Today's NY Times profiles soft-spoken superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, noting how Disney's mandate to cut costs threatened even his sure-thing Pirates of Caribbean sequels ("They almost got canceled many times; money, budget, you name it.") and ultimately resulted in their being hamstrung with a combined budget of barely half a billion dollars, scuttling his plans to stock an authentic pirate ship with hundreds of animatronic buccaneers made of solid gold and encrusted in diamonds. Despite these troubling limitations on Bruckheimer's vision, this summer's Pirates installment eventually found modest success, in no small part due to their leader's inherent understanding of what audiences want:

Beat back your acute case of Monday morning depression with these pharmaceutical-grade box office mood enhancers:

· The Last Days of K-Fed: The news. The tiny, text-messaged divorce papers. Background dancing studio owner speaks! The (debunked) sex tape. Chicago comes out to boo their pimp antihero. His backstage demands. He understands and can pronounce the word "culinary."
· Borat's Big Week: America loves Sagdiyev, as does the K in SKG, and many other famous persons. The porn star face behind Hooeylewis. Russia's Gypsy Film Commission has more sway than we initially assumed. Two frat boys sue, the third thinks it's "fucking rad dude! Kazakh bros before ho's!"
· David Lynch has a cow and a dream.
· Anna Nicole is still holding out for a higher number on the autopsy video, but this should tide you over in the meantime.
· The Ballot Of Ricky Bobby.
· After much nail biting, Aaron Sorkin gets a full order of Studio 60, giving Eli Wallach's radio writer with Alzheimer's B-story the sufficient time it needed to really develop into something interesting.
· Angelina et al. hit the streets of New Delhi for a little early Christmas orphan shopping.
· Gaylancer 3: The Reichening.
· Baby Suri didn't do Prop 87 any favors, it turns out.
· Two more signs that the end is nigh.
· Denise Richards has a message for the paparazzi: Take her picture, she'll break the old lady's arm.
· Literal cracktard Daniel Baldwin is arrested again after being caught abusing the free HBO at a Santa Monica motel. He's quickly released to pursue further projects.
· Page Six, a column whose sole purpose on this planet is to know the difference between Owen and Luke Wilson, doesn't know the difference between Owen and Luke Wilson.

Katie Holmes meets with California Senator Barbara Boxer to discuss the possibility of a Democrat-controlled Congress forcing through a bill nullifying billion-year contracts signed while actresses were under career duress.
· Britney's first husband (for like three hours) speaks out! And what he has to say about Kevin Federline will shock and amaze you. OK, he calls him an idiot. Skip the story and get on with your afternoon.
· TMZ and the tabloids are really wearing out LA court clerks with their constant requests for divorce filings.
Levert: also dead.
· Which Nicole Kidman character are you? We'd take the quiz ourselves, but we're afraid we'll wind up being the one with the fake nose who drowned herself.
· Pinkberry in crisis!

Friday
· Friday night music: The Wrens and Asobi Seksu are at the Troubadour, Petra Haden (her triplet sister Tanya married Jack Black) & the Sellouts, her choir of six, perform a capella covers of The Beach Boys, The Who, and more at the Getty, and John Doe "plays and sings and is sexy," says the Largo calendar.
· A sneak preview of Bobby at the Aero features writer/director Emilio Estevez on hand to receive a tribute, where you can ask him if he was just bullshitting Oprah when he swore up and down about how professional Lindsay Lohan was on set.
Saturday
· The official description of BarCamp calls it "an ad-hoc unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment." That's OK—we didn't get it either, until we watched this informative video: It's a geek knowledge-swapping orgy! Hot!
· Music round-up: Grant Lee Phillips plays Largo, The Apex Theory are at the Troubadour, and 400 Blows smack the Echo. (If you're thinking Truffaut-era Aznavour, think again.)
Sunday
· Steven Soderbergh will be at the Aero screening a sneak preview of The Good German (omg!), with a bonus screening of Casablanca, which, if you couldn't tell by looking at their posters, had a major influence on the director's latest project.
· Master of the short story Tobias Wolff hosts a brunch at WordTheater, where he and "four professional actors" (italics ours)—Camryn Manheim, John Heard, Johnny Simmons, Chris Gorham—will perform readings of his works over shmeared everything bagels.

Simply illustrating the news of Jack Palance's passing with a photo collage of his incredible display of septuagenarian strength at the 1992 Academy Awards seemed much classier than trying to build an item around his most memorable line from the movie that won him the Oscar, "I crap bigger than you." Really, though, he crapped bigger than all of us.

Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal has by now almost certainly picked out the Bond-themed outfit she'll be wearing to Casino Royale's premiere, but ushering her first 007 installment into theaters has been a long road, and one that required her to relinquish the iron-fisted authoritarian control one would expect of a maverick studio head overseeing a $250 million project. The LAT takes a look at the business arrangement that led to Sony getting the keys to the tricked-out Aston Martin for the first time, but finding themselves having to immediately cede the wheel to the franchise's creative custodians, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson:

[Once again, we must warn you of the possibility that this post may contain spoilers. Please, no angry e-mails about how we've ruined your life by discussing a film you haven't yet seen.] While two of Borat's troika of drunken, racist sentiment-spewing fraternity brothers have reacted to their newfound movie stardom by suing the production for filling them to the eyeballs with booze, locking them in an RV with a suspiciously friendly Kazakh reporter, and assuring them that any uncharitable remarks regarding minorities they might make during the shoot would only be seen on a public access broadcast whose only viewers are a flock of goats somewhere in Central Asia, the third beer-bonger was significantly less scandalized by the experience. In an ABC News Radio interview, the U of South Carolina student shrugs off the whole controversy:

A Defamer operative eager to celebrate one of Hollywood's highest paid citizens for doing his civic duty submitted this blurry cameraphone photo (always our favorite kind) of Will Ferrell in the act of voting early at the Beverly Hills City Hall last Friday. Unfortunately, however, the spy was too respectful of the sanctity of participatory democracy to further encroach upon the actor's privacy, and failed to position himself in a place where he could snap a picture of Ferrell's actual ballot, robbing us of the knowledge of whether he stood in solidarity with Hollywood peers Brad Pitt and Suri Cruise on their public support of the eventually defeated Prop 87, or if he helped deliver Arnold Schwarzenegger to a second term as Governator.

Watch as Federline explains his mad skills at luring ho's with nothing more than a few "culinary lessons" and a properly seasoned tomato soup. Listen as he describes the super power he most covets ("strength"), and what he would do were he granted said power ("fly"). Learn that K-Fed is actually "an interesting dude" who just hasn't figured out how to make "millions of dollars" off his own name. Clearly, the exhausted rodent spinning the tiny wheel in his brain had been working overtime that night, cooking up worst case scenario contingency plans should the unthinkable come to pass.

Please join us in reaffirming our love for this week's sponsors, who are much more tolerant of our lack of ambition and poor rapping skills than we assume a certain pop-star might be. If you'd like to advertise on Defamer and bask in our affection, see this page.

Can Hollywood forget about the small matter of Mel Gibson's drunk-driving-related tirade and evaluate his demanding, ambitious, "fiercely original" Apocalypto on its own merits? Perhaps, but we wouldn't bet on it. The local sugartitted community is notorious for holding grudges against those who would slander their sweet-breasted tribe. [Variety]
Tom Freston's ginormous severance package puts a dent in Viacom's profit numbers for the quarter. Please join us in shedding a tiny little tear for the plight of the beloved, faceless multimedia conglomerate over this sad news. [THR]
Prepare yourselves for many more millions of people learning the joys of endlessly mimicking Borat's catchphrases, from "High five!" to "Do not shrink me, gypsy!" as Fox triples the number of theatres showing the the film. [Variety]
After shitcanning the story editors that The CW wouldn't allow to join the Writers Guild, the network continues to flip off the WGA by taking steps to unionize "almost the entire production" of ANTM under IATSE. [THR]
CBS tries to salvage something from the wreck of the swiftly canceled Smith, trying to sell some commercials around the seven episodes (four of which never made it to air) it will stream on its Innertube broadband channel. [Variety]
Fox manages to beat Univision in the Nielsen race Thursday night, reversing last week's unspeakable ratings disaster. [THR

The LAT is reporting that former Times and THR reporter Anita Busch has named Michael Ovitz, erstwhile Most Powerful Man In Hollywood and current Most Powerful Man Being Upgraded From An Anonymous Name In A Civil Action Today, in her lawsuit alleging that wiretap-happy PI Anthony Pellicano attempted to intimidate her on behalf of those unhappy with her entertainment industry reporting, giving the former superagent a profile-rising bump from the quiet indignity of previously being known only as "Doe 4." Says the Times:

In a story that will chill you to the very bone and render completely useless everything you thought you knew about the unimpeachable ethics of public relations firms that service celebrities, Page Six reports that Ryan Phillippe has fired crisis management firm Sitrick and Co. for fabricating some utterly bland quotes about the break-up of his marriage that were used in an In Touch cover story. Shocking accusations of non-kosherness, uncoolitude, and fucking lying follow:

