There Are Many Comedy Persons, But Only One Comedy Person Of The Year: Judd Apatow

We return you now to the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal—a city reinvigorated by a strengthened Canadian dollar and the recent grand opening of The Celine Dion Jumpsuit and Chapeau Museum. Hours ago, comedy tycoon (we promised we wouldn't call him a monopolist) Judd Apatow picked up a handsome companion trophy to sit alongside his Flackie and prized collection of custom penis-molds of every actor he's ever worked with: The prestigious Just For Laughs First Annual Comedy Person of the Year award.

Did the 'Extra' Jinx Finally Catch Up With Sarah Silverman?

Live From Just For Laughs: The Defamer Kathy Griffin Interview

Welcome to another edition of Defamer Attractions, your weekly cheat sheet to everything new and noteworthy at the movies. This is a fairly easy installment for us, as will happen when the most anticipated superhero movie of, like, ever is threatening to run off with the biggest opening weekend, like, ever. As such, knowing that at least half of you are browsing this from a lawn chair in some long, twisting multiplex queue, let's skip the formalities: This weekend features one blockbuster, a melodic bit of counterprogramming, a primate-centric flop-in-the-making and a concert film for the manic depressive in you. As usual, our opinions are our own, but they are burnished to a soft, infallible glow. Off we go!

WHAT'S NEW: Look, what more can we say about The Dark Knight? It's terrifically well-made, it's tracking hotter than train on fire and even Terry Gilliam backslid his way into publicizing it. All that matters anymore are the numbers: Warners is unloading this thing on more than 9,000 screens worldwide, including 4,366 in the US. That's a record, reports Variety, though word on the street is that its 152-minute running time and multiplex competition will keep it from breaking Spider-Man 3's record $151 million opening last year. We're not so sure; $145 million isn't out of the question, especially with IMAX screenings sold out literally everywhere and overflow heading into neighboring theaters.

Emmy Nomination Hell! 10 Plots and Subplots to Watch After Today's Big Announcements

The world awoke this morning to the chirping of little birds resembling Kristin Chenoweth and Neil Patrick Harris, perched at a podium in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, announcing nominations for the 60th Emmy Awards. While most rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, we sat bolt upright as usual and sprinted to the window, our furious note-taking chronicling a few snubs, surprises and plenty of the conventional wisdom we've come to expect from the annual ritual.

The Academy has the full, looong slate of nominees, naturally, but we've narrowed our interests down to 10 easy storylines for our own Emmy dramedy — conveniently outlined after the jump!

Who Knew? The Top 10 Unlikely Vocal Performances From Non-Singing Actors

Defamer Reviews 'The Dark Knight': Same Batman, Bleaker Bat Channel

After surviving months of Dark Knight hype, viral outreach and tastefully overblown praise for late co-star Heath Ledger, Defamer finally got its chance at a screening Tuesday to see what all the Bat-fuss was about. And as editor Seth Abramovitch and senior editor S.T. VanAirsdale discovered in their second installment of Defamer Instant Reviews, not everybody is ready to validate its Second Coming status quite yet. Is it good? Absolutely. Is it the best film of the summer? That's where things get complicated — on AIM, of course, because this watershed cultural moment deserves no less.

Follow the jump for their respective two cents — mostly spoiler-free for even the most casual followers of the film, and naturally among the finest criticism available anywhere online.

Source: 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' Head Writer Not F**king Jimmy Kimmel

Yesterday, we noted a Gawker item suggesting that Molly McNearney, who swiftly ascended the Jimmy Kimmel Live! ranks from lowly Chinese Theater Chewbacca-wrangling assistant to that show's head writer, had been the woman who came between Kimmel and Sarah Silverman. A Defamer tipster who knows McNearny wrote us to say this couldn't be further from the truth:

She is absolutely NOT banging Jimmy Kimmel. She was promoted from assistant to staff writer, and then from staff writer to head writer. Where's the controversy there? That's kinda how it works in this biz.

Why You Don't Care About Eddie Murphy

We needed a little time today to digest our feelings after the miserable box-office showing of Meet Dave, whose free-fall over the weekend resulted in the ugliest opening of Eddie Murphy's career. Not having seen it, we have to assume that $5.1 million gross aside, the film is at least superior to Norbit (not to mention Vampire in Brooklyn, Pluto Nash and a sprinkling of other Murphy misfires over the years). We'd even venture to say it'll be better than Beverly Hills Cop IV, the PG-rated abomination to which Murphy and Brett Ratner are attached for Paramount. Certainly it's better than The Love Guru, whose own beleaguered comic icon Mike Myers nevertheless had flowers and a thank-you note on Murphy's porch by sometime Sunday afternoon.

But the knives are out anyway, with at least one impassioned plea calling for Murphy's retirement and another damning rundown of 50 not-impressive films that had higher-grossing opening weekends than Meet Dave (which even our lowball estimate last Friday waaaay overshot). But the scope of the crash-and-burn — not to mention the relative quietude of the backlash — suggests a less-controversial denouement: Nobody cares about Eddie Murphy.

'Hellboy II': The Golden Weekend

Four ways to jump start your Monday morning: 1. Moisten fork prongs with mouth. Place end of fork between teeth, press prongs into nearest wall socket. 2. Fill microwave-safe cup with water. Microwave for 2-3 minutes (times vary). Remove cup, pour contents directly onto eyeballs. 3. Have a co-worker hold a duct tape gun to your left ear. Spin in counter-clockwise circles until your entire head is mummified inside a sticky cellophane prison. See how long you can last without breathing before slicing open at mouth. 4. Read the box office numbers!

1. Hellboy II: The Golden Army - $35.885 million
Every true visionary director has their own methodology, and Guillermo del Toro is no exception: Every night before going to bed, the Guadalajara native consumes approximately two dozen tins of tainted sheep and pork products, their deadly bacteria providing the nightmare fuel that produces such del Toroian visions as cat-snacking bag ladies and 20-story legumes hellbent on destruction. Apparently America has an appetite for these fever-dream delicacies, as the reluctant red hero's adventures took an easy first place win. Selma Blair, meanwhile, returns to full-fledged movie-star status, just in time for the debut of NBC's Kath and Kim, effectively making her the new Steve Carell.

The Chosen Two Cometh! World Gets on With Life Without Pregnant Brangelina

Miley Cyrus Already Referring To Herself In The Third Person

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Welcome back to another week of Defamer Attractions, your regular guide to the fresh hell of what's new at the movies. After taking a Hancock holiday weekend to find ourselves, we're back in full-on summer anguish mode as yet another massive comics adaptation hits theaters, Brendan Fraser goes a-spelunkin' and Eddie Murphy returns with... we don't even know. But! We also have our eyes on a few alternatives both at the theaters and in the comfort of our air-conditioned caves, so all is not lost. As always, our opinions are our own and elegantly spot-on — which, of course, you've come to expect and we're happy to oblige!

Dear Quentin Tarantino,

Before you think we're getting too carried away here, let's make it known right away that we don't do this for just anybody; it takes a special kind of affront for us to sit down and hammer out correspondence amid so much more compelling news of the day. (Like have you seen Michael Jackson recently? Holy shit, right?) But like your contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson, who so annoyed us by signing off on a There Will Be Blood DVD skimpy enough to have been a costume in Death Proof, your transgressions seem to require a little more direct attention than those of say, Brett Ratner or Uwe Boll. You're Quentin Tarantino, after all — QT! You stole made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction! You are a living legend, an artist among artists, and you deserve everything that's coming to you.

Which is why we think it's time to ask you directly: When will you and Harvey Weinstein stop inflating the world's interest in Inglorious Bastards?

Robert Downey Jr. Vs. Sacha Baron Cohen: A Tale Of Two Holmes

With today's Variety report that Robert Downey Jr. will star in a mildly distracted Guy Ritchie's upcoming Sherlock Holmes for Warner Bros.—by all accounts, a much more reverential take on the mythical detective than the Columbia comedy announced just last week starring Sacha Baron Cohen—we thought we'd celebrate this latest Elementary! edition of our ongoing The End of Ideas series by comparing and contrasting the two competing projects:

The Take:
RDJ: A fast-talking, self-absorbed Holmes with hints of deep inner-turmoil, Downey's creation will overcome a career-threatening intravenous morphine habit to become the toast of London's A-list private detective scene.
SBC: A snootier and less aware take on the erudite detective, this Holmes will always insist, despite the bafflement of his perennial sidekick Watson, that the best way to solve a particularly difficult case is to visit the local all-boys brothel for some closed-door interrogations.

It's Time: Kill the TCA Press Tour

Tom Cruise's Comeback Film: A Village People Biopic, Starring Tom Cruise In Every Role

When Glossies Attack: Blake Lively Latest Victim Of Airbrushing Whack Jobs