The Sundance Film Festival this afternoon unveiled the competition lineup for its 2009 incarnation (a/k/a the One You're Boycotting), and it's a sharp crop of international cinema that will no doubt be met with accolades and not just a few bounced checks from cash-strapped indie distributors. Follow the jump for our quick, dirty, reductive and completely arbitrary survey of the fest's hottest titles and trends.

· As assumed, the Michael Cera-Charlene Yi potboiler Paper Hearts will screen in Park City, where it's one of the few competition features expected to find an immediate distribution suitor. A couple others: John Krasinski's directorial debut Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, an adaptation of a novel by the late David Foster Wallace starring Krasinski, Julianne Nicholson, Rashida Jones and Timothy Hutton; and Cold Souls, starring Paul Giamatti as a "famous American actor" who, "in the midst of an existential crisis [...] explores soul extraction as a relief from the burdens of daily life." So basically it's about joining CAA.

· Chris Rock crosses over to the gritty nonfiction world with Good Hair, a documentary about barbers.

· Pierce Brosnan will attend the world premiere of his drama The Greatest, prompting a burst of confetti and showgirls upon some unwitting attendee's 1 millionth grudging complaint that Sundance is "so fucking over."

· Complement your mid-January American Idol saturation with Afghan Star, about the nation's TV talent-competition hit Pop Idol; "this film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk their lives to sing." All that, just to succumb in the end anyway to Afghanistan's equivalent of Priscilla Presley. Heart-rending.

· Robert Siegel, former Onion editor and an Oscar-nomination lock for his Wrestler screenplay, makes his directorial debut with Big Fan, starring Patton Oswalt as "a parking garage attendant who happens to be the New York Giants' biggest fan." He life is "turned upside down after an altercation with his favorite player," whom we really, really hope isn't Plaxico Burress.

· It's a three-way tie for best synopsis, as far as we can tell:

The Cove — Dolphins are dying, whales are disappearing, and the oceans are growing sick. The horrors of a secret cove nestled off a small, coastal village in Japan are revealed by a group of activists led by Ric O’Barry, the man behind Flipper.

Dirt! The Movie — The story of the relationship between humans and dirt, Dirt! The Movie humorously details how humans are rapidly destroying the last natural resource on earth.

Humpday — A farcical comedy about straight male bonding gone a little too far.

Tough call, though we think we've already seen that last one. What do you think?

• Sundance Film Festival

• Sundance Sets Slate: 64 Films To Compete In Park City [IW]

Hypersexual lesbian temptress Ellen DeGeneres usually keeps her daytime chat show somewhat neutered, but today's Brad Pitt interview (beamed via satellite from New Orleans, where he was busy building homeless shelters using only the telekinetic energy stored up in each ab) really brought out the gay.

First, DeGeneres pleaded with Pitt to give her some sort of idea how to lure the long-absent George Clooney onto her set, prompting Pitt to detail an unorthodox trap involving speedos, greased pecs, and peroxided hair. Then, the talk show host thanked Pitt for contributing "to Proposition 8" (actually, he contributed against it, but y'know, whatevs!), a good deed that Pitt attributed to shoring up his base "an issue of equality." Clip above.

• Ellen

Welcome to the most depressing paragraph you're likely to read today:

Supersizing “Celebrity Apprentice” gives NBC a way to cut programming costs, since adding an extra hour of an already-produced reality show is much less expensive than airing an original scripted or unscripted hour. With “Biggest Loser: Couples” already slated to fill two hours on Tuesdays, and “Howie Do It” set for an hour on Fridays, NBC’s winter schedule will likely feature at least five hours of unscripted programming each week.

Setting aside for a moment whatever the fuck Howie Do It might be—and all the Canadian-cranium-polishing and germaphobic-fist-bumping that truly dreadful title implies—things have now gotten so desperate at NBC that they are stretching out Celebrity Apprentice to two hours per week. That's twice the combforward, twice the Z-list celebrities competing for charities they secretly wish were their own bank accounts, and twice the uncomfortable rendezvous at Trump's gold-encrusted penthouse vomitorium to catch up with his Transylvanian mail-order bride and their future little beednees tycoon.

That said, let's take a look at the rumored cast!

Andrew Dice Clay
Tom Green
Clint Black
Annie Duke - poker player
Claudia Jordan - Deal or No Deal briefcase model
Brian McKnight - R&B singer
Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins - TLC
Herschel Walker - retired NFL player
Natalie Gulbis - LPGA golfer
Scott Hamilton - former Skater
Khloe Kardashian
Joan Rivers
Melissa Rivers
Brande Roderick - actress
Dennis Rodman

Let's see if we can break these down for you:

Roderick, Jordan: All-purpose waitress/actress/model/whatevers, i.e. boardroom candy for Trump to keep around 'til the last possible minute when one of them burns down the Toys R Us flagship store in an EZ Bake Oven challenge gone horribly wrong.

Gulbis, Rodman, Hamilton, Walker, Duke: Washed-up stars of sports and gambling. Rodman and Hamilton will go head-to-head in the Sephora outreach challenge, but the former NBAer will ultimately come out on top by offering the best eyeshadow application to on-the-go businesswomen passing by.

Black, McKnight, Watkins: Washed-up recording artists. (Maybe Black has a career, we honestly have no idea—but would he really be doing this if he did?) Look for McKnight to eke out a few more weeks than his competitors when he rearranges the lyrics from his one hit with all the counting in it to become the catchiest 1-800-Flowers jingle ever.

Kardashian: Is that the drunk driver? Or the mother who looks like Liza? Or the one who has to sit behind the register of their drug-laundering-front accessories-store because Kim is the hotter one. We get them so confused!

Clay, Green: Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum. One has one ball, the other, none. NEXT.

