• 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]

If you've ever even been slightly curious about Tim Burton, that ultimate disconsolate son of suburbia who's been inviting us into his gleefully bent movie worlds for 27 years now, rest assured your interest will be sated by the show dedicated to the director at the Museum of Modern Art. Opening on November 22nd, it is an almost ludicrously complete assemblage of Burtoniana.

Just about everything one could think of has been matted and framed, up to and including the nascent director's adolescent doodles and prize-winning poster ideas. The director gave the museum curators the full run of his house and assorted papers; they turned up such early gems as a hand-written high school paper titled "Humor In America" ("Types of jokes I've heard and seen: Pollock [sic] jokes (ethnic jokes), Knock-knock jokes, Insults, Stories, One liners, Elephant jokes, Puns...") and this anti-litter poster, which adorned garbage collection trucks in Burton's native Burbank, California, after he won a Keep Burbank Beautiful competition.

A lot of the drawings on display date from the time Burton spent working at Disney, just after attending CalArts. Apparently, while animating such projects as The Fox And The Hound, Burton found he needed a less treacly creative outlet, and badly: most of the sketches from this period betray a mordant sense of humor and the same dark view of humankind that he would later explore in his feature films. Strangely, these images whipsaw between the grim and the twee. Men and women are portrayed as gothic grotesques, or the drawings hinge on kind of sweet little visual puns: a stringy-haired, football-headed woman tugging a string between both ears gets the caption MENTAL FLOSS, for example. Another drawing features two bunny rabbits with baskets of eggs, one saying to the other, "We've been telling the kids the story of Christ all these years...Well, I think they're old enough now to know what Easter's really all about."

The gallery is crammed with material. (Evidently the excavations of Burton's home proved fruitful.) In addition to the sketches and the high school coursework, there are sculptures — seven of which, in the museum courtyard, Burton made specially for the show — movie props, costumes, posters, Polaroids, and assorted notes such as would please the most dedicated connoisseur of arcana. In one corner, Burton's 1983 adaptation of Hansel and Gretel — screened by the Disney channel exactly once — plays. In it, a Japanese brother and sister outsmart a wicked witch with candy cane rhinoplasty who lives in a house that looks like a quivering, pink tongue. There's also a gingerbread man character who talks to Hansel even as he eats him up. "If you think I'm tasty, and you want my body, come on take another bite," taunts the pastry, to the rhythm of "If You Think I'm Sexy."

Visitors enter the exhibit through an immense mouth that hangs, red carpet-tongue extended; in the black-and-white striped corridor behind, Burton's animated shorts play on flat screens. (At the other end, presumably somewhere in the gallery's stomach, is a room lit by UV light, where Burton's blacklight paintings on velvet are displayed.) It is a curatorial choice that seems to cleave to the crowd-pleasing side of things. It's anyone's guess why the curators thought Burton's work needed such a loud proclamation of its difference from typical museum fare as a jagged-tooth orifice; it looks like the sort of thing one might encounter at an amusement park ride.

The man himself described the process of having his work turned out for display as "surreal" and "an out-of-body experience." He remembered to thank the exhibition sponsor, the ridiculously renamed SyFy — "I'm a sci-fi kinda guy" — only at the very last second.

The exhibit includes a life-sized statue of Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands, as well as this sketch of the character.

Artifacts from Beetlejuice include this sculpture, a yellowed copy of The Afterlife newspaper ("ECTOPLASM LEAK AT PLANT NUMBER 9" "EXORCISM RATE SOARS"), and Burton's own hand-written notes about the project, which compare it to that other well-known "extreme four character conflict," Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. In the nearby Mars Attacks section, there are latex severed heads and a gigantic painting of Martian anatomy. Sweeney Todd has a wooden box and an engraved set of cutthroat razors.

Batman is represented by various latex cowls, and Batman Returns merits the inclusion of Michelle Pfeiffer's whipstitched catsuit.

In a class composition Burton completed on September 27, 1974, at the age of 16, he imbued an ordinary trip to the doctor for a checkup and a tetanus shot with a sense of heavy foreboding. "There was a ghoulish smile on his face," wrote Burton, "like he enjoyed sticking the needle in my arm."

Tim Burton has stuck the needle in the moviegoing public's arm for nearly 30 years — by the looks of this show, thoroughly enjoying himself in the process. Long may he continue.

Tim Burton At MoMA [MoMA]

• The stylist who allegedly walked out on Mark Fast's show says it wasn't because the models were too "fat" - but because they were too fat to walk right! "The walk is very important,'' she explains. [Mirror]

• The stylist in question is reportedly Erika Kurihara, fashion editor at hipper-than-thou London style mag i-D. [Frockwriter]
• "Another studio insider, Amanda May, has since tweeted that the names of the three models in question are Hayley, Laura and Gwyneth and that the company is 'so happy we stuck to our guns about the casting.'" [Frockwriter]
• Says Fast's creative director, "The decision to use fuller girls is something we have been talking about. There's an idea that only thin and slender women are able to wear Mark's dresses and he wanted to combat that. We wanted women to know they didn't have to be a size zero to wear a Mark Fast dress - curvier women can look even better in them." [Daily Mail]
• Burberry's multi-pronged approach for getting down with the kids: broadcasting their fashion week show online; Facebook; Twitter; and social media site, "Art of the Trench," which "will encourage customers and fans of the brand to upload pictures of themselves sporting a classic Burberry trenchcoat." [Racked]
• Wait, what? Apparently Clint Eastwood owns a clothing line, Tehama, and it's been bought by Nacabi Inc. [WWD]
• Kelly Cutrone: "I'm, like, the patron saint of interns. I made interning famous." Well, maybe Venerable. [New York]
• The ever-modest Tim Gunn on being named a "Top 5 Silver Fox": "Well, that's very flattering but I think someone is a little cuckoo." [MediaBistro]
• And who's the Loaded Gunn's favorite superhero? Batman, of course - "the most debonair of superheroes." [USAToday]
• A Philip Lim VIP show: An intern covered in vom and a careening model. Like a PhiDelt party, plus pleating. [Racked]
• Yoko Ono's fashion show for threeASFOUR is exactly as you'd imagine a runway show by Yoko Ono. Check it. [FashionWeekDaily]
• And Rick Owens' furniture line is exactly as you'd imagine a furniture line by the punky designer. "He calls the antlers on his angular plywood chairs "brutalist crowns," and said he loves the way their elegance contrasts with the chairs' crude wooden shapes. Plywood is one of his all-time favorite materials, and a staple, "the washed black leather," he said, of his furniture collections." [WWD]
• Perhaps inevitably, Yasmin LeBon has designed a fashion line, for Sir Philip Green's Wallis chain. It's allegedly very glam, and very good. No word on whether the iconic "Rio" video was an influence. [WWD]
• Louis Vuitton hits a snag in its epic fight to protect its TM: they've lost a fight to get Google and other search engines to stop using their name. [Telegraph]
• DeBeers - which has been linked to blood diamond mining - is talking about the role of diamond mining and climate control. Says the director: "We are making sure that we do not waste any water and that we have stepped up our programs." [WWD]
• Donatella Versace regards the recession as an "opportunity." Says the tanned titan vaguely, "The crisis is a big opportunity — it offers more stimulus for creativity ... more ideas come about." [Reuters]
• In case you were wondering what Lady Gaga considers the best costume for the Vogue offices? Here's Grace Coddington: "She was wearing Philip Treacy's hat with Vogue written on it when she came to see Anna, and when she came to see me the next day she had sprayed her hair red." [Fashionista]
• In their continuing desperation to change their staid image, the Gap is collaborating with awesome illustrator Garance Dore on a line of tees. [ElleUK]
• Twiggy is the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Quoth the too-nice-for-ANTM super, "It's hysterical, and incredibly flattering. I think when you're living a life you don't mark down "this is this, and in 40 years' time I'm going to be that", you just live your life." [Telegraph]
• If there's one name you take away from London's Fashion Week, people, make it Christopher Kane. He is hottt. [NYTimes]
• And his TopShop line is, not shockingly, flying off the shelves - particularly the "crocodile dress." [Racked]
• Victoria Beckham and the other WAGs (for Yanks, that's "wives and girlfriends" of football stars; think, for fashion week purposes, Kim and Nene) have hit fashion week in full force, [ElleUK]

• Jennifer Lopez kicked off her 40th birthday on the set of her new film at midnight last night with champagne and a giant chocolate cake...that had a picture of herself on it. J-Lo: Team Cake! Who knew? [USWeekly]

• LeAnn Rimes and her husband, Dean Sheremet, are officially separated, but the relationship isn't over quite yet: ""Le and Dean have been separated for quite some time now, but they're continuing to try and work through their relationship," says a source. [People]
• "I think I'm pretty sexy in it. The movie is SO sexy! You better put on your sexy shoes for this movie!"-Megan Fox, on her sexy role in the sexy movie, Jennifer's Body, which I'm sure will be filled with SexyFace, if nothing else. [USWeekly]</li.
• Amy Winehouse had to miss her grandmother's funeral in order to appear in court, where she was dismissed of assault charges. [DailyExpress]
• Is John Travolta planning on leaving the Church of Scientology? Author Rick Ross thinks so: "There have been strong rumours coming out of Scientology that John Travolta is disappointed that the religion was not able to help his son more," Ross says, "It's led him to question his faith." [DailyMail]
• Robert Pattinson is reportedly a bit of a jerk on the set: "I don't know what the guy's problem is," says a source, "He goes from his trailer to the shoot and completely ignores all the fans who have been waiting around to see him. It's so obnoxious." Uh, maybe because the fans are crazy and want him to bite their necks? [ShowbizSpy]
• Kirstie Alley was so obsessed with Spock when she was younger that she used to "sleep with her Vulcan ears." [PageSix]
• "Someone said to me that guys are trying to copy my hairstyle, but to be honest, this hairstyle is derived from laziness. I wake up and go - that's it. There's no product in it, nothing. If you really want your hair to look good, just don't wash it for a day. That's my secret." [ShowbizSpy]
• Lindsay Lohan showed up at a Hollywood milkshake shop at 1:30 in the morning in order to promote her own milkshake. Oh, dear. [PageSix]
• Jon Gosselin thinks the world wants to watch him in his own reality show: ""Jon has a lot of things going on now with his career," says a source, "Of course his main concern is his children, but he is focusing on his private and his professional life. He is looking into some major international endorsement deals and it looks like he is going to have his own show." [E!]
• Blind Item:"This Blind comes from a reader who told us about the time they got to hang out last summer with a certain Reality TV hottie. Our reader says the guy was lots of fun, and very cute and liked to party! They did say that they stopped hanging out with him when they realized how racist he was. According to the reader, he said the ‘N' word all the time and was constantly making racist jokes. His entourage would laugh and encourage him. Not so classy after all. This confirms from another source what we've already heard before about this guy. Not Spencer Pratt." [BlindGossip]
• Gary Oldman let it slip at Comic Con that the next Batman film should hit theaters in 2011: ""We start filming the next 'Batman' next year, which means it won't come out for another two years," Oldman said, "but you didn't hear that from me." [Reuters]
• Ashton Kutcher, the executive producer of Mischa Barton's new show, The Beautiful Life, says that Barton is "doing great." [Reuters]
• Paris Hilton claims that she was the inspiration behind Michael Jackson naming his own daughter Paris: "So I grew up knowing Michael very well and when he had his daughter, he always loved the name Paris and grew up being an uncle to me," Hilton says, "So he asked my mom if it was okay and, of course, she said yes." [TheSun]
• Nadya Suleman has signed a deal that will pay each of her 14 children $250 a day for appearing in their own reality show. Because it worked out soooooo well for Jon and Kate! [Yahoo]
• Ooh- here's a clip of Peter Jackson discussing "The Hobbit" at Comic Con. [EW]
• "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 on Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. [Yahoo]
• Shia LaBeouf is breaking all kinds of laws, riding around on his scooter without a helmet. At least he's not talking about his mom again? [TMZ]

Movies based on comic book heroes are more popular than ever, and Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight earning him a Golden Globe nod. But before Thor — starring Daniel Craig — gets the green light, shouldn't we have one kick-ass superheroine?

You may have hated Halle Berry as Catwoman (and Storm), or Kirsten Dunst as Mary-Jane, but, writes Pitts, "The actress is only as good as her material, and the material is seriously lacking." Pitts outlines the problems the major directors — Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Christopher Nolan — have with including women in superhero/comic book flicks. She says of Singer: "He gave the ladies powers in the X-Men series, he just forgot the personalities. He turned the sexy, sassy southern belle Rogue into a mopey teenager, the diabolical Mystique into a naked mute, and the strong, regal storm into Halle Berry. If you’re going to take liberties with classic characters, why would you choose to make them less interesting?" As for Raimi, Pitts claims he "desexifed" Mary-Jane Watson.

