• Travel the circle of life with Scanner, sans any singing lions. The Scanner crew bring you the latest in sperm (ooh, science!) and birth (Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton celebrate the birth of their daughter, we can only imagine the Goth wonderland of the nursery), to marriage (Pam Anderson) and divorce (Pam Anderson), to passings (goodbye Dan Folgerberg: “Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens/ I've been in love with you.”)
Plus: Jessica Simpson may go nude to “save” her “acting career.” Tim McGraw may star in a movie with Jon Favreau. Mitt Romney gets a horse-face mask; his wife gets excited. The Spice Girls get armpit bulge. And a 22-year-old Canadian man gets an $83,000 cell phone bill after connecting his phone to his computer to use as a modem. We can only hope he also got some sweet-ass porn.
• Screengrab is in lurve with the new Batman Dark Knight trailer. We have to admit, Heath Ledger is looking pretty bad-ass. And our holy shit moment: Maggie Gyllenhaal is the love interest. She beats Katie Holmes, any day.
Also: Oliver Stone pisses off Iran. Phil Nugent takes a look at Slate’s “overlooked Christmas movies,” including Yogi's First Christmas ("A surprisingly touching ode to ursine innocence"), as well as Stalin’s love/hate affair with John Wayne. Though I think him sending the KGB to California to assassinate him veers firmly into the “hate” side of things…
• And Oliver over at the Hooksexup Video Blog learns that the Bible is weirder than animated viral video…and throws in his two, super-excited cents for the new Batman trailer. As well as Google and its spell-check function. Go “Gyllenhaal” go.
— Nicole Ankowski