Little did we know, yesterday's averted JetBlue tragedy was very nearly an averted Hollywood tragedy as well:

An e-mail listing today's new WireImage video clip offerings distills the bland sound-bites you'll later hear on Access Hollywood or the local news into something far more interesting. For example, take the list of Jessica Alba's Into the Blue clips, which become an almost stream-of-consciousness representation of her thoughts on the direction of her career:

"For Matthew Ash, a 24-year-old Gardena resident on a church trip to New York's Catskill Mountains, the first sign of trouble came from an icon of a JetBlue plane. The plane — on the animated map at his seat — 'wasn't going anywhere,' he said, 'just hanging around in Los Angeles.' The landing gear had not retracted, the pilot said."... But as the plane drew closer to the ground, emotions intensified, he said. People remained quiet. Many held hands. A few cried. Parents tried to calm their children, and a baby cried. In front of Ash, a woman began sobbing loudly. As the plane approached the runway, the pilot told passengers to brace themselves.

It's day two of asap, the AP's new "younger audience service," and we think we now understand it: Younger audiences like brief, totally inconsequential and news-free items on ridiculously overexposed "young" "celebrities."

• So what's up with that island being tugged around the island? Public art, of course. Isn't it all. [Towleroad]
• Yes, we know it's Talk Like a Pirate Day. No, we will not honor the occasion by writing in the appropriate dialect. [TLP]
• The gayest gay loft to ever gay its way onto Craigslist. [Craigslist]
• The Meatpacking District's Hotel Gansevoort spreads its obnoxious seed to the West. [HotelChatter]
• Evidently, someone still gives a shit about model Tyra Banks' breasts. [Contact Music]
• Finally, someone more pissy than us. [NR]
• Tara Reid's binge-drinking tour de force, Taradise, isn't quite as dead as we thought. It is, however, barely twitching. [B&C]
• Can Gwyneth Paltrow effectively play a math geek? And does anyone care besides math geeks? [IHE]
• We didn't watch the Emmys, and we're better people for it. [Defamer]

After discovering the hidden joys of having a big-budget Hollywood production like Steven Spielberg's Munich take over their neighborhood (i.e., closed streets, towed vehicles, unfriendly production staff), the Budapset-based Pestiside.hu blog passes along a rumor about Spielberg's alleged latest attempts to ingratiate himself to the locals:

The Looker notes that both late author Susan Sontag and shock rocker Alice Cooper were/are daily movie-goers. So quit harping on the physical similarities, you pricks.

Here's the short, possibly oversimplified version: After Paramount Classics agreed to a "handshake deal" to buy Thank You for Smoking at the Toronto film festival, the movie's producer, a dot-com billionaire allegedly ignorant of The Way Things Are Done in Hollywood, then turned around and made an "actual deal" to sell it to Fox Searchlight. Paramount Classics, it should be noted, is less than pleased with this outcome, and wackiness ensues. Sayeth the LAT:

If you've secretly feared that Haley Joel Osment was living out the rest of his days chained to a Ferris wheel at Michael Jackson's new Neverland Palace in Bahrain, let us set your mind at ease. He's working and trying to shed that troublesome "child actor" label, not slowly chewing through his arm in an attempt to avoid another mirthless day of tending Jacko's expat llamas:

Where the Truth Lies director Atom Egoyan lost a valiant battle with the MPAA ratings board yesterday over scenes of "explicit sexuality" in his film. (Cough cough three way!) The bad news: WTTL will have to carry an NC-17 rating (or go out unrated), which may prevent some theaters from showing the movie. The good news (unsexy version): Distributor ThinkFilm will probably receive scads of free publicity from the movie's soon-to-be famous menage a trois. The good news (sexy version): The released version will carry Egoyan's original group-sex vision:

Hollywood's annual late summer slowdown and the party-dampening post-hurricane atmosphere have taken a predictable toll on the movie premiere circuit. (To wit: VPage is covering the Williams sisters.) Still, studios with product to release must soldier on and shuffle through their red carpet song and dance, aware this is probably not the best time for crab cakes and chocolate fountains. An operative submits this report from last night's Thumbsucker premiere at the Egyptian, complete with a self-conscious admission by a rep that partying under such circumstances is "uncomfortable." You think?

Sometimes Hollywood cares too much: Fresh off a bummer of a premiere for The Man, the producers of the Eugene Levy/Samuel L. Jackson comedy think that a special screening of their movie will help to lift the spirits of the victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Today's LAT profile of small-time manager-producer Bob DeBrino paints a portrait of an interesting enough character doing his best to get off Hollywood's fringes and into the action—he drives around in a flashy Corvette, throws scripts over Nick Nolte's wall (oh, if we had a nickel for every time we tried that trick!), and is trying to help a possibly mobbed-up jailbird cousin get a career in the biz, etc etc. We're far more intrigued by his battle plan for new client Jose Canseco, baseball's blacklisted roid-monster, who's trying to parlay his recent season in Surreal Life semi-fame purgatory into—sigh, what else—a career as an action hero:

Pity Brandon Routh, the actor plucked from obscurity, liberally greased up, and squeezed into Superman's blue tights by director Bryan Singer. Warner Bros. is spending untold millions on the Superman comeback movie, Routh's Big Break, and all anyone can talk about is how painstakingly the costume department calibrated the Man of Steel's package:

Blogger The Corsair transcribes a section of an interview from Hollywood Life magazine with Sir Anthony Hopkins, who's developed an innovative system for coping with preparation-destroying on-set rewrites:

We know what you're thinking in those dark moments between the CNN anchor's question and the rain-battered New Orleans correspondent's shouted answer: Sure, this hurricane business has been truly tragic, but how does it affect the entertainment industry's bottom line? After all, the Big Easy is the New Hollywood, and these destructive, inconvenient tropical storms and the ensuing declarations of martial law are a bitch on tight shooting schedules. The LAT looks at the storm's potential impact on the movie biz and runaway production:

[Click to enlarge.]

For whatever reason (ambivalence, unpleasant mental images of Vince Vaughn pumping away on top of Jennifer Aniston, etc), we never lent much credence to the tabloid/weekly speculation that The Break-Up's stars were engaging in some hot, off-screen action. It seemed too tidy, too convenient. Today, however, Rush & Molloy's spies claim to have seen Vaughn and Aniston locked in a tonsil-tasting competition at their movie's wrap party:

The LAT has obtained the transcript from Scarlett Johansson's 911 call following her recent paparazzi-induced fender-bender at Disneyland. Johansson stayed admirably calm and collected through the conversation with the dispatcher, never once calling hysterically for the Jaws of Life to free her iPod from her damaged vehicle, or, for that matter, to loose the other party from their steel prison. But the call was not without drama, as some unexpected tension arises when Johansson discovers that her accident-partner's ride is tragically unfashionable.

Horatio Alger is cordially invited to blow us all, as today's LAT has the incredible and inspiring story of Flyboys star/producer David Ellison, who heroically overcame a lack of acting experience to be cast in the film with nothing but pluck, a billionaire pedigree, and a multimillion dollar investment: