You know it's a cruel city when Ed McMahon — Ed Fucking McMahon! — can be in danger of losing his house while the man responsible for Everybody Loves Goddamned Raymond has built his manse's weekly "movie night" into an apparently newsworthy civic event. Indeed, notes the Times, the show's executive producer Phil Rosenthal has hosted the evenings for decades, starting modestly in New York and eventually moving on to first-come, first-served fêtes at the "Tuscan-style villa" that shitty television built.

Having teased us already with a Celebrity 100 "drop-offs" list that included some of the brightest and most bankable names in the entertainment universe (they. did. not. just. say. Tom. Hanks—omgzyestheydiiiiddd), anticipation for the actual Celebrity 100 list—your annual ranking of the The World's Most Powerful Celebrities™ as verified by a team of accredited powerologists at the Forbes Institute for the Advancement of Obscene Wealth and Judgment-Summoning False Idolatry—was higher than ever. As always, Oprah Winfrey sits comfortably at the very top of the list, her $978 trillion empire affording her the luxury of purchasing everyone else in the top 100 for distribution among audience members as one of those "personal celebrity slaves I simply can't live without" on her next Favorite Things episode.

UPDATE (6/14/08 @ 7:20am): Both Ms Hayek and Ms Cruz have released statements denying any connection to Mr Villarreal Barragán, his associated groups or any knowledge of who the house belonged to. In a statement, agents for the actresses said that "the production of Bandidas arranged the accomodation for all the actores, which is common practice in the film industry". The statement also said that "Penélope Cruz chose a hotel but Salma Hayek prefered a house because she was travelling with her pet dogs. Hayek never knew who owned the house or had any contact with its owners or with anything associated with the rented place, which was paid for by the production company."

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

· Warner Bros. is developing the spy thriller novel The Tourist as a potential George Clooney vehicle which will explode in the first reel and set the entire plot in motion. What about the goat movie? When does that one come out? [Variety]
· The WGA will hold a referendum next month to simplify its credit procedures, hopefully eliminating screenwriter name-gumbo like this. [Variety]
· If you're currently in production, we hope you're shooting in Waiverland, as SAG head Alan Rosenberg doubts any agreement will be reached by the deadline date of June 30. [Variety]
· Jack Black has dropped out of Borat-writer/director Todd Phillips's Man-Witch, a movie about a man who's a witch, supposedly because Black is concerned Phillips will shoot another movie called Hangover, about a bachelor party who wakes up in Vegas and realizes they lost the groom, first. May the best wacky premise win! [THR]
· Universal buys a comedy spec called Raindrops All Around Me, about "a socially inept high school teacher who learns to 'dumb it down' in order to fit in with the people around him." Said a Universal rep, "We think after a few more drafts to broaden the humor, Middle America will really eat this up!" [THR]

Coming in at number two right after Lesbian Chic on the list of 2008's hottest celebrity trends is the slim fast phenomenon sweeping the pounds off Catherine Zeta-Jones' ass, Britney Spears' arms, and pretty much every inch of co-starvation partners Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham. But of course, when Queen of Female Mind Control Oprah Winfrey puts in her two cents on the dieting front, every housewife and Oprah wannabe begins taking dutiful notes on how exactly she'll take a few pounds off this time around. And according to a piece in the NY Daily News, Detox is the word. From Gwyneth and Beyonce to Ralph Fiennes and Vince Vaughn, these four varieties of temporary "cleansing" yourself are the current diet du jour. And of course, the question is: does it work? And more importantly, is giving up our nightly vino and succumbing to regular colonics worth looking like a lollipop head? Which celebrities are using which method, and visual evidence of their results, if any, after the jump.

Since the LA Times earlier this week floated reports that Paul Newman is suffering from lung cancer, the only developing news about the actor's condition is that no one will confirm it. With Newman's rep on one hand saying he is "doing nicely" and old pal A.E. Hotchner on the other acknowledging only "cancer of some sort" (alluding a few breaths later to previous surgery "in the lung area"), the AP today issued a statement saying it stands by its original report on Newman's condition.

After several weeks of sifting through the country's aspiring hoofers—eliminating, where necessary, any contestant they deemed perhaps better suited to Kevin Bacon stand-in work than a televised dance competition—So You Think You Can Dance finally paraded its top 20 before America last night for an unforgettable evening of high-kicking, rack-shaking, and hair-flinging. And that was just the boys! While the proceedings don't quite have the premium patina of sister-competition American Idol, both shows share something special in executive producer Nigel Lythgoe—who also serves here in the capacity of exacting judge, compassionate mentor, and sass-friendly father figure. In the above montage by Molly McAleer, we've compiled Lythgoe's greatest* opening night moments—which, in a promising sign for the season, were literally all of them. Oh, Naaaahjel, Nahhhjel—we just love that Southern attitude, too! And to think—thanks to SYTYCD, there's a chance hip-hop contestant Twitch might be allowed to come off the streets and actually enter a Broadway theater! Now that's change we can believe in.

A George Clooney superfan got one step closer to finishing his scrapbook featuring signatures of the Good Night & Good Luck actor/director's former flames. Kevin Marr of Reseda started the book merely as a joke amongst friends in his divorced men group, but took on a life of its own. Marr said, "When I started to Google and Wikipedia things, I realized that the ole Cloonester is a major poon hound like me. So, I had to pay my respects to the maestro."

In a "candid Q & A" with a still-pregnant-as-of-press-time Saint Angelina, EW covers a great many topics, but it was their bold line of questioning regarding a mysterious apparition that most interested us. Like the face of the pillow-lipped, orphan-collecting altruist herself, whom we recently discovered on a sacred Eggo waffle (and which we ended up smothering in syrup and consuming against our better judgment), a tattoo appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the lower back of her genetically perfect life-partner, Brad Pitt. It's meaning was not known. Some postulated that it might be an ancient map leading to a lost glass-headed alien temple deep in the South American jungle. We ourselves thought we had cracked the Brad Coinslot Code when an anonymous caller with an impenetrably thick Italian accent phoned in a bogus tip. As it turns out, however, it was nothing quite so arcane:

Call it a midlife crisis, queasiness or just sheer boredom, but good soldier Mark Wahlberg may have finally reached his leading-man saturation point with The Happening. It was bad enough that the gossips attribute his persistent new jitters to his work with "that scary motherfucker Manoj" Night Shyamalan, or that the actor fled Tuesday's premiere and afterparty to watch his Celtics battle the Lakers in the NBA Finals. But no on-screen spookiness could prepare him for the terrifying onslaught of questions about his past with the Funky Bunch:

Love them or hate them, the magical millionaire pixies that are the Olsen Twins have at least one confirmed talent: perfecting their trademark pose for the paparazzi. And unlike Keira Knightley’s "Don’t Hate Me Because I’m So Rich, Thin And Beautiful" pout or Lindsay Lohan’s dilated tipsy face (often accompanied by props like neon bras and knives!), the Olsens allegedly use a tactic called The Prune. We highly doubt we’re the only ones who’ve noticed the duo’s matching facial contortion on red carpets in which their doll-sized lips purse and their cheekbones struggle to break free from nicotine-drenched skin. Their secret? As a source tells OK!, “Every time they pose and smile, they say the word ‘prune.’” Genius! Examples of the sometimes-flattering, sometimes-horrifying technique, presented in our favorite Tipsy Face Bingo format, after the jump.

Now that we've opened Defamer HQ to a vindicated John Cusack and a defiant Werner Herzog, we figure that this whole "Five Questions" thing might be worth revisiting as opportunities arise (or at least until people realize who's interviewing them). This week we had an audience with Vera Farmiga, the indie darling and no-nonsense Departed love interest whose disturbing new film, Quid Pro Quo, features her as the lovely face of apotemnophilia — the condition of desiring disability and/or amputation as a sexual preference.

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

While they may seem to occupy far flung quadrants of the celebrity spectrum, Tom Cruise and Dr. Drew Pinsky share more than one might initially surmise. Both are charming and boyishly handsome men in their mid-to-late 40s, and both have devoted a good part of their lives to helping celebrities and non-celebrities alike overcome the various chemical dependencies preventing them from achieving their full potential as human beings. It's in the approach where they diverge, for while Pinsky employs a more traditional treatment of group therapy and close medical monitoring, Cruise instead adheres to the lesser-proven Scientological methodology of prescribed vitamins, rigorous shvitzing, and however many hundreds of auditing hours might be required to fully rid oneself of one's recreational-drug-loving thetans.

Time to mark your calendars: Lynne Spears, mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn, has an official September release date for her memoir about raising two of the world’s most tabloid-friendly children, Through The Storm: A Real Story About Family And Fame In A Tabloid World. In the book, Spears will supposedly take the Dina Lohan route and disguise motherly resentment as motherly love and “express her love for her children and tell their stories through a mother's eyes,” according to the publisher, who specializes in “inspirational books and Bibles.” But how rosy and cozy can the tome’s description of family life be with a title referring to said life as a “storm”? And given the nature of celebrity family members' tell-alls in the past, coupled with the assurance that this will not be “a parenting book,” we certainly hope Lynne follows in the footsteps of Nancy Aniston and Virgie Arthur by revealing a bit more dirt than the rote "Britney And Jamie Lynn Were Perfect Angels" tales (given the fact that they’re, um, not these days). We took a closer look at five of the most trash-talking tell-alls from stars’ estranged and/or envious relatives to whet our appetite in the meantime:

Anyone looking for an edge in what promises to be a bitterly contested election year should consider the strategy of Chris Monzel, a Cincinnati city councilman who this week apologized for "accidentally" classifying Rip Torn as a sexual predator during his successful 2007 reelection campaign. Apparently the incumbent's staff determined his tough-on-crime message would be best evinced by plastering a mug shot in one of its television commercials, which led to trolling the celebrity photos archived at The Smoking Gun. The rest is history — misbegotten, completely stupefying history:

Those photos of actress and pop singer Lindsay Lohan nuzzling her "close friend," DJ Samantha Ronson, have attracted surprisingly little attention. A lot of female celebrities pretend to have girl crushes—it's edgy—and at first we automatically dismissed the images as publicity-seeking. Even the confirmation of a relationship by Lohan's semi-estranged father can be dismissed as his own quest for attention. But the relationship between the freshly rehabbed star and her lesbian friend is quite extraordinary, and here's why:

There's no denying Lindsay Lohan's "thriller" I Know Who Killed Me was among the most critically and commercially reviled B-movies of last year — of any year, really. But now that IKWKM is approaching cable oblivion with its premiere June 14 on Starz, we doubt our inbox has ever seen a publicity campaign this wonderfully defensive or reactionary — almost Warholesque in its celebration of its own product's awfulness, proudly emphasizing its Razzie Award cred and critical pull quotes exhorting viewers to check out "a disaster that exerts a perverse fascination" (Variety) or "the monumental trashiness of this mess" (NY Daily News).

· Thanks to you, The Moment of Truth, no one will ever commit bigoted acts of fatism ever again! You're not the most evil TV show in history—you're bringing humankind closer together! [TMOT]
· Edward Norton prefers to let The Incredible Hulk do the junket-blabbing for itself. So tell us, Incredible Hulk—how are you similar/different to your big screen alter ego? "ARAHRRHHHHGHH SMAAAAAAAASH GRAAAAAAAAH!!!!" Really? That's hilarious! [NY Daily News]
· Something about conspiracy-junkie Mary Hart's unwillingness to break ranks with her ET underlings in the wake of ChosenTwoGate really gives us a whole new appreciation for the preternaturally perky showbiz news icon. [LAT]
· Kaufman Astoria Studios runs full steam ahead with their plan to obliterate Hollywood and establish Queens as the entertainment capital of the world. [nytimes.com]
· Sumner Redstone is a happily married mummified-Viacom-overlord, he'll have you know, regardless of who you spotted him catching up with at Ruth's Chris Steak House. [NY Post]