Though their grape smashing continues to hold authority across the globe, French wine-makers once had to be taught how to grow, stomp, swill their grapes. Molecular analysis of ancient wine pots and presses in the south of France indicates that the Italians instructed the French on the best methods to turn a delicious…

North Korea might be allowed to pay off its Cold War-era debts to the Czech Republic in ginseng root. Because really, what else can North Korea offer? Next time I'm short on rent, I'm paying in Five-Hour Energy.

Thanks to rising fuel prices and wage inflation in China, it's actually more expensive to manufacture and ship electronics across the Pacific for the American market than it would be to produce them domestically, according to a report from The McKinsey Quarterly. But iPhone assembly plants won't be coming to a…

· NBC is close to unveiling their very fantasy- and action-heavy 2008-09 lineup, including a pickup of Knight Rider, and Robinson Crusoe, an "'adrenaline-charged' update of the classic tale." Said Ben Silverman, "We just wanted to give audiences a viable alternative to all the really, really gay stuff Steve…

Lionsgate, the plucky indie studio who mined the untold box office potential of film franchises featuring a creepy marionette on a tricycle and an equally creepy actor in grandma drag, has forged its own side deal with the WGA:

· Hollywood Out of Ideas: Let's Turn Those Mildly-Amusing-At-Best Geico Cavemen Commercials, Which Themselves Are a Rip-Off of That Old Phil Hartman SNL Sketch, Into an ABC Sitcom Pilot edition! [Variety]
· Warner Bros. is turning the Valerie Plame-C.I.A. leak debacle into a feature. You can start plotting your…

· With a successful Dreamgirls and World Trade Center DVD release in the year's fourth quarter, Viacom has Paramount and DreamWorks to thank for coming out $86 million in the black. To celebrate, Sumner Redstone ordered Brad Grey to follow the trail of rose petals leading down the hall and into his candle-lit…

· The Art Directors Guild chose fifteen nominees in three categories—period, fantasy, and contemporary—with awards to be presented Feb. 17 at the Beverly Hilton. With Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Pirates of the Caribbean, Superman Returns, and V for Vendetta in direct competition, the fantasy ballot alone is…

· The 3000-member Producer's Guild of America named the nominees for its awards, with the producers of Babel, The Departed, Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen all nominated for best picture. Unlike the Academy Awards limit of three, their awards have no cap on the number of producer's names that can be…

· Monday's Rose Parade will feature George Lucas and hundreds of nerds fans dressed as Stormtroopers marching alongside a "Star Wars Spectacular" float "inspired by the landscape of the planet Naboo." Also: The Grambling State U. marching band from Louisiana dressed as Imperial officers, playing "Main Title,"…

· Analysis of this year's animated releases reveals that they tend to do better at the box office when another one doesn't open soon after. It's almost as if there was a single audience for these movies—say, parents and their young children. [Variety]
· MTV is looking to expand to the Middle East, signing a deal…

· The Library of Congress added 25 titles to the National Film Registry, including Fargo, Groundhog Day, and Blazing Saddles, the last of which you can draw up alphabetically, or by typing in "Movies: Bean-Induced Flatulence." [Variety]
· Eragon is faring much better overseas than it did in North America, while …

· The holidays take two biggies from us: Frank Stanton, credited with turning CBS into "the Tiffany network," and the hardest working man in showbiz, James Brown, who was telling friends until the very end that he'd be playing Times Square New Year's Eve. [Variety, THR]
· Dreamgirls took in a healthy $8.7 million on…

· Hollywood's abuzz about Tom Freston's roast in New York last night, where the terminated, terminally nice guy managed to get a few good ones in, too: "I've been, what do these kids do? Swimming the Internet. Check this out. MySpace.com — one word not two. I'm telling you, one day this is going to be worth a…

· The best thing to come out of the Toronto International Film Festival so far, says Variety, is a transcendent documentary from a little known Eurasian filmmaker with a "chram thick like tube of Pringles." [Variety]
· We hope Nick Meyer, formerly of Lionsgate, likes hugs, because his new co-president at Paramount…

· Survivor: Race Wars producer Mark Burnett options the rights to a series of children's fantasy books similar in tone to Harry Potter, but instead of the children assigned to Gryffindor and Slytherin houses, they're segregated accorded to—on second thought, we can't bring ourselves to finish this joke. [Variety]
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· A scene from an upcoming Desperate Housewives in which Kyle MacLachlan goes down on Marcia Cross, "with explosive results," according to Variety, was distributed on YouTube. This angered ABC execs, who insist it wasn't an "official leak" intended to build buzz. We're starting to feel extremely nauseous at the…

· AOL struggles to find new reasons to justify its pointless existence in a broadband world by offering downloadable movies from most of the majors, set at the three price points of $19.99, $14.99 and $9.99, or crap, crappier and crappiest. [Variety]
· More online entertainment news—we know, it's too much sexy, you…