Loose Lips

Amy Winehouse
is allegedly addicted to a new substance that makes your teeth fall out. No, it's not meth! It's candy. "The troubled singer has bought a pink candy floss maker, a £1,000 Slush Puppy machine and an old-fashioned sweet counter with jars of boiled sweets to decorate her Camden home," the
Daily Mail reports. • Thank Jebus that Abigail Breslin still sounds like a
normal, sweet girl. She says her acting idol is Meryl Streep, her favorite movie is the
Devil Wears Prada, working with Cameron Diaz was "really nice" and her biggest influences are "My brothers, my parents, my whole family." • An ex-Scientologist in Florida is
suing Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology for $265 million. According to
Fishbowl LA Peter Letterese "claimed that Cruise and Scientology bribed and improperly influenced a federal judge, a Florida state judge and a federal bankruptcy trustee to tie up his original law suit [also against the religion] in bankruptcy court."
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Tweenage Wasteland
It's hard out there for a living, breathing American girl. It's a
morass of mixed messages, A.O. Scott points out in a
Times think piece about
Kit Kittredge, the Abigail Breslin-helmed American Girl doll-based movie coming out this week. "Who are you supposed to be, or to avoid becoming? A nerd? A ditz? A flirt? A tomboy?" Scott wonders. "What kind of role models are those make-believe princesses, those Bratz and Barbies, to say nothing of the real-life Britneys, Lindsays and Mileys? Mean Girls, Gossip Girls, Girls Gone Wild, Girl Power, You go, girl! What's a girl to do?" And considering the pervasive skankiness of Bratz and their ilk, the American Girls franchise seems like a bastion of true childhood in an increasingly sexualized marketplace. But, as Scott painstakingly notes, it's still part of the marketplace. Jeannette Catsoulis, reviewing
Kit for the
IHT perfectly summarizes the intrinsic hypocrisy in this Depression-era film. "When you consider that a Kit doll, complete with book and accessories, will currently run you $105, the movie's insistence on the nobility of the indigent might be a tad more difficult to stomach."
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the good, the bad & the ugly
Saturday night brought one of the events that, in my youth, I anticipated as anxiously as the winter holidays: The Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. Lots of celebs! Lots of slime! Jack Black hosted the frenetically-paced activities and lots of celebrities brought the pretty. See: America Ferrera, left. Does she
ever look bad? I also like how she played the pretty dress all casual with the wooden wedges, but that's neither here nor there. Also in attendance: Abigail Breslin, Cameron Diaz, Jordin Sparks, Jodie Foster, Amy Poehler, Ashlee Simpson, Hayden Panettiere, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus, who is looking less like a tween of late and more and more like a 50-something who's spent too much time in the tanning booth. Miley, and the other Good, Bad and Ugly, after the jump.
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the good, the bad & the ugly
ShoWest is the trade show for the movie theatre industry. And because movie stars can't be movie stars unless they star in movies that get played in movie theatres, well, they need to show the ShoWest distributors a little love. In attendance at the trade show's awards ceremony last night? A series of big and small screen celebrities, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, Anne Hathaway, Kate Bosworth, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Christina Ricci, America Ferrera and Alexis Bledel (left). After the jump, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the ShoWest Awards.
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dirt bag
- Will Heath Ledger earn an Academy Award for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight? That's the buzz coming out of his native Australia. [News.com.au]
- Pete Doherty setting young heroin addicts straight on a new TV show? With music-based therapy sessions? Verdict: Maybeshambles. [Sydney Morning Herald]
- Amy Winehouse took a cab home but couldn't pay for it. Anybody got a tenner? [TMZ]
- George Clooney is putting pressure on Olympic supplier Omega watches to make a stand against China's lax Darfur policy. This gossip column calls it the Sexiest Scolding Alive. [Rush & Molloy]
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