So basically, right now, it's all up to Nolan, who should seriously think about reimagining Catwoman. Writes Pitts:

If God is listening and Christopher Nolan does make a third movie within the next few years, then our friend Batman’s gonna need a new love interest, it would be great to have one that doesn’t need to be rescued all of the time (although once is fine). And for all of you who think that miss Selina Kyle is too obvious a character to include, well, so was The Joker and look how that turned out.

Why the Comic-Book Movie Industry Needs a Female Superhero [Rope Of Silicon]

Earlier: Lasso Of Truth
It's Hard Out There For A Heroine
What Does Buffy Have To Do With Baghdad? An NPR Reporter Explains
Women And Cartoons: Beyond Breast Size
Hello, Kitty

• Geek girls out there, prepare to wet yourselves: Jon Hamm is a self-proclaimed sci-fi, video game and comic book nerd. The Observer caught up with Jon outside the premiere of The Day The Earth Stood Still and witnessed this adorable exchange between Hamm and his girlfriend, Kissing Jessica Stein's Jennifer Westfeldt: "When Mr. Hamm was asked if he still does anything geeky, his girlfriend, Jennifer Westfeldt, rolled her eyes and affectionately nodded yes. 'Oh yeah, I'm a big comic book guy and—' 'Video games, video games, video games!' exclaimed Ms. Westfedt." You can now commence with picturing yourself and Jon Hamm Wii-ing into the sunset. [Observer]
• More sci-fi news! Sigourney Weaver will reprise her role as Ellen Ripley in a new, Alien-related film. "There's definitely uncharted territory for Ripley. Both Ridley Scott and I feel a kind of commitment to that woman. He's as much responsible for who she is as I am." Jon Hamm will be thrilled! [Daily Express]

• People has the first photos of Ricky Martin's 4-month-old twin boys, Valentino and Matteo! Like Alex K. before him, Ricky took the surrogacy route. "Adoption was one option, but it's complicated and can take a long time. Surrogacy was an intriguing and faster option. I thought, 'I'm going to jump into this with no fear." [People]
• A retired Chilean cardinal has denounced Madonna for her sluttish ways. "This woman comes here and in an incredibly shameless manner, she provokes a crazy enthusiasm, an enthusiasm of lust, lustful thoughts, impure thoughts," said Cardinal Jorge Medina during a mass honoring former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Madonna: officially worse than Pinochet, maybe better than Hitler. [AP]
• More proof that crack is wack! Bobby Brown has this to say of his druggie days: "I had a desk like Scarface's in my room, and I kept [cocaine] piled up on it. Every time I walked past my desk, I'd make a line of coke from one end to the other. I'd take a straw and snort a line the same way Scarface did it in the movie. You couldn't tell me nothing. I felt like I was Tony Montana! The world was mine!" [Perez]
• Samuel L. Jackson's reaction to Los Angeles AA meetings? No, no, no. The star has been clean for 18 years, but he can't go to Hollywood area meetings because ""It's just too weird. You hear guys saying stuff like, 'I've been hitting the red wine too heavy and I need to stop, but I want to keep smoking reefer (cannabis) and doing cocaine.'" Maybe that's where Bobby B. is getting help! [Daily Express]
• Holly Montag has come to terms with her sister's marriage to the fleshbeard svengali. ""I was initially a little hurt not being able to be a part of it. But it's her choice and it's a special thing between those two. I support anything Heidi wants to do. I just want her to be happy and she seems sublimely happy." [People]
• Deeply shocking news from Nicole Kidman about new baby Sunday Rose. "She loves puppets!" Noooooooo! Not puppets! [People ]
• Want more asinine information about celeb spawn? Pete Wentz had this to say about baby Bronx. "Every time I see my son, it looks like he's landing on the moon and discovering new rocks and stuff. I mean, every time he looks at his hand, it's like he's Christopher Columbus making it across the ocean. It's pretty awesome." [People]
• Khloe Kardashian has posed nekkid for one of those "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" PETA ads. But she's not in her skivvies on billboards to compete with Playboy posing sister Kim. No, not at all! [PETA]
• Former American Idol Fantasia had to put her $1.1 million Charlotte, North Carolina house up for auction to compensate a company that loaned her money to pay taxes in 2006. But don't cry for Fantasia, according to the AP, "The soul singer has a $529,000 home a couple miles from the one scheduled for sale in south Charlotte." This thing makes literally no sense. [AP]
• Director Christopher Nolan is already sketching out ideas for a third Christian Bale-helmed Batman Movie. However, Nolan says, "I wouldn't want to do one if it weren't going to be as good as the first or second. That's not respectful to the fans." [Mirror]
• Speaking of Christian Bale, Click here to see the sexy superhero in the trailer for Terminator: Salvation. Question: is anyone else sick of Christian's breathy "serious action hero" voice? [The Life FIles]
• Kate Winslet is pretty much over people speculating over whether photos of her have been airbrushed. "It’s just one of those silly, crazy things that I’ve learnt to have to deal with.” [Mirror]
• Italian state TV cut the gay sex scene out of a broadcast of Brokeback Mountain, and gay activists are protesting because they feel a similar scene involving heterosexual sex would not have been cut. "I don't believe it was an oversight, I believe it was preventive censorship," says Vladimir Luxuria, a gay rights advocate."[cutting those scenes is] like showing the Mona Lisa without its head." [AP via Yahoo News]
• Jim Carrey says he's a pushover when it comes to girlfriend Jenny McCarthy's son, Evan. Apparently he says yes to "most things" involving the wee chappie. [People]
• Aw, the Jolie-Pitt brood was making gingerbread houses last night. But it must be asked: are they eco-friendly houses? [People]
• Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild was airlifted to safety in Cape Town, South Africa, after he injured his shoulder while trekking in the antarctic. "It's really good to be back in a normal place…Now I just want to get back to my family ... and have my shoulder sorted out," Grylls said late yesterday. Feel better Bear! [People]
• Of the Today show glib-gate, when he told Matt Lauer that psychology was a "pseudo science" Tom Cruise says, "All I want is to help people. I could have communicated it in a way that was better, no question." [Reuters]
• Desperate Housewives fans, today is your day! The show has just been renewed for 2 more seasons. [E! Online]
• Aw, Enrique Iglesias is endearingly self-aware and sort of dirty! "My target audience is females between the ages of 70 and 85…[they] usually like to give me their knickers in person." [Mirror]

[Los Angeles, December 4. Image via x17]

The New Republic:

Nolan weaves his genre obligations into this dark vision as seamlessly as one could reasonably hope. He still has some trouble establishing the geography of his action sequences and his fight scenes tend to be a bit muddled, but he nonetheless stages a number of memorable set pieces: a winged swoop over a slumbering metropolis, shot on ultra-high-definition IMAX film; a frenetic car (actually, truck) chase that culminates in the end-over-end somersaulting of an 18-wheeler. Nolan wisely minimizes the use of CGI (even when the semi is flipped), and the difference is palpable.

The director's most remarkable special effect, however, is Heath Ledger's Joker. It's a difficult performance to rate on any conventional scale, a whirlwind of energy and effects, tics and tells, Brando and Hopkins and Nicholson thrown in a blender set to "puree" and then dynamited mid-spin. To call it compelling would be a criminal understatement, and yet it seems less the creation of a living self than the annihilation of one, an exercise in the center not holding. Even without Ledger's death, this would be a deeply discomfiting performance; as it is, it's hard not to view it as sign or symptom of the subsequent tragedy.

NPR:

Ledger's Joker is every bit as disturbing as he is disturbed — tongue-flickingly reptilian, and yet disarmingly common-sensical in the way he relies on the dark side of human nature to aid him in wreaking havoc. He uses crowd psychology to endanger crowds, subverts legal niceties (wait till you see what he does with that one phone call he's allowed when arrested), and greets the perpetually self-doubting Batman as a fellow damaged soul. It's a heart-stoppingly unpredictable performance, haunted by the audience's knowledge of Ledger's death earlier this year, and rendering even darker what has to be as dark a superhero fantasy as Hollywood's likely to produce any time soon.

The A.V. Club:

Nolan lets the film's spectacular action scenes seem like the natural consequences of the conflicts between characters, conflicts that build until Gotham becomes less a setting than a stage for an operatic conflict between tortured good and contented chaos. As strong as The Dark Knight's setpieces are—and they're all pulsing showstoppers of a kind not seen in Batman Begins—the real tension comes from Nolan's willingness to let that battle's ultimate outcome remain in doubt even as the credits roll. The film's capes and cowls suggest one genre, but it's a metropolis-sized tragedy at heart.

Washington Post:

This is not because Heath Ledger died in January, though that event does perhaps add some otherwise unearned melancholy to the film. It's because Ledger's performance is so intense and so lasting; it's because despite the insane mask, it's a subtle, nuanced piece of acting so powerful it banishes all memories of the handsome Aussie behind it. The makeup seems to have liberated him: He's supple of body, expressive with only his eyes, and his voice has undulations of irony and mockery and psychopathology to it. He's an essay — in a way he's never before been, playing straight-faced characters — in pure charisma.

The New Yorker:

It’s a workable dramatic conflict, but only half the team can act it. Christian Bale has been effective in some films, but he’s a placid Bruce Wayne, a swank gent in Armani suits, with every hair in place. He’s more urgent as Batman, but he delivers all his lines in a hoarse voice, with an unvarying inflection. It’s a dogged but uninteresting performance, upstaged by the great Ledger, who shambles and slides into a room, bending his knees and twisting his neck and suddenly surging into someone’s face like a deep-sea creature coming up for air. Ledger has a fright wig of ragged hair; thick, running gobs of white makeup; scarlet lips; and dark-shadowed eyes. He’s part freaky clown, part Alice Cooper the morning after, and all actor. He’s mesmerizing in every scene. His voice is not sludgy and slow, as it was in “Brokeback Mountain.” It’s a little higher and faster, but with odd, devastating pauses and saturnine shades of mockery. At times, I was reminded of Marlon Brando at his most feline and insinuating. When Ledger wields a knife, he is thoroughly terrifying (do not, despite the PG-13 rating, bring the children), and, as you’re watching him, you can’t help wondering—in a response that admittedly lies outside film criticism—how badly he messed himself up in order to play the role this way. His performance is a heroic, unsettling final act: this young actor looked into the abyss.

New York:

Oh, the verbiage probably wouldn’t matter if those truck crashes were any fun, but the tumult is spectacularly incoherent. Nolan appears to have no clue how to stage or shoot action. He got away with the chopped-up fights in Batman Begins because his hero was a barely glimpsed ninja, coming at villains from all angles in stroboscopic flashes. There are more variables here, which means more opportunities to say “What the f—- just happened?” I defy you to make spatial sense of the early scene in which Batman battles faux Batmen, gangsters, and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy in a cameo that comes to nothing). If you can, move on to Level 2, diagramming the “Bat-tank versus Joker-truck versus cop car” chase. Then, finally, take the Ultimate Challenge: following the climax with Batman, the Joker, more faux Batmen, decoy hostages dressed as clowns, a SWAT team, and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius with some kind of sonar monitoring gizmo that tracks all the parties on video screens. Actually, Freeman looks like he knows what’s going on. Maybe the sequence plays well in sonar.

Slate:

There's an undeniable sense of one-upmanship at work in this sleek, luxurious-looking production—a subtext of "Oh yeah? Top this." But for all The Dark Knight's occasionally bombastic excess, it sort of does top them all, and not only in star power and sheer number of things blown up. Nolan turns the Manichean morality of comic books—pure good vs. pure evil—into a bleak post-9/11 allegory about how terror (and, make no mistake, Heath Ledger's Joker is a terrorist) breaks down those reassuring moral categories.

Globe And Mail:

Though none of the other actors comes close to matching Ledger's hideous lustre, everything in The Dark Knight is a bit more over the top than in Batman Begins. The Batman character seems to have been freshly dipped in darkness, with a new, more flexible outfit, and his raspy Batman voice sounds like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Darth Vader. His alter ego, Bruce Wayne, is even more of a smug jerk, a smooth-as-shellac billionaire who travels with a chain of fashion models on his arm.

As an actor, Bale's a bit of a stick, but at least he's constantly intense. Ditto for Eckhart as Harvey Dent, Wayne's out-of-the-closet crime fighter, his rival for the assistant district attorney Rachel Dawes. Maggie Gyllenhaal, who takes over the role of Rachel from the too perky Katie Holmes, brings welcome emotional gravity to the part, but she's far too mumsy to be convincing as the romantic ideal of both of Gotham City's most eligible hunks.

Salon:

There's no dramatic arc in "The Dark Knight" — only a series of speed bumps. The moments in the movie that should be the most dramatic are glanced over so quickly that we barely have time to register what has happened. I'm not sure the actors know what's going on, either. Bale was a tolerable Batman the first time around, even though he ultimately failed to dissolve the distance between us and that mask. Here, he tries to build on that earlier performance. In "The Dark Knight," Batman is misunderstood and mistrusted by the people of Gotham, who see him as a vigilante and not a hero who strives to protect them. Bale is slightly better as Bruce Wayne — he's such a good actor that he's capable of conveying the deepest anguish in a single, flashing blink. But his Batman, lumbering through the movie in a suit that's supposed to be lighter than previous incarnations, is a flat, dull creature, with no new tricks up his gauntlets: Playing this moody superhero, Bale has run out of shades of gray to work with.

USA Today:

The Joker is more than wild.

It's a tribute to the power of Heath Ledger's transcendent performance in The Dark Knight (* * * * out of four) that we can watch him, transfixed and deeply unsettled by the character's creepiness, laugh at his comic menace, and still manage to block out thoughts of the actor's tragic and untimely death. This is a career-making performance if ever there was one. Too bad it was a career-ending one as well.

The New York Times:

The new Batman movie isn’t a radical overhaul like its predecessor, which is to be expected of a film with a large price tag (well north of $100 million) and major studio expectations (worldwide domination or bust). Instead, like other filmmakers who’ve successfully reworked genre staples, Mr. Nolan has found a way to make Batman relevant to his time — meaning, to ours — investing him with shadows that remind you of the character’s troubled beginning but without lingering mustiness. That’s nothing new, but what is surprising, actually startling, is that in “The Dark Knight,” which picks up the story after the first film ends, Mr. Nolan has turned Batman (again played by the sturdy, stoic Mr. Bale) into a villain’s sidekick.

Los Angeles Times:

Because these kinds of movies are only as strong as their villains, a good part of the credit for the potency of "The Dark Knight" has to go to the unusual and unusually creepy and sadistic way the Joker was conceptualized by the Nolans and David S. Goyer (who has a story credit) and played by Ledger in what turned out to be his last completed screen role. The Joker's is a different kind of evil than we're used to, one that is harder for both Batman and the audience to dismiss than what Jack Nicholson did with the part nearly two decades ago.

'Dark Knight' Speed Towards Records: Midnight Shows Broke 'Star Wars: Sith' Numbers; More & More Screens Being Added [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

'The Dark Knight' opens today, nationwide.

The trouble with last night's party at the Met, if I may speak frankly, is that it was a little like being sucked into a sequined wind tunnel. It started with a little breeziness before the superhero displays—Oh, hey, Narciso and Claire! Hi Liya! Alessandra! Isaac! Diane! Tom!—and then, suddenly, people seemed to be flying around the room....But I thought Anna Wintour looked great in her Chanel dress—fantastical fashion....And though I didn't see Victoria Beckham until later, in pictures, her lace Armani coat dress was definitely a look—Hollywood grandeur with a wink. Zac Posen and his date Kate Mara, in outfits painfully inspired by Superman, get the try-harder award. I'll be interested to know who you all thought looked super—and not.

One could probably read as many metaphors about the transformative power of fashion in the silver-sequined, elaborately padded Chanel gown that Anna Wintour wore to the Costume Institute gala on Monday night as one could in Superman's cape, which happened to be hanging in a gallery down the hall. The floor-length dress had curiously curling crescents attached at the hips and the shoulders, giving Ms. Wintour, the Vogue editor and overseer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual Party of the Year, the fuller-bodied appearance of Botticelli's Venus on her clamshell. She seemed to be broadcasting a message of total earthly control. (Or it could have been that all the Vogue assistants standing along the way to Ms. Wintour's receiving line had been strictly instructed not to speak to anyone, not even to people they recognized, or that so many guests were unusually prompt.) With this year's gala titled "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy," Ms. Wintour pointed out that she was Storm, the "X-Men" character. "I control the weather," she said.

Blake Lively wore black gloves and a snug black Ralph Lauren gown involving feathers. She said that her favorite superhero was "Spider-Man. Cause he's awesome! He gets to swing around, and, I don't know....I've always seen pictures growing up, being a teenager, and thought, 'I'd love to go to that, a night just to dress up in ball gowns.' And here I am!"...Vogue editor and hostess Anna Wintour was the first to arrive, at 6:33 p.m., wearing a Chanel gown adorned with what appeared to be seahorse tails and accompanied by daughter Bee Shaffer, who required two men, including the formidable Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, to carry the train of her voluminous blue Nina Ricci dress up the stairs....Designer Phillip Lim came with teenage model-of-the-moment Chanel Iman,..."I've been here last year, and this is her first time here, so she's the newbie...it's a lot of pressure."

It was a silver moment for Julia Roberts, wearing a swoop-neck dress by Giorgio Armani, who underwrote the event. Her co-chairs were Clooney and Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, who wore a Superwoman creation by Chanel with snakes of padding at shoulders and thighs. Fashion's superheroes included Donatella Versace, who dressed Janet Jackson in a cut-away back dress, Karl Lagerfeld, wearing a sparkling silver jacket while he dressed Kate Bosworth in a multicolored patchwork of vintage Chanel; and Valentino, who was with the model Claudia Schiffer wearing a frilled blue dress from the retired designer's last collection....The cast of the newly revived "Hair" sang "The Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sun Shine In." David Bowie, sitting with his wife, Iman, looked pained at this new rendition of the counterculture musical.

[George] Clooney joked that he had wanted to dress as Batman, but the costume was already in the exhibition, so he settled for a midnight blue Giorgio Armani tuxedo. Anna Wintour, shimmering in silver cyber-couture, by Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, declared: "I stopped the rain"....The tennis star Venus Williams and American Vogue's editor-at-large, André Leon Talley, shared a red satin, super-cape for two that was custom-made by Chanel. The actress Scarlett Johansson wore a Dolce & Gabbana gown with a large diamond solitaire which announced her engagement to the actor, Ryan Reynolds. The designer Marc Jacobs confessed to wearing Superman underwear beneath his tuxedo....The "Superheroes" exhibition opens with a mirrored illusion of Clark Kent morphing into Superman and features radical catwalk creations by some of the world's top designers and comic book costumes from Hollywood blockbusters such as Spiderman and Batman.

It's the Oscars of the fashion industry, but if the looks on parade at Monday's Costume Institute gala in New York were anything to go by, that industry is in a sorry state of disarray. Hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour (in a Starlight Express moment, perhaps taking the superhero theme somewhat literally) and Giorgio Armani (looking as buff, relaxed and fashionably weathered as ever) the normally ultra-glamorous event fell flat as the proverbial pancake, where the frocks were concerned at least....how about Katie Holmes, who's clearly sharing a sunbed with her new best friend, Victoria Beckham? Someone really ought to have warned her that tomato red and orange is a challenging colour combination and that her razor-sharp bob is more Playmobil nurse than intergalactic heroine. And what of the aforementioned Mrs Beckham? Even by this particular fashion car crash's standards, her dress was disastrous. Nancy Reagan circa 1985, anyone? That cool-as-a-cucumber chignon, meanwhile, isn't kidding anyone. A Hitchcock heroine the artist formerly known as Posh most certainly is not.

Armani dressed Clooney and Roberts. "He asked me very sweetly if I'd be his date," Roberts, wearing a platinum Giorgio Armani Privé gown, said about the designer, who also outfitted other A-list celebrities, including Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Beyoncé Knowles and John Mayer....Clooney was taking it all in stride. "I get to have a drink. It's easy for me," he said. As for the superhero theme, he said he had a favorite when he was a kid: "Well, you know, I loved one that no one ever talks about, the Green Hornet. He was really cool." [Thandie] Newton, in a short dress in black lace with a long cape, said, "I like this because it's one look — and two looks. She made up her own superhero inspiration. "I'm Love Woman," she said. "I wanted to do a bit of skin."

"I think the secret of a good exhibition is when it happens very easily, which is what happened here," Anna Wintour told us of the Metropolitan Museum's Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy installation. We had many more looks in the exhibition than we could use, so [the idea] is obviously, once you start to look, really out there. It was largely Andrew [Bolton, the exhibition curator]'s vision that brought it all together but we've been very fortunate that at the same time," she added. "All these movies are coming out and the Olympics are coming up, so it all sort of came together."

Holy Stars, Batman! It was a celeb-studded affair at the Metropolitan Museum on Monday night as the world's fashion elite and Hollywood heavyweights met on Fifth Ave. to kick off the Costume Institute's latest exhibit, "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy." And while the night's theme celebrated cat suits and unitards, the red carpet featured far more glam getups: Co-hosts Julia Roberts and George Clooney giggled together as they strolled in wearing Giorgio Armani. "I wore the dress because he made it for me," said Roberts, who gave the designer, who sponsored the evening with Vogue magazine, a hug....Fashion darling Zac Posen took the theme seriously, rocking out Clark Kent-worthy spectacles and revealing his own secret identity. "I worked here as an intern for three years," he said. "I got paid $60 to do the event."