THE LOVELY BONES
The Story: A slain 13 year old girl looks down from heaven recalling her rape and murder.
The Pitch: Witness meetsThe Ice Storm
Who It's For: Literary fiction devotees who haven't yet learned that adaptations of their beloved reading group selections always turn out badly.
Cause for Hope: Director Peter Jackson returns to his strongest Heavenly Creatures territory at the intersection of teenage girls and murder.
Cause for Concern: CGI-fantasyland version of heaven leads one to believe Jackson has spent too much time with trolls and giant monkeys to go back to making movies about humans again.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 7

INVICTUS
The Story: In the aftermath of apartheid, President Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) attempts to unite his divided nation behind a mostly white, underdog rugby team.
The Pitch: Amistad meets The Bad News Bears
Who It's For: The entire family and your high school history class.
Cause for Hope: What could have been an overblown, pedantic story may be genuinely stirring in a non-manipulative way in the calm, understated hands of director Clint Eastwood.
Cause for Concern: Having to watch a movie about rugby, a sport combines the torpor of soccer with the meatheadness of hockey.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 8

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG
The Story: The story of the frog prince relocated to Jazz Age New Orleans.
The Pitch: The Little Mermaid meets Angel Heart
Who It's For: The kids.
Cause for Hope: Disney's first animated African-American star; the throwback 2D animation looks rather quaintly lovable.
Cause for Concern: Encouraging young women to commit intimacies upon reptiles promotes interspecies cruelty.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 7

A SINGLE MAN
The Story: A college professor (Colin Firth) in the early 60's struggles to come to terms with the death of his partner.
The Pitch: Brokeback Mountain meets Mad Men
Who It's For: The very artsy
Cause for Hope: The always watchable Colin Firth; designer Tom Ford's directing debut received very favorable festival buzz.
Cause for Concern: Trailers have attempted to majorly gloss over the film's central gay theme.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 8

THE SLAMMIN' SALMON
The Story: A down on his luck restaurant owner starts a table-waiting contest to repay his debts.
The Pitch: Best in Show meets Rocky Balboa
Who It's For: Comedy Nerds
Cause for Hope: The Broken Lizard Comedy troupe which made this film is always a delight.
Cause for Concern: Table-waiting comedy may not be ready for its moment in the sun.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 9

1.) Debbie Rowe
Love her.



LOVE. HER.



You can see her wild side in her ear lobes.



And her T-shirts.



When I saw this shirt over the weekend, it immediately made me think of Aileen Wuornos' dream job of raising "she-wolves" on a farm with her girlfriend, as revealed in Nick Broomfield's doc.

2.) "What makes you think you're Paris Hilton or some damn body?"
Last night's 16 and Pregnant featured a teen and her mom, both of whom are pregnant (out of wedlock). They — and their boyfriends and pets — all live in the grandmother's two-bedroom home. Looking for a place to store her clothes in the cramped house, the teen began emptying out a junk drawer in Meemaw's room, where she found a mug with a penis as the handle. But it turns out the mug was not Meemaw's. It was Meemaw's mother's — the teen's great grandma.

3.) She's Totally "The Other Paris" Now



Or at least for this week.

Also: Why does a guy who is too straight for high heels even wanna be Paris' BFF?

3.) Gay in the Face
Katherine Jackson subscribes to the "gay face" theory, as evidenced by this old ass interview Entertainment Tonight dug up.

4.) Five Fun Facts Dr. Arnold Klein
He was Michael's dermatologist.
He is responsible for Debbie Rowe in our lives.
He is friends with Carrie Fisher.
He has no problem going on television and claiming that he jerked off in a doctor's office to donate sperm just for the hell of it.
CBS News finds his clothing incriminating.

5.) What We All Missed On TV This Week
Judge Judy was preempted on Tuesday because MJ's funeral ran way over. I was upset about it because I had been looking forward to the case after I saw this preview for it and learned that it involved a girl urinating on her roommate's sneakers in retaliation for something.

But I seen saw this:

6.) This Guy:

7.) Motorized Wheelchair Commercial Lady
She makes getting older look easy…and dizzy.

8.) Big Brother 11
Big Brother returned this week. Part of "the twist" of this one is that a cast member from a previous season was allowed to enter the house. It was Jesse, from season 10. I'm pretty happy with this decision. He says "sweet beans" instead of "cool beans."

9.) The "No Shit" Award Goes To…
Nikki was on Intervention this week. She's addicted to Methadone and Anti-anxiety medication, among other downers. Needless to say, she is chilllllllled.

Her sister has a personal opinion as to why Nikki likes drugs.

10.) Katie's Sign Off

Nikki Finke poured cold water on excited Poehler fans yesterday by posting the report, which showed that preview audiences thought the show was a "carbon copy" of The Office, "derivative," "forced," predictable," "unoriginal," and "lacking in character development, even for a pilot" (ouch!).

Parks and Recreation is from Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who produce The Office, and it shares the hit show's mockumentary format as it follows a city bureaucrat played by Poehler trying to turn an abandoned pit into a park. NBC has high hopes for the show because—no wait, NBC Universal Chief Jeff Zucker abandoned all hope last week when he said that NBC would never be No. 1 in prime time again. Anyway, NBC still wants the show to do well, so Silverman tried to spin the leak to EW:

All of the research we do around initial rough cuts is negative. If you had seen the initial research on all of ours and our competitors' successful shows, it tends to be like that.

Bravo! No worries, then. Parks and Recreation will suck no more than anything else on TV.

Of course, if all focus groups always says they hate every show they're shown, that would raise the question as to why networks continue to pay research firms gobs of money to conduct them. A perusal of the Parks and Recreation report shows the depth of insight and guidance you can get from a gang of unemployed mouth-breathers:

1. People want a show that's exactly like The Office.

Expectations for this show are very high, especially among OFFICE viewers. Many had seen the promos and were expecting an "OFFICE-type mockumentary" with the same tone.

2. Parks and Recreation sucks because it is almost exactly like The Office!

But [they] felt the pilot was too close and similar to the OFFICE.

3. They hated The Office at first, too, but gave it time to grow on them.

However, many OFFICE fans were quick to point out that THE OFFICE did not become their favorite show overnight.

4. Parks and Recreation has about two episodes to become The Office.

[B]ut viewers will expect to see the show to be as good as THE OFFICE soon. Furthermore, labeling the show as being "from the producers of THE OFFICE" adds credibly (sic) to the show and helps raise viewers' expectations.

5. Too much of the show takes place at that abandoned pit.

Focus needs to evolve away from the pit—consider showing Leslie [Amy Poehler] and her team dealing with various parks and recreation duties.

6. More pit please!

Highest positive spike comes from Leslie falling into the pit.

After two months of negotiations, "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen is close to finalizing a new salary pact that would make him the highest-paid comedy star in television today.

Sources said Sheen will earn about $350,000 per episode this season from producer of the CBS powerhouse, Warner Bros. Television. This represents a hefty increase from his previous payday in the low six figures.

The salary doesn't come close the $1 million per episode the actor was reportedly asking for, but it's still a substantial pay raise that will allow Sheen to indulge in luxury goods and services he may have deprived himself of before; for example, hiring a personal skywriter to circle Denise Richards' home every day for a year, writing, "THIS MESSAGE PAID FOR BY MONEY YOU WILL NEVER GET YOUR GRUBBY CLAWS ON, YOU SAMBORA-SUCKING WHORE," in giant, block letters hundreds of feet above her driveway.

• Sheen set to become highest-paid sitcom star [Reuters/THR]