[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

We've already made our case for why the Wachowskis' overstuffed Gran Turismo-on-Salvia fever dream and Kutcher and Diaz's feature-length sexual-health instructional film will likely limp their way across the box office finish line this Monday. But that still leaves filmgoers with a taxing dilemma: Which of the two movies would they rather see less? Clocking in nearly neck-and-neck in their bottom-of-the-class Tomatometer scores, it's anyone's race. Perhaps mainstream film critics—and the pun-loving headline writers who really sell the bile—can help you decide:

By donning a procession of fleshy, high-heeled escort outfits over the last few weeks, Gwyneth Paltrow managed to land herself a new job! No, it’s not a plum acting role (remember, even Gwyneth herself knows she’s “the worst actress ever”), but at least it’s a paying gig. Seems after all that prancing around in see-through dresses and S&M booties has caught the attention of reputably tame brand Tod’s, they of the classic driving shoes and boring leather bags. And just yesterday she began her first day on the new job, shown here filming a commercial in Rome, triumphantly displaying a new pair of towering heels. A closer look at the pair of stilettos that we must admit we find ourselves craving, plus how Paltrow’s Lady Of The Night wardrobe selections have affected sales at British boutiques, after the jump.

The eulogies are on following Thursday's twin killing of Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures by the executioners at Warner Bros. — or perhaps more accurately, by hooded, high-ranking Time Warner axeman Jeff Bewkes, to whom some today are attributing the death penalty that ended in nearly 75 lost jobs between the two mini-majors. While we still suspect that WIP's demise in cosmically linked to its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly source of tips, hints and handicapping for the latest in moviegoing. Today we catch up with projections for the not-so-mystifyingly buzz-less Speed Racer, gauge Iron Man's potential for a second straight week at No. 1, survey the landscape for our favorite underdog on the scene (hint: She shoots a mean game of pool), and browse the DVD stacks for noteworthy new titles. As always, our opinions are our own, but they're also right — Wachowskis be damned.

· Let's play "What If?" What if...Javier Bardem went a different way with Anton Chigurh, and chose to go the Felicity Huffman-in-Transamerica route? Click play to find out! [Fourth Grade Gladiators]
· Corey Haim is back! And he looks like a lesbian dogwalker. [TMZ]
· Here's the first seven minutes of Speed Racer. As Idolator Maura put it, "Watching this is like watching them set a giant pile of money on fire in slow motion." To which we add: But the flames and sparks are so colorful! [movies.yahoo.com]
· Yeah, we're with Nick Malis: We plan on staying home, and hitting Rainbow Road instead. [Malis In Wonderland]
· After a few hits from the corpse bong! [chron.com]
· And then we're hitting this: [ThingsIDidLastNight.com]

Semi-rehabilitated celebrity minknapper Lindsay Lohan was all set to star in charmingly titled anti-romantic comedy The Manson Girls, the second installment of her Great Homicidal Psychopaths of Modern History Trilogy that began with Chapter 27 and was to conclude with her harrowing performance as the Austrian incest dungeon victim in The Basement, a Starz Original Film. But as Deadline Hollywood Daily now reports, Lohan has been let go from the production:

There is no point fighting it anymore. Vh1 will continue to produce shows featuring has-been stars from our youth and, like moths to the TV screen, we'll watch them cry, urinate on themselves and make out in hot tubs until the end of time. Their newest idea will feature (shocker!) Vh1 reality vet Scott Baio mentoring eight “male teen idols” of the 80s in an effort to jump-start a comeback. Since the sad little group has yet to be revealed, we went ahead and picked two former crushworthy picks we’d most like to see week after week, and the two who might force us to cancel our cable package altogether:

When we launched the shiny new To Do's on Monday, we promised you intrigue, excitement and the occasional intoxicatingly adventurous location shoot. Well, Molly McAleer sure delivered on the last point today, as she and a friend deliver this evening's event listings straight to you from the cereal aisle at the Ralph's on Wilshire and Western (which, btw, has apparently been overrun by "hot hipster boys"). As always, the listings are available in the oh-so-handy written word form after the jump.

