Click to viewBoomp3.com Walking the velvety red steps at the third annual Rome Film Festival, acting legend Al Pacino delivered one of his more popular catch phrases to his adoring public. Pacino titled his sunglasses slightly and unleashed a mighty “HOO-ah!” to a thundering round of applause. [Photo Credit: Getty Images] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

· Anne Hathaway is set to star in The Fiance, about a young woman who, despite her parents' wishes, leaves her seemingly perfect fiance in order to find herself. Let us guess — he's Italian, right? [Variety] · Lionsgate has attached Ashton Kutcher to portray an ex-hit man in the action-comedy Five Killers. [Variety] · Today in survival: ABC has picked up a full second season of its medical soap Private Practice, and CBS ordered more scripts for its new series Worst Week. [The Live Feed] After the jump: What Oscar-nominee hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize and call Bill Clinton a "weenie" in her next film?· Naomi Watts is close to a deal to star in My Name is Jody Williams, a biopic of the brash teacher-turned-activist who launched a controversial, Clinton-needling campaign to eradicate land mines. [THR] · Rosie O'Donnell will star in and executive produce the Lifetime original movie America, an adaptation of E.R. Frank's touching book about a troubled, 232-year old superpower fighting its way through the foster-care system in New York. [Variety]

Die Power Der Veto. We assumed a headline reading, "Hitler planned 'Big Brother' style television to broadcast Nazi propaganda," meant that the Nazi dictator was the John de Mol of his time. Turns out they were just talking about boring, old Orwell-style Big Brotherism: projections of the dictator speaking in public squares. It would have so much more fascinating to think Hitler was way ahead of the reality TV curve, with a plan to put a dozen Aryan out-of-work bartenders inside a house rigged by Leni Riefenstahl with hundreds of cameras, and broadcasting the ensuing bickering and hottübben shenanigans for an enraptured German population. [Summer's Assholes 10 photo-illustration courtesy of Glark.] [Daily Mail]

Fat Chance: Our first exposure to the greenlit MTV show Model Makers — in which eager wannabe models would have to lose 80 pounds in 12 dangerous, light-headed weeks — managed to offend even our already MTV-wary sensibilities. Now, HuffPo blogger Darryl Roberts says that MTV has decided to quietly discontinue their plans to air Model Makers. Guess we'll have to fill the gap waiting for the premiere of Ruby! [HuffPo]

Prison Break: Die Hard director John McTiernan is the latest celebrity to clear jail waivers this week after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated his four-month prison sentence for lying to federal investigators in the Anthony Pellicano case. McTiernan, who at first denied hiring Pellicano to wiretap his Rollerball producer Charles Roven, pled guilty to the charges last year; soon after, he appealed to withdraw the plea on the basis of inadequate legal counsel and, in his words, "All this for Rollerball? Have you seen Rollerball?" Free to direct again, he has since been sentenced to four years of B-pictures, with time off for good behavior. [AP]

Click to viewBoomp3.com Pint size media mogul Ashley Olsen took further advantage of her mogul status as she cut through the line at LAX early on Tuesday morning. In addition to moving ahead in line, Olsen did not have to crawl on her hands and knees to breeze past the rest of the line. Olsen said, "Airport lint is hell on my jeans." [Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Fans of Celebrity Rehab's first season will recall it featured several breakout recoveries, including those of failed hip-hop superduo Vikki & Kenickie, as well as the addictionless Joanie "Chyna" Laurer, who right up until CR commencement exercises refused to reveal the enigmatic circumstances that led her into the program. Tomorrow night, the second season premieres on VH1, but a preview already posted online suggests that Gary Busey—who's made it clear his involvement is strictly as mystical, recovering-coke-fiend mahatma to the other patients—could wind up contributing more story-editor-nip drama to the proceedings than spiritual guidance.In the following video, the actor describes his ongoing struggles with Bolivian marching powder, reaching near Marcia Brady-levels of desperation and interspecies-sexual-favor-trading in order to get his hands on the stimulant. When time comes for check-in, rehab tech Shelly finds an agitated and uncooperative Busey unwilling to part with essentials like mouthwash, mobile phones, and large bags of weed, while minutes later a concerned Dr. Drew listens compassionately as a broken Busey relays the time he snorted blow off his own dog's back. Helluvuh drug.

