Nine (which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, and everywhere on December 25) was adapted from the 1982 musical of the same name, so the movie is actually a film based on a musical based on a film. All three are set in Italy in the 1960s and follow director Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he tries to come up with an idea for his next project and deal with his messy personal life. He reflects on the women in his life, including his wife, (Marion Cotillard), mistress (Penelope Cruz), best friend (Judi Dench), muse (Nicole Kidman), mother (Sophia Loren), a prostitute (Fergie), and (in a role invented for the film) an American Vogue reporter (Kate Hudson).

All the lead actors have won an Oscars (except Kate Hudson, who was nominated), but reviewers say their musical theater abilities are lacking. They criticize the way director Rob Marshall, who previously directed the Oscar-winning musical Chicago, handles the dance numbers, calling the staging unimaginative and that Marshall and his editors use quick cuts meant to obscure the fact that many of the actresses simply cannot dance. Critics also trash the film's pacing: each actress is given a scene or two and a musical number, then it's onto the next star.

Other complaints: The songs, which were written for the musical, aren't particularly catchy, don't move the plot forward, and aren't integrated well into the film's narrative. Fergie and Marion Cotillard escape the critics' wrath for the most part, but Nicole Kidman "looks parched, stretched, and uncomfortable," Penelope Cruz is "alarmingly unsensual," Kate Hudson "may never recover from gyrating her way through the atrocious 'Cinema Italiano,'" and Daniel Day-Lewis "sounds strangely like the Count from Sesame Street" when he sings. The New York Times calls the whole thing a "travesty," and though the basic theme is the same in Nine and Fellini's original, the New Yorker says, "One is forced to ask: who wants to make, or watch, a major Hollywood musical about mental block?" Below, the reviews.

Reel Views

Nine represents director Rob Marshall's second big-screen musical spectacle. His previous effort, Chicago, won an Oscar; although Nine is likely to win its share of praise, it probably won't come close to achieving the same level of acclaim. Although the production numbers are equally impressive, this film is neither as inspired nor as rousing. Part of the problem may be that there are too many high profile actresses vying for the spotlight and each has to be given her moment to shine. Also, despite following its stage inspiration and bringing structure to Fellini's 8 1/2 (the ultimate source material), Nine still suffers at times from a lack of narrative drive and it doesn't have the surreal, dreamlike quality of 8 1/2 to fall back upon.

The New York Daily News

Unfortunately, each interaction feels like the quickest of flings, allowing us a brief flirtation with a superstar before we move on to the next affair. Everybody gets one or two big scenes, interrupted by an awkwardly-inserted musical number. Some of the actresses are more successful than others - Cruz is playfully sexy, Cotillard soulful, and Fergie impressively earthy - but for the most part, neither the songs nor the choreography are especially memorable. And because the music isn't integrated into the drama, the staging often feels not just theatrical but false.

The Wall Street Journal

The film's most remarkable performance is given by Marion Cotillard as Luisa, Guido's long-suffering wife. Her musical number, "My Husband Makes Movies," has more range than any of the others, from coiled calm to unchained ferocity. And Ms. Cotillard's gift for mystery-the art of doing much while seeming to do almost nothing-serves her brilliantly in the movie's best scene, which couples humiliation with insight.

Rolling Stone

By my score card, Marshall hits more than he misses. Those who hated his music-video editing in Chicago will hate it here. He errs by cutting three great songs ("Getting Tall," "Be On Your Own," "The Bells of St. Sebastian") for three inferior ones. "Cinema Italiano," sung by Hudson, is a tacky, overproduced misfire. He also shortchanges the influence of Catholicism on this man-child, and keeps Guido's nine-year-old alter ego too much in the shadows. Otherwise, his work is visionary and electric. And the script, by Michael Tolkin and the late, much missed Anthony Minghella, is uncommonly witty. Guido begins the film at a press conference telling reporters that to talk about a movie is to spoil its mystery. So I won't intrude except to say that Day-Lewis (who replaced an exhausted Javier Bardem) handles his two songs in high style and acts the role like the maestro he is, even if he looks as Italian as Big Ben.

Salon

Kidman — so appealing in Moulin Rouge, despite her hardly being a perfect fit for musicals — just looks parched, stretched and uncomfortable. There's no sensuousness about her; the best she can muster is a kind of shellacked glamour. Cotillard and Fergie give the finest performances here. Cotillard, done up as an Audrey Hepburn-style minx in bangs, makes demureness sexy, and although her musical number may not be the smoothest of the lot, she still brings the right amount of fire to it. Fergie, on the other hand, practically stops the movie. She's fortunate enough to have the show's finest and catchiest number, Be Italian, and after I watched her slink her way through it, I wished — even though I'm an adamant nonsmoker — there was a bed around so I could flop back on it and have a cigarette. Fergie, who gained some weight for this role, is a voluptuous, purely sexual presence, and a deliciously lethal-looking one: She looks as if she could crush boulders between those thighs. Imagine what she could do to Day-Lewis!

USA Today

The cast members' musical talents are markedly uneven. Day-Lewis' Italian accent works in speech, but when he sings, he sounds strangely like the Count from Sesame Street. The best performers are Cotillard (who won an Oscar portraying Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose) and Stacy Ferguson (aka Fergie ), whose powerful voice works well in a small but distinctive part as sensuous Saraghina. Judi Dench, as Contini's costume designer, sings capably in a French accent in her Folies Bergere-inspired number. Cruz does a steamy song and dance, but her acting is strangely caricatured. Kate Hudson appears in over her head in her extravagant musical sequence, and Sophia Loren talk-sings her role.

The A.V. Club

True, Fellini provides a tough point of comparison for anyone, but maybe Nine should have stayed on the stage, where it could benefit from having a medium all to itself. In Nine, director Rob Marshall, who fared much better with Chicago, does a pretty good job of aping the look and feel of the film's inspiration in the non-musical sequences, but comes up curiously short in the largely imaginative musical numbers. No scene in which Penélope Cruz writhes around in her underwear can be called unsexy, but Cruz's big number remains alarmingly unsensual in spite of all the flesh on display. That Maury Yeston's songs simply aren't that memorable doesn't help.

The New Yorker

To follow in the footsteps of Mastroianni is no enviable task, and Daniel Day-Lewis, adroit as ever, approaches it by changing the steps. Where his predecessor lounged and strolled, or dipped into a clownish stagger, we find Day-Lewis, leaner in physique, forever on the fast and wolfish prowl-hands in pockets, shoulders forward, not pushing his sunglasses cutely up and down his nose, as Mastroianni did, but keeping them on full beam, like the Devil's headlights. He belongs, however, in a more focussed movie; this one feels too sluggish for his predations...

Entertainment Weekly

The women, however, are spirited and sexy. Cruz performs a mock bump-and-grind with real heat, and Fergie, as an oh-so-Fellini-esque beach drifter, turns herself into a wild electric siren. If only the lyrics weren't so awful! Cotillard, a lovely presence, is martyred by having to sing such gems as ''My husband makes movies/To make them he lives a kind of dream/In which his actions aren't always what they seem!'' No wonder Day-Lewis looks like he's having stomach trouble. He spends most of Nine as a haunted spectator, and you want to tell the guy to lighten up. The 
movie Guido is trying to dream doesn't look like much fun, and neither is Nine.

Hollywood Reporter

Nicole Kidman as Guido's "muse" and Kate Hudson as an on-the-make American journalist get to do little. Judi Dench is wonderful and wise as Guido's costume designer-cum-therapist and, fortunately, is not asked to do much in terms of singing and dancing. Fergie is kind of fun as a childhood fantasy of sexuality — in the original film, the whore is fat and slovenly. Cruz and Cotillard get real characters to play, but they're the stuff of bad soap opera. Then there's Day-Lewis. He is an incredibly sexy man and performs all the right moves. The problem is, he keeps performing those same moves over and over, so one experiences not so much artistic angst but a guy trying to sober up from a two-week binge. Sporting a scruffy beard and running a hand through long hair only goes so far.

The Los Angeles Times

And while we're filling the suggestion box. . . . Because Nine is a musical, it would help if your leading man could sing, and I don't mean carry a tune, but actually flex some vocal muscle. Again, love Daniel Day-Lewis, excellent racing shirtless through the forest, but a song-and-dance man he is not.

Nine is one of those films that couldn't look better on paper — so many Oscar, Tony and Grammy winners involved that the production should have literally glittered with all that gold. But in the end, nothing adds up. Perhaps "Zero" would have been a better name.

The Village Voice

Nine might at least have been a guiltily pleasurable burlesque, were Marshall not so intent on turning all his grande dames into vamped-up grotesques. While Fergie emerges relatively unscathed, in part because her role-the feral prostitute Saraghina, from whom the chaste young Guido learns the facts of life-is meant to be a vamped-up grotesque, poor Hudson (as an enterprising Vogue reporter, dumbed down from the play's Cahiers du cinéma film critic) may never recover from gyrating her way through the atrocious "Cinema Italiano," a number that Marshall stages as something like Night of the Living Versace Runway Show. Wisely keeping her distance, Cotillard mostly lurks along the sidelines projecting a wounded visage, before finally stepping into the spotlight for the movie's single moment of emotional sincerity.

The New York Post

Penelope Cruz wriggling around in her underwear - the heavily edited result cannot quite be called dancing - in the best number, "A Call From the Vatican," is about as good as it's going to get in this faux-Fosse eyesore. Maury Yeston's mediocre, imitation-Kander-and-Ebb 1982 Broadway musical has been further edited and updated to suit the vocal limitations of its Weinstein-gerrymandered cast. Or, in the case of Kate Hudson as a journalist for American Vogue who vaguely tries to seduce our hero, the character and her awful number "Cinema Italiano" (in badly lit black-and-white) are interpolations that could be cut without changing the movie one whit.

The New York Times

Stacy Ferguson, known to pop-music fans as Fergie, is Saraghina, the village prostitute who provides the boy Guido with a glimpse of forbidden pleasures. Nice for him. The rest of us watch Ms. Ferguson stomp and gyrate through a number called "Be Italian," which, like so much else in Nine, resembles a spread in a Victoria's Secret catalog, only less tasteful. Ms. Hudson, for her part, struts through an embarrassing hymn to "Cinema Italiano" - with inane lyrics about "hip coffee bars" and Guido's "neo-realism" - that recalls not Visconti or Antonioni (or even the Italian sex farces of the 1970s) but rather those lubricious Berlusconi-esque variety shows that baffle and titillate visitors from other countries who turn on their hotel-room television sets. Those spectacles at least come by their sleaze honestly. "Nine" dresses up its coarseness in bogus prestige, which both kills the fun and exposes an emptiness at the project's heart - a fatal lack of inspiration. The fear of such a void is what animates the Guido character played by Marcello Mastroianni in 8 ½, a man whose vanity, tenderness and narcissism mirrored Fellini's own, and whose anxiety at the prospect of failing as an artist and a man made him a vivid and credible hero. That psychological dimension is missing from Nine, which never finds a way to communicate either the romantic ardor or the artistic passion that would make Mr. Day-Lewis's Guido interesting.

• Courtney Love threatened to sue Perez Hilton for publishing her messages about Frances Bean Cobain, yet she posted about her daughter again today saying, "im angry at these people not Frances id just prefer she not become Jaimie L Spears."

• Courtney wrote on Facebook this afternoon: "theres not a whole lot i can do about it. this is like a hand grenade got thrown into our lives and its not Frances! i am angry at these people not Frances id just prefer she not become Jaimie L Spears, she should go be a writer or an a...rtist wich i support 100% but this is a circus and it pains me cos i know she hates it." She added, "i very much miss my daighter, i know she knows how miserable i am im despairing and so sad, so so sad, but i just want to help her be happy, thats it, get her house and get her school and thats all ive ever wanted." [TMZ]
• Courtney Love says Perez Hilton defamed her by posting the two earlier Facebook messages about Frances Bean Cobain and the Cobain family and now she's getting her lawyer involved. In another Facebook message posted today Love writes: "perez you know what YOUR lawyer saud? to a client? "if shed just give in and sell rest for 15 million all of this would dissapear like magic" tell him to suck i oh by the way you lying queen youve just lied and defamed me and my child for the last time i fuckign HATE YOU you fat ass piece of bully shit PART of that was from a personal lettr and PART of that YOU made up, and thats ILLEGAL." [BlackBook Mag]
• The arbitrator has made his decision on how the Gosselins' assets should be divided up. His decision is confidential, but sources say now that the money has been split a divorce decree is "imminent." [TMZ]
• A source says Kate Gosselin "couldn't be happier" with how their assets were divided. "Kate is thrilled." [Radar Online]
• Kate Hudson and A-Rod actually broke up weeks ago, according to insiders. "Kate decided to take her mom to some of the press stuff and premieres as her date – that was good for her," says the source. "They both have kids and totally different lives ... They may not be done working it out though." [People]
• Tiger Woods' lady friends Jamie Jungers and Jaimee Grubbs ran into each other at a club in L.A. earlier this week. Grubbs told Jungers to stay away from her because she "hasn't talked to Tiger since the scandal broke, and she's done with it," said a source. "She wants to be disassociated from the whole thing. She just wants to do her own thing." So that's why she sold her story to the tabloids instead of just "doing her own thing" on Tool Acadamy? [E!]
• Tiger Woods' 14th named mistress Theresa Rogers heard the rumors that Tiger paid Rachel Uchitel millions to keep quiet and now she wants a payoff too. [Radar Online]
• Did you hear that Elin Nordegren would be appearing in ads for Puma? Well, it isn't true. A spokesman for the company says, "To correct recent news headlines, Puma has no plans to engage in a brand sponsorshop agreement with Elin Woods." [Extra]
• Sources say that next week Elin Nordegren is meeting with a divorce attorney who has worked with Nicole Kidman, Nicolas Cage and Britney Spears. [Radar Online]
• Just six months after opening his Mirimichi golf course near Memphis, Justin Timberlake is closing it from January to July to make improvements. [AP]
• Sophia Coppola and her boyfriend Thomas Mars are expecting their second child. [People]
• Garth Brooks is suing his hometown hospital in Yukon, Oklahoma because he donated $500,000 for a building to be named after his late mother four years ago, but the building never materialized. [CNN]
• There are rumors that Alexa Chung quit her MTV show because she is suffering from an eating disorder, but her rep insists, "She is absolutely exhausted. She's been working 16-hour days on four live shows a week. She didn't want to do that any more. It's been absolutely grueling and she hasn't had time to explore New York." The rep added, "Everybody's body looks different depending on what you wear. It's very easy to find a picture with bones sticking out. Alexa's weight hasn't changed for four years and she takes her role as a style icon and someone young girls look up to very seriously." [News Of The World]
• Jesse McCartney dumped Hayden Panettiere and is hooking up with his ex-girlfriend Katie Cassidy. [E!]
• BBC Radio DJ Chris Evans apologized to listeners for George Michael swearing during an interview. This article doesn't say what George Michael said. [The Mirror]
• During an interview CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Shakira, '"She Wolf.' I have a personal interest in the name. How did you come up with that name?" She replied, "I bet you do. Well you were part of the reason." [Press Release]
• Usher's ex-wife Tameka Raymond said, "While I am flattered at the rumor circulating about being considered to join the cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, I am absolutely not joining the cast. I was initially approached by the producers for last season and declined. At this point, my priorities are focusing on being a mom and my philanthropy, Lost Ones Foundation." [E!]
• Mo'Nique says she heard that she was nominated for a Golden Globe "In the bathroom with my husband having a conversation, just laughing and joking and he gets a text from one of the producers of ‘The Mo'Nique Show,' saying ‘Congratulations, on the Golden Globe nomination.' I just started laughing. I said, O.K.!... our bathroom is I guess, you know how people have their favorite room? It just happens to be our bathroom. That's normally where we get all our news!" [NYT]
• John Krasinski says of working with Meryl Streep in It's Complicated, "It was my first day, and it was our first big scene together. As Zoe (Kazan, as Streep's middle child) is driving away, I put my arm around Meryl, and I say, 'They grow up so fast.' I was slowly trying not to feel so awkward, but every single one of my fingers knew I was touching Meryl Streep." [USA Today]
• Emily Blunt says of Queen Victoria, who she plays in The Young Victoria, "I only knew the image of her as the grizzled old woman, to read about this spicy, spunky girl who said no to the world, it was really exciting and revealing to read her diaries and her letters. She was a modern girl, refusing to conform. And I loved that. She had this incredibly oppressive, lonely childhood, and yet she had the steeliness to rise above it all and become a success." [USA Today]
• Keira Knightley, who is making her debut on London's West End on Friday says, "(I know I will be) burned alive (by the critics). I'm not coming into it with any great expectations of coming away with great reviews. I thought if I don't do theatre right now, I think I'm going to start being too terrified to do it. So I just thought, okay, dive in and give it a go. If my best isn't good enough, then so be it." [Daily Express]
• Miss Piggy has some very un-P.C. views on female domestic abusers. She says: "My Kermie is nothing like [Tiger Woods]. I just want to say, he would never do anything untoward moi, but, if he did, you can rest assured there'd be a hole in one, and he'd be the one!"[People]
• Daniel Day Lewis said watching Nine at the New York premiere "was nerve-wracking." He added, "That's the one and only time I will do that." [Showbiz 411]
• When asked if she'll appear in Ghostbusters 3, Sigourney Weaver said, "I might do it; I didn't realize I was in it. So I'm going to read the script. I was happy to discover, though, that my little baby son [from Ghostbusters 2] has grown up and become a ghostbuster. I think that Ivan [Reitman] wants our little grouplet together. I think it's a lovely idea to have another generation of people discover the characters. I remember I was opening the door for some trick-or-treaters last Halloween and a bunch of ghostbusters came to door. And one woman was [my character, Dana Barrett], and because I was at a friend's house, it was a complete accident. Might as well feed them a new movie." [WSJ]
• "I don't really desire things. I prefer to spend my money on experiences, on meals or travel. I look at the world through a green lens now, but you can't make yourself crazy. That feeling of green guilt can be really inhibiting," says Rachel McAdams. "It's about a changing mind-set, remembering to turn off the water when you are brushing your teeth." [Daily Express]

• Here's the thing about Courtney Love losing custody of her daughter: Frances Bean Cobain wants to live with her grandmother.

Courtney Love's lawyer says that's what Courtney losing legal control of her daughter is all about. He says: "Courtney's been clean for years and is perfectly fine. This is simply about Frances preferring to live with her grandmother at this time. Frances is 17 and a strong-willed child, and this is a decision she made on her own." Wendy O'Connor, Courtney's Kurt's mother and Frances's grandmother, lives in Olympia, Washington, and last year, Frances told Bazaar: "She's probably the person I respect most out of anybody in the world." Do you remember when Courtney went on a Twitter rant in September? Frances Bean tweeted: "Someone adopt me please?" [People]

• Courtney Love's lawyer: "All I can tell you as Courtney's friend is that she loves her daughter more then anything in the world. Courtney will no doubt do what is best for Frances and will surely take her teenage daughter's desire and feelings into consideration with respect to the legal guardian issue." [Radar Online]
• Nicole Kidman's daughter Sunday Rose knows baby sign language. "She's picked it right up, Nicole says. As for her 17-year-old daughter, Bella: "She's incredibly talented… She expresses herself through drawing." [Showbiz 411]
• Yesterday's rant must have gotten him in a heap of trouble: Chris Brown has deleted his Twitter account. [Perez]
• Michael Lohan was arrested this weekend, after calling his ex-girlfriend — who has a restraining order against him. Whoops. [TMZ, Newser]
• Bethenny Frankel stripped naked for giant PETA billboard. "It's so tasteful and beautifully done," she claims. "I am especially pleased because it doesn't look like there's been any airbrushing, and I was already pregnant when I shot it." No airbrushing? Pardon us while we LOL. [Page Six]
• BREAKING: After giving birth yesterday, Kourtney Kardashian wanted a tuna sandwich. [TMZ]
• Elton John and David Furnish still want to adopt a kid, even though their attempt to adopt a 17-month old Ukrainian child who lives in an orphanage was denied. Furnish says: "We were upset not to be allowed to adopt but we'll fight and work with the Ukrainian government to change the law so that HIV positive children can be adopted. We'll be like uncles. They can visit us on holidays." [The Sun]
• So… Toby Keith was at the Nobel Peace Prize party, and Will Smith performed "Rapper's Delight." When the word "yellow" was uttered in the line "to the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow," Keith pulled his eye into a slant. Asian people love that, right? [TMZ]
• A-Rod says: "I'm definitely single." Guess he won't be on Kate Hudson's arm at any Nine premieres. Still, a source says: "They've definitely broken up. There's been some drama before about his roving eye. But this isn't the first time they've split up and got back together." [Page Six]
• A-Rod was seen in Miami over the weekend in the company of a leggy blonde. A "snitch" says: "Alex has a wandering eye, and Kate is a hopeless romantic. It's not exactly the perfect match." [Gatecrasher]
• Wait, what? Tiger Woods' wife Elin Nordegren is having a "secret meeting" with Victoria Beckham? Apparently friends have urged Elin to talk to Posh, whose own marriage was threatened by claims David Beckham had an affair with his assistant, Rebecca Loos. [The Sun]
• Several women involved with Tiger Woods claim that he wired money to them — from $5000-$10,000 — on a monthly basis. "The money comes via a wire transfer," said one woman. "There's no contract about it, there's no discussion about what it's for, but it's implied that it's in exchange for keeping quiet about his affair." And! Apparently Elin has taken his cell phone away. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Jaimee Grubbs, who had a relationship with Tiger Woods, has been calling and texting an ex-boyfriend, boasting about her notoriety. A sample: "Hey u... It's been rough... I'm very well known now and everything I do is being blasted across the Internet… I'm on every news channel and in every magazine as Tiger Woods mistress." [Radar Online]
• Items like this one, about how Tiger Woods got out of sticky situations in the past, make you wonder about all the kinds of things celebrities get away with. [TMZ]
• Jennifer Garner's stalker was arrested Monday, and sorry to be judgy, but he's totally got a super creepy mug shot. [Radar Online]
• Alabaster-skinned Kelly Osbourne is the face of St. Tropez self-tanning lotions? Ah: Fake-baking is just one of the many things she learned on Dancing With The Stars! [Page Six]
• Chace Crawford was seen drinking red wine alone and texting. Stars! Just like us. [Page Six]
• Beyoncé hearts interactive theater. [Page Six]
• Jimmy Fallon's Michael Jackson impression is allegedly impressive. [Page Six]
• Ron Howard and daughter Bryce Dallas Howard would like to make a movie together; Bryce blames her dad for not making it happen: "He knows for a fact that I pester him every single day to put me in a movie. I really want to work with him!" [Gatecrasher]
• Daniel Day Lewis thinks Jeff Bridges should win the Oscar for Crazy Heart. "Everyone loves him. And he's so good." [Showbiz 411]
• Mel Gibson "rarely" has time for his girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, or their six-week-old daughter, Lucia. According to a source. "Mel can go days without even stopping by Oksana's home and checking in on Lucia - much less feeding her, putting her down for a nap or changing a diaper," spills a source. "Mel tells Oksana he isn't raising Lucia any differently than he did his other passel of kids, and that (his estranged wife, Robyn Gibson) really did the raising." [MSNBC via National Enquirer]
• "A movie company that hired Samuel L. Jackson to star in a big-budget film is pissed off they weer forced to settle for Laurence Fishburne instead, this according to a new lawsuit." [TMZ]
• Roman Polanski's The Ghost, starring Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor, will be released in the U.S. as The Ghost Writer in early 2010. [NY Daily News]
• Coming to a silver screen near you: In The Heights — based on the Broadway musical — directed by Kenny Ortega. Meanwhile, Corbin Bleu will do the show on Broadway. [Page Six]
• Alan Arkin's character in The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee: Loosely based on Arthur Miller. [Page Six]
• In a world of losers, SpongeBob SquarePants is a winner. [NY Daily News]
• The New York Film Critics Circle chose The Hurt Locker as best picture. Will director Kathryn Bigelow get an Oscar nod? [NY Post]
• A cheat sheet for the movies which will "most likely" be Oscar nominees at the link. [NY Post]
• BREAKING: Whatshisname doesn't like boobs. [The Sun]
• "Dear Santa, I want a boy for Christmas... wanna hook a sista up?! Oh, and not just any boy… one that holds the door open for you, and writes hand written letters, and spends time with the (parents).. ya hurrd?" — Teen star Demi Lovato, via Twitter. [MSNBC]
• "I thought a divorce was the best thing for both of them at the time, as they were a destructive influence on each other. But I was sad Blake had lost the love of his life. I speak to Amy on the phone. She said to me recently: 'You have an amazing son who is gorgeous and beautiful and sensitive. But other people don't see it.' I'm convinced Blake and Amy will remarry early next year. I don't know when, where or how it will happen. I'd like to be at the wedding this time round but I wouldn't be surprised if they went away and got hitched without anyone knowing about it. Whatever they do, I think it's going to be a happy ending this time." — Georgette Civil, mother of Blake Fielder-Civil, who says the drama between her son and Amy Winehouse almost drove her to suicide: "All this has taken a big toll on my own life… I reached my lowest ebb over the summer and even thought about ending it all." [Daily Express]
• "When I met Carey, I was an abused puppy in the corner, ready to bite anyone who put their hand out." — Pink says she has softened since meeting her husband. She also claims: "I've always said I like Britney. I swear to God, I've stuck up for Britney since the beginning." [Gatecrasher via Women's Health]

• Nene and Kim might get evicted from Real Housewives Of Atlanta?!?! Aren't they the most entertaining ones?

Oh: They're demanding more money than Bravo wants to shell out. Hmm. Anyways, Bravo is looking for new wealthy/notable Atlanta housewives, though Usher's ex-wife Tameka Foster isn't being considered: Apparently "Tameka isn't very popular in Atlanta," and all the "housewives" said they'd leave the show if she were cast. OUCH. [Gatecrasher]

• BREAKING: John Mayer was seen talking to Kim Kardashian. She is happy with Reggie Bush, however. [Page Six]
• A hip NYC cafe is being sued by a waitress who claims she had her hours cut after she refused to date the "Butterscotch Stallion," Owen Wilson. [Page Six]
• Oprah won't win an Oscar for "producing" Precious because she signed on to do so after the film was shot, which disqualifies her (and Tyler Perry). [NY Post]
• By the by: Oprah's ratings are down. [NY Post]
• I like the way Josh Brolin is looking at Matt Damon in this Entertainment Weekly pic from a story about the documentary project The People Speak. [Gatecrasher]
• A former nanny claims that Christie Brinkley ignored the fact that Alexa Joel was becoming a troubled child. [Page Six]
• Mischa Barton was seen knocking back shots and drinking margaritas and a source says "she looked healthy and in control." Whatever that means. [Page Six]
• Wendy Williams got breast implants when she was 14. FOURTEEN. fourteen years ago. Sigh. Misleading headline! [Gatecrasher via People]
• The company which has the rights to distribute shirts, posters and other things with Michael Jackson on 'em is suing EVERYONE who is "bootlegging" items. [TMZ]
• A California appeals court is considering whether Roman Polanski's case can be dismissed without him being present. [CNN, LA Times]
• Kendra Wilkinson has given birth to Hank Randall Baskett IV. [Ok!, People]
• Inevitable? Tiger Woods paramour Rachel Uchitel is in negotiations to pose for Playboy. [Extra]
• Another (unnamed) woman who had a relationship with Tiger Woods has hired Gloria Allred as her lawyer. [Radar Online]
• Porn star Holly Sampson is not denying anything; she confirms that she and Tiger Woods were "intimate." In addition, in some old video clip she says that Tiger is the whitest black boy you've ever met. His teeth are perfect and he's the perfect gentleman." Then she points to her crotch and says: "He's beautiful ... beautiful everything." [Us Magazine]
• Hollywood madam Michelle Braun says that at least two of Tiger Woods' hookups — Jamie Jungers and Holly Sampson — were high-end escorts. [TMZ]
• Oh, and Michelle Braun says that Tiger was a client, and paid $60,000 for her high-priced hookers. [E!, NY Daily News, NY Post]
• Holly Sampson: "Although I enjoyed our time together, I never was and never will be one of Tiger's mistresses. I resent being put in the same category as the other women." This is because their hookups took place before he was married. [TMZ]
• "Tiger Woods has come clean to his stunning Swedish wife about ALL of his dirty horndogging, porn-star loving, cocktail-waitress chasing and general catting around with scads of ladies, according to a report." [NY Post via People]
• TLC was granted an injunction against Jon Gosselin, which — thank Zeus — bars Jon from making any more appearances like that embarrassing pool party thing. [Extra, AP]
• You may have heard that Chris Brown did a radio interview in which the DJ asked him about Rihanna — and Chris promptly hung up. Audio at the link. [TMZ]
• Jeff Bridges plays a washed-up country singer named Bad Blake in new movie Crazy Heart, and says his mom didn't like one of his most famous characters, The Dude, and "probably wouldn't like Bad, either. She liked to see her son play the president or a doctor-like any old mom, you know." [WSJ]
• Q: You've been married to the same woman for 32 years. Rule #1 for staying together in Hollywood? 
Jeff Bridges: "Don't get a divorce. That will keep you together, you know." [WSJ]
• "Michael Barrett, 48, Will Plead Guilty To Stalking For Secretly Making Nude Film Of ESPN Reporter [Erin Andrews]; Faces 5 Years In Jail." [CBS News]
• Brad Paisley has the number one album on Time's Top 100 Albums list. [Time]
• The Princess And The Frog is the number one movie on Time's Top 100 movies list. (Up is number 2, so, yay! animation.) [Time]
• Lil Wayne's new album, Rebirth, has been delayed. Again. [Reuters]
• RIP Flight Of The Conchords. Show collaborator James Bobin says: "While the characters Bret and Jemaine will no longer be around, the real Bret and Jemaine will continue to exist." Quietly sob while you watch this video the guys made for us, the ladies of the world. Redheads not warheads! Blondes not bombs! Brunettes not fighter jets! [NY Times]
• RIP It's On With Alexa Chung, which I actually thought didn't seem so bad, although I only saw it once or twice. [Variety]
• Russell Crowe is an a "laughable weepie" of a movie this columnist calls a "mawkish blunder." [NY Post]
• "I'm not picky, quite honestly. It's simply that I recognize pretty quickly the stuff that I don't like. And I also recognize the impulse that is dragging me towards a piece of work. And perhaps as you get older, that impulse comes less often." — Daniel Day-Lewis sounds kind of picky about his acting roles. [Guardian]
• "I am not proud of being rich." — Ricky Gervais. [Page Six]
• "There's no question that the recession has had an effect on the arts, especially on British films. Things are not being greenlit as much and it is more difficult for people to get work. When you go abroad people always talk with such love about British theatre, but the irony is that it's not appreciated by the Government as it should be. The state of the arts has always been, and will always be, precarious. But there is something so alarming about the huge cuts made to companies, particularly when you read of the astronomical amounts some people are earning, like bankers… I am concerned that they've taken a lot of the subsidy to the arts away for the Olympics. It's been siphoned off." — Dame Judi Dench is is calling for arts funding to be fixed. [Times Of London]
• "The Internet is full of humorists. They've risen from the earth. They've fallen from the skies. Anyone can write anything, anytime they want. Blogs that are angry—which maybe half of them are—wear out. What people keep going back to are writers who are funny. That's a great thing." — Garrison Keillor. At the link, he reveals why he wears red shoes. [Time]
• "I'm doing well, you know, because I'm committed to it and they're lovely, lovely people, its been nice. Obviously when I heard that my girlfriend had preacher parents, I thought well this has got a huge scope for disaster, but it's actually been quite good so far. Its been really good actually, in retrospect its been one of my favorite years, [the highlight was] meeting Katy. She's amazing. I'm having a right laugh. She's a good person to spend time with and its changed me - it's made me stop doing stuff that I probably shouldn't have been doing." — Russell Brand. [Daily Mail]
• "I didn't get cast in Shakespeare, but [my teacher Mrs. Rodriguez] cast me later in Oliver… There are a lot of people in my life who are surprised that I am where I am, but Mrs. Rodriguez would not be. I wish more than anything that she truly knew how much I really loved her for the gift that she gave me." — America Ferrera "held back tears" as she spoke at a New York Women In Film lunch; her teacher died of cancer before America became a star. [Page Six]
• "WOW... THIS IS REALLY FLATTERING... I'VE HAD SOME UPS AND DOWNS THIS YEAR, WELL ACTUALLY THIS DECADE. JUST SEEING THIS COVER TAKES ME BACK TO THAT TIME OF MY LIFE. I REMEMBER HOW MUCH PAIN AND LOVE WENT INTO THIS ALBUM. NO ONE SAW IT COMING. THIS PROJECT WASN'T ABOUT ME, IT WAS ABOUT A TIME IN PEOPLES LIVES WHERE PEOPLE FORCE OPINIONS ON YOU AND YOU HAVE TO MAKE CHOICES FOR YOURSELF. WE LOVED 50 CENT BUT WE WANTED TO BE THE YANG. WE WANTED TO WEAR PINK POLOS AND RAP ABOUT BEING HURT INSTEAD BEING INVINCIBLE. THERE WAS A CORE GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO WORKED ON THIS ALBUM EVERYDAY.... PLAIN PAT, JOHN MONOPOLY, DON CRAWLEY, ANTHONY KILHOFFER, MANNY MARROQUIN, JOHN LEGEND, DEVON HARRIS, RYHMEFEST, GEE ROBERSON, HIP HOP, AL BRANCH, DAMON DASH, GABE TESORIERO, CRAIG BAUER, GLC, OL' SCHOOL ICE GREE, CONSEQUENCE, B NICE AND MY MOM. I WAS MOST INSPIRED BY THE MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL AND I LISTENED TO THAT ALBUM EVERYDAY WHILE WORKING ON MY DEBUT. THANK YOU FOR THIS ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND FOR PUTTING "THE BLUEPRINT" ON THE LIST ALSO. I LOVED "THE LOVE BELOW' AND "GET RICH OR DIE TRYING" ALSO. THEY BOTH EQUALLY DESERVED THE NUMBER ONE SPOT IN MY EYES BUT THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE NUMBER ONE!!!" — Your friend Kanye West is kind of excited about Entertainment Weekly naming his CD, The College Dropout, the top album of the decade. [KanyeUniverseCity]

Model Tallulah Adeyemi is one of four women in the world who can work a bra-cup bodice. I'm not sure that the rest of it shouldn't be more deco-fitted, but whatevs.


Quoth Dodai, "I don't know who that is, but I admire her moxie." (It's Shingai Shoniwa of The Noisette.)


Nancy Del'Olio realizes this is the one case where "Fellini-esque" is not a horrified insult (necessarily.) And she's taking full advantage.


Guinnesses: how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Mitford-descended, and (in the case of Jasmine), leopard-sporting, drapery-trailing, retro-glam.


Doesn't the beauty of Penelope Cruz in this ragamuffin-glam just make you ache like a perfect sunset or the Grand Canyon or some Hudson River School-worthy vista?


NB, Nicole: 20s-Victorian-schoolgirl is not your look. Indeed, arguably not anyone's. Well, maybe a Guinness.


Kate Hudson's bodice looks suspiciously like one of those rubber mats we made as kids from little beads and ironed into trivets or ambiguous Christmas presents. And, therefore, uncomfortable. But this is total La Dolce Vita territory.


Lemon may actually be Judi Dench's color - yet further proof of her exceptionalism.
<brNatasha Kaplinsky is a news-reader. Her guest is not ID'd. He has a velvet jacket.


Hey, if you're going to dress like a mariachi ringmaster, and apparently DDL is going to do just that, now's the time. And Rebecca Miller is obviously supportive.

[Images via Getty]

• Katie Holmes went with a group of her friends to see New Moon in New York. An eyewitness reports: "Katie talked through all of New Moon. It was unbelievable – they talked nonstop about the movie and everything else."

• The source continues: "Some people wanted to tell them to be quiet, but when they realized who it was, they stayed silent. No one wanted to shush Katie." [Fox News]
• The 17-year-old Michigan girl who claimed a man bit her on the neck after a screening of New Moon on Friday has admitted that the alleged culprit was just kissing her on the neck and she was a "willing participant." She's facing criminal charges for filing a false police report. [TMZ]
• There are three versions of Entertainment Weekly's new cover, featuring either Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, or Taylor Lautner. [Pop Sugar]
• Anderson Cooper is reportedly moving in with his boyfriend of eight months, gay bar owner Ben Maisani. A friend says, "Anderson has found his 'Mr. Right' in Ben. Their relationship is so solid they want to move in together, and they've been looking at Manhattan real estate." [National Enquirer]
• The Swiss court on Roman Polanski's release: "The 76-year-old appellant is married and the father of two minors... It can be assumed that as a responsible father he will, especially in view of his advanced age, attach greater importance to the financial security of his family than a younger person." His previous bail offer of his home as collateral was rejected and the court demanded money instead. Peter Cosandey, a former Zurich prosecutor, said it's unusual for a non-resident to be granted bail, but "cash is king." [AP]
• The Jackson family had an early Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday. "That's really, really important because we're a family and throughout the years, the managers, the agents and Hollywood have tried to come between that," Jermaine Jackson said. "What they don't know is we were together before we came out here and we're going to continue to be together." [CNN]
• Now that Jon Gosselin and Hailey Glassman have split, he won't be spending Thanksgiving with her family. He can't visit his kids either, because it's Kate's day. "I won't be home," says Jon. "I'm going to my grandma's." [Us]
• Kim Kardashian posted a list of the 10 things she's most thankful for including her family, friends, fans, "Lamar for making Khloe the happiest girl in the world" and "My glam squad for always making me fabulous!" [Us]
• Courtney Love took her Hole bandmates to a strip club yesterday. "Courtney Love brought in a group of guys who all looked like Keith Richards, some of whom were in her band. They arrived about 12:30," a source reports. "She was saying she used to be a stripper and appreciated what the girls do. Courtney left in a limo with a female friend after 45 minutes, leaving the band to enjoy themselves." [N.Y. Post]
• Oprah Winfrey's former rival Phil Donahue says he understands why she wants to retire. "She's a remarkable story," he said, "But you're on air every day. Eventually you think, 'do people really want to hear me talk anymore?'" [N.Y. Post]
• In an email sent to Oprah.com subscribers, she writes: "Fifteen years ago, I wrote in my journal that one day I would create a television network, as I always felt my show was just the beginning of what the future could hold." Also, the Post is calling her "Prah" now, because it's just too difficult to type that "O." [N.Y. Post]
• Fergie experienced Daniel Day-Lewis' method acting while filming Nine. She says: "Daniel is very charming. I'd go into my dressing room, and I'd find this little note. I'd open it, and it would be Guido's stationary. He would write me little notes as Guido. They were very cute and very charming." [Popeater]
• The Real Housewives of New York were frolicking on the beach in St. John over the weekend, where they're filming an upcoming episode. [N.Y. Post]
• Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig raised $7,000 for the charity Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS when they sold the sweaty vests they were wearing after a performance of A Steady Rain. One female audience member yelled, "How much for the pants?" to which Hugh responded: "By pants, we are talking about the trousers right?" [The Star]
• "I didn't fit in in high school and I felt like a freak," says Lady Gaga. "So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don't feel alone." [People]
• Kelly Osbourne says she's not upset that Donny Osmond won DWTS "Everyone kept coming up to me and saying, 'Are you okay? Are you okay?'" she said. "And I'm like, 'I never fucking thought I was going to win anyway!'" [Us]
• Levi Johnston has rethought his position on joining DWTS. "I think if my phone were to ring right now, I would probably say yes," he said. "Dancing isn't really my thing but I think I could do it... I mean, I'm pretty athletic so I think I could do just about anything." [ET]
• Kim Cattrall is posing nude to raise money to keep the painting "Diana and Callisto" by Titian in Britain's National Gallery and prevent it from being sold to a private foreign bidder. [Contact Music]
• Good Morning America cancelled a scheduled Adam Lambert appearance this morning, so he appeared on CBS's Early Show instead, along with the man he made out with at the AMAs. [TMZ]
• Liza Minnelli says the greatest moment in her career is yet to come. "I'm a Minnelli, so there's always something to do," she said. "I'll think of something. I always do." [Reuters]
• T.I. and Lil Wayne's daughters have joined with two other girls ages 11 to 13 to form the group OMG Girlz, which is managed by T.I.'s fiancée, Tameka 'Tiny' Cottle. [MTV]
• Sylvester Stallone is facing charges after he was photographed this weekend driving his Mustang with two little girls sharing one seat belt in the passenger seat. [Daily Express]
• John Mayer's new album Battle Studies topped the Billboard chart this week with 286,000 copies sold. [N.Y.T.]
• Erik Estavillo, who is suing the makers of World of Warcraft for creating a virtual environment that he says has given him various emotional problems, has subpoenaed Depeche Mode founder Martin Lee Gore because "he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated as can be seen in the songs he writes," and Winona Ryder because she'll be able to "explain the significance of alienation in Catcher in the Rye and will also testify to how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live/video games such as World of Warcraft." [Game Politics]
• James McAvoy usually won't do films with his wife Anne-Marie Duff, but he made an exception for The Last Station. He said, "We've been offered a hell of a lot of parts playing opposite each other in films and TV and we just turn them down. If you do work together you put yourself up, you make yourself a target and you make your relationship a target and all of that. We're very keen not to do that. But in The Last Station we don't play opposite each other hardly at all. It was nice to spend those two months together rather than spending those two months apart, while she's off somewhere doing God knows what and I'm off doing God knows what. So it was fine. It was quite easy with this one." [Daily Express]
• Viggo Mortensen says his role in The Road was difficult physically. "We had good makeup and all that, but because it was such a tough journey physically and emotionally, as I gradually got closer to [the character], I literally was getting weaker and weaker and it took more energy to just focus — which was right. So it was this gradual decline into character that in some part was real. I mean, I was pretty beat by the end, and so was Kodi. And it shows. There were things that are on screen that are beyond whatever we prepared." [Inside Movies]
• "I was playing truth or dare when I had my first kiss," says Kellan Lutz. "I was probably 7. I learned to hold the girl and I won as best kisser. They picked me because I actually held the girls when I kissed them. I loved kissing them because they had flavored lip glosses on, which was great." [People]
• "Nothing surprises me in terms of reviews," says New Moon director Chris Weitz. "Having been a reviewer myself, there are only two ways to spin this story. You can either be the one guy who says this is a great movie, or more likely, take a more jaundiced view of the whole thing. And given the media blitz that has accompanied New Moon, it's rather unsurprising. I do wish there was more appreciation for cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. I think he's a genius, and I think he made something beautiful." [Us]
• "I have (my Oscar) in my house in Spain and I still haven't found the right place for it. But for the first month when I won I was so excited about it, I took it everywhere with me. I took it — this is true — I even took it to the beach one day and put it under a towel." — Penelope Cruz [UPI]

Earlier: Oprah's Favorite Things 2007: The Audience Freaks Out!

Miller, whom Cadwalladr describes as "vaguely expensive looking," wrote the recently released film The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, about a woman who responds to her much older husband's affair by running away with Keanu Reeves. Of Pippa, Cadwalladr writes, "she's the ultimate artist's wife, one of the characters says in the opening scene; the last of a dying breed, somebody who has given her whole self over to others, and who suddenly decides that she has to escape." Miller draws a parallel with her own life:

I think I've always been an escape artist. But here I am, deep in family life, and totally committed to it. Escape for me is writing. That's where all the negativity and everything goes. I think it would be easy to go mad if you don't have some sort of release. When you have children and live a family life, the demands on you - to subsume what you want or what you're thinking, or who you are - are huge. There's this thing that Pippa says about how she has ceased to be the protagonist of her own life. And it's the same with me. When I had a family I stepped aside and let other people be the centre. I think that's part of being a woman: you can't remember how to be the centre any more.

But Cadwalladr seems to be forcing Miller from the center. Time and again, the interview leaves Miller herself behind to focus on her famous father or husband. Cadwalladr writes,

[...] there's so much material in Miller's life that it's no wonder she's a writer. The complications and pressures of her familial life are so richly novelistic. Such as meeting Daniel Day-Lewis at a screening of the film that her half-brother, Robert, made of her father's most famous work, The Crucible. "There's something about Arthur," Day-Lewis said at the time, "that makes you wish he was your father. I'd like to turn up on his doorstep with adoption papers."

Here Cadwalladr neatly exscripts Miller from her own life. Her family — not her own decisions — apparently made her into a writer, and in the course of the paragraph even this family seems to exclude her. If Day-Lewis just wanted to be Arthur Miller's son, where does that leave his wife?

Of course, the life that Cadwalladr constructs for Miller isn't quite her real life — Miller hastens to point out, for instance, that Daniel Day Lewis doesn't bring his method acting home to their children. However, Cadwalladr's focus on said method acting (she actually wonders if he was in character at home before they had kids), on Arthur Miller's marriage to Marilyn Monroe and his later relationship with a much younger woman, on every aspect of Rebecca Miller's life that is not Rebecca Miller, reveals why it may be hard for a woman to be the "protagonist of her own life." Other people — even other women — simply won't let her.

Though Miller is an artist in her own right — she also writes fiction and has acted in several films — Cadwalladr seems intent on making her, like Pippa, into an artist's wife. But why isn't Daniel Day-Lewis an artist's husband? Why is no one asking him how he "remembers to be the center" in the face of his wife's creative process? Perhaps because male artists — whether they act, paint, or write plays — are still seen as difficult, unusual people who need the tender ministrations of a tolerant woman, whereas female artists are just women who happen to also do art. How come a man's greatness can excuse all manner of domestic foibles, but a woman is still defined by her family? How come Carole Cadwalladr, a female journalist, is perpetuating this double standard? It's enough to make anyone want to run off with Keanu Reeves.

Interview: Rebecca Miller [Guardian]

[Rome, Italy; January 30. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Rome, January 28. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Rome, January 25. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Rome, Italy; January 11. Image via Flynet]

[Anguillara, Italy; January 8. Image via INF]

[London, December 18. Image via INF]

[Peterborough Cambridgeshire, UK; October 28. Image via INF]

The Good:

The Bad:

The Ugly:

[Los Angeles, CA; February 24. Image via AP.]

[LAX, February 20. Image via Bauer-Griffin.]