• Lindsay Lohan will appear on SIX EPISODES of Ugly Betty, including the season finale. LL will play an old classmate of Betty's who is down on her luck. Naomi Campbell, Christian Siriano, Victoria Beckham and now Lindsay? It's official: Ugly Betty is the new Love Boat. [TMZ]
  
• Oooh, Lindsay's mugshot is being used in a drunk driving ad. [Reuters]
  
• Courtney Love was in the hospital over the weekend; homegirl has strep throat! Stay away. (Not that you needed a warning.) [Mirror]
  
• Thirty guests attended Jamie Lynn Spears's baby shower in Kentwood, LA on Saturday and big sis Britney was one of them. The ladies sat in a circle and opened gifts and nothing scandalous happened, yawn. [People]
  
• Britney hadn't been in her hometown since early 2007. Bet she misses some Southern cooking. [People]
  
• Miley Cyrus appeared at the Disney Channel Games concert Saturday night and thanked fans, saying: "Thank you guys for all your support. Without you, none of this would be possible. I love every one of you and I could not be more appreciative. God bless you." Then she took her top off. Kidding! [People]

• Boo! Amy Winehouse has backed out of recording the theme for the new James Bond flick because she's not ready to work. Also: Nothing rhymes with Quantum of Solace. [Variety]
• But! Amy will duet with Pete Doherty at a gig at Royal Albert Hall. Which sounds um, healthy? [Mirror]
• The nanny who is accusing Rob Lowe of sexual harassment also babysits for Shanna Moakler, whom you may know from the MTV show Meet The Barkers, as she is Travis Barker's ex-wife. [People]
• Oscar nominee Judy Davis is suing a Sydney newspaper over an article that implies she is a child-hating selfish hypocrite. The thing is, she doesn't want floodlights on a soccer field near her waterfront home. [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Dina Lohan to Jill Zarin of The Real Housewives of New York: "I don't watch TV. Especially reality shows." Haha bet you will when yours starts airing! [Rush & Molloy]
• Kim Kardashian: Seen going for a laser cellulite treatment... With camera crews in tow, of course! A butt that famous needs lots of attention and tender loving care. [Rush & Molloy]
• Blind item! "Which newly minted TV star is a pushover who already looks ready for rehab? At an L.A. party, the actor was mocked into doing a bunch of shots, despite protesting numerous times that he had to drive that night." [Rush & Molloy]
• Lily Allen spent £300 at a nail salon last week but neglected to tip her technician, tsk tsk! [Mirror]
• Sean "Diddy" Combs was honored with a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood on Friday; his mom, kids and baby mama Kim Porter were all in attendance — and dressed to match. [Concrete Loop]
• Avril Lavigne has laryngitis and has canceled or postponed most of her tour. Get a refund, people! [People]
• Dinner with Erykah Badu is up for auction! The proceeds go to the African American Museum in Dallas. [UPI]
• Gary Dourdan is "embarrassed" about his arrest situation. But the luggage in his car with all the drugs wasn't his and the reason he pulled over and cops found him sleeping in his car was because he didn't want to drive while drunk. So there's that. [People]
• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes gave the Beckhams a wine tasting trip to Napa Valley for their birthday; Seal and Heidi Klum and Kate Beckinsale and Len Wiseman also came along. Hot couples wandering through the grapevines? Sounds like the opening scene of a very classy porn film. [Mirror]
• A woman is scheduled to testify at R. Kelly's upcoming child pornography trial, and will reveal that she had a threesome with R. and the allegedly underage girl in the infamous video. Wait, wouldn't that be a crime, too? Oh, the woman was also underage when she had the threesome. Great. And by great I mean awful. [TMZ]
• A Sting charity concert was meant to raise money for the rain forests, but less than half of the show's profits actually went to the cause. "What are they doing with the money?" the Better Business Bureau asked. Good question. [UPI]
• Orlando Bloom: Seen out drinking sake with a buddy instead of attending a fashion show where his girlfriend Miranda Kerr was in the front row. [News.com.au]
• Elle Macpherson is moving from London to her homeland of Australia. [News.com.au]
• Country star Gretchen Wilson, 34, passed her GED exam in April and will don a cap and gown and finally graduate from high school on May 15. Better late than ever! [AP]
• "I came to grips with my bum. Before, I always tied a shirt around my waist when I went for a run. It was ridiculous. I finally told myself, 'I'm not doing this anymore — I have nothing to hide.' I've got some curves, I've got a bubble butt, but I don't mind, because it's what powers me forward when I run." — Elisabeth Hasselebeck. [Page Six]
• "Unfortunately for certain media outlets, you will never be able 2 'Michael Jackson' me. That means 2 make it seem like everything I do is so weird or out of place... they always try 2 make it seem like everything is about my ego! That joke is getting old. At a certain point you have 2 respect that I'm one of the last artist that still cares about the fans having the best time of there lives!" —Kanye West. [Perez Hilton]
• Iron Man made $100 million? This country confuses me. [E!]

Newsweek:

Many people had a hard time imagining Downey donning superhero garb. In truth, it's hard to imagine "Iron Man" without him. For without his ironic hipster spin, without his rapid, off-speed line readings, which can make the most ordinary exposition sound like tossed-off improvs, this would be just another generic action picture with risible villains, a conventional story arc, and the inevitable showdown between two lumbering hunks of CGI metal—Iron Man vs. the even larger Iron Monger.

But the real treat is for grownups, who get a beguiling character study behind and above the special effects. Favreau — who directed the best Will Ferrell comedy (Elf) and an agreeably mature fantasy (Zathura: A Space Adventure), and before that wrote and starred in Swingers, maybe the sharpest buddy comedy of the '90s — knows that, when making a big movie, you do not leave your I.Q. at the soundstage door; you bend your gifts in different directions. He lends Iron Man the unobtrusive speed and precision of classic comedy. An actor before he was a director, he's not content to let his stars play stereotypes, or even archetypes. Bridges and Toub, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark's gal Friday (the most attractive she's been in years), aren't slumming in the least. They're rising to the material, and elevating it.

Like Tony Stark, Iron Man the movie has a maddening way of hiding its light (Downey) under a bushel—actually bushels and bushels—of special effects. During the action sequences (especially the disappointing final one, a face-off between Stark's Iron Man and Stane's Iron Monger), this movie could be any expensive summer blockbuster, with exploding tanks and bisected city buses and faceless mega-robots duking it out on rooftops. But when it's idling in neutral, and we're watching Stark putter in his workshop or seduce unsuspecting journalists, Iron Man abounds in that rarest of superpowers: charm.

The ace up Iron Man's sleeve, quite unexpectedly, is Gwyneth Paltrow, who brings both radiance and gentle intelligence to the role of a glorified housekeeper called Pepper Potts. How she takes out the laundry in those heels is beyond me, but she's a great sport for doing it, and her dry chemistry with our hero is worth a dozen atomic warheads. Downey may be the smartest star in a mask since Michael Keaton, but this fun, rattling picture would be all boys and toys without Paltrow to humour him.

The genius of the production lies in the agility with which it leaps from one mode to another. I'll be happy to see it again — and plan to do so over the weekend — for the pleasure of Mr. Downey's company, plus the genuine sophistication of the world that Tony Stark inhabits when he isn't driving his sexy cars or bedding a sexy writer from a glossy magazine. The serious-ish plot involves Tony's spiritual conversion from an arms magnate to a peacenik at war with his own corporation and the military-industrial complex, not to mention global terrorism, while his comic-book origins give him what amounts to an Achilles heart, a nuclear-powered device that makes him vulnerable as a man and all but invincible as his alter ego.

As Stark soars around in his titanium alloy outfit, aiming fireballs with perfect precision, he is as potent a figure as Superman. He's as rich as Bruce Wayne with an extra dollop of science-guy nerdiness, finished off with a heaping dose of snark. Iron Man's biggest strength is that the fantastically armored suit doesn't overpower the intriguingly flawed character encased within.

Wearing a goatee right out of the beatnik '50s, he's fast and frictionless, as airlessly ironic as a talk-show host who's been shoved onto the air at 3 a.m. and left to his own what-the-hell devices. The key to Downey's mocking, crumpled charm is that no matter whom he's talking to, he's really just nattering to himself. When he climbs into his Iron Man machine suit, with its whirring, clicking limbs and plated chest, flamethrower arms, and mask of a medieval knight, he doesn't disappear behind the tin-can walls of that chunky, atomic-age jet-pack robot. He's still there, a deftly fragile motormouth — a damaged soul who needs armor to fully become himself.

The hero must flex and furrow his brow; the bad guy must glower and scheme; the girl must shriek and fret. There should also be a skeptical but supportive friend. Those are the rules of the genre, as unbreakable as the pseudoscientific principles that explain everything (An arc reactor! Of course!) and the Law of the Bald Villain. In "Iron Man" it all plays out more or less as expected, from the trial-and-error building of the costume to the climactic showdown, with lots of flying, chasing and noisemaking in between. (I note that there is one sharp, subversive surprise right at the very end.)

What is less expected is that Mr. Favreau, somewhat in the manner of those sly studio-era craftsmen who kept their artistry close to the vest so the bosses wouldn't confiscate it, wears the genre paradigm as a light cloak rather than a suit of iron. Instead of the tedious, moralizing, pop-Freudian origin story we often get in the first installments of comic-book-franchise movies — childhood trauma; identity crisis; longing for justice versus thirst for revenge; wake me up when the explosions start — "Iron Man" plunges us immediately into a world that crackles with character and incident.

Downey clearly has a ball playing the weapons dealer Stark, best described as a cross between James Bond, Mick Jagger and Howard Hughes (whom Lee reportedly based Stark on). During an early flashback sequence, he's portrayed as a kid in a testosterone-laced candy store, living in a concrete temple to modernism in Malibu, delegating his longtime assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to dispatch his one-night stands with dry-cleaned clothes and a limo home, partying with his Pentagon liaison Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) in a private plane that, after a few drinks, transforms into a flying strip club. Once the guns start going off, "Iron Man" is fueled by so many explosions and sundry ejaculatory ya-yas that watching it is akin to sneaking into a treehouse past a sign saying "No Girls Allowed."

It's not difficult to guess where this is heading — Marvel stories are all permutations on a handful of stock scenarios — but Favreau doesn't blow it up any more than he has to. In "Elf" and "Zathura" he showed he could integrate special effects and carry the story, but like Downey, he's almost always looking for a comic spin.

A scene in which Tony invites his assistant, Pepper Potts (an appealingly valiant Gwyneth Paltrow), to reach into the hole in his chest and fix his battery is a cheeky cocktail of trust, disgust, love, sex, fear and courage (it's also a key plant for subsequent developments), but above all it plays funny. When a movie is firing on all those cylinders, you know it's a winner.

The Good:
Robert Downey, Jr. and his wife Susan look like an old-time glamor couple from the Hollywood of yore.

Ben Stiller looks sharp in his dark suit (even if he's almost doing "Blue Steel" here) and Christine Taylor rocks the naught secretary look.

Whoah: It's Billy Corgan. He can wear whatever the fuck he wants. Especially when it involves a stripey shrirt, cropped pants, and a hat.

Emmanuelle Chirqui makes it okay to wear white after Labor Day.

No one puts Baby in the corner.

Leslie Bibb makes the one-shoulder dress look completely novel, not to mention sexy-yet-classy.

Nazanin Boniadi's dress has to be Rami Kashou, right?!

Sean Combs must be giving his outfit for this year's White Party a partial test-run.

The Bad:

Gwyneth Paltrow is wearing a jumper. How Studio 54 of her.

Beau Bridges and Wendy Treece: Did they just step out of a time machine? I know I saw these looks at my cousin's Bat Mitzvah in 1989.

Jenna Dewan's dress has good ideas. But something went terribly wrong in its execution.

I really have no patience for Pete Wentz and his "style." Also, is that a sweater vest I spy?

Same goes for Terrence Howard. But minus the sweater vest. Also, shouldn't he be carrying baby wipes?

Just not Vince Vaughn's finest hour.

The Ugly:
Oh blah blah blah I know that Jack Black is supposed to be all wacky and such, but he and wife Tanya Haden look like they're wearing their dirty laundry. From their time in the house-cleaning circus.

Courtney Hansen's dress is so wrong on so many different levels. But the shiny, too-tight booby trap up top and the piecemeal bottom seem to be the most insurmountable problems.

No, seriously: What is Rosanna Arquette wearing?

[Images via Getty.]

Earlier: Gwyneth Paltrow's Son Moses Is A "Sensitive Thug"

The Good:
I'm always a sucker for a picture of a big sister and a little brother, like this one of Eva Amurri and Jack Robbins. Love her skirt. Also: how much do they look like their parents?


Big yes to the drop-waist on Famke Janssen's dress.


Ok, Hana Soukupova, I get it already: You're a model. You are perfect.


I'll have what Helena Christensen is having. Even if it's safari wear.


Joy Bryant is a dream in her very modern and very sophisticated pants-and-jacket pairing. Love the silhouette. Love the colors. Want the necklace. Now.


I know I should hate Leelee Sobieski's dress, but I can't help but love it.


Maggie Rizer: Keeping it real, playing to her hair.


Gwyneth's dress: See-through or not?




The Bad:
Is anyone else surprised to learn that Tracey Ullman is the Burberry trench-wearing type?


Bebe Neuwirth: When headbands and bad fashion happen to good people.


Carol Alt: When too much satin and bad necklines happen to good people.


Is Diana Ross wearing galoshes? And leggings?


And is Elettra Wiedman wearing them too??


Liv Tyler disappoints with a sad sack of a dress paired with flesh-tone shoes.


Tory Burch: Furthering my belief that no one dresses worse than fashion designers.


Terrence Howard and his son are both dressed as Indiana Jones. Also, is his daughter carrying a clutch? Or a Trapper-Keeper?




The Ugly:
I do believe Kelly Bensimon is wearing wet boots with that most unfortunate dress.

[Images via Getty.]

[Berlin, April 22. Images via Splash.]