Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity has a paper trail now that leads it right back to the Kabbalah Center cult in Los Angeles.

Kabbalah Centre is the “religion” that charges on its website $26 for a spiritual red string to be worn on the wrist, and $500 for a “special package” of materials to get started in the sect. Madonna actually wore the red string on Jerry Seinfeld’s “The Marriage Ref” last night. (More on that above.)

I’ve said since Raising Malawi first reared its ugly head that it was merely a front for Philip Berg’s Kabbalah Centre. Berg’s son Michael started it, drafted in Madonna, who then went to Malawi and adopted, with much controversy, two children. Malawi does seem like an odd place to bring Kabbalah since the country is very poor. But it’s also a great way to train thousands of new disciples who can go out in the world and sell more red strings.

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Pink Floyd has won what could be a landmark case today in the British courts. EMI can no longer sell its individual tracks piecemeal to iTunes and other downloading services. Floyd’s lawyers argued that the group’s contracts with EMI meant that albums like “Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Wall” were meant to be listened to and sold in their entirety.

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Conan O’Brien’s live tour has been announced officially. I told you about it on March 5.

The tour starts on April 12 — I was asked to say “mid-April” because the dates weren’t all booked — and in Eugene, Ore., of all places. (This column said it would be in Seattle or San Diego. At least we were on the right coast!)

Conan’s tour will be a hot, hot ticket. And the funniest thing about it will be charting the travel arrangements of all the guests who come and go. Some cities, like Eugene, are going to be quite busy rolling out the red carpets. That could be the most hilarious part of the tour!

This is a pretty good week for Sir Elton John.

On Monday night, former “American Idol” producer Nigel Lythgoe told me — when I ran into him at the new Beverly Hills Soho House — that he still thinks Sir Elton is the best choice to replace Simon Cowell. “He’s absolutely it,” said Lythgoe, who also said he thinks Ellen DeGeneres is still warming up and has yet to show her full potential. And he misses Paula Abdul. “She was the glue that held it together, wasn’t she?” he said wistfully.

On Sunday night Sir Elton hosted his annual Oscar dinner and party at the Pacific Design Center. Tons of A listers filled up the tents to hear Grace Jones and rub elbows with stars like Betty White, Jamie Foxx, Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Hudson, Salma Hayek, Will.i.am, Josh Groban, Malin Akerman, Slash, John Waters, the Osbournes, Hayden Panettiere, Victoria Beckham, Heidi Klum, Alan Cumming, Serena Williams, Nick Jonas, Kara DioGuardi, Simon Cowell — who was driven around in a $540,000 Rolls Royce Phantom — Miley Cyrus, and even, as an oddity, Perez Hilton! Grace Jones was wild, outrageous, as good as ever. The party planners created an all red nightclub for her within Elton’s tents. It was quite a treat.

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20th Century Fox has suddenly sent Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps” to a Sept. 24 opening instead of its planned April 23th release.

There are two reasons for this: one is that they’ve submitted the film to the Cannes Film Festival and are awaiting word. It’s more than likely that Cannes will take it, especially with Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Josh Brolin, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, and Charlie Sheen in the Oliver Stone cast. What a group for the red carpet !

Second, Fox feels that Sept. 24th is a better bet for Oscar nominations. This may be true, but as long as I’ve been writing about Hollywood, September has been a toss off month. Last year these were the movies released during that week: “Capitalism A Love Story,” “Rage,” “Fame 2009,” “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” “The Boys Are Back,” “Coco Before Chanel,” and “Paranormal Activity.” Only the latter had a pulse, but it was a genre film. No Oscar touted film is released in September. Period.

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All the awards and nominations bestowed on Lee Daniels‘ movie, “Precious,” should shame the already shameful National Board of Review.

The NBR, a fan-based, fee-paying group, snubbed “Precious” this year. It was not named as the one of the group’s Best Films of the year. The only citation it received was a throwaway nod to Gabby Sidibe as Breakthrough Performer. The NBR was pretty much the only group in the world that didn’t give its Best Supporting Actress award to Mo’Nique.

The real and utter embarrassment for the NBR though comes with the Oscar awarded to Geoffrey Fletcher, who adapted Sapphire’s novel “Push.” Fletcher won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was ignored by the NBR after resigning from the group last year. His reasoning? He thought it would be a conflict of interest if he stayed. Of course, Fletcher was a fee paying member. Maybe the NBR didn’t like losing his $600 a year.

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Former  —  and disgraced — Congressman Tom DeLay thinks the unemployed should just buck up and take it.

“You know,” Delay said on CNN recently, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.”

Ok, so no one likes him. Now George Hickenlooper’s new film, “Casino Jack,” won’t do much to improve this idiot’s status. DeLay, you see, enabled former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to loot and pillage Washington while George Bush was president. Abramoff is now in jail.

Kevin Spacey seems like he was born to play Abramoff, a so-called devout Jew with a non-Jewish wife and very blonde little girls. “Casino Jack” isn’t necessarily good for the Jews but it’s not good for anyone else either, like the Christian right.

That Spacey plays disingenuous and creepy well is no surprise, but the film does have its surprises nonetheless. Barry Pepper is a revelation as Abramoff’s main associate. Jon Lovitz is pond scum personified as a mattress dealer-slash-thug and con man who allowed himself to be a front for Abramoff’s stealing.

I saw “Casino Jack” last week in Hollywood. It reminded me of “GoodFellas.” Not so good people discover evil, sell out, and lose everything. It’s quite a story. And the really funny part is that Abramoff is only serving six years. When he gets out, he’ll be rich. And he plans to move to Hollywood and become a film producer. Why the hell not?

Now Hickenlooper will take his film to festivals and find a distributor to release “Casino Jack” in the fall. There will be Oscar nominations for Spacey and Pepper, certainly. And a lot of screaming from Oliver Stone, as “Casino Jack” is really a contemporary version of “Wall Street.”

As for Tom DeLay: this is a contestant from a dance show on TV. Let’s just ignore him.

Ronald McDonald kills the Michelin Man in a short film that won an Oscar on Sunday night for Best Animated Short film.

“Logorama” played at Sundance, but it unlikely to be seen in many theaters. It possibly runs afoul of at least a thousand trademark violations by lampooning logos of well known companies from McDonalds to Michelin to Starbucks, Apple, Nickelodeon, and so on.

The film, made by Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain,won Best Short at the Stockholm Festival and the Kodak award at Cannes. But no one in America saw it until its Sundance screening and a few museum showings. Sacre bleu!

“Logorama” is a satire about branding, I guess. It’s animated, and propels Ronald and the Michelin Man, as well the kids from Haribo Candy, and the mustachoied Pringles man (voiced by director David Fincher of all people) and many other well known brand characters into a bizarre story that is literally chock full of logos and a little violence. You might think it’s a product plug, but this is the antithesis of that. You have to give the animators credit: they’ve found just about every logo they could think of, even Atlantic Records. Dunkin Donuts is in there, as well as Avis, MGM and Best Western. You can get a taste of it at http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/15/logorama-animated-ci.html.

“Logorama” is incredibly inventive. It reminded me of old cartoons from the 1950s that took regular swipes at topical subjects. Maybe the companies involved will have a sense of humor and let it go. The Oscar should help. We can only hope.

Now that “The Cove” has won Best Documentary, the world is an oyster for director Louie Psihoyos.

I am told that Psihoyos and his team are in deep discussions with Quentin Tarantino’s long time producer, Lawrence Bender, to make their next film.

The new film is even deeper than “The Cove.” It’s about the extinction of species, and what we can do to stop it before it happens.

Currently there are hundreds of thousands of species that are vanishing all over the world, from small to huge. Psihoyos’s new project would follow the list of extinct-prone animals and organisms, and the battles to save them.

According to one report, nearly 17,000 different plant and animal species are currently in danger of extinction, along with the record business and investigative journalism. But Psihoyos will just address himself to the former.

Oddly enough, I’ve also heard that the latter — investigative journalism and its gradual demise — may be the subject of another doc by a nominated filmmaker, Robert Kenner (”Food Inc.”).

Two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda finally met Kate Bosworth last night. And she proclaimed, “I want her to do the ‘Barbarella’ sequel!”

And that’s what Vanity Fair’s big Oscar party is always like: It’s like the whole industry is stuffed into one place. People meet and make deals or have romances.

Jane’s beau, famed record producer Richard Perry, fell into conversation with Jennifer Lopez.  Her whole recording career could be changed if Perry produces some tracks for her.

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