Entertainment Report

• David Fincher, the man who somehow convinced Fox that an ultra-violent anarchic, nihilistic novel would make for a good summer blockbuster, has signed a two-picture deal with Warner. On tap first is a movie about the Zodiac killer, which will be followed by an adaptation of the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a story about a man who begins aging backwards. Michael Jackson has been approached to star. [Guardian]

• Mia Farrow will testify on Roman Polanski's behalf during the pederast/director's upcoming libel trial. Polanski is suing Vanity Fair; the magazine reported that Polanski propositioned a woman on his way to Sharon Tate's funeral 35 years ago. The trial will be Farrow's first serious acting gig since her last courthouse appearance at Woody Allen's trial. [Times UK]

• We all thought that Death Wish would always be the most excessively exploited, tired movie franchise of all time. We were dead wrong. Plans for a fifth Highlander sequel were announced today. No word as to whether Lorenzo Lamas will be appearing. [Empire Online]

• The Miramax garage sale is in full-swing over at Disney; the latest formerly shelved movie to go straight to DVD is an adaptation of Prozac Nation. The movie, completed in 2001, stars Jessica Lange, Jason Biggs, Anne Heche, and, in their feature-film debut, Christina Ricci's tits. [NYT, Amazon] (LH)

Bono Wins, Stylist Loses

A judge in Dublin has ordered a former U2 stylist to give Bono back his clothes. Lola Cashman tried to sell the gear, including an "iconic" cowboy hat and a mess of earrings, at a London auction. She said the items were gifts from the singer after the 1987 tour. But she'd already pissed off the band by publishing the book Inside the Zoo With U2: My Life With the World's Biggest Rock Band. And as those 10 people with crappy red-and-black U2 iPods know, no one but U2 is allowed to benefit from the U2 marketing machine.

Band members didn't show up in Dublin Circuit Court, but we hear the Edge was on pins and needles waiting for the verdict. The judge not only ordered Cashman to hand over Bono's things but said she also had to give up almost 200 pictures she'd taken during her time backstage because they violated her confidentiality agreement with the band.

Sadly, the judge failed to order time to return Bono's sincerity, originality, or hair. (TG)

• U2's Ex-Stylist Must Return Bono's Clothes [AP]

Compare and Contrast

Over at DailyKos, the liberal, Al Franken-listenin', latte-drinkin' crowd has been coming up with example after example to show just how much in common Al Qaeda/Taliban members have with members of the far right in the US (what they like to call the "American Taliban"). Some of what they've come up with so far:

Religion in government
Al Qaida/Taliban: One and the same
American Taliban: One and the same
Liberals: Separation of church and state

Schools
Al Qaida/Taliban: Religious indoctrination. Run by clergy
American Taliban: School prayer. Religious indoctrination
Liberals: Leave religious teachings to sunday school

Women
Al Qaida/Taliban: No school, must cover entire body, no rights
American Taliban: Government control over reproductive freedoms, hostility to Title IX, hostility to working women
Liberals: Equality of the sexes

Religious freedom
Al Qaida/Taliban: 'Think like us, or we'll whip you and/or chop off your head'
American Taliban: 'Think like us, or we'll condemn you to hell'
Liberals: To each her own

Homosexuality
Al Qaida/Taliban: Eradicate them from society
American Taliban: Eradicate them from society
Liberals: Equality under the law

Torture
Al Qaida/Taliban: Torture them or chop off their heads
American Taliban: Torture them or homosexually rape them.
Liberals: No torture

A steaming plate of falafel:
Al Qaida/Taliban: Mmm, tasty!
American Taliban: Mmm, tasty!
Liberals: Mmm, tasty!

Okay, fine, we totally made the last one up.

Astrology vs. Astronomy

A Russian astrologer is suing NASA for blowing the hell out of the comet Temple 1 on Sunday and hatin' on her whole future-seeing scene. NASA scientists say their "Deep Impact" mission affected the comet's orbit about as much as the movie Deep Impact affected audiences -- very little, if at all. Nor did the mission pose any threat to Earth, they say. But futurist Marina Bai has filed suit against NASA for $300 million, roughly the cost of the space mission, claiming NASA skewed her horoscopes and caused her "moral suffering."

We're guessing she's a Scorpio.

We predict that the suit won't stop the space agency from getting hungry for bigger targets now. You're going down, moon! (TG)

• Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Mission [AP]
• Deep Impact [NASA.gov]
• Photo: NASA

The Live 8 Rating Debate

So, about that Live 8 thing. Great cause, great music, great weather. Organizers peg worldwide concert attendance at 1 million. Okay, that's believable. AOLMusic.com saw more than 5 million tuning in online to watch the live Internet broadcasts. That figure appears pretty sound. But what's this about organizer Bob Geldof claiming 3 billion television viewers? Granted, that's his worldwide figure. But... three billion?

Even the Grammy Awards stopped claiming 1 billion viewers, with a more modest 100 million (tops) worldwide directing their dials to the annual propaganda campaign against illegal music downloads. Sure, perhaps the Live 8 broadcast is available to a sizeable chunk of the world's population, but could the show really have distracted enough of the poverty striken masses so that half of the entire world tuned in?

The available data from the BBC counts 7.8 million viewers in England, 1.9 million in France, 2.0 million in Italy and about 10.5 million (or one-in-three people) in Canada. Impressive, for sure, but you do the math. And we're nearly certain about a few of those not clocking in alongside the supposed three billion: George Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin, Gerhard Schroder, Junichiro Koizumi, Silvio Berlusconi and Paul Martin.

