· Golden Globe overload!: Our recap. Red carpet reviews. That insipid song. Clooney on the Brokeback sequel. The parties. The embarrassing mothers. The no-shows. The bombs. The burgers. The Gays. The elevators. The SCANDAL! The bra flap. The End.
· Tom Cruise gives Katie an inscribed collection of his own movies on DVD, and thus the "Dear Katie" parlor game is born. Sadly, however, not even this remarkably thoughtful gift seems to cheer Katie up.
· Disney seduces a rose-biting Pixar with its tango of corporate synergy.
· The boys of Heroin Alley: Leif Garrett hits rock bottom on a subway platform, while Brad Renfro pleads not guilty.
· Maddox and Zahara now have Pitt's last name, ensuring that long after Brad disappears forever, Angelina Jolie's adopted children will have something to remember him by.
· "Aw, the battery s dead so is my fucking cock."
· Not a great week for Paris Hilton: First, a deposition gives the world a glimpse into her keen intellect. Then a report comes out that she peed herself in a cab.
· Fabrizio Moretti gets a piece of Drew Barrymore at the opera.

Friday
· Friday night music: The Elected at the Troubadour, Michael Penn at McCabe s Guitar Shop, She Wants Revenge at the El Rey, and The Warlocks at the Echo.
· The Hammer Museum presents Masters of American Comics: Collecting Comics, a discussion on institutional and personal collections of comics and comic art. Don't be surprised if you run into Kevin Smith and Bryan Singer arguing over who's the hottest Teen Titan (Starfire vs. Kid Flash).
Saturday
· The twisted metal and microchip-on-the-fritz genius of Survival Research Laboratories returns to LA.
· The DGA hosts a question and answer session with House star Hugh Laurie, who will pull his responses randomly from his blazer pocket.
· Saturday night music: Mark Kozelek of Sun Kill Moon and the Red House Painters goes solo at the Troubadour, while Colin Meloy of the Decemberists plays his fanciful artpop at the El Rey.
· The Drkrm is showing David Del Vall collection of rare images silent-film monster images in Until Dawn: The Iconography of the Horror Film at the Drkrm.
Sunday:
· Sunday night music: Giant Drag at the Troubadour, and an alt-country throwdown at the Mint, featuring Ghost Town and The Vaquetones.

The weekend is tantalizingly close, and so are your beckoning local multiplexes, where any of the following quality motion pictures are available for your viewing enjoyment (unless of course, your local multiplex is owned by Larry H. Miller). Study the following predictions, confident in the fact that ever since a one-eyed gypsy woman slapped us in the forehead, we have rarely been wrong:

Because not all of us can luxuriate in a Park City condo hot tub with a gaggle of giggling, blonde PR girls twirling your chest hairs and saying, "Wow. So you're Defamer? That's hot," we offer up instead this consolation prize: Your blind item guesses. First, let us reacquaint ourselves with One Bodily Fluid Blind Vice:

As the eyes of the world turn to tiny Park City to find the next independent filmmaking voices of our generation, only to have over-eager studio execs throw millions at them, instantly turning them into Hollywood asswads you want to completely avoid, the real talent has always been right here, friends, with Defamer advertisers. Take a moment to appreciate their non-flash-in-the-pan, dependably consistent status. And if you would like to join their illustrious ranks, simply go here for more information.

The Sundance Festival officially began last night; not, as many of you may have guessed, the moment Mark's toe first touched the slushy sidewalks of Park City, but with the premiere of Nicole Holofcener's Friends With Money. But when the jittery Lovely & Amazing writer/director took the podium to introduce her film, she almost forgot to mention her four big-name lead actresses, Jennifer Aniston being among them:

As the debate rages on about the appropriateness/inappropriateness of Drew Barrymore and her braless bazongas taking the stage at the Golden Globe awards, Barrymore boyfriend and Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti recently offered up this story of a night in a stall at the opera:

Wherein we retire to the palace drawing room, press a pinchful of snuff to our powdered nostril, and attend to the impenetrably layered, fugue-like prose of E! gossip maestro Ted Casablanca. In today's masterful blind concerto, Casablanca serenades us with the tale of Vamperella Vein-Pop, who forgoes the love of a commoner for the nobler allure of celebrity suitor Slick Brick. But just when you've heard all the notes before, Casablanca adds a gay-bomb coda to his composition. Douse yourself in expensive perfumes and lace up your tightest corset before succumbing to One Bodily Fluid Blind Vice:

· The Sundance Festival loses some of its excitement due to the fact that many buyers are showing up having already seen screeners of most of the films in the comfort of their own homes, at what is unofficially being referred to as the Underpants Festival. [Variety]
· As the WSJ reported yesterday, talks between the purported Disney acquisition of Pixar are at a very sensitive stage, with Bob Iger and Steve Jobs courtship being observed more closely than two newly-introduced pandas at the San Diego Zoo. [Variety]
· The team behind Dodgeball sells Dreamworks a pitch for a Dr. Evil-envying $1 million. While the plot is being kept a secret, we have it on good authority that it relies heavily on Ben Stiller playing a pompous and/or put-upon guy who is constantly humiliated and/or has trouble keeping his rage bottled up. [Variety]
· Tooth gnashing, wild-eyed crusader for moral betterment Jack Valenti introduces a multimillion-dollar plan to educate Americans about the various ways to protect their children from Satan s tangy gumdrops, i.e. televised smut and violence. [Variety]
· Commander in Chief has been seeing a steady decline in its ratings since its debut, though producers are optimistic that people will show up for their ripped-from-the-headlines episode in which Geena Davis likens the Senate to Uncle Tom s Cabin. [THR]
· Showtime president Bob Greenblatt announces at the TCA winter press tour that there are ongoing negotiations for the premium network to pick up Arrested Development, but that no deal has been reached, further stretching out the series excruciatingly long death sequence, while bringing hope to millions of Arrested fans who, push comes to shove, won t shell out the bucks to subscribe to Showtime in the end, anyway. [THR]