· 'A Good Year,' a bad movie [EW/CNN.com]
· 'A Good Year': But Not A Great One, By Kurt Loder [MTV.com]
· `A Good Year' is a bad two hours [Charlotte Observer]
· "A Good Year" is a mediocre two hours [Denver Post]
· 'A Good Year' Equals a Bad 118 Minutes For Crowe [WashPo]
· Not necessarily 'A Good Year' [MSNBC]
· 'Good Year' maybe, but not a great movie [Cantonrep.com/Baltimore Sun]
· `A Good Year'? Maybe, but a great movie it is not [Kalamazoo Gazette]
· 'A Good Year' a so-so film with a view [InsideBayArea.com]
· "A Good Year," A Bad Movie [FilmFodder.com]
· 'A Good Year' a great look at life's time [Jamaica-Gleaner.com]
· 'A Good Year' not the best vintage [LA Daily News]
· Not really "A Good Year" for Crowe [OnMilwaukee.com]
· NOT A GOOD YEAR FOR WOMEN IN CROWE'S ROMANTIC COMEDY [VueWeekly.com]

You'd think that during the fifteen minutes in which Kevin Federline enjoyed enough leverage to make any kind of backstage demands for his predictably underattended live performances, he'd at least try and see if he could send venues scrambling to find "Five (5) bitches of various ethnicities, drenched in baby oil" and a "One (1) Sub Zero refrigerator, equipped to dispense Cristal from its drinking water apparatus" for his appearances. The Smoking Gun, however, has revealed the surprisingly modest ridiculousness of his concert rider game, which makes requests for the expected cans of Red Bull, bottles of Jack Daniels and Grey Goose, and in what must be seen as a conscious attempt to establish a snack food identity distinct from that of his Cheeto-guzzling, soon-to-be ex-wife, bags of Doritos and BBQ chips. Perhaps the most interesting item on the list is the pair of aromatherapy candles, which we imagine are an indispensable part of his pre-performance preparation: their calming scents help him temporarily achieve a sense of happiness and well-being that will be shattered the moment he steps on stage and is quickly enveloped by the boos (or at best, ironic cheers) of a sparsely populated auditorium.

In what we hope completes our multimedia coverage of yesterday's publicity stunt, in which David Lynch mysteriously appeared on the corner of Hollywood and La Brea with a cow and copious promotional signage for Inland Empire, we pass along this clip, submitted by two guys who claim to have been driving by the site and who were so delighted by the bovine/auteur tableaux that they took a moment to talk to the infamously quirky director, capturing on video some Lynchian (really, how do you avoid that word in this context?) wisdom about the provenance of cheese.

· Lapsed Catholic Tom Cruise is encountering a number of obstacles from the Italian Church for his upcoming wedding, who don't seem particularly interested in letting a divorced Scientologist have a recognized Catholic ceremony. He'll probably have to just settle for a simpler Scientology affair, which entails Cruise standing before at least two witnesses in sailor suits and repeating the vow "I enslave you" three times to his war bride, who will then mumble her assent through a solid-gold ball gag.
Guess the crazy: "Do I believe in spirits that haven't passed over? Yes I do. Especially in places where there is a lot of violence, like in castles from the medieval times. Do I believe in possession? Not so sure. Do I believe in good angels? Yes. Do I believe they are in dog form? Yes I do." Hint: It's not Anne Heche.
NBC launched a new comedy site today. (Dot Comedy, get it? Yay internets!) The good news: It looks like they put a lot more effort into it than Defaker. The bad news: There's actually a section called Viral Vidz. We bet that name tested really well with people who self-identified as "not yet sick of watching Lazy Sunday."
We hope that we're not actually breaking this news to you, but 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley died. Improbably, Mike Wallace continues to live.
· Ten out of ten comedians not featured on Tourgasm agree: Dane Cook wildly successful, not funny.

Good news both for genuine fans of Studio 60 and for those who derive their primary enjoyment from the series from their spirited Tuesday morning discussions about why Jesus running a network Standards & Practices department isn't actually funny: Despite our spies' forecast of an imminent mercy killing, NBC has officially picked up a full season's worth of episodes, giving Aaron Sorkin nine more episodes and many more millions of dollars to continue his bold exploration of the curiously serious side of sketch comedy. THR's Ray Richmond (who notes he called it two days ago) has the press release:

[Warning: Further Borat movie spoilers lie ahead.] Some of those "How'd they do that?" tricks up the sleeves of the crafty team responsible for making the Borat movie have already been revealed, including, "How'd they get those Polaroids of our hero within spitting distance of his supposed teenage son's sprouting chram?" (Answer: Hire a dark, twinky-looking gay porn star), and "How'd they get Pamela Anderson to give a semi-convincing performance?" (Answer: Actually, we still have no idea). The small matter persists, however, of that RV full of wasted, University of South Carolina frat boys, and just how their loudly voiced philosophical alignments with the faux-Kazakh on subjects such as women, Jews, and the lamentable abolition of legal slavery managed to make their way into the final cut. Now, an anonymously filed lawsuit seems to reveal, at least in part, yet more behind-the-scenes Borat movie magic: