Deadliest Catch star Philip Seymour Hoffman just returned to solid land after being out to sea for a few months catching crabs. Hoffman arrived just in time to partake in the Toronto Film Festival and was looking forward to watching some movies. Hoffman said, "As long as it doesn't involve fish, fishing or the ocean, I'll watch it. I'll even watch that new Nicolas Cage movie."

When Olympian gold medalist Michael Phelps was announced as the host of Saturday Night Live's 33rd season premiere, we had a couple concerns about his acting ability — worries that, frankly, weren't alleviated by his monotone presenting at last night's VMAs. Fortunately, SNL all-star Kristen Wiig has the right idea about how best to utilize Phelps — and it's by putting focus on his most unassailable trait, his body:

Ready Your Pitchforks: While we can usually count on Nicolas Cage for his on-screen eccentricities, it seems that he can't even let a simple financial pickle pass without adding his own unique touch to the proceedings. According to Forbes, the actor has been caught deducting millions worth of personal expenses (simple things, like a Gulfstream 1159A turbojet) and now owes the IRS "substantial back taxes." Just how much does Cage have to fork over? The not-at-all ominous sum of $666,000. Looks like Ghost Rider's been taking that deal with the devil a bit too seriously... [Forbes]

· Will Smith will star in The Last Pharaoh, playing Taharqa, the actual pharaoh who fought off the Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 677 B.C. Didn't Eddie Murphy play that guy already in the "Remember The Time" video? [Variety] · Jessica Alba will star in An Invisible Sign of My Own, based on an Aimee Bender novel about "a young woman who has retreated from the world and is consumed by numbers and math." Alba, we're told, will play this young woman's totally bangable, much hotter sister. [Variety] · Spanking Shakespeare means different things to different people. To Paramount, it means a movie based on a young adult novel. To us, it reminds us of when he had no access to real porn, so we'd spank it to the Collected Works. What? Horatio was hot. [Variety] · Tom Sizemore has joined the cast of Crash. He's clearly heard about the orgies. Good luck with that one, guys! [THR] · In the Motherhood, a web series starring Chelsea Handler, Leah Remini and Jenny McCarthy based on real mom's stories, received a 13-episode order from ABC. The only surviving cast member is Handler, who'll be joined by Megan Mullally and Cheryl Hines. Don't we love those comediennes for the very fact that they are all the anti-mother? Who wants to see Karen or Mrs. David picking up their kids from soccer practice? [THR]

It's pretty much been an all-VMA recap kind of day here at Defamer HQ. Not only have we caught you up on our red carpet conversations with Brooke Hogan, Robert Pattinson and Brett Ratner, but we've also given you nearly 24 hours to digest all the goings-on from last night's event. All of which leads us into tonight's installment of Defamer To Do's, where Molls deconstructs some of the evening's high points (namely, T.I.'s LACMA worthy performance) and head-scratchers (why why WHY did X-Tina choose to lip sync?). Enjoy!· Rob Giles at Molly Malones. · Warner Drive at the Key Club. · The Art of War at the Norton Simon Museum. · Jedi Training at Disneyland.

We've been telling you about The End of Ideas for a while now, but generally in the context where otherwise upstanding individuals knowingly attach their names to remakes, rehashes, reimaginings and revisions whose very existence could threaten even a VMA attendee's faith in a benevolent God. (His close neighbors are starting to have their doubts, anyway.) But to think that a Dane Cook movie that even he has found reason to second-guess could in fact be a poorly rendered rip-off of a straight-to-video David Boreanaz exercise from a decade ago? Really, now — that's just unholy. Judge for yourself after the jump as we bring you the special-needs trailer for Cook's forthcoming My Best Friend's Girl and its 2006 counterpart for the forgotten rom-com Mr. Fix It. As an added bonus, find a dormant IMDB comment thread parsing the films' respective plots: "What a rip-off! I predict this movie will never be released..." Alas.

To help generate further internet excitement and mainstream media buzz, tween superstar Miley Cyrus and potential one hit wonder Katy Perry air kissed their way down the red carpet at the VMAs on Sunday afternoon. Cyrus' mother, Tricia, made sure that she oversaw the air kissing and light hand holding. Mrs. Cyrus said, "I'm just here to make sure she doesn't run into that Ronson chick or get too buck wild. She's already had two Rock Stars, I think that's where it's going to stop today. "

Uh-oh. Barbra Streisand—referred to among the elite Democratic core as the Black Buttah Widow for the way her endorsements mean the certain kiss of death—will perform at an Obama fundraiser at the ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on September 16. This is a room that holds only 700 people, so attendees will be expected to pony up for the privilege. From Variety.com:

For a while, it looked like No Country For Old Men might have been the perfect crime, one where everybody made out as a winner: Javier Bardem, Scott Rudin and the Coens with their Oscars; Josh Brolin with leading-man creds; and Miramax and Paramount Vantage splitting the $160 million worldwide gross. Did we forget anyone? Oh. Right:

While we enjoyed sharing with you the alternately entertaining, excruciating, and utterly discombobulating experience of attending the 2008 VMAs in person, there were moments completely lost on us from our extremely un-VIP vantage point. Take, for example, this off-prompter ad-lib from Jordin Sparks, in which the uncomfortable tension building steadily in Soundstage 16—Brandian anti-Republicanism and hypersexuality reacting against Jonas Brothers's calculated chastity—burst like on overfilled water balloon. What we hadn't noticed at the time was her co-presenter John Legend's overt attempts at distancing himself from Sparks's pro-abstinence sentiments, displaying his naked fingers to indicate the absence of any such sex-warding amulets from Zales. He's good to go, groupies!

The tension at the Toronto Film Festival press conference for the film The Duchess was so thick and juicy that it could be cut with a bread knife. When asked what it was like to work with her co-star Ralph Fiennes, Keira Knightley mistakenly called him "Ralph", instead of the preferred pronunciation "Rafe". Fiennes instantly began to sulk and slumped extremely low into his seat, at which point Knightley released an exasperated sigh. "If it bothers you so much, why don't you just change your name to Ocho Cinco?", she asked.

The marketing squad behind Robert De Niro's latest film may not have an especially well-developed touch with movie posters, but you can't say it isn't getting its money's worth with the brilliant new cross-promotion, "Righteous Kill Tuna — Only at Nobu!" While the summer's blockbuster superhero crop nickel-and-dimed their way through Happy Meals and Whoppers, De Niro and restaurant's London outposts ventured waaay outside the box recently with high-priced helpings of the rare Atlantic bluefin tuna — a species that activists contend has been overfished to the point of near-extinction and which Nobu should apparently know better than to serve:

The official kickoff of football season was blamed for having taken a hefty bite out of the weekend box office, so we thought we'd take a moment to check in with what's going on over at America's other favorite spectator pastime. Ah yes, some wholesome college football—fun for the whole family. Even those kids on the rock are enjoying a spirited Texas/UTEP game, in "sparkling high-definiton on ESPN 2." Uh...wait one second. Yo, announcer—could you give us a hand with that Telestrator and circle the offending region for us? Ah ha! Just as we thought! She's giving that guy a hand job! We doubt theater owners can compete with that kind of entertainment value; expect cushy, masturbation-friendly seats to premiere at the next ShoWest, replete with individual lube-pump dispensers and Handy Wipes holders.

Never one to miss an opportunity to sing in public, superstar George Clooney picked up the nearest megaphone and began to croon the afternoon away. Clooney started off with a selection of songs made popular by his aunt, Rosemary Clooney, before transitioning into a jubilant medley of Rudy Valle and Frank Sinatra tunes. One female onlooker was quoted as saying that his appeal was due to the fact that "he's got the voice of the Velvet Fog, the charm of Dean Martin and the sex appeal of all three Jonas Brothers."

After The Wrestler's more-than-well-received premiere last week in Venice, where star Mickey Rourke was forewarned that Oscar would likely forbid his puppy onstage next February, word out of Toronto confirms that Darren Aronofsky's drama was picked up over the weekend by the awards-season whizzes at Fox Searchlight. The sale went down for about $4 million and all but assures Rourke of a Best Actor nomination if not a win, similar to the arc following Searchlight's push on Forest Whitaker's behalf for The Last King of Scotland. So early congrats to him. But there's still work to do, as we've discovered after the jump.The critical accolades to date suggest the campaign will only expand from there, perhaps starting with revisions to the publicity stills currently circulating in the trades. After all, we know Oscar voters love a comeback story, but rarely against the backdrop of slogans invoking the sucking of "a fat dick." Don't take our word for it, though; see above where The Hollywood Reporter got burned, Variety drew the line, and where a better tomorrow begins today with a little bit of Photoshop and a whole lot of love.

