• I like it, Rush & Molloy, I like it. Thanks for the nice, scandalicious, SEO-happy headline. The Boris and Natasha-esque Daily News gossip columnists have been stepping up their game lately. Today they slice-and-dice their Moose and Squirrel sights on a few items, chief among them: laughing at Courtney Love's batshit claim that Britney Spears was molested as a young girl, and the British tabloid who's paying an unnamed female Spears family member to argue that she did. That said, Courtney Love: still batshit insane, not worth listening to at all. Some conspiracy theorists, you gotta be like, hey, they might be on to something. What the hell is Courtney Love so worried about Britney Spears for? It's like she's reading us too much lately, or something. She's got to have something better to do. Also, She's kind of like The Werid Sisters, except nothing she says makes any sense whatsoever, and nobody would go to her for advice. Bubble bubble toilet and trouble, whiskey burn and tweaker mumble. [R & M]
  
  
• Usher is a crier. Every time he watches Extreme Home Makeover, he cries. 'Few things here: (1) This is the lead Page Six story today, probably because the other two major gossip stories (Alexa Ray Joel and Tiger-Style) get their own reports, but still: depressing; (2) Everyone cries at Extreme Home Makeover. People without tear ducts cry at Extreme Home Makeover. That doesn't make any less shitty or exploitative of a show. They're prying on your middle-class-and-above selfishness and need to compensate for it with guilt (or, if you're Usher, your boatloads of scratch), so your natural reaction is, of course, to cry. Well, guess what: when you're done crying, those people and their twelve adopted children have still been fucked eight ways to Pluto by the universe and they also still have a smile on their face at the end of the day. In swoops ABC with their cameras and JC Penny's with their advertising and the screamy tweakergay who scares the shit out of me. They get the house, everyone cries, and like that, we've all been subverted by the fucked up corporate entity that—by four or so degrees—probably resulted in their poor living conditions in the first place. So go ahead, keep crying. Assholes. But this doesn't change the fact that (3) Ush-urr got the beat make the booty go (CLAP). [Page Six]
  
  
• Johnson & Johnson heir Casey Johnson was dumped by "lover and friend" Courtenay Semel, but neither of them were in Twilight so I don't give a shit. Come back when you sparkle or can turn into an eagle or some shit. [Page Six]
  
  
• JEETAH! He eats chicken. [Page Six]
  
  
• Great. Tyra Banks was spotted eating at Market Table the other night with her boyfriend. The Page Six item is about how they were there eating all the fatty foots but honestly, it's like, just stay out of New York's good restaurants, Tyra. You don't need to eat. Your life encourages other people not to eat, or to throw up, or in my case, to involuntarily projectile vom. Go to Nello's. Shit, go to Buddakahn. Read all the fake books painted on the walls, come out "smarter." But Market Table? Seriously. If you take it to Joseph Leonard I'm gonna burn the West Village to the ground. [Page Six]
  
  
• Love it. Today show producers wanted to get her to talk about this so they were all like, So, Kathy Lee, Frank fucked around on you. This makes you an expert on Tiger Woods, right? [R & M, Second Item]
  
  
• Gianni Versace (pronounced VER-SAZE-EE) "must be turning in his grave" according to Page Six. What, did someone realize that his Peacock-print shirts were ugly as a fucking moon rock? I didn't read the rest of this item. I think it's about his Miami house. Former house. Former, because he's dead. [Page Six]
  
  
• What the fuck?

  F. Warrington Gillet Jr. can finally rest in peace. "Big Warry," as he was known in Palm Beach, died seven years ago and had a big funeral befitting his bloodlines — one ancestor was US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph Davies, the husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post. But his widow, steel heiress Elesabeth Ingalls Boykin Gillet, never put a tombstone on his unmarked grave in Maryland.

