· "Glickman, a former congressman who took the job after Jack Valenti retired last year, calls piracy 'a potential dagger poised at the heart of the motion picture industry.'" It's so nice that some of Valenti's poetic soul is finally rubbing off on the Glickster.
· PoweR girl Lizzie Grubman gets busted planting a gossip item on Lindsay Lohan. Guess she's still getting the hang of being on camera all of the time. Good thing she didn't have a show when she was learning how drive her SUV in the Hamptons, eh? [second item]
· Michael Jackson's learning, albeit slowly. Sure, he showed up to court late and in tears from his "back pain," but at least his handlers got him out of his jammies this time.
· The Genies (the Canadian Oscars) are being held tonight, and forgive us for sounding like an ugly American for saying so, but doesn't the Genie statue look like something that Oscar would fuck in in the bathroom of the Abbey and never call again for being too clingy? We're just sayin'.

Pint-sized The Ring Two star David Dorfman mistakes this wax figure for Jesus, then prays with all of his might that he not grow up to be as creepy as Haley Joel Osment.

What's the only thing more homoerotic than the pseudo-macho banter from Top Gun? How about repeating that banter with a stranger while holding your penis?

Query Letters I Love, the blog that anonymously posts the ill-conceived pitch letters of the unhinged for all to see, presents a screenplay we'd like to see get made (although it's possible we've been blinded the brilliance of the title):

· At the ShoWest conference in Vegas, MPAA head Dan Glickman thanks foreign film markets for making even the most egregious of Hollywood's bombs reach profitability. In an unrelated note, we really loved Glickman's work as the Tall Man in the Phantasm movies (pic at left). [THR]
· Kenneth Branagh decides to steer his career into startlingly uncharted waters by directing an adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It. [Variety]
· Whoops! Look like we were wrong about all of the actors in Hollywood being used up for pilots. Donald Sutherland, Gina Gershon, George Wendt, and Roger Daltrey fill in some of the casting cracks. [THR]
· New Line buys the rights to the upcoming Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% a True Story, in which the writer visits the sites of infamous rock-star demises. Let's see if they can get Philip Seymour Hoffman to play Klosterman. [Variety]
· A quick reminder of a controversy that had the country's panties in a painful bunch, but which now we can barely remember: The FCC rules that Nicolette Sheridan's Monday Night Football skit was not indecent. Which, we suppose, makes it decent. [THR]

Despite initial appearances and a bedeviling name, the Blue Tights Adventure Network is not a gay dating website. Still, Superman director Bryan Singer takes an interest and sends in some video from Sydney, featuring the superhero auteur himself fixing his hair, talking about his interests, and men flying around in harnesses. How clever of him to send a video that can easily be repurposed for that other kind of site!

Today's NYT retreads much of the LAT's Friday profile of Million Dollar Baby scribe and screenwriting flavor-of-the-moment Paul Haggis: his incredible rise from The Facts of Life ghetto to the Oscar nomination penthouse, the sage words from his thirtysomething mentor, the inspiration for his new movie, Crash. The NYT did, however, nod to Haggis' involvement with the Church of Scientology, but that's just a single sentence that goes nowhere (a white van full of L. Ron's footsoldiers must've been idling menacingly nearby). Far more fascinating is the startling revelation that Haggis is ambidextrous, at least in regards to photographs that feature the scribe pensively cradling his chin and piercing us with those baby blues.

The LAT profiles Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis, whose involvement with Clint Eastwood's tone poem to mood lighting and bloody tongues has propelled him to screenwriting It-Boy status. Haggis' rise is your typical Hollywood up-from-humble-beginnings story, in which a hardscrabble go-getter with big dreams somehow beats the odds of making hundreds of thousands of dollars writing for television to eventually earn millions as an Oscar-nominated movie scribe. As is common in these Alger-quality tales, a mentor passes on some words of wisdom, scales fall from eyes, and an epiphany occurs:

· Even with their corporate masters cracking the whip and demanding more, more, more, the Sideways-boosted Fox Searchlight will make fewer movies this year. [Variety]
· MPAA Head Pirate Hunter in Charge Dan Glickman tours the "crime-ridden black market-areas" of Mexico City in an effort to crack down on piracy south of the border. Luckily, there have been no reports of Glickman firing pistols at poverty-stricken sidewalk vendors selling unauthorized DVD copies from dirty blankets. Yet. [THR]
· Fox Animation gets the rights to Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, which much to the chagrin of the Geisel estate, will promptly be retitled Rupert Hears a Who. Hey, that's what happens when you deal with Hollywood. [Variety]
· Hey, did you hear the one about pilot season? Ellen Burstyn, Alan Ruck, John Francis Daley join pilot casts. [THR]
· "Thanks to a vote Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Hollywood is one small step closer to seeing the camcording of a film declared a federal crime." Whether the crime should be punished by firing squad or by mere genital mutilation is yet to be determined, however. [Variety]

At a NY screening for Fox's new animated movie, actor Stanley Tucci points out the Ewan McGregor-voiced robot's distressing lack of junk.
NY Social Diary]

Perhaps if Parker Lewis had been a little more humble about his prospects of defeat, he wouldn't find himself in such an awful predicament.

Granted, Jane Fonda might be staring career suicide in the face, but she should've done a better job holding in the flop sweat until the cameras stopped rolling.

Upon seeing our earlier post about the LAT's profile of reading-impaired producer Avi Lerner, a reader offers a fresh chapter in the Big Book of Dumb Shit PAs Are Forced To Endure:

Needing a break from the stresses of winning her second Oscar and inconspicuously scarfing Astro burgers in front of blinding paparazzi flashbulbs, Hilary Swank and oft-emasculated house-husband Chad Something have earned a vacation:

The whiskey fumes rising from Dustin Hoffman's skin haven't even dissipated, and already the AP is looking at candidates for next year's Oscars. You can find all of the no-brainers in their round-up: Cinderella Man (dumb Russell Crowe/Ron Howard/Brian Grazer boxing movie that will pretend to be smart), War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise shouts while looking constipated, Steven Spielberg blows shit up), Memoirs of a Geisha (Spielberg was too busy blowing shit up to direct it himself), All the King's Men (Sean Penn gets serious, again, and perhaps squeezes in a manly cry), and Untitled Steven Spielberg Project (Spielberg begs Academy to forgive him for blowing shit up by making an Important Movie About a Tragic Event). Our bold prediction: We will be so fucking high while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

It's feeling a little bit like a Vin Diesel kind of afternoon: The action star/marble-mouthed part-time nanny is starting to get the idea that his vision for his pet project, Hannibal the Conqueror, might never be realized.

An operative files this report from the premiere of Vin Diesel's attempt at a kiddie franchise, The Pacifier. (And here we thought that after Kindergarten Cop, we'd never again experience the magic of someone who struggles with the English language chasing after children.) Unfortunately for our mole, the after-party was predictably a bad scene for getting drunk and/or laid, though we think the bounce castle was clearly a missed opportunity:

Did an impaired Dustin Hoffman lose a bet at an Oscars post-party?

Given the diminished ratings that other awards shows suffered during this season of kudo-oversaturation and the splintering of television audience by the proliferation of cable and satellite, the Oscars were considered a relative...what were we talking about? Hey, can we get some sound-bites from geezers in the Academy complaining about the all the newfangled doodads in the overhauled talkies telecast?

· Beware, TiVo watched your Oscar-surfing habits. They know if you rewound fifteen times to see if you actually caught a glimpse of Hilary Swank's ass-crack creeping out her dress, or if you were engaged in more intellectual pursuits.
· Being your own lawyer: All the crazy, drifter/stalker types are doing it!
· The all Trim-Spa diet isn't the best idea we've ever heard. Someone may need to start mainlining Krispy Kremes to reverse the damage. [via witz.org]
· We offer a warm welcome home to sodomy-n-policy lovin' sister blogger Wonkette, who returns from her month-long, peyote-fueled vision quest to unleash another ass-fucking-fueled reign of terror on Washington.