At this point, 24's seventh season has been hit with more obstacles than the beleaguered Jack Bauer — so what's one more? After suffering through a WGA strike, a one-year delay, and a stint in jail for lead Kiefer Sutherland, the Fox drama is once again shutting down production, says EW. Producer Howard Gordon tells the mag that he was unhappy with the scripts for hours 19-24, so the show will power down until writers can start from scratch. Still, thanks to the eight episodes banked before the strike, producers don't expect the season premiere to be delayed any further — which is more than can be said for the Lifetime debut of Project Runway, now pushed back to January 2009. Originally slotted for this fall, where it would have followed quickly on the heels of its Bravo swan song, producers couldn't make the abbreviated schedule work. The delay lends Lifetime the extra time it will need to craft an all-important needlepoint challenge and secure the participation of "fashion legend" Meredith Baxter Birney as final judge at NY Fashion Week. [EW]

Forgive us. We're still a little hazy, having stumbled out in the wee morning hours from a Chateau Marmont bungalow, where the Jonas Brothers were reading bible passages off a stripper's ass at their official post-VMAs party. Good news: our virginity is still intact! Bad news: we wish we could say the same about our septum. More bad news: the box office crapped itself this weekend. Please enjoy this fittingly humdrum installment of Monday Morning Box Office: 1. Bangkok Dangerous - $7.8 million The worst box office in five years is led by this low-budget shoot 'em up starring Nic Cage, a remake of the Pang twins' Thai-language film. The number is in line with Lionsgate's expectations, they say, and should become "nicely profitable" just as soon as its star—who recently admitted to David Letterman that he was sold into Bangkok flesh trade sometime mid-filming—gives American businessmen with a taste for eccentric movie stars with roaming hairlines the sex-tour satisfaction they seek.2. Tropic Thunder - $7.5 million We've done the "full retard" jokes. We've done the "pee-pee maker t-t-tingle" jokes. And, sadly, that's all we got. Clearly, we have Tropic fatigue. 3. The House Bunny - $5.9 million Feel free to arouse yourselves with this photo of Anna Faris in a revealing pink two-piece holding a garden hose. 4. The Dark Knight - $5.715 million We're similarly at a loss as to what to say about The Dark Knight, so we cede the floor to this mashup trailer, which takes the audio from The Dark Knight trailer and grafts it to footage of Casino Royale. Why? We really have no idea. But it's well done. 5. Traitor - $4.66 million OK, clearly we don't want to write this today. So we'll let you write it, with a little round of Logline Mad Libs! "[Man's name] Cheadle and Guy [Verb] star in a [ADJ] international [NOUN] set against a [A CHILDREN'S GAME] of covert [A LINE OF WORK] operations."

The waves of Malibu apparently weren't too kind to hunky actor Matthew McConaughey over the weekend. The Fool's Gold star seemed rather honest about his lackluster surfing performance in the famed Pacific Ocean. McConaughey said, "I could say that I wasn't feeling the vibes because I wasn't feeling the ocean breeze bouncing off my pectorals, or I could say that I saw a dolphin and I got a bit scared that it was going to go after my driving paw. That wasn't it though. I was just no good out there. That, and there were too many people." McConaughey seemed frustrated by the amount of people hogging all the of the waves and wished that the politicians would fix the global warming problem soon. McConaughey added, "It should be cold in September. Or, at least chilly, you know?"

You'd think that Gary Coleman's wedded bliss wouldn't have burned off so soon in the rural redoubt of Payson, Utah, where diminutive ex-child stars and their relatively Amazonian nuptial conquests have long retreated to peaceful, simple lives far removed from the flashbiulb glare of LA. But apparently even this dusky frontier 50 miles outside Salt Lake City has its predatory paps; they may wield disposable cameras, and they may or may not ask for permission, but whatever amateur shutterbug Colt Rushton did this weekend at a Payson ten-pinnery was enough to rouse Coleman from his heretofore gracious calm:

The latest salvo in the ongoing battle between 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin and My Name is Earl creator Greg Garcia is being waged right here on Gawker. Garcia sent us his response to Baldwin's early morning swipe, in which he goofed on Garcia for being a Scientologist. "Alec, I can't tell you how happy I am to once again point out that you are an idiot. I'm unable to answer your question about Scientologists because, although I respect anyone's right to their own beliefs, I am not currently nor have I ever been a Scientologist. Maybe you should have done some research that extended past the comments section of Defamer before you crafted your insult."