But if you didn't get in on the action -- or feel like outfitting your wrist with yet another cause -- you can always buy the frickin' rubber band. (DH)

• ABC's Live 8 rocked by AOL [Hollywood Reporter]

Daily Dirt: Box Office Redemption?

• Hmmm, maybe those faux celebrity relationships really are working. Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds drop-kicked the box office over the holiday weekend, raking in $77.6 million and ensuring Katie Holmes' $5 million relationship check won't bounce. [Access Hollywood]

• Prosecutors need to be more specific about R. Kelly's alleged sex acts with a minor, says the judge. Like, did he pee on the girl's stomach, boobies or hair? [AP]

• If the pages of the New York Times weren't a big enough venue for Brooke Shields to respond to Tom Cruise's anti-meds commentary, the actress now has New Jersey acting governor Richard Codey on the megaphone. Codey's wife Mary Jo also struggled with postpartum depression, but has no plans to star in a sitcom opposite Kathy Griffin. [AP]

• You mean boy band reunions aren't a sure thing? The Backstreet Boys have three weeks to unload tons of unsold tickets before their tour kicks off July 22 in West Palm Beach. The best seats in the house are now going for $59.50, which means they're now only $59.50 too much. [Page Six] (DH)

Sex, Bread and Butter

The sex addicts who run Slate use the news peg of a buzzing vibrator recently discovered by South Carolina postal workers and whip it into a full-blown slide show honoring the her-story of the self-pleasuring device. Bless their hearts. Though the early drawings of crude looking enormo-brators are certainly compelling, it's this one stat that especially caught our eye:

By 1917, there were more vibrators than toasters in American homes.

So while much has been made of the liberating effect of the vibrator on female sexuality, there was been little comparative discourse focusing on the corresponding decline of the toast industry. Not to mention poor, forgotten butter and jam. Also interesting to note Slate's omission of the cell phone in its slide show. (MM)

• For pleasure: a history of the vibrator [Slate]

Morning Roundup

• Tropical Storm Cindy is heading toward Louisiana while Dennis in the Caribbean and Dora in the Pacific gain strength. Cindy could pick up steam before it reaches the Gulf Coast early Wednesday but meteorologists say it's not expected to turn into a hurricane. Producers at CNN and Fox, on the other hand, are probably praying for a monstrous hurricane now that the Natalee Holloway story is entering its fifth week. [AP]

• President Bush hopped on a plane to Europe this morning to visit Denmark and attend the G8 summit in Scotland. No napping on the plane: George brought reading material "on a variety of candidates to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor." Reading on the plane? Funny, we always pictured George as more of an in-flight movie kind of guy. [Reuters]

• The United Church of Christ voted Monday to back same-sex marriage, making it the largest Christian denomination to make such a move. Not surprisingly, some UCC members aren't happy with the decision and are now threatening to leave the church. [NY Times]

• Get ready for a messy G8 food fight. French President Jacques Chirac dubbed British and Finnish cuisine the worst in Europe during a conversation with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a report by Liberation, a French daily. "Don't talk crepe, Jacques!" read the headline in today's Sun. [AP] (Rachel Jonas)

Weekend Pop

• Dust off your copy of Porky's; dumb comedy with boobs is back. The NYT compares today's frat house/sex-lube Slip 'n' Slide National Lampoon to the Chevy Chase/John Belushi genius of old. Meanwhile, the LA Times fails to mourn the loss of Bottle Rocket/Swingers-era Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn and instead hails Wedding Crashers as a success in a wave of new R-rated comedies. [NY Times, LA Times]

• The fallout from Time magazine's cave-in swells way beyond the Romenesko crowd as Newsweek's Michael Isikoff finally gets revenge on the White House for smearing him over his Koran-flushing Gitmo scoop (which was dead on). Bush's Brain (and 2nd and 3rd chin) Karl Rove is quite possibly the man who leaked the identity of a CIA operative to hack Bob Novak -- and that's a serious crime. Rove's lawyers scramble. Writer Ted Rall says Rove is worse than Osama. "Rovegate" has a nice ring, doesn't it? [Newsweek]

• People are dying for iPods! Yay for marketing! A 15-year-old boy is stabbed to death in Brooklyn for his iPod. Plus, the ubiquitous white-corded music players are fueling a crime wave in New York City subways -- crime jumped 18 percent in the first three months of 2005. Take iPod theft out of the equation, and it actually dropped 3 percent. No word whether Apple will podcast pleas for sanity. [NY Daily News] (TG)

The Third, Fourth and Fifth Sex

When you finally dust the partying out of your eyes and rejoin humanity this morning, you might experience a bit of gay-ja vu when you crack open your New York Times. That ol' grey goose is still chasing the short skirt of lesbianism and the powerful package of male homosexuality and it's practically plagiarizing itself in the strawberry-daiquiri-guzzling process. A couple weeks back, for a piece on the post-metrosexual gay-vague style movement, the Times went with this headline: "Gay or Straight? Hard to Tell."

The papers' editors go one farther today for the headline accompanying a story on a study about men and bisexuality: "Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited." At this rate, expect to see this headline coming soon: "Gay, Straight, Bisexual, Ambi-sexual, Quasi-sexual, Bestiality, Necrophilia, Hermaphrodites -- Oh Yeah, It's On." (MM)

• Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited [NY Times]