WHAT'S NEW: Baby Mama and Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay will duel for the top spot, with the latter film predicted to ride its franchise basis all the way to No. 1. Its R-rating won't help against the PG-13 Tina Fey vehicle, however, which could lure its core female demographic to an opening take of $13 million. Harold and Kumar's estimates are all over the place — from $11 million to $16.6 million — so wager now for Monday morning bragging rights. Also opening: Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure; the Burt Reynolds gambling drama Deal; and French legend Claude Lelouch's suspenser Roman de Gare.

THE BIG LOSER: Talk about dump-and-run: A-listers Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, and Michelle Williams are hiding in plain sight in the "thriller" Deception, which we didn't even know existed until Variety revealed Fox was throwing it on 2,000 screens this weekend. And the critics love it almost as much as last week's Pacino-Bomb 88 Minutes; with 6% favorable ratings currently at Rotten Tomatoes, the film "was made to be forgotten," writes Onion AV Clubber Scott Tobias.

THE UNDERDOG: We're of two minds about Helen Hunt's directorial debut Then She Found Me. Yes, the sex in the film is quite terrible, and yes, the story lapses perhaps too eagerly at times into rom-com convention. (First mistake: casting Colin Firth.) But! Hunt's story of an adopted, baby-craving New Yorker (Hunt) whose husband leaves just as her birth mother (Bette Midler) reenters her life has way more going for it than we'd thought — Midler, for starters, whose meddling, mendacious mommy is one of her most modulated performances in years. Paired with Hunt, their timing, vulnerability and overall chemistry are as worthy as any of the Fey/Poehler maternity schtick anchoring Baby Mama.

FOR SHUT-INS: You'd be crazy to stay indoors this weekend, but still: New DVD's include Cloverfield, Charlie Wilson's War, The Savages and the most heavily anticipated TV revival of at least the last seven days, Laverne & Shirley: The Complete Fourth Season.

So are you with Team H&K or Baby Mama in the Battle of the Middling Spring Comedies? Will you roll the dice on Deception? Will you trust us on Bette Midler? Go ahead: Now tell us how to spend our weekend.

· Even Hollywood gets the blues. :( [Variety]
· Warner Bros. wins a bidding war for Daily Show writer Josh Lieb's book proposal I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President. [THR]

[Photo Illustration: Variety]

"Laughlin" fell 63 percent from lead-in "CSI" to post a 2.4 preliminary rating among adults 18 to 49 at 10 p.m., coming in last place. Moreover, the show lost 31 percent of its demo rating in its second half hour and was the lowest-rated program among the major broadcast networks for the night.

CBS is going to wait until after Sunday night's "Laughlin" airing in the show's regular time slot before making any decisions about its fate. But if you're working on the show, you might want to stop payment on the boat.

Naturally, such a spectacularly poor result invites second-guessing about the network's programming choices, especially considering CBS's early season struggles with its new series. We speak, of course, of their egregious passing over of Babylon Fields, whose horny zombies could have made a nice lead-out for CSI, allowing viewers to see what might happen if the hit procedural's corpses unzipped their body bags and reassumed their lives once their murders had been solved.

• 'Viva Laughlin' Craps Out [TV Week]

Joy: What happens when a beautiful man marries a sort of unattractive woman? Then you have dilemma. People will really talk. They think he's gay. This is what happens.

Barbara Walters: Really?

Joy: Oh, yeah. I was reading in the article that we're reading that Hugh Jackman, who is a very handsome guy, people always think he's gay because his wife looks like the rest of us.

Barbara: That's not true. First of all, his wife is very attractive. I think people—

Joy: Not in his level. He's like Sex Man.

Barbara: I think a lot of people thought was gay because he was doing The Boy From Oz which was about Peter—

Joy: He wasn't "doing" the boy from Oz. He was playing in it. This is making Hugh Jackman's life more miserable.

Barbara: He was playing the role of Peter...Peter Allen who was gay. So people thought he must be gay because he was...She's very good looking and it's a very good marriage.

We doubt Jackman will be called upon any time soon to bring the adventures of Sex Man—a bold S & M emblazoned across his chest, and in possession of a remarkable array of retractable mutant appendages—to the silver screen. That said, we feel its somewhat unfair that the actor should be gloryholed as a Gay, and for entirely circumstantial reasons at that: Just because his arm candy doesn't measure up to Beharian standards of beauty, or because he can't resist making splashy entrances that involve leaping onto the nearest coffee table to swivel his hips and shake a pair of maracas, that doesn't necessarily imply he's got one hand in the Man Jar.

• The View on why some folks think Hugh Jackman is gay [AfterElton.com]
• Previously: Hugh Jackman Sucker For Any Part Involving Vocal Warm-Ups And High-Kicks [Defamer]

Spider-Man has some of the most visually interesting villains in all of comics, and it will be a challenge for Taymor to deliver a viable stage adaptation of the mechanical tentacles of Doctor Octopus or the flying bat-glider of the Green Goblin. But the director did win Tonys for direction and costume design for the wildly popular adaptation of "The Lion King," which used puppetry, stilts, mechanically enhanced costumes and other tactics to create its complex vision of the jungle fable.

We imagine that no expense will be spared in helping Taymore realize her vision for the project (whatever that may be), and eventually we'll all be clamoring for tickets to watch superhero movie veteran and Broadway staple Hugh Jackman swinging to and fro on an elaborate system of pulleys created especially for the production, belting out Bono's musical interpretation of Peter Parker's trademark one-liners, and battling villains in exquisitely bedazzled spandex. And if the following video of some early, computer-modeled choreography is to be trusted, the dancing will be just as spectacular as its other inevitably top-notch elements:

• Spider-Man is spinning his web toward Broadway [LAT]

• Superman's costume matches Oz guard's at auction [Reuters]
• Hollywood Memorabilia [Profiles in History]

We thought a handsome companion item to our post about Alec Baldwin threatening to shit on an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary is this photo, brought to our attention by our friends at BestWeekEver.tv, of a lovingly handcrafted Christian-Bale-on-the-crapper figurine, as precious and detailed as anything Hagen-Renaker has ever produced, and sure to only increase in value with time. The eBay craftsman selling "The Bathroom Man" is willing to hand sculpt your purchase to look like you, but why have a boring, non-celebrity such as yourself immortalized talking a miniature, poorly aimed crap (or are those cinnamon buns?) on the floor, when you can proudly display an unmasked Batman doing the same? And for those for whom the $139.99 price point is not an issue, may we suggest ordering a second sculpture, featuring the likeness of Bale's The Prestige co-star, Hugh Jackman—a handsome, bookend companion that would complete a diorama scenario of the two magician nemeses going head-to-head in a mantelshelf crap-off.

• The Bathroom man - Hand Sculpted to look like U [eBay]

1. The Prestige—$14.818 million
Enough people have probably now seen The Prestige for buzz about the movie's twist ending to build. Because we know that you can't stand the tension of not knowing what everyone's talking about, we'll let you off the hook by revealing the stunning third-act reversal (which, quite frankly, anyone who's paid attention to Jackman's career up to this point should have seen coming a mile away) in this space: [SPOILER ALERT—Read no further if you don't want everything you thought you knew about dueling, turn-of-the-century magicians in London placed in an ornate box and sawed in half] As master illusionist/showman Hugh Jackman stares into the face of freshly vanquished prestidigitator Christian Bale in the film's closing moments, their career-long, obsessive battle now at its bitter end, Bale salvages ultimate victory from his humiliating defeat with his final gasp: "I've already sold an exclusive musical adaptation of the story of our rivalry. And not only did I give your character all the best song-and-dance numbers and the most fabulous costumes, my executors have been instructed to let you audition, then deny you the part. Abracadabra, old friend."

2. The Departed—$13.675 million
The Departed's critical and commercial success seems to be pointing to a predictably tragic Oscar endgame for cursed director Martin Scorsese: another heart-wrenching Best Picture loss to a Clint Eastwood film written by Paul Haggis. The envelope is all but sealed.

3. Flags of Our Fathers—$10.20 million
While this disappointing™ opening seems to undermine the above prediction, we should probably point out that Million Dollar Baby opened at a little over $12 million when it went into wide release. Fate is just setting up Marty for the sucker-punch.

4. Open Season—$8 million
5. Flicka—$7.7 million
It's better that we ignore the talking animals and the horse movie and get on with our day.

• October 20-22, 2006 Studio Estimates [Box Office Mojo]

Jackman would play Billy Bigelow, a carnival barker whose temper puts him in the middle of a botched robbery and leads to his death. Stuck in purgatory, he's given one day to return and fix the problems he left behind — namely a teenager who has a lot of his rebellious traits.

Jackman is well acquainted with the role, having sung Billy in a 2002 Carnegie Hall concert to honor Rodgers & Hammerstein.

To know a true musical theater buff is to know that nothing—not even superstardom as a romantic leading man and action hero—can pry them away from the footlights. It's a testament to Jackman's solid bankability that Fox was willing to greenlight Carousel, essentially a no-brainer whose built-in audience of 14 avid PBS watchers will ensure an opening weekend in the low to mid three-figures.

• Jackman's Seed planted in tuner redo [Variety]

• X-Men-3:The Last Standing Ovation Trailer [YouTube]

• A love boat for 'X-Men' stars [USA Today]

HUGH JACKMAN's wife makes him dress in his WOLVERINE X-MEN outfit in the bedroom to spice up their sex-life. The Australian actor reveals DEBORRA-LEE FURNESS loves the hairy suit and insisted he keep hold of it after shooting on the third installment wrapped. He says, "I feel a bit silly in that outfit but, believe me, my wife, really, really likes it. "They'll have to make a new one for the next movie because she won't let me part with it."

Somewhat less enthusiastically received by Furness is Jackman's insistence that he occasionally get to slip back into his costume from his stint playing Peter Allen in the Broadway bio-musical, "The Boy From Oz." While it may lack the beastly thrust of the Wolverine get-up, Jackman finds that a few hours of high-kicking foreplay in nothing but a sequined tuxedo blazer and dance-belt really gets him in the mood.

• JACKMAN AND FURNESS' KINKY SECRET [Contact Music]

The exchange began when Hugh Jackman, Berry's X-Men: The Last Stand co-star, jokingly suggested that Moyles might take the role of his body double if he ever landed the part of James Bond.

"I could definitely do that," Moyles said before adding, "Put your hands in the air!"

A somewhat puzzled Jackman replied, "Are you some kind of Brooklyn Bond?"

Moyles replied: "I'm a black American guy. A big, fat, black guy. Put your hands up in the air."

The interview continued, though the DJ later said Berry was "ratty" — British slang for grouchy.

We think we see where she may have been coming from, though the radio host claims this was not an issue of racism, but of his limited ability with comedic foreign accents. It's hard to explain that to someone you've inadvertently offended, however, and once the damage was done, there's was no turning back. Even the DJ's heartfelt apology, "I never meant to offend you, skinny black actress without a gun," did nothing to alleviate Berry's unwaveringly ratty mood.

• Halle Berry clashes with disc jockey [USA Today/AP]

*HAND MODELS WANTED & MOUTH DOUBLE for HUGH JACKMAN* We need to cast two hand doubles for one day of work on Nov 16 in LA:

One White Male - Left Handed Preferred.
One White Female - Needs to have calligraphy skills to replicate a
certain style which we will provide. (genesis quote attached)

Non-sag - The Pay is $350.00

Polaroids and/or hand modeling shots will need to be sent to NY for approval.

We also need to cast one "mouth double" for Hugh Jackman

This also pays 350.

This shoots on the 16th at panavision woodland hills

A rather unusual casting request, it conjures the image of some non-descript waiting room in the Valley, packed with disembodied sets of male lips nervously running through vocal scales and Peter Allen songs.

As for what is actually being shot, your guess is as good as ours. From the precious few clues made available a woman's hand, a calligraphic Genesis quote (the band? or the Bible?), and of course, Hugh Jackman's mouth the best we can come up with is that Brett Ratner has decided to take X Men 3 into gothic Celine Dion video territory.

• Defamer’s Emmy Moments [Defamer]