W magazine’s cover-story interview with Katie Holmes was apparently conducted before Tom popped the question at the Eiffel Tower, but it still features the future Bride of Cruise in a photo spread that includes a shot of her modeling a Comme des Garçons wedding gown. The interview itself takes a skeptical tone toward Holmes’ echoes of her couch-hopping fiancé’s gushing declarations of love, noting that Holmes’ new best friend, Church of Scientology employee Jessica Rodriguez, occasionally feeds her a line. (”You adore him,” she tells Holmes to say.) Alas, no photo of the moment in the interview where she one-ups her man by leaping on a chair, then jumps back to the floor and does a split — no, seriously, we’re not making that up. A move like that could have been worth an extra $30 million to Batman Begins‘ box office.

Anyone expecting a repeat ofFriday’s fireworks in the second half of Matt Lauer’s Tom Cruise interviewwould have been disappointed by the anticlimactic chat that Today aired thismorning. The nerve of that guy, giving a normal interview where all he did wastalk about his movie and include a brief reference to his upcoming nuptials.Doesn’t he know he was supposed to continue his public meltdown?

After the Cruise chat, Katie Couric interviewed two shrinksregarding whether or not the actor had a point last week in his slam ofantidepressants. Surprisingly, one doc agreed with him that the jury is stillout on whether such drugs really correct chemical imbalances in the brain,while the other conceded that antidepressants may be overprescribed. Thesegment was followed immediately by an commercial for War of the Worlds. Did Paramountknow that Monday’s Cruise coverage would be much friendlier than Friday’s? Ordid the studio simply not care, believing that any coverage was good as long aseveryone kept mentioning Tom Cruise’s name?

What do you think? Did Today pull its punches? Does Cruisehave a point? Does any mention of Cruise only encourage viewers to see War ofthe Worlds?

About 120 print, TV, and online journalists from around the world gathered in the ballroom of New York’s Essex House hotel for a pair of ”War of the Worlds” press conferences, first from Tim Robbins, and then from Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, who fielded questions together.

Robbins, who has a small but pivotal role, got started about 25 minutes late, thanks apparently to some technical and sound glitches. ”We can make tripods come out of the air but we can’t get the sound right,” joked Robbins, looking fitter and trimmer than the doughy proles he’s played in his last couple movies. He answered all questions affably, even those that were fatuous (asked what a more famously friendly Spielberg alien would think of the film, Robbins said, ”E.T. would be pissed”) or that baited him about his career (”I don’t think much about Howard the Duck,” he said when reminded of that early low point in his filmography) or his politics (One moral of the film, the outspokenly anti-Iraq War actor said, was that ”you can conquer but you can never really inhabit”). Asked if he thought there was intelligent life on other planets, he replied, ”I’m not sure intelligent life exists here.” He ended his remarks with what he called ”a shameless plug” for Embedded Live, a filmed performance of his satirical play about the Iraq War, which he said is out now on DVD.

Then came the World’s Biggest Movie Star and the World’s Biggest Movie Director, who together seemed to form the world’s biggest mutual admiration society. They said they had never disagreed about anything over the course of making two sci-fi epics together. Both also downplayed the potential box office threat from Fantastic Four, saying they were both looking forward to seeing the superhero adventure with their own families.

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Don’t say PopWatch never does anything for you. If you happened to miss Tom Cruise’s, um, energetic performance on Oprah last month, you can catch the repeat on Thursday, June 22. (Check your local listings for the correct time.) If you’ve already watched it on Tivo 137 times, check out this insane re-edit of what happened what The Cruise met The O (special guest star Tyra Banks).

Now that the Catholic-until-recently actress is taking classes in her boyfriend’s faith, I have a few nagging questions:

How long before she signs on to costar opposite John Travolta in Battlefield Earth 2?

Will she play Kirstie Alley’s bubbly niece on the next season of Fat Actress?

Will she be required to denounce prescription-drug user Brooke Shields?

Will she get to duet with Beck or will she have to settle for Lisa Marie Presley?

Should TomKat split up, will she be allowed to seek solace in therapy?