[Los Angeles, May 4. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

A relative shortage of marriageable women has, the Times of London explains, given prospective brides a lot of bargaining power with suitors, and indoor plumbing has become a common pre-nuptial requirement. It's a program the local government has spearheaded as a means of reducing disease, and a comprehensive radio, print and television campaign has spread the message (literally, "If you don't have a proper lavatory in your house, don't even think about marrying my daughter") to good effect. Says one father quoted in the article, "Our daughter will be married only to a family that has a toilet at home ... [if need be] we will hold out for the construction of a new toilet."

Plumbing is a high priority for women, who find a lack of bathrooms more problematic than do men. Says one official, "I come from a village and I know that if there is no sugarcane or wheat in the fields women may have to walk very far to find privacy. It's inconvenient, undignified and, at night, it's not safe."

Many men are obliging, but apparently there are holdouts. Says another official, "People do not want to go to the toilet in the home where they cook food. And many old people enjoy the opportunity to go for a walk. It gives them the opportunity to check on their fields."

The article doesn't detail whether there will be any crackdown on public, ahem, facility use as plumbing becomes more common - surely old folks could still "check on their fields" if the spirit moved them? One wonders if, as conditions improve and with them, health and water supplies, the government will use the notion of marital leverage to impose other innovations; apparently the progress has been considerable, and the ratio of men to women should stay unbalanced for some time at least. For now, one supposes the site of a cistern in the yard must be a dead giveaway to gossipy neighbors that someone has marriage on the mind.

Show Us Your Loo Before You Woo, Indian Men Are Told [Times of London]

[Paris, January 19. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Berlin, Germany; January 16. Image via Getty]

• Russell Crowe has gone a bit mad on the set of Nottingham, throwing the film into a state of chaos. The star is demanding re-writes and reportedly trying to get director Ridley Scott fired. [PageSix]

• Yikes: Crowe's weight is also becoming a problem, leading Sienna Miller to leave the film entirely. The love scenes between the two were apparently "a mess. Russell never lost the weight he put on for 'Body of Evidence' - and so the love scenes between him and Sienna would have been laughable. He's so old and fat and she's so young and gorgeous. It's just . . . gross." [PageSix]
• Drew Barrymore isn't too thrilled about today's dating world: "When I first started dating, it was like the Pony Express. We had to be frickin' patient. And now everything is instantaneous. It's too much! Where is old-fashioned romance and a little bit of mystery?" She then went off to give her 18,982th interview entitled, "Drew In Love!" wherein she spilled all of her secrets about the 18,982th "love of her life."[PageSix]
• Meanwhile, Drew's BFF Cameron Diaz may be getting married to her boyfriend, Paul Sculfor: "Cameron and Paul are having a wonderful time and don't want to spoil it by pushing things, but they have used the m-word occasionally," says a source, "They're playing house in a serious way - both openly admit marriage scares them but they are very much in love and the subject has come up."[ShowbizSpy]
• The original Girls Next Door are no more: Bridget Marquardt is finally leaving the Playboy Mansion. ""It's unrelated to Holly and Kendra moving out," Marquardt says, "Hef and I have a really special relationship. This all has nothing to do with my feelings for Hef. I care about him very much. It's just a good time for me to become my own person."[USMagazine]
• Robert Pattinson credits James Dean with his on-screen success: "I tried copying James Dean's accent just because I've always wanted James Dean's voice,"Pattinson says, "I think that is why it has worked. Everyone loves a bit of James Dean." Or perhaps "it has worked" because there are crazy women out there who actually think you're a sparkly vampire, no? [ShowbizSpy]
• Gael Garcia Bernal is a (dreamy) dad: he and his girlfriend, Dolores Fonzi, welcomed a son this week. [USMagazine]
• Britney Spears is reportedly "spying" on her ex, Kevin Federline, and his new girlfriend, Victoria Prince. "Britney has asked her boys what Victoria is like and if she spends the night," says a source, "She has also asked her bodyguards to milk information out of Kevin's bodyguards and quizzed his nanny and friends. She's been texting people, asking what's up with him and Victoria." [ShowbizSpy]
• Singer Jill Scott is pregnant with her first child. "The first trimester I spent in Botswana," Scott says, "That was one of the biggest challenges of my life. First trimester! You're sick every morning. It was seven hours time difference, the heat, the bugs, the 14 hour days." [People]
• In awesome band news: the Fleet Foxes will be making an appearance on SNL on January 17. [Pitchfork]
• But perhaps even more awesome is the fact that Liza Minelli will be making a guest appearance on tonight's SNL, which is being hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. Madness! [Broadway World]
• Pixie Geldof will be following her sister, Peaches, in posing in her underwear for Agent Provacateur. Meanwhile, my sister will be following in my footsteps by eating Oreos and chocolate milk for breakfast. [DailyMail]
• Lindsay Lohan says her partying past gets in the way of people taking her seriously: "hat hurts me the most is that I work just as hard as any other actress around my age, like Scarlett Johansson, but I just don't get the opportunities that they get. People are so distracted by the mess that I created in my life. But that doesn't mean it's going to last forever."[TheSun]
• Seth Rogen has written an episode of the Simpsons and will be adding his voice to the episode as well: "He wrote an episode we'll be reading soon, where Comic Book Guy creates a superhero comic which then gets made into a feature film," Matt Groening says, "Homer plays the lead and, to slim down, Seth Rogen will play his personal trainer." Whatever! We all know that Homer prefers to slim down by unleashing the awesome power of apples. [E!]
• Is Wilmer Valderrama dating Pink!? [Celebuzz]
• Sandra Bullock may be signing up for Speed 3:"Producers are looking at a lot of old franchises in order to secure box office hits and Speed is just one of those," a source says, "Sandra is still a popular star and another Speed movie is there for her should she want to do it. It would be a modern twist on the old theme." Meh. Can't we just get a While You Were Sleeping 2 instead? [ShowbizSpy]
• Wacky brides have no chance against a cranky Clint Eastwood with a shotgun: Gran Torino beat Bride Wars at the box office on Friday, bringing in $9.8 million— $1.8 million more than the Hathaway/Hudson mess. Your flower power is no match for his glower power![DeadlineHollywood]
• And finally, with what is perhaps the most hilarious opening line of the year, the Associated Press tells us that "R. Kelly can officially bump and grind with whomever he chooses: He has finalized his divorce from his wife." The accompanying headline? "R.Kelly No Longer Trapped In Marriage." Tremendous![NYTimes]

Bride Wars is about as funny as a cringingly awkward wedding toast. On top of a noticeable lack of humor, it's absurdly sexist and mired in retro stereotypes. It might as well proclaim up front that all young woman care about is landing their MRS.

The problem with keeping Bride Wars cheerful is the inherent nastiness of the rivalry, which comes to involve outlandish sabotage at such locales as beauty parlors and a tanning salon. "A wedding marks the first day of the rest of your life," says a dictatorial wedding planner played by Candice Bergen. "You have been dead until now." That's not quite correct. Her two crazed clients have been relatively well-adjusted until now; it's wedding fever that nearly kills them.

At least, and this is something to be grateful for, Bride Wars deviates from the usual wedding-flick routine of maids of honor who should be the bride (or groom). And even though the catfighting goes over the top, the notion that a passionate female friendship can turn ugly in a heartbeat is, sadly, realistic.

In the end, the movie owes its mild success to Anne Hathaway, who makes it watchable ... Bride Wars is a reminder that Hathaway can be soulful and charming no matter how mundane her surroundings. She manages her appealing vulnerability with expertise, but she's also learned how to blend in just enough sexuality to put those Princess Diaries days behind her.

It should have been evident long before this unmitigated disaster went into production that none of their subsequent misbehaviour is funny. Every character is bland, hateful or self-absorbed, and sometimes all three. Kate Hudson proves yet again that Almost Famous was a solitary aberration: she cannot act. Her features have coarsened unpleasantly with age. And she is so badly made up that she looks as though she has jaundice.

But their aggression toward each other isn't their fault -- they're just women, after all, empty-headed creatures naturally prone to impractical fantasies and vicious rivalries.

The opener — a gauzy scene from childhood that finds Liv and Emma, dressed as a bride and groom, tenderly dancing with each other — and an adult catfight, which looks like a prelude to a kiss, suggest that there may be more to this friendship (and the fury underlying its rupture) than either the women or the movie can admit ... It’s nice to pretend that they might lead somewhere else, say to San Francisco, where once upon another time two female movie characters, inspired by Harvey Milk (or maybe just Sean Penn), will take on the gay-marriage ban and say “I do, I do” to something more than shopping.

The concept seems dated. Throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars on the perfect flowers and the perfect dress and the perfect save-the-date announcement is so early 2008. In these recessionary times, it's not just misogynistic to assume that intelligent women turn into feral dogs at the sight of a Tiffany gift box, but it's also beside the point. Excessive spending is as declasse as the Bush administration.

Among its other sillinesses, Bride Wars has a fear of larger-than-average rumps that extends to the dialogue and an inability to photograph Bergen below the waist. (At one point she's posed behind a chair so as not to scare the children.) This may be the first chick flick that's actively bulimic.

