• More on this is Midweek Madness, but Star is reporting that Justin Timberlake and Rihanna are "on." Here's the deal:

They've been talking and texting "nonstop" since the VMAs; but Rihanna doesn't want to be "his lady on the side." A source says: "She asked him on the phone, ‘Are you still with Jessica?' And he hinted that things were cooling off between them." [Star]

• If you were at the Bourgeois Pig on East Seventh Street the other night, you would have seen Madonna eating with Jessica Seinfeld and Jesus Luz… Then Anderson Cooper "rolled up on his bicycle and joined them." [Page Six]
• Rose McGowan has broken off her engagement to Robert Rodriguez. Does this mean no Red Sonja? But what about the awesome poster?!?! [Radar Online]
• Uh-oh! Bomb scare on the set of The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen! [TMZ]
• Hospitalized twice in two days? Get well soon, Tori Spelling. [Page Six, People]
• Chris Brown says he's trying to make as much music as possible — while doing community service at the same time. Multitasky. [TMZ]
• "How to fix Jon and Kate? Lose the Eight… Kate Gosselin is and has always been the show's central character. How she mothers, how she bosses her husband around, how she cuts her hair and tucks her tummy - that's what the show is really about." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Lamar Odom says his wedding to Khloe Kardashian was not fake: "It's crazy how perception works in America when you're looking at things from the outside… Anybody that was there will tell you that it was a beautiful event and it was real." [People]
• Some hairstylist claimed he did Khloe Kardashian's hair for her wedding — at a cost of $4500 — but KK didn't actually use him and actually never heard of him. [TMZ, NY Post]
• Michael Jackson's estate is suing the "Heal The World Foundation," which claims it is linked to MJ, but had no connection to the pop star and, in fact, "became dormant before he died." [CBS News]
• Rihanna is being sued by a neighbor who claims she had been allowing cars to drive on his lawn to get to her driveway; she denies causing any damage. [TMZ]
• Daniel Radcliffe: Taking driving lessons. [Telegraph]
• Jessica Alba is in talks to join the cast of Little Fockers, along side Ben Stiller and Bobby De Niro. According to this story, she'll play an "attractive" pharmaceutical rep "whose looks wreak havoc on male characters." In other words: They don't need her to act. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Uma Thurman will star in Ceremony, a flick directed by Max Winkler — Henry's son. Uma will play an older woman who is about to get married when a young man falls for her; the young man will be played by Michael Angarano, aka Kristen Stewart's (ex?) boyfriend. [Variety]
• One of the defendants in the John Travolta case claimed to have document suggesting Travolta wanted his son dead; it was actually just a form that released medical professionals in the Bahamas from liability if Travolta decided to fly his son to a hospital in Florida. [TMZ]
• "An ambulance driver believed he had John Travolta over a barrel and wanted big bucks to keep embarrassing medical records secret, a witness testified yesterday." [NY Post]
• Randy and Evi Quaid's home in Marfa, Texas now has a cease and desist sign out front, because the Quaids has started remodeling job without permits. [Radar Online]
• Remember Edward Furlong? Terminator, American History X? His estranged wife just filed a restraining order against him, claiming he threatened to hire people to beat her with chains and bats. And! She claims he "is smoking cocaine and doing other various drugs. He is very unpredictable." [TMZ]
• This columnist gives Joy Behar's new show three and a half stars and writes: "if there's one thing wrong with Joy's great new show it's her old-lady Aunt Carmela hairdo. Please Joy, call me — I'll pay for you to go to my hairdressers." [NY Post]
• The Tate Modern museum in London has decided to display a naked photograph of 10-year-old Brooke Shields; critics want it withdrawn from the exhibition, called "Pop Life: Art In A Material World." [Daily Mail]
• A Steady Rain stars Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman reportedly attracted the highest weekly gross for a nonmusical production on Broadway. But as far as I know, neither of them take their shirts off! Weird. [NY Post]
• Bono may be a superstar, but he knows how to wait patiently for a table in a crowded restaurant. [Page Six]
• Lady Gaga sang over the phone at a fundraiser and helped earn over $10 million for charities. [Page Six]
• "Sean 'Diddy' Combs has signed with Universal Music Group's Interscope Geffen A&M label in a deal which includes his future albums and creates a new joint venture with Combs' Bad Boy label." [Reuters]
• Interesting: Melissa Gilbert is playing "Ma" in Little House On The Prairie: The Musical. [USA Today]
• Jennifer Hudson says her newborn baby boy is "the cutest thing in the world" and he "seems like he's very interested in music already." [People]
• "Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's one-legged ex-wife, will appear on the British TV show Dancing on Ice, according to the London Sun." [NY Post]
• Roger Avary, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction, has been sentenced to a year in jail for drunk driving and causing a fatal traffic crash in Southern California. [Breitbart]
• "A former teaching assistant who was employed by Wynonna Judd to home-school her two kids has been charged in Tennessee with distribution of child pornography." [E!]
• "Pink Floyd star leaves £24m to his children - but nothing to his three wives." [Daily Mail]
• "I had to think: 'What can I do with it? How can I make this fun?' I wanted him to be happy-go-lucky about the whole thing and not a conflicted, angry killer. More of the Hannibal Lecter school of killer: the killer you want at a party. I wasn't trying to banish Seth Cohen. I'm still me. He looks different and is morally corrupt. But I don't see it as a big departure." — Adam Brody, on his character in Jennifer's Body. [USA Today]
• "I went to Oregon to study permaculture and lived in an eco-village for a month outside Eugene. It's called Lost Valley. It was amazing and exactly what I needed, because there had been the Juno thing, where you're getting a lot of attention. You're learning how to live in a holistic way with the cycles of the Earth. At one point I was digging goat (manure) and putting it into a wheelbarrow, and while shoveling it, I just went, 'Oh, my God, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now.' "— Ellen Page on her life after Juno and before Whip It!. [USA Today]
• "I'm not a fancy person. I love small spaces. I like tiny cars. I don't buy things, aside from music and books." — Ellen Page. [USA Today]
• "She's really sexy. I did my wardrobe fittings with her where we would just take our clothes off and look at our own bodies. We both have insecurities or flaws, but we were both like, 'How do we get over this? How do we be the sexiest we can be in this movie?' We pushed each other. We challenged each other. We developed a love affair that was based on truth rather than niceties." — Drew Barrymore on Ellen Page. [USA Today]
• "It took me all my effort to watch The Wire. And I only watched it because I was directing an episode in the last season. Then I watched the whole lot in a very short time and suddenly realized what a great thing I was in." —Dominic West. More from him at the link. [Telegraph]
• "I want to apologize to everybody. I had no idea what it would turn into." — Kristin Cavallari, on introducing Spencer and Heidi to each other. [Hollywood Crush]
• "She is not a nice person… Madonna laid the law down to me before we went out. [She said] I am not going to Disneyland, OK? That's out. I said, 'I didn't ask to go to Disneyland.' She said, 'We are going to the restaurant. And afterwards, we are going to a strip bar. I said, 'I am not going to a strip bar, where they cross dress. ... I am not going to there. If that's how it is, forget this whole thing. ... Afterwards, she wrote some mean things about me in the press. And I wrote that she is a nasty witch, after I was so kind to her." — Michael Jackson, in that new book by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. [CNN]

6. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried's Kiss Isn't That Exploitative

By the time I saw a screening of Jennifer's Body last week, the "lesbian kiss" clip was already partially online, and seemed just as eye-rollingly marketing department-mandated as one would expect. But it actually fits nicely into the plot — in the full scene, Needy (Amanda Seyfried) is suspicious of Jennifer (Megan Fox), and Jennifer is trying to win her back the only way she knows how — with her overpowering sexuality. Besides, it's played for laughs when Needy suddenly realizes they're kissing and pushes Jennifer away and is all like "Wait, what?" about it.

5. The Diablo Cody-isms Aren't As Distracting As They Were In Juno

Jennifer's Body probably could have done without "Moveon, Dot Org!", but generally, the weird Diablo Cody alien teenspeak is limited to one character — Jennifer — which makes it seem like it's her tic, not the entire movie's. And when I'm watching a horror movie, I like knowing there's always another pop culture allusion just around the corner. This movie isn't trying to be Citizen Kane. I might even start calling my best friends Monistat and Vagisil...well...or not. But teenagers do tend to have their own language, and if it was okay in Heathers, it's okay here.

4. Adam Brody's Dead-On Brandon Flowers Impression

Adam plays the eyelinered lead singer of the indie band Low Shoulder, whose single "Through The Trees" goes platinum after it becomes the official song of the Devil's Kettle Tragedy. Though Adam claims in interviews that he based his character on several famous lead singers, come on, it's Brandon Flowers from The Killers all the way. He even grows a Flowers-esque mustache after he gets famous. It adds another layer to think of his ruthless evil famewhore character being based on Flowers the goodie two-shoes Mormon.

3. J.K. Simmons As the Wig-Wearing Science Teacher With A Hook For A Hand

Because J.K. Simmons is always funny, and because the hook is never explained or even mentioned.

2. Megan Fox....Can...Actually...Like...Act?

Bad news for Megan Fox's legions of haters: she may have dumb tattoos, say silly things in interviews, and possess exactly one mouth-agape red-carpet facial expression, but in this movie at least, Megan Fox's ability to play the full range of her ditzy-yet-utterly-enthralling high school alpha-female character is undeniable. (Amanda Seyfriend is also terrific, but we already knew that.) You just can't stop watching Megan, and after this mesmerizing performance, her sudden massive fame seems a little bit more understandable. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone. It's just true. Bitch can act, and we need to accept it and move on (dot org).

1. It's An Empowerment Movie For Former Wallflower Sidekicks Everywhere

Most of us have, at some point in our lives, found ourselves playing sidekick to an underminer-y, narcissistic, "best friend." (This is based on anecdotal, not scientific, research, but it's totally true.) We tend to grow out of it by our late '20s unless we're characters on Sex and the City, but if the low-self-in-relation-to-Miss-Superstar-esteem memories still linger, Jennifer's Body is THE movie to see to permanently exorcise your inner nerdy sidekick forever. It's a horror movie about toxic friendships! Why didn't anyone think of that before? The last two scenes of Jennifer's Body will make any former wallflower feel like a badass, giving us more than we ever expected from a cheap horror movie: an hour and a half of therapy. See it with a friend you (actually, really) love!

[New York, August 3. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Los Angeles, March 26. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

• Radio talk show host to presidential candidate: "America wants to know — would you pardon Paris Hilton?" Thus began a morning of watching the legitimate media — starved as they are for weighty topics — attack the Paris prison scandal like rats to a carcass. Around 7:30 Al Sharpton weighed in on CNN. A few minutes later we found something on the Washington Post op-ed page dubbing Paris our generation's Mona Lisa. And Mozart. And Sun-Tzu. A story in the paper was a bit less reverent: "Be mad! Be glad! You didn't get a vote."
  
• The prosecutors do, however, and so the saga continues, and at noon our time America will tune in yet again to witness Chapter 2,087 in this epochal happening on one of the major cable news channels, and you can feel safe clicking back here to see how we feel about it all. (SPOILER ALERT: Nothing!) [TMZ]
  
• Adam Brody, who is cute, has a new girlfriend he won't be photographed with. But we know who she is! We're putting her picture after the jump so you actually give us some page views. [Page Six]

• Angelina Jolie has visited refugee camps in 30 countries. Can we even name 30 countries, after three weeks in this gig? Let's see, Malawi, um, Iraq... [People]
• We could not be more in love with Dave Chappelle. In fact, seriously guys, that's our next poll, this just reminded us, this genius we know named Julia once suggested we perennially pose the question, "Who Would Jesus Do?" and that's our first pair: Angelina? Or Dave Chappelle? I mean, we're not gay, but we're gay for Angelina, so we imagine that even if Jesus was straight, like we think he is since... that Discovery Channel show or something... he would still probably be gay for Dave, and Anderson Cooper, and Shepard Smith, who Julia claims isn't gay but whatever. [Page Six]
• Lindsay Lohan dumps Calum Best. The story is tagged "bizarre" because it involves a Lohan engaging in non-self-destructive behavior, but we're pretty sure that visit from Dina in rehab will get Lindsay flocking to the arms of another larcenous sex-addicted cokehead soon enough. [The Sun]
• Meet Lauren German, the latest Rachel Bilson replacement: