After four movies, Pierce Brosnan is quitting as James Bond, Brit superspy and sex-addicted chaser of pun-named femme fatale tail, according to an "exclusive interview" with Entertainment Weekly. Brosnan's departure should have been apparent the second anyone saw him in that West Hollywood barbershop poster mustache, but this news nonetheless plunges the Bond franchise into chaos. Let wild speculation begin as to the identity of Brosnan's successor, as every actor with an British/Irish/Australian accent has been named as a possibility, including Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Heath Ledger, Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana, Mr. Bean, and the ghost of Benny Hill. We think they should just sign up Owen, throw him in a tux (he probably still has his from Croupier), and let him loose on Miss Moneypenny and Clitty Cumwell.

MGM is hosting an "interactive screenings" of historic cinematic failure Showgirls at the Vista theater in Los Feliz tonight to celebrate the release of a DVD "V.I.P. Special Edition" of the movie. The strategy: "Buy our enormous piece of shit, now rendered appealing because we're finally in on the joke." Masochist screening attendees will receive a "goodie bag" of props (such as fake c-notes) to hurl at the screen to mark moments of forced, ironic enjoyment of the horrid spectacle. (BYO human scat for maximum fun!) Before you shake your head and say, "It's wasn't that bad," remember this: The movie committed the twin sins of desensitizing us to exposed breasts and rendering fucking in a swimming pool unsexy and ridiculous.

For years, the myth has been passed about that former Sophia-Coppola-lover and director Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) is "the heir to the Spiegel catalogue fortune." Filmmaker Greg Allen rips apart the "Adam Spiegel" legend today:

A reader with a bird's eye view of a XXX sequel (variously and complexly titled as XXX Squared, XXX2, and XXX2: State of the Union) location shoot in Long Beach sends a brief report, with a cliffhanger: Will our spy finally get some flaming action out of Vin Diesel?

A Comic-Con nerd of a somewhat lesser degree steps back from the helmeted, plastic lightsaber-clutching crowd and takes a brief accounting of the chaos unfolding as the title of the last Star Wars movie is announced:

We can't say for sure if handing out One. Tiny. Fucking. Burger. per person is going to make people go see Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, but Sunset Boulevard freeloaders seem less than happy with the portions and quality of their gratis beef. If they gave out more than one burger, all of LA's regular and boring homeless would converge on The Strip, driving away the crowd of homeless actors and rock stars who have rightly claimed that turf as their own. A reader even points out that Harold & Kumar is at best going to stake out a place as only the second-greatest White Castle movie ever made:

In-house statistician Andrew Krucoff takes two of Hollywood's obsessions, box office dollars and the height of its stars, and translates them into a chart that even we can understand. Click on the above chart to see the full version, which includes separate breakdowns for Hollywood's all-time earners (per picture) and for some of Young Hollywood's up-and-comers. Mike Myers may be a mere 5' 8", but can swing his realtively meager inches with admirable box-office potency, while Leo translates his stature to money with the worst efficiency. Krucoff explains methodology:

Here's yet another surefire sign that your movie is headed for the tank: Bloggers are clawing out each other's eyes to do bad review round-ups. There's just so much bad to go around as Halle Berry braces herself for a potentially historic box-office failure. Our favorite phrase comes from Variety, presented here completely out of context to spotlight its magnificience: "arcane pussy power."

We're terrified by the giant gaping (and hopefully photoflash-induced) opening in Woody Allen's hand in this photo. If I squint, I can almost see the neurotic motherboard. On the other hand (ha!), we're definitely stoked that shooting begins soon on I, Jewbot. (Oh, shut up, it's Friday.)
Woody Allen in Spain [Yahoo!]

If you want to ruin the lives of 25-year-old Williamsburg hipsters, wake them up and force them to read Salon's ultimate spoiler-sheet on cult flick Donnie Darko today. What will the kids argue about during their stoned Saturday nights now?
Everything you were afraid to ask about 'Donnie Darko' [Salon]

Eat food you'd only ingest while high to promote the opening of a movie you'd only watch while high:

Blogger The Corsair transcribes this Movieline Hollywood Life interview (not available online, apparently) with Christina Applegate, in which she discusses working with Ben Affleck on the upcoming movie Surviving Christmas.

Jake Gyllenhaal's caught turning his dreamy-eyed X-rays onto a Sparkle Motion dancer by Variety's camera at Thursday night's Egyptian Theater premiere of the Donnie Darko director's cut. Or is he just trying to explain what the fuck is actually going on in Darko? Either way, nice move: In Hollywood, a good way to get laid is to a) be famous or b) talk about your incomprehensible indie film until someone fucks you just to shut you up.

On Saturday night, singer Linda Ronstadt was fired after she ignited a near-riot ("guests...spilled drinks, tore down posters and demanded their money back") at the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas for dedicating the song "Desperado" to Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore. We can almost see the scene...Republican conventioneers, livid that their little respite from losing their capital gains tax savings to the roulette wheel has been interrupted, push their hookers to the floor and threaten to burn the place down.

This Worth1000.com Photoshop contest entry knows that the Fox marketing department will snow-shoe over the furthest tundra in search of demographics previously untainted by their advertising machine. Look for I, Robot to hit number one in the Inuit community next week, and to be really sick of Will Smith by week two.

We'd love to say that we snuck into Thursday's premiere of The Bourne Supremacy at the ArcLight and the after party across the street, but a friend (i.e. not anyone connected to the movie) slipped us a pair of tickets at the last minute. Feel free to invent your own story. Maybe we seduced a cocktail waitress and stole her uniform as she performed the standard shame-driven, post-coital vomiting fit that "friends of Defamer" all seem to suffer? Whatever works for you.

Surefire Sign That Your Movie Marketing Department Is About Ten Minutes From Mass Suicide: The last-ditch recruitment of Barbie to promote your lite S&M stinker to the last demographic not poisoned by your movie's negative hype, seven-year-old girls.

PlanetOut notices that former adorable, screeching face-slapper and current gay icon Macaulay Culkin's last three projects have been gay-friendly. He explains his latest artistic choices in this excerpt from the interview:

If you thought Pat O'Brien's bitching filled today's quota of aeronautical industry-derived gossip, you were wrong. Who knew there's anything good happening on airplanes besides mile-high quickies in the bathroom? A reader reports on a troubling failure in airline security, which resulted in a hateful bomb being transported on a passenger plane. Luckily, the dangerous cargo is not set to detonate until next Friday. There's still time to save yourselves!

Ben Affleck has dropped out of the Disney/Bruckheimer production Glory Road less than a month before production begins. Affleck was apparently disappointed with Disney's offered back-end deal. We'd like to go ahead and assume the same problem may have contributed to the demise of his relationship with J. Lo, but nobody gets an engagement ring that big without giving up enough back-end action.