The Mobile Defamer Team (OK, one person hardly makes a "team") landed in Salt Lake City late last night, and has accomplished nothing other than discovering that shuttle bus drivers are not required to know how to reach any particular destination within Park City ("close enough" seems to be their mantra), rushing to Main Street to get in a solitary beer before last call, and watching two people roughly fifteen seconds away from public, full-on penetration devour each other's faces in front of the Intel storefront on the central drag, romantically bathed in the warm, blue light of the microprocessor-touting sign above their grinding heads. Let it not be said that there is no love at Sundance.

Queerty, the blog with just a little too much spring in its step, if you catch our drift, recently found this unusual casting ad on Craigslist:

Not a day after a deposition revealed that gasp! Paris Hilton may not be the sharpest stiletto in the walk-in closet, comes this report that the Feel Good Party Heiress of the Year has her flacks tap dancing in triple time trying to quash a story about her pulling a Fergie in the back of a Hawaiian cab:

Pillar of British tabloid journalistic integrity The Sun reports that the infamous "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park, in which Tom Cruise is not so subtly outed as being gay (the entire episode is available courtesy Scientomogy, but just to give those who missed it some reference point, a subtler maneuver would have been to write the word "HOMO" on Cruise's forehead in pink spray paint, accompanied by a giant, downward pointing arrow running down his face and torso), has been pulled from its UK airing schedule, with whispers that it was Cruise himself who's to blame:

The trick to being an aging action star is figuring out a way to remain relevant once you are way past your shit-kicking prime. You can risk ridicule by trotting your past heroes out for another go-around; you can choose to enter a completely new line of equally hazardous work; or, you can accept that things are really out of your hands and just embrace what you have become. In the case of black belt Brawny man Chuck Norris, that would be the subject of a mythic compendium of widely e-mailed "facts." From his website:

· FishbowlLA reports that Reese Witherspoon has taken a moment's break from vigorously loofahing any residual Kirsten Dunst cells off her body to sign with Endeavor.
· Accorded to Us Weekly, it was Ryan Seacrest himself who got Kathy Griffin booted from E!. Add that to her growing shit list resume.
· Asked to comment on the "Seinfeld Curse," Julia Louis-Dreyfus provides a master class in how to respond to obnoxious entertainment reporter questions: "My short answer is I have no worries about that because I'm on a heavy dose of antibiotics right now."
· Before we get all carried away in the Sundance hoopla (bon voyage, Mark!), the LAT would like to remind us that many Sundance winners are still miserable, broke schmos like the rest of us.
· We've all heard the jokes. But Defamer slutty sister site Fleshbot delivers the goods. Ladies and gentlemen: Bareback Mountain, the gay porn.
· Ever wonder how tall you stood in relation to celebrities and famous historical figures? No? Well here's the link anyway. [via b3ta]
· "You are getting very sleepy, my subservient rabbit friend."

· UCLA is hosting a Hip Hop Film Festival, with features, docs and shorts and a renowned panel of experts speaking on the subject. If there's a lecture called Love and Hate: The Symbolic Use of Jewelry in "Do the Right Thing", we're totally there.
· Poster artist Jay Ryan will be on hand at Giant Robot signing his new book, 100 Posters, 134 Squirrels, a Decade of Hot Dogs, Large Mammals, and Independent Rock: the Handcrafted Art of Jay Ryan, or as his editor refers to it, "the squirrel thing."
· Grab a cup of Starbucks and a sandwich from Gelson's before heading over to the Echo Park Film Center for "a slate of movies that examine issues of gentrification and class in LA."
· Thursday night music: High on Fire w/ The Bronx at the Troubadour, John Doe at Largo, The Advantage at the Echo.

A reader points out that Hollywood berproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has funneled his billion dollar, mass appeal instincts into Apple's "starfucking meets the art of the mixed tape"-hybrid, the iTunes celebrity playlist. You'll need to have the iTunes software installed to access the list, but here we offer a sampling of Bruckheimer's selections accompanied by some thoughts on why he chose them:

It's an exciting time for former Neverland Ranch VIP Macaulay Culkin. There are rumors he may be getting ready to marry for the second time, and that he is considering taking a spot on the next season of UK's Celebrity Big Brother. But it's his debut novel Junior, due this March, that is getting the most buzz. Its first critique, from Kirkus Reviews, came out today. Some highlights:

Just a day after we fretted out loud about what might become of the non-Justin Timberlake members of 'NSYNC, comes this story that, if temporarily assuaging our fears that they might fall victim to the intoxicating narcotic allure of downtown's heroin alley, in some ways is no less disconcerting:

Thanks to the magic of the internets and relatively affordable Southwest airbus fares, Defamer will be covering the Sundance Film Festival for an unprecedented (for us, anyway) second straight year. I'm off to Park City, Hollywood's temporary refugee colony in the mountains of Utah, to file man-on-the-street, man-waiting-in-line-for-four-hours-to-see-something-for which-Paramount-Classics-will-tragically-overpay, and, most importantly, drunken-man-at-the-open-bar-typing-on-a-Treo reports. As always, the offer stands: If you have a party with some free booze that demands guzzling by a blogger you later want to dig out of a snow drift, you know where to find me.