• Gisele Bundchen has given birth to a baby boy. Husband Tom Brady has a two-year-old son with actress Bridget Moynihan. [People]
• A Chantilly lace LBD worn by Audrey Hepburn in How To Steal A Million sold for $97,000. [AP]

• Naomi Campbell might do a modeling reality show in the U.K. Then she and Tyra would really have something to fight about. "Naomi has been approached with an offer, which we are talking about and discussing," says her spokesperson, somewhat redundantly. [UK Vogue]
• Executives at Maison Martin Margiela have confirmed that the Belgian designer, famous for his closely guarded privacy and his avant-garde designs, has left the house he founded and later sold to Diesel. Margiela's presence or absence at the house had long been a subject of speculation, with most fashion commentators, including us, operating on the understanding that Margiela the person was gone, but this confirmation comes with a twist: Diesel will not be hiring anyone to take Margiela's place. (Haider Ackermann and Raf Simons had been mentioned as potential replacements.) The design work will continue to be spearheaded by the 28-strong creative team, saving the house the expense of a "name" creative director. Will this work? Fashion design is a collective effort — all designers rely heavily on their creative teams for the generation, not just the execution, of ideas — but fashion observers yearn for an identifiable individual (even one who is rarely seen in public) to pin their criticism on. [IHT]
• Yesterday morning, police executed raids on 30 businesses on Canal Street in Chinatown, long a hotbed of counterfeiting. The Cut snapped a photo of what a shop without its imitation Coach and Prada goods looks like: basically a particleboard shell with racks and cases. "It's time to take back the streets of New York," said a police officer. Could this be the start of a crackdown? [The Cut]
• The counterfeit goods seized, including perfumes and handbags, filled an entire trailer. The sting was the result of a month long investigation carried out by the police and a private firm called Counter Tech. Officers made controlled buys of the imitation goods, which bore the trademarks of companies like Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany, and Chanel, and then used those goods to obtain search warrants. Investigators noted that during the five weeks they observed Canal Street, there seemed to be more foot traffic in the stalls than ever before. [WWD]
• Apparently pointing out that Michelle Obama "is not the next Jackie O" is enough to count as evil, unthinkable "sniping." Designer Douglas Hannant allegedly said this perfectly reasonable thing — Michelle Obama and Jackie Kennedy-Onassis are different women who had different roles in public life even if they shared a position, and all the Obama/Kennedy comparisons are a tad trite — and people gasped. [P6]
• Vogue is doing a shoot with fashion bloggers. Somehow our invitation must have gotten lost in the post! There are allegedly seven bloggers involved, and only three of them have been named: Tommy Ton of Jak & Jil, BryanBoy, and Todd Selby of The Selby. Who are the others? Garance Doré recently mentioned losing weight thanks to Anna Wintour in New York, and Tavi Gevinson certainly merits inclusion. Seeing the women behind Refinery29 would also be great (although they were just in Elle). But how much do you wanna bet it'll just be Julia Frakes and Sea of Shoes again? [Fashionista]
• Speaking of Tavi: She plays a prominent role in this video about the Rodarte for Target collection. You won't spend a better 2:37 today than watching Tavi interview Elijah Wood and Jason Schwartzman at the Rodarte show, or seeing the Target ad shoot in surprisingly picturesque North Dakota. [Style.com]
• And Tavi is now writing for Harper's Bazaar. [WWD]
• Just what you needed for the holidays: A $3,000 Judith Leiber Hello Kitty clutch. [Racked]
• Tamara Mellon went out to the premiere of A Single Man after trouncing her mother, Ann Yeardre, in a legal battle. Mellon, the owner of Jimmy Choo, won a $10 million settlement against Yeardre after some Jimmy Choo shares were mistakenly transferred to Yeardre, and she refused to give them back. [P6]
• The spring Louis Vuitton campaign has leaked. Lara Stone's position, reclining on dark, mossy grass, with white doves and, duh, handbags, looks like a friendlier revision of editorials done by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, one earlier this year for Vogue and the other in 2007, for W. The ads were shot by Steven Meisel. [Blackbook]
• After auctioning off all his and Yves Saint Laurent's artworks and household goods, Pierre Bergé is putting their 5,400 square foot Paris apartment on the market. It has a garden roughly equal in size, and is expected to sell for around $30 million. [WWD]
• Curious about who the most powerful 25 people in British fashion are? Well now you can find out. Good to know the British Fashion Council's on top of this stuff. [Telegraph]
• Carolina Herrera is opening her first freestanding store on Madison Avenue. [WWD]

Fantastic Mr. Fox, which opens today, is the first animated film by Anderson, who is known for directing the quirky and distinctive films Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Critics weren't as fond of his most recent film The Darjeeling Limited because they felt Anderson was so preoccupied with the film's offbeat style that it stifled the actors. It was a risk for him to take on Roald Dahl's classic children's story because in addition to filming it in old-fashioned stop motion rather than CGI, he directed the film from Paris through a video link to London, where it was filmed.

Anderson wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach (who also wrote The Squid and the Whale and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou). Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) start out poaching chickens together, but when their son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) is born, she convinces him to take a more legitimate job. Twelve years later, he's writing a newspaper column no one reads, but when the family moves, he can't resist his wild urge to steal from his human neighbors. Three farmers led by Mr. Bean (Michael Gambon) wage war on the animal kingdom and Mr. Fox, along with his lawyer Badger (Bill Murray) and his sidekick Kylie (Wally Wolodarsky), have to outwit them.

Though at times the plot is jumpy, critics uniformly praise the film, saying it "reanimates" Anderson's career. Though it seems odd to imagine George Clooney's very-recognizable voice coming out of a fox, several critics say he gives one of his best performances ever. The exquisite hand-crafted miniatures give the movie a depth that reviewers said many computer animated films (particularly Jim Carrey's A Christmas Carol) fail to capture. Below, the reviews.

The Village Voice

For the reportedly painstaking labor it took to create, the film is a marvel to behold-with wonderful shifts in perspective, an intensely tactile design, and an intentional herky-jerkiness of motion that only enriches the make-believe atmosphere. Clooney (speaking as if everything were a self-conscious aside) and Streep (resplendent as a former wildcat turned Earth mother) do some of the best work of their illustrious careers. Among the movie's many virtues, they render an unusually convincing portrait of a marriage, a reminder that the most unexpected thing about Anderson's film may be-underneath all the carefully affixed, wind-sensitive whiskers and fur-how deeply human it is.

Salon

There should be something incongruous about the sound of George Clooney's cashmere-flannel voice coming from the mouth of a somewhat rangy-looking fox in a country gent's corduroy suit: Why should a matinee idol suffer the indignity of being trapped in a puppet's body? But from the first minute of the Wes Anderson stop-motion-animated feature Fantastic Mr. Fox, Clooney isthat creature, the genuinely fantastic Mr. Fox of the title, a rapscallion charmer who wears many hats: husband, father, newspaperman, chicken thief. It's one thing for an actor to feel comfortable in his own skin; it's another for him to feel completely at home in the body of a fake-fur and metal-armature vulpus vulpus. And yet Clooney's naturalism is of a piece with the joyous, marvelously detailed movie around him, adapted from Roald Dahl's novel with adventurousness and seemingly boundless love .

Entertainment Weekly

I'm not a big fan of Anderson's work. What I now understand, though, is that in essence, he's alwaysbeen making cartoons; he just confused the issue by putting real live actors in them. Before, he twisted reality into a permanent ironic pose. Now, in the infectiously primitive talking-animal world of Fantastic Mr. Fox, he's become an ironic realist.

Slate

The experience of Fantastic Mr. Fox... is like being magically shrunk down to 1:12 scale and set loose for 90 minutes in an exquisite, handcrafted, dizzyingly well-stocked dollhouse. If, like me, you're a lifelong aficionado of miniatures-someone who still presses their nose to toy-store windows filled with cunningly crafted furniture and tiny kitchen supplies-this movie will seduce you on tactile terms alone. The animal characters' real, shiny fur, gently moving in the wind! The infinitely detailed sets and props: acorn-patterned wallpaper, cutlery made from deer hooves, bespoke corduroy jackets with tiny stalks of wheat in place of pocket squares! You don't want to watch this movie, you want to climb inside it and play.

New York Magazine

There's no way the disparate elements of this movie should jell, yet here they sit, side by side, in the bric-a-brac of [Anderson's] brain. Frames in the foxes' den have a depth of field that evokes Velázquez paintings in the Prado. Then a bunch of characters dash down a tunnel to escape the farmers' bulldozers, looking in long shot like a child's plastic toy soldiers. A confrontation with an elongated hepcat security-guard rat (with the stabbing voice of Willem Dafoe) is scored and staged like a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. Not even Quentin Tarantino would have the audacity to assemble a soundtrack in which the Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains" is followed by Burl Ives, Mozart, Jarvis Cocker (as a farmhand) singing and picking a banjo, the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man," and-believe it or not-"Ol' Man River."

The Los Angeles Times

[Fanstastic Mr. Fox] reanimates filmmaker Wes Anderson's career... Not since the memorable days of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore has it made sense to apply those words to Anderson. Though the director never lost his hard-core fans, his work had gotten hermetic, even stifling. With Fantastic Mr. Fox he's managed to be himself and still let some air into the room.

The Hollywood Reporter

The screenplay sometimes overdoes the winking asides, and the film doesn't so much flow as jump from one set piece to the next. But with animation director Mark Gustafson, DP Tristan Oliver and production designer Nelson Lowry, Anderson has created a world as stylized and inventive as anything he's done. From the fox-red glow of a morning idyll to the noirish gutter scene where one character meets his end to the icy fluorescent glare of the film's closing scene — happy but not without compromise — Fox is a visual delight.

The New York Times

At times this adaptation of Roald Dahl's slender anti-fable - truer to the spirit than to the letter of the source - does not even look like a movie. In spite of the pedigreed voices... it feels more like an extended episode of what progressive educators call imaginative play. The sets might just as well have been built out of available household stuff, the stiff figurines animated and ventriloquized on a classroom or bedroom floor by precocious children.

Is it is a movie for children? This inevitable question depends on the assumption that children have uniform tastes and expectations. How can that be? And besides, the point of everything Mr. Anderson has ever done is that truth and beauty reside in the odd, the mismatched, the idiosyncratic. He makes that point in ways that are sometimes touching, sometimes annoying, but usually worth arguing about. Not everyone will like Fantastic Mr. Fox; and if everyone did, it would not be nearly as interesting as it is. There are some children - some people - who will embrace it with a special, strange intensity, as if it had been made for them alone.

Official trailer:

• Could Michael Lohan go to jail for the phone calls he's been leaking?

Apparently Dina Lohan has had a protective order since 2005 — and it bans Michael Lohan from communicating with Dina by email or phone through 2011. One of the calls is supposedly from 2008, meaning Michael definitely violated the order. [TMZ]

• A "source" on Nicole Kidman's face at the Country Music Awards: "She looked freakish; She just had her lips done, and now she looks like Meg Ryan." [Page Six]
• Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are dating! Director Catherine Hardwicke says so! But she says: "It didn't happen on the first movie. Nothing crossed the line while on the first film," since KStew was 18. Now that she's 19, it's on! TWILIGHT IS REAL ZOMG SPARKLEVAMP 4EVA BITE ME. [Us]
• Because he is awesome, Johnny Depp has offered to take care of Nicolas Cage's debts. Apparently Johnny was a struggling musician when he met Nic in the '80s, and Nic sent Johnny to his agent, who cast Johnny in Nightmare On Elm Street. [Daily Express]
• Levi Johnston had his Playgirl shoot yesterday, which involved a hockey stick and, naturally, nudity. Levi's manager Tank Jones says: "The shoot was fantastic! People are going to see more of Levi than they thought." Grrrreat. There's another shoot today; may we suggest a moose-skin rug? Or an igloo? [Us]
• Levi Johnston says he sees his upcoming memoir becoming a movie. "I would play myself," he says, naturally. [Gatecrasher]
• As previously mentioned, Chris Brown went to a Footaction store on Wednesday, and was heckled. A woman shouted, "I hope someone beats the fucking shit out of you!" Today Chris will be on Wendy Williams saying he's been "perceived wrong" and I'm definitely remorseful, and it's not something that I take lightly or think that it's, like, under the rug." [Page Six]
• Before the Country Music Awards, Wynonna Judd said Taylor Swift's nomination for Entertainer Of The Year was "too much too soon… I want kids to earn it." But now she says: "My intent was not to take anything from her talent and contributions to the country music industry… Taylor is a beautiful, hard working young woman that deserves the success she has had and I support her as an artist and as a woman in the business." Sure, sure. [Us Magazine]
• Lily Allen has hurt her foot after falling while carrying a suitcase down a flight of stairs. [The Sun]
• DVR alert: Kathy Griffin will be on Law & Order SVU. [TV Guide]
• Balloon Dad Richard Heene turned himself in yesterday and was released on a $5000 bond. [ET]
• Richard Heene will plead guilty to felony charges, his lawyer claims. Mayumi Heene will plead guilty to false reporting to authorities — a misdemeanor. Is there a law against making everyone worry? [NY Post]
• Amy Winehouse is working with a Miami-based producer on her third record, but her visa issues keep her from traveling. [The Sun]
• If you would like to see a mug shot of Cindy Crawford's alleged blackmailer, click the link. He's a former model who took a photograph he found in Cindy's nanny's room, and the pic shows Cindy's daughter bound and gagged for a "prank." [TMZ]
• Nadya Suleman would like for you to know that she is a competent mother. [Us]
• Some guy is auctioning off Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley's marriage certificate from when they tied the knot in the Dominican Republic in 1994. The names Jackson + Presley = ca$h. [Perez]
• 20-year-old Daniel Radcliffe smoked pot and a party and it is "news." [Mirror]
• Geena Davis has gained weight and it is "news." [NY Daily News]
• Whoa — Emmy Rossum met Adam Duritz via Twitter? [People]
• BREAKING: Vivica A. Fox and 50 Cent are no longer pissed at each other. [Page Six]
• Rumors abounded but now it's official: Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane are expecting their first child. [Gatecrasher]
• In this video, David Beckham talks about playing with the LA Galaxy today, which means missing an England vs. Brazil game. [Guardian]
• Lil' Kim is being sued for $20,000 by British club promoters who claim she accepted money but then did not appear at an event, saying she had a nosebleed. No, really. [NY Post]
• Aerosmith's management reportedly asked Steven Tyler to perform in a wheelchair. "I just wouldn't do it," Tyler told Rolling Stone. Not even if you were contractually obligated to do the gig and hurt yourself acting crazy on stage? Hmm. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Tori Amos' fantasy band would have Janis Joplin on vocals, Stevie Ray Vaughn on guitar, Bootsy Collins on bass and Zeppelin's John Bonham on drums. [Independent]
• In "10 Questions For Tony Hawk," the skateboarder says: "I don't want to name names. I'm just saying many Olympic sports require less physical effort and less talent than skateboarding." [Time]
• Chris Mann wrote the Three's Company tell-all book Come and Knock on Our Door, and served as consulting producer on NBC's behind-the-scenes movie about Company. On his blog, he writes that before John Ritter died, he was asked about Suzanne Somers' supposed breast cancer, and Ritter said: "We don't know if Suzanne has cancer or not, because she lies." [Retroality.tv]
• Jon & Kate is being replaced by Cake Boss, a show that seems super scripted but still pretty funny. And unlike those weird "challenge" cake shows, the cakes actually look edible and delicious. [NY Post]
• Zsa Zsa Gabor has tax problems. Will she have to move to the country and live on a farm with a pig named Arnold? Oh wait. That was Eva. Anyway, Bernard Madoff is to blame for this. [TMZ]
• Saturday Night Live Christmas 2009 airs December 19, and will feature the best holiday sketches from the show's 35-year history. [NY Post]
• TMZ lifted images from Radar Online. [Page Six]
• The Coen brothers are remaking True Grit, with Josh Brolin instead of John Wayne. [NY Daily News]
• "Look, I really am the last British actor who's not in any of the Harry Potter films. I was looking for something I could do that would make me cool in the eyes of my daughter." — Michael Sheen, of Frost/Nixon and, more importantly, New Moon. He also says: "I had to say to my daughter, 'I heard someone talking about this character Aro in these books. Do you know anything about that?' And she said, 'Yes, he's the leader of the Volturi and he reads people's minds. Are you playing him?' Of course I said, 'no, no, no'. When it was all worked out, she cried. Then she hit me." [Independent]
• It feels weird to do interviews because I don't understand why anyone wants to talk to me. There were all these other guys in high school that were bigger, funnier, and more handsome than I was, so why do you care about what I have to say? You should ask them." — Jason Schwartzman. [Advocate]
• "I'm not aware of any fans. I do nothing to live in secrecy, but I really don't get recognized anywhere. Though I was walking my dog recently when someone yelled, 'Hey, Jason!' They said it so sweetly that I turned around and said, 'Hey!' Then they said, 'Fuck you, you asshole!' and drove away." — Jason Schwartzman. [Advocate]
• "I had friends growing up, but I struggled to feel like I really fit in. If I was invited to a party, I would just end up sitting on a couch or standing in a corner by myself. But it wasn't like I was getting beat up or anything. I wish I had gotten beaten up, because at least that would've justified why I felt so homesick all the time, even though I was home." — Jason Schwartzman. [Advocate]
• "Susan Boyle is a lovely gracious woman, and I took advantage of that by poking fun at her." — Sharon Osboune, who, a week ago, said SuBo looked like she'd been hit by a "fucking ugly stick." [NY Post]
• We were disappointed, but we understand. He's only 1. But we were in Alaska and have plenty of footage of Trig." — Barbara Walters wanted to have Sarah Palin's grandson Trig in the studio, but he has a cold and couldn't make it. [Page Six]
• "It's disgusting that people would say those things. My sister has an incredible body. I feel sorry for anyone who would judge her, because she's one sexy lady. There's gonna be a time when I'm way curvier, and that'll be sexy, too." — Ashlee Simpson is tired of people calling Jessica Simpson fat. Ashlee also says her husband loves her body:"Pete isn't worried about stretch marks," she says. "He always makes me feel good." [Gatecrasher]
• "I have half-a-dozen close friends and Mariah is among the dearest. I flatter myself that the relationship is reciprocal: Mariah and I share a strong, sisterly friendship. She signs off all her letters to me with the affectionate endearment: 'Your sis, M.' Though she is stupendously rich and I am relatively poor, it is a friendship of equals. She visits me in my small home; I am a frequent guest at her various mansions and holiday villas all over the world." — from a piece written by a former MTV host who stayed friends with Mariah Carey after meeting her through work. [Daily Mail]
• "There are so many young girls wearing too much makeup, too much hairspray — I find that very dated." — Victoria Beckham. [Gatecrasher via Harper's Bazaar UK]

• Some people were offended by the jokes Alex Borstein made about Marlee Matlin's speaking voice on Sunday's Family Guy special. She says, "It was sick. It was twisted. It was rude... and I was glad to be part of it."

• "People love [Seth MacFarlane's] stuff. They don't pay him the big bucks for nothing," Matlin wrote in an email. "I want to do it again and BE the voice. BTW, it only would've been offensive if I hadn't laughed and I loved that you couldn't quite figure out if I was seriously angry at Alex or not!" [Hollywood Insider]
• Jon Voight says he and Angelina Jolie have reconciled. "We're in touch, but not regularly," he says. "We love each other and that's the most important thing." [Us]
• "Amy Winehouse is addicted to table tennis." [Mirror]
• John Travolta, who recently started playing tennis, says, "I play at midnight... Kind of vampire style." [People]
• The Twilight kids are on the cover of Entertainment Weekly this week and in the mag Taylor Lautner says, "Jacob and Bella are so open, and they can tell each other everything. So it was very important for me and Kristen to grow very close before doing this." [Just Jared]
• "The highlight of playing Jane [in New Moon]was getting to wear the costume and the red contact lenses and to play an evil character," says Dakota Fanning. "I think red eyes make everyone look very evil." [L.A.T.]
• If you want to watch Robert Pattinson talk about his facial hair, check out this video: [Pop Sugar]
• Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have written a book called How To Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture. [Ok]
• In the video at the link, Robert Halderman's lawyer explains that he wasn't trying to blackmail David Letterman, he was just giving him the right of first refusal on his screenplay. [TMZ]
• David Letterman's lawyer says he's "absolutely" ready to testify against Robert Halderman and is "fully prepared to see this case through to the end." [CBS News]
• Sad news: Though Celine Dion announced she was pregnant this summer, it was a misdiagnosis. Her husband Rene Angelil said, "We're living the reality of the majority of couples who face these procreation techniques." [Us]
• Sources say TLC's lawyers are watching all of Jon Gosselin's TV appearances so they can run a tab on how much money he's making since he allegedly violated his contract with the network. [TMZ]
• Shanna Moakler says she's "looking forward to seeing" Carrie Prejean's sex tape. [TMZ]
• Last night Susan Boyle sang on DWTS and got to meet her idol, Donny Osmond. "It is quite something to be in Hollywood," she explains. "This is a world I've never seen before and never dreamt that I would get to see," said Boyle, who added that Hollywood is, "Nothing a woman like me was used to. I have found Americans to be incredibly warm and friendly and very open." [People]
• Susan Boyle says after she became famous, "There were phone calls 24 hours a day. They kept me awake for three weeks, until I changed my number. It was constant... "It got to the stage where I couldn't even go outside because the media - American television crews, too - surrounded the house... Everything had built up, and I was exhausted. You have to understand, my life ceased to be normal." [Show Biz Spy]
• Joey Lawrence and his wife Chandie Yawn-Nelson are expecting their second child. [Us]
• Mickey Rourke says after his divorce from Carre Otis, "I don't want to live with an actress again, no matter how they look. I'm working opposite Megan Fox and Eva Green next, and I'm certainly not complaining. But I'll tell you, once bitten..." [Daily Express]
• Though Steven Tyler played with Aerosmith on Tuesday, Joe Perry says he still doesn't know if that means he's staying in the band. "I was totally surprised. I had no idea he was going to show up," said Perry. "All I know is we walked off stage and were sitting taking our break [before] the encore and there was a bunch of commotion and I looked up and Steven was there." [People]
• Halle Berry says she decided to get involved with Jenesse Center, a L.A. domestic violence shelter, because, "My mother was a battered woman and that was my childhood for a good chunk of it... I care, I really care about these women and children." [Us]
• John Cusack on being called an "everyman": "I've been called worse, but I'm not the best person to ask about that. I think it's a compliment if it's sort of a leading-man type compliment. You get the audience to sympathize with you ... it's kind of a cool thing to be an 'everyman' I guess." [BlackBook Magazine]
• Ian McKellen says sometimes gay actors ask him for advice about coming out and he says, "When I act, some people fancy me and some of them are women. There we are! What's the problem? They don't believe me when I say I am in love with a woman?...They don't believe me when I say I am a wizard? They believe me even though they know I am not. It's all nonsense. Everyone knows we are acting." [Reuters]
• Tori Amos says she did a lot of research before recording her holiday album Midwinter Graces because, "In order to make this kind of record and to have it work, I needed to know what the carol writers were doing, then you need to know the theology of where it came from in order to change it. I did change it in making it more inclusive rather than exclusive. Because some of these lyrics were written, it was in a very puritanical time. Women had no rights, they couldn't vote. Some of the music would've been fifteenth century." [N.Y. Magazine]
• You can stop holding your breath — Pamela Anderson says she'll never rekindle her romance with Tommy Lee again. "You can't get heartbroken any more over all the disappointments or how he is as a father or anything like that. He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. I do tell him the truth, but it's been 10 years of suffering over him so I'm over it," she says. "Whatever it is, it is - as long as my kids are happy and we're happy and we're safe, let him run around the world. I support him." [New]
• Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones has been very openly dating much younger women for over a year, but his wife Jo Wood just filed divorce papers accusing him of adultery. [TMZ]
• "I definitely keep myself secret," says Leona Lewis. "I went on a show watched by millions of people, so this might sound ridiculous, but I had no desire to be famous, and I still don't. I have this media persona – "She's a shy girl, really nice" – but you can't get to know someone like that. Unless you talk to me every day, you're not really going get a sense of me." [The Telegraph]
• James Franco says he doesn't think he can study in Columbia University's Butler Library anymore. He explains: "Last night I went in, I went into the restroom and this guy was in there and he's mumbling like, 'You're James Franco, right?' I'm like, 'Yeah, how's it going?' Basically, he said he was annoyed with me that I came to the library and that there are girls in the library. He didn't express himself. I think what he meant was that he thought I came to the library to meet young girls and he said it wasn't fair. And I tried to apologize for any disruption my presence had, but he was still annoyed. So I left and I went to the writing building, which is a little more private, but I have to sit there alone in the dark." [Gothamist]
• Jason Schwartzman, whose mom is Talia Shire, said, "I think it's an amazing thing that two words like 'Yo, Adrian' have been so unforgotten. People yell it out when you achieve something, or you've spent a lot of energy and you accomplish something. You yell it out like, 'I did it!' Growing up a lot of kids didn't know my mom [Talia Shire] was in Rocky. And we'd go to P.E. class and we'd have to go jogging; everyone would run up stairs and all the kids would yell it out. They didn't even know my mom was in the movie. It made me feel kind of awkward but also kind of so happy." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Hip-hop artists are "completely gay-friendly. Are you kidding me? Look at how they dress!" said Fergie. "Kanye West really did a great thing for hip-hop and made it very mixed and open." [MTV]

Elisabetta Canalis is either besotted with her escort, or grinning through the chagrin of realizing she's wearing a leather train.


Aw, Dahls represent! And, um, Jamie Cullum too, of course.


This may be the first time I mention my great love of Romola Garai, it won't be the last. Partially because she always puts together a great look, but still looks incredibly ill-at-ease on the red carpet.


There was a brief period when I thought maybe it would be a good idea to date Wes Anderson, because I had a few ideas for his films. Then I saw "Hotel Chevalier" and our romance was over.


Oddly enough, I don't hold "Hotel Chevalier" against Jason Schwartzman, though. Possibly because he always looks so unexpectedly right in black tie.


Miriam D'Abo is obviously inspired by her robes and pilgrim shoes. I'm more...perplexed.


Sandra Hebron looks the picture of safe elegance...then you reach the orthopedic evening shoes.


Cindy Crawford, from the heights of perfection, is also giving them the side-eye.


Somehow, the two weirds of Bill Murray and this hat almost cancel each other out.


It's official: Thandie Newton may have the most adorable children in the world.

[Images via Getty]

Rachel Griffiths' hint of leopard feels like the kind of "fun touch" Stacey and Clinton are always pushing for classic basics.


Trying to decide what contributes the air of Loehmann's back-room to the normally-flawless Angela Bassett. Is it the wrap? The straps? The open-toed with hose?


On the one hand, Eloisa Dudamel's rather standard gown could be more interesting. But how amazing does she look in this color?


Dana Delaney also gets major points for working "Flaming June" - even if the gown itself isn't setting the world on fire.


Kelley Phleger's seriously unflattering shoe-dress combo kind of plays up the worst aspects of both.


Kind of dig Rita Wilson's subdued take on the disco-glitz trend.


Deborah Borda represents classic concert-wear.


And it's fun how Jenna Elfman's playing with pattern - few are this bold in maternity.


I don't feel that Sophia Bush has ever gotten sufficient recognition for her track record of impeccable dress.


I love that Jason Schwartzman is here, even if he's looking a tad Rushmore.


Ginny Mancini (with Quincy Jones)'s sleeves are the evening's highlight.

[Images via Getty]

• Lindsay Lohan thew a fit at the G-Star runway show:

She arrived with sister Ali in tow, wouldn't pose for photos and didn't like her seats. So, naturally, she threw the seating cards for Juliette Lewis, Christian Siriano, and Taylor Momsen on the floor. When event producers tried to approach her, she sniped, "Don't fucking touch me," and rolled her eyes. Of course, I found pix of her posing so grain of salt. [Page Six]

• Mischa Barton was at the G-star after party, drunk and saying "Like, I'm with the deejay. I totally know the deejay. I'm here for the deejay." [Page Six]
• Kanye West and Lady Gaga were supposed to start a Fame Kills tour later this fall, but it looks like Kanye may have been serious about taking some time off: Tour date listings have been removed from the Ticketmaster website. [LA Times]
• Pink has a separated shoulder! "It hurts," she says. She couldn't do any of the aerial parts of her trapeze-oriented show in Seattle on Tuesday night, but won't cancel tour dates. [People]
• Katie Holmes took Suri to Beyoncé's concert in Australia on Tuesday night, and Suri wore "industrial earmuffs." [News.com.au]
• Jennifer Lopez was spotted at the White House "with an entourage bigger than President Obama's Secret Service detail." [NY Daily News]
• Chris Brown's community service has begun; click for a pic of him in an orange vest. He doesn't seem too… contrite; he Tweeted, "check out my outfit." [Ny Daily News]
• Why haven't we seen Mo'Nique promoting new film Precious? She will be on the Today show this morning, but she wasn't at the Toronto Film festival (Mariah Carey, Gabby Sidibe, Sherri Shephard, and Paula Patton were there) and rumors are that she wants to be paid for appearances. A studio spokesperson says it isn't true. [Showbiz 411]
• Charlize Threron is naked in the opening scene of her new film, The Burning Plain but says: "I'm not some exhibitionist. I think people think I just love walking around naked. When you start making it about yourself, you stand in the way of doing your job. I have to sit in an editing room with [director] Guillermo Arriaga and a bunch of execs, and if I had to sit there and think about myself and these men watching me, I think that would make me insecure. I'm just like every other girl out there. I would cringe." And: "There was a time in my life where I understood actors who said they don't like watching themselves. But when I made the mental switch that I was not watching myself and watching an actual character, that was the day I actually could look at things from a distance." [USA Today]
• "The uncle Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher helped put behind bars for molesting two girls has died in prison." [Daily Express]
• Sean Penn and beyond foxy Sports Illustrated model Jessica White: "Together all the time." [NY Daily News]
• Jason Schwartzman's new HBO show, Bored To Death, his most high-profile roles ever. Although he also loves books and music, acting gives him focus: "When I all of sudden became a part of Rushmore, it was like a giant acupuncture needle or something. It just put everything in line for me. It was like going to the emotional chiropractor. I was so disjointed as a teenager, from being unpopular or from being not the guy that girls liked - just feeling like an outsider, just being a dork." [AP]
• Nicole Kidman will star in The Danish Girl, about the first man to undergo a sex-change operation in 1931. I know it's early but I have to say that I'm sort of scared about the medical technology back then and its proximity to genitalia. [NY Daily News]
• Bruce Willis and wife: Moving into L.A.'s new Carlyle Residences, where apartments go for $2.9-$15 million. The new pad has a private wine cellar and elevator. [E!]
• Rod Stewart's son Sean was a riding in a $200,000 Bentley on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. when his friend wrecked the car. Sean was renting it from Beverly Hills Rent-A-Car for $2,500 a day. [TMZ]
• Jasmine Guy: Deep in debt, thanks to a divorce. In related news, she has joined the cast of the new CW show Vampire Diaries as the GRANDMOTHER of one of the characters. A different world, indeed. [TMZ, Buddy TV]
• Director Jane Campion got an admiring letter from Quentin Tarantino about her latest effort, Bright Star. "It was a love letter, really, about the film," she says. "I am really touched. He is one of my biggest heroes of the current generation, I think he is a genius so it was surprising." Asked about what it takes to make movies likes hers, Campion said with a smile: "I am not very submissive." [Reuters]
• Joe Francis tried to crash a party being thrown by Frankie Delgado but was thrown out, mostly because Frankie is bff with Brody Jenner and Brody and Joe had a scuffle a couple of weeks ago. Related: I don't care about any of these people. [E!]
• "Fuming Barbra Streisand fans claim she rigged a 'cute pet competition.' so one of her friends could win priceless tickets to her upcoming Village Vanguard show." [Page Six]
• Burt Reynolds, who just went into rehab, is already out, it seems. [Reuters, Mirror]
• Jon Bon Jovi totally understands why former members of Nirvana are upset about Kurt Cobain's character in Guitar Hero 5 being able to play songs by other bands in the game. "I don't know that I would have wanted it either. To hear someone else's voice coming out of a cartoon version of me? I don't know. It sounds a little forced." [BBC News]
• "Paul McCartney topped a poll of Americans' favorite Beatles, but nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they didn't like the British rock group." [Reuters]
• Katie "Jordan" Price named her celebrity rapist on camera but "terrified" lawyers banned his identity from being broadcast. [The Sun]
• Q. After you dropped out of school at 16, you were a drummer in a punk rock band. What was that like? "It was a wild time. It involved a lot of drinking and fighting, but I'm not sure if I was being a punk rocker or just Scottish." — Craig Ferguson. [USA Today]
• "She looked like Rachel Zoe gone horribly wrong! It proves the point that you can judge a person by the company they keep- or don't keep. "It's painfully apparent that Jesus may be able to turn water into wine, but your basic blow dryer eludes him." — Madonna's brother, Christopher Ciccone, on his sister's look at the VMAs. [E!]
• Q. Did you really write the book's first chapter on your iPhone? "I actually did. I was amazed it had this little keyboard in it. I'm a techno-moron and it had this keyboard that spellchecked as you wrote. It was a good way to start writing the novel because I wasn't taking it seriously, I was just checking out my phone. The rest I wrote by hand." — Nick Cave on his second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro. [Time]
• "It's always so hard for me to describe a film I'm in, as it's so subjective. It's about a lot of different people living in Paris, and a mix of many sides of life, not all happy ones. If you don't go to the bottom, you don't know what joy is, and to explore life you have to plunge head first and take risks. And the way we're brought up with this whole view of life as black and white, good and bad, is completely false, because in life everything is transformable, and something bad can actually be very good, and vice versa. So it's about all those ideas." — Juliette Binoche on her new film, Paris. [Reuters]
• "Yeah. But I don't want to elaborate. I would never call myself a cutter. Girls go through different phases when they're growing up, when they're miserable and do different things, whether it's an eating disorder or they dabble in cutting… I never think I'm worthy of anything... I have a sick feeling of being mocked all the time. I have a lot of self-loathing." — Megan Fox to Rolling Stone, when asked if she had ever cut herself. [NY Daily News]
• "I made my wife appreciate it. She was a good sport. I paraded around. I loved my body. I walked around, danced — dancing with a belly like that was fun. My stepdaughter loved it, too. She kept poking me in the stomach, laughing." — Matt Damon on gaining 30 pounds for The Informant!. [USA Today]
• "Jennifer is one of the coolest women I've ever met. She's so smart." — Gerard Butler on Ms. Aniston. [MSNBC Scoop via Us Weekly]

It might not do to make too much of the fact that the Bryant Park shenanigans take place in large tents, but between the vinyl and the stage lights, there is something of a circus about the proceedings. Fashion week throws up strange combinations of people and places: You're as likely to see André Leon Talley taking a breather outside the Salon as you are to spot a young drunk editor throwing champagne over herself in the early afternoon. For a brief moment on Saturday at Band of Outsiders, Grace Coddington, tiny Jason Schwartzman, and the Cobra Snake were all browsing the same collection. No doubt each would have chosen something very different to wear from it.

As the show schedule rolls on through the tents, crowds too disorderly to be called "lines" form, hemmed in by stanchion posts, first to check in with the designer's public relations team, and then to wait in a new crowd, divided by seating assignment. Perversely, having a ticket — even having a ticket and a confirmed RSVP — is no guarantee of entry: I've been turned away from various shows so far, mostly for reasons said to be related to capacity. (But also for some that are not: On Friday, after waiting in line to check in for half an hour, a flack looked at me square in the eye and said, "I know who you are, and you are not on the list." I haven't felt so thoroughly told off since I was 8 years old and left my bunk area a mess at brownie camp.)

But not having a ticket also isn't a bar to entry: There are so many computer issues and intelligence meltdowns behind the average seating list that plenty of shows will just let you into the standing room section — or at least let you into the standing room waiting pen — if you look and sound convinced of your right to be there. That much at least mirrors the fashion world in the broader sense: Success is a special mix of confidence, entitlement, superficial appearance, and access to specialized knowledge. (Of course, these days most everything anyone who wanted to go to fashion week would need to know is available online. Democracy in action.)

This is my first year attending fashion week as a reporter, not a model, and I guess I'm not sure I understand - after you wait, and wait (and wait) behind one of the many stanchions and the many webbing ropes, after being questioned by the occasional security guard and verified by the PRs - what the point of a fashion show is. The tents are a deeply unreal space, a stage-lit environment where it never seems to be day or night, and everyone mobs the open bar after the 10 a.m. show. It feels deadening somehow, and sameish, to watch 15 or 20 models parading 20 or 30 looks in an identical venue to indistinguishable thundering electronic music before a rotating configuration of the same front-row cast, a Real Housewife here, an actor there. Given the energy and the activity that I know exists backstage, it's odd to see fashion as this white-background poker-faced hurry-up-and-wait thing. I never knew the audience saw it all that way.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to a show by a designer who is young and — though Australian — very talented: Toni Maticevski. I went with my friend Sophie Ward, who still models occasionally, and who was supposed to sit in Maticevski's front row as his friend. But because, like 90% of fashion shows, this one was starting late, and because the radiant energy from behind the scenes seemed to have us locked in like a tractor beam, she and I ended up sneaking backstage.


People were running up and down the stairs, against the grain of the taped arrows. Models where everywhere, getting their hair and makeup done and checking their Blackberries. Stylists were rushing around with voluminous dresses, tugging girls from station to station. There was a large catering tray and a strange man in a green shirt guarding it. Several times someone in a headset grabbed at Sophie's or my elbow, trying to corral us into the lineup. There were backstage photographers snapping rapaciously. Maticevski was surrounded, finessing, rearranging, overseeing. The sense of shared purpose was palpable, and deeply touching. Sophie and I sat down in the midst of it all, and let the scene wash over us. (Also we were trying to find a way to get at that catering tray.)

We hardly noticed when the music began. Two more-or-less-ex-models, distracted by sandwiches and our former lives: the show had started! We had to race around the back stairs, and watch the runway from the nosebleed seats.

Only three days to go and it was still the best show I've been to so far.

Earlier: I Am The Anonymous Model

• Well here's one we haven't heard before: A source claims that Macaulay Culkin is Blanket Jackson's father. [The Sun]
• Also: Prince Michael Malachi Jet Jackson, 24, claims Michael Jackson is his dad. [TMZ]

• Uh-oh: Heidi Montag wants a baby. Heidi's sister-in-law, Stephanie Pratt, says: "Heidi is the one with the baby fever; Spencer is not. Basically, Heidi got married; [then] she's like, 'Oh my God, what do I do?' I really feel like she went to a bookstore and saw Newlyweds: The Wife's Edition, and so now she's like, 'I still want to get a house with a white picket fence... and then probably a dog, and then we'll move on to kids. And I want to take cooking lessons.'" So surely it's just a matter of time. What shall we do to prepare ourselves for the spawn of Speidi?!?!? [NY Daily News]
• Spencer was seen passing out Playboys with Heidi on the cover to the entire first-class section of a flight from the Bahamas to LAX. No word on whether he said: Take my wife, please. [Page Six]
• Law enforcement sources are saying DJ AM's death was not a suicide. The recovering addict developed a dependency to to Xanax and other benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs) as a direct result of the plane crash he survived. He had developed a high anxiety over flying, but it was something he had to do for work. This relapse was recent, and his death was most likely a consequence of the combination of cocaine and benzodiazepines. [TMZ]
• Dr. Drew blames pain medication for DJ AM's relapse: "It very slowly and subtly reawakens addiction. I'm not saying it was inappropriately prescribed, I'm saying he didn't know the risks." [NY Post]
• Madonna is in Israel, where she visited the Old City in Jerusalem, and toured an ancient tunnel near the Western Wall - the holiest site where Jews can pray. [AP]
• I don't know whether to laugh or to cry: Medics have had to treat Twihards who visit the set of New Moon and freak out over the Sparkle Vamp or the Buff Werewolf. Taylor Lautner says: We've met many different fans: the criers, who come around quite often; the hyperventilators, who stop breathing and have to have a medic come. We've definitely seen some passion." [Daily Express]
• While Jon Gosselin was busy posing it up in Vegas, Kate Gosselin had her own pool party — with bodyguard and rumored beau, Steve Neild. And his family. He arrived with his wife, kids, and teenaged sons and all the kids went swimming and everything was fun and everything is fine. [E!]
• By the way: Jon Gosselin was heckled at his own damn pool party. Guys mocked his bald spot, his weight and his clothes. [Radar Online]
• Jon Gosselin did a sit-down interview with GMA's Chris Cuomo and said something like he's worried the show is "exploiting" his eight children. No, wait, he says: "I'm not saying TLC is exploiting my children. But I do believe the media and tabloids covering my family and the show for their own financial gain are the ones exploiting them. I have said on numerous occasions TLC has afforded my kids a better life and has helped provide a better roof on their heads." [E!]
• Whitney Houston hasn't released an album in six years, but her "comeback" is very controlled. Her interview with Diane Sawyer will not be live; neither will her interview with Oprah. And when she does a Good Morning America performance, it will be taped, not live. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Lily Allen needs an Orgasmaton, STAT. [The Sun]
• Here's an iffy story about the Beckham marriage being torn apart because "While David is keen to play football in Europe, ambitious Victoria is set on remaining in LA." [Daily Mail]
• In these pictures from February, Chris Brown is seen tagging a wall — spray painting his nickname, Breezy. Now graffiti removal will be one of the things he is expected to do as part of his 1400 hours of community service. [Daily Mail]
• Elisabeth Moss spills spoilery Mad Men secrets! "It is so important to [creator] Matt [Weiner], and to the way the story is told, that things remain secret if possible. But I can say that [this season] Peggy starts becoming more of Don's protege and moves up in that world. She goes down paths that are wrong for her, but she is just trying to figure out what it means to be in her position in that man's world. I don't honestly know if she is going to figure it out. Does she have to be like Don, or can she be her own person?" [Reuters]
• Ouch: Miranda Kerr was walking the red carpet at the launch of Victoria's Secret's Heavenly Enchanted fragrance when Melissa (Dancing With the Stars) Rycroft accidentally sprayed her in the eyes and momentarily blinded her. [Page Six]
• "Cate Blanchett and Liv Ullmann have long wanted to collaborate. Now Tennessee Williams has brought them together on the Sydney stage." [Sydney Morning Herald]
• When Chris Noth DJs, you're gonna hear '80s hits from KISS and Prince. [Page Six]
• Highly recommended: outtakes from an interview with Amber Tamblyn, in which she says lots of awesome stuff, like, "I have a poem in my new book of poetry out in September called Bang Ditto about Twitter and the poem is 140 characters about how Twitter can suck it." She also says: "People always ask me why I'm so level-headed and normal and don't lash out like all these other young celebrities and go crazy. Well, I went crazy. I just didn't get caught." [Parade]
• Speaking of Amber Tamblyn, her boyfriend David Cross says he's got no news on The Arrested Development movie. But he's looking forward to it: "Just finding out what the characters are up to. Obviously I miss the camaraderie and having fun, but more than anything, my curiosity is like, 'Oh, what are those guys are doing?'" [Time]
• Will Arnett might be the one holding up the Arrested Development movie. [Gatecrasher]
• Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel is talking crap about Jill Zarin: "Why would Jill be hanging with Jon Gosselin and Michael Lohan? That was like an episode of 'The Surreal Life.' It is utterly embarrassing. I mean, honestly, Urkel should have come - and if Gary Coleman showed up, it would have been perfect." [Gatecrasher]
• Joan Rivers claims she almost rented her apartment to Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy: "The Libyan ambassador called my [broker] and offered over $200,000 a week so he could use it for entertaining… I thought it was great. I said I would give half the rent to Lockerbie." [Page Six]
• Jane Lynch — the funny lady from The 40 Year Old Virgin, Best in Show and Weeds, is described as a scene-stealer in the TV show Glee. "I think 'scene stealer' is a compliment, or at least I take it as one," she says. "I certainly don't try to take attention from anyone else, I just do the best job I can with the material." [Newsweek]
• "Oasis split because Noel Gallagher forgave brother Liam for jokingly suggesting he was not the real dad of daughter Anais." [News Of The World]
• Liam Gallagher has gone to Lake Como now that Oasis has broken up. [Mirror]
• Are the Pussycat Dolls dunzo? The group is taking a "long break" and the members are each concentrating on their "own projects." [Mirror]
• Word is that Shelley Duvall (The Shining, Popeye, Casper Meets Wendy) spends her nights in Blanco, Texas patrolling her yard, convinced her home is a portal for aliens. She went to a local hardware store and asked for dirt to block up a hole in her backyard, because that's where the aliens were coming in. Poor thing. [ONTD]
• Sir Sean Connery has won "Worst Movie Accent Of All Time," for playing an Irish-American cop in The Untouchables with his Scottish brogue. [Mirror]
• What the world needs now: Another Rambo movie. Yes, of course Sylvester Stallone is starring and directing. [Variety]
• "A police force is to review the death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, 40 years since he was found lifeless in a swimming pool." [Mirror]
• "They do love each other, but they've always been very different. The funny thing is, they didn't fight as children. They didn't fight until they started the band. I hope this isn't the end of Oasis. I don't think it is. They're just tired at the end of the tour. They've had fights before and got over it." — Peggy Gallagher, on son Noel Gallagher quitting Oasis right before the band was supposed to headline a rock festival in Paris. Right before the split, Liam allegedly smashed a guitar and said to Noel: "You're no brother of mine!" [Mirror]
• "It's now like we have become spirits on the Internet. The time sense and the physical-location sense is lost. And of course the visual looks are lost, too." — Yoko Ono. [Newsweek]
• "This show is mad Brooklynish." Olivia Thirlby, on Bored To Death, the new HBO series starring Jason Schwartzman. [The New Yorker]
• "I start the day reading my political blogs. The Daily Beast. The Huffington Post. Daily Kos. But what annoys me is when celebrities all get on a bandwagon and support a t-shirt company that prints slogans about voting instead of getting involved with specific things they really care about and can nurture. So I try not to be another name on a list. I'm active in things like Planned Parenthood. I'm a poet and writer as well as an actress, and I think that is a kind of politics when I write about body image and the experiences of young people in Hollywood. I've always written stuff like that. It's kept me 94% sane because it's an outlet that a lot of actresses don't get to talk about." — Amber Tamblyn. [Parade]
• "I've said that I was an only child for many years, and I realize now it was a mistake saying it… But when I was about 7, a young woman came to our door and told my dad she was his daughter. And she was. She was from a fling he had in the '60s. Her name is China, and she's an artist and a welder. We've become close." — Amber Tamblyn. [Parade]
• "It is one of the toughest things I've ever done in my life. My entire body hurts. My muscle, my bone, everything." — Mila Kunis, on spending four hours a day, seven days a week in dance classes for Black Swan, in which she and Natalie Portman play rival ballerinas. [WWD]

• Michael Lohan says Jon Gosselin is trying to get out of his TLC contract to appear on his new show Divorced Dads Club and hinted that a few famous former sports stars/single dads may be joining them.

• Lohan says of Jon's relationship with TLC, "There's bad blood there. If your show was making the network $130 something million and they paid you the pittance they paid you and restricted you from doing so many different things, how would you feel?" adding that the producers of Divorced Dads Club are, "reaching out to Dennis Rodman. I know Jose Canseco has already said yes, he wants to be part of the show that bad. There are even some divorced celebrities who are not dads who want to do the show." [Radar Online]
• In Croatia Jay-Z and Beyonce were having dinner by the ocean when their body guard started fighting with a paparazzo. The photographer threw his tripod at the body guard, so he threw it in the ocean. There's video: [TMZ]
• Dr. Conrad Murray will be arrested for the death of Michael Jackson and charged with manslaughter in the next two weeks according to a law enforcement source. MJ's dermatologist Dr. Arnold Klein will also be arrested and charged with medical malpractice. [Fox News]
• The doctor who performed the in vitro fertilization procedure in Celine Dion that resulted in her second pregnancy says he implanted an embryo that had been kept frozen in liquid nitrogen for the past eight years. The embryo was frozen while she was going through IVF to conceive her first child René-Charles in 2001. [People]
• A friend of Samantha Burke says she met Jude Law in a New York club. "He was sick, so she kept going to his hotel over the course of a week to take care of him." But Jude wasn't all that grateful. "Jude didn't even remember her. She hasn't seen him since New York. They've only been in contact through their lawyers," says the friend, who added that she thinks Samantha's crazy to keep the baby and that she may be looking for money because "her family doesn't have any money." [E!]
• A "family friend" says Chaz Bono is planning to conceive a child with his fiance Jennifer Elia after his gender reassignment surgery is complete and Cher has volunteered to help them find a sperm donor. "Cher doesn't care if the baby is a boy or girl, but she's insisting on a donor with intelligence, creativity and good looks," says the source. [National Enquirer]
• Sheryl Crow sold her music catalogue to fund affiliated with an Australian bank. She'll get a smaller cut of the royalties, but the group will promote her copyrighted material to movie houses and advertisers. [WSJ]
• A source says Jason Trawick hasn't broken up with Britney Spears. "Things are fine – they still maintain a great working relationship and he's in her life as a great friend as he's always been," said the source, "Things are casual … Britney really listens to what he has to say. He's been with her a long time, he gets along with the family. He has her best interests at heart, and he cares about her." [People]
• The LAPD has issued a statement saying someone gave them the nude Eric Dane/Rebecca Gayheart tape that "could link celebrities engaging in illegal activity... The LAPD was in the process of reviewing the voluminous files contained on the DVD when the story was leaked to the media. No determination has been made as to whether or not the DVD contained any information that could be used for a criminal investigation. Some of the information contained on the DVD included archived articles and photographs of porn stars and formally convicted madams, which could readily be found over the Internet." [Extra]
• Brad Pitt's former Thelma & Louise co-star Michael Madsen said, "Everybody's had enough of Brad Pitt. I've seen enough of him for a lifetime." It's possible he's mad at Brad for not getting him a role in The Assasination of Jesse James. [TMZ]
• Ugh, "internet personality" Justin Ross Lee, who previously shared pictures of Ashley Olsen he took on a flight sold video of Brad Pitt, who happened to wind up on another flight with him. [Star]
• Renee Zellweger and Bradley Cooper "get along really well and just kinda click," said a source, "Bradley likes the speed of everything. He likes that Reneé is low-key." [People]
• Renee Zellweger wore Carolina Herrera to the premiere of her movie My One And Only but Mark Randall, who plays her son, wore jeans with ripped knees and five year old Converse sneakers. "I decided to dress up a little tonight," he said. [N.Y. Observer]
• A group of Bulgarian Orthodox priests have asked Madonna to reschedule a concert scheduled for August 29 because it falls on St. John the Baptist day, when followers are supposed to refrain from "secular pleasures and merrymaking". [UPI]
• "I don't have a girlfriend," says Robert Pattinson, "I don't know why... You always think you're going to get more girls after you've made a movie and it never happens. You sit there and you're like, 'I'm a big movie star and I want to go out with some models,' but I don't know why that doesn't happen." [People]
• A friend says that Jasmine Flore, whose body was found in a suitcase and thrown in a dumpster over the weekend, had told her husband Ryan Alexander Jenkins of Megan Wants A Millionaire, that their relationship was over and was supposed to go to Las Vegas to reunite with an ex on the day her body was found. [TMZ]
• The ex, Robert Hasman, says he received a text from Jasmine Flore saying she was coming to see him, then another that said "suck it." Police suspect Ryan Jenkins may have seen the first message on his wife's phone and written the second. Jenkins reported Flore missing on Saturday night and is now MIA. [TMZ]
• Ryan Jenkins has a criminal record for assaulting a girlfriend in 2005. He was ordered to get treatment for sex addiction and domestic violence and serve 15 months probation. [TMZ]
• American Idol producers want Faith Hill to be a celebrity judge next season. [Radar Online]
• When Leighton Meester came to the studio to perform the vocals on Cobra Starship's "Good Girls Go Bad," "She like, turned the lights down low in the studio and lit a few candles to set the mood," says bassist Alex Suarez. "I've never seen candles in the studio before... So she's like, 'You make me want to lose control,' alone in the dark surrounded by vanilla and lavender, clenching her fist, just really feeling it." [People]
• Julianne Moore is selling her New York townhouse for $12 million and you can check out shots of her living room, kitchen, and bathroom here: [Fashion Week Daily]
• Jason Schwartzman married clothing designer Brady Cunningham on July 11 in the San Fernando Valley. "It was a very small ceremony with many family members and close friends," said his rep. [People]
• If you can't wait to hear the song Heidi Montag will perform at the Miss Universe pageant later this month, you can check it out at the link. Heidi says, "I am so excited to perform ... at Miss Universe for my first ever live performance... This is such a miracle in life and I give thanks to God everyday for this once in a lifetime opportunity." [People]
• Three women displaced by Hurricane Katrina have been charged with collecting rental assistance from FEMA after Oprah Winfrey helped them buy new homes through her Angel Network. [Reuters]
• George Lopez's family members are mad at him because he buried his grandma without telling them. "George buried our grandma and didn't tell any of us about it," said his sister Linda Sierra. "He didn't let any of us know — George's sisters, nephews and nieces are all heartbroken." [Radar Online]
• Philadelphia native Bill Cosby appeared at a news conference today with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell to criticize Senate Republicans' plan to provide less money for schools than the Democratic governor has proposed. [AP]
• Possible Mad Men spoiler: Orestes Arcuni, who played the bell hop on Monday's episode, says, "The kissing and sex stuff is so technical that it only resembles something romantic when spliced and edited together. It took about four hours and about ten different camera set ups to shoot. The actors are not having a romantic experience, that's hopefully the result of good editing, a good story, and ultimately what the audience brings along with them to the viewing experience." [Gothamist]
• Katey Sagal, who is starring in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy says of there being more roles for actresses "of a certain age," "I don't know why it's changed, but I'm really grateful it has. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we're all living longer and suddenly it's okay to get older. Maybe there's a broader audience for these characters. The stories you can tell about older women are deeper. Plus, cable has opened up enormous possibilities. In feature films, you're still lucky if you're not the girlfriend or the wife. But I just read yesterday that Dianne Keaton is going to be on television now, she's doing a series with HBO, so TV is where our stories are being told." [CNN]

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

[Los Angeles, May 9. Image via INFdaily.com.]

[West Hollywood, March 9. Image via INFDaily.com]

[Hollywood, December 5. Image via FilmMagic.]

• Marc Jacobs wants a reality show, and Project Runway's Tim Gunn wants it for him. "The whole thing's sort of egotistical, I suppose, but I do find myself entertaining," says Jacobs. And says Gunn, "God knows Marc has a fascinating life, and he looks great. I'd watch." Well, if it has Tim's vote... [NY Mag]
  
• Marc Jacobs' kidswear line Little Marc is opening up a little store. [WWD, 5th item]
  
• Sex and the City wardrobe spoiler. Says Patricia Field: "Without giving too much away, there is a shoe from Dior that Carrie wears all the time that I am sure will be on fire... My intention in the movie was to approach it realizing that four or five years have passed... there are little twists on Carrie that will be an opposite approach from the image we have of her, like a heavier shoe or studs." [WWD, 2nd item]

• Jason Schwartzman is the new face of indie fashion label Band of Outsiders. Is that name sort of self-awareness wrapped in irony wrapped in self-awareness wrapped in sincerity? Or is Jason Schwartzman just a bad fit? [WWD, 2nd item]
• Fila has launched a contest on its website, asking brand-devotees to submit photos of themselves that answer the question "How do you Fila?" Not that it's an invitation for teenage boys to submit photos of themselves "fila"-ing up girls who are "fila"-ing horny or anything. [MediaPost]
• Kohl's, meanwhile, answers this question and says, "With us!" A new Fila for Kohl's line will be in stores next fall. [WSJ]
• Giorgio Armani visited Australia this weekend so he could, um, bond with the beneficiaries of the "biggest single financial donation to an Australian theatrical institution," his declaration of "patronage" to the Sydney Theatre Company, helmed by Cate Blanchett. [WWD, sub req'd]
• And in other self-congratulatory Armani-speak, Giorgio also says, "Cary Grant is still the man. He managed to look good in a suit even while running across a field being chased by a plane. My friend George Clooney has that quality too - he looks effortlessly smart whatever he is wearing. I'm flattered that he chooses to wear my designs." [Vogue UK]
• Valentino: Also humble! "People say, 'Oh, Mr. Valentino, fashion without you is very sad.'" [Fashion Week Daily]
• Damon Dash-better half Rachel Roy just got an undisclosed amount of funding from TSM, a firm that also just purchased 22% of English label Matthew Williamson. Not sure why she needs the money, but, ha ha, just kidding. [Vogue UK]
• Bebe: No longer designing with fur! PETA likes this! Bebe: Still selling fur! PETA does not like this. [PETA]