If you had told us that there was a way that something could make us even less interested in Eva Longoria's acting career than we already are, we would (as is the expected outcome of rhetorical constructions like this one) have declared you crazy. But a story in which the red carpet ubiquity unwisely dispels the rumor that she was planning to explore the erotic possibilities of Beyonc 's ample thighs in a movie project described as a female Brokeback Mountain has done what we previously thought impossible, nudging our Longoria interest-level from "generally find it hard to give a shit about anything she does" to absolute zero. We do, however, reserve the right to express a grudging concern for her well-being if either a freak accident or a bitchy co-star displeased with her wardrobe trailer etiquette on the set of Desperate Housewives results in bodily injury, as such stories are not technically career-related.

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, which we try to post several times per week, so send them in as quickly and as often as you can. Submit yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let the world know about the time you spotted Jake Gyllenhaal render a volunteer incontinent at your local polling station.

While many people probably assume that Hollywood is a magical, environmentally friendly Utopia where actors pull up to the fully biodegradable green carpets at their movie premieres in vehicles specially retrofitted to produce all-rainbow emissions, a UCLA study has found that the entertainment industry trails only petroleum manufacturing in terms of disgorging unfiltered, New Ice Age-beckoning, Al-Gore-sterilizing evil into the air of Los Angeles:

Comcast pulls the plug on its talks with Al Jazeera International, effectively putting an end to the network's hopes of getting U.S. distribution in time for the worldwide launch of their English-language channel on Wednesday. [Variety]
· Studio 60 ticks up slightly in the ratings, improving to 7.8 million upscale, affluent viewers from last week's count of 7.7 million, a gain that will have NBC considering whether or not to order another five seasons to reward the public's obvious recognition of their faith in the show. Meanwhile, showrunner Aaron Sorkin hopes that now the series is off its deathwatch, people will stop obsessing over the numbers and the fact that he's the person behind the aggressively unfunny in-show sketches that are driving his critics crazy. [THR, THR]
Virgin Comics will adapt its "The Sadhu" for film, with Nick Cage starring and Deepak Chopra writing the script. He's a screenwriter now? We must be really out of touch with the Hollywood ambitions of spiritual gurus these days. [Variety]
Executive tag-teams are the hottest trend in studio management. Read the touching story of how months of trust-falls and a renewed commitment to honest communication led Sony's Matt Tolmach and Doug Belgrad to finally embrace their roles as studio life-partners. [THR]
Chinese TV censors make vague, menacing threats to "severely punish" vulgar and immoral content, announcing that they intend to make "secret inquiries" to discover the broadcast of prohibited programming, an oppressive pilot censorship program expected to eventually be adopted by the FCC. [Variety]

Along with the Borat movie's many unwitting victim/stars, yet another subgroup of angry Kazakh-lashers are emerging: those who suddenly find themselves putting up with endless, irritating Borat mimicry by the show's impressionable teen audiences. Dubbing it "the Borat effect," ABCNews.com examines how the movie's outrageous comic sequences have some parents worried they might soon be subjected to an inter-sibling penetrative liplock at the dinner table:

Yesterday, we noted that Katie Holmes' unimpressive turn in Thank You For Smoking was virtually the only one not pimped for awards consideration by Fox Searchlight on their screener for the film, but today Page Six reports that "sources close" to Holmes (read: scrambling publicists) claim that the decision to leave her off the list was her own:

Dave Chappelle, America's most beloved no-show comedian, is set to once again thrill audiences with one of his trademark mysterious absences at the HBO-co-sponsored Comedy Festival this Thursday in Las Vegas:

Today's THR reports that Warner Bros. has found success overseas by exporting 80s sitcom Perfect Strangers to Russia (titled Brat'ya po-raznomu, loosely translated as We Are From Different Lands and Yet Somehow the Same, New Friend). But the Russian producers are not content to merely rename Larry and Balki as Andrei and Ivan and recycle American jokes incomprehensible to local audiences, tasking themselves with finding their own ways to drive each episode's plot forward to the inevitable dramatic catharsis represented by the Dance of Joy:

With this Saturday's alleged betrothal of fledgling studio mogul Tom Cruise to Katie Holmes, the woman he personally—personally!—enslaved for the purpose of being the incubating vessel in which he would grow a daughter produced from the DNA culled from the finest physical specimens of the army of drones who dust his legendary collection of vintage e-meters at his Beverly Hills compound, the gossip columns are ensuring that no aspect of the couple's last-minute preparations will go unreported. This morning, The Scoop, obviously assisted by a lingerie-shop proprietor eager to have her boutique become the "It" shopping destination for actresses treating themselves to some lacy underthings before dazedly processing down the aisle and towards the final step of their self-nullification, details items allegedly purchased by Holmes in anticipation of her wedding night:

· While we're not the particular flavor of nerd whose superhero Underoos are suddenly stretched tight with fanboy tumescence over a leaked movie trailer showing incomplete footage from Spider-Man 3 (warning: a Venom cameo may cause spontaneous webjaculation in the excitable), we appreciate that some of you might want to see the clip which TMZ reports has Sony scrambling to repair the leaks that allowed it to escape onto the wilds of the internets in its premature.
· Tom Cruise is already in Rome, making sure that all of the bride-retention mechanisms he's arranged for this weekend's wedding ceremony (Holmes-sniffing Dobermans, tranquilizer-gun equipped snipers accurate at a range of 300 yards, well-disguised perimeter bear traps) are functional and ready to make sure his big day stays special.
· Giving away money or time has never been quite so hard for obscenely rich people in Hollywood.
· We are still officially undecided about the Team Pam vs Team Karen question, but we expect to make up our minds before The Office's writers do.

While his lawsuit may name him only as a John Doe, the tireless, truth seeking netizens at The Smoking Gun have identified one of the frat boys suing the makers of the Borat movie as Justin Seay, 24, whom you may recall as the portliest good ol' boy of the bunch. TSG has posted 8 photos from his MySpace profile, each featuring Seay in various stages of apparent shit-facedness, and always with a drink in his hand. Taken together, they suggest a fun-loving and irrepressible people-person, though they also provide overwhelming visual evidence that works against Seay's claims that he was coerced by producers into the heavy drinking that would ultimately make him do and say foolish and offensive things in a hit Hollywood comedy. This is clearly a man as proud of his love of libation as he is of his Southern heritage, as evidenced by that dorm room poster featuring John Belushi's iconic, Animal House crapulence accompanying a mounted T-shirt that hints at the pro-Confederate sentiments he and his buddies expressed to their Kazakh drinking buddy while under the influence of his cynically proferred moonshine.

· Music round-up: Wolf Eyes and Great Northern at the Echo; Damien Rice at the El Rey; Indigo Girls at the Wiltern; Clipse at House of Blues.
· Stephen Farber's Reel Talk screening series shows the just-released Stranger Than Fiction at the Wadsworth Theater, including a Q& A with producer Lindsay Doran and screenwriter Zach Helm, who will happily provide aspiring scribes tips on penning their own manifestos.
· Glen and Les Charles and James Burrows of Cheers join Just Shoot Me's Steve Levitan at the Museum of TV and Radio, where they will talk sitcoms and field questions from the audience about how Sam and Diane's romance made possible Elliot and Maya's legendary pairing.

As anyone who has ever worked on a sitcom can tell you, the writers room is not just the inner sanctum where a dozen scribes gather to brainstorm the theoretical contents of Courteney Cox's uterus or share their disdain for foreplay into the wee hours of the morning, it's also the place where metric tons of Red Vines, Balance bars, and production-supplied feasts from local restaurants are ritualistically devoured as part of the creative process. This weekend's NY Times Magazine comedy issue devoted a piece to gluttony in the Room, including this anecdote from a doomed spinoff that generated as many potential diabetes cases as episodes:

FindLaw's Julie Hilden, the same columnist who once eloquently argued that Tom Cruise suing South Park for insinuating that he's gay would be as nonsensical as Michael Jackson suing Rolling Stone for claiming that he's black (or something to that effect), now takes a look at the recent matter of Britney Spears vs. Us Weekly. As you may recall, the newly unencumbered pop star had sued the glossy weekly for reporting that she and former joint-bank-account-depletionist Kevin Federline had made a sex tape and "acted goofy" when the subject of its leak came up in her lawyers' presence. An L.A. judge then dismissed the case, writing in her decision that "the plaintiff has publicly portrayed herself in a sexual way in her performances." But as Hilden explains, that ruling virtually ignores the stronger half of the defamation suit—the "goofy" half:

The Indian populace has been faithfully following Angelina Jolie's time in their country, where's she's currently shooting A Mighty Heart, assembling in droves Monday to watch as Jolie and co-star Daniel Futterman shot a scene for the film aboard a crowded train in Mumbai. While security guards kept the throng from approaching the actors, they were unable to stop a number of onlookers, sympathetic that the refugee-coveting humanitarian Jolie was unable to find a suitable new child to adopt on her recent trip to New Delhi, from ruining several takes by tossing their children towards Jolie, urging her to take them back to Malibu, where they could enjoy a life of People magazine spreads and Entertainment Tonight appearances not available to the average Indian commuter. Jolie, however, graciously declined the crowd's selfless support of her brood-expanding endeavors, politely explaining to the overly generous parents that their offspring didn't qualify for adoption under her strict "orphan only" policy.

Universal's exhaustive research into underexploited marketing opportunities seems to have revealed that potential moviegoers demonstrate an impressive recall rate of their product when a disembodied voice delivers a pitch to the targeted consumer while he's engaged in an act of waste elimination, ensuring that our once-sacred urinal time is about to be as aggressively ad-riddled as the rest of our lives. Reports the Defamer Special Correspondent On What The Fuck, Can't I Even Take A Piss Without Hearing A Movie Ad Now? on the new campaign for Let's Go to Prison:

Despite having raked in untold millions selling every available photo, video, and autographed autopsy diagram relating to the death of her son and birth of her baby daughter, Anna Nicole Smith is still having difficulties making the monthly mortgage payments on her Bahamian home, which she insists was a gift from real estate developer G. Ben Thompson. TMZ is now reporting that Thompson, as part of his ongoing effort to evict the sedated new mom, has had the power turned off:

The studios are jamming 65 releases down audiences' throats between Nov. 17th and the New Year, hoping to establish favorable awards season position and reap quick profits from a barrage of holiday-themed movies. [Variety]
For those who think Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight's coming out announcements were progress, the THR cautions to wait and see what happens when a Rock Hudson-type steps out of the closet, instead of Doogie and a guy who's "practically one of the girls on Grey's." [THR]
Fox is shy about using the word "canceled" to describe Justice, instead preferring the gentler "pulled from the schedule, never to be seen again, except for possibly on tiny TV sets on budget-fare Eastern European airlines." Meanwhile, ABC gives What About Brian a full season pick-up. [Variety]
Heads have finally started to roll for NBCUni's "Layoffs 2.0" initiative, with about 15 Dateline NBC staffers sacrificing their paychecks to the company's bottom line. [THR]
Two best friends go batshit insane when they pick the same wedding date, starring Kate Hudson. That's pretty much all you need to know. [Variety]

A reader just submitted this scan of the Thank You For Smoking awards screener, lamenting that the conspicuous absence of Katie Holmes among those offered For Your Consideration (an omission made even more glaring by the inclusion of pretty much everyone else who spoke a line in the film) almost certainly ruins her chances for a "Least Convincing On-Screen Fucking of the Year" nod at the Independent Spirit Awards. While disappointing, it's not surprising that Fox Searchlight hasn't chosen to back the actress's performance, defined by the scene of clumsily executed, well-clothed carnality that famously and mysteriously disappeared from the movie's Sundance screening ; executives there are probably as put off by the idea of Holmes' Cruise-era, contractually mandated, one-cursory-mating-session-per-billion-years sexuality as we all are, and don't want her baggage tainting the other deserving candidates from their film.

It's one thing to be taunted by a mustachioed imbecile for a Kazakh public TV audience, but quite another when the mustachioed imbecile is set to become one of the richest and most powerful men in Hollywood, and the audience turns out to be every man, woman, and snuck-in child in America. A "not everyone loves Borat" round-up (and it's full of spoilers, for those die-hard Borat fans patiently waiting until the movie hits the discounted second-run theaters):
· The Sun reports that after the SNL taping of a few weeks ago, Sacha Baron Cohen, in character as Borat, and that week's host Hugh Laurie, popped into a New York bar for some interactive fun with the clientele. An unamused patron then responded to Borat's request to purchase and have sex with his clothing by punching him in the face several times. Witness reports claiming the assailant was a bitter and broke Yakov Smirnoff demanding his act back turned out to be erroneous. [The Sun]
· That village at the beginning of the movie wasn't a Fox backlot set—it was an actual village, called Glod, in Romania. Its inhabitants are now claiming they were lied to, having been paid roughly six dollars each and told they were being filmed as part of a documentary about poverty in the region. Particularly bitter is the one-armed man who has come to realize his floppy prosthetic may have once found its way up the anus of the film's unwitting star at the hand of a proud homosexual. [DailyMail.co.uk]
· As the world laughs, Borat's victims continue to weather the reverberations of their public humiliations and betrayals. Some of their stories are compiled by the AP, including the Jackson, Miss. morning show producer who let Borat on the air to wreak havoc on an interview segment and weather report, leading directly to her firing and a "downward spiral." We'd recommend adding the scene to her clip reel and immediately mailing an application package to Good Day L.A., where that kind of gonzo morning show programming vision is best appreciated. [ABCNews.com/AP]