Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein took a look at two pieces: the Actress Salary Report by The Hollywood Reporter and Box Office Of the '00s: The Top Grossing Female Films on IndieWire. Here's what she found:

• Of the 241 films in the last decade that have grossed over $100 million, only five of them are directed by women. (Twilight, What Women Want, The Proposal, Mamma Mia, Something's Gotta Give. Julie & Julia made just under $100 million with $94,125,426.)
• "Only 31 films directed or co-directed by women grossed over $20 million.  Over 1,000 films directed by men did the same."
• The list of the top earning actresses? All white, and (mostly) the same old faces: Julia Roberts, Katharine Heigl, Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Rachel McAdams and, of course, Jennifer Aniston. (Silverstein writes, "I expect to see more boring romantic comedies from her for another 10 years.")

Some of the women on this list are great; many of the women on this list have made flicks (marketed to women) that looked terrible (The Ugly Truth? All About Steve?). But since we know that women buy 50% of all movie tickets, how do we get better product — or at least, quality, profitable product out there?

Keeping the list of successes and the actresses in mind, expect to see, very shortly: A musical romantic comedy about a vampire chef who can't decide if she wants to propose to her werewolf boyfriend. Starring Meryl Streep as the demanding restaurant owner; Julia Roberts as the FBI agent who suspects too much; Sandra Bullock as the Vampire Queen, Cameron Diaz as the health inspector, suspicious of the "special ingredient" in the vampire chef's delectable meals; Jennifer Aniston as the food critic; Reese Witherspoon, Amy Adams and Rachel McAdams as the chef's bffs/potential bridesmaids. With any luck, [insert your favorite vastly underused actress here] could play the chef, in the role of a lifetime.

Women, Hollywood and Money [Women & Hollywood]
Actress Salary Report [The Hollywood Reporter]
B.O. of the ‘00s: The Top Grossing Female Helmed Films [IndieWire]

• Angelina Jolie has a "secret family" she's "kept hidden for years."

She's been paying to support seven orphans — three girls and four boys — at the SOS Children's Village in Amman, Jordan. During her recent visit to the Middle East, she took Brad to see the kids, who live together in one house with a foster mother. Image at the link and, as always, consider the source. [National Enquirer]

• Beyoncé threw a star-studded 1920s-themed birthday party in the Dominican Republic for Jay-Z's 40th; Kanye West, Amber Rose, Diddy, Alex Rodriguez, Kate Hudson, Alicia Keys, Lyor Cohen and Tory Burch were in attendance. [Mirror, Page Six]
• As seen in a Snap Judgment, Lady Gaga met the Queen of England last night; the former wore a modest latex gown. On stage, she wore an Elizabethan collar, and played a Dali-esque piano 30 feet in the air from a cushion suspended by chains. The very definition of restraint! [Daily Mail]
• A woman was rushed to the hospital from Tiger Woods' home in Florida this morning. All we know is that she is blonde, and that the ambulance was followed by a car with another blonde woman driving. [Newser, People]
• The assumption is that the person in the hospital is Elin Nordegren's mom. [TMZ]
• TMZ has a random blurry pic of Tiger Woods chatting up a waitress at a Las Vegas nightclub. [TMZ]
• Tiger Woods will not be the best man at Byron Bell's wedding this weekend — Tiger's not even going to the event. [TMZ]
• TMZ saw the admissions chart when Tiger was in the hospital the day after Thanksgiving and paperwork says Tiger was there because of an "OD." [TMZ]
• A Florida trooper tried to get Tiger Woods' blood results from the hospital — suspecting DUI — but was denied. Preferential treatment? [CBS News]
• Tiger's wife Elin Nordegren has purchased a mansion in Sweden; it's on a small, secluded island reachable from Stockholm only by ferryboat. Will she move there? [NY Daily News]
• Tiger Woods' mistress Jaimee Grubbs was given a VIP table next to Lauren Conrad and near Leighton Meester at an LA club. Why? That's unclear. But this column is titled "Tiger's Tails Live It Up." [Page Six]
• FYI: George Clooney and Elisabetta Canalis are still dating, though you may have heard a rumor that they broke up. Her dad says: "My daughter is happy and at peace… There is genuine affection between my daughter and Clooney." [UPI]
• 50 Cent says: "Susan Boyle is hot right now. I got to get her on a track, for real." OMG that could be awesome. Fiddy adds: "She's cool. I'd love to take her clubbing, show her around my world. She'd have a great time." [PopEater via Mirror]
• Lindsay Lohan is headed to India, where she's filming a BBC documentary about impoverished kids. [Page Six]
• LOL: "Madonna stayed away from Courtney Love at the bash for Tom Ford's movie, A Single Man." [Page Six]
• Just when you thought that Tiger Woods had knocked these fools out of the news: Hailey Glassman calls Jon Gosselin "a monster" in this video. She says Jon and Kate Major and told her that Kate Major was going to "pretend" to be Jon's girlfriend to take the tabloid heat off of her. "Stupid me," Hailey says. She explains that then she found out that Jon slept with Kate Major. Hailey also says: "I was with a liar. I loved a liar. I was lied to constantly." [Radar Online]
• Um... Hailey Glassman is still living with Jon. And: "I'm not on speaking terms with my mother because of Jon. He's thrown a huge fork in my family. That's the saddest part about all of this. When all the cheating accusations came out I'd catch him lying, he'd call my mother and tell her 'I love Hailey, I would never cheat on her. Those other girls are whores and they're trying to extort money from me.' At that point I would break up with Jon and tell him to leave me alone. My mom would then come to me and say, 'Jon's a great guy.' He would manipulate my mother because he knew my mother and I were best friends. He would manipulate my mother to get back to me and I would forgive him." For the love of God. [Radar Online
• Jon Gosselin was named the "most provocative" person of the year by HLN. "Jon Gosselin was the tabloid train-wreck gift who just kept on giving!" says Showbiz Tonight senior executive producer David Levine, with glee. [CNN]
• Alexa Ray Joel is recovering at her father's estate in Long Island. [NY Daily News]
• This columnist notes that Alexa Ray Joel is "a piano woman in an age dominated by Beyoncés and Rihannas, a torch singer with a taste for Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, writing her own music, booking her own gigs, and distributing her CDs independently. The fact that she has skills and a couple of famous parents didn't necessarily make her artistic life easier… what happened this weekend was also a poignant reminder of just how dispiriting it can be to be a young artist at a time when record deals only seem to go to reality-show contestants, and radio consolidation has made it harder for niche artists to find an audience." [The Daily Beast]
• ABC may have had issues with Adam Lambert, but not Fox — he'll be singing on So You Think You Can Dance. [Page Six]
• Mickey Rourke will marry his girlfriend Elena Kuletskaya in Moscow in April; his thrid marriage and her first. Mickey and Elena met when she was coaching him in Russian dialogue for Iron Man 2. [Page Six]
• Kate Bosworth will star in Lost Girls & Love Hotels, written by Nadia Conners and directed by Young Victoria's Jean-Marc Vallee. She'll play a woman who tries to forget her past by living in Tokyo, where she's a flight attendant trainer by day and "sex- and drug-addled" by night. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Tori and Candy Spelling are communicating, says Dean McDermott. "Candy has seen the kids, which is what this is all about." Does this mean that they're no longer using the media as voicemail? [People]
• Peeps in LA: Prepare yourselves for a Pee-Wee comeback! He is doing a new stage play — The Pee-Wee Herman Show — with puppets and all of the original characters: Chairry, Genie, Conky, Magic Screen, Miss Yvonne and Cowboy Curtis. All the original actors from the TV show will play their parts on stage, except for Laurence Fishburne, who has a previous commitment. But Fishburne says if there is a movie, he'll get a Jheri curl and be there. [CNN]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Amy Adams would like to know the sex of her fetus. "I thought about waiting and I just don't think that's really my personality," she explains. "It's not about planning a nursery, it's more about I just want to know. I want to be able to relate in that way. That's what works for me, but I totally believe in whatever works for the individual." [People]
• On a German TV show, Hugh Grant embraced a comedian named Anke Engelke, and she recoiled, cringed and made a face. Why, yes, there are pix at the link. [People]
• Joely Richardson says: "I cannot imagine that there will ever be a day when I don't think of [my sister] Natasha." [Daily Mail]
• Russell Brand has returned from a four-day retreat in which he studied the art of transcendental meditation. Now he can stop contemplating the universe and go back to focusing on Katy Perry's assets. [The Sun]
• Leona Lewis was flown to Monte Carlo over the weekend, where she was paid six figures to sing for "one of Romania's richest men." Maybe she changed the lyrics? Keep bleeding, keep keep bleeding cash. [The Sun]
• Porn star Janine Lindemulder lost her request for expanded visitation rights for her 5-year-old daughter with ex-husband Jesse James (who is now married to Sandra Bullock). [LA Times]
• A nude photograph taken by David Bailey of Roman Polanski and wife Sharon Tate — taken shortly before she was brutally murdered — sold for $11,250 at an auction on Monday. [Reuters]
• No weasel jokes: Pauly Shore is suing his brother, accusing him of elder abuse against their mother, who has Parkinson's. [Radar Online]
• "Two physicians accused of over-prescribing addictive medication to Anna Nicole Smith will fight efforts by the state medical board to bar them from practicing medicine," [LA Times]
• The Dallas remake: Coming to a TV near you. [NY Daily News]
• "A judge has dismissed a misdemeanor domestic violence charge against gospel singer BeBe Winans after determining he had seen a counselor as required by prosecutors." [USA Today]
• "On my first day [on the set of Space Cowboys], he came into the hair and makeup trailer, and the 13-year-old girl in me took over. I flung myself across the trailer and hugged him — and I hugged him hard. I said 'Hi, I'm Marcia Gay Harden!' and he said, 'I know, I cast you.'" — Marcia Gay Harden, on meeting Clint Eastwood. [Gatecrasher]
• "[Many young American actresses] have a Nickelodeon quality to their acting, like they're goofing. We needed a girl who looked like she was from 1973 and who got the reality of the story. Saoirse is fiercely courageous. In a way, I like to think that Susie Salmon found us." — director Peter Jackson. He and Stanley Tucci both sing the praises of Lovely Bones star, 15-year-old Irish actress Saoirse Ronan — whom you may have seen in Atonement — at the link. [USA Today]
• "[A bully] calls up my phone and he's like, 'Is Taylor there?' and I just handed it to my bodyguard and I was like, 'John, give him a talking to.' So he's like, 'Yo, you don't ever call this number ever again. I put my fist through your face.' It was really great. It was effective." — Taylor Swift. [MSNBC]
• "If I have to go out on stage and, you know, jump around in a pair of hot pants I better look good, and also when I perform I'm like an athlete, I have to be in good shape. I'm not panicked, I just know what my job is, and I know that if I want to be able to wear whatever I want to wear on stage, then my body better look good." — Madonna. [MSNBC]

• According to Radar Online, Tiger Woods has agreed to pay alleged mistress Rachel Uchitel "more than one million but less than three million" to keep her from sharing the details of their relationship with the public. [RadarOnline]

• Yet the reported payoff might not be enough to stop the embarrassing tabloid stories from popping up: a friend of Uchitel is now claiming that Woods had dreams about Uchitel with other famous men, writing such things as "I came home, excited to see you, and there you were in the bedroom getting f—ked by Derek and David [Boreanaz]. Some part of me thinks you would like that." [USWeekly]
• Meanwhile, a fourth alleged mistress of Woods, a VIP cocktail waitress who claims she had an affair with Woods back in 2004, has "lawyered up." [TMZ]
• Amy Adams and her fiance, Darren Legallo, have announced that they are expecting their first child. Congrats! [People]
• Naomi Campbell has hired a bodyguard to accompany her in Miami due to an "aggressive female stalker" who has given her trouble in the past. [PageSix]
• Rihanna hit up a NYC club on Thursday night and preferred to party with her girlfriends: "Rihanna was having a great time," says a source, "She danced until 4 a.m. in a skintight dress. She drank champagne and vodka. While every guy in the room wanted to get to her, she only stuck with her girlfriends. They even went to the bathroom together. She insisted on arriving and leaving through the back door — alone." [PageSix]
• ABC has apparently forgiven Adam Lambert: he's been booked to perform on The View December 10. [TMZ]
• "Brad and I have three magnificent children and we look forward to raising them. We say we are going to be a family that lives in two different houses. There are challenges, but I think it will be a good year."-Jane Kaczmarek on her divorce from Bradley Whitford [People]
• Helen Mirren says that though things have improved for women in Hollywood since she started out, there's still quite a ways to go: "It has not gone nearly far enough... I want to see more women behind the camera," she noted while picking up her Women In Film lifetime achievement award, "We have great women working in this industry. Let's celebrate them with this award." [Mirror]
• "Opening that center is one of my greatest achievements because it's something I've always wanted to do for other women. It's part of the charitable organization I co-founded with Steve Stoute in 2008, Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now. Our initiative is to educate, encourage and empower women. Yonkers is where I grew up and saw women destroyed, both physically and mentally. So this center is beautiful for me because maybe those women's children or their children's children can go there and get help. I'm hoping to see FFAWN and Mary J. Blige Centers all over the world. Outside of music, that's probably the one thing to which I will devote a lot of my time."- Mary J. Blige, on opening the Mary J. Blige Center for Women [Reuters]
• Miley Cyrus was turned away at an over-21 club on Wednesday night because she's well, not over 21. [TMZ]
• A truck carrying roughly 50-75 dresses for Victoria Beckham's new fashion line, worth approximately £350,000, was robbed last night at knife-point in London. "This operation was meticulously planned. The thieves must feel they can make a fortune selling the collection on the black market," says a source, "Victoria was informed straight away about the incident and was shocked and deeply saddened, although her first priority was the well-being of the driver." The dresses were eventually supposed to be delivered to Neiman-Marcus in New York City.[DailyMail]
• Morgan Freeman, who began taking flying lessons in 2002 and now has a pilot's license, is going to christen his new private jet with a trip around the world. [DailyExpress]
• Jake Gyllenhaal's mother, screenwriter Naomi Foner, would really like to see him play Danny Kaye in a film. "(We'd watch) Five Pennies, The Court Jester and Hans Christian Anderson," Gyllenhaal says, "My mother was a big Danny Kaye fan and would always play me these movies. She is, in fact, the person who always calls me up and is like, 'You should redo The Court Jester!'" [DailyExpress]
• Katie Holmes eats french fries, world apparently stops turning. [DailyMail]
• "To me it's strange that, you know, my sister calls me a weirdo. I love my sister, we get along, but I'm the weirdo? I'm the one that's weird? You buy a magazine with pictures of celebrities' children in them so you can read about children in magazines, and I'm the fucking weirdo?"-Zach Galifianakis [Guardian]
• Sienna Miller and Jude Law were spotted leaving Law's apartment minutes apart last night, which means they may be back together. Alternately, it means absolutely nothing. [DailyMail]
• "Elton lives on that. He will not be happy until I bang on his door in the middle of the night saying, 'Please, please, help me, Elton. Take me to rehab.' It's not going to happen. Elton just needs to shut his mouth and get on with his own life. Look, if people choose to believe that I'm sitting here in my ivory tower, Howard Hughesing myself with long fingernails and loads of drugs, then I can't do anything about that, can I? People want to see me as tragic with all the cottaging and drug-taking... those things are not what most people aspire to, and I think it removes people's envy to see your weaknesses. I don't even see them as weaknesses any more. It's just who I am."-George Michael, on his drug use. [DailyMail]
• Michael Keaton says he has two of his Batsuits from his days playing Batman for Tim Burton, but he's afraid they might be falling apart: "One is in storage. Sometimes I think, I know I'm going to go there and rats will have eaten it and I am going to go 'No!'. They are going to be worth a lot of money." [DailyExpress]
• "Yeah, we were mates. God, that was so cool. It was the saving grace. Because it got a bit sticky after the Beatles. No, we were really good mates again - it was lovely, actually."- Paul McCartney, on his relationship with John Lennon before Lennon's death. [TimesOnline]
• Nicolas Cage was presented with the U.N. Correspondents Association's Global Citizen of the Year award last night and named a UN Goodwill Ambassador in honor of his commitment to humanitarian work. [Yahoo]
• Jessica Simpson has "completely fallen" for Billy Corgan and wants to "take things a lot further." In related news, my brain has just melted all over my keyboard and my copy of Siamese Dream just spontaneously combusted in the corner of the room. [JustJared]

First, the numbers: While G.I. Joe made $56.2 million, according to Time, it cost $175 million to produce and more than $100 million to market worldwide. Will the studio recoup those costs?

On the other hand, Julie & Julia cost $38 million to make. And Time's Richard Corliss notes that the Julia Child-oriented movie got loads of free publicity: "Nora Ephron, the movie's writer-director, was the subject of 15 New York Times articles in the past month."

Next, Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein offers some other numbers for perspective:

Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle opened in 1993 on over 1700 screens to a approx $17 million gross. It earned $126 million domestically. You've Got Mail opened in 1998 on over 2600 screens and earned a little over $18 million. Film went on to earn $115 million domestically.
And from Meryl Streep. The Devil Wears Prada opened in 2006 on 2,847 screens and grossed $27 million. The total domestic gross was $124 million. This film made more overseas with a total box office cum of $326 million. Mamma Mia opened on over 2900 screens and grossed approx $27 million on opening weekend. The domestic gross topped out at $144 million and the worldwide total is an astounding $600 million.

These women make hits.

But even more noteworthy is the fact that the true star of Julie & Julia is not a slinky young ingenue (coughMeganFoxcough) but 60-year-old Meryl Streep. Corliss writes: "With The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! both earning well over $100 million domestic, and her new picture on its way to hit status, she is arguably the movie's top female star. And she's 60. That's never happened in Hollywood history." (Yet who's on Vogue's August issue? G.I. Joe's Sienna Miller.)

Lastly, and maybe most important: Julie & Julia is a movie about two women whose romantic lives are secondary in the plot. While other comedies focus on beaus and babies, the movie manages to acknowledge that women have other hopes, dreams, desires and things to talk about. Which is, of course, something to savor.

Box Office Weekend: G.I. Just-OK, Julia Delicious [Time]
Julie & Julia By The Numbers [Women & Hollywood]

[Image via Sony Pictures]

• Victoria Beckham had her first day on the set of American Idol on Friday and a source says: "It didn't go well." Why ever not?

"She tried to hard to be 'nice,' but came off as icy and wooden," a source revealed. Plus: Contestants were disappointed not to see Paula on the panel. [Radar Online]

• Before she started judging, Victoria Beckham told Ryan Seacrest: "I'm going to try hard to pout and not shatter the illusion that I'm a moody cow, but I don't know if I can - I'm just so happy." [Daily Mail]
• Meanwhile, ABC has reached out to Paula Abdul about joining Dancing With The Stars. as a judge or a contestant. [Variety]
• Olivia Newton-John's former boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, presumed dead since 2005, is alive in Mexico and wishes to be left alone. He reportedly owes back child support to his ex-wife, which may be one of the reasons he disappeared. [Daily Mail]
• Behold: A picture of Real Housewives Kim Zolciak with her "Big Poppa." [TMZ]
• Jon Gosselin will sit down for an interview with E!, and react to whatever Kate Gosselin says on the Today show today. So there's a Jon special on E! tonight — and tomorrow night, a full interview. [E!]
• Kate Major continues to attempt to be relevant. [E!]
• Jeremy Piven and Chris Kattan got into a screaming match backstage at MTV on Thursday: Kattan said "So, what are you here to promote, your Broadway play?" and Piven said Well, what are you here to promote? Mango?" Tempers flared. Doors slammed. Obscenities were yelled. Funny dudes can't take jokes? [Gatecrasher]
• Sparkle vamp Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were spotted at a Bobby Long concert in L.A. on Thursday night. Because their love is destiny, people! And what is a sparkle vamp without a ladylove? According to this report: "After the show, a cab spirited them off into the night." [ET]
• "Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart heat up with low-key date nights and hotel sleepovers." [NY Daily News]
• Pattinson had a low-key night out… not in a Manhattan hot spot. On Long Island. [Page Six]
• A man accused of sending death threats to Beyoncé and Jay-Z will have to undergo a mental evaluation, duh. [Daily Express]
• "America's other first couple: Beyoncé and Jay-Z are black America's second most famous couple: young, rich and with a direct line to the White House." [Times Of London]
• Is Guy Ritchie dating Iron Man actress Mellany Gandara? [Daily Express]
• Katherine Jackson's lawyer L. Londell McMillan says: "She's got her grandchildren, they're set. She's starting to rock and roll. She's getting her grandma swagger back. But she has been busy trying to make sure that these children will be provided for." [People]
• Mark Lester, who was in the 1968 film Oliver!, and is the godfather of Michael Jackson's kids, says he could be the biological father of Paris Jackson. This paper puts a picture of Paris side by side with a picture of Lester's daughter and survey says: Probably not. But does Paris have long ears like Arnold Klein? [Daily Mail]
• "Longtime Michael Jackson friend Mark Lester is not the father of Jackson's daughter, nor is he claiming paternity, despite a tabloid report indicating Lester says he's Paris Jackson's biological dad, sources tell People." [People]
• A source says that Michael Jackson was super excited about his upcoming tour. "He even said to me on several occasions, 'I am going to give everything I have. He even said, I'll die on the stage if I have to. It gives me the chills thinking about it now." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Michael Jackson's body was finally buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills. No ceremony, no fans. The exact location is a secret. [Mirror]
• Presented without comment: "A doctor has revealed how he prescribed Michael Jackson a 'chemical castration' drug to suppress his sexual urges towards under-age boys." [Mirror]
• ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson on Katherine Heigl's latest anti-Grey's Anatomy tirade: "People will behave in a way they choose to behave. There are so many people who work unbelievably hard on Grey's… so I think it's really hard for them to hear [her complain about working a 17-hour day]." [EW]
• Jenna Fischer says: "I always see these tabloid reports about certain people being 'Spotted Without Their Wedding Ring!' like it's some big deal… [I don't wear my ring because I] would have to take it off and leave it in my trailer, which I would never do. They aren't that secure. Break-ins happen all the time. So if I go someplace after work I could be 'spotted' without my ring. It means nothing." [People]
• How did Ashlee Simpson lose her "baby weight"? Luck. "After I had Bronx I lucked out. I mean, I'm 24 years old. I have the genes from my mother and I did work out for three months." [The Sun]
• "A Night Out With Holly Madison" reveals that she calls a vodka and water "The Skinny Bitch," and later announces: "Chicken fingers are seriously, like, my favorite food." [NY Times]
• Kelsey Grammer says the cancellation of his TV series Back To You may have contributed to his heart attack in 2008. "When they examined my arteries, there was no blocked arteries. I had no cholesterol buildup. I had an event that they think was stress-related." [UPI]
• Madonna's boyfriend, model Jesus Luz, would like to be a DJ. [Page Six]
• Just a reminder: Vanessa Hudgens plays Sa5m in Bandslam, but the 5 is silent. Her character "is an emo girl who speaks slowly because of a stutter, resembles Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club and is ostensibly the female lead, Ms. Hudgens argues to the contrary." [NY Times]
• Shannon Elizabeth and Derek Hough: Broken up. They will "remain friends." [UPI]
• Tracy Morgan and his wife Sabina have been married for 23 years, but reportedly spent the last eight living apart. Morgan has decided to file for divorce, maybe because he took some cornbread behind a middle school and got it pregnant. [TMZ]
• Lady GaGa says she wore that Kermit coat as a statement: "I thought it was [a] commentary on not wearing fur, 'cause I hate fur and I don't wear fur." Naturally, now PETA would like for her to pose nude in an ad campaign. [TMZ]
• Cheech Marin married longtime girlfriend Natasha Rubin over the weekned. [People]
• If you do nothing else today, for the love of Kirk, read this William Shatner interview. It's crazyinsane. A snippet: So what is your relationship with Conan really like when the cameras are off? "It's great, he folds me into his arms and I come up to his belly button. So I suckle on his belly button and he holds me close." [Time]
• Just what your Monday morning needs: An anecdote about Mick Jagger's penis. [Page Six]
• Whatshisname says Whatshername is disgusting because she let her four-year-old son see her in bed with her new lover. [The Sun]
• "Because I'm pretty everybody thinks I'm stupid. But you don't have to play a victim. You have to show who you are to make the others come to discover you." — Monica Bellucci. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• "I don't sit there and think 'well I did Confessions of a Shopaholic and now I've got to go out and do Chekhov.' If the next one that comes along happens to be another romantic comedy and I find something in it that appeals to me then great. I operate on almost no system at all." — Hugh Dancy. [Independent]
• "I had a conversation with one of the scientists, and I was saying how I interviewed some [little] kids. I asked him what his opinion was, because I was like, 'Oh, it's really sweet, their idea of love is so pure.' And he was like, 'They don't really understand what love is because they haven't got their hormones and they haven't had sex and they haven't had that many relationships.' And I'm like, it doesn't mean that you can't experience love. Just the fact that you've been in one relationship doesn't devalue how you feel about someone. One of the couples in the film met when they were fourteen and their parents were like, 'That's puppy love.' They ended up being together for over fifty years. So I think people are biased against age." — Charlyne Yi. [Nerve]
• "She knew that I wanted to paint and make music. Eventually she said: ‘do it!' She encouraged me to go forward without fear . So it's all thanks to my wife, who knew that I had done a lot of acting over the years and suggested maybe it was time to start doing something else." — Anthony Hopkins, who has an exhibition of his paintings in Tuscany and also composes orchestral work. [Daily Express]
• Q. Does it feel odd to be putting young designers out in the world when the fashion world is in extreme crisis? A. "I think that everything is kind of in crisis. But what are you going to do? Is everyone going to stop working? I think the best will always succeed in any world. The people who are working hard, I think they will stay out there. In terms of fashion, maybe there are things that are more needed than other things — and the things that people cannot afford, maybe those things will go. But I don't think people should stop their dreams. A lot of our designers, people who have been on in the past, not everyone is self-employed. I think the only one who has become successful is Christian [Siriano] — on their own. I think the others are also successful, not as their own brand. Which I think is also success! They are working under good design houses. Or selling on HSN or Shopping Network." — Heidi Klum, on Project Runway. [LA Times]
• "I grew up on a red dirt road with a tree growing right in the middle of it. We didn't have much, but it never occurred to me that if you wanted to do something you couldn't do it. You can do anything if you try… I came here with a curling iron, two boxes of clothes and $200 in savings." — Nancy Grace. [USA Today]
• "I walk around and don't understand why more people are not smiling, enjoying the day, why they give me stink-eye. I guess being happy must not agree with them. I do not say I am always happy, but I do strive to be cheery." — Amy Adams. [Times Of London]
• "About 50 percent [of Paper Heart is fiction]. Everything with the interview subjects is real, but the plot with Michael Cera is fiction… But I honestly was kind of questioning the idea of love. I'd dropped out of college and I'd just been doing comedy, and I'm kind of like an old lady — when I was 10 I learned how to knit — so, most of my friends would go to clubs [to meet people], but I don't go to clubs or bars because I don't drink. So there was this fear of, how would I meet someone my own age? It's not that I doubted other people's love. It was just about my own concern of whether it could happen to me." — Charlyne Yi [WaPo]
• "You know when you first discovered a hamburger and then you can't live without it? That's what it's like for me with her" — Ashton Kutcher on his love for Demi Moore to Gotham magazine. [Page Six]
• "I'd rather staple my eyelids shut than watch Gwyneth cook." — Bethenny Frankel. [Gatecrasher]

• Russell Brand was shoved into a fountain by an onlooker as he filmed his latest movie in London: "The bloke used a bit of force," says a source, "Brand was completely underwater. I expect he will have some bruises." [TheSun]

• Jennifer Aniston trusts her dog, Norman, to "sniff out" potential boyfriends. "Norman was crazy about Jen's ex-husband Brad Pitt, but he couldn't stand John Mayer – the pooch growled at him and hid whenever John spent the night at her Beverly Hills mansion," says a source. [ShowbizSpy]
• Simon Cowell says he's "going to miss" Paula Abdul during the upcoming season of American Idol. "She's my buddy," Cowell says, ""Paula has been very cool about the whole thing. And let me tell you, Paula is going to be fine." [People]
• Meanwhile, Victoria Beckham, who will be guest judging on Idol this season, says that she plans to be kind to the contestants: "'I want to be nice to people. I know how it feels to be stood there and be judged and how it can feel when nerves get the better of you. I don't want to shatter anybody's dream. But at the same time, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of constructive criticism." In other words, when you're feeling sad and low, she will take you where you want to go. [DailyMail]
• Meanwhile, Jordan Sparks says it was "dumb" of American Idol to lose Paula: ""I love American Idol and I respect them. It's because of them that I got my start, but Paula was one of the original judges. She helped soften the blow for contestants when we didn't do well. I love Paula," Sparks says, "The show will definitely not be the same without her, and I feel bad that future contestants will not get to experience having her on the show. I'm so sad." [E!]
• Hundreds of Beatles fans flocked to Abbey Road this morning to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the groups famous album cover photo. [NYTimes]
• Yikes: apparently Janeane Garofalo's show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last night was a "train wreck." [Reuters]
• "After the Toronto incident, I didn't even want to look people in the eye at the gym. The shame came from people saying I had it coming — it was karma. Even though you may think someone is a douche, you shouldn't mock a victim of violence because that victimizes them again. I am much more compassionate now."-Perez Hilton [LATimes]
• Kate Moss and Lily Allen have been spotted vacationing together in St. Tropez, where Kate has allegedly urged Lily "to try the 'rock chick' diet - coffee, cigarettes, vodka and champagne, which are relatively low in calories." Ugh. DailyMail]
• "I wouldn't call myself a dark soul, but I'm feisty and I can be very edgy. Being my size and having blonde hair, with a sweet, innocent-looking face is interesting because that's not who I am. I'd never describe myself as innocent or sweet - those are two words I really would not use to describe myself, ever." -Hayden Panettiere [ShowbizSpy]
• Actress Shannon Elizabeth and her Dancing With The Stars partner Derek Hough have called it quits, and announced their breakup over Twitter, with Hough tweeting: "Hi everyone, we wanted you all to know directly from us, that Shannon & I have decided to end our relationship as boyfriend & girlfriend." [People]
• "I think Jon just needs to spend time to himself. I mean, there are many days that I wish that I talked to him in person instead of over the phone. But that's just the way it has to be right now, so if we're better off as friends and that means that people kinda leave him alone and just let him be the dad that he wants to be, then I'm willing to do that for him."- Kate Major, who quit her job at Star to be with Jon Gosselin. [E!]
• 250 tween fans showed up to watch Leighton Meester shop at a store in Great Neck, causing police to "shut down the main stretch of road in town," according to a source. "It was madness. I've never seen anything like that at a store." [PageSix]
• "For a while, I was seriously considering giving up acting. My life lacked balance because I was too focused on a result as opposed to enjoying the process. I just had to get back into enjoying myself. There were times when I didn't work. There were times when I was flat broke, just like anyone else. You go through ups and downs in life. And, right now, I'm on an up. I'm going to enjoy it and have fun and make the most of it."-Amy Adams [DailyExpress]
• Get ready for a few more Gerard Butler comedies: "I like to see myself more as a Spencer Tracy type," the actor says. "As an actor, I think I can tick several different genre boxes. At the moment, I just happen to be finding comedies kind of irresistible." [Mirror]
• "Ten years ago I would never have imagined I would be in a flesh-coloured leotard hanging from the bars of a cage. I was very traditional and very conservative. But people grow and people change. I am in another moment in my life. I feel more like a woman today."- Shakira [ShowbizSpy]

The film, which comes out today, was written and directed by Nora Ephron and cuts between scenes based on Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and Julie Powell's 2005 book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. Both Julie and Julia are happily married, but not sure what they want to do with their lives. The film depicts Julia's life in France in the late '40s and '50s, as she enrolls in Le Cordon Bleu, discovers her passion for cooking and publishes the seminal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. About 50 years in the future, Julie Powell lives in an apartment in Queens and works in a government job she hates, tending to the families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks. In 2002 she decides to cook her way through every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writes about it in a blog originally published on Salon.com.

Julie & Julia is a rarity: A movie about the mentoring relationship between two women that doesn't focus on them trying to find a man. Both Julia's husband Paul Childs (Stanley Tucci) and Julie's husband Eric Powell (Chris Messina) are supportive of their wives' pursuits. Paul Childs accepts his wife's need to find her calling at a time when that was not considered a necessity for women. Eric Powell has to learn to take his wife's cooking seriously when many people consider cooking oppressive housework rather than a liberating activity. As one critic notes, the film makes "deboning a duck a feminist act."

Every review said the scenes featuring Julia Child were far better, as a modern day woman cooking in her apartment and blogging can't really compete with the iconic cook, her odd but passionate marriage, and the romance of post-war Paris. While critics said Amy Adams performance was good, they found her character Julie Powell hopelessly whiney and narcissistic. Or, as the Wall Street Journal review put it, her scenes were "dollops of margarine that barely hint at butter." (As noted on the blog Humor Slays Me, the reviews were teeming — or maybe boiling over — with bad food puns.) Many thought the film would have been better as just a Julia Child biopic, and one reviewer even suggested someone should make a bootleg edit excising all the Julie scenes. Below, we check out the reviews for Julie & Julia.

Salon

Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful — she's playing our ideaof Julia Child. When Streep's Julia nearly loses that omelette on TV, she pooh-poohs the possible dangers of dropping food on the floor: "You're alone in the kitchen. Whoooooooo's to see?" The line, and the way Streep draws it out, is just one measure of the intimacy of this performance. We're not observers here, but conspirators: We know exactly where the food has been, and we're not telling.

New York Magazine

That's the case with Meryl Streep as the middle-aged Julia Child in the comedy Julie & Julia: What begins as a great impersonation becomes a marvel of sympathetic imagination. The performance is transcendental. Streep's voice is deeply musical, starting in the chest and erupting into that burbling falsetto with its trills and diphthongs. The voice is Streep's way into Child's pleasure centers, and the body-stiff-shouldered, sloshing around like an ocean liner-follows along in a kind of daffy interpretive dance. Streep isn't tall, but she's photographed carefully and projects height; she understands that the six-foot-two Child learned not to be ashamed of her size but to go with it. Her Julia is a force. At one point, she falls into bed with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), and one's instinctive response-"Julia Child having sex … Ewww …"-gives way to, "Julia Child having sex … Awesome!" Anything to hear that voice in full, happy throttle!

But when Ephron cuts between Paris in the fifties and Queens in 2002 to show Julia and Julie as they both achieve autonomy through cooking, The Godfather Part II this ain't-the connection is strained. (The Child material is based on her memoir My Life in France, written with her nephew, Alex Prud'Homme.) Julie's character doesn't even track. She's referred to as a "bitch," but all we've seen is the patented Ephron adorable klutz. (Adams is too good to waste on Meg Ryan parts.) Ephron should make a film about the person she herself is (smart, acid) instead of the cutie-pixie of her dumb fantasies.

Associated Press

The Julia parts in Julie & Julia are a delight. The ones about Julie? More like an annoying distraction.,,,Julie, by contrast, isn't so well-defined; it isn't so easy to connect with her. The deeper she delves into her cooking project and the more she withdraws from her enormously supportive husband (Chris Messina), the more whiny, narcissistic and unlikable she becomes - which is surprising given Adams' seemingly boundless charm. Working her way through Julia's groundbreaking tome (co-written by Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck) feels more like a tedious chore or a source of wacky slapstick than a proud accomplishment, as Ephron focuses on Julie's culinary screw-ups. Despite the clever idea of juxtaposing both women's lives, this really should have been a biopic of Julia Child, if only to hear Streep say more things like "beurre blanc" in that distinctive, high-pitched voice. Now that would have been a meal worth sinking your teeth into.

Hollywood Reporter

Powell's story about her single-minded engagement with Child's cookbook has an almost unpleasant taste of self-absorption. And by sharing that story with Child's, Ephron throws the wrong emphasis on Child's delightful memoir of the early years in her ideal marriage to Paul Child. True, the movie shows that Paul — played with modest self-effacement by Stanley Tucci against Streep's larger-than-life Julia — encourages his beloved wife's every experiment in the kitchen and the writing of her seminal book. But by contrasting that memoir with Powell's, the movie somewhat distorts the life the Childs share as they revel in their love for la belle France and each other....Adams' Julie is more of a lost soul. She lives with a "saint," as she often calls her husband, Eric (Chris Messina), in an iffy apartment above a pizza parlor. She works in a federal government office overlooking the World Trade Center crater and laments that she has never finished anything in her life. Thus her determination to complete the cookbook marathon. She suffers for her blog. She drags herself to that cramped kitchen whether sick or well. She refuses to quit because it has become her identity. Without the "Julie/Julia Project," she'd revert to a frustrated wife with a dead-end job and another unfinished project. No joie de vivre here.

The San Francisco Chronicle

The movie just assumes that Powell is a sympathetic figure. Then it goes about justifying the juxtaposition of the two women by finding shallow parallels between them. In fact, their differences in moral stature and achievement are staggering: Julia Child passionately applies herself in an effort to do something worthwhile and finally achieves a foothold in success after 13 years of hard work and setbacks. Meanwhile, Julie, piggybacking on the efforts of a great woman, tries to get famous by writing a blog - and succeeds inside a year. On the way to her book and movie deals, she whines, throws tantrums and puts her poor husband (Chris Messina) through utter hell.

The Village Voice

The tome is an absolutely delightful read in which Powell uses Child and, in particular, Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, to discover "what it takes to find your way in the world," as she wrote. Yet all Ephron saw in that tale was just another dreary romantic comedy about a woman, played by a slow-simmering Amy Adams, who hates her job (tending to the families of people killed in the World Trade Center attacks-Powell's office was perched over the gaping wound), hates her friends (climbers as self-obsessed as she), hates her apartment (in Queens, over a pizzeria), and escapes into cooking and writing about cooking till she leaves behind her supportive husband, Eric, played by Chris Messina, but only briefly, whew. The book, originally shopped as a stand-alone project, could have made for a scrappy, scrumptious indie-all the outer-borough funk and main-course "fucks" of the book left intact, Bridget Jones doused in Béarnaise sauce and vodka gimlets. But Ephron has excised the heart (and gizzard and liver and so on) from Powell's tale. How could the writer-director not see that she had rigged this patently unfair game of Compare and Contrast?... Perhaps someone will do forJulie & Juliawhat one enterprising Star Warsfan did for Episode I: The Phantom Menace, when he released a bootleg shorn of that annoyance named Jar-Jar Binks and titled it The Phantom Edit. Surely there's room enough in this world for two Meryl Streep movies named Julia.

The Wall Street Journal

The remarkable thing about the Julia segments, given Ms. Streep's daring flirtations with caricature, is how full and affecting they prove to be. Yes, Julia's windmill arms are outlandish; so is her awkward, stentorian French and her religious belief in the miracle of butter. Yet she's an endearing figure, a woman who digests the life around her with enormous gusto while she's breaking the gender barrier at a Cordon Bleu cooking class or, much later, after fame has struck, digests with incredulity her husband's advice that she ought to be on TV. Mr. Tucci's Paul plays a subordinate role in the story, but his dry wit and calm love are perfect counterpoints to the intensity of Julia's enthusiasms.

Entertainment Weekly

Amy Adams nails the obsessiveness of Julie's devotion to her muse, Julia. She also captures the tactile pleasures, and challenges, of cooking (how in God's name does one bone a duck?). And Ephron gives us nothing less than the first full-scale Hollywood portrait of the life of a blogger, in all its creative fire and solitary, caffeinated, how many comments did I get?midnight narcissism. Yet the movie wants to make Julie an edgy ''bitch'' and soften her at the same time, which doesn't exactly jell.

The Los Angeles Times

Though both women have loyal and encouraging husbands (played by fine actors Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina) who are crucial to their success, this is the rare Hollywood film where it's the men who are the support team, not the women. Julie & Julia is very much a female coming to power story, which is one of several reasons why the producers were fortunate to get Ephron to write and direct.

Though a bit overshadowed by Streep (who isn't?), the gifted Adams is essential in making this two-part story work. Playing a character that is more ordinary than the actress' past efforts (think the princess in Enchanted) but still a tad eccentric, Adams turns Julie into someone we always care about no matter what shenanigans she is going through.

The New York Times

Julie & Julia proceeds with such ease and charm that its audacity - a no-nonsense, plucky self-confidence embodied by the indomitable Julia herself - is easy to miss. Most strikingly, this is a Hollywood movie about women that is not about the desperate pursuit of men. Marriage is certainly the context both of Julia's story and of Julie's (about whom more in a moment), but it is not the point. The point, to invoke the title of a book whose author has an amusing cameo here (played by Frances Sternhagen), is the joy of cooking.

The conceit of parallel lives is undone by the movie's condescending treatment of Julie and also by its ardent embrace of the past at the expense of the present. From the very start, Paris in the late '40s and early '50s is - well, it's postwar Paris, a dream world of fabulous clothes, architecture, sex, food, cigarettes and political intrigue. And New York in 2002 is made, a little unfairly, to seem drab and soulless by comparison. Queens, demographically the most cosmopolitan of the five boroughs and something of a foodie mecca, is treated with easy Manhattanite disdain, as a punch line and punching bag. The unevenness of Julie and Julia is nobody's fault, really. It arises from an inherent flaw in the film's premise. Julie is an insecure, enterprising young woman who found a gimmick and scored a book contract. Julia is a figure of such imposing cultural stature that her pots and pans are displayed at the Smithsonian. The fact that Ms. Ephron, like Julie herself, is well aware of this gap does not prevent the film from falling into it. All the filmmaker's artful whisking can't quite achieve the light, fluffy emulsion she is trying for.

The Boston Globe

People who knew or worshiped Child will question some of the movie's details. Did she and Paul, for instance, really have this much sex? Was he this romantic? ("Where's my big sprig?'' Paul says to his wife.) But that misses the larger point of these scenes. When in an American movie do regular people have that much sex? Plus - and this is important - Stanley Tucci is very sexy.

A few people have worried that Adams's half of the movie isn't as lively or as brightly lit as Streep's (it isn't) - or that Adams isn't Streep. But it isn't that the Adams half suffers from Adams not being Streep. It's that Julie suffers (as all American cooks do) from not being Julia. And this is why the Powell parts of the film work. It's Ephron's way of coming to terms with a real consequence of post-feminism. Powell is a woman in a job she hates who finds a source of liberation doing something certain liberated women still see as oppressive housework. She turns to Child's book partly as therapy, partly as anthropology. Cooking used to be about cooking, but in so many ways it's became about politics, and the politics loosely start to take their toll on Powell's marriage. Powell's loving husband, having been trained to accept her as a professional equal, now has to learn to take his wife's kitchen work seriously. Paul Child is just as fully evolved, but free of any angst over his wife's success. He's rooting for her.

Slate

Because the movie turns on plot points no bigger than "Will my book be published?" and "Is the boeuf bourguignon overdone?," Julie & Juliamay be dismissed as insubstantial fluff, a ditzy "women's picture." And it's true that Nora Ephron doesn't rank among our nation's deepest thinkers, though she shows a surer directorial hand here than she has before. Still, the relationship at the heart of this movie-between a female mentor and pupil who never meet but who share a common passion and a drive to reinvent themselves-is one you don't often see depicted in the movies. Julie & Julia makes deboning a duck a feminist act and cooking a great meal a creative triumph.

The Worst Julie & Julia Puns [Humor Slays Me]

Ok, so hopefully in combo with the lead photo, you can see the asymmetrical action on Amy Adams' glam gown. (It's off the shoulder on the other side.)


It's like Jaslene Gonzalez doesn't even care that I'm over the tummy-peep trend and its accompanying 10th grade-geometry-worthy tan lines! (Yeah, I know you smarter kids took Geometry earlier, but I was in the slow math group.)


Katie Lee (Joel?) is looking a lot more comfortable in her skin on the red carpet these days. It's too bad this coincides with everyone kind of turning on her for vague reasons that, at least in my case, have less to do with Billy Joel than with her career as a celebrity chef and restauranteur.


Okay, I friggin' adore writer and former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, so it's no shock that this beggar-princess-Arabian-Nights ensemble should totally make my day. I mean, can you see Wintour or her coterie in anything this bizarre? (ALT's caftans excepted, of course.)


Okay, there's something I'm not loving in the mix of low-key glitz and glitz-glitz in Claire Robinson's getup, but this is one of the few frocks that I can actually imagine wearing in yesterday's gruesome stickiness.


Many of us may know Frances Sternhagen best as Bunny MacDougal, but she's also a distinguished stage actress. And someone whose unabashedly white hair and equally unabashed hot-weather-comfort dress I am finding delightfully no-fuss.


Patricia Clarkson, obviously, looks crisp, cucumber-cool and like a total class act.


Chris Messina is, looks, extremely handsome. The end.


Jillian Bach models the "tearaway" bodice, a trend only available to those women with svelte chests. The rest of us would give "bodice-ripper" a new meaning.


What say you about Gayle King's racing stripes? I, personally, hate 'em, but it takes all kinds, as a man once said, to make a world.


Meryl Streep does no-nonsense, wear-anywhere.


Rachel Roy sports the extremely expensive I-Have-"Celebrity Skin"-in-my-walkman distressed jeans trend I'm really hoping is about to end.


Why is Barbara Walters wearing a coat? Because she didn't want to sport head-to-toe ecru?


Come on, even Rachael Ray's harshest critics would be hard-pressed to find much to criticize in this super-safe LBD.


Julie Powell, meanwhile, follows suit. As you know, I have a particular sympathy for the writers at these celeb-filled events; it must be a bit of an ordeal, albeit exciting.


[Images via Getty]

To Michael Pollan, the nascence of Julie and Julia's paeon to celluloid gastronomy prompts a New York Times Magazine meditation on why the birth of American cuisine should have coincided with the death of the American diet. To be sure, he concludes, there's a corollation between cooking-as-specttaor sport and that Julia Child ushered in and, you know, actual cooking. But for all the disspiriting conclusions Pollan can't help drawing about our culture and our planet, there are some serious bright spots amidst the rubble. And a major one is Child-as-empowerer.

Says he,

Julie Powell operates in a world that Julia Child helped to create, one where food is taken seriously, where chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and where cooking has become a broadly appealing mise-en-scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out. How amazing is it that we live today in a culture that has not only something called the Food Network but now a hit show on that network called "The Next Food Network Star," which thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become? It would seem we have come a long way from Swanson TV dinners.

And Julia Child, he adds, had a lot to do with this. More than just the popularizer of soigne French cuisine, Child, ironically, managed to free women from kitchen drudgery with her laborious, multi-pan recipes.

Even as The Feminist Mystique was lambasting housework as drudgery - enter Friedan - Julia Child was presenting cooking as pleasurable, luxurious, spiritually sustaining. In popularizing French cuisine (which has so aften been the purview, famously, of the male chef) she was making the love of food a less-gendered and more sybaritic subject, a sign of sophistication rather than imprisonment. Indeed,

Julia never referred to her viewers as "housewives" - a word she detested - and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read "The Feminine Mystique" that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman's attention.

On a personal level, like Friedan, Child was a housewife who'd found herself and made a career. Maybe a career that centered on a traditionally feminine sphere, but never one that depended upon an exaggerated femininity or sense of debasement. Child was, famously, "alone in the kitchen" - not preparing dinner for a husband or children, but for pleasure and accomplishment.

To suggest that Child destigmatized cooking for women, or removed the burden of context, would be absurd - the reactions to Amanda Hesser's recent piece on Michelle Obama's lack of interest in cooking is testament to this. And it also can't be denied, as Pollan points out, that obviously both parents entering the workforce had an adverse effect on the nation's eating habits, since we had never learned to balance domestic and professional duties, seeing them as stubbornly either-or. But, as Judith Jones points out in her wonderful The Tenth Muse, Child made good food democratic, removed some of the barriers that separated "fine cooking" from "cooking" and in so doing added an element of discovery and pleasure to an everyday ritual. It's not an unmixed legacy; many would surely claim that Child's focus on French cuisine served to maintain the underlying classicism of fine cooking that persists to this day, making good food's proliferation more fraught and tricky. But this was not her intention. And no one can deny that Julia's influence directly impacted on the American cuisine movement, and later, local, slow, and organic food in this country - all of which have been heavily influenced and run by progressive women.

And, as Pollan says, it's Child who allowed Powell to recapture an identity and a career, through food - a career that plays with traditional roles while confident in its autonomy. And be played by Amy Adams. And if that's not progress of a certain measure, well, I don't speak fluent American dream.

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch [NYT Magazine]

Related: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?

We actually can't make sense of the two-page chart below (Figs. 1 - 3), showing the length of David and Victoria Beckham's hair versus the Dow, but none of us have a degree in economics. The only pattern we can spot is that for the past two decades the Beckhams' have had hair on their heads and the stock market hasn't completely and utterly crashed. Therefore, we must conclude that, like modern day Sampsons, if they go bald, the country will suffer a complete meltdown. The bizarre hair theme continues in the fall fashion spread, in which one model poses as a hot pink wookie wielding a lightsaber (Fig. 4). Later, Amy Adams reveals she's actually a blonde, not a redhead, and Allure's editors punish her for this deception by giving her a Bride of Frankenstein hairdo and putting her in unflattering magenta eyeshadow. The only one who escapes Allure's wrath is Mad Men's Christina Hendricks (another blonde turned redhead) who explains how to look more like Joan on Mad Men (Fig. 5), which is pretty much the only beauty secret we were ever interested in. Below, we untangle the cover lies in this month's Allure.

Fig. 1


Fig. 2 (Detail)


Fig. 3 (Detail)


Fig. 4


Fig. 5

Okay. I'm not sure why Amy Adams' hair looks filthy, and her shoes look too narrow for her feet (I know the lateral squash all too well) but digging on the crisp frock!


Obviously Julie Powell and Amy Adams looks absolutely nothing alike (and it can't be fun to have to dress for one of these things as the token non-actor, I always think.) But Julie looks terrific, and her shoes fit way better, too.


It took me a moment to determine whether Giada De Laurentiis' top had a weird kangaroo pocket or just a weird fan ruffle, sur-crotch. Methinks it's the latter. But can I say how much I love the food celebs here?


I despise so many things about the lovely Ashley Greene's ensemble that an itemized list would rival the Key to All Mythologies in length.


I'm not normally a major fan of the Valley of the Dolls-style evolution of maternity-chic - and this fabric is pretty susceptible to wrinkling, considering it's gotta sit through a film - but Jane Lynch looks comfy, happy.


I don't think I've ever seen Mary Lynn Rajskub look better than she does in this soft Grecian.


I'd sort of like to see Meryl Streep's easy jersey sans cardi, but heck, a gal's gotta protect against the drafts.


Okay, this is from his website and I don't think I can improve on it: "Suave, sophisticated Emrhys Cooper delivers a one-two punch of brooding good looks and versatility with a dash of playfulness." He also adds a dash of Tab Hunter hair.


You know who this event needed? Brittny Gastineau. And, thank goodness, she's also showing her bra. Now everyone can relax and enjoy the movie!


As regards 80's nostalgia: I don't remember the 80's being that good. It involved a lot of graham crackers and a severe limit on the amount of TV I was allowed to watch. (I chose David the Gnome.) Nina Bergman disagrees.


I kind of love how Kate Flannery always does "approachable but commanding boss" on the red carpet.


When, Yvonne Strahovski, did it become okay to wear a transparent shirt on the red carpet? Or did it...not?


I can't tell whether Maria Menounos is headed to a disco, a playpen, a tractor or a Mormon temple. I guess this really is all-purpose!


Rob McElhenney, meanwhile, can apparently go fly-fishing directly from the premiere.


Nora Ephron may feel bad about her neck, but there's certainly no reason to worry about her classic uniform of clean basics! (Yes, that was cheesy. And made no sense.)


The Alice Waters seal of approval! I'd love to see her closet and touch all the silks. I'll bet it smells of sage. Sorry, creepy!


I'm starting to think it's not a premiere until perma-guest Kat Kramer shows. How? Why? Maybe she's become such an institution that all the PR people figure everyone must know something they don't. Whatever, I love her.


Looking at Molly Sims' myriad straps gives me sympathy pangs: Can you imagine wrestling with this in a store dressing room, breaking out in a cold sweat and wondering if you'll ever extricate yourself?


[Images via Getty, Bauer-Griffin]

• Have mercy. Will Lauren Conrad's L.A. Candy be turned into a film? That would mean a movie based on a book based on reality show based on someone's life. LC says:

"We're hoping for a movie deal. I'm working on [adapting the book for the movies] right now, but I don't want to commit to anything until I see all my options." [Gatecrasher]

• Here's an article devoted to dissecting, mocking and nitpicking Madonna's "stringy" arms. [NY Daily News]
• Old love letters Madonna wrote are up for auction; she refers to herself as "Lil' Booty" and "Lola Montez" in honor of a famous mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Yeah. [Page Six]
• Oh Kate Major. One day you're a reporter for Star magazine, the next you're "dating" Jon Gosselin; and now you're being accused of having a former life as a high-priced call girl. [Extra]
• Would you watch a Jon Gosselin reality show? No Kate or plus 8 — just the Ed Hardy-wearing bachelor doing… stuff? [E!]
• A stylist who worked with Mischa Barton on the set of The O.C. says the actress developed an alcohol problem in her teens. "Mischa has been drinking since she was about 14, and she doesn't drink to have fun any more - she drinks not to feel anything…It was just a matter of time before she hit rock bottom." [The Sun]
• Mischa Barton is out of the hospital and "has every intention" of rejoining the Ashton Kutcher-produced CW drama The Beautiful Life when it resumes production in a few weeks. [E!]
• "Amy Winehouse 'Stole Cocaine From Kate Moss's Handbag.'" So says Blake Formerly Incarcerated, who seems to be spilling all kinds of tales now that he and Amy are divorced. Anyways, that was then. [Daily Mail]
• Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart stayed in the same hotel, on the same floor, in San Diego Wednesday night before Comic-Con. ZOMG true love! Twilight is real! [E!]
• George Clooney is being linked to Elisabetta Canalis, who hosts the Italian version of MTV's TRL. [Daily Express]
• Hold on to your ovaries: Jon Hamm vacation pictures. [Best Week Ever]
• Speaking of Jon Hamm, he'll star with Ben Affleck in The Town, a flick about a a bank robber who becomes smitten with the teller of a bank he held up. Hamm plays an FBI agent. [Variety]
• There were rumors that John Travolta was leaving the Church of Scientology, but his rep says, somewhat ominously: "There's no change in the relationship between the Church of Scientology and John. He is a member and it's as it was, now and forever." [People]
• On June 25, the day Michael Jackson died, Dr. Conrad Murray gave him the powerful anesthetic propofol through an IV sometime after midnight. [AP, AP]
• "Authorities believe Dr. Murray may have actually fallen asleep during the time the drug was administered and may have awakened to find Jackson already dead from heart failure. An IV drip of Propofol allows a constant, steady infusion of the drug for a period of time determined by the person administering it." [TMZ
• The toxicology report is expected any day now, and will play a role in whether Dr. Conrad Murray is charged with manslaughter. [People]
• "Michael Jackson's children could miss out on a $20 million life insurance payout – because an aide allowed the policy to lapse." [Telegraph]
• Paula Abdul still does not have a deal with American Idol. A source says: "She sees the big money Ryan Seacrest got, she knows that Simon is close to a huge deal, too. She feels like it's personal that she's not getting the same big numbers." Or! Gender gap??? No, but seriously: It's gotta suck to know your coworkers are bringing in millions more than you are. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Meryl Streep and Amy Adams have started the Julie And Julia promotional appearances! [Mirror]
• Kristin Davis has a new man, celebrity photographer Russell James. [People]
• Why did Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush break up? A source says: They never get to see each other, ever." [People]
• Wait, what? "Pink accuses Christina Aguilera of being a lesbian who wants to sleep with Lindsay Lohan." [ONTD]
• Yes! RuPaul's Drag Race Season 2 has its first contestant, and her name is Jessica Wild. Love the accent, and the energy — video at the link. [EW]
• Tobey Maguire's mom, Wendy, and brother, Weston, will be in a reality show called Growing Up Maguire; Weston rides motocross, skateboards and snowboards. [Page Six]
• Mariah Carey, Diddy and Lil Wayne were supposed to release albums this summer, but all have been delayed until September. [Reuters]
• Diddy ate dinner while gazing upon a billboard of himself. [Page Six]
• Elizabeth Mitchell from Lost is also on the new show V, and talks about joining the cast of the new show while still working on the other, and credits fans with keeping her character around. Video at the link. [EW]
• Lucy Lawless has nude scenes in her new Starz show, Spartacus, and in this video asks, "Have you ever been fitted for a merkin?" [EW]
• "A California judge appointed a lawyer Monday to oversee the estate of Nadya Suleman's octuplets, saying he wanted to ensure they weren't exploited by reality television shows, tabloid photo spreads or other paid ventures." [NY Daily News]
• Hitting on Keri Russell when she is with her kid doesn't impress Keri Russell. [Page Six]
• Dubliners took to the street and protested U2's noisy all-night stage dismantling, which caused the band's trucks to miss their ferry, which affected the tour schedule. [AP]
• Sir Sean Connery may come out of retirement to narrate a film about former servicemen involved in nuclear testing on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. [Daily Express]
• Dominic West is in a new film with "Bond girl" Olga Kurylenko and says: "I thought I was going to get involved in a mud wrestle with her, but, in the end, she had a 12-foot spear, so I didn't really get anywhere near her." [Telegraph]
• Uh-oh, Chris Tucker owes over $3 million in back taxes. Where has he been lately, anyway? [TMZ]
• Want Joan Rivers roast jokes? Get 'em here. A sample: "You're like Robo-Cop, you're half-human and nobody's given a shit about you since 1986." [Page Six]
• "Peter Andre has hinted that his estranged wife Jordan had a miscarriage with their baby due to excessive boozing during her pregnancy." [The Sun]
• "I love sickos. Dennis Nilsen, Fred and Rose West, Ted Bundy — I'm obsessed. I've always been into that kind of stuff — real cut-up, blood and gore murders." — Katie "Jordan" Price. [The Sun]
• "Pete dumped me by phone," Katie Price claims. [The Sun]
• "The Broadcasting Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint against RTÉ for allowing actor Gabriel Byrne to endorse Dublin City Council election candidate Mannix Flynn on the Late Late Show one week before the poll." [Irish Times]
• "Quentin got the Jewish director to do the Nazi propaganda film. [And] I thought I'd never do anything more disgusting than Hostel II." — Eli Roth on his Inglourious Basterds role. [Page Six]
• "We have a horrendous row within days of being reunited because it's annoying to have someone else telling you what to do and then we get over that and we are really happy." — Helen Mirren on her marriage to Taylor Hackford, whom she is often away from for months at a time. [Daily Express]
• "It's a lot different from anything I've done before. It's not a pop-rock record. This is more about emotion and feeling." — Avril Lavigne on her new album. [Reuters]
• "It's based on all of Lewis Carroll's material, including the 'Jabberwocky Poem.' Past 'Alice' films were always just a girl wandering around passively with a lot of weird characters. We tried to weave it into a story that has emotion to it and makes sense. I've seen many of the different versions of 'Alice' over the years. I know there was a musical porno movie I remember seeing in the '70s. And lots of other different versions." — Tim Burton on his Alice In Wonderland film. [Reuters]
• Q:What does Johnny Depp bring to the Mad Hatter? A: "He likes dressing up. I think with the Alice in Wonderland characters, they've often been portrayed as just crazy without much subtext, and I think he tried to bring something, an underlying human quality to the craziness. He tried to understand it a bit more...We try to give each character their own particular craziness. And he's good at sort of exploring that, I guess because he's crazy. I don't know." — Tim Burton. [Reuters]

While the film is something of a love story (blogger Julie Powell cooks chef Julia Child's recipes and goes on a journey of self-discovery) Ephron — known for films like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally — considers food right up there on the same level as romance. John Horn, who spent an afternoon baking with Ephron, writes:

"The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does," said Ephron, who is married to author and screenwriter Nick Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) and wrote about her earlier marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein in the caustic roman à clef Heartburn, a novel that included recipes. Ephron's best-selling 2006 memoir, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, shares an almost equal fascination with gastronomy.

Of course, many human relationships revolve around food: Dating often involves going out to dinner; catching up with friends can mean lunches and brunches; family get-togethers and reunions mean picnics and barbecues.

But Ephron's love of food may go beyond the norm: She says her postgraduate cooking phase was "obsessive. It was competitive. It was pathological." And Horn describes shots of food in Julie & Julia as " adoring close-ups of fish, duck and even an Everest of chopped onions." The question is, will the movie inspire women who don't know a turnip from a radish to get in the kitchen and try out recipes? Perhaps not. "No one seems to cook anymore," Ephron says. Maybe we'll just walk out of the theater with an insatiable appetite.

Nora Ephron Tries To Find The Perfect Recipe For 'Julie & Julia' [LA Times]

• Chris Brown tried to sit next to Mariah Carey during a private reception after Michael Jackson's memorial. She quickly informed him that she would rather he sit at another table. [Perez Hilton]

• Some have taken Jermaine Dupri's absence from Michael Jackson's funeral as confirmation of the rumors that he and Janet Jackson have split, but a pal says Dupri just "doesn't attend funerals." [Us]
• Janet Jackson has offered to raise Michael Jackson's kids... according to a random Inside Edition reporter. [CBS News]
• Debbie Rowe is suing the woman who sold Extra the emails in which Rowe said she doesn't really want custody of Michael Jackson's kids for defamation and invasion of privacy. Rowe says the emails are fake and she hasn't spoken to the women recently. [AP]
• Sources say lawyers for Debbie Rowe and Katherine Jackson are close to working out a custody settlement. It looks like Katherine will have custody of the children if a judge agrees. [TMZ]
• Hundreds of stuffed animals and other memorabilia left outside the Motown Historical Museum after Michael Jackson's death were buried in two vaults at Woodlawn Cemetary in Detroit. The cemetary, where Rosa Parks is buried and Diana Ross and the Four Tops have plots reserved, donated the vaults to Jackson along with a granite headstone memorial. [AP]
• The Iowa Fair let people vote online to decide whether or not there would be a butter sculpture made of Michael Jackson. Sixty-five percent voted no so plans for the sculpture have been cancelled. [UPI]
• The song "Home", which LaToya Jackson previously recorded to honor her family is being re-released as a tribute to Michael Jackson. The song will be the first single or LaToya's new album. The proceeds will got to AIDS Project LA. [AP]
• Marlon, Randy, Tito and possibly Jackie Jackson will do a paid performance of Jackson 5 songs at Reggae Sumfest in Jamaica next week. [TMZ]
• Prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation after the collapse of the stage being constructed for a Madonna concert in France killed two men and injured eight others. [Entertainment Tonight]
• The same company built the stage for the Madonna and Britney Spears concert at Dodger Stadium in November, which also collapsed. The company released a statement saying, "We were incredibly saddened by the tragic accident ... Two of our Directors have flown out to Marseille to visit the injured and to get a better understanding of what caused the accident ...There is absolutely no technical or other connection between the incident at the Dodgers Stadium in November 2008 and the tragic accident yesterday (July 16 2009) at the Velodrome in Marseille." [TMZ]
• Ne-Yo got sick and left the stage crying during a concert in Manchester, England. People thought he was crying because he was singing a tribute to Michael Jackson, but then he was struggling to move and clung onto a table onstage to keep from falling over. A presenter said he had "a really bad fever." [UPI]
• Lady Gaga was asked to wear a less revealing outfit and not dance provocatively for an appearince on Britain's GMTV yesterday mornign. A source says, "She finally agreed to tone it down. The nation would have been coughing up cornflakes if she'd had her way." [The Daily Express]
• Mark Ronson, who produced Back To Black says, "I heard Amy [Winehouse] was back in town, but I haven't spoken to her yet. I'm working on a new record now, but I would love to work with Amy again. I would definitely like to hear what Amy's been working on - she's an amazing artist, so I would be interested in anything she does." [The Daily Express]
• Eva Longoria Parker went camping in Normandy with husband Tony Parker, who is French. An onlooker said, "Sleeping under canvas obviously agreed with her. She looked gorgeous!" [The Daily Express]
• Security has been tightened on the set of The Fighter after an intruder startled Amy Adams in her trailer. "Amy was getting ready to leave the set when the guy climbed the steps right outside her trailer and said: ‘I'm looking for my cousin,'" said a source. "Amy, who was fully dressed and was with a production worker, yelled out: ‘What the hell are you doing?' and the guy quickly climbed down the stairs before running off." [Radar Online]
• Leelee Sobieski is engaged to menswear designer Adam Kimmel. [Us]
• Ivanka Trump gushes about her new fiance Jared Kushner: "Jared is my best friend for many reasons, largely because I've allowed him to see who I truly am and he still loves me... He's a bit of a hero of mine. His ability to remain focused - he lacks an anxiety that's natural for someone his age handed so much responsibility … Sometimes I catch myself looking at him and being thankful that I have grown to a level of personal maturity that I would value so much the qualities he has." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Ivanka Trump's mother Ivana Trump says, "I am so thrilled about Ivanka's engagement. She and Jared have been a serious couple for a long time, and their happiness has grown as their relationship has deepened." [People]
• Oprah's ratings have slipped by nearly a third since 2004. Some suggest people are suddenly tired of her after 20 years and others think it's an Obama backlash... since Obama is so unpopular right now. [N.Y. Post]
• John Goodman will star in The Station a new FOX comedy about CIA agents trying to install a new dictator in Central America. Sounds hilarious! [Media Week]
• Adrian Grenier showed up late to Live With Regis And Kelly yesterday. "I didn't realize it was live! I thought they just tape it," he said. [The Observer]
• Russell Crowe is in negotiations to reprise his role of Jack Aubrey for a Master and Commander sequel. [Yahoo]
• Mischa Barton may be released from psychiatric evaluation on Saturday. "A 5150 is considered a psychiatric emergency, when a person is deemed a danger to themselves, to others or is gravely disabled," says a psychiatrist who doesn't treat her. "A serious risk of suicide is a primary reason for the hold, as well as those suffering from severe depression or schizophrenia." [People]
• Jon Gosselin has moved into a two bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. [People]
• Russell Simmons says his favorite New Yorker is Rev. Al Sharpton. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Here's an analysis of why the ads for Funny People mention that it's a Judd Apatow film but don't print Adam Sandler or Seth Rogan's names. [L.A. Times]
• Kid Rock debuted his American Badass Beer at a his concerts in Detroit this week. He said, "I'm American, that's what I like to drink, and from looking around the parking lot before my shows, I know that's what my fans drink." [UPI]
• Derek and Julianne Hough both received Emmy nominations for a dance they choreographed and performed on Dancing With the Stars I can't think of a better person to be nominated with," said Julianne. "My first time being nominated for an Emmy last year was surreal and awesome, but this time around is more special because Derek and I choreographed to fit our personalities and not the celebrities we dance with on the show." [People]
• Q: You do "hot topics." Doesn't that come from The View?
  Wendy Williams: Yeah. They're the topics and they're hot. What else would I call them?
  Q: You also have a member of the audience introduce you, just like Rosie O'Donnell did.
  Wendy Williams: Are you accusing me of being a thief? Rosie's not using it anymore. Stop being so observant! [Newsweek]
• Marc Anthony scheduled a news conference with the Miami Dophins for next Tuesday. When Gloria Estefan arranged a similar news conference last month she announced that she was becoming a minority owner. [Yahoo]
• Here's the first image from the Broadway production of After Miss Julie, which Sienna Miller and Jonny Lee Miller will star in this fall. [Entertainment Weekly]
• Did you know Vin Diesel has been working behind the camera? He says: "For the mass public I think they probably aren't aware of my directing history but I think when you do the research it becomes super-clear. I think people that know me solely for XXX or Fast And Furious might be a little surprised but I directed a short film called Multi-Facial that was in Cannes," the actor explained. [The Star]
• Taylor Lautner says of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart: "The whole cast is really close. It would be difficult for our characters if we weren't. It's a love triangle, and we need to understand each other. So the fact that we're close and can talk things through in rehearsals, and if we're out at dinner, we'll just randomly start talking about the scene we're shooting the next day . . . If we weren't able to do those things, I don't know where we'd be. [The L.A. Times]
• Here's a video of Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind performing a song he says is about being in love with a lesbian [Gothamist]
• Zooey Deschanel says of the soundtrack to 500 Days of Summer: "If they were bonding over some shitty band, that would actually make me close the script. But the fact that they liked music that was approved by me, because they're bonding over the Smiths, I was, like, ‘Well, obviously!'" [Rolling Stone]
• Zooey Deschanel gives a more detailed assessment of the soundtrack to 500 Days of Summer here: [Esquire]
• "When I first started acting and auditioning, people wanted me to be as generic as possible. When you're going out for the part of 'High School Girl #2,' people want you to be a stereotype. But I was never easily categorized. It was always difficult to reduce me to two sentences. Casting agents don't want unique-they want, 'That girl looks like a bitch,' or, 'That girl looks like a princess.' Eventually, though, you end up building your career on things that are different from other people, but in the beginning it was frustrating. I just try to be myself and as honest as possible-but I have limits." — Zooey Deschanel. [Black Book Magazine]
• An Oompa Loompah was detained by security guards at Florida's Westfield Broward mall earlier today. He had been promoting an upcoming comedy show, but a security officer cuffed him and detained him for several hours. Onlookers laughed and screamed, "Let the Oompa Loompa go!" [Peopel]

• Is Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox's friendship in trouble? A source says:

"It seems like Courteney and Jen's close friendship has chilled in recent months, and it comes down to their lifestyles not gelling anymore. Jen is almost a workaholic who spends her free time dating and hunting for Mr. Right, while Courteney is happily married and busy juggling work and motherhood." [MSNBC Scoop via National Enquirer]

• Oh, God. Real Housewives' Bethenny Frankel has landed her own show, Skinny & The City. Viewers will get to see her planning her wedding to fiancé Jason Hoppy, and, presumably, learn all about her "naturally thin" recipes. [Page Six]
• LAPD were called to Mischa Barton's home in West Hollywood at 3pm yesterday to assist with a "medical issue." She was escorted from her apartment to an unknown location. Mystery abounds. [Daily Mail]
• Oh wait: Mystery solved. Mischa Barton was taken to the hospital due to complications from oral surgery. Apparently she was in too much pain to drive and asked to be take by police, hoping the paparazzi would leave her alone. She'd previously had impacted teeth that had to be removed from her jaw bones. [ONTD via RPulse]
• Mariah Carey will shill sing her new single, "Obsessed," on America's Got Talent. [UPI]
• Amy Winehouse was granted a "quickie" divorce from Blake Fielder-Civil today, on the grounds of her adultery. [Mirror, AP, Mirror]
• How is Jessica Simpson since boyfriend Tony Romo broke up with her a day before her birthday? A source says she "was really blindsided" and is "sad, mad, and confused." [People]
• Lauren Conrad wore a brunette wig for a Harper's Bazaar photo shoot and "day-long experiment." She says: "I went into a wig store and tried on a brown wig, and they all laughed at me. All these women [who worked there] were like, 'You look like Hannah Montana.' Day to day, I can only do blonde. Everything else makes me look sort of plain-Jane." [People]
• By the by, Lauren Conrad is on the cover of Shape looking a wee Photoshoppy. [Perez]
• Paris Hilton has a new driver's license photo — after posing at the DMV five times. [TMZ]
• Kim Kardashian was detained at customs in Johannesburg, South Africa, when she couldn't find her passport. She claimed that she'd left it on the plane, but officials wouldn't let her look for it. Boyfriend Reggie Bush talked someone into letting him back on the plane, where he found the passport, and all is well. Kim Reggie and Khloe had been in Botswana visiting a diamond mine in league with the Russell Simmons Diamond Empowerment Fund, FYI. [E!]
• Someone broke into Orlando Bloom's home in L.A. and stole some "personal effects." Oh, no, not the Legolas wig! Anything but that. [People]
• Lovely photographs of Richard Gere and Carey Lowell's bed and breakfast in Bedford, New York. Gere says, "We're pretty open to just letting it flow and go where it wants to." [W]
• LL Cool J had one of those travel days from hell: First his flight from L.A. to St. Louis had to make an emergency landing in Kansas City, after passengers smelled smoke. Then, once the plane landed, one of the passengers was so sick everyone had to be quarantined for 3 hours. LL ended up ordering a car service. [TMZ]
• Q: What do you think has been Harry's greatest misstep or failure in judgment? - Susan Bevins, Winter Park, Fla. A: "Susan Bevins, you have asked a question no journalist has ever asked me. I think the way he treated his friends a couple of films ago was quite questionable. They're always there for him, and he was a little bit ungrateful. I think Harry is a flawed character. He can be quite selfish and really manipulative. He's not all sweetness and light." — From "10 Questions For Daniel Radcliffe." [Time]
• Check out the cover art of Whitney's Houston's new album: She looks regal, and not at all like someone who would say "crack is cheap." [NY Daily News]
• The good news is: Michael Jackson record sales continue to soar. [NY Times]
• The bad news is: A veteran prosecutor resigned from the L.A. district attorney's office after her supervisors found out that she talked about the Michael Jackson case on Larry King Live. [LA Times]
• Meanwhile, the DEA has contacted the manufacturer of Propofol, which is thought to be the cause of Michael Jackson's death. They're going through records and vial numbers to match the drug with doctors who have a connection to MJ. [TMZ]
• "Michael Jackson's death has the FDA considering labeling Propofol a 'controlled substance.'" [NY Daily News]
• Dr. Conrad Murray's lawyer would not confirm or deny whether his client administered Propofol to Michael Jackson the day he died. [TMZ]
• Rumors that Janet Jackson wants Michael Jackson's kids persist. "Janet is not only willing to raise those children, she is also the only relative who knows how to protect them," says a source. [MSNBC Scoop via Ok!]
• A guitarist who worked with Michael Jackson hours before his death says: "It still hasn't sunk in that he has actually passed, we're still in shock. What you see on the footage is what he was like to us. That was what was so shocking for all of us. We saw him dancing and singing and interacting and joking, having a great time, so excited. He wasn't sitting in a chair coughing and looking sickly. To be with him on the night before (he died) was hard." [Mirror]
• Michael Jackson was in negotiations to purchase an assortment of celebrity nude photographs before he died — people like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie-and-Clyde fame. [Yahoo via E!]
• Joe Jackson's business partner in his new record label served 366 days in federal prison in 2001 — for conspiracy to commit extortion. Bad news. [TMZ]
• Tito Jackson says Michael Jackson is the biological father of all of his kids: "They are all his children. Blanket is Michael's, I can tell. Those eyes don't lie. Them eyes are Michael over again. I see a lot of Michael in him." Um, okay. [Mirror]
• Kylie Minogue got separated from her boyfriend in a bar on Tuesday night, so, when she found him, he slapped him in the face with a fan. [Page Six]
• "Steven Spielberg is on the verge of completing an $825m financing for his new film venture, nine months after he began looking for capital in the worst funding market in Hollywood's recent history." [Financial Times]
• Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher lived out a 007 fantasy by vacationing at the Ocean Club resort in Barbados, where Casino Royale was shot. Ashton requested to be picked up from the airport in a silver Aston Martin! [Daily Express]
• Want Bob Dylan/Jimmy Carter gossip? Click the link. [Page Six]
• Rapper Common is being sued for sampling someone else's song, even though he doesn't deny that he sampled the work and credits the sample on the track listing. [ONTD via Hip Hop DX]
• Griffin O'Neal claims his estranged father Ryan O'Neal had an affair with Alana Stewart as Farrah Fawcett was dying. [Daily Express]
• Cheryl Tiegs and significant other Dan Buettner: Broken up. [Star-Tribune]
• Brittny Gastineau says that in her scene in Brüno — in which she says "abort the baby," she was joking around. "I was spoofing myself. When I got there, I saw him, and I obviously knew it was him. I was like, 'Oh, this is funny. This is a joke.' I just went along with it." [Us Magazine]
• A theater in Ireland has left a recorded message about Brüno on its ticket hotline, which says: "Bruno is particularly vile. It leads to a hell of a lot of complaints. It will offend every prejudice in the book, believe me, so don't come on after and tell us how horrible it was. One or two have enjoyed it, though." A spokesman for the theater says, "We often leave jokey messages." [Telegraph]
• Whatshisname thinks Whatshername has sold out by doing a tell-all interview. [Daily Mail]
• Whatshisname says living in the public eye can be a mistake. [Daily Mail]
• Blind item! "Which now-married (but then-engaged) starlet hooked up with her geeky dreamboat of a co-star on the set of their film? Wisely, they frolicked in a soundproof room." [Gatecrasher]
• "It's a funny thing because what I've found is some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the country are watching this show. I think it's because there is an underlying smartness that a lot of people don't get that relates to how most successful people rose to the top. You need that group around you; you need a couple of breaks and good fortune. That's what we try to tap into. To have Obama say he watches and gets it — well, he's got that same crowd around him, and it was an amazing thing to hear. Hopefully, it'll keep us on — at least through next year." — Doug Ellin, creator of Entourage. [Reuters]
• "It's almost career suicide to take a break and just not release music like I did. But to have people still care, I just don't know what to say and how to explain it. I'm just so happy because it validates the music I did in my 20s." — Maxwell, who had huge first-week album sales for chart-topping release Blacksummer's night and whose single, "Pretty Wings," is also number one. [USA Today]
• "I was homely [as a teenager], painfully small, short, with too much blue eye shadow because I thought, it matches my eyes, so why not? Trying desperately to fit in." — Amy Adams. [NY Daily News via Allure]
• "I want to do great movies that are number one at the box office and also independent movies that are dark and miserable. I see myself with a career like Cameron Diaz — she does What Happens in Vegas and then My Sister's Keeper, so I want to do it all!" — Kristin Cavallari, who when asked if she wants to go back to college someday, says: "I'm really happy with what I'm doing. I read a lot of books, you know. So, no. I have no urge to go back to college." [PopWrap]
• "It's wonderful. I grew up around gay people my entire life, basically, that's possibly why I'm quite camp, and some people think I'm gay when I meet them, which I think is awesome. It's always good to keep them guessing. I don't go on any blogs or chats or anything, but my friends are demons for them, and apparently someone said 'Daniel Radcliffe is gay. He's got a gay face!' I really don't know what a gay face is." — Daniel Radcliffe loves people thinking that he is gay. [Telegraph]
• "I'll say American for now. I really have no preference, though. Nationality is nothing. It's all about the girl - but she has to be curvy!" — Daniel Radcliffe, when asked if he likes American or Brit ladies best. [Gatecrasher]
• "Everyone lies online. In fact, readers expect you to lie. If you don't, they'll think you make less than you actually do." — Brad Pitt, on online dating. [Mirror via Wired]
• "My dream role would be to play musical legend Carol Channing in a biopic of her life. I love her, I really do. she's amazing. With all the digital technology available these days, I could probably pull it off!" — Johnny Depp. [Gatecrasher]

• A source claims Tony Romo dumped Jessica Simpson so abruptly because he found messages on her phone from none other than her ex, John Mayer.

• Says the source: "They were hanging out and he picked up her phone and she got defensive about it. Tony found messages from John and went ballistic... Tony dumped her right then. He walked out and that was it." [Radar Online]
• A source says of Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson's breakup, "She was caught off guard." While poor lonely Jess has been lying low, Tony was out partying with his friends on three of the four nights since their breakup. [E!]
• Hustler has created a Lindsay Lohan parody porn called Hustler's Untrue Hollywood Stories: Lindsay Lohan. It features porn star Scarlett Fay as Lindsay and follows various events in her life such as her Marilyn Monroe photo shoot, her relationship with Samantha Ronson, and lots of sex, of course. [Fleshbot (NSFW)]
• Debbie Rowe's lawyer made the New York Post retract a story that claimed Rowe was paid $4 million by Katherine Jackson in exchange for not seeking custody of Paris and Prince. He said Rowe would not take money for giving up custody and the story "can only have been concocted with reckless disregard for the truth." [CNN]
• Police arrested two paparazzi outside Debbie Rowe's ranch in Palmdale, California after she called 911. One didn't have a driver's license and the other was riding on top of the other photographer's car. [TMZ]
• CNN is reporting that LaToya Jackson was paid for the recent Daily Mail interview in which she said Michael Jackson was murdered. Because that's the only thing that would make you doubt that interview. [MTV News]
• Someone from the L.A. County Coroner's office went to the office of Dr. Arnold Klein, Michael Jackson's dermatologist today to hunt for missing medical records. [TMZ]
• In 2005 a man filed a $120 million lawsuit against Janet Jackson because he claimed her bodyguards beat him up after he said hello to her. Today a judge threw out the case saying, "There is no evidence upon which a jury could rationally find that (Jackson's bodyguard) was the assailant, or that Jackson directed the assailant's actions or negligently failed to control him." [The Daily Express]
• The promoter of Michael Jackson's London shows wants to do a show on his birthday, August 29, featuring his brothers and possibly Janet Jackson. [The Mirror]
• Elizabeth Taylor is in the hospital and Cindy Adams wrote today that she is suffering from exhaustion because she's been crying so much after Michael Jackson's death and denied her access to their funeral pews and barred her from the events because she was Michael's friend, not theirs." Didn't Liz say she had PLANNED this surgery and it has nothing to do with MJ's death? [UPI]
• Amy Winehouse is back in the U.K. from St. Lucia. "She is good. She has been looking after herself," says a friend. "She did a lot of exercise and she has been eating better. Look at her – she is not what she was." [People]
• LeVar Bruton was injured in a five-car accident in Los Angeles. An elderly woman turned left in front of him and he crashed into her. No one was seriously hurt and Burton was treated for neck pains and released from the hospital. [People]
• Jon Gosselin lied to designer Christian Audigier so he could bring his girlfriend Hailey Glassman on a business trip to St. Tropez. "[Jon] had told me was he was going out there with his stylist," said Audigier's rep. "We said we could accommodate her going out there as long as she's bringing his biker wardrobe or something relevant - motorcycles being the key the factor in all of this." [TV Guide]
• An anonymous source says of Hailey Glassman, "She's one of those crazy party animals," who never had a steady boyfriend in college said a source, "She would probably be that type of girl who would get on top of the bar and start dancing." [People]
• David Arquette and Courteney Cox have signed on to do Scream 4. [E!]
• Another cast member has been added for The Real Housewives of Orange County, Alexis Bellino. Here's how the press release describes her: "Alexis keeps herself busy by being the best wife and mother she can, and when she does have a free moment, she likes to work out to keep herself looking and feeling her best." [People]
• Previously Morrissey cancelled some tour dates due to illness. Now he's called off two more because of "unresolvable" issues. [The Daily Express]
• Jennifer Connelly and her husband Paul Bettany play Charles Darwin and his wife in the biopic Creation, which is opening at the Toronto International Film Festival. [Yahoo]
• Ricky Gervais will star with Jennifer Garner and Tina Fey in The Invention of Lying, a film about a man who discovers everyone he knows tells the truth, and believes whatever he tells them. [Yahoo]
• Kim Kardashian Tweeted: "We are here in Botswana, South Africa! Wow what a long flight!" She's in the country of Botswana on a "humanitarian" trip. [Perez Hilton]
• George Carlin's last book, appropriately titled Last Words will be published in November. He had been working on it for the last decade. [Yahoo]
• Brandy settled a lawsuit with another survivor of her 2006 car crash. Mallory Ham, who suffered a severely broken nose, was paid an undisclosed amount. [TMZ]
• Justin Timberlake's Mirimichi gold course will open on July 25 in Memphis after a $16 million renovation to make it more eco-friendly. [AP]
• Russell Brand will host the MTV VMA Awards once again in September. "This year will be a controversy-free festival of love and discrete orgasms," he said. [The Sun]
• Jordan says of estranged husband Peter Andre: "Whatever women he chooses in his life I just hope he's happy with them. I've got no bad feelings - as long as they're girlie girls and can paint Princess's feet and hands and play all the games the kids love like I do. I've got no animosity towards Peter, I just want him to be really happy." [The Sun]
• Amy Adams, who has been engaged for a year to actor Darren Le Gallo says, "I've been really busy, and I feel like a horrible fiancée that I haven't gotten swept up in the whole idea of a wedding but I just haven't... He wants to be married... I think he was patient for the first nine months, but that we have been engaged for a year, he's sort of, you know, 'This is going to happen, right?' He understands I'm busy but he's ready. He's much more ready for kids and stuff than I am." [People]
• Clive Davis says of Whitney Houston's upcoming album, "you won't forget it after you hear it." [ABC News]
• Emma Watson says of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: "There's just much more chemistry, much more interaction between all the students... It was quite a different Hermione for me to play because usually she's this very tough, very stern, you know she's kind of like this ‘girl power' (character). And in this one, she's much more fragile, vulnerable. She kind of gets her heart broken a bit." [CBS News]
• "You know, I'm not really doing the dating thing. I don't feel like I'm in the world of dating. I don't feel like a young twentysomething. I'm happy working but it's not a case of 'I don't have time for a girlfriend'. I do. It's just like everyone else who's single I suppose." — Daniel Radcliffe [The Daily Express]
• Daniel Radcliffe on photographers snapping pictures of Emma Watson's undies: "I did feel bad for her. Men will never know the kind of humiliation of having an upskirt done, which poor old Emma had. We talked a few days after her birthday, and she said, 'It was awful, they were all over me. They were trying to shoot up my knickers!' It's incredibly invasive. That's why I do think it's much, much harder for girls being famous than it is for guys." [L.A. Times]

• Here's the first picture of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick with their new twins, Marion and Tabitha Broderick. Big brother James, are you ready for double trouble? [TMZ]

• Britney Spears has dark hair and something that looks like an engagement ring. What does it mean??? [NY Daily News]
• Uh-oh: Us Weekly dropped $120,000 for exclusive rights to Kendra Wilkinson's wedding, but the death of Michael Jackson will push her bridal bliss off the cover. [Page Six]
• Will Michael Jackson's body be put on display in a coffin of glass, like Eva Peron? [The Sun]
• Michael Jackson's mother has been granted temporary guardianship of his three kids. [LA Times]
• According to a source, Michael Jackson almost died once before — in 2004 — he was unconscious and had to be revived. [Fox News]
• Michael Jackson's doctor didn't call 911 for a half hour after finding MJ unconscious. [TMZ]
• The LAPD is trying to identify and interview "multiple doctors" who treated or prescribed medicine to Michael Jackson. [LA Times]
• Michael Jackson's mother Katherine is worried about people stealing from MJ's estate. [TMZ]
• Debbie Rowe has been reaching out to the Jackson family, but has been unsuccessful. [People]
• A will drafted by Michael Jackson in 2002 may be released this week. [WSJ]
• "Michael Jackson's Last Art Purchase." A wicked witch painting. [TMZ]
• "Michael Jackson was spending £30,000 a month on prescription drugs," says this paper, which lied to us yesterday. [The Sun]
• "Michael Jackson's Death: Sorting Fact From Fiction." A run down of all the claims and contradictions. [NY Daily News]
• Two weeks before he died, Michael Jackson completed a video project; his last. [AP]
• Expect some "instant" Michael Jackson books — some due by the end of the week, one coming in July. [AP]
• Michael Jackson's "This Is It" tour is being transformed into a tribute concert in September, and Madonna may take part. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Here is Lindsay Lohan posing like Michael Jackson. [NY Daily News]
• Ladies and gentlemen, a statement from Jon and Kate Gosselin: "During this very difficult time we will be working to focus solely on the needs of our family. This includes no longer commenting publicly or reacting to media stories and speculation. Our goal is to do the very best for our children and that will be done as privately as possible. We appreciate the understanding, support and well wishes from so many. Thank you." [TLC]
• Chris Brown was not at the BET Awards because Al Sharpton and Jay-Z were "very vocal" with producers about not letting him appear. [Gatecrasher]
• A source says: "Jay-Z wasn't having it. He threatened to pull out of the show if Chris was involved, so BET dropped Chris." [Page Six]
• Chris Brown's friend Teairra Mari says: "He's sorry. That's my friend, and I love Chris. He's a good kid-he just made a mistake. He knows that and feels terrible about it." [E!]
• Justin Timberlake went out boozing with Guy Ritchie, and guess which one went home at 2:30am and which one stayed in the pub? Guy was in it til the bitter end. [The Sun]
• How is the filming of The Runaways going? Well, Joan Jett made Kristen Stewart cry. So. [Gatecrasher]
• Some GQ Brüno pictures in which the character is posing with a high school football team have infuriated a school official in L.A., who says: "We've allowed our students to be used, and not in the most glamorous circumstances either." [UPI]
• Susan Boyle on Ugly Betty? Why, yes. [Telegraph]
• Amy Winehouse has been banned from taking in any more stray dogs after resort management had to fumigate her house in St. Lucia. [The Sun]
• George Clooney is not dead. Why are there so many death pranks? That shit is not funny. [TMZ]
• Kate Moss's boyfriend Jamie Hince is getting tired of Kate's lengthy karaoke sessions and is limiting her to half an hour a day. [The Sun]
• Lady GaGa visited an HIV Support Centre in Manchester, UK yesterday, and said: "I've been doing volunteer work since I was two." She also said: "I want to make it fashionable to have safe sex. You must be safe. You can have sex with hundreds of people with a condom on and get nothing. If you have sex without one, then you could get all sorts of problems." To which this paper asks, "Speaking from experience?" [The Sun]
• Ashton Kutcher is Tweeting for the White House. No, really. [Politico]
• Kathy Griffin on NPR! "NPR listeners, I know who you are. I know you guys read books, which I find tedious. You guys might try a book called Us Weekly. OK? It's a really good book. It has a lot of pictures." [NPR]
• Megan Fox spent the weekend in Las Vegas with Brian Austin Green. Back together? [E!]
• Someone threw a drink on Anna Kournikova at a club in Vegas and the tennis player "sprang into action," showing and screaming at the lady. [Page Six]
• Marissa Jaret Winokur continues to blog about her "weight loss journey." She writes: "I downloaded the video of Beyoncé's 'Single Ladies' and started to learn her dance. Let me tell you, if I ever did that dance in a club I would still be a single lady!!! But what a workout! It was free and fun and it kept my son very entertained – it was like a real-life Muppet danced out of his TV and into the living room. It kept him and, sadly, my husband very amused for almost an hour." [People]
• "Hollywood stars Antonio Banderas And Melanie Griffiths' Garden Seized As Spain Cracks Down On Illegal Coastal Homes." They'll lose their 40 foot swimming pool! [Daily Mail]
• Is Antonia Kidman — sister of Nicole and TV personality in Australia — addicted to exercise? [News.com.au]
• Redmond O'Neal with be allowed to leave jail to attend his mother Farrah Fawcett's funeral. [People]
• Law And Order: SVU fans, take note: Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay have finally signed on to stay for two more seasons. [Variety]
• Amy Adams is in negotiations to star alongside Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg in boxing drama The Fighter. [Variety]
• Some kind of drama involving Kanye West's bisexual girlfriend Amber Rose and a singer named Nicki Minaj, who Amber hit on? [ONTD]
• Here's a Q&A with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, who says: "We did get word that whoever's in charge of loading [Barack Obama's] iPod requested the record and we got the record in." [Time]
• Best wishes to 92-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor, who is out of the hospital after a 6-day stay for flu-like symptoms. [AP]
• The Nutty Professor is coming to Broadway, and Jerry Lewis will direct. [AP]
• Whatshername and Whatshisname: fighting in public. [Mirror]
• Blind item! "Which former boy bander looked oh-so-strung-out over the weekend? His diet of booze and nose candy certainly isn't helping his skin-and-bones appearance." [Gatecrasher]
• "I don't watch TV comedy in the UK anymore. We've got some poor copies of Curb Your Enthusiasm, some poor copies of Entourage and some poor copies of Seinfeld. With a few exceptions the Americans seem to be ahead of the game." — Ricky Gervais. [The Sun]
• "I pointed to a spot where I told him I wanted to be buried. Michael had a meltdown right then and there when he heard this. He shrieked and bent over and said, 'No, no, no.' [He said,] 'Don't ever talk about your dying. Don't ever think about it.' I couldn't pretend to understand him. There were so many complicated signals. Did he want me to be his 'older woman' friend? He gravitated to older women. For solace? Succor? A beard? Did he want me to teach him the ropes? I never could quite figure it out." — Jane Fonda, on her relationship with Michael Jackson. [E!]
• "I wish I could say that I was inspired by him for a role, I was inspired by him because I think he was a great artist but he was not the inspiration for Willy Wonka contrary to what most people say. No no no, I never ever thought of playing Michael Jackson in a film, I think if anyone should play Michael Jackson in a film it should've been Michael Jackson. A mother and a father have lost a son, siblings have lost a brother and millions of people around the world have lost someone they love. Children have lost a father so it's obviously a very sad, sad moment." — Johnny Depp. [The Star]
• "At the moment I feel like I need to go away and figure out what I want to do and be myself for a bit. I just want to take a step back from it and not rush into stuff. I need university to give me that break. People think because I'm going to university I'm never going to act again, but it's actually me… I want to… figure out how I feel about everything first. Maybe I'll keep acting, maybe I won't. I just want to find something where I feel I have to do this. Maybe that'll happen when I read a script. It felt like that with Hermione. I want to feel like that again." — Emma Watson, who will attend Columbia University in the fall. [Elle UK, NY Daily News]

• American Idol runner-up Adam Glambert has been vague about his sexuality, but a source says:

He'll come out, officially, on the cover of the next Rolling Stone. [Page Six]

• For the love of Zeus: Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer might be back on. Here is an actual quote from a "source" o the set of The Baster: "[John] wasn't calling her or texting her. But, as she got lonelier and the shoot for her new movie wore on, she started reaching out to him, sometimes very late at night and sometimes after a few too many glasses of wine." Boozy old lonely sad tragic drunk dialing! [MSNBC]
• Jen Aniston's movie is filming near her ex-roommate's restaurant; the roomie is the one who wrote a memoir and depicted Aniston as "weight-obsessed." Unscripted dramz. [Page Six]
• Pierce Brosnan saved Uma Thurman from an out-of-control van on the set of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief! He saw the runaway vehicle "hurtling down a hill" towards Uma and jumped into the drivers' seat and slammed on the brakes. [Daily Express]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Nicole Kidman dyed her hair red and has a "poochy stomach," so clearly she must be pregnant. [Page Six]
• Kate Hudson and Alex Rodriguez have been dating for about a week but she is "already following A-Rod around." [Page Six]
• Order in the court! Al Roker got in big trouble yesterday for snapping pictures while on jury duty. [NY Daily News]
• Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman together on Broadway? Can your ovaries stand it? [NY Daily News]
• The ex-wife of Jon Cryer (aka Duckie Dale) has been arrested for felony child neglect. [TMZ]
• Is Demi Moore going to the UK without Ashton Kutcher? Well that would mean a woman acting independently of her husband! Sound the alarm! [Mirror]
• "Carla Bruni: I feel pain when people criticise my husband... and mock my low-heeled shoes." [Daily Mail]
• Will Susan Boyle bail out of Britain's Got Talent? At this point, she could get a record deal without actually finishing the program. "The producers of the show are going to do everything in their power to make sure she is there on May 30," said a source close to the show. "Whatever Susan wants between now and then, she'll have." [MSNBC Scoop]
• This report says that network bosses will not get rid of Susan Boyle, despite the fears that she's not coping well with her new-found fame. [Mirror]
• Before he joined the cast of SNL, Andy Samberg worked as a writer for the MTV Movie Awards. So the fact that he's hosting Sunday's show means he's coming full circle, in a way. He says: "It's going to be action packed. There's going to be some surprises - nothing I can divulge, but it will involve celebrities. It's going to be great. There's going to be some pre-taped stuff, some digital shorts-style stuff, and a lot of fun collaborations." [AP]
• The rules for I'm A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here state that there is to be "no bullying, nonconsensual touching, racist or homophobic language, romantic advances (at least ones 'which are not desired or returned'), assault or sex in camp." Can Heidi and Spencer abide? [Gatecrasher]
• Four words: Bridget Jones The Musical. [NY Post]
• Is Disney being cheap with Miley Cyrus? She's getting "only" $5,000 for a week of work to guest star on The Suite Life On Deck. [TMZ]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin spent Memorial Day apart: She took the kids on a boat ride in North Carolina; he was seen in an upstate New York bar with two women. [People]
• Here's video of the Gossip Girl cast talking about various things; Blake Lively has been traveled through Asia on her break from the show and is halfway to getting certified for her scuba license. Penn Badgley went with her and grew a beard, saying, "I looked like a homeless person." [E!]
• The Jonas Brothers do not fight, says Nick Jonas. "We get along very well. I think it's just because we have a different kind of respect for one another, being in the band together. We consider each other as equals. There's no picking on the youngest, it's just not that way." Boo. Zzzzz. [Mirror]
• "Her sunglasses gleam. Her skin is scrubbed, her body pneumatic, her vast white teeth dazzling in the sunshine. Meeting Kruger is, in fact, an almost entirely predictable experience. She is pleasant and pretty and punctual […] She looks extraordinary on screen, but disarmingly normal face-to-face. She is not alienatingly gorgeous […] bland, malleable beauty […]" — from a profile on Diane Kruger. [Guardian]
• Lily Allen will have a cameo appearance in the Aussie soap Neighbors. [Independent]
• Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theatre Company is thankful to Tom Stoppard, whose play Rock and Roll sold the largest number of tickets over the last 12 months. [Telegraph]
• So Mayim Bialik is the first celeb on What Not To Wear, but Stacy London and Clinton Kelly had some restrictions: the woman formerly known as Blossom doesn't wear pants or leather. [People]
• Sherri Shepherd will be taking WWE superstar wrestler Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) to the prom. No, really. [Page Six]
• Dr. Dre appears in a Dr. Pepper ad, and so do eight seconds of his new, long-awaited album, Detox. [LA Times, Reuters]
• Comedian Zach Galifianakis gets a lot of big-screen time in The Hangover, which could make him into a movie star. [WSJ]
• NBC CEO Jeff Zucker says Seinfeld would not make it on TV today, since shows have less time to mature. [CBS News]
• An Australian woman was sentenced to more than two years in prison today for stalking American Idol's Diana DeGarmo over the Internet. [AP]
• Amy Adams will star in Leap, about a very detail-oriented woman who plans to propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day — "and things sort of go off course with the help of a very handsome, roguish Irishman." Matthew Goode is her co-star. [USA Today]
• Break out the jazz flute: Will Ferrell's in talks to do an Anchorman sequel. [NY Daily News]
• Emily Mortimer has purchased a house in Amagansett, Long Island. [Daily Express]
• Chris Martin has lost his voice and Coldplay had to cancel a show in Saratoga Springs, NY. [The Sun]
• Steve Martin's banjo music CD means the actor is on the U.S. pop album chart for the first time since 1981. [Reuters]
• Lucy Gordon, the Spider-Man 3 actress who was found dead in her paris apartment last week, apparently hanged herself, two days before her 29th birthday. She had just finished filming her role as British model-actress Jane Birkin in the biopic of Serge Gainsbourg when she died. [People]
• Phil Spector will be sentenced today. [UPI]
• The Rockabye Baby! CD has hits by Nirvana, Queen, AC/DC, Bob Marley and Pink Floyd — done in lullaby version. With the lights out, it's less dangerous? [The Sun]
• Blind item: "Which former newscaster was so drunk at a recent fete that she could barely remember her own name, never mind what day it was?" [Gatecrasher]
• "There are people who take the quest for youth too far. Madonna – she's from the show-off brigade. She makes my skin crawl. I call her desperate. I know she's got a wonderful willpower and beauty regime but talk about the ‘me' generation wrapped up in one! I think as you get older, you get the face you deserve. I'm hoping that good habits will get me through." — former Dynasty actress Stephanie Beacham. [Daily Express]
• "I tried really hard not to be who I am. I tried super hard. It was a difficult journey for me to come to terms and be whole and happy with who I am." — Kelly McGillis, who says coming out as a lesbian has not been easy, either. [People]
• "It is sad that Linda Hogan continues to attempt to throw her family under the bus to gain publicity. In terms of the ongoing divorce suit, Hulk Hogan and his legal team would gladly take Linda up on her offer to submit to a legally supervised drug test and certainly Terry would do the same. We believe the results would speak for themselves and reveal that Linda's idea of a good time would definitely not be appropriate for Mass or a family restaurant." — An attorney for Hulk Hogan. [Perez]
• "The Tonight Show means everything to me. I'll have good moments and bad, but I'll keep coming at it. At 4 a.m., I do wake up sometimes and go, 'Oh my God, it's The Tonight Show. But nothing funny comes out of reverence. I'll take care of this franchise. The key is to put aside the fear and say, 'Let's just make some people laugh.'" — Conan O'Brien, who plans to host the show "Until I'm 160, because there will be medical advancements. Fallon will take over for me when I retire at 108 to travel with my family. But it won't be Jimmy, it'll be his brain in a jar." [USA Today]
• "As I look around my friends' Tweets I see banality on all sides. I think if people were able to take these 140 characters (allowed in each post) and develop a poetic Western form - a haiku of our own in which all human existence could be compressed into those 140 characters - that would be a satisfying thing, but that's not what I see when I read them." — Hugh Laurie on Twitter. [MSNBC]
• "Tattoos are sexy. I love my name on a woman; it lets me know I'm serious" — Tyrese Gibson to InStyle. [Page Six]
• "I really want to work with Madonna. It doesn't seem a likely pairing, maybe, but I just think that she is so creative and has such vision." — Adam "Glambert" Lambert. [Mirror]

• Miley Cyrus was photographed wearing a bikini in the Bahamas; the 16-year-old Tweeted a joke about her "jiggling thighs," but then went off on critics who called her fat:

"Talk all you want. I have my flaws. I'm a normal girl, there's things about my body I would change but stop with calling me f*t… People that are so okay with being so hateful disgust me and need to spend last time on a gossip website and more time a. reading your bible b. reading stories/articles about what happens when cyber abuse and name calling happens. Kids hurt themselves." The sage Disney star added: "oh and ps if your thighs don't jiggle go see a doctor. thanks" [Daily Mail]

• This report claims that Mariah Carey "threw a fit" in Cannes before the premiere of Precious because the director, Lee Daniels, was late. But an eyewitness says she was "in a great mood" at the after party and Daniels says, "I was not late." Another day, another faux drama. [Gatecrasher]
• Madonna, David Banda, Jesus Luz and Lourdes went to a Kabbalah service over the weekend, but no one seems to know if Madge and Jesus had a commitment ceremony or not. One thing is for sure: Lourdes going to the synagogue Kaballah center wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt under her white button down = awesome. [Daily Mail]
• Bradley Cooper says the rumor about he and Jennifer Aniston dating is toro caca: "My mom loves it, but unfortunately it's not true." [People]
• Now that Cameron Diaz has split from Paul Sculfor, she was seen having a lunch date with Adam Levine from Maroon 5. He's on the herpes tree, right? [Daily Mail]
• Cynthia Nixon: Engaged to longtime girlfriend Christine Marinoni. [ET]
• Naomi Campbell is dating Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin, whom this paper calls "the man who has tamed" her. Because, you know, wimminz is craycray without a good man. Here is an actual sentence from the piece: "Perhaps it is Vladislav's relaxed manner that has calmed her down. Or maybe Naomi, 38, finds the property tycoon's massive bank balance – said to be £1.5billion – a reassuring influence. One thing's for sure…she isn't attracted by his dodgy fashion sense, judging by those swim shorts – nor his 'man boobs.'" [Mirror]
• Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds and Betty White star in this hilarious Funny or Die video and frankly, Ms. White steals the show. Too bad it's basically viral marketing for The Proposal. [Funny Or Die]
• A few days ago, there was a "ruckus" at Paris Hilton's house; turns out someone prank called the heiress and told her that Tinkerbell was roadkill on Mulholland Drive. Paris freaked out; neighbors thought they heard an argument and called cops; they really want Paris out of the neighborhood. Sigh. [TMZ]
• Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk, is glad Miss California Carrie Prejean kept her crown: "What I think she does is help identify a population that we need to reach out to," he says. "The only way we could get through to some of these groups that vote against us on election day is by telling our stories. That process of education breaks down the stereotypes, the lies and the myths. I'm actually glad [Carrie] didn't lose her job." [Yahoo News via E!]
• Beyoncé is obsessed with Sex And The City and thinks of herself as a Carrie: "She was the person who held all the friendships together." [Mirror]
• "Amber Tamblyn and David Cross Make Out In Public." [Page Six]
• James Gray, who directed Two Lovers, says Gwyneth Paltrow asked him to inspect her breasts: "Gwyneth told me, 'I don't care about nudity, I'll give you everything you need. But I've had two children and I just don't think they look very good any more. Do me a favour, come into my trailer and I'll show them to you and if you think they look OK I'll do it.' So I marched in there and I told her they looked great." And! if you want to see one, nipple and all, click the link. [The Sun]
• Emily Blunt was supposed to be in Get Him To The Greek with Russell Brand, playing a "sex-crazed" pop star who beds Brand's character. But: "She got cold feet and pulled out. She's no prude but the stumbling block was that her character had far too many explicit love scenes." [Daily Express]
• Ricky Gervais wore pajamas to the white house. [The Sun]
• A reporter spoke to Chelsy Davy about her ex, Prince Harry, and writes this: "At a recent dinner the blonde South African, who dated Harry for four years, was asked why she had split with the Prince. She shot me a look of disdain and replied: 'Because he cheated on me.'" [Mirror]
• Is Fergie bisexual? She says: "Put it this way, I've experimented definitely, but I have never had a steady girlfriend." [The Sun]
• Farrah Fawcett's son, currently serving a jail sentence, was allowed to visit her on Friday — the same day Farrah's Story aired — to "say goodbye." [NY Daily News]
• There may be another cut of Farrah's Story in the works, emphasizing that her type of cancer is curable if caught early. [MSNBC]
• Michael Jackson has said he will not perform with Janet and the Jackson 5, but some concert promoter is still trying to make it happen, and if it doesn't, he'll sue MJ. [TMZ]
• Also, contrary to earlier reports, Michael Jackson does not have skin cancer. A spokesperson says the singer "doesn't have any diseases whatsoever." [Guardian]
• Ewan McGregor wants to get a pilot's license but frets that he won't be able to rack up flying hours: "What worries me about it is if I get the licence, what happens if I'm always going away? I don't like to fly when I'm making a movie, so I'm gonna be the most inconsistent pilot." [Daily Express]
• Amy Adams, who is engaged but "too busy" to plan a wedding, says she prepared for Night At The Museum 2 to be on IMAX screens by doing Pilates "as often as I could." [People]
• Rumer Willis guest stars tonight on Medium, alongside Angelica Huston; executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron was the one who gave Rumer's dad, Bruce Willis, his big break in Moonlighting. [AP]
• Oh, and Rumer Willis is a fan of Twitter: "It's a great place for starting a new era of people being less harsh or judgmental. You can really get to know people and everybody is just a human. Just because they have a different job doesn't make them any less a person than anybody else." [AP]
• A psychic who works as a producer on The Ghost Whisperer knew Jennifer Love Hewitt would never marry actor Ross McCall. Freaky! [Page Six]
• Katie "Jordan" Price and Peter Andre are holding "crisis talks" to try and saved their shattered marriage. Although she is in the Maldives and he is in Cyprus. [Daily Mail]
• this paper asks Kristin Scott Thomas: Have you kept in touch with Prince? I read that the song "Better With Time," on his last album, was an ode to you. She replies: "If it's true, it's fantastic. He came to see "The Seagull" [when Scott Thomas was acting on Broadway last year] and was completely wowed by it. A lot of people knew what we were doing and he just turned up. He is incredibly intelligent and talented - if he's written a song for me, it's just the most wonderful present. He's just brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at what he does. What's really great about getting older is that down the road you meet people you haven't seen for a long time and they're still doing something you really admire." Thomas's film debut was as a topless French socialite in Under The Cherry Moon. [NY Daily News]
• Mary Carey, a former patient of Dr. Drew Pinksy, has released a porn titled Celebrity Pornhab with Dr. Screw. [TMZ]
• Did you know that Catherine Zeta-Jones used to be engaged to Hollywood producer Jon Peters — the same guy who's been dishing about Barbra Streisand? [Daily Mail]
• Balthazar Getty and Sienna Miller are over, for real this time. Sienna is now "getting friendly" with Josh Hartnett. [Mirror]
• Jason Priestley and his wife rushed their 1-year-old daughter Ava from a Von's grocery store to the hospital on Saturday — no one knows what happened, but he kid is okay. When i was a kid i got my finger pinched by the wheel while sitting in the bottom of a Kroger shopping cart and the butcher wrapped it up with tape. True story. [TMZ]
• Larry King's 11th book is a memoir; the man has been married eight times to seven women. He's had a personal relationship with every president since Richard Nixon. He says: "If you're going to write an autobiography, you can't leave things out." [USA Today]
• There will be a Broadway musical based on First Wives Club. You're been warned. [Variety]
• William Hurt, Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave will appear in Ralph Fiennes' directorial debut, Coriolanus, which is a Shakespearean Roman tragedy but will be set in the current day as a political thriller. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Tilda Swinton will star in a film (based on a novel) called We Need to Talk About Kevin. She'll play a "smart, educated New York mother who does her best to raise a son she never wanted in the first place." [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Liam Neeson and Jennifer Connelly will star in What's Wrong With Virginia, and the film will be the directorial debut of Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk. [Variety]
• Rita Wilson has sold a script; it's a comedy called Terms Of Embarrassment, and revolves around a middle-aged couple who wind up attending the same college as their son. Although she produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Mamma Mia!, this is her first script sale. [Variety]
• Milla Jovovich will star alongside Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in the psychological thriller Stone. [Variety]
• Slumdog Millionaire child star Ayush Mahesh Khedekar got another job! He'll co-star in a Swiss film called Shyam's Secret. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• If you want to know what kind of tunes Quentin Tarantino uses as "music to kill Nazis by" in his new flick, Inglourious Basterds, click the link. [Page Six]
• Star Trek wasn't strong enough to take the top spot at the box office two weekends in a row: Angels & Demons beat the sci-fi flick with $48 mil. [NY Daily News]
• Sadie Frost is reportedly working on a tell-all book, in which she will dish about "infamous bedhopping sessions" involving ex-hubby Jude Law, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey and his wife Pearl Lowe (mother of Daisy). [Mirror]
• "It was the pills I was taking; they had my mood really fucked up. I was already depressed and with the drugs it just became a vicious cycle of depression. And as if my drug problem wasn't bad enough, when Proof died it was like, 'Son of a bitch, what I am going to do now?' I went through a lot when he died. It was the worst time in my life. It just gave me a real legitimate excuse, in my head at least, to use drugs. I didn't care if my drug problem got worse at that point so I took more pills. And the more I said fuck it and took more pills, the higher my tolerance got. The higher my tolerance got, the more I needed those pills in my body just to feel normal and not feel sick. It's a vicious cycle. I got over it all last year. I ended up coming out of all that shit that was cluttering my mind and as I came up out of the haze from the pills and everything, shit started to get clearer." — Eminem, whose album, Relapse, drops tomorrow. [Guardian]
• "It feels a little too self-loathing to me. When I go back and listen to it… it just feels like I'm pissing and moaning about whatever. It sounds like in my head I feel like I have all these things to piss and moan about. And maybe I did, maybe I didn't, I don't know, but to actually bring that kind of shit to the forefront like that, I just don't agree with it." — Eminem on his last album, Encore. [Guardian]
• "One of the main connections I had with my character was that journey that you go through when you're about to have a baby. I could relate to the people giving you so much information that you didn't need or want or ask for and also having some of it be completely outrageous." — Maya Rudolph, on her film, Away We Go, which also stars John Krasinski. [UPI]
• "Some girls were mean. They made fun of me because I dressed differently. Nuns ran my school, so I was suppressing this part of myself for a long time. It wasn't until later that I realized my true passions were music, art and performance... definitely shock art." — Lady GaGa. [Daily Mail]
• "I don't know if I'm fashion-obsessed. I think when I'm working, yes, but when I'm at home I usually wear the same thing every day. I have my straight-leg jeans and a pair of Christian Louboutins and a little jacket and a white shirt. I get sent about 15 designer bags a month. I can only imagine how much they cost. Even I wouldn't buy some of them." — Beyoncé. [Mirror]
• Speaking of age, you turn 49 next week. You're famously candid about aging, especially for an actress. "They did tell me to shut up a long time ago: 'You mustn't say you're 35, say you're 30.' I thought, 'This is ridiculous! Why should I?' In English and American cinema, people my age are immediately categorized into either campy, kind of clowny middle-aged women making them appear much older than they really do look or you're playing someone's grandmother. In Europe, we have this fantastic tradition of really enjoying women over 40, of that not being a taboo at all - people like Catherine Deneuve. Look at [Pedro] Almodóvar, the way he films women with such care and affection. The filmmakers here just love women who've been around a bit longer, they make those wrinkles look beautiful. In English or American films, they just want you to be old and shut up." — Kristin Scott Thomas. [NY Daily News]

• Could Oscar winner Jamie Foxx play Frank Sinatra in the highly anticipated upcoming biopic directed by Martin Scorsese? "Cool is colour-blind," says an industry source, "Jamie would seem to be born to the role." [DailyExpress]

• However, other industry sources say that Martin Scorsese has narrowed his finalists down to Johnny Depp and James Franco. "One issue for Johnny is his age. He's 45. But he's youthful enough to play nearly anybody," says a source. Mark Wahlberg, Harry Connick, Jr., and everyone's Mom's boyfriend, Michael Buble, have also been mentioned for the role. [PageSix]
• Bradley Cooper is denying rumors that he and Jennifer Aniston are a couple: "My mom loves it, but unfortunately it's not true." [People]
• Aniston, meanwhile, hopes to direct someday: ""I'm just waiting for the right thing. When you get to a place in your career where you're like, ‘OK, I feel like I can breathe and I can make some choices that creatively stimulate me.' I don't know if acting is always going to be it, but I love it." [ShowbizSpy]
• Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, Jr., are expecting a baby girl. "Sarah wants the room to look sophisticated, so nothing too frilly or princessy," says a source, "She's been shopping for earth tones to mix with plum or magenta accents." [Star]
• "There were certain moments when I was 18 and I'd look out of the window to see girls going to parties with their boyfriends and think, ‘How am I ever going to meet anybody?' I couldn't just go on a date, and nobody was going to ask me out. I was working too hard and not exposed to people my own age. But now I'm in such a great place and I'm happy that I've found the person I've found. I wouldn't trade it for anything."- Beyonce [Mirror]
• Blind Item: "This B-/C+ actor from a hit network drama who has had a very famous girlfriend in the past year, thinks he has a life coach that he hired last year. What he really has is a tabloid reporter who is writing a book about the show and the people on it." [BlindGossip]
• Wonder what the cast of The Facts of Life is up to? Find out here. [Yahoo]
• Amy Adams, who got engaged last year, says her work schedule has made it impossible to do any planning for her wedding. "I'm working too hard." [People]
• Good news for Dollhouse fans: the show has been renewed. [EW]
• "We were a rich kids' school but with good morals. Stefani was a straight-A student who wore her skirt to her knee, as we were supposed to, and knee-high socks," says one ofLady Gaga's former classmates, "I was so shocked when I first saw her perform as Lady Gaga. It was at a Lower East Side club, the Slipper Room, and she was in a coned bra and little hot pants. I said, "Damn, you have changed. But when we got to talking, she hadn't changed at all. She wasn't even drinking. She was still one of the nice girls. I really think her morals are still intact." [DailyMail]
• After a "blazing row" with her boyfriend, Doug Reinhardt, Paris Hilton decided to take her father to the premiere of her new reality show. [DailyMail]
• Meanwhile, MTV has bought the rights to a documentary called Paris, Not France, that aims to show that Paris Hilton isn't as ditzy as she appears.KansasCityStar]
• "I'd never want to become famous now. I feel like there's a real cockiness with young people today. Maybe it's protective, a shell. But the new celeb daughters and sons, the pop stars, are wise beyond their years. And that really irritates me."-Chloe Sevigny [TimesOnline]
• A source claims that Amy Winehouse "has knocked the drugs on the head but replaced them with alcohol." Amy is currently on St. Lucia, doing gymnastics, horseback riding, and attempting to prepare for summer festivals. [DailyExpress]
• Carrie Prejean is in trouble again for booking a Fox & Friends appearance without clearing it with the Miss California USA organization. ""We did not know about Carrie hosting Fox and Friends on May 27," says pageant director Keith Lewis, "She did not ask us if she could host the show, and once again Carrie is not in compliance with her Miss CA USA contract and obligations."[ONTD]
• Jeremy Piven is "not welcome" on Broadway after his mercury-poisoning Speed the Plow fiasco last year: "He's not welcome here," says Steven Pasquale of reasons to be pretty, "He should stay on the West Coast forever and . . . never, never return. It's sort of like the Broadway-producer Mafia . . . They certainly don't want him in town." [PageSix]
• Me, personally, if I don't write all the time, if a couple of weeks go by and I'm not writing, I feel shitty. I need to write, just as little exercises to feel like I'm doing something."-Eminem [Guardian]
• "I don't see myself as funny. I am definitely low-key, not the kind of person who is always ‘on', especially with strangers," the actor tells Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper in a new interview. "I think people approach me with certain expectations that I don't always live up to. I have never been a stand-up comedian. I can't tell a joke. Actually, I don't know any jokes."- Ben Stiller [ShowbizSpy]
• "I mean, in Harry Potter people likes the characters, but they don't want to sleep with them. And I guess it kind of adds a different intensity to it, which I still haven't got my head around."-Robert Pattinson, who clearly has never read any Potter fanfic. Yikes. [ShowbizSpy]