Hey, have you heard that there's a gang of obsessed Star Wars nerds camping out in front of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd, even though there's a chance that the movie won't be premiering there? So has the LAT...four days after the story unfolding right under their nose first broke. But what the Times lacks in timeliness they attempt to make up in definitiveness, deftly leading their story with a serviceable FAQ of The Line:

Note to Mr. Gere: You may want to think twice before you try to slow-dance with the head of the PLO, lest you lose that "come hither" finger.

Taking a cue from the Oscar telecast visionaries who forced winners to enjoy the proudest moment of their lives while standing uncomfortably in the aisles of the audience like overdressed ushers or arrayed on stage like firing-squad fodder, the television academy has recommended similar, time-saving changes to their ratings-impaired Emmy show. Some winners will be urged to keep their speeches brief (choosing "thanks" over "thank you" will save half a second at least), while others will be asked to pre-tape the spontaneous outburst of joy that comes from basking in the highlight of their careers. Still, writers and directors turn the lemons of discontent into the lemonade of acquiescence:

Whichever skinny-armed, Vader-helmeted Lucas disciple decided to line up the band of Star Wars disciples in front of the "wrong" theater six weeks before the new movie's premiere has turned out to be some kind of publicity genius. Sure, they got some blog attention earlier in the week, but now the mainstream media is sniffing around, knowing that the headlines had already written themselves:

Not everyone in Hollywood was pleased with the changes to this year's Oscar telecast, in which producer Gil Gates forced the recipients of some of the ceremony's technical (read: less sexy) awards to receive their statues in the audience—or by herding all nominees onto the stage, where the losers' spontaneous expressions of agony could more easily be captured in a single camera shot. The professional organizations of movie editors and visual effects artists penned letters to Cates expressing their displeasure with the new format:

Johnny Ray Gasca, the arrested movie pirate who eluded the FBI for a year after giving his lawyer the slip while awaiting trial, was finally caught in Florida yesterday. According to today's LAT story on Gasca's capture, being a wildly successful bootlegger requires a seemingly total absence of taste, as Gasca was nabbed recording screenings of The Core and Anger Management. Here, MPAA chief Dan Glickman crows about the collar:

While on one level we take some degree of comfort in knowing that the world's taste in cinema can be every bit as bad as our own, on another, much more visceral level, this press release has plunged us into the blackest depths of despair—we had no idea that Bruce Almighty was the previous record holder:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away...fuck it. Here's the story: Star Wars fans are lined up in front of the Chinese Theatre in anticipation of the release of Revenge of the Sith on May 19th. The problem: As of now, the movie isn't scheduled to play at the Chinese; instead, the ArcLight will host it. This small logistical matter has become a topic of much debate on the Lining Up group's website—some propose moving the line, some want to keep it where it is for the purpose of staging a more visible spectacle in the heart of Hollywood, and some want to trot out the "cancer-ridden kids" (on whose behalf the Lining Up people are collecting charitable donations) to force distributor Fox or Lucas himself to show the movie at the beloved Chinese:

Even with the enforcers from Hollywood's New Gay Mafia nearby, Will Ferrell still couldn't avoid the open-mouthed humiliation of a promotional Shrek ogre bukkake photo op at the Nickolodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

After watching the three seasons' worth of first-time directors flail their way through disastrous low-budget films* on Project Greenlight, producer (and former partner of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) Chris Moore decides that he's ready to get behind the camera himself for a remake of Race with the Devil:

Jessica Alba continues to torture us through prudish headlines, but far more disturbing is the larger trend of actresses portraying exotic dancers while eschewing the nudity required for stripper-verisimilitude. Sure, we put up with Natalie Portman's coy refusal to show even a single nipple in Closer, but she's a "serious actress." Seemingly every other female in Sin City either paraded around topless or in revealing bondage gear, so why must she buck the system and lose the career points? This was her freebie, where she could've said "it made sense for the role" with a straight face.

At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Johnny Depp and Ben Stiller delight the crowd by acting out a scene from next year's Shrek sequel, Shrek 3: Ogre Facials. They assured the parents in attendance that DreamWorks' first-ever animated bukkake flick will be made more family-friendly when it's finally rendered in CGI.

As if it wasn't bad enough that new, vanilla MPAA head Dan Glickman has to suffer through the inevitable, unfavorable comparisons to Jack Valenti, his swashbuckling, dashingly demented, and poetic predecessor, Glickman, a Democrat straight out of Clinton's cabinet, has to prove that he can swing both ways:

Sometimes brevity isn't the soul of wit and only an ungrammatical, spittle-flecked mini-diatribe can effectively express your cynically affected moral outrage. We shudder to think what might have happened if the heathens at Dimension went with their original working title, Popefuckerville.

The Culture to Go blog takes a stroll through whirleybird aficionado/occasional broomstick fetishist Harrison Ford's IMDb page with an eye on the great actor's penchant for constipated grimacing. Ford's work in The Fugitive was perhaps the apogee of his knotted-colon facial articulations:

"Look, Prime Minister, I know that this probably violates all kinds of cultural norms that may cause you to lose respect among your peers in the government, but do you mind if I lead? The Dalai Lama never lets me lead."

A reader reports on last night's ArcLight screening of Palindromes, director Todd Solondz's latest addition to the misanthrope canon, where it was discovered that Ellen Barkin's rambling answers to questions about the movie are a good time to hit the concession stand or the restrooms:

The latest in former hit cross-pollination technology brings us this gem from the world of feature film development:

If director Michael Bay had a blog, what would we write about? Behind-the-scenes accounts of his dealings in the entertainment industry? His sexual conquests? The profound disappointment of realizing that he's become only the second-hackiest fauxteur in town since Brett Ratner's hacky genius descended over Hollywood? The anonymous author behind the Michael Bay blog tries to intercept the director's innermost thoughts and present them in an online diary:

They are Hollywood's comedy cartel, the actors, writers, and producers that can walk into any studio in town and get a greenlight from a pitch with the simple formula "[Hot comedic actor] is a [wacky or offbeat occupation]" (examples: Will Ferrell as anchorman/NASCAR driver/beach volleyball player, Ben Stiller as dodgeball player/Starsky, etc). The implications are chilling: You'd better enjoy the goofy chemistry between Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, find Stiller's constipated Everyman rage as hilarious as ever, or learn to love the sight of Ferrell slathered in cocoa butter, because that's all you're going to get for the next three to five years.