This movie does not like women at all. It seems to be in love with girlish things and ideas. But not actual girls. Both of the film’s leads are stereotypical time bombs waiting for some occurrence to come along and give them an opportunity to finally use their ticket to take the express train to crazytown. Imagine if Nora Ephron awoke from a dream to pencil down a half baked idea based upon having watched Rushmore just hours before and then that notepad was stolen by someone with no imagination whatsoever that wanted nothing more than to set feminism back 20 years or so. That’s Bride Wars.

These movies are never about love, or how a man and a woman have decided to spend the rest of their lives together, and long to celebrate this decision with their closest friends and family. These flicks are always about how the female brain goes haywire when she gets a "big day" to be the center of attention. There are scenes involving ridiculous amounts of money spent on disposable things: Dresses worn once, flowers carried for 20 minutes. And does the bride in the films enjoy these lavish luxuries? Of course not! She's too busy fretting and being petty. The brides are always painted as stressed out headcases. Explains Hesse:

"In the movies, planning the wedding becomes the ultimate test in the couple's relationship, and the catalyst that prompts the bride to 'find herself.' She gets plastered (Bride Wars), she spins insane lies (Sweet Home Alabama), she throws punches (My Best Friend's Wedding). If the groom can embrace the bride's edgy behavior (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Runaway Bride), that means that he can embrace her. But if the groom doesn't embrace her newfound spunk (The Wedding Singer, Wedding Crashers), then she'll end up with a different, more awesome guy who does."

Even though I find the concept condescending, Hollywood keeps making these films, and audiences keep watching them. And this is despite the fact that you know what's going to happen, because the Wedding Movie has a formula. Hesse explains:

"We've been watching it for years. Here Comes the Crazy Bride. Again and again and again… It's puffy, it's poufy, it's crinoline and buttercream. But lick off enough layers of icing, and there lurks the monster. Our heroine must wrestle it to the ground, narrowly escaping disaster, to learn if she's captured the right prince."

The question is, why does this formula have to involve making women look shallow and hare-brained?

Hollywood Wedded To The Formula [Washington Post]

The Good:
Weird? Yes. But kinda digging Kate's graphic exercise in structure. The hair? Not so much...


Anne Hathaway never looks comfy in her own skin, and so doesn't really work anything, but I do like this sleek mod suit with Barbarella hair. Imagine how good this would look were she relaxed!


Shannon Ferber and Zoe O'Grady (who must be either flower girls or kid versions of Kate and Anne, right?) get points just for dressing like little girls, being cute.




The Bad:
Anna Madigan: Peaches 'n Cream Barbie called. She wants her dress back. So she can go to an ice cream social. Yes, it's formal.


I kind of like when people like Vera Wang are all, yes I can design amazing gowns if I want, and if I choose to dress like a shlep on my own time, I can.


So, if Luann Delesseps were on the Project runway, you just know these random strings would elicit a serious "unfinished" from one Nina Garcia.


I fear Carley Roney's frock is a)ill-fitting b)not pretty.




The Ugly:
Don't get me wrong, I think we're totally due for a rad 90's revival. But unlike Tara Subkoff, I'm thinking more Reality Bites than Joe Pesci in With Honors.


Ginger Kroll : does it count as a scroll-down when the top is this bad?

[Images via Getty]

When I was on the left coast visiting my fiancé's family last week, I had to field a lot of wedding questions; by the end of his parents' holiday party, I'd come up with the vague catch-all, "we're talking about the Spring." The one question I could field with total authority was the gown one, which I described in rapturous detail — save the little detail, of course, of having gotten it when I was engaged the first time, nearly four years ago.

Allow me to explain. I'd been with my boyfriend for six years when we got engaged, and the idea came as no shock to anyone. Now, that wedding was planned — no thanks to me — and my grandparents offered to buy my dress as their wedding present. When things unraveled, it was no hardship to return the ring, and I could deal with the pain of informing everyone and calling things off, but I saw absolutely no reason to taint my gown by association. About six months after we called it off, I discovered my mother had taken the dress out of my closet and hidden it in a guest room, thinking to spare me pain. But the dress had brought me nothing but pleasure, and I knew then that if I ever did marry, I'd still wear it. If I didn't, I'd just wear it around all the time, Miss Havisham-style.

Because it was so, so lovely. It was the dress I'd had in mind long before I'd met my first boyfriend; he'd never seen it; and, most of all, it had been made for me. It was, and remains, the only custom garment I've ever owned, and there seemed an unspeakable luxury to stepping into a dress I'd envisioned and having it fit perfectly. I'd long peered into the windows of the dressmaker's small shop in lower Manhattan, and it was with great excitement that I'd first breached the doorway and explained what I wanted: Swiss Dot; sweetheart neck; full, ballerina-length skirt. I was quickly persuaded to adopt a pale pink underskirt and a dainty tulle halter that sounds slightly ugly but is, I assure you, truly lovely. Without the crinoline, the dress would simply be a pretty, retro party-frock; with, it reminded me of the wedding gown from Funny Face.

Not that the process was all pleasant. The dressmaker was an intimidating and exacting figure. On my first visit, she asked me if there were any parts of my figure I didn't especially care to showcase. I considered the matter, and allowed as how I felt me shoulders were slightly broad in proportion to my frame (as the basic design of the dress was already chosen to mask and hilight more pressing concerns.)

"Everyone has some crap!" she snapped, which seemed to me very unjust given that I'd been effectively set up. In future visits, she seemed irritated by the throng of friends and relatives I brought to marvel at its progress, at my requests for swatches of material, and the consistently inappropriate underpinnings I'd wear to fittings. But by the end, we were both enchanted with the end result, with the dainty little kitten heels I'd found to wear with it, and with the tiny hairpiece I had had a milliner make to decorate my retro hairdo.

I could never blame the dress. After I found it, it brought me pleasure just to slip my hand into the garment bag and feel the fine, thin cotton. I toyed with dyeing it, of course, but it was too perfect. I didn't wear it, though, at least not until I met my fiancé — Matthew, that is. On one of our first dates, he asked me how far the wedding had progressed and whistled when I alluded to venues, dates, gifts and a dress. "Can I see it?" he asked eagerly. As this was one of several bizarre comments he'd made, and I was covertly checking my watch under the table, I was fairly sure I'd never be confronted with whatever sort of fetish this surely indicated, and let it pass. A few months later however, once we were embarked on what I insisted on referring to as a "fling," and we found ourselves at my parents' house, he brought it up again. Since by this time I'd learned he had an equally bizarre but somewhat less sinister interest in women's tailoring, I agreed, and he became the first and only man to ever see the Dress.

Which is, I suppose, bad luck now. But having seen it, he agrees that any substitution is simply out of the question. Its provenance is not something I am particularly eager to reveal to Matt's family, because I know it sounds flippant and a little tacky. The dress reminds me of a lot of painful things, naturally; but at the end of the day it's the frock I wanted to be married in, and I'd much rather be accused of vulgarity than have some tragic monument to disappointment sitting in my closet. More to the point, it's a beautiful, custom-made dress that must be worn! And the fact that it will be carrying me to City Hall instead of a fancy wedding by the seashore just goes to show: tacky or not, it is always in style.

It's like a perfect storm of Cosmo approved clichés, so it's sort of not surprising that in the past year or so, Kate Hudson has appeared on the cover of pretty much every women's magazine under the sun, including W, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and of course, Cosmo. But it's not like Bride Wars is Hudson's first dip into the tasteless end of the cinematic pool.

On his blog Hollywood Elsewhere, movie critic Jeffery Wells says plainly, Kate Hudson has no taste. Though we all loved her as charming, winsome Penny Lane in Almost Famous, Wells asks, "Is there another actress out there whose name on a movie poster is a more reliable assurance you're going to have a dispiriting or lousy time in a theatre (or in your living room)?" Most recently it's been this terrible looking Bride Wars and the Dane Cook-co-staring fiasco My Best Friend's Girl, but in the years leading up to those dim bulbs, You, Me and Dupree,, The Skeleton Key, and How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days.

And Hathaway, despite a commanding performance in Rachel Getting Married, you're not off the hook either. Wells notes that her three most recent movies have had something to do with weddings: Rachel, Bride Wars, and according to MTV, now she's just signed on to do a film called The Fiance, about "a woman on the verge of walking down the aisle, who decides to cancel her wedding and dump her seemingly perfect fiance. She wants to figure out who she really is, and what she wants out of life. But unfortunately for her inner journey, her meddling parents attempt to patch things up between the couple, and she can’t move on."

Seriously? I know there is a dearth of good scripts out there for young actresses, but come on, Anne. I expected more from you. Kate I'm pretty sure has no talent, but you can actually act. Bride Wars comes out in January of next year, so at least we have a few months respite before the deluge of idiocy.

Saints Protect Us [Hollywood Elsewhere]
The Girl Has No Taste [Hollywood Elsewhere]
Anne Hathaway Has A New ‘Fiance’ [MTV]