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

Rustle through your closet for those crotchless leotards and lamé headbands, and hightail it to Hollywood and Highland—American Apparel wants YOU: "WE NEED YOU! We're holding an Open Call for all our Los Angeles stores at our Hollywood and Highland location. We are currently looking for intelligent, friendly, and dedicated people to work at our Los Angeles stores." And if it just so happens that you look like you might have been involved in a Polaroid prostitution ring in the early '80s based out of your uncle from Phoenix's split-level ranch basement, all the better! [Craigslist]

The curious path of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired took another bizarre turn this week when HBO hosted an actual red-carpet "premiere" for the film in New York — the same city where it had attempted to secretly screen the doc for a week-long Oscar-qualifying run last month. Then, as Vulture noted today, things got even weirder when Polanski's 1977 statutory rape victim, the then-13 Samantha Geimer, showed up as one of the guests:

If you've not yet noticed, the media has been clogged with even more Barbara Walters than usual lately, the 78-year-old TV journalist and delightfully addled View ring referee doing overtime to plug her new memoir, Audition. (Defamer videographer and foremost Waltersologist Molly McAleer gives it three empty Hostess cupcake wrappers out of a possible four!) On last night's ABC tie-in special, Audition: Barbara Walters' Journey, Walters sat down with smarmy news anchor Charles Gibson for a one-hour trot down memory lane. (Sadly, it was trampled in the ratings by the bloodthirsty crowd who had gathered in Fox square to witness Jason Castro's dredlocked melon lopped off like a Rastafarian rugby ball.) Among her reminiscences, that default assignment for any young, ambitious journalist in the early '60s sporting a swell set of gams: a tour of Playboy Bunny duty, slinging buck-fifty cocktails and steaks while executing perfect Bunny-dips, all in the service of the fourth estate. Va-voom, Miss Walters. Va-voom! [Audition: Barbara Walters' Journey]

Thus far, Riches star Minnie Driver has given the public three wildly different answers to anyone inquiring who knocked up the card-carrying member of that annoyingly massive Celebrity-Slash-Singer subset. Among the potential baby daddies she's flung out into the media’s clutches? The Easter Bunny, musician Craig Zolezzi, and yes, God him or herself. And six months into her pregnancy, Driver has defiantly and coyly kept her lips sealed, until now. In a recent interview with the UK’s Independent, she finally released two very telling details: the guy is British, and "sort of in the same business." Our guesses lie after the jump, but we leave it to you, loyal Defamer readers, to solve the mystery:

When Jack Kliger took over Elle and Hachette's other US titles in 1999, he established himself as one of the magazine industry's few multimedia visionaries. The former Conde Nast publisher pushed Hachette's content onto EchoStar's interactive TV platform; Hachette's Car and Driver teamed up with the USA Network to produce a reality show spin-off of Cannonball Run, the cross-country car-race movie. And, when Hachette closed Elle Girl and Premiere magazines but kept their websites going, Kliger the charmer spun the cost-cutting exercise as an embrace of online media. So how's that going? Try utter disaster. We've been getting reports all day that the group has laid off almost its entire online staff. And here's one good reason: even Hachette's most successful online properties have the reach of a mid-sized blog, according to previously undisclosed web stats. (Oh, yes, and Hachette's Elle is about to lose its cherished role on Project Runway, the fashion-industry reality show.) If the future of magazines is some multimedia magic, as Kliger has been saying for a decade, Hachette has not much of a future; nor the Hachette boss himself.

After a brief stint as a Pink Dot delivery guy, recovering child star Frankie Muniz has returned to the world of acting. While leaving the supermarket where he works, Muniz explained that he's been bulking up and working out for a bold, new high concept film. He is said to be pitching a self-penned script that has him playing a guy who's a hitman by day and and a Pink Dot delivery guy by night. Muniz hopes that playing against type will bring him back much the same way it brought John Travolta back with Pulp Fiction.

Defamer Critic Death Watch, Part XXIV: We'd heard whispers from the deck of the slave ship today that magazine publishing giant Hachette Filipacchi would be paring around 15 jobs from Elle.com and other Web sites, and among them sadly appears to be Premiere film critic and blogger extraordinaire Glenn Kenny. He made the announcement today at In the Company of Glenn, where he's blogged since late 2006.

· Craig Ferguson is writing his memoirs for HarperCollins, detailing his years as a "punk rocker, a dancer, a bouncer and a construction worker." Working title: The Village People in My Head: The Craig F. Story. [Variety]
· No strike talks are going to scare ABC away from casting their pilots: Morena Baccarin (Joss Whedon nerds know who she is) was cast as the lead in "untitled Dave Hemingson drama pilot," and Steve "Reba" Howey and Lee "Nothing You've Likely Seen" Thompson Young have jobs—for now—on comedy pilot Five Year Plan. [THR]

We've been poking fun at Katherine Heigl for months now, and with good reason: she just can't stop saying the darndest things about her emasculated husband Joshua Kelley, she is completely lacking gaydar ... frankly, this list could go on for hours. But after hearing the news that Heigl is pushing for an escape from the ratings-challenged Grey's Anatomy following a fiscally successful contract renegotiation later made public, we're inching towards Team Heigl for the first time. As a source tells MSNBC: