This is just a hunch, but we’re expecting Will Ferrell to be named as People’s sexiest man alive next year.

Because, seriously, that man is loaded. He gets paid so much money. Too much money, in fact. And he doesn’t deserve a bloody penny of it. That’s according to Forbes, at least – Will Ferrell has come out on top of a list 0f Hollywood’s most overpaid stars. The list claims that Will Ferrell only earns his investors a return of $3.29 for every dollar he’s paid.

Why such a poor figure? Well, it’s partly because Land Of The Lost flopped, partly because comedy is notoriously difficult to sell around the world and partly because Will Ferrell has cold dead eyes and a rapist’s haircut. Possibly.

What makes a good actor? Commitment? Research? An ability to emotionally connect with an audience? No, you idiot. What makes a good actor is the comparative financial return that they make for investors based on their salary. That’s why Matt Damon is a great actor and Will Ferrell is the worst, stupidest, actor to have ever walked the Earth.

According to a new Forbes list, Will Ferrell is the most overpaid star in Hollywood because he only makes $3.29 back for each dollar he’s paid. Compare this to Naomi Watts, who earns investors $44 for every dollar she’s paid, and you can see what an underwhelming amount that is.

That’s not necessarily a helpful comparison – Naomi Watts’ figure is so much higher because she’s generally paid less than Will Ferrell, her films cost less to make and she rarely carries movies by herself, plus the fact that her name is a guarantee that you’re either going to see her boobs or the outline of at least one of her nipples through a skimpy top at some point – but it must still be a worry for Will. ABC reports:

Ferrell took first place largely due to the flop of his summer 2009 movie “Land of the Lost”, which Forbes said cost an estimated $100 million to make but earned just $65 million at box offices worldwide for movie studio Universal Pictures. The movie followed a disappointing $43 million box office for Ferrell’s 2008 outing “Semi-Pro”, and $128 million for “Step Brothers”.

We should probably point out that Will Ferrell was part of a list of overpaid actors, but we’re trying not to mention that because it’ll only depress Ferrell further. For instance, Ewan McGregor came second in the list. And when was the last time you ever got excited about a Ewan McGregor film? This year? Last year? This decade? Ewan McGregor is awful, and he’s still better value for money than Will Ferrell.

Other actors on the list include Tom Cruise – a man who only makes films so that people can tell him how rubbish he is in them – and Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton, for crying out loud. He can’t even do an interview properly, let alone a bloody film. Seriously, Will Ferrell must be feeling terrible.

There’s only one thing for it. To turn this around, Will Ferrell will have to start taking on Naomi Watts-style roles before it’s too late. He should sign up for impossibly minor roles in bad Clive Owen films, harrowing remakes of brutally amoral German horror films and London-set films where members of the Lord Of The Rings cast beat a large number Russian gangsters to death with their bare penises. That will definitely revive Will Ferrell’s fortunes as a Hollywood commodity.

We expect a consultancy fee for this advice.

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Paul Haggis isn’t just the bald film director responsible for writing the worst James Bond film ever, you know.

He’s also a Scientologist. Or at least he was a Scientologist. Paul Haggis has just decided to leave Scientology, and he’s decided to do it by basically writing a letter to Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis saying that Scientology is stupid and it doesn’t like gay people and it’s awful and that all Scientologists have stinky bums, or something.

So there goes any hope of Paul Haggis working with John Travolta or that terrible woman from King Of Queens in the future. He’ll probably survive.

We wouldn’t like to be in Tom Cruise’s shoes this morning. That’s mainly because Tom Cruise probably has tiny impish feet and wearing such ridiculously small shoes would no doubt result in us developing an outbreak of bunions, but it’s also because Paul Haggis has just left Scientology – which means that everyone’s going to talk about Tom Cruise and his crazy made-up religion again.

You might not know who Paul Haggis is, but there’s a very good chance that at some point you’ve rolled your eyes during one of his films and muttered “Christ, this is all a bit bloody heavy, isn’t it?” to yourself. Paul is the writer of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, In the Valley of Elah and Quantum Of Solace – which should warn you that, if Paul Haggis has a point to make, then he’s going to repeatedly bludgeon you over the head with it for two hours until you’re a weeping wreck begging for forgiveness.

And the point Paul Haggis is making now is roughly “Boo, stupid Scientology”. Despite being a member of the Church of Scientology for 35 years, Paul Haggis has decided to leave over the religion’s support of Proposition 8. And, like all people when they leave a position, Haggis decided to write a great big angry letter explaining why he was leaving and sent it to just about everyone on the planet. Here’s an excerpt:

“As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us… The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.”

What’s more, Paul Haggis also claims that Scientology told his wife to break off all contact with her parents “because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church”. But that’s not important. What’s important is that Paul Haggis has quit Scientology, and that means that the church will probably end up leaking his darkest secrets to the world before long.

Or maybe he has a worse fate in store. Maybe he’s going to be the subject of some of Kirstie Alley’s batty old barely-comprehensible Twitter entries. Then he’ll be done for.

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Cameos in movies are always a bit of a double-edged sword.

On one hand they can provide audiences with a reaction of genuine delight when they find a big-name star who was not listed in the opening credits has suddenly turned up on screen to enliven and enrich the film in progress.

The more negative reaction however can see fans of a particular actor howling in anger as some wannabe gate-crashes some other big-name star’s party – usually with a scene of such gravitas that it completely overshadows the main star’s performance.

After all don’t actors get enough work of their own without having to swan around in movies which were meant for the people who’s names are up outside the multiplex?

Even worse are the fame-hungry fly-by-nights who, not content with already being famous in fields such as sport or politics, have to go and show up in the world of showbusiness too.

Like them or hate them it seems cameos will always be a part of the great world of cinema and just for your viewing pleasure we have listed the best 20 we could think of.

Any we’ve forgotten…well they’re probably off appearing in some other list somewhere.

20 – Jarvis Cocker – Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire

After his unwelcome, but undoubtedly amusing, cameo in Michael Jackson’s Earth Song performance the former Pulp frontman decided to stick with what he knows best.

19 – William Hootkins – Star Wars

He was master of the cameo in his day and thanks to the net his untimely death in this scene is being blamed on a Mexican food-fuelled fart.

18 – Bruce Willis – Loaded Weapon

John McClane would have kicked their asses – sadly this was not his movie.

17 – Bruce Springsteen – High Fidelity

We’ve tried hard to make Britney Spears materialise in our bedrooms but apparently it only works for lucky gits like John Cusack.

16 – Martin Sheen – Hot Shots Part 2

I loved you in Wall Street – brilliant.

15 – Keith Richards – At World’s End

Clearly influenced by the fans and the media this cameo showed some people really will do anything for money.

14 – Lance Armstrong – Dodgeball

If ever you feel like quitting – just imagine a pep-talk from a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

13 – Mike Tyson – The Hangover

Even once hated and universally shunned boxers seem able to make us say ‘all is forgiven’ by doing stuff like this.

12 – Sean Connery in Robin Hood

Historians agree Richard the Lionheart was born in England and raised French – so why does he sound here like he hails from Kilmarnock?

11 – Matt Damon – Eurotrip

If you go to school with the right mega-stars they too may one day agree to cameo in one of your films.

10 – Chris Rock – You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

Man loses entire family – consoles himself with Chinese food.

9 – Samuel L Jackson – Iron Man

A special kind of cool cameo – one which hints at the next blockbusting film to come.

8 – David Hasslehoff – Spongebob the Movie

Also appeared in Dodgeball – but this saw him back in Baywatch mode. Couldn’t he have bought Pammy and the girls with him, though?

7 – Stan Lee – Marvel series

OK to play old man on street or postman to the Fantastic Four – but who told him he could pull off Hugh Hefner?

6 – Animator – Aladdin

Not strictly a cameo but rumour has it this was a piece of sabotage created by a pissed-off animator who told Aladdin to take Princess Jasmine’s clothes off. Fair play to him.

5 – Richard Burton – Zulu

Could have got any jobbing actor to read out the opening and closing narration but thankfully decided to go with a legend who’s voice sends shivers up your spine.

4 – Alfred Hitchcock – Everything!

The cameo master – no contest.

3 – Tom Cruise – Tropic Thunder

You got us back on side with this one Tom – but not for long.

2 – Chuck Norris – Dodgeball

If Chuck Norris says you play Dodgeball. YOU. PLAY. DODGEBALL!

1 – Alec Baldwin – Glengarry Glenn Ross

Better in these seven or so minutes than he was in any of the films in which he was the star. There you have the true definition of a cameo.

[story by Chris Longhurst]

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Some people just don’t quite know how to correctly behave when they’re famous. Yes, we’re talking about you, Sarah Michelle Gellar! And you, Freddie Prinze Jr! Don’t try to hide away from our steely gaze. You both once had the world at your feet. For Christ’s sake, you could have been the next Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. But look at you, so totally normal, it’s disgusting. You’ve even given your child a standard everyday name – Charlotte Grace. Charlotte Grace? What the hell is wrong with you people?

As literally everyone else on the planet knows, if you’re going to live in the limelight, every single aspect of your life must be thrilling and unusual. Your diet, your choice of deity to worship, your outfits, and especially your children. They should be given freaky made-up names that sound stupid, like Suri, Maddox, or Brooklyn. Names guaranteed to see them cornered in the playground, and eventually home schooled.

They should have hairstyles almost as soon as they exit the womb, and their baby outfits should consist of hilarious designer trainers, and jeans! Celebrity babies MUST wear jeans. After all, these kiddies are not delicate souls ready to be nurtured and loved, they’re extensions of your personality, who will eventually blow most of your money on crystal meth, because they could never live up to your phenomenal successes. Might we suggest changing the Charlotte bit to Willem? It’s a small gesture, but funnier. More Hollywood.

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time Michelle Gellar has failed to play the Hollywood card correctly, having previously responded to a simple question about religion by claiming to believe that there might be some kind of God, but going on to point out that she doesn’t affiliate herself with any of the organised religions. Oh, for the love of GOD, woman! What kind of weedy, flannel-like response is that? It’s one of the first rules of celebrity that you choose something outrageous, pluck it from thin air if you must, and then just go with it. Macho men like Cruise and Travolta have been doing this very well for years. And Madonna found, to her enormous benefit, that wearing a thin red cotton bracelet made her somehow more alluring and impressive. These are the people to watch and learn from, Gellar and Prinz Jnr. The kind of people who would only acknowledge someone called Charlotte Grace had she just finished wiping down their car for a few bucks.

The baby, by the way, was born on Saturday. Poor little blighter.

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So Tom Cruise is going to make Mission: Impossible 4. Let’s get all the obvious gags out of the way now, shall we?

Hey, what’s the impossible mission this time? Reviving Tom Cruise’s career? Ha. Finding Tom Cruise a decent haircut? Ha. Trying to convince the world that Tom Cruise isn’t a boggle-eyed religious fanatic? Ha. Making Tom Cruise the size of a normal human being? Ha. Getting Tom Cruise to convincingly marry a woman? Ha. Trying to get Tom Cruise to promote a movie without making an overwhelming arsehole of himself? Haaaa.

Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

Let’s have a quick quiz. What was your favourite part of any of the last three Mission: Impossible movies? It’s a difficult question, huh? There are just so many moments to choose from. Like in the first Mission: Impossible where Tom Cruise, you know, did that thing that we can’t really remember very well. Or in Mission: Impossible 2, where Tom Cruise was all like “Aargh” for reasons that seem to elude us. Or what about Mission: Impossible 3, which might have been partly set in China unless we’re thinking of another film. Classics, the lot of them.

Or at least we’re assuming they’re classics. All of them were so massively forgettable from start to finish that we usually need to be reminded who everyone is, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and why we agreed to watch them doing it every 20 minutes or so. The world needs another Mission: Impossible movie like it needs to be liked in the jaw by a horse.

So the good news is that there’s going to be another Mission: Impossible movie and Tom Cruise is involved and everything. AP reports:

Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams have chosen to accept another impossible mission. Cruise and Abrams have signed on to produce a fourth installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise for Paramount. Abrams directed Cruise’s last outing as covert operative Ethan Hunt in 2006’s “Mission: Impossible III.”

It’s slightly shocking news, isn’t it? Not because Sumner Redstone famously booted Tom Cruise from Paramount after his reputation as a babbling religion-zonked lunatic stopped just about everyone from watching it, but because it just shows how desperate Tom Cruise is to be liked again.

Because, up until now, Tom Cruise’s career rehabilitation has been going horribly. Lions For Lambs was a dreary misfire and Valkyrie did the impossible and made the star of an anti-Hitler movie even less popular than Hitler in Germany. And now he’s returning to his past in an effort to reclaim his former glory. Which would be good, except that the part of his past that he’s decided to return to is the crappy part that’s sort of a sub-Bourne James Bond rip-off that nobody is really that interested in seeing.

But still, on the plus side Tom Cruise will be approaching 50 by the time Mission: Impossible 4 comes out, so at least there’s a decent chance that he’ll throw his back out while leaping around on Oprah Winfrey’s furniture to promote it. And that’s something we’d happily watch.

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Imagine going on a date with someone who seems perfectly normal. Throughout the course of the evening, you notice that they have a little vial around their neck.

“Oh, that, that’s just my ex husband’s blood.” says your date as she pours you another glass of wine. “When I’m not looking after my fifty six billion children, I’m busy learning how to knife throw and kissing my brother in a way that could only be described as really really creepy. What do you do in your spare time?”

I reckon it’d take you about ten seconds to make your ’something bad happened’ excuse and get the  hell out of there. Leaving your wallet, phone and passport behind if you had to. Run! Run away!

Unless you’re on a date with Angelina Jolie.

Despite this woman being as mad as a box of frogs, we take one look at her (frankly fantastic) rack and forget all about her crazy blood carrying incestuous ways. You can be as mad as you like in Hollywood, as long as you’re pretty enough to distract people. We don’t really like the crazy, we’re just willing for forget about it.

Once upon a time, Britney Spears was every man’s school uniform wanking fantasy. And she always was a bit crazy (years of Disney will do that to you). But until she decided to shave off her pretty blonde mane, no one noticed. Once she looked a bit trailer trash, everyone thought she’d gone nutty. The fact is, she’d always been a bit nutty, we just didn’t have anything pretty to detract from this. She was just all crazy and no hair extensions.

If you’re pretty in Hollywood, you can get away with anything. I’m not saying every pretty girl is mad as a tree (Kate Hudson is just lovely, isn’t she?), but they could be if they wanted. The prettier you are, the more crazy you can get away with.

If Tom Cruise had gone a bit mad in his gay icon Top Gun phase we’d have forgiven him and he’d have been topless on the cover of Vanity Fair. Instead we (and every movie maker every to snort a line of coke) cross the street to avoid him and his Scientologist buddies. He’s not that pretty anymore, is he?

If you’re not convinced by my prettiness Vs crazy equation (PX10 = C), take a look at Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s sometimes really really pretty. And sometimes really really ugly. She’s also a little bit weird. But she’s not totally crazy. Because she’s not always pretty enough to carry it off. She’s treading a fine line that Gylenhaal woman. One step too far and she’ll be shaving her head and kissing her brother and we won’t forgive her for it. Instead we’ll point and laugh at her crazy ways until she sorts herself out with a bit of slap and nice dress.

Then we’ll forget aaaaaall about it.

This was a guest blog by the wonderful Sian Meades from the wonderful Domesticsluttery.com, which you should probably all visit now.

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The actress and mother is the subject of much speculation and often ridicule.

Some think that she is the kid who got lucky and married her childhood crush, while others think that she is the target of a clever Scientology-based blind date system, where the winner gets to be shackled to their famous mate for the rest of their lives.

Katie opens up in a new interview in quite astonishingly candid detail, about her feelings on motherhood and how she feels about the inevitable media intrusion into the life of her and her adorable baby daughter, two-year-old Suri.

In the piece published online and in the April 2009 issue of Glamour magazine, Katie opens with the usual stock quotes she always does about how she started in the business and life before becoming Tom’s loyal Scientology robot.

As the interview progresses, the mask slips and we get a more probing look into what murky waters lie behind the now dead eyes of the woman most people in their 20s shall only ever remember fondly as Joey.

The star seems to respond well to many things, the click of a paparazzi bulb, the glare of the spotlight and if her most recent cover shoot for the publication is anything to go by she responds to Photoshop like a Crackberry addict to the ping of a new email.

Katie’s glued-on, wonky smile hides a woman who is arguably as media savvy as Angelina or even the more recent media darling Octomum’Nadya Suleman. Rarely is a woman so adept at selling an image to the media based solely on her looks and her womb.

When lovingly probed by the interviewer Katie divulges many a secret. Things that her adoring fan (yes, fan) is dying to know. Despite public desperation for them to be oh so dysfunctional, by all accounts the Cruise family are like any other parents of a toddler. They both share feeding, playing with the little one and they share nappy changing.

Katie recounts stories of family time as if she were reciting dry tales of her first auditing session. For instance, she retells stories of family board game time with all the love and passion of a daytime TV actress.

So, does the formally bubbly wife of the most famous man in the world feel overwhelmed by her family duties? Does she mind no longer being her own woman? Katie says:

“From an early age I knew that I wanted to be in this business. So I did everything I could to get here, and when I met Tom, I knew in an instant that we were going to be together, that we were going to get married. He does have a very big life. And you know, we just do it.”

Sigh, by all accounts robot Katie is and was a willing participant into the charade that is her life at present.

She welcomed the cameras, she courted the fame and she popped out a baby so quickly that she barely made it down the aisle before she went into labour.

With all that in mind, guess that explains why the wizards in the Glamour Photoshop department could not airbrush out the vacant look in this empty little robot’s eyes.

More? You want more? Then you should probably head over to Amy Grindhouse, shouldn’t you?

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And it’s all down to Suri Cruise. You see, the effect of Suri Cruise on Katie Holmes has been enormous. So big that Katie Holmes has just become the first mother in all of history to publicly state that she quite likes her child.

It goes further. Katie Holmes has called being a mother ‘the most important job in the world’. Take that Ban Ki-moon, and don’t come back until you’ve learnt how to cook fish fingers for crying ungrateful brats.

We haven’t heard a great deal from Katie Holmes recently. Is this because she’s been busy in New York starring in All My Sons? Possibly. Is it because Tom Cruise has reduced her daily allowance of moisture and daylight because of perceived insubordination regarding a pithy comment about Xenu? There’s a chance of that, yes.

But we like to think that it’s because Katie Holmes has been hard at work studying the entire history of philosophy in order to come up with a profoundly original take on motherhood in western civilisation at the turn of the 21st century. She’s certainly been doing some of that, because only someone well-versed in Utilitarianism and Kant’s system of Deontological ethics could come out with something as stunningly intellectual as this:

“[Motherhood] has been the most amazing experience – in an instant you become strong. You have to be a little bit wiser; it’s the most important job in the world.”

Did you hear that? Katie Holmes actually seems to like her own child. Incredible – we assumed that all mothers hated the sight of their children so much that they locked them in the cupboard and fed them pieces of metal until they were 10. Wow, she sure taught us.

And it’s good to see that Katie Holmes thinks being a mother is the most important job in the world. Not because she’s wrong or anything – although, you know -  but because if acting was the most important job in the world then she’d have been sacked for gross incompetency shortly after Mad Money came out.

While she was bravely pioneering this new ‘mothers sometimes don’t find their children hideous’ school of thought, Katie Holmes also had words for those cruel people who said mean things about Suri Cruise after she was born, like that she didn’t exist or that she’d had skin pigmentation treatment because she’d really been adopted from Uganda and didn’t look a thing like Tom Cruise or Katie Holmes. Or that she was a robot. Or a koala. Anyway, here’s what Katie Holmes said:

“Why don’t you come over and have dinner? See what there is to see.”

Oh God, Katie Holmes totally just invited us to her house for dinner! Katie, Tom, we’d love to. We’ll be at yours at six. We’ll eat anything you like, although if there could be a side order of pieces of metal we’d be most grateful.

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As far as our top five list of attractive dictators goes, Hitler’s not even on it. You know who is though? General Mao. Sure he was mean, but he had the jaw-line of a god. Adolf was ugly alright – but don’t tell that to Eva Braun. She used to lick sugar off his greasy cheek bones (Germans think that’s an exfoliator). Imagine how dumb she’d feel once she found out he was ugly.

Hideous as he was, though, Hitler apparently had good taste in globes. And that, through a series of strange events, now has Tom Cruise hovering on the brink of a huge gaping lawsuit.

As vile as he was, there were still two admirable traits clearly owned by Adolf Hitler. The first is that he was a real patriot, at least that’s what our great aunt Adolpha told us through what we suspect is a Spanish accent. The second is he owned a really nice globe – nice enough that Tom Cruise went way out of his way to include a replica of it in his recent German one-eyed romantic comedy, whatever it was called. We haven’t seen it yet.

The problem there is the actual physical look of Adolf’s globe was copyrighted by what must be a very lonely fellow. That’s right, the globe itself is a full-fledge copyrighted item, and Cruise and company approached nobody about using it in a film. Page Six can get you up to speed:

“Robert Pritikin – who penned such jingles as “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat” and has a $40 million art collection – owns several Hitler artifacts, including the Fuehrer’s notorious globe, which he used to plan U-boat attacks from his compound in the Bavarian Alps.

“The globe was replicated and prominently featured in “Valkyrie,” the thriller about a real-life plot to assassinate Hitler – and that has Pritikin mulling legal action. In 2007, Pritikin paid $100,000 for the globe and had its likeness copyrighted to keep it from being used in propaganda by sick neo-Nazi groups.”

A solution the Rice-A-Roni guy has in mind is that Tommy-boy could buy all of his Hitler related paraphernalia and then donate it to a museum or something. Other items Pritikin may have in mind for quick sale include Hitler’s crusty inside-out underpants, the actual withered portion of Hitler’s lip that his tiny mustache used to call home, and a montage of several German puppies. That last one we’re told is quite cute.

If any of that is true it sounds absolutely terrible – but not that all of the Rice-A-Roni guy’s ideas are bad. For instance we’re really thinking about copyrighting all flat maps made during the greater WWII era. And if that works we’re also gonna reserve the image rights to Abraham Lincoln’s stove pipe hat and the white horse that’s always in the background whenever George Washington posed for a prayer painting.

Then we’re just gonna sit back and let the inevitable cash flow in. Thanks for that, Hitler-rice guy, from the bottom of our pocket book.

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Apparently a big action film about a one-eyed Tom Cruise trying to batter Hitler to death with a suitcase isn’t all that. Who knew?

However, Tom Cruise isn’t going down without a fight. It’s been claimed that staff at a radio station were offered a free screening of Valkyrie – at Tom Cruise’s actual house – but only on the proviso that they all said that Valkyrie was a masterpiece, that Tom Cruise was a sexy virtuoso of acting and that Katie Holmes‘ dungeon actually didn’t look that uncomfortable really.

There’s a glut of big, big Oscar-worthy movies coming out at the moment, from Kate Winslet’s moving portrayal of a Nazi in the upcoming adaptation of the acclaimed novel Holocaust MILF Sluts Go Wild to Meryl Streep’s incendiary performance in Doubt, the follow-up to Mamma Mia that explores institutionalised paedophilia in the priesthood to the timeless beat of some of Abba’s most beloved hits.

Our point is that it’s hard to get your movie noticed at the moment. Especially, as it turns out, if your movie is a dreary load of cock about Hitler that stars one of the most profoundly unlikeable actors in movie history. Which hobbles Tom Cruise’s new film Valkyrie from the outset, really.

To put it politely, Valkyrie has had a troubled birth. Germany tried banning Tom Cruise from filming there, then there were all the accidents, then its release got shunted around the calendar like a flaming dogpoo that nobody knew how to put out properly. And that was before the reviews started coming in.

The early word on Valkyrie is that it’s ‘unengaging’ and that Tom Cruise is ‘distractingly bad’ in it. But that doesn’t sit too well with Tom Cruise himself – after the disappointment of Mission: Impossible III and the fetid, unwatched abortion that was Lions For Lambs, Tom needs Valkyrie to be a great big hit. If it isn’t a massive, career-resuscitating blockbuster, then Tom Cruise will have insincerely apologised to Matt Lauer for absolutely nothing at all, and that would just tear him apart.

That’s why Tom Cruise has apparently been offering critics private screenings of Valkyrie at his house so long as they say something – anything – nice about the film. MSNBC reports:

According to a source with radio station K-Earth 101, the Cruise camp was willing to go to great lengths to garner some positive publicity. In fact, they went so far as to offer a screening for anyone at the station and their friends at the Cruise home, according to the source. “They offered to hold it in Tom’s home — they didn’t say if he’d be there or not. We just had to agree to say ‘nice things’ about the movie.”

Now, it goes without saying that this news is the last thing that Tom Cruise wants to get out. It makes him look like a needy, approval-seeking idiot desperately doing anything he can to save a movie that he knows stinks. It’s literally the worst publicity that Valkyrie could get – and since its publicity already includes the pull-quote ‘Tom Cruise is distractingly bad’ that’s really saying something.

But you know what? We’re willing to give Valkyrie a chance. Personally we’ve always found Tom Cruise to be an engagingly charismatic actor, plus he’s surrounded by a cast of exceptionally talented character actors and telling a story of enormous global significance. In fact, we’re going to confidently predict that Valkyrie will be one of the best movies made this decade. We can’t wait to go and see Valkyrie.

And, best of all, we’ll get to go and see it in the brand new sports car that Tom Cruise is going to send us for writing that last paragraph. Remember the contract, Tom. The boot has to be stuffed with jewels and prostitutes. Again, that’s jewels and prostitutes.

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Wait a minute, everyone celebrates with what? That isn’t in the script – All My Sons ends with the patriarch killing himself to end his unbearable guilt and then everyone unites in a tableau of profound grief. Where’s all this bloody cake come from?

Oh, Tom Cruise. We should have known. Yesterday was Katie Holmes‘ 30th birthday, so Tom Cruise sent cake and champagne for everyone in the play to enjoy. In a tableau of profound grief, obviously.

On the surface it might look like Tom Cruise controls Katie Holmes’ life to the extent that she constantly looks relieved not to be chained up in her kennel-dungeon and drip-fed rainwater, but the truth is that Tom Cruise needs Katie Holmes to help him promote movies.

For instance, War Of The Worlds was the Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Get Engaged movie, and it was all very sweet and lovely and romantic. Then Mission: Impossible III turned out to be the Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Have A Baby movie and, well, that was harder to find sweet and lovely and romantic because nobody really believed that the baby existed.

And now Tom Cruise has another movie coming out, about a one-eyed Nazi who couldn’t even blow up Hitler with a suitcase properly. But it’s a bit harder to rope Katie Holmes into promoting this one, because what would it be? The Tom Cruise Lets Katie Holmes Star In A Play movie? The Tom Cruise Stands Next To Katie Holmes And Everyone Sees What A Funny Little Elf He Is movie? It’s a tricky one.

Luckily, yesterday happened to be Katie Holmes’ 30th birthday, thereby making Valkyrie the Katie Holmes Reaches An Age Where People No Longer Mistake Her For Tom Cruise’s Daughter And Tom Cruise Sends Her A Cake To Celebrate Because He’s Too Busy To Do It In Person movie. God, Valkyrie’s going to be rubbish, isn’t it?

But, hey, who doesn’t like cake and a sing-song to puncture the emotional impact of a play about death? People reports:

Addressing the audience, Holmes’s costar John Lithgow announced, “Tom Cruise, our good friend, devoted fan to the show, doting husband of Katie, could not be here tonight. He’s heartsick that he couldn’t be here … So, he’s joining us, inviting all of you, to celebrate Katie’s birthday.” And with that, crewmembers wheeled out a five-tiered, white-frosted, circular birthday cake as the crowd cheered and applauded.

We were just kidding about Tom Cruise ruining the ending to the play, by the way – when Katie Holmes received the cake and read that it was iced with the inscription “Don’t eat any of this. The last thing I want is a fat wife. I can tell, you know. I’m always watching you. ALWAYS” the mood in the theatre returned to the tangible solemnity that Arthur Miller had always envisioned for the climax of his play. Tom Cruise saves the day again!

But now he’s exhausted engagements, childbirth and landmark birthdays to promote his films, Tom Cruise is in a bit of a bind. That’s why we’re comfortably predicting that Tom’s next movie will either be the Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Divorce movie, the Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Have A Marital Wobble But Ultimately Pull Through movie or the Katie Holmes Accidentally Falls Down A Flight Of Stairs And Mysteriously Dies And Tom Cruise Has To Tenderly Grieve In Public movie.

Which will it be? We’re so excited!

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But now Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson have emerged as figureheads on opposing sides of a dispute over whether actors should go on strike because there aren’t enough fame-blinded young nymphomaniacs who’ll indulge their every fleeting sexual whim or whatever.

Mel Gibson is for the strike, Tom Hanks is against it. Sadly Mel Gibson will win, because the dispute will be settled by charging at each other across a field. Poor Tom Hanks – if only it involved growing a crap mullet and ranting about Jesus.

Our favourite part of this year, hands down, was the writers’ strike. It was brilliant – fed up with not being paid enough royalties for material shown on the internet, film and television writers all put their tools down and deliberately crippled the industry.

Except what actually happened in the writers’ strike was this a) the Golden Globes got cancelled, b) Lost got to make a shorter-than-usual season that wasn’t full of guffy episodes about nothing and c) 24 was forced to take a year off, allowing its producers to think of a way to make it less embarrassingly rubbish. In short, only brilliant things came from the writers’ strike.

And that’s why the actors have decided to have a go too – the Screen Actors Guild has long been brewing over whether or not to go on strike for similar reasons to the actors and, despite George Clooney’s efforts, ballots will be sent out to members first thing next year.

Imagine what’ll happen if the actors do go on strike – not only will your favourite shows get screwed for another season, but actors will have to spend most of their time sitting around not doing any real work. We genuinely can’t imagine what that’d be like.

But some actors don’t want to go on strike. They’re claiming, quite sensibly, that another strike-crippled winter wouldn’t be fair on all the piecemeal crew members forced out of work and that, with a global recession looming ever closer, the last thing that the public wants to see is a load of manicured moviestars stamping their feet because they only got $18 million for pretending to be a hard-bitten policeman who doesn’t follow the rules instead of $19 million.

And that’s why these actors have taken a stand and, um, written a strongly-worded letter. The New York Times reports:

“We support our union and we support the issues we’re fighting for, but we do not believe in all good conscience that now is the time to be putting people out of work.” Beneath that was what might have been the cast list for a tentpole blockbuster: George Clooney, Glenn Close, Cameron Diaz, Charlize Theron, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman and Tom Hanks.

That’s quite a list of names – who’d be stupid enough to argue with nice guys like George Clooney and Tom Hanks, powerful girls like Glenn Close and Charlize Theron, the actual voice of God in Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, a man who once made a comedy about some cojoined twins?

Actually, Mel Gibson would. And so would Sandra Oh. And Holly Hunter. And Jerry O’Connell. And this disagreement has driven a wedge through the middle of Hollywood, a community which usually prefers to publicly rub its own tummy until it gets a hardon.

What happens next remains to be seen, but there is one obvious solution staring everyone in the face here – let Mel Gibson and Sandra Oh and Holly Hunter and Jerry O’Connell go on strike and everyone else doesn’t have to.

That way the striking actors get to make the point they so firmly believe in, and we get to go a few months without having to watch Grey’s Anatomy, Saving Grace, any new Mel Gibson films at all or Kangaroo Jack 2: Jack Bounces Back. Everyone’s happy.

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Look, OK, we know that technically Lions For Lambs was the movie that was supposed to be Tom Cruise’s redemption from all the berserko weirdness, but nobody watched that so it doesn’t count. Understood?

So instead, Tom Cruise is promoting Valkyrie by continuing his long, painful roadshow of apologies. This time, Tom has dropped in Matt Lauer to say sorry for calling him ‘glib’ during an interview three years ago. Great – maybe soon he’ll apologise for letting us waste our lives watching War Of The Worlds as well.
Tom Cruise has a message for us and, uniquely for Tom Cruise, it doesn’t involve either the phrase ‘Hail Xenu’ or a series of tiny sci-fi madman cackles. We know. Unexpected.

Instead, Tom Cruise’s message is that he’s sorry. No, really. He means it. Yes, he knows he went a little bit off-message a while ago, what with the couch-jumping and the Katie Holmes stuff and the terrifying rants about how stupid Brooke Shields was for taking drugs that stopped her wanting to hurl her baby against a wall, but that’s all in the past.

Even though all of that happened back in 2005, Tom Cruise still feels the need to make amends, and that’s why he’s spent the last couple of years apologising to Brooke Shields for being a weirdo and apologising to Oprah Winfrey for scuffing up her soft furnishings. And now, to complete the set, Tom Cruise has decided to apologise to Matt Lauer.

You’ll remember that in 2005 Tom Cruise reached the pinnacle of his batshit behaviour by being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show, turning the interview into a bewilderingly intense diatribe about psychiatric medication and calling Lauer ‘glib’ when he tried to interject.

Well, now Tom Cruise has decided that he’s sorry for that. And that’s because he’s one of the good guys, and not because he’s got that Nazi movie coming out soon that’ll either mark the start of his comeback as a serious actor or bury him forever. People reports:

Cruise… chalked up his passion at the time to “a subject matter that’s important. It’s something that’s been debated in the public, and that’s what it should be.” Yet, he also said, he came across “not as I had intended. In looking at myself, I came across as arrogant. … I didn’t communicate it in the way I wanted to communicate it. Also, that’s not the way I am. That’s not the person I am.”

It must be a weight off Tom Cruise’s mind to say all that. We know we always feel better after making squirming public apologies for things that everyone knows we still believe in, anyway.

But still, at least Tom Cruise has finally finished apologising for everything he did wrong in 2005. So now he can start apologising for things he did in 2006. And you know what that means? He’s going to visit every single household on earth and, hand on heart, tell us all how terribly sorry he is for getting off with Katie Holmes for like 15 minutes straight at his wedding.

Which is all well and good, but it’s hardly going to bring back our eyesight, is it?

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Unless, you know, those fans keep turning up at his house without permission because they’re fanatical veterans’ rights activists with a history of psychiatric issues who keep shutting down freeways by allegedly waving flags and guns around.

That’s bad news for Edward Van Tassel – he’s exactly that, and he’s been given a restraining order forcing him to stay away from Tom Cruise. Phew, that was close – it’s a good job these mentally ill gun-toting rogue soldiers respect court orders so diligently, eh?

Tom Cruise’s powers are perfectly self-evident to everyone. He can help car crash victims better than people who know how to help car crash victims, he can impregnate virgins young enough to be his daughter and he can also take any number of sure-fire hit movies and make people not want to watch them just because of who he is. It’s incredible.

But Tom Cruise is only human – or part-human and part-Jesus alien or whatever – and so sometimes his powers fail him and he needs outside help. Like when mentally-troubled Iraq veterans come to his house and try to hand him slightly unsettling letters, which is the case with Edward Van Tassel.

Van Tassel is a former soldier who gained notoriety recently for walking into a radio studio in fatigues and a mask with a gun as a massively ill-advised Halloween stunt, and for shutting down a freeway by standing on an overpass waving a flag and a gun around. Oh, and for spooking Tom Cruise out by visiting him with letters and books and friendship requests and whatnot now, too.

But it’s OK because, as E! Online reports, Tom Cruise has managed to get a restraining order taken out on Van Tassel:

Darryl Perlin, senior deputy district attorney for Santa Barbara County, tells E! News the order issued Wednesday bars 28-year-old Edward Van Tassel from having any contact or communications with the 46-year-old Cruise. It also forbids Van Tassel from coming anywhere near the actor’s Beverly Hills estate. “He’s definitely a threat. He’s a celebrity stalker,” said Perlin.

We know what you’re thinking – why would anyone want to stalk a film star as creepy and unapproachable as Tom Cruise when it’d be easier just to draw macabre pictures of Uma Thurman or send Britney Spears a big box of dildos?

Well, given that Edward Van Tassel is a veterans’ rights activist, and in Born On The Fourth Of July Tom Cruise played a veteran struggling to come to terms with civilian life, there’s a good chance that that’s the link.

Or maybe Edward Van Tassel just really, really liked Lions For Lambs. We suppose statistically someone had to. No wonder the poor chap seems so disturbed.

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But that’s besides the point.

Books still get banned you know. All the time – why just recently the British arm of Amazon.com reached into its electronic library, grabbed a tell-all work of non-fiction by the spine and thrashed it to and fro until the pages thereof had all fluttered loosely to the ground.

Rumour has it the book was pulled by the heavy hand of Tom Cruise who, for the record, denies any involvement in this literary scandal. His influence is implied because the novel’s topic is – you guessed it – Esoteric Christianity. Or whatever that thing is he’s deep into.

John Duignan is a guy who wrote a book called The Complex. Duignan is a former Scientologist who’s had it up to here with how the religion made him and everyone else who’d reached the inner sanctum of the seventh level sit around wearing nothing but donuts over their nipples while talking over and over about how L Ron Hubbard didn’t owe the US government one red cent when he died alone in his desert trailer.

This is all detailed in his book’s eleventh chapter – it starts on page eight. We should clear up that we haven’t actually read the book as we’re waiting for Oprah’s go-ahead, but most of our description there is probably written on the jacket somewhere. If you want to see for yourself – don’t check Amazon.co.uk – they’ve digitally burned it. At least according to the author.

The Daily News explains things:

“On Oct. 31, Irish publisher Merlin released “The Complex,” in which John Duignan, identified as “a former high-ranking member” of the church in Britain, describes his “dramatic escape” from its “elite para-military group,” the Sea Organization.  Five days later, Cruise dropped by Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to glad-hand staffers and host a sneak peek at his new movie, “Valkyrie.”

“A few days later, Amazon’s British Web site stopped selling “The Complex,” explaining to customers that someone mentioned in the book had alleged it defamed him with “false claims.””

Cruise is innocent – we think we can explain things right away here. Tom strangely stopped by the Amazon offices to show off his new Valkyrie movie. Seems like a weird choice until you realise that later in the day he’d also let the employees of a local mom & pop grocery store sneak a peak. Then he went to two gas stations and an unimpressed toll-taker, all allegedly with a projector in tow, but we digress.

The film, being extremely pro-Nazi according to a dream we had three nights ago, whipped all the employees up into a heil-Hitler fervor, causing several smokey book piles to plume way up into the night sky.

We don’t really think Cruise’s visit had a specific book bashing agenda though. No, there was definitely more of a religion-in-general theme to the torching as we’ve heard other flame-fuellers included the Bible, The Book of Mormon, and the third installment of Jeff Foxworthy’s semi-popular ‘You Might Be Resurrected If….” series.

But, you know, Cruise denies the allegations outright.

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