  Okay guys, if F. Warrington Gillet Jr. can make Page Six, if you dream it, you can, too. Just make sure you send Richard and Neel an unmarked envelope stacked with enough cash to get them to get an intern to write this shit up. In fact, I'm working on an item about how the two cats I don't own, Captain Scuzzybutt Esq. and Muffin McCloud III fell in love, as they recounted the story to a party in Miami at Art Basel while everyone drank Veuve Cliquot on dry ice and Andy Dick tried to put his pants on backwards. [Page Six]
  
  

• Guys, does Barbara Corcoran have a main line into Page Six, or what? This week, there's a story about the real estate queen bumping into Robert DeNiro in the "Today" show makeup room. De Niro—still kinda funny—asked her how the real estate business was [get it? Because it's fucked and etc, yeah, you get it.] and she responded by asking if he was still with that beautiful wife of his. Cute. But AH-HA! Two weeks ago, during that same visit to the Today Show, Babs' (far funnier) story about running into Len Berman at Today was ALSO reported. So! Either Today has an intern hiding in a houseplant to collect decent anecdotes, Barbara Corcoran has an awesome publicist, or Corcoran's been hanging out at Today was too much. There are any number of scenarios in this case, but the fact that I feel pride in being able to connect these two items only means that I need to get out more. Also, Babs, if you're looking for a hot PR drop, holla. I can't take cash like the real gossips, but it's always good to know a decent real estate agent in this town. Apartment hunting's a bitch. [Page Six]
  
  
• Rosanne Barr sits around and talks shit with former First Lady Barbara Bush, who "hates" Obama. Well, that's okay, Barbara Bush, you're sitting around talking with Rosanne Barr. [R & M, Second Item]
  
  
• A Harvard dean who was supposed to be at an event with Mark Conseulos and Kelly Ripa came down with Swine Flu. Good to know where your professors hang out, Harvard: with Kelly Ripa and in places you can catch Swine Flu. Ivy league, my ass. [Page Six]
  
  
• Natalie Portman thanked director Jim Sheriden for the "special effects" on Brothers. I'm thankful to Natalie Portman for getting quoted using the word "tits" in the Daily News. [R & M, Fourth Item]
  
  
• Anthony Haden-Guest—who, and, really, I'm not going to explain—was roasting artist Damien Hirst (who is an Important Artist right now selling Expensive Art to Fancy People) at The Standard in Miami (where Art Basel is wrapping up) and he did it with this fairly crafty poem, entitled "A Brilliant But Inexplicably Underappreciated Artist Contemplates Some Figures in the Landscape." It went: "Why would I want to see him immersed / In formaldehyde next to his putrid shark / And sold as a set to an oligarch?" This was in reference to a Hirst piece sold to a billionaire. What I like about thinking about artists who only sell paintings for bazillions of dollars because they all blew Larry Gagosian is that they're a fine lesson in exactly what kind of art sells in this world: theirs, and their poster reprints at the MoMA. And that's really all you need to know! [Page Six]
  
  
• Glenn Beck is "cool" with gay marriage and thinks we should just leave the institution of marriage "alone." This is funny, because, regardless of your gender, Glenn Beck's job is to stick his dick in your ear. [R & M, Fifth Item]
  
  
• Awesomely funny asshole-comic Jim Norton almost got his spine snapped in half by Jesse "The Body" Ventura (R) on live radio recently. See, people: radio isn't dead. Especially whenever Jim Norton might be. [Page Six]
  
  
• R & M buried a few decent items on their last page, but I've spent way too long on this, so here: Zack Galifinakis likes working in Brooklyn on Bored to Death because he can ride his bike to work, subtext, every woman in Brooklyn wants him and he gets to watch on his way to work. Sub-subtext: I still don't understand the appeal of Zack Galifinakis. KiKi Dunst got drunk at dinner. Chelsea Handler's dating the guy who runs Comcast who will soon run NBC and we will soon all eat out of Chelsea Handler-emblazoned dogbowls. Julian Lennon who was the Lennon son John had that acts more like Paul (HA!) is doing something that doesn't involve Yoko Fucking Ono and that's all that matters. [R & M]

Running a wee bit late today. Whoops! Anyway, I'm well-rested, and we hope you are, too. I think another nine girls who slept with Tiger Woods are outing themselves today, so, you know, word: another few slides on the dossier, notches on the belt, balls in the holes, whatever. How's everyone doing this morning? Let's kick it off with a nice jam.

Thank you for your continued support of Gawker Weekends.

[Image via Bauer-Griffin]

• Donald Trump is now getting into bed with his worthiest apprentice/prodigal daughter Omarosa. The pair are becoming partners to produce Omarosa's Ultimate Merger a new show which will attempt to find a husband for the reality star. The show's active subtext will address the question: what is crazier, to get married on a TV show for the attention or to actually want to spend the rest of your days on Earth with Omarosa?
[Variety]

• What with Robert De Niro's film career looking more and more like some rickety nostalgia act, Tribeca sees no doubt safer waters on the small screen. Tribeca has just signed a two year deal with CBS television to develop new shows. [Variety]

• Someone has stolen a percent of ABC! Since the digital conversion, the network's clearance rate — the percentage of American households with access to ABC's affiliates — has mysteriously fallen one percent, and no one can figure out why. The single percentage point could be worth $15 — 20 million a year, but more importantly, the new digital statistics now put ABC below the despised Fox network in national access. [Variety]

• The network meanwhile has pulled the plug on witch-drama Eastwick while ordering more episodes of Jerry Bruckheimer's new procedural The Forgotten. [The Wrap]

• While Oscar's best picture race may be getting all the attention, the Hollywood Reporter writes that the animation category is shaping up as the hottest race on the book, with the field potentially increasing to five films instead of the past three. Pixar's Up faces a conundrum as it looks at potential nominations in both the animated and best picture categories, leading to the possibility that its supporters will be divided in which award they vote to give the film, a split vote which could lead the balloon film empty handed. The category also looks to become a referendum on the state of film technology today with its ranks including everything from motion capture (Christmas Carol) to hand drawn 2D (Ponyo) to claymation (Mary and Max). [Hollywood Reporter]

• Meanwhile in the main category, The Wrap's Steve Pond writes that despite the new ten film wide category, the best picture race appears to have already boiled down to a very stable, very small group of contenders, with the Oscar world basically having decided that the Best Picture of 2009 will be either Precious, Up in the Air or The Hurt Locker. [The Wrap]

• Recession or no, the buyers have been out at the American Film Market. Hoping to snag the next District 9, international agents have picked up the rights to new films starring Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis and Jodie Foster. [The Wrap]

• Disney wont have Mark Zoradi to kick around any more. After being passed over for the top job last month, the President of Disney pics, a 29-year veteran of the company, has announced he is stepping down. [Hollywood Reporter]

• What may be Miramax's last great premiere took place last night at the AFI Festival, celebrating the debut of Everybody's Fine, the news dramedy starring Robert De Niro, and the company appears to be going out with something less than a roar. There were early hopes that the film might give Miramax — and De Niro — one last Oscar hurrah. HItfix reports however, that "the film a mess in so many ways that neither the legendary actor or the stars who play his children — Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale — can save it." [Hitfix]

• The natives are getting restless and the drumbeat grows ever louder for the NBC/Universal Comcast deal. In their quarterly earnings reports, Comcast reported their profits were up 22 percent, bringing to a crescendo pleas that they just go ahead and buy NBC already and end our long showbiz-wide nightmare of suspense. [Variety]

• At the other end of the spectrum, Time-Warner was the beneficiary of low expectations. Its profits fell 38 percent last quarter, which remarkably was above expectations and led the company to raise its earnings projections for the year. [Hollywood Reporter]

• There may be signs of life in that old DVD market yet. The Wrap reports that after the huge success of the Transformers 2 DVD release, analysts are optimistic about the upcoming crop of blockbuster home releases to fuel strong sales. [The Wrap]

• The American Film Market, where US independent filmmakers peddle their wares for international distributors, opened yesterday and Variety saw hopes that the expo may be coming out of the doldrums it has been in in recent years. In addition to a line-up of films made by and featuring some heavy-hitters, Variety says the worldwide success of a handful of indie films — including Slumdog Millionaire — has created a more favorable climate. [Variety]

• Gerard Butler will star in the directorial debut of actor Ralph Fiennes, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. [Hollywood Reporter]

• It's a waiting game to see whether Vivendi will exercise its put option on its remaining 20 percent stake in NBC Universal, possibly sending the network studio hybrid into the fabled lands of IPO. While the anticipation mounts, Vivendi's chair said the company would take the next few months to make up its mind. [Variety]

• Oprah's Harpo Productions, Sam Mendes and Focus Features are teaming up to bring Joseph O'Neill's celebrated cricket pot-boiler Netherland to the big screen. [Variety]

• Spike Lee and Robert DeNiro announced plans to make a series about Alphabet City for Showtime. Alphaville will be an ensemble drama set in the 1980's. [Hollywood Reporter]

• With a mere two months until its release, pre-sales of tickets for New Moon the second installment of the Twilight saga have been brisk, with many locations reporting showings have already sold out. [Hollywood Reporter]

• What you won't read much about in the trades is the rumors about the trades themselves. Yesterday, Nikki Finke declared Variety was planning to take its website behind a pay wall and the Hollywood Reporter to cease publication entirely. The Wrap attempted to find the truth behind the rumors. It quotes a "high level" Reporter exec reacting "with amusement" to Finke's item, while Variety remained oblique about its online plans. [The Wrap]

• The UK Sun lays out their entire "Brad and Angelina are faking it" case in a long piece today. Included among the reasons why—-She wants even MORE kids, he does not. Brad likes the West Coast, Angelina likes the East Coast. And Brad has been in regular contact with Jennifer Aniston lately. And oh yeah, Angie's an intellectual and Brad's a dumbass. [Sun]
  
  
• Ed Westwick and Jessica Szhor partied it up together at the Gramercy Park Hotel last night [Just Jared]
  
  
• It looks as though there really is a Gossip Girl spinoff in the works at CW. [EOnline]
  
  
• Despite rumors on the internets that he's died 10 times since last Friday, Patrick Swayze is still alive and kicking and he and his wife took this photo to prove it. [Mirror]
  
  
• Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are getting back together AGAIN! [EOnline]
  
  
• Did Keith Urban follow the lead of his perpetually-Botoxed bride and get a round of injections himself? [LaineyGossip]
  
  
• Natalie Cole received a lifesaving kidney transplant this week but her sister died suddenly while she was in the hospital. [Page Six]
  
  
• Law & Order SVU star Mariska Hargitay said that the collapsed lung she recently suffered was the result of a stunt gone wrong. [Daily News]
  
  
• Teresa from Real Housewives of New Jersey is expecting her fourth child. [Dlisted]
  
  
• Robert DeNiro is a new grandfather to a seven pound baby girl. [Page Six]

Prosecutors say that Salander, arrested today in Milbrook, New York, bilked 26 clients out of $88 million in a scheme which ran over 13 years. The indictment included 100 counts of grand larceny, scheme to defraud, falsifying business records, securities fraud, forgery, criminal possession of a forged instrument, and perjury. He is due to be arraigned this afternoon.

Salander, most recently a specialist in Renaissance art, operated by promising investors rich returns on money borrowed to finance sales which he described as a sure thing. His Salander-O'Reilly gallery on the Upper East Side closed amid a flurry of lawsuits in October 2007. As we wrote then:

It's the art dealer's primary shuffle, which works like this. Every sale is actually a loan. The phrase "Ponzi scheme" gets bandied about- though it's not much more illicit than any decent hedge fund.

And sure enough, the phrase "Ponzi scheme" is getting bandied about. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Salander had built his reputation with a gallery on East 79th Street with a solid reputation. But in 2005, he opened a second gallery, in a lavish town house on East 71st Street, steps from the renowned Frick Collection.

Rival dealers marveled that Mr. Salander seemed to be switching specialties. He planned to use the town house gallery to show and sell old masters after years of specializing in 20th-century American art. He told his landlord on East 79th Street he needed more space to display European works and attract "all the new money" that was pouring into the art market.

The pursuit of new money to cover old payments due is the classic mark of a Ponzi scheme. But don't all highly leveraged businesses look like Ponzi scheme when the markets seize up? When the new money dries up, when sure-thing deals fall apart, there's nothing left to a business that operates on the edge but empty promises.

Salander and his wife fled the city to move upstate and in November 2007 filed for bankruptcy. That same month, De Niro claimed that Salander had stolen a dozen paintings by his artist father to settle a debt Salander owed to an Italian gallery. The amount owed to his creditors has swelled to $500 million.

From BBC:

The poster for Righteous Kill was displayed at the station where Mr [Charles] de Menezes, 27, was shot dead after being mistaken for a suicide bomber.

