Katie Holmes’ dwarfish control freak of a spouse is giving her a little more space these days, which suggests he must be truly desperate to salvage this marriage. Right now Katie is in Australia working on a remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. It wasn’t a very good movie the first time around, but the set is 12,000 miles away from Tom and nobody was shooting in Antarctica, so Katie probably figured it would have to do. At any rate, this weekend a car that Katie had been shooting some scenes in suffered some minor damage from an exploding battery. No one was injured and Katie wasn’t even in the car at the time, which makes this item a contender for Most Pointless News Story of 2009. The only reason it rates a mention is the admirably deadpan description of the movie at Radar Online:

In the Miramax film (a remake of a 1973 ABC Made-for-TV movie), the wife of Tom Cruise plays a woman stalked by evil gnomes.

Kudos to Radar for recognizing why Katie was uniquely qualified to play this role. However, I don’t think they’ll be getting any thank-you notes from Tom Cruise.