advertainment. [THR]
· Var rounds up how the various networks reacted to yesterday's Virginia Tech massacre, including the fact that an unexpectedly sensitive Fox has yanked a new Bones episode that dealt with "human remains being uncovered on a college campus." [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Irene Cara Edition: MGM will sink $25 million into a remake of Fame, hoping that a generation being raised to believe that success is achieved through serial vagina-flashing and assiduous nightclub attendance can relate to an old-fashioned story about people trying to achieve recognition through actual talent and hard work. [THR]
· Dancing with the Stars: One-Legged Tango Edition and The Bachelor: Another Boring, Horny Guy Who's Never Going To Marry Any Of These Fame-Hungry Skanks lead ABC to a Monday night Nielsen win. [Variety]

While Sylvester Stallone's efforts on behalf of Rocky Balboa have so far been mostly comprised of guilting potential audience members into seeing his movie by asking them to give an old, broken down action star a second chance at success in a youth-obsessed Hollywood, he's now taking his pandering in a new and potentially lucrative direction. Writes an operative, who for reasons unknown to us was watching The 700 Club earlier today:

· At last night's premiere of Rocky Balboa, star Sylvester Stallone and pals Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Patrick Swayze, Dolph Lundgren, and Christian Slater briefly gathered by the bar to share a few laughs about the good old days, but quickly scattered when Slater began his pitch for a six-way buddy comedy about a bunch of past-their-prime actors who enroll in the Police Academy together. [Note to MGM: We will sue if you put this into development.]
Q: "What has seven legs, male and female reproductive organs and nub antlers?" A: We don't know, but didn't it just get into Eddie Murphy's car on Santa Monica Boulevard? [via Boing Boing]
Amy Poehler's breasts are now a matter of public record, but at least her baby factory is still locked down.
We're going to be really depressed if this amazing video turns out to be some kind of viral ad for Famima pork buns. Which, we might add, are totally delicious.

A couple of weeks ago, Sylvester Stallone appeared in the pages of the NY Times to guilt fans into going to see Rocky Balboa by framing their ticket purchase as a message sent to Hollywood that it can't dispatch him and his contemporaries to the Faded Action Stars Retirement Home before they're good and ready to go. Stallone now reappears in the new issue of Newsweek with more heartstring tugs meant to loosen moviegoers' purse strings:

On her blog, the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke unloads both barrels on the Weinsteins and MGM for their decision to open Yuletide-themed horror movie Black Christmas on Christmas Day, a crass attempt to corrupt the purity of the holiday by luring teenagers away from their families and into the multiplex, where Hollywood expects them to celebrate the miracle of Jesus' birth by watching the evisceration of nubile sorority girls instead of unwrapping next-generation video game consoles. Says Finke: