• Wait wait wait wait. Did Lindsay Lohan spend the night at Jason Segel's house?

Apparently he came outside and told nosy paparazzi that she was not inside. An hour later, she emerged. [Daily Mail]

• The photographer who shot Lindsay Lohan in a ménage-à-trois situation for Muse magazine, Yu Tsai, says: "When you see her nipple, it just happened in the moment. She was playing the role of Kate Moss — you're at a party and you are with a guy you really love and another girl. She is stunning and radiates in the pictures. Lindsay is incredibly focused where it comes to her career and fashion is her passion. It's raw, it's exposed, this is her at her best. She told me: 'I want to make this iconic.'" So; the nipple shot was in the moment, huh? What about the bare-assed shot? [Page Six]
• Madonna could possibly adopt again. "Never say never," she told a TV news reporter. [Daily Express]
• Is Britney's dad's conservatorship coming to an end? Jamie Spears actually has two: one over Britney as a person; another over her business affairs. The business conservatorship will likely continue, but Britney may get some freedom back. [TMZ]
• "Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, the American actors, have made it into Who's Who 2010, adding a 'touch of Hollywood glamour' to the list of new entrants." [Telegraph]
• Diane Sawyer has announced that this is her last week on Good Morning America. She will take over the World News anchor chair for Charles Gibson, who retires December 18. [Good Morning America]
• Christopher Cuomo has resigned from ABC, where he was the is co-anchor of Good Morning America and a regular contributor to ABC Evening News. Is it because people are saying George Stephanopolous will take over for Diane Sawyer? [Radar Online]
• mediabistro.com's TV Newser column declares: "Reports of Chris Cuomo's Resignation Untrue." [TV Newser]
• Alexa Ray Joel is out of the hospital. [Showbiz 411]
• Sources claim that Alexa Ray Joel took pills after fighting with an ex-boyfriend. [Extra, People]
• Alexa Ray Joel's ex-boyfriend, Johnny Riot, says: "I don't know how she's doing." [NY Daily News]
• Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are heating up again, and you know, I hope those crazy kids make it work. Adorable. [Gatecrasher]
• Over the weekend, Jake Gyllenhaal said: "Obviously I exist in my girlfriend's world and my sister's world in a different way, but [being around their kids has] opened my heart and I feel much more grown up and want to be grown up as a result of it." Does using the word "girlfriend" mean that he and Reese have not broken up? [Gatecrasher]
• Tiger Woods is a regular at two bars in Orlando, FL — people who work at the Blue Martini say that Tiger is "really friendly" with the waitresses and at a bar called 23, the private lounge is called the Tiger Room — where Tiger's tab is around $1,500 a night. [TMZ]
• Tiger Woods' fourth alleged mistress, Jamie Jungers, is a former Trashy Lingerie "Trashy Girl," as you can see in the pictures at the link. [E!, E!]
• This post claims that Tiger Woods made the decision to pay off Rachel Uchitel after a "secret phone call" in which she made it clear that was not the one who leaked the story of their affair. And: "Tiger felt it was important to silence Uchitel more than any other woman because his relationship with her was current and intense." [Radar Online]
• More women may come forward to say they've been involved with Tiger Woods. An anonymous Las Vegas nightclub owner says: "He wasn't one to send away someone who was interested. There was a revolving door of women with Tiger. I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head." [MSNBC Scoop]
• One alleged mistress says that Tiger Woods told her his marriage was a sham and "only for publicity." [NY Daily News]
• Tiger Woods' best friend, Byron Bell — the one who bought tickets for Rachel Uchitel to join Tiger in Australia — is getting married next week. Tiger is the best man. [TMZ]
• Wait, what? "Tiger Woods Alienates Black Community With White Lovers." You mean golf didn't do it? One blogger says: "If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great's accident would have been barely a blip in the blogosphere." [NY Daily News]
• Hey, look who's on the January cover of Golf Digest? Tiger Woods. And Barack Obama. [The Life Files, WSJ]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Amy Adams is pregnant. She and fiancé Darren Legallo have yet to set a wedding date. [NY Daily News]
• Clothingus strippis! The new Harry Potter flick will feature a "very sexy" love scene in which Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are NAKED. Doubt that we'll see Harry's wand, though. It ain't Equus. [Telegraph]
• Susan Boyle is still at the top of the album charts in the UK. [Mirror]
• Matt Damon thinks a fourth Jason Bourne movie will happen "someday." He adds: "It's gotta happen - we've just got to get a script, and we don't have one." The thing is, he wants to do it with director Paul Greengrass, who recently said he wasn't interested in returning to the franchise. "I wouldn't do it with anybody else." [MTV News]
• Rihanna high-fived a young woman wearing the same outfit at her album launch party. [Gatecrasher]
• Shakira will speak at the Oxford Union debating society in front of Oxford University students. [The Star]
• Helen Mirren keeps her Oscar, SAG Awards, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Emmys in her attic. At the Women in Film and TV Awards – where she won a Lifetime Achievement award — she was asked how a Lifetime Achievement prize made her feel. She said: "Old." [Telegraph]
• A Mexican governor plans to empty a prison in Veracruz in January so that Mel Gibson can film a movie there. [AP]
• "Harvard Medical School professor contends U.S. talk show host Nancy Grace is partially to blame for the suicide of a mother of a missing boy three years ago." [UPI]
• I didn't read this item about how Hulk Hogan wants his antique toilet seat back from his ex-wife because I don't want to know. [TMZ]
• Hotel Gramercy Park premieres tonight on the Sundance Channel, and luminaries such as Debbie Harry, Julian Schnabel, Karl Lagerfeld, Ben Stiller, Winona Ryder, Russell Simmons and Kanye West make appearances in the film. [Page Six]
• John McEnroe and rocker wife Patty Smyth: Spotted smoking a joint at an art exhibit. [Page Six]
• "I've tried, but I get too crazy with that guitar arm and the things coming toward you… I think the game is great… I think the graphics are great."— Ringo Starr has never played Beatles: Rock Band. [Mirror]
• "I didn't really have that many friends at school. Kids would just heckle me: 'Oh, go sing that country beep.' It just dawned on me that I had to love being different or else I was going to end up being dark and angry and frustrated by school. Sometimes I felt like I was some sort of spy because I would go to school during the day, and then, after school, I had this life that was completely different. I definitely was more nervous walking into my first day of freshman year in high school than I was walking up to record labels and handing them my CD." — Taylor Swift. [NY Times]
• "I felt like that was fun. I would do it exactly the same way. You know, I am who I am." — Adam Lambert wouldn't change a thing about his AMA performance. [Gatecrasher]
• "We definitely got bigger than we wanted to be. You feel like you've done something wrong. That woman in mom jeans who'd never let me date her daughter? She likes my music. That's fucking not cool. You almost start doing damage control: When people ask you to do stuff, you're like, ‘No, because I can already tell this record is going to get to a level where people will fucking hate us.'" — Caleb Followill of Kings Of Leon. [Gatecrasher via Spin Magazine]
• "I hid out for a while, but that just drove me crazy. I got cabin fever. I was ready to make music again. It was a hard time, but I found peace in the studio." — Rihanna, on the making of her new album, Rated R. [USA Today]
• "The bottom line is, I really don't know how to relax to the degree that I could just stop. So when something comes along and is presented to me, and I think, 'Gee, I could have some fun doing that,' or 'I think I could bring something to that,' I'll do it."— Angela Lansbury, who is on Broadway in A Little Night Music with Catherine Zeta-Jones. [CBS News]
• Where do you live? "The May Fair hotel." But you must have a home somewhere? "My home is onstage." Where do you keep your things? "I have storage." Not even an apartment? "No. I don't care about those things. I tell my fans this little poem I wrote: For every minute of the day, The truth is that I'm dead, Until I'm here onstage with you -Then I'm alive instead." — from an interview with Lady Gaga. [Times Of London]
• "I'm not trying to be the girlfriend. I'm just kind of game. Often the role they send me is a man's role, written with a man in mind. But character is character; it's not about gender. Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines." — Sigourney Weaver on the kind of roles she gets or looks for. Also, she says she once went to the White House, during the Reagan administration, when an 11-year-old Saudi Arabian prince and Ghostbusters fan had requested her presence at a dinner… he was disappointed that she didn't turn up as Zuul. [New York Mag]
• "He hissed at me yesterday. I tried to explain to him but he doesn't understand concepts such as international travel and work. He certainly doesn't understand the concept of a bikini. I am getting him a pet passport which means he can travel around as much as he likes. Unfortunately, they don't do photos. I was really looking forward to that." — Russell Brand on his cat, Morrissey. [Mirror]
• "I started auditioning here and I had the accent, the body and the attitude for the Latin woman, but they don't associate 'blond' with us. I went for a screen test, and they asked me to come with dark hair. I thought it looked better because I have darker eyebrows. So now they believe me that I'm Latin. [Laughs] I always joke that if they throw me in a chlorine pool, all my Latin is going away — my hair and my self-tanner!" — Sofia Vergara, on her role on Modern Family. She also says: "When I came to L.A., people started telling me I had to lose some weight. No one has ever told me in my life that I'm fat. Or that my breasts were too big! When I told my mother that my reps want me to get a reduction, she went crazy. 'God is going to punish you if you cut your [breasts].' …Mine are natural, so they go here and they go there and there's no dress that picks them up! When they told me to lose weight, I was like, are they playing a joke on me? I've always been known for my body! . . . . The thing is I did lose a little weight because I understand that standing next to the stick figures, I don't look as good in pictures. My friend says that the other actresses look better than me on TV because they're skinny. And I'm like, 'Yeah, but I look better naked!'" [LA Times]

• Remember when Nicole Richie was on The Simple Life? She's planning on returning to primetime TV — this time in a scripted comedy.

Nicole is producing and starring as "a professional woman with complicated family relationships" who is "struggling to figure out what role she'll take as her life and her family evolve." She came up with the idea for the show, and Daisy Gardner (Californication) will be writing the half-hour sitcom for ABC. There's no title yet, so maybe we can brainstorm one? Is Family Puts The Fun In Dysfunctional too long?!?! [Variety]

• Jennifer Aniston really loves her yoga instructor, Mandy Ingber. Jen has filmed a personal introduction for Mandy's new DVD, in which she declares, "Mandy brought yoga into my life. This workout will change your body and your mind." Jen works out with Mandy up to five times a week, and even takes her on vacation with her. What have you done for your yoga instructor lately? [Page Six]
• Jake Gyllenhaal's assistant was seeing taking luggage from Reese Witherspoon's house to Jake's house. Are they broken up? Does he have sleepover bags? Is he going on a trip? What does it mean?!?!?! [MSNBC]
• Breaking: Amy Winehouse was sober at her father's birthday party. [The Sun]
• BREAKING! Lindsay Lohan was also spotted sober, while out at a night club. End times? [Page Six]
• "Sources" say the news about Tiger Woods is not surprising: "He's a pro athlete. He's been in a lot of situations with women that would not look good… Most athletes of his stature fall under the same category, it doesn't mean he doesn't love his family." Apparently Tiger was often seen "in the company of women in public places" and "whether he crossed lines - that's not something anyone talks about openly, but I can tell you there are times things look that way." As always: grain of salt. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Roman Polanski will not be released on bail before Friday, according to Swiss authorities. [AFP]
• Ever the nonconformist, Cate Blanchett spent Cyber Monday shopping the streets of Manhattan. [Gatecrasher]
• In LA, George Clooney walked the red carpet at the premiere of his film Up In The Air with his girlfriend, Elisabetta Canalis, and his mom, Nina. [Daily Mail]
• Elisabeth Hasselbeck has been sued AGAIN over her book, The G Free Diet, by the same woman who sued her the first time. Susan Hassett claims Hasselbeck's book is a rip-off of her own work, Living with Celiac Disease. [TMZ]
• Emma Watson: Spotted vacationing in Jamaica with Brit cutie Jay Barrymore, mere days after she attended a hockey game with Spanish rocker Rafael Cebrian. Hermione plays the field! [Page Six]
• Charlize Theron will be the host of a 90-minute live show promoting — and drawing players for — next year's football Wold Cup in South Africa. Only two hundred million people in 200 countries will be watching. No pressure. [Reuters]
• Rihanna was incredibly upset when a man punched Leona Lewis in the face at an event a few weeks ago. I got so mad, like it was me. I couldn't believe it happened to her, of all people," Rihanna says. "It's so disappointing when people behave like that. Why? She's so sweet. She is just a beautiful, beautiful spirit. You don't want any bad things to happen to her." [Daily Express]
• Boys kissing boys and boys in boys' crotches are very much a no-no! ABC is trying to find a way to avoid a repeat of a performance like Adam Lambert's at the American Music Awards: "We certainly don't want to suppress artistry at any level, but we also have to be cognizant of who our audience is," Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, says. [NY Post]
• Richard Gere is being called a "tree-killer." [Page Six]
• Sherri Shepherd bribes her son with White Castle. [Gatecrasher]
• In a very graphic video at the link, bounce's from Jay-Z's 40/40 Club in Atlantic City punch and beat two "ejected patrons." The bouncers may face criminal charges. [NY Daily News]
• The gorgeous and talented exiled Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo — whom you may have seen in House Of Sand And Fog — is maybe about to ink a deal for her memoir. And this column claims she is the "dark-horse Oscar contender" for her performance in The Stoning of Soraya M, a film we have been keeping tabs on. [Page Six]
• The next Harry Potter movie will mostly take place away from Hogwarts, and Rupert Grint says: "Harry, Ron and Hermione are just camping out in random places, living rough, in regular clothes… Me and Dan actually have some stubble." [USA Today]
• Check out this picture of the very limber Jaden Smith, son of Will, who is currently filming the Karate Kid remake, Kung-Fu Kid. [The Life Files]
• Roger Avary, who won a screenwriting Oscar for Pulp Fiction, sent tweets from jail, and now is under higher security; he had been on a work furlough program but is now back in routine confinement. [NY Daily News]
• Russell Brand met Katy Perry's religious parents! Katy's dad gave Rusty a book about God's intervention, Russell gave Katy's dad My Booky Wook, in which Russell details his former life of drugs and hookers. Everyone is okay with everything and all four of them are on vacation in Austria. [The Sun]
• Congrats to Susan Boyle, who could have the number one album in the US and the UK and whose disc has the biggest opening sales of the year. [NY Daily News]
• Gary Busey has been named the unsexiest man in Hollywood. [Daily Express]
• "Liam Gallagher Brands Noel The 'Kevin Keegan Of Rock." [Independent]
• "Michael Jackson" was the most-searched term on Yahoo this year. [AP]
• ''I would have done nothing differently. I think it worked out really well.
  ''I am really happy with what I am doing now — happy in my personal life and happy with my professional life. 'I apologized for the thing I did wrong to the person I did it wrong to." — Russell Brand, regarding the prank calls he and Jonathan Ross made to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs in October 2008. [Telegraph]
• "[My father] was scary and violent. He beat the living hell out of me, and there was constant verbal abuse. Looking back on it, he probably was disappointed that I was so drawn to the arts. He probably thought I was gay. I wasn't interested in sports. I didn't know the names of any baseball players. I liked films and books and records." — Tom Petty. [Advocate via Rolling Stone]
• "The only thing that came into my mind was a decade ago, when I hit 50, I was onstage in Philadelphia, and you realize, 'OK, this is exactly where I want to be right now. I wouldn't want to be any place else.' You realize there is a finiteness to it. We're playing to an audience now that will outlive us. There will be a seed of an audience out there tonight that's just going to outlive the band. But at the same time, the band is very, very powerful right now. And part of the reason it's powerful is that it's carrying a lot of very strong cumulative history. You come and you see 35 years of a speeding train going down the track and you're going to get to be on the front end of it. We look forward to many, many more years of touring and playing and enjoying it." — Bruce Springsteen. Much more in an extensive interview at the link. [Reuters]
• "I mean, it's fine if that's what they want to focus on. It's a movie that I think is beautiful and was a joy to make. But I can only make it. If people want to make that the thing they want to talk about, it's distressing, but that's their business." — Willem Dafoe wish you would stop focusing on his mutilated genitalia in Antichrist. [New York]
• "I don't have any interest in acting anymore. Movies are a part of my past. It's been 30 years. I'm not young, but I have time to do something else. I consider my entire movie career a complete failure. The goal of movie-making is to star in a film where your performance drives the film, and the film is either a soaring critical or commercial success, and I never had that." — Say it ain't so, Alec Baldwin! [MSNBC Scoop via Men's Journal]
• "I hate that. He has such a big mouth. It drives me crazy, and it makes me want to thump him in the side of his head… It's not accurate." — Kimora Lee Simmons, when asked if it's true that Russell Simmons gives her $40,000 a month in child support. [Page Six]

#1 Sexism
When asked about her much-publicized campaign wardrobe, Sarah said that the ensuing controversy was due to a double standard, because people don't give the same sort of grief to male candidates. She also said that women have to work just a little bit harder and face a few more challenges than their male counterparts. But later, when discussing how hard it might be to be Vice President (or President) and take care of five children, Sarah said that "things have changed…there's so much equality."


#2 Choice
Sarah, who is anti-choice, said that she believes that when women get abortions, they're taking the easy way out. But later, when discussing her career and ambition, she said it's all about "making the choices that are appropriate for you at the time."


#3 The Katie Couric Interview
When talking about the infamous Katie Couric interview, Sarah said that she was only scheduled to do one interview segment, and if it went well, she would be scheduled for more. Oprah then asked her why she did a second interview if she didn't believe the first went well, and Sarah said, "Well, it was scheduled."


#4 John McCain's Progressiveness
Sarah described her running mate as progressive and all about "equality and empowering women and the working class individual." But she later said the McCain campaign lost the election because their ticket "represented what was perceived as the status quo."


#5 Speaking Her Mind
Sarah told Oprah that she believes the campaign's efforts to force her to "stick to the script" and not "speak from the heart" were a detriment to their ticket. Later, she rejected the notion that not speaking her mind is what lost the election.


#6 Empowering Women
Supposedly, this is accomplished by not terminating pregnancies.


#7 Rumors
In an outtake of the interview, posted on Oprah's website, Sarah says that the "rumor" that she banned books from school libraries could've been so easily disproved, had the campaign allowed her, because Harry Potter hadn't even been written when she was mayor. Sarah, however, was mayor of Wasilla from 1996-2002. The first Harry Potter book was published in the U.S. in 1998, the second and third in 1999, and the fourth in 2000. Also: this. And this.


#8 Journalism
This one isn't so much a contradiction, as it is simply incorrect, or weird. Sarah has a journalism degree and has "journaled her whole life."

A World Exclusive: Oprah and Sarah Palin Meet for the First Time [Oprah.com]

[Gloucester, October 29. Image via Getty]

GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 29: Harry Potter fans dressed in character costumes sit in the cloisters as they wait to see the film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on a giant screen inside Gloucester Cathedral on October 29, 2009 in Gloucester, England. Some of the scenes in the latest Harry Potter installment were filmed inside the Cathedral, which dates back over 900 years. The historic cathedral cloisters were transformed into the corridors of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the films of JK Rowling's first two books - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and also the more recent Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

A remote-controlled zombie with a brain-shaped remote makes quite the stocking stuffer.

So many winners on this page, but the golden fertility idol pen holder and the Lost Ark bank are the ones that really caught my eye. The legless Short Round statue is terrifying, and the Delorean is cool, but not super useful.

Ooh — sure to be a hot toy come Christmastime! They made the doll of Tiana from The Princess And The Frog super pretty. The plush frogs are cute too, and there must be someone you know who's dying for a Slimer bank?

Attention Twihards! You can choose from THREE different kinds of Sparkle Vamp. There's the Byronic effete version; the über-pale Barbie version and the "very detailed" sick of Hollywood bullshit model. ZOMGSPARKLEVAMP4EVA! Question: Where is my Buff Werewolf? Team Jacob has been robbed.

In case you didn't believe that Robert Pattinson's glare had been recreated: Believe.

Prefer wizards to sparkle vamps? Draco Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange dolls should satisfy you.

Ben Linus bobblehead: Creeptastic!

Remember when Strawberry Shortcake got a makeover? This is what she looks like now. Shed a tear for your destroyed childhood.

Can we just pretend we didn't see the pages of busty Anime girls with removable clothing? No? Dammit.

When I say I need an R2D2 USB hub, I mean now.

Question: Is the Heidi Klum Barbie supposed to look like Heidi Klum? Because it doesn't. (The legs. So thin. I cry.)

Question: If you purchase a zombie oil painting, have you made an intelligent art-buying decision? As in, the kind that takes BRAINS?

Question: Can you believe that there is a Twilight flash drive — complete with Cullen family crest — and it's actually pretty cool? (ZOMG WHAT AM I SAYING? I HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED BY THE SPARKLE VAMP)

Question: May I please have life-size versions of the Jonathan Adler Barbie dress — AND LAMP — for my wardrobe and bedroom?

Earlier: Entertainment Earth: Weird Gifts For The Freaks & Geeks On Your List

• Lily Allen was performing in Helsinki, Finland when she burst into tears. Before the show, she Tweeted:

"Fell over badly last night and I've really fucked my back up. Just had an injection in my bum. How am I gonna get through tonight's gig?" Throwing out your back is terrible! So is Lily's hair/makeup in these pix. [Daily Mail]

• Bill Maher said he once saw Brad Pitt roll the most perfect joint he had ever seen. "I'm an artist," Brad agreed. [NY Daily News]
• Brad Pitt is being added to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes as the detective's arch enemy. The character of Moriarty was missing from a rough cut of the film, and movie execs insisted the famous nemesis be added to the flick. Ritchie called old pal Pitt (who was in Snatch) and he'll film this week in London. [Mirror]
• The Dancing With The Stars season 9 cast: Revealed! Macy Gray, Melissa Joan Hart, Kathy Ireland, Mya, Iron Chef host Mark Dacascos, Ashley Hamilton, former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin, Donny Osmond, Tom DeLay (?!?!?!), Olympic swimming gold medalist Natalie Coughlin, model Joanna Krupa, Debi Mazar, Kelly Osbourne, Aaron Carter, Chuck Liddell, and snowboarder Louie Vito. [ABC News]
• Jennifer Aniston complimented a woman pole-dancing on the set of The Bounty, saying she looked like a professional. The lady replied, "I am!" [Gatecrasher]
• George Clooney plans to sue a photographer who climbed over the wall of his Lake Como home and took pictures of a 13-year-old girl changing in a guest room, as well as snaps of Clooney and gf Elisabetta Canalis. Cloons says: "I don't know about the law in the United States, but in Italy it's illegal for photographers to climb over my wall. He'll also press charges against two magazines who published the photos. [Gatecrasher]
• Beyoncé: Secretly taking ballet classes at Alvin Ailey School of Dance. [Gatecrasher]
• Jon Gosselin went to a party thrown by a student at Parsons School Of Design. He only stayed for 20 minutes, but arrived with a paparazzo and left with two female students. Keepin' it classy. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Even though Paula Abdul won't be on Dancing With The Stars, she MIGHT get a ABC show of her own. Paula's Wacky Clappy Variety Show? [TMZ]
• Madonna performed in Warsaw on Saturday even though it was a holy date, the Assumption of Mary feast. National group Pro Polonia called her a "crypto-Satanist," which is not very crypto. [Daily Express]
• Bob Dylan was on tour and took a walk in Long Branch, NJ, when he was stopped by cops; a resident had reported someone "wandering" around the neighborhood. A cop asked him for I.D. "I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," says a town official. [NY Daily News]
• Jennifer Lopez is looking pretty hot on the cover of InStyle and inside she's saying stuff like: "There's nothing as huge as giving birth to another human being and having to be responsible for another life. There's you before kids, and there's you after kids – and they're not the same you." [People]
• Mark Wahlberg was rushed to the hospital on Friday morning after suffering smoke inhalation on the set of The Frighter. A smoke machine was being used for atmosphere and Wahlberg breathed in too much. [RadarOnline, Daily Express]
• Amy Winehouse's divorce from Blake Fielder-Civil will be finalized at the end of the month, but Blake allegedly told a reporter: "I want to take her out for dinner and propose again. I hope that within five minutes we'll be planning where we're next going to get married." [Daily Mail]
• Blake also says: "She is looking beautiful and healthy now and it reminds me of the old Amy." [News Of The World]
• Amy will appear on Strictly Come Dancing in September as a backup singer for her 13-year-old goddaughter Dionne Bromfield, and there's a cute picture of them hugging at the link. [Mirror]
• Bodysnarky opening sentence of the day: "She's looking thinner than ever, but there's one part of Victoria Beckham that looks set to put on a lot of weight very quickly - her wallet. Posh Spice has landed a £3million contract on American Idol…" [Daily Mail]
• Joe Simpson is pushing Jessica Simpson as the perfect replacement for Paula Abdul on American Idol. [Page Six]
• Saturday night after a Fall Out Boy show, Ashlee Simpson and husband Pete Wentz were at a bar when Ashlee got wasted, yelled at Pete and made him leave his own party early. Charming! [Perez]
• Jane Fonda, 71, might marry 67-year-old Richard Perry next year, which would be her fourth wedding. [Daily Express]
• So many contradictory stories about MJ. We first heard that he was strong during rehearsals. This report claims: "Michael Jackson was so weak in his final days he needed to be SPOON-FED meals, his make-up artist has revealed." [The Sun]
• "Michael Jackson's body has been moved in secret to a new crypt, where it's been frozen." [Daily Express]
• This report claims that Michael Jackson will be buried on what would have been his 51st birthday, August 29. Or so says Joe Jackson. [Gatecrasher]
• You know how Michael Phelps was in a car accident last week? Turns out he was driving with an expired license and told cops he had a beer about an hour before the crash. [TMZ]
• George Michael on his car smashup: "Neither of us was charged because we were both stone cold sober. We both think the other is to blame so this is just an insurance fight." [E!]
• Eva Longoria is expanding her restaurant business, and soon she'll have a Beso Vegas and "Besitos" in ariports. [People]
• Kristin Bauer, who plays Pam on True Blood, thinks Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer will have kids together since Anna is "great" with Stephen's kids from previous relationships. [E!]
• Tons of Gossip Girl spoilers at the link, and yes, there are details on Chuck and Blair — with a HOT picture of the Bass. [People]
• Matthew Settle — Gossip Girl's Rufus — skateboards through New York during rush hour. [NY Times]
• Actress Aishwarya Rai has a chest infection with flu-like symptoms. [Times Of India]
• Anna Friel will play Holly Golightly in an upcoming stage production of Breakfast At Tiffany's in London. [Times Of London]
• The Office's Amy Ryan — who plays Holly Flax — is pregnant. [E!]
• An excerpt of Alana Stewart's book, My Journey With Farrah: A Story Of Life, Love And Friendship, at the link. [Daily Mail]
• Bananarama's back. [Daily Mail]
• Aberdeen, Washington has the title of one hometown hero Kurt Cobain's songs, "Come As You Are," posted at the entrance of town. An unofficial park has been established next to the bridge under which Cobain hung out and wrote songs. [LA Times]
• Blind item! "Which D-list relationship recently ended when the gal found out her man's secret vice was boy-on-boy action?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I can't tell you how far from a gold-digger I am. I've never dated a rich man in my life. I've always wondered how girl friends of mine could even ask their boyfriends to buy them clothes." — Samantha Burke, who was impregnated by Jude Law. [Daily Mail]
• "I thought it was an incredibly sexual role and a challenge to be an 'older woman' in the film. Roles always challenge me in some personal way and that was one I wanted to overcome: 'Wow, all of a sudden, you've become the "Older Woman" in a movie. Let's give the younger ones a run for their money.'" — Anne Heche on playing opposite Ashton Kutcher in Spread. [LA Times]
• "This season, I really want to get back to the guerilla style I used to have. I want to try to get back to my roots and make it crazy. In the first episode, I get buried alive in a coffin, six feet under 5,000 pounds of snow. I want people to realize I'm not complacent because I have a little bit of success and a little money. Hopefully in return I can raise the level of the art form to the level other art forms receive, like the cinema.… I just really loved the ability as a kid to do something that adults didn't understand. It was like power. Then I realized as a teenager that there was more to the art of magic than how you did it. It's trying to connect to somebody." — Criss Angel, whose Mindfreak is back on A&E for its 5th season. [LA Times]
• "I like everything about filming except the acting. In recent years I've had really bad attacks where I totally froze up. I thought 'Well, if I am going to get stage fright, then I am packing it in.'" — Hugh Grant. [Daily Mail]
• "I think anybody that's touring is going to have a carbon footprint. I think it's probably unfair to single out rock 'n' roll. There's many other things that are in the same category but as it happens we have a program to offset whatever carbon footprint we have." — The Edge, annoyed by critics of U2's travel. [Daily Express]
• "The Harry Potter books are not explicitly religious in the way that C.S. Lewis's Narnia tales are, but there is a strong sense of evil, and issues of good and evil are not only philosophical issues but also theological issues." —University of Massachusetts-Amherst philosophy professor Gareth B. Matthews. [UPI]
• "I think when I started I was working in the vein of The Dirty Dozen or The Devil's Brigade. But now watching the completed film with audiences, I don't think there has ever been a World War II movie like it. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your taste, but it's definitely a thing." — Quentin Tarantino on Inglourious Basterds. [WSJ]
• "Don Cheadle could play me, but I hope they just go with the obvious casting choice." — Richard Belzer, when asked who would play Richard Belzer if his crime novel about a a New York City police detective named Richard Belzer were made into a TV show. [Publishers Weekly]
• "I've had my heart broken before. Truly, truly broken. But when I look back at me in my heartbroken phase, it's pretty hilarious, because it felt so much more extreme than it really was. One of the things I love about (500) Days of Summer is that it doesn't make light of what we go through in romances, but it is honest about it and shows it for what it is, which is often profoundly funny." — Joseph Gordon-Levitt. [Guardian]
• "The speed of news creates so much vertigo. I am a very private person." — Penelope Cruz. [Telegraph]
• "We kind of rolled our eyes at the idea of having to make out." — Amanda Seyfried on her Jennifer's Body girl-on-girl scene with Megan Fox. [Page Six via Entertainment Weekly]
• "I remember really vividly kneeling by my bed as a nine-year-old, saying my prayers and asking God to give me boobs that were so big that if I laid on my back I wouldn't be able to see my feet. Eventually that request was granted. A bit of divine intervention displays the power of prayer. Every time before I go on stage, or go out where I know there will be a lot of press, I take a skipping rope and spend about ten minutes, fully clothed, skipping. I look like Rocky. This way I can ensure that everything is firmly in place and I won't have a wardrobe malfunction. Don't want those boulders doing a show of their own." — Katy Perry. [The Sun]

• Last week, Katherine Heigl complained that "cruel and mean" Grey's Anatomy producers forced her to work a 17-hour day, but according to rumors, the schedule was the result of producers shuffling things around to let her promote The Ugly Truth.

• Ken Levine, a producer who does not work on Grey's, says that everyone on the crew was paid overtime for the long day, adding, "This is an extreme case of chutzpah, but it's not uncommon that when shows become big hits cast members become much in demand... All of a sudden, the show that launched their success is now sort of an imposition... So producers are put in the sticky position of either denying them these outside projects or moving heaven and earth to accommodate them." [The L.A. Times]
• EW reports that Jude Law is expecting his fourth child this fall, "following a relationship last year." A rep adds, "no other statements will be made." Mwahaha...we'll see about that! [EW]
• Brad Pitt joked, "It's so tough being an actor... Sometimes they bring you coffee, and sometimes it's cold, and sometimes you don't have a chair to sit on." [People]
• This morning Star said that Michael Cera is 21 and had been dating 33-year-old Charlyne Yi for the past three years, but the two recently broke up (right before their film Paper Hearts opens). Newsweek ran an article dubbing him "The Hipster's Cougar Cub" but then posted a retraction, saying she's probably in her early 20s even though numerous sources say she's 33. Nobody knows here real age, and Newsweek also says he's 20, so we really have no idea how old these kids are. [Newsweek]
• Michael Jackson's friend Dick Gregory said that during MJ's molestation trial he called him saying, "They're trying to kill me ... they'll poison me!" but he was actually just so extremely dehydrated that a doctor at the hospital said if he'd waiting another 12 hours to come in he would have died. [TMZ]
• Michael Jackson's former nutritionist says he mostly existed on juice and smoothie diet, but "He loved trail mix, and once a month he had to have fried chicken." [E!]
• Michael Jackson's chef, Kai Chase, said she knew something was wrong on the morning of MJ's death because Dr. Conrad Murray didn't come downstairs to get the juice and granola he brought him every morning. She says, "I started preparing the lunch and then I looked at my cell phone and it was noon. About 12:05 or 12:10 Dr. Murray runs down the steps and screams, 'Go get Prince!' He's screaming very loud. I run into the den where the kids are playing. Prince runs to meet Dr. Murray and from that point on you could feel the energy in the house change. I walked into the hall and I saw the children there. The daughter was crying. I saw paramedics running up the stairs." Chase, the nanny, the housekeeper, and the kids formed a prayer circle as paramedics tried to save MJ. [Us]
• The DEA and the LAPD are fighting with Las Vegas police because the former agencies wanted to do a simultaneous raid of Dr. Conrad Murray's Houston and Las Vegas residences to maintain an element of surprise, but the Las Vegas police held up the second raid for nearly a week. [TMZ]
• Q: What's hanging above your sofa? David Cross: A painting of Michael Jackson being honored in the Rose Garden with Ronald and Nancy Reagan by his side. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Is Blake Fielder-Civil just holding daily press conferences now? Today he announced that Amy Winehouse cheated on him with four other guys during their marriage. [The Sun]
• When asked about the tabloid-generated rumors that Jessica Simpson would reunite with John Mayer, John's friend Rob Dyrdek said "absolutely not," but added that he "wouldn't rule out... I'm just saying [I don't think so]." [People]
• As mentioned in Midweek Madness, Us claims Tony Romo is dating Natalie Smith, the daughter of his former athletic director at Eastern Illinois University, even though all parties deny it. A source says they're "are are not officially dating, but they are having an intimate relationship." [Us]
• Ryan Reynolds rep has denied rumors that he skipped Comic-Con because of a fight with wife Scarlett Johansson saying, "[The report] is completely untrue. Warner Brothers never planned to have Green Lantern as part of their panel at this year's Comic-Con and Ryan is in Europe shooting a film." [People]
• Yesterday Kelly Clarkson blamed producer Ryan Tedder for not telling her that the backing track on her song "Already Gone" is the same one used on Beyonce's "Halo." Today Tedder replied, "They are two entirely different songs conceptually, melodically, & lyrically and I would never try to dupe an artist such as Kelly Clarkson or Beyoncé into recording over the same musical track, the idea is both hurtful & absurd." [TMZ]
• Ugh. More Twitter clues that Miley Cyrus is leaving her Jonas Brother for Justin Gaston. She Tweeted a line from one of Gaston's songs (apparently he writes music) this morning. [People]
• Georgia Sheriff Al St. Lawrence says he didn't do anything wrong by arresting and releasing the 53-year-old man accused of stalking Miley Cyrus last month. "If we had heard something about this guy supposedly being a stalker or he had been charged with a felony he wouldn't have been released," said St. Lawrence. [WSAV]
• Johnny Depp is looking at schools near Bath, England, where he recently bought a home, for his children Lily-Rose, 10, and Jack, 7. [The Daily Express]
• Madonna has written a column titled "How My Life Changed" about her religious awakening for the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot. [AP]
• Russell Crowe walked into a charity shop in the U.K. next door to the cafe he's been frequenting while working on Robin Hood and made a £1,000 donation. [BBC]
• Friends of LeAnn Rimes and Dean Sheremet aren't doing much to dispel the rumors that their marriage ended because he's gay (in addition to her affair). They say the two were always spotted shopping for clothes for LeAnn around Nashville and, "When she met Dean, the whole image of who LeAnn Rimes was completely morphed into 'fabulousity," says the source, adding, "Her wardrobe, hair and makeup changed almost over night from the time they started being together." [People]
• For some reason Radar Online has posted the last blurry picture taken of American Idol contestant Alexis Cohen a few hours before she was killed in a hit and run. [Radar Online]
• Bob Barker met with members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina to ask them to stop exhibiting bears in pit-like enclosures at local zoos. [Yahoo]
• Yesterday Courtney Love insulted The Veronicas and Taylor Momsen via Twitter. Lisa Origliasso Tweeted: "Is wondering what is considered 'credible' these days anyway!? A sob story? A drug addition? A guitar? Bleached hair? Give me a break.." [The Veronicas]
• Though a promo for The Real Housewives of Atlanta shows Sheree Whitfield pulling Kim Zolciak's wig off, Kim says, "It didn't happen." Co-star Lisa Wu Hartwell said of the incident, "Did that happen? You have to tune in to see that. But I know she had a hell of a grab on that. She had a serious mean grip." [Us]
• A public records search has revealed some of the names of the rides at the theme park Wizarding World of Harry Potter inside Universal Studios Orlando, including Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Flight of the Hippogriff, and Dragon Challenge. [The L.A. Times]
• While promoting her new reality show How'd You Get So Rich? Joan Rivers said, "I'm still in this business at age 197, and am still relevant." [Media Week]
• A memorial garden honoring Adrienne Shelly, the Waitress actor, writer, and director who was murdered in 2006 will be dedicated in New York's West Village next week. [The N.Y. Times]
• Dolly Parton's Broadway musical 9 To 5 will close around Labor Day after a short run, losing about $14 million. [N.Y. Post]
• The Bachelorette Jillian Harris says of her engagement to Ed Swiderski, "It feels more normal than any relationship I've ever had," Harris says. "It's very strange how it's such a contradiction to have something so normal come from something that's so manic." [People]
• DJ AM was once a cocaine addict and survived a plane crash, and this fall he'll help the families of addicts stage interventions on the MTV show Gone Too Far. "There's no reason why I should have lived or why I lived and they didn't," Goldstein said. "I'm never gonna know. But I am alive and I'm here and I have to do something better with my life now." [The L.A. Times]
• "(I'm) a woman who has been through life experiences, thank God, and therapy. I love therapy! I'm very into it. I'm very in touch with my feelings, so I'm a completely different person. Not that different but you know... I gotta tell you, there's nothing like going in and sitting down and talking to someone who has no emotional tie to your life. Just to talk to someone. It's amazing." — Eva Mendes [The Daily Express]
• A fan asked David Beckham where he came up with his children's names and he responded: "With Brooklyn, we found out when we were in New York that Victoria was pregnant with him, so that's where his name comes from. Romeo comes from [the fact] that we're a very romantic couple. When we first met Tom Cruise - actually quite a few years ago – I said 'Isn't Cruise a really nice name?' And Cruz came from that. Tom was one of the first people we phoned when Cruz was born and told him. [People]
• When a reporter suggested Mad Men reflected the classiness of the '60s, Jon Hamm replied: "Buddy, I don't know if they had class back then. I can send you a couple of links of stuff where guys are berating their wives for making their coffee badly. What I think happened in the '60s is I think irony happened. And the idea of selling non-earnestly became cool. And obviously that's not a mistake that that's when the baby boomers started getting 18. We're seeing a lot of it now, we're seeing these cool hipsters, man ... You can't tell 18-year-olds anything. ... That's what happens. The irony happens. And it's cool to be in a not-cool place. Get it man? And so that's what the big shift was that our guys are trying to figure out." [The L.A. Times]
• January Jones said Mad Men producers admonished her for looking too thin. "I'm naturally pretty thin, so I'm trying," she said, explaining that all the women on the show are "encouraged NOT to work out. We want soft; we don't want any muscle definition. They tell us to gain weight, gain weight, gain weight, because they want a soft, voluptuous woman which they were [back then] which is beautiful, as it should be." [I'm Not Obsessed]

Half-Blood Prince opened today and has already earned $22.2 million from midnight showings last night, making it the biggest midnight gross of all time, according to Variety. Criticism of the film is unlikely to influence the film's revenue at this point, but many reviewers noted that if you haven't read the books or seen the previous films in the series, The Half-Blood Prince wastes no time filling viewers in on the back story (though expecting an explanation of the last five films seems pretty unreasonable). According to critics, screenwriter Steve Kloves and director David Yates, who have both worked on previous Harry Potter films, had a hard enough time adapting just what's in the exposition-heavy book, but managed to preserve the major plot points. Basically, Harry finds the anonymous Half-Blood Prince's potions book with helpful notes written in the margins and begins private lessons with Professor Dumbledore, during which Voldemort's past is revealed Voldemort. Meanwhile, the kids discover the opposite sex: Harry develops a crush on Ginny Weasley and Ron starts dating Lavender Brown, which leads to much teenage angst for Hermione.

Since every other chapter in the book was a flashback about Tom Riddle (who becomes Voldemort) and there isn't much action until the end, Half-Blood Prince may have been the most difficult book to adapt to film. Even the book is mostly setting up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now that the final book has been split into two films, critics say this installment feels even more like filler. New cast members Jim Broadbent (Professor Horace Slughorn), Hero Fiennes-Tiffin (Tom Riddle Age 11), and Frank Dillane (Tom Riddle Age 16) were all praised in reviews. As for the rest of the cast, critics found their remarkable transformation from children to attractive teenagers in the past eight years most notable. Below, reviews for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The Washington Post

The film's sacrifice of Horcruxes in favor of hormones yields some comic highlights: The three leads, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione), give their most charming performances to date. Ron is particularly funny under the addling effects of a love potion, and Hermione is sad and sweet in a moment of romantic disillusionment, sitting at the bottom of a set of stone stairs, conjuring a flock of twittering birds to circle above her head...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, though not without its excellent moments, doesn't tell the two stories that, at heart, the book tells. It doesn't present a compelling portrait of the birth, life and descent into inhumanity of the villain who has haunted this series from its opening scenes: Voldemort. And it doesn't make the budding romance between Harry and Ginny feel inevitable and true.

New York Magazine

Screenwriter Steve Kloves-who adapted earlier Potter tomes with excessive reverence-sat out part five and is in fighting form, cutting a droll path through Rowling's verbiage. Apart from the fact that no one who hasn't seen parts one through five will have a clue what's going on, this barely feels like a sequel. Director David Yates creates Orson Welles–ish multiple levels of action, and when the camera sails around Hogwarts' turrets, it's as if the CGI is an extension of the wizards' magic.

Our three protagonists are taller, more polished, more charismatic-after all, they're movie stars now. But Emma Watson's Hermione has turned out disappointingly. It's not Watson's fault she grew up so pretty, so poised, with such luscious tresses. But someone ought to have reminded the filmmakers that in this boy-centric universe, Hermione is the nerdy-wonky cutie with whom all girls, hot and not, could identify. Now she's just another cover girl. I found myself wishing for more of the washed-out blonde Evanna Lynch and her glassy singsong as the space case Luna Lovegood, the last female reminder that Harry Potter began as a universe of misfits.

Variety

But assessing the romantic entanglements is not nearly as much fun as simply beholding the big physical changes in the young actors, whose onscreen maturation will have been documented across the span of a decade when all is said and done. The biggest change since Phoenix two years ago has been registered by Tom Felton, who plays Malfoy; he's now a tall stringbean in the Jimmy Stewart mold, with a face that's come to resemble that of Jonathan Pryce, and he towers over Daniel Radcliffe's Harry, who looks to be the shortest person in the cast (not true when Imelda Staunton was around). Rupert Grint, as Ron, has always looked a tad older than the others and continues to while showing more character. Emma Watson, perennially appealing as Hermione, has become a very attractive young woman, and Bonnie Wright's Ginny intrigues as the sort of initial plain Jane who keeps growing on you.

Slate

That goodwill comes in handy around the midpoint, when you begin to recognize this episode's chief flaw: the absence of a juicy villain. Ralph Fiennes' spectral Lord Voldemort appears only as a cloud formation looming over the proceedings; his evil designs on Harry are carried out mainly by the remarkably dull Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), a fellow student who, having defected to the dark side, sulks around the halls of Hogwarts like a high-school Goth fresh from a spree at Hot Topic. Helena Bonham Carter pops up at intervals as the far scarier Bellatrix Lestrange, but her screen time is so limited that her character remains frustratingly vague. For example, why is she pregnant the first time we see her but not thereafter? Has she given birth to some awful creature that will haunt the final episodes?

The New York Times

There must be a factory where the British mint their acting royalty: Hero, who plays the dark lord as a spectrally pale, creepy child of 11, is Ralph Fiennes's nephew, and Frank is the son of the terrific actor Stephen Dillane (Thomas Jefferson in the HBO mini-series John Adams). The younger Mr. Dillane, who plays Voldemort at 16, conveys the seductiveness of evil with small, silky smiles he bestows like dangerous gifts on Jim Broadbent's Horace Slughorn, a professor whose trembling jowls suggest a deeper tremulousness. When Slughorn, the fear almost visibly leaking from his body, shares the secret of immortality with Voldemort, you feel, much as when Ralph Fiennes raged through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005, that something vital is at stake. If that sense of exigency rarely materializes in The Half-Blood Prince, it's partly because the series finale is both too close and too far away and partly because Mr. Radcliffe and his co-stars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as Harry's friends Hermione and Ron, have grown up into three prettily manicured bores.

The Wall Street Journal

The filmmakers have certainly honored the book, which is famously dark, though with bright spots provided by the stirrings of teenage romance. And that chiaroscuro is enhanced by some very funny moments in the movie; the director, David Yates, has lightened his touch since the previous installment. But the book's dramatic challenge is its overall sense of incipiency, rather than immediacy-great events aren't happening quite yet, they're soon to happen. (While the death of a major character is momentous, it's mainly symbolic as a passing of the torch.) In a mythical analog to The Gathering Storm, the stage is being set for the final, epic battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort. For those who've lived with the series for more than a decade, this fateful pause may heighten the suspense. For a Muggle like me, the storm does gather slowly.

CNN

It risks annoying some fans by axing one significant character and a potential action show-stopper, but it's actually the overarching storyline that feels skimpy; the movie is replete with lovely, inventive design details and idiosyncratic effects work, while Yates' reluctance to pump up the bombast might be counted sweet relief after the latest bout of blockbusting overkill.

The Boston Globe

The Half-Blood Prince introduces Jim Broadbent as Professor Horace Slughorn, the new, extravagantly dithering potions professor. The performance is a lovely concoction of tics, stammers, and squints. But the character is a device, something to be unlatched and opened so the plot can move to the next locked door. Sadly, that door is in the next movie. There's enough cliffhanging to give you vertigo... An hour or so of interesting character development followed by 30 minutes of boredom, then an hour of plot development. That second hour always feels as if Kloves just remembered that he has to lay the groundwork for the subsequent movie. The individual installments become extensions on a lengthening fuse.

The Half-Blood Prince does remain true to the book's hormonal action... Lust in this movie is far freakier and more exciting to these kids than magic. There are moments when the actors in this movie look like they want to be ravaged as much as Kristen Stewart does in Twilight.'

USA Today

In this sixth film in the series, the cinematography is stunning, and the story unfolds in a stately and unhurried fashion. Captivating from the first frame, this Potter feels more epic than previous films, which had a less mature, more madcap quality. Yates finds an artful way to meld the teenage romance and inherent humor with a sense of impending doom. Half-Blood Prince conveys some of the rich texture and depth of J.K. Rowling's book, but it takes a lackluster turn at the end. In a key scene, Harry is rendered more ineffectual than his literary counterpart as a result of plot revisions.

Reel Views

The Half-Blood Prince suffers from what I call "setup syndrome," meaning that much of its plot and energy is devoted not to telling a self-contained story but to establishing threads that will have a payoff in a future installment. As a result, there's little doubt that The Half-Blood Prince will fare better when the entire series is available. At this point, however, it has an incomplete, unfocused feel. It is easily the least structured of the movies. Fortunately, it ends with a bang, both in terms of visual and emotional impact. The final half-hour is good enough to make one forgive the somewhat meandering nature of the two hours that precede it. For anyone unfamiliar with the novels, some of what happens during the climax may come as a surprise. The Rowling faithful, however, will be interested to see whether the movie does the written word justice with these particular scenes, and I can assure them that it does.

"Harry Potter" Pulls In $22.2 Million [Variety]

A poll that came out yesterday found that Hermione has surpassed Harry as the series' most popular character, and that 51% of those polled felt Watson had the best chance of a good post-Potter career. That's encouraging: after all, Hermione is a character defined by her intelligence and scholarship, as well as her bravery and loyalty. Watson, meanwhile, has always come across as composed and thoughtful in interviews, and seems to be choosing her adult career carefully, edging more towards high-fashion than Maxim. So all this should be really, encouraging, right? Well, maybe, except for the part where, according to Reuters, they feel that career could be as "a sex symbol." And that 67% of the same poll-ees "approved" the idea of her appearing naked.

What does a girl have to do? Yes, her upcoming Elle cover is more mature than her Teen Vogue shoots. And it's true that Hermione and Ron have filmed (apparently with much embarrassment) a long-awaited onscreen snog. But besides a paparazzi shot of her drinking a few years ago, and an accidental flash of panties (which Letterman was quick to leer about), what has Emma Watson done to warrant polls about her nudity or lecherous salivating?

Of course, Daniel Radcliffe has bared all. But as Salon's Joy Press points out, "shifting your image into a more mature gear has very different ramifications for a young woman than for a young guy. I doubt many people actually wanted to glimpse Harry Potter's wand, whereas at least one creepy Web site counting down the days till Watson's 18th birthday popped up back in 2004."

Although there was plenty of salacious innuendo about said wand, the truth is that in doing so, Radcliffe pretty much spiked his critics' guns - and looked brave in the process. If Watson were to do anything similar, few would be praising her artistic cred, and it would begin, rather than end, the calls for more flesh-baring. It's an interestingly controlled study of the contrasts, because up until recently, the whole young cast has had a similar level of exposure and fame. Radcliffe acknowledges the differences, saying,

She's always been a very, very pretty girl, and now suddenly that she turned 18, everyone's like 'OK, now she's fair game! Paparazzi!'...It is kind of creepy, I did feel bad for her. Men will never know the kind of humiliation of having an upskirt done, which poor old Emma had,

The Sexual Awakening Of Hermione [Salon]
Hermione Casts Biggest Spell On "Potter" Fans [Reuters]

• Remember this report that Quentin Tarantino asked Brad Pitt to join the cast of Inglourious Basterds over some wine and some weed?

Quentin says: "That was Brad. He did the fabrication. He can take a Coke can and make it - functional." [NY Mag]

• Unsolicited uterus update: "Is Penelope Cruz pregnant?" Is she? [Page Six]
• Matt Damon has launched a new humanitarian project, Water.org, aimed at bringing clean water sources to nearly 890 million people at risk of disease. [Mirror]
• "Why I Waited Until 44 To Do My First Nude Scene, By The Proposal Star Sandra Bullock." Actually, she doesn't explain that, but she does say: "If you're naked and you're trying to be sexy — you don't really make as much money as if you're naked and you're funny." [Daily Mail]
• NYC Artist Dash Snow has died of a drug overdose; his brother, Maxwell Snow, dated Mary-Kate Olsen. [ONTD, Page Six]
• What will the Harry Potter stars do after the the movies are over? Daniel Radcliffe hopes to head back to the stage, but also "sleep"; Emma Watson will attend college, but would like to work with directors Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro; Rupert Grint says: "I look forward to seeing what else is out there and to move on, really." [USA Today]
• In a poll, Hermione was voted the favorite Harry Potter character. And! "Some 51% thought [Emma] Watson would have the best post-Potter career, with a large majority (67 percent) approving the idea of her appearing naked." Eyeroll! [Reuters]
• Uh, the Vatican approves of the latest Harry Potter movie, since it makes the debate over good versus evil crystal clear. [Mirror]
• Madonna's boyfriend Jesus Luz is "resentful" that Guy Ritchie has been hanging around lately. But, you know, Madge and Guy were married for eight years and have three kids together. So. As for Jesus, a source says Madonna likes him because "He's pretty and she can boss him around." [Gatecrasher]
• Pity the Poles! Britney's Circus tour won't be stopping in Warsaw, due to a contractual dispute. [AP]
• Robert Redford got married on Saturday! The bride was a German Fräulein named Sibylle Szaggars; the ceremony took place at St. Catherine Church in Hamburg. Herzlichen Glückwunsch! [AP]
• Nicole Kidman's daughter, Sunday Rose, has turned one year old, and Nic and husband Keith Urban celebrated with a "little cake." Also, Keith says, "My wife made a beautiful video that covered her first year and we gave that to all the family." The kid is already a film star. [Daily Express]
• David Beckham has a new tattoo: The ring of roses around his arm has one flower for each year of marriage to wife Victoria. Sweet. [Daily Mail]
• Is Simon Cowell worth £100 million a year? That's what he's negotiating for to stay on American Idol. [Mirror]
• An X Factor fan lost her purse and Simon Cowell gave her a wad of his own cash. He can spare it! [EW]
• The LAPD is treating Michael Jackson's death as a homicide, and Dr. Conrad Murray is the focus of the investigation. [TMZ]
• Debbie Rowe's lawyer denies that she accepted $4 million to walk away from the custody battle. He says: "Ms. Rowe has not accepted — and will not accept — any additional financial consideration beyond the spousal support she and Michael Jackson personally agreed to several years ago." The New York Post printed a story claiming that Rowe had struck a deal with the Jackson family, and her lawyer is calling it "unequivocally false." [TMZ, CBS News, Reuters]
• Debbie Rowe sent emails to a friend which say: "I'm not going after custody. These kids are not mine. They were never mine. They were always Michael's. I was Michael's best friend." [Extra]
• Dr. Arnold Klein, Michael Jackson's dermatologist, is not fully cooperating with official requests for medical records. [TMZ]
• The DEA is trying to find out who supplied Michael Jackson with the powerful anesthesia Propofol. [TMZ]
• "A maker of the potent anesthetic propofol found in Michael Jackson's home has been contacted by federal officials investigating the pop star's death and has recalled tens of thousands of vials of the drug after two tainted lots sickened dozens of patients." [AP]
• "I never saw him on drugs. Not once. He deliberately did it away from us. He didn't want his family to know anything about that part of him." — Tito Jackson on Michael's drug use. [Mirror]
• Jack Wishna, a Las Vegas businessman who tried to organized comeback shows for Michael Jackson, says the pop star would move a bunch of mattresses on to the floor so he and all his kids could play, jump up and down and sleep in the same room. In addition, he would leave his Christmas trees up for about seven months. [E!]
• At this link, you'll find similarities and differences between real-life super agent Ari Emanuel and the character inspired by him, Entourage's Ari Gold. [Independent]
• Zooey Deschanel was supposed to headline a screening and Q&A of her film 500 Days Of Summer on Monday, but she'd already headed to Ireland where she's shooting Your Highness, a fantasy flick in which she plays a princess. Zooey sent a recorded statement in which she said, "Umm, I guess I should maybe answer a few questions preemptively. ... I did the movie because I liked it." [Observer]
• Vanessa Hudgens will be in a movie called Bandslam, playing a character named Sa5m, and — this is important — the 5 is silent. [People]
• Emily Blunt joins Matt Damon in Adjustment Bureau, a movie based on a Philip K. Dick short story. [Variety]
• Russell Brand: The voice of the Easter Bunny. In a live action/CGI family comedy called I Hop, to be released in March 2011. [Variety]
• Miley Cyrus will star in Wings, a movie based on a novel about a high-school girl who sprouts a pair of wings and learns that she is a fairy. [Variety]
• Hugh Jackman's signed on to appear in Avon Man, in which guys laid off from an auto dealership end up working as Avon salesmen. Jackman + makeup + comedy? We're in. [Variety]
• Usher has a summer camp, Camp New Look, that invites 130 children to spend two weeks in Atlanta learning about the business side of sports and entertainment. Hey says: "These kids come here and they're like 'Oh, wow … we're going to learn about entertainment!' But they leave engaged in life and knowing that, 'I can have a future outside of music.' That's what makes me most proud." [USA Today]
• Uh-oh. Robert De Niro is a victim of an art scam? He is gonna take you down. Take you down to Chinatown. [Reuters]
• Hmm, I didn't know that Rashida Jones was dating President Obama's speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Where have I been? [Page Six]
• Q-Tip has inked a deal to publish his memoir, titled Industry Rules. Is one chapter titled "I Left My Wallet In El Segundo"? [mediabistro.com]
• Interesting piece about Angie Dickinson, who starred in the 1974-78 NBC series Police Woman, for which she earned a Golden Globe award and Emmy nominations as L.A. police officer Sgt. Pepper Anderson. The show paved the way for future female-driven cop shows. [LA Times]
• Congrats To Joey McIntyre and his wife, who are expecting their second child in December. [People]
• Some guy was trying to sue Janet Jackson, claiming that her bodyguards beat him up in a club, but the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence. [Goathamist]
• Aerosmith bass player Tom Hamilton is recovering from non-invasive surgery and will miss some tour dates. [Reuters]
• Jane Fonda and music producer Richard Perry: It's on. [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which grungy young starlet's idea of a good time is getting stoned with her ex-hippie parents?" [Gatecrasher]
• "When you have three kids, you've got to take your opportunities when they come. In a limo, on the way to the Academy Awards this year, Will started looking at me in this way that drives me wild. We started kissing passionately, and the next thing I knew, well, let's just say we missed the red carpet and I ended up with almost no makeup on." — Jada Pinkett Smith spills about her sex life. [Page Six]
• "[She] wipes the floor with me every time I play her." — Daniel Radcliffe, who says Emma Watson is a pro at table tennis. [The Sun]
• "I respect criticism. But I know more about film than most of the people writing about me. Not only that, I'm a better writer than most of the people writing about me. And I can write film criticism better than most of the people writing about me. [My goal was] to get the biggest standing ovation of the festival, and I got it [...] Sometimes it's your time to be Elvis, and that was my time." — Quentin Tarantino, on the mixed reviews of Inglourious Basterds and its reception at Cannes. [NY Mag]
• "I'm a trained astronaut, and it's my time to go." — Lance Bass is still hoping to head to space. [Gatecrasher]
• "I don't have his number, so haven't spoken to him. But I can safely say that his insisting that girls would choose me over him that they would not. That they do not. He is the much prettier and can be much more charming. And he can do that thing of being sultry and sexy." — Daniel Radcliffe, on Robert Pattinson. [The Daily Beast]
• "Although my grief over Michael could not be any deeper, I am not on suicide watch as some of the cheaper 'rags' would have you believe." — Elizabeth Taylor. [CNN]

• "I'm not a designer," says Emma Watson. "If someone asked me to do something that was beneficial to a cause, then maybe I'd consider it, but not just ‘Look at me! I've got my own line!'" And as for perfume:

• "[It's] gotten so ridiculous," continues the actress. "The idea of making my own perfume makes me want to vomit." There's a joke about Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans in here somewhere. [WWD]
• The Cut did this awesome thing where they analyzed couture week by the numbers. Ever wondered how many feathers Jean Paul Gaultier uses in his couture collection? (Approximately 10,000.) Or the length of the train on Lara Stone's Chanel couture wedding dress? (200 meters.) Or the number of false eyelashes used for the Maison Martin Margiela eyelash vest? (275.) Well, now you can know all that — and much more. [The Cut]
• Madonna's back-up dancers wear Brooks Brothers. Who knew? [WWD]
• Simon Cowell and Sir Philip Green are forming an entertainment company together that'll span music, television, and fashion and other merchandising — and rumor has it they've signed Kate Moss to be a figurehead for the fashion division, and to act as a talent scout for new musical artists. [Daily Mail]
• Karolina Kurkova and her documentarian ex-Marine boyfriend are expecting their first child together. Blahopřejeme! [P6]
• Anthropologie is collaborating with the estate of print designer Vera Neumann, who started her business just after WWII by using surplus parachute silk for fabric and whose stated goal was to make one new print design every day of her life (she died with some 7,000 to her name). In addition to reproducing plates, bedding, and other homewares with Neumann's distinctive designs, Anthropologie is doing a book about Neumann, out next March. [W]
• Now this is just weird. For her Fall '09 campaign, Donna Karan decided to use runway photographs — all fine and good. But her creative team obviously Photoshopped the head of her chosen campaign model, Toni Garrn, onto the bodies of Sasha Pivovarova and Anya Kazakova. Anya and Sasha were in the show, had their pictures taken on the runway, and as Fashionologie's side-by-side shots prove, they now have both been digitally replaced from the neck up by Toni Garrn. (From the looks of things, Karlie Kloss was also Photoshopped into the background of the campaign images.) If Karan hasn't paid Kazakova, Pivovarova and Kloss for being featured in the campaign, their agencies have an awfully good case to make. [Fashionologie]
• Vivienne Westwood: "Take the tablecloth if it's beautiful and even take a towel if it's good enough, or the curtains or anything, and put things together yourself. Take things from your husband or your boyfriend, like boxer shorts or whatever — and you can take a beautiful thing as well and put it with a bit of rubbish. Don't spend money, just take what you can find. Take your old things, keep on wearing them. Don't buy much fashion anymore, but if you do buy it, choose really well, wear it for a long time, till it sort of drops off your back, it'll get even more wonderful, maybe. Even if it's horrible, if you wear it for ages it'll probably look better. Forget all this business with the washing machine and buying all these clothes. Choose well, if it's dirty, don't bother. Dirt is patina. It's patina." "Dirt is patina" is totally our new catchphrase. [WoW]
• Christian Audigier has denied that he is working on a line of kids' clothing with Jon Gosselin. [UPI]
• Of course there would be a product tie-in. Kooba is producing bags named after the female characters in NYC Prep. They're brightly colored and have gold-toned hardware, which is to say that they look like Kooba bags — and they cost $595. [Luxist]
• Balmain is said to be starting a handbag business. Buyers in Paris are being shown pre-collection samples in a half-dozen styles. We imagine anything in studded, black fringed leather, done in Christophe Decarnin's hot-right-now style, would sell like the proverbial hot cakes. [WWD]
• Oh, Jesus. What is this? Lara Stone is not a U.S. Size 6. (And by no method of conversion is a U.K. Size 8 a U.S. Size 6!) Pull the other one. Have you ever seen Lara Stone? Don't be distracted by her (awesome) boobies: she has a small frame and strikingly narrow hips. Certain fashion writers may long for that brief early 90s interregnum when certain models could be a Size 6, but the way to get back there is not to seize upon a buxom Size 2 girl and insert her into your Procrustean narrative. [The Cut]
• If you speak Italian, maybe you might want to watch this Italian television segment about Terry Richardson's Pirelli Calendar shoot in Bahia, Brazil. Given the nature of the Pirelli Calendar, it is NSFW. [BlackBook]
• Come this September, for $39, you will be able to buy a "limited edition" biscuit tin, printed with an Erin Fetherston fashion sketch and filled with six packets of LU cookies. This was totally one of those partnerships finalized before the recession. [WWD]
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized over 800 items of counterfeit Izod, Old Navy, and Gap denim items at a port in Charleston, South Carolina. The haul had an estimated value of over $727,000. [WWD]
• After having to expensively back out of a Fifth Avenue lease for a planned flagship store, and after announcing the need to refinance some $170 million in debt this spring, Marc Ecko is putting his company's 275,000 sq. ft. 23rd St. headquarters on the market. If anyone needs an office with a half basketball court, now's your time — the price is "negotiable." [Crain's via CityFile, which has pictures]
• Gene McCarthy is leaving his position as co-president of Timberland, effective the end of this week. The company would not explain the departure. [WWD]

• Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been checking out a gorgeous building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Will they move the brood to New York? [Rush & Molloy]

• Madonna and Guy Ritchie have been spending time together, and Jesus Luz is unhappy. [Daily Mail]
• GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios says of a scene in Brüno showing an infant and two naked men involved in a sex act "doesn't help America understand the hundreds of thousands of gay families who get up every day, do the carpool then rush home to make dinner and be with their children." [USA Today]
• Another lawsuit for Brüno: A woman who got into a physical altercation with Sacha Baron Cohen at a bingo game (in a scene that didn't make the film) first sued for getting injured; now she is suing for "emotional distress." [E!]
• Please take a moment to read this interview between Daniel Radcliffe and an 11-year-old reporter. It is so very intensely awesome. [NY Mag]
• By the by, Daniel Radcliffe is worth £30 million; Emma Watson is worth £12 million; and Rupert Grint is worth £7 million. Buys a lot of treats in Diagon Alley! [Mirror]
• Emma Watson on former Harry Potter costar Robert Pattinson: "We're just friends." [Gatecrasher]
• Oh, and Robert Pattinson's ex-girlfriend is spilling that the sparkle vamp was "always amazing in bed." [ONTD]
• Wha?? Jon Gosselin and new girlfriend Hailey Glassman are in St. Tropez? And Shes the daughter of the doctor who did his wife's tummy tuck? And they've been hanging out on on fashion designer Christian Audigier's yacht?!?! [NY Daily News]
• Members of Parliament have received an apology from Mia Farrow after a "rogue fan" spent weeks flooding their fax machines with human rights and save Darfur information from Farrow's website. [Guardian]
• Gwyneth Paltrow hearts Spain! She and husband Chris Martin may build a home there, and there's now a Spanish version of Goop. [Daily Mail]
• Victoria Beckham wants a Sex And The City sequel cameo? Party like it's 1999! [NY Daily News, Elle UK]
• Aw: Step Up's Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan got married in Mailbu on Saturday! No doubt that the dancing at the reception was intense. [UPI]
• "At 38 (she turns 39 in September), [Padma] Lakshmi has a beauty that is not, perhaps, as bewitching as reports would have had me believe…" [Times of London]
• Ryan Reynolds is the first choice to play Green Lantern, beating out Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto and Justin Timberlake. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Michael Jackson-related magazines are flying off the newsstands; experts are calling it the biggest newsstand push since the election. [Folio]
• A&E had commissioned a one-hour special, The Jackson Family, which followed Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy. They finished shooting before Michael died, and the question is: Now what? [Reuters]
• The LAPD and the coroner are both targeting Dr. Conrad Murray, finding evidence linking him to the drug that may have killed Michael Jackson. [TMZ]
• La Toya Jackson believes Michael was murdered. [NY Post]
• This report claims that Katherine Jackson will have custody of Michael Jackson's kids; Debbie Rowe will have regular access and Joe Jackson will be kept away from them. [Mirror]
• "Debbie Rowe frequently injected Michael Jackson with drugs while she worked for Jackson's dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein." [TMZ]
• More pill/drug allegations. [TMZ, TMZ, The Daily Beast]
• Here's a claim that Joe Jackson wants to take Michael's kids on a world tour as the Jackson 3. [The Sun]
• Debbie Rowe will attend a custody hearing on July 20. [UPI]
• Michael Jackson's former nanny Grace Rwaramba was obsessed with Michael Jackson in high school, with references to him in hew yearbook. [TMZ]
• "Michael Jackson had a way of picking doctors who became such close friends with him that the doctor-patient distinction became blurred." [TMZ]
• "Jackson Targeted Dentists to Fuel Addiction." [TMZ]
• Some guy named Jack Wishna, who was orchestrating a deal with Michael Jackson to set up a Las Vegas residency, says that MJ was "thin and weak" and could not have put on shows. Wishna also says MJ "never never, never" wanted to go back to Neverland. "My thought is if someone buries him in Neverland he will come up out of the ground like in Thriller and strangle them," Wishna says. [E!]
• At the link, Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt discuss love, relationships and their new flick, 500 Days Of Summer, which is getting great buzz. [USA Today]
• Is Amy Winehouse finally growing tired of St. Lucia? How can you get weary of living in paradise? Should we fly there and conduct an experiment? [Daily Express]
• Oh: Amy Winehouse arrived in London from St. Lucia and promptly burst into tears. [Daily Mail]
• CNN: You were involved in the season finale of [the NBC program] 30 Rock. Are you a fan?
  Moby: Yeah. I got a call asking if I wanted to be a part of the season finale. And I didn't have to think. ... If they had said, "Would you like to come and clean the toilets on set?" I would've said yes. [CNN]
• Barbra Streisand talks global warming and environmental urgency. [Politico]
• Kim Cattrall found out that her grandfather was a bigamist and feels "terribly sad" and can't forgive him. [Daily Mail]
• Bethenny Frankel on The Real Housewives Of New Jersey' s "Lost Footage" episode: "Just really enjoyable and fun to watch!" [E!]
• Michelle Williams from Destiny's Child: Playing Roxie Hart in Chicago in London. [Independent]
• Mad Men's Christina Hendricks has picked a dress for her October wedding: "I'm wearing Carolina Herrera. It was the first dress I tried on and it was magnificent." But don't expect the nuptials to be Mad Men-filled — t will be mostly friends and family. [People]
• Remember Anna Chlumsky from My Girl? After dabbling in politics, writing and editing, she's back to acting. [WWD]
• More drama for Whatshername and Whatshis name. [The Sun]
• Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman will star in HBO Films' biopic about Dr. Jack Kevorkian. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Blind item! "Which lazy actor hired someone to do his college homework? Learning apparently does not do a body good." [Gatecrasher]
• "She's been public as well about her extensive plastic surgery-her breast implants, her Botox injections, and her liposuction-and wears wigs so luxurious they are more landscaped than styled. Her own past drug addiction has been some of the richest fodder for her books and radio show." — from a profile on Wendy Williams. [The Daily Beast]
• In this charming interview, Paul Giamatti describes what people's souls would look like: "I'd like to try Willie Nelson's soul for a day. It would be like an ear of roasted corn. And I go to Dolly Parton, for some reason-her soul would be light and airy, like a hummingbird. Yes, I like the idea of having a country singer's soul. But not Merle Haggard's-it'd be an engine block. Powerful, but kind of rusty, with lots of buildup." His own soul? "I'm seeing a hand-painted ceramic toad." [The New Yorker]
• "Everyone says, 'Oh, it's fake, it's fake. But I can tell you from personal experience that it's not. Some of the things, maybe they will produce it a certain way or whatever, but what actually goes down with all the people that I film with is real." — Brody Jenner's girlfriend, Jayde Nicole, on The Hills [E!]
• "When I got my breast cancer diagnosis [in 2004] and realized that my body was out of balance, I started to look at what it needed to be in balance: good food, whole food. I started looking at the environment around me - and I realized we need similar ingredients to make our earth bodies run. We have neglected what it takes to make the earth run. When I got involved in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, I really began to educate myself. I realized I couldn't keep walking down the path of, 'I can put anything I want into my stomach, and I'm going to live forever.' That's not going to work, nor will it for the Earth." — Melissa Etheridge. [Politico]
• "The reason I joined [Twitter] is because Rob Thomas found my wife on Twitter and they started talking. I didn't really appreciate that so much. So I called Rob. I was like, 'Dude, I hear you're tweeting my wife. So now I'm joining just so I can monitor your conversations.' It was all in good fun." — Chris Daughtry. [newsweek]
• I'm thinking Season 6: "Rescue Me 3-D." Why not? What show is going to be better for 3-D? A show where you're running through a fire, you're up on a giant ladder, you're racing through a fire… You get the regular viewers plus people who are going, 'What? 3-D fires?' You feel like your own living room is on fire! I don't know if that's a good way to sell it." — Denis Leary. [LA Times]
• "It's unprofessional in my eyes. In every soccer player's eyes throughout the world it would be unprofessional to speak out about a teammate especially in the press and not to your face. But I'm going to turn it on a positive spin because that's what this needs. But in 17 years, I have played with the biggest teams in the world and the biggest players and not once have I been criticized for my professionalism. It's important to get this cleared up and I will be speaking to Landon either this evening or over the next couple of days." — David Beckham, who is miffed that his L.A. Galaxy teammate Landon Donovan who called him a bad captain and portrayed him as stingy in upcoming book The Beckham Experiment, written by Grant Wahl. [AP]
• "I trim, but I don't shave. I think it could get pretty gruesome after a while - I mean, my beard is pretty nasty. I happen to be one of those men - uh, I like to bring it in a little closer to the body." — Kelsey Grammer, on manscaping. [NY Mag]
• "Confessions of a Shopaholic was fun, but it was bloody hard work. In Adam, the script was solid; Confessions literally changed day by day, line by line. It was a Disney–Jerry Bruckheimer film, and there were a lot of cooks, which became incredibly frustrating… I had to do detailed and specific work about [my character in Adam] so he didn't end up being a series of quirks. When I initially read that first bit of script, I thought, Jesus, I hope this isn't one of those scripts where it turns out he's just a little off, but he's kind of wonderful and is going to teach us how to be better and more simple people. Because I kind of hate that." — Hugh Dancy, who plays a man with Asperger's in new movie Adam. [NY Mag]
• "I'm high and clean and tight, man. It's good to feel hungry. If you keep filling your tank when it's three-quarters empty, you're gonna run on old fuel. So you gotta drive it down to empty and let it work. I came here to press a little reset and then head back down the road." — Matthew McConaughey, on his 10-day fast. [Times of London]
• "'Was I terrified [of becoming stepmother to three children]? Not at all. Actors are the biggest babies on the planet, and I would rather be in a kindergarten than a room full of actors." — Sandra Bullock. [Daily Mail]

[Gold Coast, Australia, July 12. Image via Getty.]

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA - JULY 12: Reptilist with her owl at the premiere of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' at Warner Bros Movie World on July 12, 2009 on the Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by David Hardenberg/Getty Images)

• Daniel Radcliffe is a budding poet: one of his poems (written when he was 17, mind you) can be read here. It involves "glistening blondes," and "hookers and lies." Hookers and lies?! That's 10 points from Gryffindor! [DailyMail]

• Russell Brand reportedly declined Lindsay Lohan's advances at P.Diddy's White Party last week: "Lindsay is a very good-looking girl and she is used to getting what she wants. Russell has been on her radar for a while now but he doesn't want anything to do with her," says a source, "He finds her constant craving for attention and her heavy drinking a turn-off. It's not like he is short of female attention anyway." [TheSun]
• Despite an internet death rumor, Jeff Goldblum is alive and well, and thanks you for your concern: ""This was a rare opportunity to experience your own death. (Fans) still run into me on the street (and say), 'Glad to see you're alive!' I reconnected with people I hadn't seen in a long time. I wasn't angry I was touched." [DailyExpress]
• Morgan Freeman's publicist says the story about the actor marrying his step-granddaughter is "complete garbage." [DailyExpress]
• Paul McCartney will appear on the Late Show with David Letterman this Wednesday; it's his first appearance on Dave's show, but obviously not his first time at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he made history performing with The Beatles in 1964. [Variety]
• The custody hearing over Michael Jackson's children has been pushed back to July 20. As of right now, Katherine Jackson still has custody; according to Debbie Rowe's attorney, Rowe "has not reached a final decision concerning the pending custody proceedings." [People]
• More than 6,000 people showed up for a memorial to Jackson in his hometown of Gary, Indiana. The memorial included a recreation of Jackson's Thriller video, complete with 500 "zombies." Says Mayor Rudy Clay: "He's going to put on those golden slippers and he's going to dance all over God's heaven.'' [NYTimes]
• The premiere of NBC's upcoming series, Parenthood has been pushed back due to an illness that has caused star Maura Tierney to undergo "medical evaluation." [Hollywood Reporter]
• "I had a real dialogue with my mother during the shoot. She was very supportive and funny. And I needed to make jokes about the whole thing. It was so heavy and it was great to be able to describe my day to her and joke with her about what I was doing. It was like, ‘Guess what I've been doing today?' You know, my day would go from crying and howling and screaming into the sex and the blood. It was hysterical and to put it into words in a text message was hilarious." -Charlotte Gainsbourg on how she coped with difficult scenes while shooting the film Antichrist. [TimesOnline]
• An old flame of Robert Pattinson says he's "amazing" in bed. Like, really amazing: "We just had this chemistry between us that made our kisses amazing," she says, "I felt electricity go between us! I'm really passionate, as is he. That's why, no matter how much we fought, it was always amazing in bed! We'd glance at each other throughout the night because it made it more exciting when we got home. The tension was so strong, we couldn't control ourselves. It was amazing!" Yes...but was it AMAZING!?! [ShowbizSpy]
• Artie Lange was charged with DUI yesterday after getting into a "minor car accident." [Yahoo]
• Despite earlier reports that Justin Timberlake and Bradley Cooper were in talks for the role, the Hollywood Reporter now claims that Ryan Reynolds will indeed play the Green Lantern. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Britney Spears has allegedly put Kevin Federline on a diet. "She's worried his eating habits are setting up the kids to make poor food choices," says a source. [ShowbizSpy]
• Amy Winehouse is heading back to England after an extended stay in St. Lucia. "She's been banned from hotels, the bars don't want her there and locals see her as a nuisance when she's drunk," says a source, "Her friends have all left and gone back home, her mum and dad couldn't stay in St Lucia with her as she was acting up too much. She's lonely and wants to get back to what she knows. But she has to knuckle down. She's on a very fine line with the label and has pushed them almost as far as they will go." [Mirror]
• Blind Item: "This American teen TV star's fall from grace has been documented all over the celebrity weeklies recently. But perhaps the saddest thing behind-the-scenes is that the actress doesn't think she has any real friends so her entry into the London party scene was to try to lose her loner's reputation - instead she descended into a drug spiral." [BlindGossip]
• Paris Hilton was in court yesterday to defend herself against allegations that she did not properly promote Pledge This, a flop that she co-starred in. The judge in the case was curious about Hilton's reality show, and according to the AP, "After Hilton gave the title - 'Paris Hilton's My New Best Friend Forever'- the judge remarked 'This will be my best case forever.' Without missing a beat, Hilton replied 'You're my best judge forever.'" Oh, Paris. [Yahoo]
• Michael Gambon, who plays Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, has found a way to hide his cigarettes inside of his Hogwarts robe: "I got the wardrobe to put a little pocket inside for them," he says. Hooker poems! Cigarette pockets! What is going on at Hogwarts?! [DailyExpress]

[London, July 7. Image via Getty]

Fans wearing home-made 'Harry Potter'-style glasses wait in Leicester Square in central London, ahead of the world premiere of the latest in the Harry Potter movie, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' on July 7, 2009. The stars of the sixth Harry Potter film were set to walk up the red carpet in London on Tuesday for the world premiere after one of the actors recovered from a bout of swine flu. Hundreds of fans had gathered in London's Leicester Square despite the rain hours before the premiere of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

• Lindsay Lohan is being sued by a Florida chemist named Jennifer Sunday, who claims the actress stole the formula for Sevin Nyne tanning mist.

Lindsay says she co-created the formula with Lorit Simon, a Las Vegas businesswoman who air-brushes tans for celebrities. But Simon had signed a confidentiality agreement in January with Sunday's company. By the way, Sevin Nyne is named after Lindsay's lucky numbers. [St. Petersburg Times]

• The Real Housewives Of New York want more cash before they'll return to the show next season. We're talking six figures, a clothing allowance and money for hair and makeup. Bravo is responding by interviewing replacements, haha. [Gatecrasher]
• Are Countess LuAnn de Lesseps and Count Alex on the verge of a reconciliation? [Page Six]
• "Rihanna's Risqué Fashion Choice Of Pasties Ensures No One Looks At Her Hairstyle." [NY Daily News]
• In a ceremony yesterday, Prince William was made an honorary barrister. He says: "I play football, rugby and water polo, not very well, but particularly pride myself in being a quite magnificent armchair centre-back at football and flanker at rugby... and now you have made me a barrister — I promise not to practise, except for the odd speeding ticket." [Telegraph]
• Barack Obama on Michael Jackson: "There are certain figures in our popular culture that just capture peoples' imagination, and in death they become even larger. I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable." [CBS News]
• The Michael Jackson memorial is today, and Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder, Usher and Lionel Richie will be taking part. [Reuters]
• Debbie Rowe, biological mother of Michael's children, will not attend. [NY Post]
• Will Michael Jackson's son, Prince Michael Jackson, perform today?!?!?! [MSNBC Scoop]
• The Jackson family was at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles last night, viewing the body. [TMZ, People]
• Michael Jackson's mother, Katherine, has turned his bedroom into a shrine, with life-size wax models from Madame Tussauds and his old report cards. [The Sun]
• Word on Michael Jackson's kids — who have not been seen since his death — is that they are with their grandmother, Katherine, and are "doing as OK as can be expected." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Uh-oh: A Liz Taylor-Michael Jackson drug link? This piece details "How Taylor's pill habit fed Jackon's addiction, how the two shared the same doctor, and the warnings they both received." [The Daily Beast]
• In this interview, Brooke Shields — who first met Michael Jackson when she was 13 — says as Michael grew up, "the more asexual he became to me." She also says: "He was like a little kid who talked about the bases - what first base was, what second base was," Shields said. "It sounded very odd to the outside, I can imagine, but to the inside, to someone who's never really left his bubble, you can understand how he would be curious." [AP via Rolling Stone]
• Robin Leach has a blog (!?!) where he writes: "Just 48 hours before his death, Michael Jackson was 'in a high state of stress and emotional drama, fearing that he would never be able to complete the 50-concert run in London, and it would kill him.'" [Vegas Deluxe]
• Ugh, every funny or crazy thing the poor man said is now coming out as a headline. For instance: "Michael Jackson Wanted To Clone Himself." [Mirror]
• In a police report from 2004, five doctors are named as continually prescribing drugs for Michael Jackson. [The Wrap]
• Congressman Peter King — who ranted about MJ over the weekend — has more to say. He calls the coverage of the singer's death an "orgy of glorification." [TMZ]
• Michael Jackson news = huge traffic for TMZ. [AP]
• When Megan Fox went to Michael Bay's house to audition for Transformers, "He made her wash his Ferrari while he filmed her." Apparently this footage is now missing. [Page Six]
• Madonna is in talks to perform on Simon Cowell's X Factor show; Lady GaGa and Rihanna may also make appearances. [The Sun]
• By the by: Madonna has plans to do a concert in Warsaw, Poland on a day celebrating the Virgin Mary; Lech Walesa calls this "Satanic provocation." [Reuters]
• The Office's Jenna Fischer: Engaged! [People]
• A Brit paper claims Kelly Osbourne called Lady GaGa a "butterface": Kelly responds, "I have a big mouth and that's no secret… BUT when words are being put into my mouth and things are being printed that I did not say it really makes me really mad. I am a huge fan of Lady GaGa. If anything i'm slightly jealous of her wardrobe and I am definitely in no position to be calling anyone a butter face." [Perez]
• Diddy's White Party is being called "B-list" because Tila Tequila, Tara Reid and Tom Green were there, but what about Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Russell Brand, Jonah Hill and Lindsay Lohan? [Page Six]
• Twilight star Kellan Lutz and 90210's AnnaLynne McCord are so totally on, but don't want people to know. Luckily, you don't even care, do you? [Page Six]
• Scores, a "gentleman's club" in New York City, has offered Heidi Montag $25,000 to strip. [PopCrunch]
• Paula Abdul calls the American Idol panel a dysfunctional family of sorts." To wit: "I'm the nurturing mom, Simon's the disapproving dad, and Randy's the cool brother." Oh, and forgotten stepsister, whatshername? [AP]
• Here is a sentence from a story about Agyness Deyn's love life: "Agyness Deyn is now all loved up with cheeky Scouse musician Miles Kane from The Rascals, who is also one half of The Last Shadow Puppets." Got it? [The Sun]
• Well, this should be insane: Kathy Griffin will host Comedy Central's roast on Joan Rivers. "I will be roasting Joan with more gentleness and tenderness than her latest chemical peel," quips Kath. [Variety]
• Bruce Willis' Idaho ski lodge burned down earlier this year, and the actor is planning on rebuilding bigger and better. [USA Today]
• Ooh la la: Kristin Scott Thomas will star in a production of A Little Night Music on the stage in Paris. [Variety]
• My übercrush Benicio Del Toro visited a prison in Puerto Rico Monday, telling inmates in a theater group: "I believe everyone needs a second chance… I am here to help reaffirm that as long as there is life, you can still help society in some way, you can improve yourself." [AP]
• Even though Winona Ryder has said a Heathers sequel was "in the works," the film's director, Michael Lehmann, says: "Winona brings it up every once in a while and [writer] Dan Waters and I will joke about it but as far as I know there's no script and no plans to do the sequel. I never thought it made sense to see a sequel to a movie which took place in a specific time and specific place and in which many of the characters got killed off." Well. Fuck me gently with a chain saw. [Daily Express]
• Anna Kournikova was seen with a huge diamond ring on THAT finger but tried to hide it and refused to elaborate. [AP, Page Six]
• Blind item! "Damage control! Which hard-partying actor rushed back to his local AA chapter when he was caught drinking, but is actually still on the sauce?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Quidditch is right up there with the least fun things I've done in Harry Potter. It's not a pleasant experience, it does hurt quite a lot and it's not something I would rush back to." — Daniel Radcliffe. [Telegraph]
• "I've had a cross tattooed over the tattoo I got of his name. I won't get his name removed because he was part of my life but I just want to get on with the divorce now." — Katie "Jordan" Price on estranged hubs Peter Andre. [The Sun]
• "I would like to think I haven't been influenced by him too much just by playing him for so long. I am thrilled to have this in my life, but it is separate from my life, you know? It's nice to be called Dan. And actually I started correcting people now. You do feel like a bit of an idiot doing that, but at the same time, in the long run it is better for us. I know it's better for me." — Daniel Radcliffe, who would like to remind you that he is not actually Harry Potter. [LA Times]

• Oy (Oi?): An Australian tabloid is claiming that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are "in turmoil" because Kristen is pregnant with the sparkle vamp's spawn.

The story is illustrated with a ridiculous "bump watch" close-up of Kristen's rather flat tummy trying to breathe in some super tight leather pants. Oh, hey: While we're on the subject, remember this? [ONTD]

• Will Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight film, have a different director? Says New Moon's Ashley Greene: "[Eclipse director] David [Slade] and [New Moon director] Chris [Weitz] will both be busy in postproduction, and Catherine [Hardwicke] will be doing Hamlet." [E!]
• Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson is sick of shooting his film in New York and dying to get back home. A source says he is "so over everything" and overwhelmed by fans: "He's embarrassed by the way girls throw themselves at him. The girls here are stalking him. He stayed in two different hotels over the course of four days just to try to escape the fans who were following him. He's afraid that if he gives a hand, they'll take the whole arm. He's being advised by security not to encourage the crowd, so he doesn't even look up anymore." [Gatecrasher]
• You know that Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning will make out in The Runaways, right? [NY Daily News]
• A tiny, "economically depressed" Indian reservation in Washington state — home of the Quileute Nation — has become inundated with Twilight fans. The tribe opened its Wednesday night drum circle to all visitors, but has "mixed feelings" about the attention. [NY Post]
• Did Chris Brown and Amber Rose hook up at Diddy's white party on July 4? "They were holding hands and making out in the shadows," a witness claims. Kanye West was "devastated" when Chris Brown harmed Rihanna, whom Kanye thinks of as a sister. What will he think of his on/off ladyfriend making out with Chris Brown? WILL HE WRITE A RANT?!?! [NY Daily News]
• Weeks after allegedly trashing a hotel room in L.A., Courtney Love is being accused of leaving a NYC hotel room "littered with needles and used feminine hygiene products." [The Sun]
• Daniel Radcliffe says the idea of him dating Emma Watson is "really incestuous," but admits this of his Harry Potter costars: "There was a period when we were the only boys and girls any of us knew. And so, you know, we were all unbelievably horny from about the third film to probably about the end of the fifth; then it all settled down." Hmm. Sounds like someone was fantasizing about someone! [Mirror]
• Though details are sketchy, it looks like Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys and Aretha Franklin will be attending and performing at the Michael Jackson memorial. [MSNBC Scoop]
• 1.6 million people wanted tickets for Michael Jackson's memorial, but only 11,000 tickets are available. A producer says: "It will be a celebration of Michael's life (but) we're not approaching it as a TV show… In the future, there may be a tribute to Michael Jackson. This is really a memorial service. It's not going to have all the bells and whistles. We want to keep it low-key." [AFP]
• "I want to stress to those people who are coming, or are thinking about coming, to the city for this special event that you might want to consider watching this from the comfort of your home," says Councilwoman Jan Perry, L.A.'s acting mayor (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is out of the country). [CNN]
• There are already Michael Jackson memorial tickets on eBay. [CBS News]
• Lawyers will be in court today, arguing over who will control Michael Jackson's estate. [TMZ]
• The doctor who was with Michael Jackson the day he died clams he did not administer Demerol or OxyContin to Jackson that day. What about Propofol? No comment on that. [TMZ]
• Fans have created a shrine to Michael Jackson in Moscow, Russia. [CNN]
• A 1984 Andy Warhol portrait of Michael Jackson is up for auction, if you have like $10 million. [NY Daily News]
• This piece by Michael Jackson biographer Ian Halperin alleges that Michael was a drug addict who had recorded 200 "secret" songs before he died, had been depressed for a long time and had recently begun a relationship with a male artist, but was afraid of being revealed as gay. [Daily Mail]
• This paper is running video of Michael Jackson defending himself about child abuse allegations. He looks incredulous and annoyed. [News Of The World]
• According to this report, Michael Jackson may be buried in concrete to prevent fans from digging up his grave. [UPI]
• Will Michael Jackson be cremated, and his ashes scattered at Neverland? [NY Post]
• The bodyguard who called 911 to save Michael Jackson's life is named Alberto Alvarez, and he was apparently so loyal he didn't tell his neighbors whom he worked for. "He would disappear for days at a time. I guessed he was in security because of his size," one neighbor says. [Mirror]
• Paul McCartney is "devastated" that he doesn't have rights to Beatles songs he wrote with John Lennon, which may be part of Michael Jackson's estate. [Daily Express]
• In an interview with Silvio Berlusconi, Bob Geldof forced the Italian Prime Minister to apologize for failing to meet commitments to fighting poverty. "How can you lead the G8? Where is your credibility?" Geldof asked. [Times of London]
• Look for Michael Phelps to appear with that guy Jared in new Subway sandwich commercials starting today. The theme? "Be yourself." [AdWeek]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin spent the 4th of July together (with the kids). they had agreed weeks ago to set aside their differences for the holiday. [People]
• Alanis Morissette's guest stint on Weeds begins tonight. The singer says: "Weeds was my solace and respite in the back of the bus on tour. I was in the middle of detoxing at the time, and it was my replacement addiction for food." [USA Today]
• Gerard Butler partied in Montauk, NY over the weekend, at a "model-strewn" bash thrown by photographer Ben Watts (brother of Naomi). Did Gerard have fun? "He was there with about a million girls," a source says. [Page Six]
• Free your mind! En Vogue marked their 20th anniversary with a reunion show at the Essence Music Festival. [AP]
• Lock, stock and two smoking barrels of turnips: Guy Ritchie is trying to make his country estate, Ashcombe House, more eco-friendly and self-sufficient by adding greenhouses and vegetable gardens. [Mirror]
• Josh Duhamel and Fergie got a stripper pole as a wedding gift, but Josh says: "I've played on the pole more than she has." Pardon? "If you know my wife, she's a perfectionist and won't get on it until she's good, so she wants to take a class first. So the pole is really just decorative at this point." [Page Six]
• "German director Wim Wenders has stopped production on the planned 3D dance film Pina following the death of the film's subject — the legendary choreographer Pina Bausch." [Reuters]
• Blind items! "Which self-important, philandering writer who was dumped recently by his long-suffering wife is complaining that his jerky behavior is no longer covered on Page Six, moaning, 'You start getting used to it. And then you pick up the paper and you're not there and you think, 'Well, what am I, chopped liver?'" "Which unnaturally thin celebrity chef credits her bony frame to good eating habits, but really is addicted to laxatives?" [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which actor may have transformed himself from the drinker he once was, but still travels with his sponsor to avoid a slipup?" [Gatecrasher]
• "Q: What did you think about the Letterman/Palin controversy? (He made a truly tasteless joke about a baseball player and her 14-year-old daughter.)
  A: I thought the joke was hilarious and not only brought her back into the spotlight but gave her sympathy.
  Q: So, Letterman shouldn't have said it.
  A: Of course he should have said it! Oh, for God's sakes. We're comedians. Americans are so ridiculously uptight. Enough!" — Joan Rivers. [Houston Chronicle]
• "I look at Chris Martin who says he has never taken drugs in his life and I think he is an idiot. Doing drugs is the most beautiful thing about being in a rockband. Up until 1998 I must have spent £1 million on drugs then I stopped because it is bad for your health, brain, life and for people around you." — Noel Gallagher. [Daily Mail]
• "I was sort of smarting from Russell Crowe coming over here and playing Robin Hood and all these foreigners coming over here and stealing our great heroes - I felt I was striking a blow back by being a Brit playing a foreigner. I'd love to play Robin Hood but I'd particularly like to play all those parts Johnny Depp plays that are English people like The Earl of Rochester." — Dominic West. [Mirror]
• "It is bizarre, certainly in Hollywood, when you hit 23 [and] people start to ask you, 'How does it feel to get older?' It is absolutely surreal because, as a woman, when you hit your 30s it's just the beginning of owning yourself and being in your own body." — Carla Gugino. [Page Six]
• "I've always loved Chanel's style, but I was more interested in her character than the fashion. Her life is so rich, and her personality so unusual, that the story of her life is far greater than simply being a story of fashion. And I wanted to discover what lay behind the façade…" — Audrey Tautou, who plays Coco Chanel in Coco Avant Chanel. [Telegraph]
• "I've always been an elusive person. Maybe because it's the only way to keep yourself sacred. If you blow yourself out on too many movies and magazine covers, you just get chewed up and spat out. Okay, you might get to know me, but you can only come so far. The public is conditioned to think it's entitled to know everything about Brad and Angelina and whoever else, but that's not so. They're not entitled." — Robin Wright Penn. [Times Of London]
• "It's obvious I'm not dressing for men. I don't want to be sexy, I'm, like, covered in tattoos. I have piercings. I'm just grungy and weird and not what is socially accepted as being beautiful, and I think that's cool. [My heroes were mostly big in the '90s.] The women who were championing things that were different. I loved Winona Ryder in her Beetlejuice and Heathers era, and even when I saw Angelina Jolie on the red carpet, like, years before the Hollywood makeover and everyone was so weirded out because she had long, weird nails and a long, weird dress on. And that's what I think is amazing. Anti-beauty. I don't want to dress for men, I think it's almost like a feminist thing." — Peaches Geldof. [Times of London]

[London, June 28. Image via Bauer-Griffin]