Angelina Jolie has defeated Jessica Simpson in the first round of HDTV ‘Hottie Hysteria’ — TVPredictions.com’s elimination tournament to determine who’s the hottest female in High-Definition TV.

TVPredictions.com is posting a daily reader poll pitting one celebrity babe against another. Readers are being asked to vote on which female looks best in high-def. Then, based on their votes, each winner will move to the next round until only one woman is left standing.

In the Jolie-Simpson contest, Angelina, the star of the Lara Croft films, captured 56 percent of the vote to Jessica’s 44 percent. (2,173 readers voted in the poll.)

Jolie, the top seed in the Plasma division of Hottie Hysteria, will now face the winner of the Vanessa Williams-Jennifer Love Hewitt contest in the Plasma Division finals.

To vote in today’s match-up, click Hottie Hysteria.

here are bands that play the South By Southwest Music Conference - skinny, unwashed four-pieces who soullessly schlep gear from showcase to showcase - and then there are bands that play South By Southwest, starry-eyed dreamers who attack any stage with reckless abandon in hope of landing that big record deal that will make them unspeakably rich. Paramore is not one of those bands. Neither are N.E.R.D. or Britney Spears (she’s not even a band, but we digress), although on one glorious night in Austin, two-thirds of them sort of were.

Confused? Welcome to Friday at South By Southwest, a day that featured a pair of big-name headliners, one-supersized rumor and a whole lot of not making sense. (Don’t worry, we’re here to sort everything out.)

First and foremost, pop-punk heroes Paramore, who sat down with MTV News earlier in the day to let fans know they’re not breaking up, headlined one of the most un-SXSW events of the entire week: a multi-band pileup for the MySpace generation, sponsored by spooky-ooky retailer Hot Topic, packed with local kids who wouldn’t know a SXSW badge from a dial-up Internet connection.

Held on the outskirts of town at hangar-esque rock club La Zona Rosa, this was to be the group’s first performance since they canceled a string of European dates to work out some rather pesky (and nefarious sounding) “internal issues,” and clearly, the band were treating it as a rather huge coming-out party.

“I know there’s been a lot of craziness going on, and you’ve probably all heard about it,” frontwoman/firecracker Hayley Williams told the crowd, pausing to allow appropriate time for the squeals to pass. “We all just wanted you to know that music is the one thing we love, and no matter what you’ve heard, we won’t stop doing it.”

And then they got down to doing just that, ripping through a set full of their hits (”Misery Business,” “Crushcrushcrush”) and older (at least for them) songs, like “Woah” and “Emergency,” from their 2005 debut, All We Know Is Falling. Through it all, Williams - who, according to label reps, has been battling vocal strain for awhile now - belted out as best as she could, and when her voice faltered, she simply thrust the microphone into the crowd, who were more than willing to do the work for her. Guitarist Josh Farro and bassist Jeremy Davis flanked her, busting out chords and pulling out some truly Trohman/Wentz-worthy onstage acrobatics. Oh, and drummer Zac Farro totally barfed up some Mexican food he had eaten for dinner.

Truly, Paramore were giving it their all - and then some more. And at the end of the set, the band joined hands and bowed in unison as their fans held up a countless array of hand-held devices. Paramore left the stage amid a blizzard of cell-phone camera flashes, and their message was clear: We’re a band, we’re united, we’re not going anywhere. It was the kind of context you rarely get from a SXSW show, and though Paramore aren’t your typical SXSW band (they’ve sold more records than 14 Vampire Weekends, 100 Times New Vikings and 2,000 Lightspeed Champions combined) - it’s something we could get used to seeing more often ’round these parts.

Meanwhile, as Paramore were exiting the stage, something potentially huge was bubbling up across town: namely, rumors that Britney Spears would be making an SXSW appearance, performing with Pharrell Williams and N.E.R.D. during their late-night set at Stubb’s. It seemed improbable, but hey, stranger things have happened (though not many) and within hours, it had been texted from handheld to handheld with such veracity that it had seemingly become fact.

Of course, it never happened (Britney at SXSW? Come on!) and, to be quite honest, Pharrell didn’t need her anyway. The line to get into Stubb’s stretched for miles up Red River Street, and when Skateboard P and his N.E.R.D. cohorts finally took the stage, all the struggle was worth it. With a pair of funky drummers, a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and sampler, N.E.R.D. played a rock-star set that mixed nearly punk thrash with funk keyboards, outer space effects, acid-rock guitar and hip-hop swagger.

Williams commanded the stage, bounding back and forth during hard funk jams on “Brain” and “Rock Star,” which found the stage filled with nearly two dozen posse members, waving red flags, parading their Mohawks and snapping photos of the thousands of fans in the crowd bouncing up and down in unison. Williams has clearly spent time in a mosh pit - as evidenced by his scissor-kicking, arm-swinging dance moves - but as loose as he got at the start of “Lapdance,” the man is a meticulous professional and when the instrumentation got a bit sloppy, he made the band start over.

By the time the set ended with a punk-funk take on “She Wants to Move” (which slipped into Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” for a few bars), Williams had proven to the crowd that while his genius might be in the studio, his heart is on the stage, where he breathes new life into his creations. And you thought Britney had a Jeckyl and Hyde complex …

The final epilogue to the tumultuous writers strike has been written, but Hollywood is bracing for a possible sequel to the costly walkout — this one starring film and television actors.While the TV industry has rushed to bring derailed shows back on the air since screenwriters returned to work three weeks ago, the threat of renewed labor unrest by actors in the months ahead has put movie studios in a tenuous situation.

Filmmakers are reluctant to launch any production that cannot be completed before the expiration of the Screen Actors Guild’s major film and TV contract on June 30 — a date being treated as the union’s de facto strike deadline.

Assuming a typical 60-day movie shoot, plus extra time for days off, possible overruns and re-shoots that might be necessary, that means few if any big-studio movies will start filming after the end of this month, industry experts say.

“The studios for the most part are not greenlighting any movies that would have to be in production after that (June 30) deadline,” said an insider at one leading talent agency who was not authorized to speak publicly about client issues.

Labor jitters have even prompted Hollywood’s leading insurance carrier, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co, to offer a first-of-its-kind “strike expense” policy for studios.

The policy covers the costs of a strike-related production shutdown in the event that an actor’s illness, equipment damage or other unexpected loss pushes the shooting schedule of a movie past SAG’s June 30 contract deadline.

To qualify, a film must be scheduled to finish shooting by June 15 and already be covered by a so-called completion bond, which insures a movie’s financial backers against the cost of failing to finish a picture on time and on budget

February 29, 2008 — The “other man” who helped destroy a marriage on national TV - getting his ex to admit to 8 million viewers that she’d rather be married to him than her hubby - is “sick” over his role in the scandal and says he made a mistake appearing on the show.

“I really just want all of this to be over,” Frank Nardi Jr. wrote in an e-mail to The Post yesterday about his stomach-churning appearance on the lie-detector reality show “Moment of Truth” Monday.

The fledgling New York actor, who goes by the online nickname “Nardiballs,” also wrote on his MySpace.com page yesterday: “This whole experience was a mistake . . . I haven’t been this sick ever in my life.

“It wasn’t my intention to go out and ruin a marriage.”

But that’s what happened when Nardi, 25, turned up as a surprise guest on the controversial Fox show where his one-time gal pal, Lauren Cleri, 26, made viewers squirm after admitting she’d cheated on her husband.

She then dropped a stunner, confessing she wishes she’d married Nardi instead of her hubby of two years, NYPD rookie cop Frank Cleri, 24.

“I thought it was gonna be fun when the producers from the show invited me out to LA,” Nardi wrote on his blog.

“Quite the contrary . . . It was supposed to be a surprise, a good surprise, but unfortunately it backfired right in my face.”

“As we all know the show was nuts,” added Nardi, who has been labeled on several TV message boards as a homewrecker.

I’m sorry I ever did it.”

Before his small-screen debut, Nardi - who has appeared in the Philadelphia production of the off-Broadway hit “Tony & Tina’s Wedding” and attends acting classes at Manhattan’s William Esper Studio - touted his prime-time appearance to his online friends, and urged them to watch the show.

Lauren Cleri, a New York salon worker and aspiring actress, and Nardi were classmates at New Jersey’s Pennsauken HS, where he was president of the drama club.

They dated before she wed Cleri in 2006.

As the cameras rolled and a visibly shaken Frank Cleri cringed, Nardi boldly asked Lauren: “Do you believe I am the man you should be married to?”

She answered “yes” - and racked up $100,000 when the lie-detector results said she was telling the truth, but wound up with nothing when the machine rejected her answer that she was a good person.

Alessandra Facchinetti debuted in what is arguably the toughest job in fashion on Thursday presenting her first collection for Valentino since the maestro couturier retired in January after 45 years.

And, perhaps wisely, the 35-year-old former Gucci designer did not stray far from the path that made Valentino the red-carpet favorite for generations of glamorous women from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis to Julia Roberts.

Ruffles, bows and lipstick red dresses — the signature touches Valentino made his own over decades — all made their appearance, together with modern twists of volume skirts and sleek black suiting.

Held on an all-white runway at the Palais de Chaillot near the Eiffel Tower, Facchinetti also stayed true to Valentino’s legendary love of spectacle, although overall opted for a more muted palette of blacks, navy and beige.

Actress Winona Ryder, a front row guest, said the show was “beautiful”. Notably also on the front row, Giancarlo Giammetti, Valentino Garavani’s long-time business partner, gave his blessing, and noted its “elegance, quality and lightness”.

Succeeding Valentino is a daunting task because of the designer’s iconic status and because the appointment is seen as a test during a period when many fashion houses are burning through designers in only a clutch of seasons.

“I hope it went well. Let’s see tomorrow,” Facchinetti said backstage after the show, surrounded by television cameras.

“The DNA of the house will never change, only the point of view will change and that will allow us to do new things,” she added.