There aren't a lot of wheels left to fly off at the Weinstein Company, where as many as five executives are now expected to have made their exits by the end of the year. Add on the news that its previous Oscar hopeful The Road is officially shelved until 2009 while Bob Weinstein reportedly invests upward of $60 million in straight-to DVD releases for next year (a market he badmouthed as recently as last week), and your Weinstein DeathWatch countdown may have just acquired new, accelerated momentum. Watch the casualties mount after the jump.Today's Hollywood Reporter notes that TWC's bosses of acquisition and production Michelle Krumm and Maeva Gatineau left through the back door at the beginning of October, while production execs Michael Cole and Carla Gardini will follow with marketing VP Gary Faber in short order. All were Miramax veterans at the end of their first contracts with TWC. Harvey says he intends to replace them, and with Inglourious Basterds [sic] currently shooting in Germany and Rob Marshall's musical Nine on the way soon after, face-value presumes to believe him. But we'd much sooner believe he'd sell the operation for parts — Basterds, Nine, the just-shelved Forest Whitaker drama Hurricane Season, Fanboys, Shanghai and anything else Fox Searchlight, Focus Features, Flopz™ or another willing suitor can squeeze into a shopping cart on a 60-second spree through the storage locker. (Sorry, though, Lifetime — you still can't have Project Runway.) Even if The Reader can surmount its rush-job ego drama to make a legit awards-season run, whatever prestige accompanies it will wind up attributed to everybody but poor Harvey. It's almost pitiable. Almost. In the end, the Weinstein brothers' public incompetence is really too willful to lament and too insistent to shock. Take today's Variety item, for example, in which Bob Weinstein, whose genre arm Dimension has itself survived without a production president since buying out Richard Saperstein last year, announced a greenlight for 18 titles to be produced this fall and released to straight to the Dimension Extreme DVD label in 2009. (This coming the same day Dimension shelved its Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road indefinitely.) They're all franchise installments or remakes — Pulse 2, Midnight Man 2 and 3, Children of the Corn, Chapter XXIV, etc. — budgeted between $3 million and $6 million. “Having learned how profitable a video library is and having already found great success launching franchises on video, this was a natural and obvious progression,” Bob told the trade. Contrast that with his appearance sitting in for Harvey last week at Nielsen's Media and Money conference, where the Reporter cited his bearishness toward a "dwindling DVD market" and the vague hope that he might be lucky enough to exploit that library — not $75 million in new productions — through VOD and Web downloads. Is the Weinsteins' output deal with Showtime richer than we thought? And with almost as many empty desks as delayed titles left in the office, who is selling these films? How are they even getting made? That said, Zack and Miri Make a Porno will probably open in the Top 3 next week with little more than stick figures on its poster and morbidly obese Kevin Smith regaling America with his stories of broken toilets, so what do we know? As you were, Harvey, we guess.

Samuel L. Jackson and Barack Obama may have a certain amount of preternatural cool in common, but there's one thing Jackson can do that the presidential candidate can't: curse up a storm! While promoting his new film Soul Men, the actor opined at length on all things Obama, and thanks to Hollywood Outbreak, we have the NSFW audio (caution: as though he were back on the set of a Tarantino film, Jackson lets fly with a torrent of "n-words").You may be interested to hear Jackson hold court on Sarah Palin rallies, how Obama is hamstrung by what society wants to see in a black man, and his greatest fear involving the candidate, but our favorite moment was Jackson's brief, jowly McCain impression. Hey Sam, we hear SNL is hiring — sure, there's that whole racial barrier thing, but that hasn't stopped Fred Armisen from playing Obama, has it?

Click to viewBoomp3.com After a lunch date with a good friend, Four Christmases star Reese Witherspoon went in for a kiss since she felt the meal went well. However, Witherspoon’s companion gracefully glided Witherspoon to her cheek. The companion said, “Lunch dates get the cheek. Now, take me to Katsuya and maybe I’ll reconsider the lips.” [Photo Credit: X17] *A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: 10/21 — So I’m at the lab next to the CitiBank in Burbank, minding my own business, and I look out the window at the parking lot, and there’s this guy who looks like Ozzy Osbourne getting into an Audi station wagon, and I’m saying to myself, you know, that guy looks like Ozzy, but he’s moving kinda well, no shaking. And then I see Sharon Osbourne getting into the back. And there was Kelly Osbourne in a Mercedes behind them. No carpooling in this family, evidently. Sorry, but that was cool. See? Post-production has its rewards. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

Roger Ebert survived a battle with thyroid and salivary gland cancer with his prodigious mind still intact, but ever since his notorious binder-thwacking at the hands of Lou Lumenick, things have been a little... askew. First, Rog stumped his audience with an ode to creationism that seemed more appropriate for Free Republic than the Chicago Sun-Times (later, he informed us it was just satire). Now, Ebert is in hot water after posting a review of the gay independent film Tru Loved that he admits at the end was written after watching only eight minutes. The one-star review is here, his original disclaimer is here, and Ebert's attempt to walk back the firestorm is after the jump:

Much of Hollywood is on edge (and making "eeeeeeew" faces) this morning as news quickly spread that some of our most treasured lesbian DJs, their reformed starlet girlfriends, a various other tenacious hangers-on have been exposed to waters that recently held a dead body. The location was the Roosevelt Hotel—certainly no stranger to corpses, hosting at least one accidentally fatal date-rape-drugging per weekend—but what made this tragedy unusual was the fact that: 1. the victim, a 30-year-old New York native, was discovered at the pool's bottom, not in a cabana with an iPod boombox still playing "I Kissed A Girl" on infinite loop, and 2. the pool was never drained. Page Six reports:

Guns N' Roses takes its 15-year battle with irrelevance straight to the people today, officially releasing the title track of its long, long, long, long-delayed album Chinese Democracy after years of leaks, lawsuits and general internecine drama that left a once-great rock band in yawning disarray. We've tired enough of attempting to keep up that we hadn't bothered tracking down the new single before this morning (you can hear it after the jump); it's about as soft as Axl Rose's cosmetically burnished features and, as presumed, won't make us forget anything on Appetite For Destruction. And thank goodness, because despite Democracy's Nov. 23 release date finally laid down by Interscope Records, GNR's manager hinted to Entertainment Weekly today that even more "complications" are imminent.Somewhat intriguingly, EW retracted this morning's item headlined, "Guns N' Roses manger: 'Great art takes time'" almost as soon as it was published — right around the time the single first hit the radio and began streaming online. But why? After all, rock managers are chronically bloated with braggadocio, even if shaking up their band's label and exclusive retail partners at Best Buy with suggestions that Nov. 23 doesn't really mean Nov. 23:

The ink is barely dry on those first giddy divorce filings, and already the vultures are circling world's biggest pop star Madonna and her cuckolded soon-to-be ex-husband, "film director" Guy Ritchie. While the two stars themselves have remained relatively demure about the whole matter—Madge makes the same "emotionally retarded" joke at every concert, Guy reportedly said on the set of his new film Sherlock Holmes, "today's going to be a weird one, but don't feel awkward because this is where I want to be" while waving a copy of a British tabloid—the press has been a little more salacious. The latest Us Weekly features a gushy, long-for-that-publication article on the storied split, providing hideous and sad details like how Ritchie used to refer to sex with his Isla Bonita as "cuddling up with a piece of gristle." That's just... well, that's poetry Mr. Ritchie. How messy is this thing going to get? One hopes, because there are three young children involved, that they'll keep their cool and blunder on in private. Though discretion is not always Maddy's forte and Guy will have to come to terms with the fact that he's not really famous without his muscly bride. Though juicy details about Madonna's Kaballah-fueled romp in the twenty million dollar hay with Yankees sucker Alex Rodriguez and Ritchie's supposed on-set romance with a young British chippy promise to "entertain" for some time. Plus, there are wonderful unconfirmed tidbits about Madge slapping Guy and calling him a coward for eating chocolate bars, and Guy returning fire by calling her old and wrinkly. Whee! The tabloid press will, of course, screech and caw and ruffle their feathers, pulling smaller and smaller strands of meat from this marriage's dessicated carcass, but eventually—if Madonna and Guy play it close to their chests—they'll have to find some other moldering corpse of a blessed union to feed off of. Who's due? Um... Ashlee and Pete? Nicole Richie and that man that she married? Elton and David??

It's official: Sumner Redstone's second marriage is finished, confirming our exclusive from Friday. Court papers were filed at the end of last week, according to the Los Angeles Times, and now the Viacom chief has issued a statement saying the split is "amicable" and that "we remain close and supportive friends." In other words, wife Paula Fortunato has finally, 14 months after divorce rumors surfaced, agreed to leave, perhaps because she got something beyond her "iron-clad prenup," once thought to be worth a flat $1 million, or because she's actually now earned $5 million, with the prenup now pegged at $1 million per year of marriage. Or maybe the former public school teacher is just tired of living with the mean mogul, 40 years her elder, and of hearing rumors he's been calling some famous comedian's wife. Whatever happened, Redstone is reaching into his pocket at a time when he can least afford it. Writes the LA Times:

· That's why you need the Zyliss Ultra Peeler: Your lady will barely be able to keep her hands off your kiwis! · These two delightful finds—one featuring nothing but inverted canines, the other, a gallery of impressively morbid creations using chicken bones, KFC containers, and ketchup—do nothing but reconfirm our love of the Internets. [All via b3ta] · We found an actor willing to go on record in support of Proposition 8: Latin heartthrob Eduardo Verástegui. Enjoy having terrible hair and makeup and looking fat in jeans for the rest of your career, Eduardo! (Wily stylists.) [Guanabee] · Tears For Fears's Curt Smith will be playing the third of four dates at the Standard Hollywood's Cactus Lounge tonight at 7 p.m. An intimate, free evening with your high school fantasy boyfriend! How can you pass that up? Here's "Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version" to get you warmed up, from the guys who brought you "Take On Me: LVV." (Not as good as the last one, but whatever—it's also free.) · Does Chace Crawford have a hamburger for you!

A storm surge of Wall Street-in-crisis movies is coming soon to a theater or television near you, and busy trend reporters are preparing us for the worst today with their grim surveys of what to expect in the weeks and months ahead. But beyond the obvious recycling of Wall Street for a new generation of jaded multiplexers, the forecast remains mostly sunny after early, patchy fog; we think you're more likely to see Papi and his Beverly Hills Chihuahua-mates yapping in theaters again before Gordon Gekko ever makes his return trip to Manhattan.Look at it this way: Hollywood hasn't sold a domestic crisis to moviegoers in years. At least not as a drama, anyway; Michael Moore exceeded documentary standards with Fahrenheit 9/11, but the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina and other recent, rattling history are nowhere at the box office. Vietnam hit and (mostly) missed between 1975 and 1990, with exceptions including The Deer Hunter, Coming Home Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Since then, it's all about the distractions; 24 works because Jack Bauer is your kind of torturer. He's as much of an escapist as you are. The financial meltdown offers few such release valves. The familiar, curious comforts of Wall Street and Boiler Room are flying off rental shelves, according to The New York Times, but the next crop of business-themed productions — from Lifetime's Candace Bushnell adaptation Trading Up to the Gekko follow-up Money Never Sleeps — are as stillborn as Stop-Loss and Body of Lies before them. Maybe they need dancing chihuahuas, as Paul Haggis hints to the NYT, or, as an NBC programming boss told Bloomberg today, at least "exemplify the foolishness of the human condition in the world of finance'':

While her old BFF Paris Hilton has remade herself as a third-party presidential candidate, Nicole Richie has been content to slip out of the spotlight, instead making questionable moves like living in Glendale and giving the dude from Good Charlotte a second career as a professional boyfriend. Last night, however, Richie returned to the acting career she had given up after being forced to feign interest in the non-famous for multiple seasons of The Simple Life. In her appearance on the NBC show Chuck, Richie channeled her claws and engaged in a bruising, bloody catfight not seen since the great Aguilera/Richie Baby Picture Smackdown, and we have the confrontation's best moments. Sure, the fight isn't quite Buffy vs. Faith caliber, but at least it's better than the brouhaha that ensued when Paris and Nicole once showed up to a T-Mobile party wearing the exact same hair extensions. Shit went down — trust. [NBC]

Nothing on the fall TV schedule has captured our imaginations more than a tiny, as-yet-untitled program to recently premiere on YouTube, which we informally refer to around Defamer HQ as The William Shatner Has Seriously Lost His Fucking Mind Show. Accompanied by dutiful daughter Liz—the product, it's widely rumored, of a one-beam-stand with a hot little green number from Orion—Shatner has moved on from obsessing over his snubbing from the new Star Trek movie, and now has an entirely new rebuff to fixate on: his exclusion from the George Takei-Brad Altman nuptials.While he enters the conversation with almost Vulcan-like logic (his former Star Trek co-star, whom he "barely knows" but desperately wishes he could have tossed fistfuls of rice at, suffers from acute psychosis-induced jealousy), things quickly start to devolve around the two-minute mark. It's at that point that Shatner begins to drift off to the outer realms, where not even the most up-to-date Universal Translators would be able to untangle his meandering theories on what might have been eating at the bridge's furtively Redshirt-lusting lieutenant all these years.