Its tagline read: "There's nothing wrong with a little shooting as long as the right people get shot."

The Advertising Standards Authority said it breached guidelines on decency.

"We understood the siting of the poster at the station was unintentional, but nevertheless considered that the text had the potential to cause serious offence in that location," the ASA said in its adjudication.

You gotta love the U.K.'s fastidious propriety standards. Only in England would a governmental bureau dedicated to enforcing ad-manners reprimand a studio for insensitively mounting a poster that mocks a tragic case of mistaken identity set to occur at some time in the future* three years prior. As a result of their efforts, however, we understand the offending materials have since been covered up, and the title of the movie has been replaced on all marquees with the far more delicate Heat 2: Warmed Over.

*We're informed the shooting took place there in 2005. Either way, Righteous Kill still sucks Scott Caan's balls.

• De Niro movie poster criticised [BBC]

• Kate Moss and her boyfriend may be welcoming a child into their continuous boxing match/family.
• Mariah Carey may also be pregnant. She was clutching an apparent sonogram as she exited the office of the OB/GYN to the stars. [P6]
• Vanity Fair assembled an epic photo shoot to commemorate the Four Seasons restaurant's 50th anniversary, but there's no way editor and Waverly Inn proprietor Graydon Carter was going to show up for that picture. He had a terrible case of the flu, you see. [P6]

• Robert De Niro cried when Barack Obama won the election, and it took him until now to admit it. Anybody wanna make a joke about that? Because De Niro will happily show you what change means to YOU. [Daily Star]
• David Bowie's family does not wait with commoners at the pediatric eye doctor. Ever. [P6]
• Britney Spears wants her dancers clean and sober. It'll be more fun to corrupt them that way! [E!]
• Poor Alex Rodriguez can't sell either of his homes. [Cindy Adams]
• Pamela Anderson made out with/terrified Stephen Dorff, passed out on David LaChapelle, went to four more parties and ended up with some other poor sap. [P6]

After the jump: What actress is set to join the Mile-High Club with George Clooney?

· Vera Farmiga will play George Clooney's requisite romantic interest in Up in the Air, Jason Reitman's Juno follow-up about a man chasing down his life's goal of accruing 1 million frequent flyer miles. [Variety
· Speedy the Diet Supplement will be just one of the cartoon characters easing kids into Fox's planned Weekend Marketplace, a two-hour infomercial block that will replace the network's Saturday-morning cartoon programming. [Variety]
· Robert De Niro is the latest player to belly up to the Middle East gravy bowl, franchising his Tribeca Film Festival to Qatar for an annual event to screen in the capital city of Doha. [Variety]

• Brad Pitt said it was uncool for ex Jennifer Aniston to say his wife Angelina Jolie is uncool. Or, as he puts it, he was "totally thrown." [Sun-Times ]
• Who wouldn't want to be on John Mayer's 1960s-style variety show?? Other than Brad Pitt? [Daily Star]
• Justin Timberlake is buying a condo in TriBeCa. Jessica Biel is moving in and Robert De Niro's son brokered the sale. [Post]
• Ari Emanuel screamed at poor, helpless kids playing soccer in Los Angeles, and Barack Obama still hasn't apologized. What terrible things will his chief-of-staff's family do next? [P6]
• Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson marrying? That was so yesterday. Now they're fighting because Lindsay wants to have an open relationship and sleep with guys, and their flack is denying the whole marriage thing.
• Thank you, Barack Obama, for convincing Alan Cumming to grace us with his citizenship. [P6]
• Former HBO president Chris Albrecht is trying to work things out with the girlfriend he choked at a boxing match. Page Six headline? "Rocky Love." [P6]
• Manolo Blahnik, the man, is not familiar with this "Sex And The City." [P6]

WHAT'S NEW: No one would argue that Mark Wahlberg's video-game adaptation Max Payne won't win the weekend, but with Beverly Hills Chihuahua still barking in theaters (it actually expands by 32 screens this week), the sour-cop actioner might see a tiny bite out of its margin of victory. Still, $20.8 million is a reliable bet, with Disney's purse dog settling settling with around $11.5 million.

The X factor is W., the Bush biopic which some forecasters see sneaking into second place with as much as $12 million. But to project any more than $10 million, maybe $11 million max is to overestimate it as anything more than a curio, an election-year stunt that wields neither the bite nor the influence that even we thought it would when the fall movie season began. Josh Brolin drawls and squints in fitful, fascinating bursts, and certain imagined powwows leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion make for riveting ensemble drama. On the whole, though, W. connotes the rush job it was — undisciplined, tonally dissonant (Stone's professed empathy for Bush repeatedly knocks its head on low-hanging satirical fruit) and way, way too long. The American people deserve better, and at least until Nov. 4, they'll vote with their dollars. There will be no stealing this election.

Also opening: Seth Green's R-rated romp Sex Drive; Roy Disney's boat-race vanity project Morning Light; critic Godfrey Cheshire's acclaimed doc filmmaking bow Moving Midway; the indie tolerance drama Tru Loved; and for those of you in New York (and the rest of you on VOD), Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom. (L.A. will get its theatrical engagement Oct. 31.)

THE BIG LOSER: The Barry Levinson-directed/Robert De Niro-starring Hollywood satire What Just Happened is one of the year's finest case-studies in meta: A troubled, pedigreed film about troubled, pedigreed filmmaking, following in the flatlining tradition of every industry saga that preceded it. It false-started out of Sundance last January but finally found a taker at Cannes, and to its credit, Magnolia Pictures has aggressively pushed the film everywhere from baseball playoffs to presidential debates. Still, one half of that audience hates Hollywood, and the other half is off to see W. As recipes for disaster go — even in limited release — this one is ready to serve.

THE UNDERDOG: Is it too reductive of us to foresee good things for The Secret Life of Bees — a film featuring an Oscar-winner (Jennifer Hudson), a Grammy winner (Alicia Keys), two Oscar nominees (Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo) and America's favorite teen diva Dakota Fanning, presented in a nicely bundled chick-flick wrapper by the money-printers at Fox Searchlight? Like $7.3 million worth of good things?

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include last summer's rapey adventure Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Errol Morris's dense, harrowing Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure; the Stephen Rea-in-Mena Suvari's-windshield thriller Stuck; and the much-awaited Nash Bridges: The First Season.

So is it time for Payne? Or is today brought to you by the letter W.? Or is this the weekend you clean up after Papi and Co.? Whatever you decide, don't leave Dakota Fanning out; her curfew is later these days, and she'll hunt you down without thinking twice. Choose wisely!

After the jump: Kung Fu Panda reups in 3D, Fringe reups in 2D, and crisis! grips! Bollywood!

· Jack Black and Angelina Jolie will return for a 3D Kung Fu Panda sequel, prompting the Chinese scientists so humiliated by the first one to ramp up their pursuit of a fourth dimension for their eagerly awaited response. [THR]
· The number of new DVD titles released through August is down almost 15% from the same time last year, 8,661 to 7,381. Come on, Hollywood — let's get going! Harvey can't keep up this pace all by himself! [THR]
· The Bollywood film industry is in a standstill today after 147,000 workers in 22 unions (even the dancing girls!) went on strike to protest substandard pay and work conditions. In related news, Warnari Bros. Studios drew fan wrath after the stoppage forced them to delay the release of Hari Puttar 2 to summer 2009. [Variety]
· You wanted it (we think), you got it: Fox ordered a full season of JJ Abrams's Fringe. [THR]

The latest tape isn't that interesting. It's a conversation between the Miramax boss and director Quentin Tarantino from a long time ago, 1997, when both were still at the top of their game; the most notable line is Weinstein's description of Robert DeNiro's career dilemma as an explanation for some grievance he's carrying. Change a few words and this could be a summary of Weinstein's own plight, a movie producer who wanted to be an all-round mogul but now must be wondering whether he has the financial wherewithal.

This is a great actor and actually a great guy, who's going through a difficult time... I think he's really having like a scratching-his-head session, you know, with his own life and his own career. I think he knows he can play a certain kind of role from now for the next 20 years. But I think he wants to change the course of his career.

"He thinks he's going to . . . make John Travolta look like that was an amateur night in Dixie," says Weinstein in the 11-year-old recording, referring to Travolta's comeback in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Responds Tarantino: "He's still dealing with, subconsciously, the fact that he's not going to get paid for doing the thing that he's created after 20 years . . . He's built his reputation on roles like [Jackie Brown's]Louis . . . 'How can you not pay me?' "

At another point, Weinstein warns Tarantino he might get a "weird midnight phone call" from the star. Tarantino rages: "Tell Bob not to call me yelling and screaming . . . I don't know if I'm going to be nice [if] the guy calls up yelling and screaming at me like a maniac, calling me a [bleep]er!"

Better that than a terrifying, apostrophe-free email, we think, though we certainly wouldn't welcome a late-night tirade from the erstwhile Travis Bickle. Still, we can't help but think this all could have been avoided if De Niro had tempted Tarantino into a pay raise by appealing to his well-known foot fetish. Sure, it may be an ignominious thing for an Oscar-winning actor to doff his shoes and socks and wiggle his little piggies for gross points, but can it really be worse than Analyze That?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• COPING WITH DE NIRO FLIP-OUT [NY Post]

According to [one] source, Campbell had Bobby D. repeatedly shoot and re-shoot a scene where his character tries to hit a ball out of a sand trap. At the end of the day, the actor reportedly approached the director to discuss the long day, and the discussion degenerated into a shouting match that culminated with De Niro hitting the road. [...]

Producer Graham King, who brought The Departed to Boston and knows a little something about working with A-List talent, swears that there is nothing more to the story than real-life “creative differences.”

“The issue really was that Bob saw the character one way and we saw it another,” King told the Track. “And it was hard for Martin, especially, to get his head around how Bob wanted to portray the actor.”

Other rumors suggested that De Niro simply didn't know his lines ("That dog don't hunt," quipped his flack, so cross that off!) and/or couldn't hack it with the mildly anti-Semitic Gibson, with whom he hadn't even yet shared a scene. God only knows, though it should be noted that Ray Winstone — a celebrated charity golf stud in his native England — was just brought in to replace De Niro. We're just saying.

• Why Robert De Niro left Mel Gibson’s ’Edge’ [Boston Herald]

"Nobu and Robert De Niro are clearly making a great deal of money serving up endangered fish," Willie Mackenzie of the environmental group Greenpeace told the Telegraph of London. Greenpeace activists went undercover at the chain, a favorite haunt of Madonna, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, and discovered menus failed to disclose the species of tuna served.

The mouth-watering fish was actually bluefin, a species so endangered the World Wildlife Federation has called for a ban on its sale.

Even though Nobu's New York restaurants were not cited in the report, one diner said it made him think twice about eating at the swank Tribeca eatery.

"I come here for good food, not to be part of some exterminating force," said Lawrence Clay-Williams, 34, of SoHo.

Whatever. It's not like it's illegal or anything, making for an exotic, ultimately guilt-free alternative to less-righteous kills you'll find between bread at Subway or lesser eateries. And think of the exclusivity, with satisfied diners forking over a reported $600 apiece for the privilege of sensually living out a variation on Kill's tagline: "Most tuna respect the fisherman. Every tuna respects the chef." Someone's a genius.

• Robert De Niro's Nobu restaurant called all wet on tuna [NYDN]

Nobu does not specify on its menus which species of tuna it serves. Requests for the information by campaigners have been met for several years with a terse "no comment".

Although it is not illegal to serve Atlantic bluefin, also known as northern bluefin, many chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, have dropped it because of concern that fishing is at higher levels than stocks can withstand. At Nobu Berkeley St, which has one Michelin star, investigators asked for Atlantic bluefin (hon maguro in Japanese) but staff told them the restaurant did not stock it. However, DNA tests proved that the fish they were given was indeed Atlantic bluefin.

[A] second dish they ordered, described only as "o-toro", the fattiest belly meat, was Atlantic bluefin. At Nobu London, a waitress told the investigators that a dish on the menu was hon maguro. The fish that was served tested positive as Atlantic bluefin.

The lack of clear information about the species of tuna on sale at Nobu could land the restaurants in trouble. A spokesman for Westminster city council said that falsely describing food was an offence.

Willie Mackenzie of Greenpeace said: "Nobu and Robert De Niro are clearly making a great deal of money serving up endangered fish." The restaurant declined to comment. [Telegraph]