Well—we guess that leaves the Rivers girls.

Joan FTW.

• Celebrity Apprentice On Steroids [TVGasm]
• NBC’s Sunday Audible: Supersize ‘Apprentice’ [TV Week]

Sharon Stone has worked with Samuel L. Jackson exactly once: on the 1998 flop Sphere. However, this was hardly her best qualification to make a speech to Jackson during 23rd annual American Cinematheque Awards, which honored the actor. No, Stone was almost certainly booked for the special brand of crazy she brings to such occasions, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, she did not disappoint:

One running theme of the evening was guessing what the "L" in "Samuel L. Jackson" stands for...In perhaps the most bizarre tribute, Stone strutted onstage and, with her hands on her hips, purred words such as "Luscious," "L'amour," "Ladies love Samuel L. Jackson" — and breathlessly told a story about seeing Jackson "nekkid" in a movie and then trying to talk to him at a premiere. She eventually got serious, talking about the moral compass he brings to his characters, and saying that the "L" stood for "Legend."

Sadly, a flashing light indicating that Stone should wrap it up meant that she never had a chance to use her runners-up in the initial derby, which included "Laser skin resurfacing," "Licentious cougar," and "Laotian Chinese who brought devastation upon themselves." Next time!

• Cinematheque honors Samuel L. Jackson [Yahoo]

Adventures in Obviousness. A helpful reminder from MSNBC for anyone who might have forgotten: "Movies no place to learn real history." Like Frost/Nixon? Their meeting never really happened! Spoiler alert! [MSNBC via MCN]

Kate Winslet's sex-positive, clothes-allergic career emerged from its most severe test to date in Revolutionary Road: It was there, the actress admits in a wrenching confession to ET, that her husband sternly insisted that he share her with Leonardo Di Caprio.

In fairness, her husband, Sam Mendes, was the director — a first for Winslet that seemed to bother her in ways that her Titanic leading man Di Caprio more readily shrugged off:

Did some of those intimate scenes get a little awkward? "Not a problem in this department," Leo says. "It was right for the characters."

"You know what? Yes, it was (awkward)," says a candid Kate. "I did feel weird about it — [but] you get over that quickly. You really have to." She adds that her husband "really treated me like the actress playing [the character]," and that during one of their more heated scenes, "Sam would sort of yell from the other room, 'No, Leo really grab her thigh! Really grab her thigh!' I thought, 'This is really strange, but I'm gonna go with it.'"

Kinky! Not to mention an improvement over those James Cameron days, when "grab her thigh" was simply something the Titanic taskmaster disgustedly spat at on-set paramedics every time the fragile Di Caprio cramped up while treading water for six hours on end.

• LEO & KATE ON AWKWARD LOVE SCENES [ET]

Presidential Theater: Earlier this week, world's laziest presidential candidate Fred Thompson awoke from his midday nap (11am to 5pm) to start plotting out his next move. "Get me that job back as that mentor guy with five lines on Law & Order," he drawled to his agent. "What? Sam Waterston is doing that now? Too young! What about SVU? Maybe I could romance Mariska Harg..." He then fell back asleep, conserving his energy as the agent patiently pre-cut Thompson's dinner steak while booking him his first role since the presidential campaign: NYPD's chief of detectives on Life on Mars. Haha, remember when everyone was scared of this dude? [EW]

Terrible lovebirds Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are capable of making no move without a cannery-level of fishiness (and paparazzi present, of course), and so it is with their Mexico wedding, which has since been revealed as the legally unbinding publicity stunt that, rather than being beneath the couple, represents the absolute apex of their combined powers. Still, Heidi's mother Darlene is not having it, and she's come out swinging in Us with some wild allegations about Spencer's Svengali-like hold on her daughter. But is it all part of the plan? Let's find out:

"He's manipulative and seems to have power over Heidi," Darlene Egelhoff, 46, told Us in an exclusive interview from her home in Crested Butte, Colorado the day after Montag, 22, blew off Thanksgiving with her family to stay with Pratt in Cabo San Lucas., the site of her Nov. 20 elopement. "I would like to see a blood test from Mexico. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had her drugged."

"Spencer has tried to cut everyone out of her life," Egelhoff tells Us. "I've been honest with Heidi, and it's caused our relationship to decline. I'm more devastated about that than the marriage, because I'm confident the marriage won't work out." [...]

So how long does she give their marriage?

"Six months," she says.

Harsh words from someone who's been a regular fixture in their staged paparazzi shoots, as seen above! Had Spencer slipped drugs into Egelhoff's mocha latte to earn her former compliance, or is she simply now playing along with the staged villainy that adds fuel to the duo's stalled Hills storyline? How long before Egelhoff packes her bags and moves from Crested Butte into Lauren Conrad's apartment, ready to provide her with a sympathetic shoulder pad to cry on (while making secret advances to Brody behind her back)?

• Heidi Montag's Mom: I Give Her Marriage Six Months [Us]

At a Cedars-Sinai benefit last night at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, the animated woodland creatures that typically accompany David Archuleta wherever he goes were shooed away by idol-feeding succubus Priscilla Presley, who quickly drained the rosy tint from his cheeks. Hours later, he arose from a shallow dirt grave to take on his new, immortal form—as ELVISULA, Hip-Gyrating Prince of Darkness. [NY Post]

Silver Mine: Buoyed by the sterling performance of Speed Racer and other films from its multi-faceted partnership with Joel Silver, officials at Studio Babelsburg have announced a deal to co-produce a slate of Silver's upcoming projects released through Warner Bros. The pact sets up another five years of subsidized shoots at the German studio, complementing their co-financing deal for Silver's genre output from his Dark Castle shingle and assuring the producer a clean, spacious cubicle from which to work when Warners throws him off the lot at the end of 2009. [THR]