Yes, it was only a matter of time, pardon the pun, before someone launched a fun, old-fashioned Olsen twins-style 18th birthday countdown clock for Hollywood golden cherub Dakota Fanning. The outfit she has on seems ripe for the ripping, but we'll leave that to the Fugly Girls*. Besides, she is just 11 years old! Criticizing her personal style could give the poor girl a complex, and besides, it's just in bad taste.

· In a drastic corporate realignment, Warner Bros. becomes the first studio to combine home entertainment, Internet, wireless, games and other other digital operations into one group. What this means for you is precisely nothing. But for Java developers making downloadable Harry Potter Quidditch cell phone games, the world will never again be the same. [Variety]
· Paramount is in final negotiations with Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughn to direct and produce a screen version of Neil Gaiman s Stardust, about a young man who promises his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm, where he has to contend with witches, goblins, gnomes, talking animals and evil trees. One Ring nerds everywhere go on a cloak dry-cleaning frenzy. [Variety]
· A record 58 countries have submitted films to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration, including previously unrepresented Iraq, Costa Rica and Fiji. Sean Penn begins composing his annual sourpuss pronouncement early this year to make sure he gets the tricky Arabic verb tenses right. [THR]
· CBS wins the ratings week, with ABC a strong second. And King Midas, Crap Version NBC was down 11% vs. the same week a year ago, with its Thursday lineup off 27%. Have you guys ever thought about another line of work? I mean, seriously. I hear biotech is heating up! [Variety]
· Undeterred that E-Ring is doing less that spectacular Nielsen numbers, NBC makes a pilot-commitment to another Jerry Bruckheimer-produced series: the medical thriller Invisible, centering on a rogue researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who's tracking a mysterious illness. Andy Dick is rumored favorite to play the virus. [Variety]

Page Six shines an unforgiving interrogation room light on those Hollywood lefties too wracked with liberal guilt to admit they're packing heat. "J'accuse!" Joe Mantegna tells a Fade In reporter, probably from his j'acuzzi:

An anonymous reader has sent us an in-depth analysis of the Moment That Changed a Nation Forever: the Zapruderesque Paris Hilton ass-flap photograph. And while this latter day Jim Garrison's relentless search for the truth may not contain any catchy, repeatable catchphrases ("Flap, and to the left... Flap, and to the left..."), the conclusions remain nevertheless stunning:

Seth here, with wonderful news! Mark (CDC code name: Patient Zero) has come down with a nasty case of bird flu*, and so I'll be guest editing for the rest of the week. I couldn t be more thrilled to be back here at Defamer.com Bathroom Reading for Your Cubicle (or vice versa, for all you Sidekick-wielding on-the-/gotta go types).

· We already knew that Natalie Portman was unreasonably gorgeous in high school, so why do we need to bid on her yearbook? Because it will one day make her fall in love with us, that's why.
· Come on, sillies, George Clooney didn't literally mean he was considering suicide when he said that he was going to kill himself over his Syriana injuries. Don't be ridiculous. Who'd run the casino if he offed himself, Gerber? Pitt? Whatever.
· The LAT profiles Mark "The Cobrasnake" Hunter, in-house photographer for Drunken Hipster Quarterly. If you see him at a party (and you will—even hermits like us have bumped into the guy), hide—his magical lens makes everyone look like they're wasted and/or wearing headbands.
· Janet Jackson might have a "secret child" with an obscure DeBarge, says an even more obscure DeBarge. (For our purposes, all non-El DeBarges shall be labeled various degrees of obscure.)

· Tuesday night music: Nada Surf at Cinespace; Timonium at Spaceland; She Wants Revenge at the Troubadour.
· The Manhattan Monologue Slam returns to LA at Ivar in Hollywood, where actors will "throw down" (our appropriation of the somewhat dated slang term, not theirs) monologues in front of celebrity, semicelebrity, and industry judges for a chance to do so again in NY.
· Kanye West's DJ (nota bene: not West himself, despite our intentionally misleading photo) "spins" at Concorde for URB's November issue release party. Free beer from Red Stripe, who, as far as we know, are not sending free beer to Defamer HQ for mentioning that fact. [via Cheapskatin' LA]

When Paris Hilton officially split up with fiancé Paris Latsis, she made off with most of the poor Greek shipping heir's fame, dignity, and, presumably, orgy friends. This left Latsis is something of a bind, for in January, he'd purchased a house large enough to accommodate both his ladylove's horny caravan and her astounding assflaps. While Latsis is sorting through the wreckage of his life, he's put his mansion on the market, and may actually realize a profit for his suffering. The Defamer Special Real Estate Correspondent strikes again:

Early this morning, Universal Pictures issued this press release involving an incident near the Miami Vice location shoot in the Dominican Republic:

With all due respect to Rosa Parks' legacy, CBS won't send the checks if we don't help them cast their inevitable M.O.W. If Dakota Fanning's hot enough to force sex changes for characters she's interested in playing, surely her agents can pressure Les Moonves into making some slight alterations to the civil rights legend's life story to better suit their client's bankable gifts.

Sometimes it's fun (read: our lives are so very dreary) to place a couple of timely PrivacyWatch sightings next to each other and muse about what they might reveal about their celebrity subjects. Readers spotted two couples from opposite ends of the tabloid speculation spectrum out on Friday night, courting are they/aren't they attention by their very presence:

· Studios fear that SAG's intramural executive bloodbath might indicate that the guild might not bend over so readily in future negotiations, perhaps even getting so uppity as to follow through on a work stoppage. The studios, however, will happily detonate a nuclear device and wipe out all of Hollywood before sharing any more DVD revenues, no matter how many people SAG replaces. [Variety]
· Tired of pussy-footing around their world domination ambitions with such society-destabilizing programs as Who's Your Daddy?, Fox announces its plans to Destroy All Humans. Rupert Murdoch will not stop until every last one of us is a smoldering pile of ash. [THR]
· MGM board member Harry Sloan is named new chariman and CEO of the studio, plans to focus on producing more original content if he can figure out how to fill out corporate parent Sony's utterly confusing paperwork. [Variety]
· Desperate NBC is so grateful to My Name is Earl star Jason Lee for starring in a bright spot in the desolation of their primetime schedule that they've agreed to let him develop shows of his own. [THR]
·ABC picks up a script and five script outlines of the reality TV parody America's Next Muppet, in which viewers may actually get the chance to choose a new felt star. The newest Muppet will immediately be written into a six-show arc as Nicolette Sherdian's latest love interest on Desperate Housewives. [Variety]

Finally complying with an FCC regulation mandating that an Adam Carolla show be available at any given moment of the day across a variety of broadcast media, Infinity Broadcasting announced that the Loveline/Too Late With Adam Carolla/The Adam Carolla Project/10 Minute Budget Gourmet Recipes With Rachel Ray (Featuring Adam Carolla) host will fill Howard Stern's morning talk show slot here in Los Angeles. Sadly, however, something has to give, and we're told that Hollywood's Hardest Working Man (in number of jobs, not effort, if you've ever seen the Comedy Central show) will announce that he's leaving Loveline on tonight's show. Tune in this evening to hear Carolla break the hearts of Dr. Drew and a nation of giggling 12 year-olds pretending to have chlamydia long enough to give a shout-out to the rest of their friends at the rainbow party. It's sure to be a poignant goodbye.

While we're not too surprised at the lineup of actors supposedly eager to dirty up their pretty-boy images by portraying the ravages of addiction in the Million Little Pieces adaptation, one of the names interested in playing a rehab love interest (can't wait for the first "meet cute" during a violent vomiting fit) really jumps out. Page Six runs down the rumored casting list:

Admit it: You miss the Weinsteins. Brothers Harvey and Bob announced that they've raised $490 million to fund their new empire. From the LAT:

We don't have the strength to find out exactly what Claire Danes was trying to say, but a quick scan of the story did reveal a fair amount of quotation marks, so it seems that her latest mode of expression was verbal. What a letdown! We're still waiting for an actress to finally answer the incisive "Are you exactly like/nothing like your character?" junket question with five minutes of interpretive dance.

Quick quiz: This pic is either Dakota Fanning's attempt to a) demonstrate that she's actually human, or b) show off her favorite piece from her torture chamber. Hint: There's not necessarily just one correct answer.
· Now that's commitment: George Clooney gains 38 lbs, bruises brain for Syriana. Let's see that pussy De Niro try and leak spinal fluid from his nose.
· We suppose it depends on what your definition of acquaintance is.
· Model Zeta Graff sues Paris Hilton for slander for allegedly placing an item in Page Six...hey, did you hear that? Yeah, that was the sound of us warming up the toaster we're about to toss in the bathtub. There's only so much we can take in a day where we've pondered Hilton's assflaps.
· Donald Trump reportedly earns $25,000 per minute for a lecture, whether or not everyone in the audience tunes out after the 50th time he uses the word "great" to describe one of his pursuits.

· Sit in on a conversation between Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Pop Culture Is Actually Making You Smarter and the NY Public Library's Paul Holdengraber at the Skirball Cultural Center. We're pretty certain that the things we write about on a daily basis have made us far, far dumber (example: the inability to write in the first person singular), but it's always interesting to listen to a dissenting opinion while drooling on our laptop.
· Movie critic Stephen Farber screens North Country at Landmark's NuWilshire Theater for his latest Reel Talk event, then discusses the film with screenwriter Michael Seitzman. Even though it's almost certainly not his fault, feel free to ask the poor scribe why pretty, pretty Charlize Theron has to look so dowdy when playing a miner.
· KROQ's Jed the Fish hosts an all-star tribute to Sublime, with Ozomatli, Fishbone, Blackalicious, and the Surviving Members of Sublime at the Henry Fonda. Bonus: It's for charity. More info here.

After a too-long absence, the Defamer Special Real Estate Correspondent returns with yet another brief virtual tour from Hollywood's B-listings. Our brave man on the open-house beat lucks into nearly three million dollars' worth of boring in the Hills, courtesy of Emmy-nominated Law & Order: SVU player Mariska Hargitay:

Defamer is committed to helping cash-strapped, female U2 fans connect with the sensitive, anonymous Craigslist posters looking to test the limits of both their self-esteem and their devotion to their favorite band: