[Bali, October 25. Image via Splash.]

(Click to enlarge)

• Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are engaged, according to a source, who also reports, "They tried to keep it very private and quiet" (and apparently aren't succeeding). Some suspect this rumored engagement may be related to her rumored pregnancy.

• Cruz's rep had no comment. [Us]
• On Today this morning, Kate Gosselin said of Jon Gosselin emptying $200,000 out of their joint bank account, "When you've left your children and their mother without the funds to pay for the roof over their head, it's not acceptable... I need that money to provide for them. We were in the position after our sextuplets were born that we could not pay our bills. We did the show to provide a better life for them. Never did I think I'd be back in the same position." She suggested that Jon's new aggressive behavior may be due to the new lawyer he hired after his first dropped him a few weeks ago. "I think he's receiving bad counsel. He's always been one to listen to the one next to him," she said. [People]
• Jon Gosselin says Kate's story is, "a total fabrication." He explains, "I've never taken any money out because over 10 years, Kate handled all the banking. Over the past four years of doing the show, we accrued $2,250,000. She says in the past week I took $230,000. I have withdrawn roughly $177,000 over the course of a year, which is less than 10 percent of what we made. That's like my paycheck." He continues, "She's hiding money... We have 11 bank accounts. That was just our joint account. She had a best-selling book. Where's that million dollars? I believe she's incriminating herself and not thinking clearly. She's wanting me to look bad. I didn't want these things to come public. I didn't want this to be embarrassing for her." [People]
• On Today Kate Gosselin wore the ring Jon gave her when they renewed their vows last year and says, "I'm changing them out. I'm switching them out." She said she's planning on buying herself a ring to replace her wedding band. "We discussed a ring I might buy," she said. "It has eight little diamonds and a mother of pearl." [People]
• The money Jon Gosselin took from their joint account was their only real source of living income. The Gosselins have a $720,000 mortgage on their $1.12 million home. They haven't sold the first home and have another mortgage on that house. However, there is money set aside for the children in a trust fund. [TMZ]
• Audio and video tapes of the police sting operation targeting Pleasant Bridgewater and Tarino Lightbourne are being played in court today. In one John Travolta's attorney says he can't give them $25 million because, "John doesn't have that kind of bread ... not even lying around." On another tape Bridgewater tells the attorney, "I just want to get this over with ... I don't want to hear about it again ... I feel so badly about the whole thing." [TMZ]
• According to a transcript of the tapes, at one point John Travolta's lawyer says, "We can do a little rug merchant negotiations here." [TMZ]
• Nicole Richie was rear ended by a paparazzo today. Sources say there was an adult male passenger but her kids were not in the car. She said she was in pain but wanted to go to her own doctor, not the ER. The other driver has been arrested for driving without a license. [TMZ]
• Method Man has been arrested for allegedly failing to pay income tax for four years. If convicted, he could face four years in jail. [TMZ]
• A judge has sealed a new report on Michael Jackson's children and says he doesn't need any further updates. "It looks like the children are really doing wonderfully with their grandmother guardian," he said. [L.A. Times]
• Robert Pattinson says, "I'm trying to write some songs for the next [Twilight] movie... I don't know if it will be possible because of my schedule, but I want to do it. Music is the other side of me, it's one of the things that complete me and I wouldn't want to leave it aside for anything in the world. I have the intention of evolving in that aspect. It's something I want to develop just as much as acting. I want to have a balance between those two things." [Ok]
• On Today, a lawyer for Robert "Joe" Halderman, the man accused of trying to extort money from David Letterman, said Dave is a "master manipulator of the media," and that evidence will come out in court to exonerate Halderman. However when pressed, he couldn't say what that evidence might be. [People]
• According to a poll of 505 Late Show viewers, David Letterman's sex/extortion scandal hasn't changed their opinion of him much. 22 percent said they have a more negative perception of him now; 23 percent said they have a more positive perception of him now; and 55 percent said there is no change in their perception of Letterman. [UPI]
• Police say they found a suicide note on the computer found in the hotel room where Ryan Jenkins hanged himself. He never admits to killing Jasmine Fiore in the document, but apologizes to his friends and family for the pain he caused them. In the letter he blames Jasmine for the situation he's in and says he loves and hates her at different points. [TMZ]
• Guests at Patrick Swayze's memorial yesterday were greeted by a white horse he owned with Patrick's boots facing backwards in the stirrups, "It's an old horseman tradition," says a source. The memorial was held on the Sony Studios lot and was attended by several hundred people. "A whole dance floor was built," says another source. "The dancers did these amazing numbers." [People]
• Two independent record labels are suing Guns N' Roses for $1 million because they claim the group used songs by German musician Ulrich Schnauss on their album Chinese Democracy. [Reuters]
• Backstreet Boy Brian Litrell has H1N1. [TMZ]
• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy launched carlabrunisarkozy.org today to promote her charity work and reveal bits of her life as France's first lady, but the site crashed after being featured on the front page of several French news sites. [AFP]
• Previous reports claimed that DJ AM's property generated $3.5 million per year, but it turns out that was the total value of his properties. [TMZ]
• MTV will air DJ AM's addiction series Gone Too Far beginning on October 12. The network released a statement from his family saying, "It is our hope through airing this show that people will get to see the side of Adam that we knew and loved, not just the celebrity DJ, but the honest and caring person who gave so much of himself to help others." [TMZ]
• Antonio Banderas has been ordered to demolish part of his beachfront Spanish villa after losing a court battle. He built part of his home into a public beach area and reportedly turned down an offer to buy the land from the community for £2 million. [Daily Express]
• Eddie Cibrian's estranged wife Brandi Glanville says, "I have a new neighbor and her name is LeAnn Rimes. She's moved in a half a mile from my house and a block from my son's school. So she is completely space invading me at the moment so things are not cool," adding, "There is a point where she needs to have a sensitive side and back the F up." [Us]
• Just so you know, "Sherri Shepherd Still Has Jiggly Thighs" [People]
• Maggie Smith says receiving chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments for breast cancer have left her "flattened" with no energy or confidence. "I'm frightened to work in theatre now. I feel very uncertain. I haven't done it for a while," said Smith, who is 74, adding, "I think it's the age I was when it happened. It takes you longer to recover, you are not so resilient." [The Daily Mail]
• Anne Heche says she won't introduce her sons to her mother because she works with Focus on the Family to preach against homosexuality. She joined the group after Heche's father, a closet homosexual who sexually abused Heche, died of AIDS in 1983. Heche says, "My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she still stands up against love. And one wonders why I'm not rushing to have her meet my children." [Daily Express]
• Here's a blind item of sorts: Sarah Paulson says of a script she read recently, "All I can tell you is it's, like, a humongous famous actor and, like, the most famous director ever. It was like this movie is like the hottest movie and I literally threw it across the room - like, This is terrible. The state of the business right now, it's like some of the most famous actors in the world are taking parts that normally people like me could get, but now I can't get them because really famous people want them because they're not making as many movies. So when the script turns around, everyone gets all excited, and I was like, "Wow, they can have it. This thing sucks." [NY Magazine]
• Ashlee Simpson-Wentz says of Heather Locklear joining the new Melrose Place, "She's great. She's fantastic. I really, truly believe that she's part of the heart of the show. She's so sweet and has a great energy, so it's great to have her on the show." [People]
• "It's sad when you realize you can't be the angry young man anymore. The angry young man is barely ever interesting, and tolerable in his 20s. But his late 20s? Early 30s? God forbid late 30s? You can't anymore. I'm in a business where I get to make pretend for a living, so what the fuck am I angry about? There's nothing anymore; I'm a very content, middle aged man. People are like 'Ah when are Jay and Silent Bob coming back?' And I'm like 'I don't think they are. I'm fuckin' 39! I can't just put my fuckin' hat on backwards." — Kevin Smith [The Huffington Post]
• Carrie Fisher says of sharing the details of her life in various memoirs, "The fact that I can make somebody laugh at this stuff-it can be very cathartic. If you claim something, you can own it. But if you have it as a shameful secret, you're fucked; you're sitting in a room populated by elephants. I have a lot of elephants to kill. But I also have a lot to be grateful for. Most of my problems are high-class. As Mike Nichols used to say, ‘The champagne is flat and the caviar has run out-will it never end?'" [Vanity Fair]

• Kate Gossselin will be going after Jon Gosselin for "raiding" their joint bank account.

Apparently there's a court order prohibiting Jon or Kate from withdrawing any money from the account without he consent of both parties; yet Jon's taken $200,00 out. [TMZ]

• Kate Gosselin's lawyer says: "If the money is not immediately returned, we will be looking into potential claims against [Jon's lawyer] if he had any involvement with the violation of the court order… It is very disappointing that Jon Gosselin has escalated this to such an ugly place." [Radar Online, TMZ]
• Jon Gosselin's attorney, Mark Heller, was once suspended from practicing law for five years due to "professional misconduct." This was between 1994 and 1999. [Radar Online]
• BREAKING: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt took Knox and Vivi out in public! They visited a gelato store in Amman, Jordan! Pix at the link! ZOMG TWINZZZ. [Daily Mail]
• Even before David Letterman became involved with staffer Stephanie Birkitt, he had a "secret affair" with intern Holly Hester in the '90s, and his relationship with personal assistant Laurie Diamond is described as "particularly flirtatious." In addition, a source says: "Dave has a great track record of promoting women on the show — three of the five executive producers are women, and all of them have been with him for more than 20 years." [NY Post]
• Simon Cowell's 50th birthday party at sprawling estate Wrotham Park featured a huge image of Simon's smirking face, projected on an outside wall of the mansion; waiters wearing masks of Simon's face; a performance by Earth, Wind and Fire; and burlesque dancers, who whipped Ryan Seacrest. [NY Post]
• Miley Cyrus had to cancel a concert over the weekend because she is still battling strep throat. [UPI]
• Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem: Engaged. Supposedly. [Rush & Molloy]
• Elton John and David Furnish are still hoping to adopt. They'll have to put the Ukrainian toddler Elton fell in love with out of their minds, however: Furnish says, "When we found out he had a maternal grandmother, and brother and sister, we realized it wouldn't be the right thing to take him away from the family he had there. We would love to adopt Lev, but that does not seem possible under Ukrainian rules." [Daily Express]
• The mother of the toddler Elton John wanted to adopt says she will not give her kid up; the boy is in a children's home because she's an alcoholic and he was taken by social workers. [The Sun]
• "Switzerland would have arrested film director Roman Polanski on earlier visits to the country if justice authorities had been aware of his presence, a Swiss minister said in an interview published on Sunday." [Reuters]
• Precious got a standing ovation at the New York Film Festival over the weekend; Roger Friedman writes: "Expect Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress (Gabby Sidibe), and one or more Supporting Actresses (Mariah, Mo'Nique)." [Showbiz 411]
• The problem with Precious? Mo'nique did not show up for the NYFF, just as she "ditched" her promotional duties during the Toronto Film Festival. [Gatecrasher]
• John Travolta testified that his son was autistic, which is in conflict with Scientology's "unofficial position" on the condition. But, this report claims, Travolta remains "firmly committed" to the Church. [TMZ]
• A DNA test has confirmed that Jude Law is indeed the father of Samantha Burke's baby. This paper calls Jude and Samantha's relationship "a brief love affair," but weren't you under the impression it was a one night stand? [Daily Express]
• Jenna Fischer's on the cover of Shape doing the classic Shape pose: Standing in water in a bikini. [JustJared]
• Chris Noth: Engaged. [People]
• A Facebook campaign has helped get an indie film starring Harry Potter redhead Rupert Grint get a distribution deal in Britain. Grint plays a Northern Irish teenager who takes drugs… and is featured in intimate bedroom scenes. In other words: Not Ron Weasely. [Gatecrasher]
• At the link, the Seinfeld cast spills about the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Jason Alexander, aka George Costanza, says: "It was so bizarre, I can't even describe it. It negated the idea that time had passed at all, and I was actually grateful that some of the elements of the apartment set were different, [so] it wasn't a complete mindfuck." [EW's Hollywood Insider]
• At a party in LA, Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane put the moves on Dianna Agron, aka Quinn Fabray from Glee. She wasn't interested. [Gatecrasher]
• Shia LaBeouf blatantly checks out hot chicks even when his girlfriend, Carey Mulligan, is right next to him. [Gatecrasher]
• Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon wants to be an actress when she grows up. Do you think she's seen Swept Away ? [Daily Mail]
• Russell Crowe is in Robin Hood and is taking the character to heart: He got filmmakers to gift a £60,000 prop — a battering ram — to extras on his film, who are in a battle re-enactment group. [Daily Express]
• Beer and doughnut loving Homer Simpson in an anti-obesity campaign sponsored by the Department of Health?!?! [Mirror]
• "Housewife Kandi Burruss Devastated By Fiancé's Death."[People]
• In this piece, Vince Vaughn plays shrink and diagnoses the four couples from Couples Retreat, which he co-wrote and produced. [USA Today]
• On Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking: "hilariously perceptive journey" "chock-full of funny, fascinating tales." [AP]
• "Drinking is a perfectly pleasant trifle - nothing that requires or inspires great emotional commitment, but fine for a one-night stand." [USA Today]
• James Blunt has been dumped. [Daily Express]
• Candy Spelling had neck surgery and is currently in a full-body cast. [TMZ]
• As mentioned last week, Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that he will be making a third Kill Bill movie. [Variety]
• Q: I heard a rumor that you run on a treadmill in heels and sing. A: "[Laughs] No, I don't run on a treadmill in heels. That's a bit extreme. But I do practice my choreography in heels. And I have a rule that when I have my heels on, everyone has to have their heels on too. Sometimes the dancers are like, 'Oh, God, we hope Beyonce comes in late,' because I'll go all day. And in the end, I'll have blisters and my toes will have bruises. It's really hard sometimes. I still do all the boring things that everyone else does in regular workouts like squats and the treadmill. But I mainly get in shape from doing the choreography during those long 12-hour rehearsals for two months before a tour." — Beyoncé. [Reuters]
• "I'd like to get involved in videogames since I really love Wii Fit. I think it would be a great idea to incorporate choreography because for me my workout is way more fun when it involves dancing as opposed to running on a boring treadmill. So I would love to do some kind of fitness game but incorporate dance and performance into it. I think a lot of women would enjoy that." — Beyoncé. [Reuters]
• "When he walked on the stage I was like no, no, no! I knew his intentions and I knew he was standing up for art… [In the end] Taylor Swift had her moment and I didn't have to give an acceptance speech!" Beyoncé on the Kanye/VMA incident. [Mirror]
• "We mutually decided to cancel the tour. He's going to take some time off, but I'm not. Kanye and I talked about it. We talked about it a lot, as well as with Live Nation…" — Lady Gaga, who has just announced a solo tour now that the "Fame Kills" tour with Kanye West has been canceled. [Variety]
• "We're calling it a ‘vacation.' He's going away to get things sorted out." — a "source" on Kanye West possibly going to rehab. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "I went to the doctor and had an AIDS test and he told me it was positive. That was one of the worst days of my life." — Ozzy Osbourne, who did another HIV test, which came back negative. [Telegraph]
• "For the first time in my life I'm legal to drive — so watch out." — Ozzy Osbourne, who passed his driving test after the 19th attempt. [The Sun]
• "It was the most physical pain I've ever experienced. There was crying. But then you'd feel so good about falling and then getting back up and doing it again… I've never been to an overnight camp, but it felt like what I imagine that to be. Drew was just one of the girls. We'd skate and then go to the break room and talk about boys. She makes everyone feel like the most important person in the room." — Ari Graynor, aka Eva Destruction, on making Whip It. [NY Mag]
• "I know you're supposed to tell kids not to do drugs, but, kids, do it! Do weed! Don't do the other stuff, but weed is good… What you want to do is what I did, build a movie empire and, at age 38, smoke it all away." — Kevin Smith. [Page Six]
• "It is kind of disturbing, but so is putting yourself out there as far as relationships or friendships goes. It is scary and sometimes you are taking a risk. If you aren't prepared to do that you're going to have very safe options in your life, but they won't be the most exciting ones." — Anna Paquin, on vampire/human relationships in True Blood. [Telegraph]

[Madrid, October 1. Image via INF]

• Julia Roberts is in India shooting Eat, Pray, Love, and security is tight on the film set:

50 local police officers and security officers are guarding Julia; yet kids and villagers are climbing trees and rooftops to get a glimpse of the Hollywood star. [AP]

• Michael Jackson is making money at the box office: This Is It accounted for 71% of all sales yesterday on the ticket site fandango.com. [NY Daily News]
• Madonna might marry boyfriend Jesus Luz, according to reports. She apparently likes how he checks in all the time and understands that she is self-involved — plus, says a source, "the sex is scorching hot." Husband material! [Daily Mail]
• This column claims that Penelope Cruz must be pregnant: She went to an OB/GYN with boyfriend Javier Bardem. Maybe he just tagged along for her Pap smear? [NY Daily News]
• Teri Hatcher, who was a guest on Friday's (canceled) episode of The Tonight Show, says that Conan O'Brien has a concussion: "We did this bit and at the very end, when we ran in to cross the finish line, he slipped as he was crossing the finish line and hit his head… And the thing was, I was in front of him so I didn't see it initially. He didn't get off floor right a way, but then he [seemed] like he recovered and [pulled] it together, and they did an instant replay, and you could really see his head hit the floor. He did go to the hospital and he does have a concussion." [ET]
• Sources say Kanye West has an alcohol problem. "He's been boozing heavily ever since his mother died," an insider says. [Showbiz Spy]
• Kanye West was seen acting "reserved, quiet and humble for once." [Gatecrasher]
• "Roman Polanski's Arrest Could Lead to Extradition."[NY Times]
• "Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland could lead to diplomatic row." [Times Of London]
• "Poland, France seek Polanski's release." [USA Today]
• "France, Poland want Polanski released on bail." [AP]
• "'Outraged' Roman Polanski's wife vows to fight extradition to U.S. after he is arrested over 1977 underage sex charge." [Daily Mail]
• "Roman Polanski is weighing his legal options after his arrest Saturday at the Zurich Airport. If he agrees to allow extradition, he could be sent to the U.S. within a few days. If he fights the order, it could take several months for the case to get through Swiss courts." [Variety]
• Khloe Kardashian married Lamar Odom on Sunday at a private residence in Beverly Hills. She wore Vera Wang; the flowers were all white; preparation for the nuptials were covered by cameras from E!. [People]
• The wedding will air on E!'s Keeping Up With The Kardashians, in case you weren't clear on that. [NY Daily News]
• Here's the thing: E! agreed to pick up the $1 million tab for Khloe Kardashian's wedding only if it was staged by Sunday — that way it could open the new seaason of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. But since Lamar Odom's lawyers didn't have time to do a pre-nup, yesterday's "wedding" may not have been legally binding. [NY Post]
• Padma Lakshmi, 39, is reportedly pregnant with her first child by boyfriend Manu Nathan, 27. [JustJared]
• Clive Owen is a Liverpool football (soccer) fan, and watched a game in a NYC sports bar with other fans, only one of whom asked, "What was it like snogging Julia Roberts?" [The New Yorker]
• Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch, will join the cast of I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here. [Ireland Online]
• Kate Moss: Making music her focus? She has registered as a songwriter and publisher with the Performing Rights Society, where artists can protect any future royalties from their records. [Daily Express]
• Not that Kate Moss isn't modeling — she's totally the G in Paris Vogue. [TheLifeFiles]
• Simon Cowell is about to become the highest-paid star on TV — with his deal to bring X Factor to the U.S. (he'll producer, not appear on the show) — Cowell will make $103 million by next fall. That's more than Oprah, if you don't include her "empire" earnings. [NY Post]
• The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has checked into rehab; ex-girlfriend Agyness Deyn was seen out with her old flame, Miles Kane, during fashion week. [Daily Mail]
• "[John Travolta's] public acknowledgement that his son, who died in January, was autistic has former Scientologists convinced that he will leave the church-which they say has little tolerance for chronic conditions." [The Daily Beast]
• Rihanna was in Venice for her manager's wedding, and naturally, she posed with and signed an autograph for an Italian monk. He looks incredibly happy. [Daily Mail]
• "Jude Law is refusing to see his newborn daughter until a DNA test proves he is the father, according to new reports." [Daily Express]
• Has Jude Law banned interviewers from asking him about his new daughter? A source says yes, and that's why he didn't talk about it on Regis & Kelly. Jude's rep says "No subjects are banned." [Page Six]
• Jamie Kennedy has reportedly been cheating on Jennifer Love Hewitt with his ex-girlfriend, Shannon Funk. Funk was Britney Spears' assistant for a while. [Prz]
• Megan Fox told Nylon magazine that she thinks she's "really overexposed," which may be one of her most astute quotes ever. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Andrew Shue and the Today show's Amy Robach: Engaged. [People]
• Paris Hilton drove her new pink Bentley to the launch of a jewelry line, where the organizers offered her a free diamond pendant and she "begged and begged to take the matching earrings, too." Vivica A. Fox was at the same event and refused a free diamond bracelet, saying: "I'll buy it myself from my next paycheck." [Page Six]
• Kristen Bell hearts butterscotch pudding. [People]
• 75-year-old Larry King has been interviewing celebrities since 1985; his contract with CNN is set to expire in 18 months. Should he retire, who would take his place? Ryan Seacrest, Katie Couric and Joy Behar are reported contenders. [Page Six]
• Housewife Bethenny Frankel has been "gradually cutting ties" with the other housewives "since news that she'd get her own show on Bravo broke during the summer months." [Gatecrasher]
• Even though Marilyn Manson announced that he has the swine flu, his reps are denying that he is sick, which is just weird. [Gatecrasher]
• Justin Guarini was married over the weekend and the ceremony featured music by Radiohead, Paramore and Peter Gabriel — played by a string quartet. [People]
• Actress/model Angie Everhart denies that British royal Prince Andrew is the father of the baby boy she gave birth to in July. She says: "Just because I've been linked romantically with him in the past it doesn't mean I am still going to bed with him. Whether I am or not is nobody's business but ours… Kayden's daddy is someone who is not in the public eye." [Daily Express]
• This compilation of quotes from Robbie Williams is hilarious. [Guardian]
• "I never tried hard at anything. I was born smart on a very working-class estate. A couple of people I knew went to university apart from me, but all the way through I was the smartest kid in the school. That's luck, but I was proud of it. And I was also proud of doing well without trying. As you get older, and it took me a long time to realise it, that's a disgusting attitude, revolting. It's ignorant and it's a tragic waste, and I realised that the work itself is the reward. The struggle itself is the reward." — Ricky Gervais. [Guardian]
• "I knew my character was going to be pregnant the entire first season, so I figured it was a good time to have another kid." — Jenna Elfman, on being pregnant at the same time as her character in her new show Accidentally On Purpose. [USA Today]
• "The one through-line is the big accent and the in-your-face attitude. I'm definitely stereotyped and I'm very OK with that. I get super bored playing bland, normal girls." — Drea de Matteo, on playing a "tough broad" on Desperate Housewives, who sounds a lot like her Sopranos character. [Time]
• "I just passed my driving test. Took me 60 years, but I did it! For the first time in my life, I'm legal to drive, so watch out!" — Ozzy Osbourne. [MSNBC]
• "When I asked him what he envisioned, he mentioned Serge and Brigitte, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. So for me, I kind of saw it more as 'he said, she said' duets, as opposed to something that was just two people singing together. It's the kind of interplay between a male perspective and a female perspective, so they were a great example of that." — Scarlett Johansson on her duets with Pete Yorn. [NPR]
• "I wish a happy birthday to Sophia Loren, my splendid twin, and I ask her to stop wearing fur — that is the best gift she could offer me." — Brigitte Bardot, who, like Loren, turned 75 this week. [AFP]
• "She doesn't have a penis. She came to my house in her underwear and I saw no hint of a penis. She thought it was appropriate attire. She can get away with it. She knows what she's doing. She ain't no fool. She's brilliant. I think she's a good role model for girls. She plays with sex and makes it unsexy on purpose - so outrageous it's approachable."— Mika, on Lady Gaga. [ONTD via MTV.au]

• Paula Abdul will not return to American Idol. This announcement comes via her Twitter. She wrote:

"With sadness in my heart, I've decided not to return to #IDOL. I'll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all I'll miss being a part of a show that I helped from day1 become an international phenomenon. What I want to say most, is how much I appreciate the undying support and enormous love that you have showered upon me… It truly has been breathtaking, especially over the past month… I do without any doubt have the BEST fans in the entire world and I love you all." She was reportedly looking for as much as $20 million to continue with the show, but producers were recently heard talking up new host Kara DioGuardi (who has already signed on for another season, along with Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest). [Variety]

• First we heard that Penelope Cruz might be knocked up, then we heard she quit smoking, and now a source says: "Penelope is about four months pregnant." Congrats to Penny and lover Javier Bardem! [Just Jared]
• Thank Zeus: Jennifer Aniston has signed on for a movie we can actually get behind: Goree Girls is about an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s. [Variety]
• Presented without comment: "A park bench featuring a sculpture of a nude Angelina Jolie with her infant twins is to be unveiled in Oklahoma to promote World Breastfeeding Week." [UPI]
• Madonna's old love letters "borrowed heavily" from Anne Sexton poems. [Page Six]
• Childhood stardom can be tough. Ashley Olsen tells Marie Claire: "[Growing up,] it was almost like I was in the Army. School, work, homework, fly to New York, get in at 2 in the morning, do a morning show at 5 a.m., then another one at 7, then a radio interview at 10." She adds: "I look at Britney, and I'm surprised I didn't end up like her." [Gatecrasher]
• When Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their split, they got great ratings; the new episode's ratings? Crappy. Hence the headline, "Viewers Break Up With 'Jon and Kate.'" [AdAdge]
• More on this in Midweek Madness, but Jon Gosselin is on the cover of In Touch, saying "I'm tired of being blamed." He says his marriage fell apart in October 2008. "Many people think that everything moved too fast, that I was out partying too quickly. But Kate gave up on the marriage last October, and the divorce will be finalized by Sept. 30." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Robert Pattinson has been voted the sexiest man in the world in a Glamour mag poll in which many of the women were obviously Twihards. [The Star]
• Spotted: Kelly Bensimon and Damages actress Rose Byrne vying for Gerard Butler's attention. "Kelly blocked Gerard from speaking to Rose and was flirting up a storm - but he couldn't have seemed less interested." Gerard found Rose later and took her to a "private corner" to talk. [Gatecrasher]
• Gerard Butler says he got involved in his new romcom because he was always cracking jokes: "I was doing an action movie with the guys who made this and at night we would go to dinner and I would be like 'did you hear the one about this?' and they were like The Ugly Truth." [Mirror]
• Chris Brown will be sentenced for assault today. [AP]
• Elisabeth Moss says she and Mad Men costar Christina Hendricks — who are both getting married soon — are having their cakes made by the same people.
  "We've been exchanging flower information a little bit," she says. "Our weddings are sort of different, but we love talking about it." [People]
• CW programming chief Dawn Ostroff says Mischa Barton is at work on her new show The Beautiful Life and has been "great" and there have been "no issues." Everything is FINE okay? [USA Today]
• According to this report, it's not Mischa the CW producers are worried about, it's Elle Macpherson, her TBL costar, who has a large role, but can't act. [Gatecrasher]
• Jamie-Lynn Sigler gets kinda Sopranos-esque in this video, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey with Jamie-Lynn Sigler." Bonus points for "buh-bies." [Funny Or Die]
• The Michael Jackson concert rehearsal footage will be a full-length motion picture… if a probate judge approves the deal by Monday. [AP]
• Joe Jackson, thank you for saying the following: "I do visit the family residence from time to time and will continue to do so, however I will not be involved in raising the children." [AP]
• Administrators of Michael Jackson's estate expect to earn cash from merchandising Jackson-related stuff, which would be good for the kids. [TMZ]
• David and Victoria Beckham MIGHT be moving to a £10million home in Chelsea, London, and here are pictures of the house they COULD live in someday. [Daily Mail]
• Check out Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in this music video shot to promote (500) Days Of Summer. It's got a '60s look and DANCING! [USA Today, USA Today]
• John Slattery, aka Mad Men's Roger Sterling, may direct an upcoming episode of the AMC show. [LA Times]
• Candy Spelling is still using the media to talk to daughter Tori Spelling. Last week she accused Tori of using her kids as "reality show props"; today she's telling Tori: "I love you, and I always will." [USA Today]
• Daniel Baldwin says of the woman who claims he left her a "hostile" message: "Either she's delusional, can't remember what's going on, or she's psychotic." The woman fired his niece, who is a nanny, and allegedly threatened the niece, saying she would never work in Malibu again. Baldwin says he texted back: "Please don't threaten my niece" and that's it. [E!]
• Former U.S. President Bill Clinton will present filmmaker Steven Spielberg with the 2009 Liberty Medal at a ceremony in Philadelphia. [UPI]
• Jay Leno's new show will have "correspondents" — Brian Williams, Mikey Day, Rachael Harris, D.L. Hughley and Jim Norton. [Page Six]
• Josh Duhamel is in talks to star with Katherine Heigl in Life As We Know It, a romance about two people "whose worlds are turned upside down when their mutual best friends die in an accident and name them as caregivers of their orphaned daughter." Cue parenting goofs, falling in love. [Variety]
• Bam Margera is working it out with his wife, with the help of marriage counseling and meds. [TMZ]
• Johnny Hallyday, the "French Elvis," fell while boarding a yacht on the Riviera last month and dislocated his hip. [Page Six]
• This picture of Whatshername face down getting her ass squeezed while getting a massage is one of the reasons I can't bear to be interested in her. In any case, Whatshisname is hoping for a quickie divorce. [The Sun]
• Blind item! "Which wacky celeb is certainly no angel when it comes to her hobbies? This hostess holds drawing parties for her gal pals - complete with a nude model and lots of alcohol." [Gatecrasher]
• "Silence is a powerful weapon in drama, "What you don't say and what you don't reveal can be as powerful as what you do say. My intention is to make [the performance] as real as possible but never forgetting that it's actually drama." — Gabriel Byrne, on In Treatment. [LA Times]
• "She comes to L.A. from the Midwest to find her mother [who turns out to be one of the original show's characters, Sydney Andrews, played by Laura Leighton], and all of a sudden she's thrown in with the sharks." — Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, on her Melrose Place character. [WWD]
• "In the music business in the Seventies, girls were beautiful. You were a performer, or you could be a girlfriend or groupie, but you still had to look good. I didn't have the face or the body that opens doors... Not being beautiful was an education. My achievements are down to my looks, or lack of them... I'm not putting myself down, that's the truth." — Sharon Osbourne, who says being "short, fat and hairy" meant she had to "develop a brain and personality and be fun and smart and learn to get on with people and make deals." [Daily Mail]
• "I'm not going to confirm or deny that. It might jump forward, it might not." -Jon Hamm, on whether the third season of Mad Men takes place two years after the last season ended. [NY Mag, via ESPN podcast]
• "A lot of his chickens came home to roost, so to speak. He had a lot of balls in the air, and they all kinda came crashing down as the season progressed. A lot more happens in season three, and there's a lot of change coming his way. Not only in his life, but a lot happens in the culture as well. So far, it's been an amazing season and I can't wait for people to see it." -Jon Hamm, on Don Draper's meltdown last season and how Don recovers (or doesn't). [NY Mag, via ESPN podcast]
• "They're fucking nuts. You have to either accept that or you do like me: You get married four times."— James Caan, on women. [Page Six via Men's Journal]
• "My music is a little more edgy so that inspired me to be adventurous. I've never dyed my hair before so this was a pretty drastic change. I've always been known as a brunette but I've been thinking about it for a long time and it kind of just fit with all of the searching with the music and experimenting that I would do the same thing with my look. The look has affected the way I dress, it's inspired me to be more adventurous with what I decide to wear. It's silly that something so simple as changing your hair could have such a big effect. I'm just having fun with it." — Katharine McPhee, on dying her hair blonde. [People]
• "I'm not great [at romance in real life] actually — my husband [musician Josh Kelley] and I have had this argument, I can be but generally I am a little, like, squeamish about being too romantic. I do love a good snuggle, but I don't want to, have to, get all verbally gooey." — Katherine Heigl. [Mirror]
• "I probably seem like not a particularly nice person, not a girl's girl. I think if you put a camera in anyone's life and document it daily for six years, from the age of 21 to 27, there are going to be things that aren't always pretty. Those are the rebellious years, the years of self discovery. I've never been someone who has conformed, and I think my response to that level of attention was to pretend it didn't exist." — Sienna Miller. [Daily Mail]
• "I'm disgusted by him. Here's a guy with eight kids who runs off to 'find himself' — well, he should have found himself a condom." — Joan Rivers on Jon Gosselin. [Page Six]

• Jon Gosselin has been hanging out in the Hamptons with Star reporter Kate Major. At the home of Michael Lohan. "Jon and her are good friends," Lindsay's dad says. [E!, People]

• Jon Gosselin, Kate Major, Michael Lohan and Real Housewives Jill Zarin had dinner together. Margaret sent me an email which read: "Ok, my head just exploded. We've now tied together RHONY, the Gosselins, AND Michael Lohan? I really hope Blanket isn't the 9th Gosselin kid." [Us Magazine]
• More on Gosselin and Zarin here. [People]
• Oh no. No. Buckingham Palace requested a copy of Brüno. The Queen is going to watch Brüno. Oh no. [Telegraph]
• "Brüno star Sacha Baron Cohen gets death threats from Islamic terrorists." Something about calling Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a "dirty wizard or a homeless Santa." [Telegraph]
• Mischa Barton's rep says she is "making improvements." [UPI]
• Mischa didn't make the cover of any of the celeb weeklies, but her rep says they've been calling and emailing. [Page Six]
• Lindsay Lohan's Labor Pains got half as many viewers as The Parent Trap did on a different cable channel exactly a week before. [NY Daily News]
• Jude Law accidentally hit a female photographer when surrounded by paparazzi but apologized and calls the accusations that he attacked her "nonsense." [Independent]
• Comb out the weavehive: Amy Winehouse will have to go on trial for assaulting a woman at a charity ball last September. [Mirror]
• Oh wait! She already went to court! They're saying Amy used "deliberate and unjustifiable violence." [Daily Express, Telegraph]
• There was a "media scrum" at the courthouse as Amy Winehouse arrived. [Mirror]
• Last night Kelis was in labor and Nas went to the hospital; he was turned away because he was too drunk. He'd performed earlier in the evening and been downing champagne since. [TMZ]
• Kelis had a boy! His name is Knight Jones. She Tweeted: "I was in labor for 3 of the longest most painful days of my life. I don't understand when women say they don't remember giving birth." She added: "I will remember for the rest of my life. He's kinda perfect btw :)" [Rap Radar]
• Want to know more about Michael Jackson's secret son and secret moms and all kinds of secrets? Click the link. Or ask Liz Taylor. "The one woman who knows everything there is to know about Michael Jackson and where his children came from is Elizabeth Taylor," a source spills. "Elizabeth Taylor introduced Michael to the mother." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Will Michael's kids be raised by their Aunt Rebbie? [TMZ]
• The Jackson investigation is focusing on manslaughter. And documents have been seized from Dr. Conrad Murray's office. [TMZ]
• AEG has filed legal papers asking to be part of the Jackson probate hearing on August 3. [TMZ]
• Well this is not surprising: Security breeches in connection with Jackson's death certificate. Apparently it's been "improperly accessed," like, 300 times. Sigh. [E!]
• Jackson rehearsal footage for the "This is It" concerts could be spliced together into a movie to hit in theaters in October. Quick. [NY Daily News]
• Jermaine Jackson on SECRET NORWEGIAN LOVE CHILD Omer: "If Omer's his son, he's his son. We won't deny it. We are going to give him the same love and care that we give Prince and Paris and Blanket." [Daily Mail]
• Meredith Vieira says of Susan Boyle: "She's figuring it out. I think she's watched very carefully – she said she has a good team around her to help her put it in perspective." [People]
• The first song to be released as a single by Boyle has yet to be chosen. [BBC News]
• Gotta love this quote from this Tracy Morgan interview: "Tina Fey is down like four flat tires. I love her. That's my girl, Tina Fey-Fey. She's the coolest. That's my sister from another mother with a different color." [USA Today]
• Writers who want to get a job with the new Wanda Sykes Show have to do a whole lot of writing — for free — as a test. The "packet requirements" — which you can see at the link — are lengthy. Really really involved. [Deadline Hollywood]
• Julianne Hough got an Emmy nomination for her choreography, is set to star with Chace Crawford in Footloose and is in love with fellow country singer Chuck Wicks. And she just turned 21 on Monday. [USA Today]
• John Oates of Hall & Oates has a new cartoon, J-stache, the star of which is his famous mustache. "Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell." [Reuters]
• In a "People of Today" list which includes hobbies, we discover that David Beckham enjoys wine tasting; John Cleese spends most of his leisure time indulging in gluttony and sloth. [Telegraph]
• Jay-Z will replace the Beastie Boys a the All Points West festival in Jersey City. The Beastie Boys had to cancel when MCA revealed he had throat cancer. [NY Times]
• Wendy Williams has decided to quit her longtime day job as a radio personality; she will work on her TV show full-time. [Black Voices]
• Javier Bardem has turned down a role in Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel. [NY Times]
• Megan Fox has turned down a role in a James Bond film. She'd rather be a major player and not just a pretty face, or something. Slumdog star Freda Pinto also turned down the role. [Gatecrasher]
• Gossip Girl gossip: Are Ed Westwick and Jessica Szohr on the rocks? [Page Six]
• The Whitney Houston comeback campaign is getting in full swing. [Page Six]
• We knew this, right? The Notebook, the musical? [NY Daily News]
• "'Do you still love Daddy?': Katie Price reveals the tough questions she's getting from her children in wake of split" [Daily Mail]
• "My five-year experience proved to me that I could not trust any answer that was given [about my character, George]." — T.R. Knight, on why he left Grey's Anatomy. More at the link. [NY Daily News]
• "I suppose you can put him in the same category as the Dr. Phils and these kinds of characters of the world. Thank God, he doesn't have a television show. He's become quite well known, quite quoted, popular, sells lots and lots of books. We meet him at a point of his own personal crisis and tragedy, and the film is about can he a) help himself and b) help any of his patients. But he's certainly far more screwed up than most of his patients, as it turns out." — Kevin Spacey, on his character in the new film Shrink. [Salon]
• "We based it off this movie that we were really into from the 80s called Lost Boys, about vampires and we just stole the whole concept, kids taking over this theme park and doing what they want with it and that's the whole atmosphere of the video, and it definitely came out perfectly. It's our favourite music video we've ever shot, it was wonderful, we were so happy with the outcome." — Trace Cyrus of the Band Metro Station, whose sister, Miley Cyrus, appears in the new video. [Mirror]
• "You will be surprised but I do a lot of studying and I watch National Geographic. I try to stay away from the reality shows. I don't get anything out of Kim Kardashian and her family and nothing out of Kendra. When I watch television, I got to walk away with new type of knowledge. I get none of that from Kendra [Wilkinson] and Hugh Hefner and his girlfriends. I'm not a ninth grader who gets enticed by the female anatomy like that!" — Tracy Morgan. [People]
• "I did hard drugs. I never name them because it gets too sensational, but you can imagine. It was hard. All of my life lessons were very short but very intense. When I was a teenager, I smoked tons of pot. And my relationship to chemicals was very specifically tied to my inability to connect with people. It's almost as if the drugs-disconnection-helped me connect. It doesn't make sense. But people thought I was on drugs when I wasn't on drugs, because I guess I've always been a strange bird. I wasn't fun on drugs, so I quit at 22. … I, Juliette, believe in aliens. I don't know any other Scientologists who do. I also believe in fairies, you know, the real ones that live in the forest. Like most Scientologists, I'm really antidrug, especially in our anaesthetized, consumerist culture. The idea of taking a pill when you're unhappy or uneven to even out, to consume, to be perfect little robots-it all fucking relates. I think it's a really radical thing to be present, to own your shit-your lust, your anger, your joy, your fear. That's hard, but in the long run, it's the better road to take." — Juliette Lewis. (Also click to see her dressed as Bettie Page.) [BlackBook]
• "Byron said the only difference between the English and Turks was the English spent all their time whoring and drinking, while the Turks preferred sodomy and sherbet. I'm looking forward to a bit of sodomy and sherbet myself.…Sorry granny, sorry mum. "I'd better say sorry. My grandmother, who is aged 99, might be sitting in front of the television, swallowing her false teeth." — Rupert Everett. [The Sun]
• "Pretty girls, lose the attitude. Who needs it? Life's too short. You're not a brain surgeon. In Los Angeles and New York, where there's definitely a high concentration of beautiful women… A lot of them take themselves way too seriously. Their beauty feels like it's become a weapon. There's nothing more attractive to a guy than a beautiful woman who has her defenses down… Well, maybe not that. That sounds animalistic, like you're on the prowl. [What's alluring is] a beautiful woman who seems unaware of it." —Gerard Butler. [LA Times]
• "To be honest, I think I have chemistry with everybody." — Gerard Butler. [LA Times]
• "It's probably okay for me to say this now, but my Thirteen character was completely, 100% me at that age. That's why I did it. I had never seen something that honest being done for teenagers and their parents, that wasn't some terrible educational film. It was like Requiem for a Dream, but with teenagers: everything about it just rang true with me… It made me laugh so hard when people were like, 'Evan Rachel Wood and Marilyn Manson? She's so squeaky clean!' I was like, 'I was cutting myself on camera at the age of 14 and making out with chicks!'" — Evan Rachel Wood. [BlackBook]

• Lindsay Lohan had a "meltdown" in a club in London, which involved saying:

"I feel so, like, caged. Totally caged." Then Lindsay tried to curl up in a ball on the floor. According to this report. [Mirror]

• Brad and Angie to wed??? Apparently someone sent Angelina Jolie all the press clippings about her "relationship problems," so she has decided that she and Brad should get married and put an end to the stories. A rumor about a Brangelina wedding circulates pretty much once a year, so perhaps we were overdue. [Mirror]
• BREAKING: Mariah Carey has been "stuffing her face" while making her album. "She has put on about 15 pounds, but she loves the curves," says a "source." [Page Six]
• Uh-oh: Pete Doherty was arrested in Switzerland after being found "slumped" in the bathroom of a British Airways flight with a needle. [Sunday Mail]
• The Slumdog kids danced to the movie's hit song, "Jai Ho," in a Hong Kong shopping mall on Saturday to raise money for charity. According to this report, "They sang off-key but drew an enthusiastic response." [Hindustan Times]
• Heidi and Spencer were "tortured" on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, by being held in a dark room with only water, rice and beans. Heidi was rushed to the hospital with what was diagnosed as a gastric ulcer; she has been released. If all of this is part of the Speidi attention machine, it's certainly impressive. [TMZ]
• Spencer claims he was locked up for 3 days with no food or water; producers say it was 8-10 hours max, with food and water. [TMZ]
• This report says Heidi and Spencer were in the Lost Chamber for 14 hours. [MSNBC Scoop]
• The production company behind I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here says that "All allegations of the celebrities being deprived of food and water are completely untrue." [Perez]
• Susan Boyle has signed with Ossie Kilkenny, the manager who made u2 millions. [Mirror]
• Chelsy Davy "can't wait" to see Prince Harry at a party this week. or something, This picture, in which Prince Harry's hand seems to be about to grab Prince Harry's crotch, is distracting. [Daily Mail]
• Even though Christina Ricci has called off her engagement, she and her ex-fiancé, Owen Benjamin, went to the movies Saturday night. [TMZ]
• It's hard to even understand how this is a news item, but here it is: Dancing With The Stars' Cheryl Burke has dropped some "excess" pounds and is "enjoying her new figure." [UPI]
• Brooke Shields and the National Enquirer have reached a settlement over the May incident in which two reporters checked Brooke's mom out of a nursing home to get a story. Also: The mag has agreed to make a generous donation to further research on dementia. [UPI]
• Kirsten Dunst: Returning to the Spider-Man franchise for flick number four. Will there be a Spidey wedding? [E!]
• Will Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Tommy Mottola all move into the same gorgeous NYC building? [NY Times]
• Cameron Diaz says her costars on My Sister's Keeper helped her deal with the sudden death of her father: "I was really, really fortunate to have these people to come back to." [People]
• The family of David Carradine is asking the FBI to investigate the actor's death. [Us Magazine, People]
• Want details from David Carradine's death? Click away. [TMZ]
• Kate Hudson's mom, Goldie Hawn, is allegedly worried about Kate dating Alex Rodriguez. A source says: "Kate's had a string of boyfriends since her divorce from Chris Robinson and it's always the same pattern – she falls hard and fast, then gets bored or has her heart broken. Goldie hates the idea of seeing Kate getting hurt again." [Daily Mail]
• Katie "Jordan" Price is "drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and barely eating" since splitting with husband Peter Andre. [Telegraph]
• This report shows Katie "Jordan" Price very calmly shopping with her kids. [Daily Mail]
• Baby-wipes enthusiast Terrence Howard stopped six lanes of traffic in Beverly Hills to save the life of a baby bird. [Page Six]
• Another day, another Kylie Minogue wedding rumor. This time, her man gave her a rose, so, clearly they are getting hitched. [Daily Mail]
• Will Michael Jackson try and turn his London mansion into the new Neverland? [The Sun]
• Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, who were husband and wife in Brokeback Mountain, may reunite in a flick called Love and Other Drugs, an adaptation of Jamie Reidy's nonfiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• What, what? A film adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love? With Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem? Oookay. [Variety]
• "In a PawNation poll, 70 percent of animal lovers voted Jennifer Aniston as the celeb they would trust to pet sit their furry friend." Mickey Rourke came in second. [E!]
• Patrick Dempsey has a dream, and it involves having a nice bus so he can bring his kids racing with him. [People]
• Composer Benny Andersson of ABBA has contributed one million kronor ($128,000) to the Swedish feminist initiative. [Independent Political Report]
• "She divides her time between California and Colorado, and in both places she lives 'off the grid,' with her own sources of water and power. Her homes are powered by solar panels, her toilets are compost, her cars run on leftover grease from fast-food restaurants […] She wears recycled necklaces made of boiled-down shotgun casings. She has more than 20 animals - horses, alpacas, chickens, dogs, cows - all of which are rescues…" — from a profile on Daryl Hannah. [Guardian]
• In this interview with Harry Shearer, he talks being part of Spinal Tap and The Simpsons. [LA Times]
• James Caan and Scott Caan play father and son in a new film called Mercy. [LA Times]
• Check out a portrait of Sandra Bernhard by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (and some information about the relationship between the photographer and the comedian) here. [HuffPo]
• Ooky, spooky, kooky: Bebe Neuwirth is working on a play based on The Addams Family. Snap, snap. [Gatecrasher]
• "There is nothing more humiliating for a stutterer than to have their word or sentence finished for them. I didn't have names for these fears." — from "How I Found My Voice," an essay by Carly Simon. [The Daily Beast]
• Evan Dando of the Lemonheads is suing General Motors, saying the company copied one of his songs for an ad. Dude, have you heard? They don't have any money! You're suing the bankrupt. [AP]
• Jon Voight is suing investors who sued him. [TMZ]
• The woman who inspired the Beatles song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is seriously ill. [Newser]
• Blind item! "Which once prominent magazine writer/TV interviewer now appears in elegant homes wearing men's clothes and a fedora? Sighed one jaded observer, 'These days, becoming a lesbian is a career move.'" [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which sexy leading man, known for his wandering eye, recently hooked up with a pouty songstress? The raven-haired rocker is a big change from his usual choice of supermodels." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which actor is on hiatus due to a drug relapse? He claimed he needed time off because of the heartbreak of his public split, but he's actually headed to rehab." [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which heartthrob actor nearly cried bloody murder when he couldn't get into a private lounge?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I don't know him. I've never really seen him in interviews either. [But] yeah, he's cute. I'm a huge fan of the Twilight series." — Kelly Clarkson hearts Robert Pattinson! And she wrote a song, "Empty As I Am," inspired by the characters, which might make it on to the New Moon soundtrack. [Mirror]
• "I have people coming up to me all the time on the street and saying, 'My daughter's gay; thank you for this.' People send me e-mails like, 'My mother was going to take away my cellphone (and this and that) because I told her I was gay. She saw the movie and now she says she loves me.' It's a very powerful response. I get a lot of questions from people saying, when is it going to go to Ireland, to India…That gives me hope, that it's such a powerful story, being the truth, that it will transcend these other cultures and get Mary's message across." — Sigourney Weaver, on playing Mary Griffith, who attempted to save her gay son's soul by religious means before his suicide. [LA Times]
• "It's a mix of curiosity, fascination, respect and bewilderment. Twitter freaks me out. You have followers? It feels so obsessive and proprietary. It has great applications, and it's effective, I get it. But 'I did something, I did something else, I'm at it again.' Why? I'm still getting over YouTube, people. These breakthroughs are coming at such velocity that before you get your sea legs, there's another wave hitting you." — Mos Def. [USA Today]
• "I think she's much more raw in the third season. You see everything that's happening to her, so you see her more open and vulnerable, though she's being deceptive. You see her really desperate, which is a different side to her. I've been playing the character for so long now it comes naturally. [That allows me] to be more confident, take more risks, go bigger. In my film work, I'm scared to go too big — it's projected on the big screen and what not — but on Big Love, I feel I have a lot more freedom." — Chloe Sevigny on playing Nicolette "Nicki" Grant. [LA Times]
• "When I was a child my parents threatened to send me to a convent. I've often wondered how that would have worked out. I'd have made a terrible nun. I'm a good Catholic girl in the way that Madonna is. In the sense that I'm not that good at all. If the church is having a hard time recruiting nuns, I'd make an ideal poster girl. 'Become a nun or else end up like her!'" — Heather Graham. [Daily Mail]
• "I am who I am-a regular guy with a great job. How I'm analyzed belongs to someone else. In a few minutes, I've got a kid's game to go to, and then I'm taking our daughter to auditions. Today, that's my job." — Denzel Washington. [Reader's Digest]
• "The problem with Harry Potter is that there is so little controversy. It would be so great for the press if one of them would go off the rails and end up in rehab, but they are, actually, just really sweet guys." — Jason Isaacs, who plays Lucius Malfoy. [Telegraph]
• "The moment that changed me for ever ... was becoming a vegetarian aged 17; my whole life changed. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the woods near my house and felt a connection to the birds and trees." — Chrissie Hynde. [Independent]
• "I really wish I could play, but I don't at all." — Princess Beatrice, on polo. [Telegraph]
• "I never said (I wasn't returning). I just said that I'm not sure. It's called, um, 'negotiating.'" — Paula Abdul on whether she'll return to American Idol. [UPI]
• "When people talk about reincarnation, I always feel that if there is such a thing, this is definitely my first time, because I'm always amazed. I'm both amazed at how horrifically we can treat each other and all other living things, and also amazed at the wonder and the beauty. I'm like: 'Oh my God, look at that bird!' or 'Look at that flower!' literally every single day. I can't get over how people are putting so much energy and so many resources into going to Mars when everything we could ever dream of is on this planet, if we just take care of it. What do they have on Mars? They don't even have oxygen up there!" — Daryl Hannah. [Guardian]
• "I can never get close. My No. 1 job is always, always, always stand-up. It has to be a no-holds-barred attitude. Let me give you an example. I met Drew Barrymore a couple times. I went to a party at her house. And she said, 'You know, you should come to one of my small dinner parties, we hate the same people.' But if I'm sitting next to Courtney Love and she falls over, I can't not put it in the act. I'm responsible to my audience the way most people feel responsible to their Lord Jesus." — Kathy Griffin. [LA Times]
• "I learned that when you yell, nobody hears you. The best communicators have to live and present themselves in a peaceful manner. And that's going to be a lifelong quest of mine. I don't have a temper. I've never broken everything. I've never thrown a thing. But I have passion. If I feel passionate, you're going to know." — Rosie O'Donnell. [CBS News]
• "It depends where you are in the world. It's not brilliant here in Britain compared to, for example, Scandinavia – maternity leave and everything is different and they're much more clued in to what parents and children need. We still have quite a lot of Victorian principles hanging on, you can see it and feel it." — Emma Thompson, on Britain not being helpful to working mothers. [Daily Express]
• "I'm taking a year off. That's my birthday present to myself. I'm not going to act, write or anything like that. I'll be a mum, teach drama at my daughter's school, I'll cook meals and have fun, go out with my friends, I'll go to movies and not think about working. I'll see what bubbles up after that." — Emma Thompson. [Mirror]
• "I was insane to go on the Spice tour three months after having [my son]Beau. I wouldn't put myself through it again. At the time I was very self conscious about it all. It was awful. I remember being on stage and going numb and thinking everyone was looking at my body and that it wasn't perfect and I was next to the other girls […] Can you believe [Mel B] does 600 [sit ups a day]? That's nuts. Twenty sit ups and I'm done." — Emma Bunton, aka Baby Spice. [Mirror]
• "I'm convinced he plays for the other team. I even had my gay friends assess the situation" — Bethenny Frankel, joking about her boyfriend, Jason Hoppy. [Page Six]
• "I think what Drew and I found was a connection very similar to the connection between the characters. We adored each other; we played off each other. I can't imagine doing it with anybody else. It's two parts of a whole, really." — Jessica Lange, on Grey Gardens. [LA Times]
• "I'm an awkward kid from Long Island who had a dream about going to New York and becoming an actress. That's who I still am in my core… I fell into this phenomenon. Huge. Huge. This doesn't happen to most people. I'm lucky in that the way I look has never gotten me anything." — Edie Falco. [UPI]
• "I haven't done any exercise since October. I haven't done a thing. So who knows how I'm holding it together." — Kate Winslet. [Daily Mail]

[Madrid, April 29. Image via INF]

• Sean Penn is pushing for Harvey Milk's birthday to be recognized as a "day of significance" in California. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year, but Penn hopes his Oscar may change his mind.

• Schwarzenegger says Milk's birthday should only be recognized in San Francisco, but State Senator Mark Leno plans to reintroduce a bill tomorrow with Penn and argue that Penn's Oscar win proves Milk has a larger significance. [USA Today]
• Chris Brown and Rihanna have left Miami Beach. They were spotted together at the airport on Sunday night. Brown went to L.A. and is scheduled to be arraigned in Los Angeles on Thursday. Rihanna's whereabouts are unknown. [E!]
• Mekhi Phifer, who has worked with Chris Brown said he wishes Chris and Rihanna "both the best," and added: "People make mistakes-and while I don't condone what happened that night, you know, what Chris did to her-I remember being young, 19, and at that age it seemed like everything was so over-the-top, and everyone's so passionate about things at the age." [Yahoo]
• Nadya Suleman was interviewed today on Dr. Phil's show. In this video she says she needs to find a house to rent because she can't bring her octuplets home to her mom's house, which is being foreclosed on. [Entertainment Tonight]
• And this video features more snippets of Suleman's Dr. Phil interview and the Radar interview. Nadya says she's confident that none of her children will be taken away by the authorities. [Entertainment Tonight]
• In case you missed it, Mel Gibson appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show after the Academy Awards. He's trying to rehabilitate his image and seem normal, but his Civil War era goatee and handlebar mustache aren't helping. Neither is joking with Kimmel about calling a female police officer "sugar tits," (which he denies) saying, "I wish I could copyright it... I wish I had said it." [FOX News]
• Ed McMahon is still in the hospital for pneumonia and bone cancer. His publicist had this to say: "I've seen many people come up to Ed over the years and say, 'You were a Marine.' Ed would look them in the eye and say, 'I AM a Marine.' What that means for his current medical challenges is the same thing it's meant for every challenge he's ever faced in life. It means he's a fighter — not a quitter. It means he's confronting it head-on with strength, courage and dignity. I would ask that those who care about Ed say a prayer, remain hopeful and send their good wishes, because Colonel McMahon is still fighting the good fight. Ed, his family, and friends are looking forward to celebrating his 86th birthday Friday." [TMZ]
• Jennifer Aniston told Elle she would love to play a Bond girl opposite Daniel Craig. When she was inevitably asked about Brangelina, she said: "No matter what I say, things will always be taken out of context and misinterpreted, will always be turned around to make it seem as though I won't let something go, or that I just keep talking about it over and over...I don't owe anybody anything. I don't owe anybody my side of the story. There are no sides! There is no bad guy and there is no good guy. There are no villains and there is no heroine in this story. It's just not the case." [The Star]
• Emma Watson has revealed via Twitter that she's been accepted to Yale. If she attends, she'll join a long list of actor alumni, including Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, and Edward Norton. [E!]
• Billy Burke, who plays Bella's dad in Twilight said he hopes Dakota Fanning will join the cast. Burke has a seven-month-old daughter in real life and said, "I had to turn down a movie last month because I didn't want to be away from the baby. I've never had to make decisions like that before. I used to be a pretty selfish bastard. Now I'm thinking like I'd rather spend time with my kid." [People]
• R. Kelly is being sued again in relation to his child pornography case. A private investigator claims R. Kelly hired him to "obtain and/or recover certain tapes that were said to incriminate" R. Kelly. The man says he completed the job, but R. Kelly refused to pay him the $300,000 he was owed. [TMZ]
• The Chinese government cancelled two concerts Oasis had scheduled in the country after learning that the band appeared at at "Free Tibet" concert in 1997. [Reuters]
• Many criticized Javier Bardem for not attending the Oscars with girlfriend and Best Supporting Actress winner Penelope Cruz. But, it turns out he has a good excuse. He suffered a herniated disk two weeks ago while shooting a movie and has been on bed rest. A source says: "Javier has returned to shooting and is in perfect health." [Terra]
• Sarah Jessica Parker is still talking about wearing a black gown at her wedding to Matthew Broderick. She says: "James Wilkie's teacher is getting married, and he said, 'Do you think she will be wearing black?' I said, 'No! I can almost assure you.' Then he said, 'Do you still regret it?' and I said, 'Yes, I still regret it.'" [The Daily Express]
• Rachael Ray says of her racy photos that ran years ago in FHM, "I think I was 35 at the time ... And I thought about it for a while, and I said, 'You know what? This magazine has as young as 17-, 18-year-olds in hottie bikinis, and these are all actresses, models, pin-up girls. I don't belong to any even remote club of theirs ... And I thought, 'If I'm gutsy enough to do this, this is a good thing for everybody. This is the everywoman, here she is.' And I did it, and it was the most scared I've ever been, and I wouldn't change a thing. I'd do it again tomorrow." [People]
• Prince is releasing a new CD set at the end of the month exclusively at Target. The three-disk CD will include two new albums, "LOtUSFLOW3R", "MPLSoUND", and a third by his new artist, Bria Valente, for $11.98. [AP]
• Heroes fans freaked out when Greg Grun wrote a Tweet saying, "Winding down shooting Season 3 Heroes. Tough to say goodbye to crew not knowing if any or all of us will return next year. Hope all." The show's rating have hit an all time low, but he posted a follow up Tweet later, saying, "Don't get me wrong, 'Heroes' IS coming back next year, but some crew take other jobs, so it's tough." [Perez Hilton]
• Ashton Kutcher's Twitter addiction is now officially dangerous. He posted a video of himself riding his motorcycle with one hand while filming with the other. [Perez Hilton]
• "I'm the crazy lady sitting in the crowd screaming my head off," says Hilary Duff, who has become a hockey fan since dating Ottawa Senators player Mike Comrie. [People]
• "Films have changed a lot. I think women are finally able to get older and be sexy just like men. So I'm really enjoying that part - that's my evolution... I think sometimes we seem to obsess on negativity. I think role models exist but they usually don't get the light because people like scandal." - Andie MacDowell. [The Daily Express]

• It's Oscar night, kids, and you know what that means: a night of fashions, possible upsets, long speeches cut off by orchestra music, and my mother calling to ask me where Billy Crystal is. [CNN]

• Hugh Jackman is ready to party tonight: "Celebration is the key," the Oscar host says, "I'm certainly going to have a good time. If I'm not going to have a good time, how the hell is anybody else?"[WashingtonPost]
• "One of my favorite moments at the Oscars was when the streaker came across David Niven. And we're upping it a level and we're just going to do most of the show naked. Um, well, there hopefully will be YouTube moments," Jackman says. "Drunk and nude, yes. So that's our new fresh approach. It's the Australian way."[CNN]
• However, Hollywood apparently is none too pleased that films like Wall-E and The Dark Knight didn't make it into Best Picture contention this year. [NYTimes]
• Anne Hathaway isn't expecting to go home with an Oscar tonight: "My category is sewn up. It's going to be (Kate) Winslet all the way. The best thing so far has not been winning the Golden Globe. It would have been awesome to win and a lot of people told me I was going to, and when I didn't I realized I was still having a great time. It didn't matter what would happen to me for the rest of the awards season. I was having a blast and so lucky to be there." [USAToday]
• Will Javier Bardem be skipping the Oscars tonight in order to keep his relationship with Penelope Cruz under the radar? "I got an e-mail from a source that said Javier is not going to show because he doesn't want to acknowledge his relationship with Penélope," says E!'s Guiliana Rancic, "They're a couple that likes to stay under the radar and so meeting on the Oscars stage would blow their cover. Would Javier kiss Penelope if she won? Would they hug? Would they shake hands? He's worried it could be an awkward scene."[OK!]
• Mickey Rourke picked up another Best Actor award last night at the Independent Spirit Awards."I just got done talking to the Santa Monica Police Department," Rourke said in his speech. "They gave me a bed to sleep in 10 years ago. And I thank them-I asked them for two pillows, they told me to f—k off. But anyway, thank you, Darren Aronofsky, for believing in me...I've told people in the past that directors like [him] come around every 25 years...He is one tough son of a bitch and he don't like it when I say that 'cause he goes, 'Mickey, you'll scare all the other actors away from me.' But Darren, you know what, if they ain't got the balls to bring it, then f—k 'em, you know."[E!]
• Meanwhile, Mike Myers' stinker, The Love Guru, was the big winner at last night's Razzie Awards.[EW]
• "I wanted to be a movie star. You can't say about work that I didn't try very hard. That really wasn't true. I've always been a great opportunist, but the opportunity was not always there. I had a difficult set of circumstances to deal with, particularly for a movie career. Being gay, really. It just doesn't work."- Rupert Everett[NYTimes]
• Is Amy Winehouse responsible for breaking up a couple? A woman claims she found Amy in bed with her girlfriend. Amy asked the woman to join in, but she refused. "It all got messy. Amy shouted at me for not joining in. It was a strange night," says the unnamed woman, who later updated her MySpace profile to read, ""Amy Winehouse asked me for a threesome and I said no, no, no".[Mirror]
• Lacey Schwimmer is quite impressed with her Dancing With The Stars partner, Steve-O: "His head is really clear. I look up to him in that sense because as hard as he's working on so many things, I feel like I should be working harder. I wasn't expecting how nice of a guy he turned out to be and how much of a gentleman and how adorable he is. He's so sweet and so cute and everyone who meets him just falls in love with him," she says. [People]
• Johnny Depp's real acting dream? To be a Python, apparently. "Johnny always wanted to be a Python," says Terry Gilliam, "He loves comedy and said 'If I could have been a Python I would've been happy." [DailyExpress]
• Jessica Alba claims that a leaky source ruined her wedding: "The person who helped us sign the documents told the press that day, so my parents found out from a reporter before we got to tell them," she says, We were planning to take them out to dinner and tell them, but that got ruined. I was more hurt, probably, than anything. It's not the first time something like that has happened. Journalists feel entitled to do whatever it takes to get a sensational story, no matter how it affects the person involved. We're not really people, right? We're just celebrities."[ShowbizSpy]
• Yo: Samantha Ronson doesn't John Edwards-it when it comes to haircuts, dig? "Two things," Ronson writes on her MySpace blog, "1. it doesn't cost $500 to cut my hair.... have you seen my hair? i don't even have that many strands.
  2. if for some reason i decided that I was going to throw $500 away on a hair cut I would pay for it myself, however- I have a great exchange going with my hair dresser- i make him cds- he cuts my hair. yay! cheap and cheerful! so there!"[ONTD]
• The third film in the Twilight series, Eclipse, already has a release date of June, 2010. But will sparkly vampires still be all the rage in a year or so? [HollywoodReporter]
• Diane Kruger was seen at Tommy Hilfiger's Fashion Week show with bruises under her eyes, but her rep insists that she did not have a nose job. "The truth is she had laser eye surgery the day before," the rep says. [UPI]
• Lady GaGa knows what she wants out of this fame gig: "I'm not interested in settling down," she says, "I just want to make music and f*** random people. I want to be around for 25 years. I admire Madonna and Courtney Love and the way they re-invent themselves and kick ass. I want to do that and be even bigger."[ShowbizSpy]
• "I feel like I came from the dark ages into the light ages. When I first started out, we didn't even have electricity. I was singing on TV before we even owned one. Now here I am in this high tech world. I don't even know half of what the stuff means. But I'm on it."-Dolly Parton [ShowbizSpy]
• Kenan Thompson wins today's round of "just stop digging that hole, please" when discussing whether or not Chris Brown would ever reappear on SNL: "It's not up to me, but I'm sure we would if he had another hit single," Thompson says, "We don't care about scandal. We just care about what brings us ratings! I don't know the whole story, but I know how women can get when you get a text message from another female, so I'm just saying, you have to learn that you can't put your hands on a female." Oh Kenan. Do we need to get Lori Beth Denberg in here to give you some Vital Information for Your Everyday Life? [USMagazine]

[Barcelona, Spain; January 14. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Geneva, Switzerland; January 4. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Barcelona, December 1. Image via INF]

• Did Ellen DeGeneres try to trick Mariah Carey into admitting she's pregnant? Mariah was a guest on Ellen's show, and after Ellen asked and got a vague response, she busted out the champagne, saying, "You don't have to answer that. Let's just toast with champagne." Mariah got flustered and said, "I can't believe you did this to me, Ellen," and pretended to sip the bubbly. Knocked up? [Yahoo News via E!]
• Someone's not pregnant: Sarah Jessica Parker in the Sex And The City sequel. Carrie won't be having a kid. "It doesn't seem as if that's going to be a choice she'll make… Michael (Patrick King, director) and I never talk about it. That doesn't mean that won't be part of the story. We just haven't figured it out. It feels a little bit manipulative to toss that into the mix, because she seems so pointed in a different direction." [Daily Express]
• Kanye West and hot hot model Sessilee Lopez: Is it on? [The Sun]
• Madonna has hired a specialist to help her "exorcise the memories" of her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie, from her home. The technique seems to involve throwing shit away. [Mirror]
• Madonna and A-Rod are in Miami together right now, having just landed in a private jet. [TMZ]

• What's this? Even though his ex, Cynthia, claimed Rodriguez would be spending Thanksgiving with Madonna, a source says A-Rod "has been in Florida for days" and "always had every intention of spending the holiday" there with his ex-wife and daughters? [People]
• In other news, Madonna's brother is going to direct a "teen thriller" called Twist. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Britney Spears wants to go back on the road again. She and her conservators have asked the court to allow her to go on a U.S. tour next year: She'd need to make deals with backup singers, roadies, venues, ticket brokers, etc., but legally can't make any of the deals herself. [TMZ]
• Britney will be in New York next week — her album drops Tuesday, so she's hitting Good Morning America, but it's also her 27th birthday. So she'll also have a "very private circus-themed" birthday party that night. Waiting for our invitation! [Page Six]
• The chick from The Rules is offering dating advice to Jennifer Aniston. Says Sherrie Schneider, who co-wrote the infamous dating manual with Ellen Fein: "Never mention Brad's or John Mayer's name in public. Also, don't say anything bad about John, like when you said he was missing a sensitivity chip. Never talk about Angelina or call her 'uncool', even if she was uncool. She does not exist in your world. You are going to be 40 soon. You have no time to waste if you want kids." What's that eyeroll emoticon again? [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Lily Allen and Agyness Deyn got strip searched when they went to Dubai. Lily says: "I knew I didn’t have anything on me so I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t paranoid, just terrified." Agyness agrees: "It was really traumatic. It wasn’t the best experience in the world, but it is their culture and you just have to respect it." [The Sun]
• Ivanka Trump sure is fueling those rumors she might get engaged to boyfriend Jared Kushner — she's guest blogging for Brides.com the first week of December, writing about her style and her jewelry line. [WWD]
• Model Jessica Stam is dating Austin Cregg, the son of '80s pop music icon Huey Lewis. He's facing jail time for marijuana possession and scrawling graffiti. [Page Six]
• An upcoming Law & Order episode will have a young male "supermodel" die in a way that is eerily similar to the way Heath Ledger did. [Page Six]
• Ricki Lake is on Match.com. Go Ricki! [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Oh no, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem might be on the rocks: They'd agreed to take a break from movies for a year, then he took a part in a film. She wanted to adopt a baby from India because she "admires Angelina Jolie." [ONTD]
• Pete Wentz freaked out when his wife, Ashlee was about to give birth: "Right before she went into labor, I was like, 'Oh, my god, I think I'm having a heart attack,'" he says. "My heart started beating real fast. You see your wife is in all this pain. And I don't know what's happening right now. She took care of me and made sure I was okay and then went into labor. That's why she's a saint." [People]
• For the second day in a row, a story about how Reese Witherspoon totally got along with Vince Vaughn while shooting Four Christmases. "Vince is the funniest person I've ever worked with. It was a challenge for me to stay there and keep up with him." The lady doth protest too much? [Yahoo News]
• Natalie Portman doesn't understand celibacy. [Page Six]
• Roger Friedman on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: "Innovative, creative, technologically advanced… [Brad Pitt] is Gollum from Lord of the Rings meeting Robert Redford, with a better wardrobe." [Fox 411]
• Rachael Ray's Christmas will be a silent night: "I'm having voice surgery on Dec. 16, so we're going to celebrate very quietly," she says. [People]
• Are Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's parents broke? [Page Six]
• Audrina Patridge on Heidi and Spencer's elopement: "I am surprised and not surprised at the same time." Haha, because you know that they're contractually obligated to make headlines for Us magazine? She also says: "I do think it's very romantic that they eloped." [People]
• Uh-oh, director John Waters is being sued for adding "Santa Claus is a Black Man" to his Christmas album without permission. [Daily Express]
• Tragic: You know how Kanye West's mom died after plastic surgery? Her nephew, a registered nurse, was supervising her post-surgery care and may have left her bedside to attend a baby shower — he's being investigated. [People]
• Village Voice reporter Michael Musto hit the Milk premiere party, where Marc Jacobs told him he cried and shook his leg emotionally through the whole movie. "I'm for anything gay," the designer said. "The world would be a better place if everyone was gay." "Look, around," Musto urged. "They are!" Meanwhile, Carson Kressley said: "I'm lactose-intolerant, but I loved Milk." [Village Voice]
• TMZ the TV show: Renewed. [Yahoo News]
• File under news you can't use: Katie "Jordan" Price and Peter Andre sunbathe naked; Peter has a "brown willy." [Perez Hilton]
• Carson Daly has a girlfriend? And she's pregnant? [ONTD]
• U2, Jay-Z, Coldplay and R.E.M. are among the bands contributing music to (RED)WIRE, a new download service aligned with Bono’s (PRODUCT)RED campaign. [Rolling Stone]
• Don't know much about country singer Chuck Wicks, but he is "very much in love" with Dancing With The Stars' Julianne Hough, so that's nice. [People]
• Mel Gibson, what hast thou done? A Superior Court Judge wants you to explain why a screenwriter claims he was screwed out of $10 million from the 2004 megahit The Passion Of The Christ [Yahoo News via E!]
• TV chef Gordon Ramsay has made a "groveling apology" to his wife after admitting to meeting his mistress four times. [Daily Mail]
• "There's always someone telling you not to make a movie. When I did Born on the Fourth of July, they said, 'This is going to ruin your career. What are you doing?' Suicide? I’ve committed it. There were people who didn’t want me to make Top Gun. [My character], Stauffenberg, went from saying, 'Someone should shoot that bastard' to realizing, I’m the only one who can do it. You can’t really know until you're under that kind of pressure. I'm not saying this in some chest-pounding way, but I do feel I'd have that kind of courage." — Tom Cruise, defending his Nazi movie, Valkyrie, in Details. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "We came up with the idea Bronx. We've been throwing [ideas] back and forth a while. It's kind of cool to just leave the narrative what it is. People are stoked or pissed or whatever. And you're like, you know what: I don't think anyone really has the real story." — Pete Wentz on why he named his kid Bronx Mowgli. [People]

[Barcelona, November 19. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

[Barcelona, November 4. Image via Flynet]

Wall Street Journal:

American girls abroad — it's a subject that has provided rich material for writers from Henry James to Edith Wharton, from Louisa May Alcott to Cornelia Otis Skinner to Laurie Colwin. Now, in the beautiful if insubstantial pastel "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," it's Woody Allen's turn as he chronicles the sentimental education of two young women on a summer idyll in Barcelona.

Entertainment Weekly:

I hope it's not too bourgeois of me to point out that for a director who is trying to make a worldly romantic comedy, this is quite a shallow and jejune point of view. (It's why the '60s had to end.) Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a movie of distinct pleasures, a number of them of the travel-and-leisure variety (never mind all that wondrous, dripped-candle Gaudí architecture — what's really fabulous is the long lunches in which people linger over wine). The writing is zippy, the story spins like a top, and Bardem turns out to be the wittiest of leading men, making Juan Antonio a seducer who is almost innocent in his games. As for Hall and Johansson, both of them have lovely presences, yet Vicky and Cristina, as characters, never quite transcend the schematic. They are mind and body, spirit and flesh, strait-laced and free. In Woody Allen's perpetual counterculture, never the twain shall meet.

New York Times:

Maria Elena and Juan Antonio give the film such a twinned jolt of energy that you may wish it would head off into Almodóvar country, but that wouldn’t be true to Mr. Allen, for whom desire remains an agony. Still, he’s enough of an entertainer to give the audience its pleasures, which partly accounts for Ms. Johansson. She isn’t much of an actress, but it doesn’t terribly matter in his films: She gives him succulent youth, and he cushions her with enough laughs to distract you from her lack of skill. The appealing Ms. Hall, whose jaw line and brittle delivery evoke Katharine Hepburn, furnishes an actual performance, one that, tinged with sadness, makes evident that this is as much a tragedy as a comedy.

USA Today:

A witty, engrossing and well-crafted musing on the capricious nature of love, the film also is a valentine to the city, which is almost an additional character. Its visual splendors are displayed in a sun-dappled light with special regard for its striking art and architecture, particularly the work of Antoni Gaudi. Allen seems to have been reinvigorated since he began filming in Europe.

Washington Post:

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is different because it's really about Vicky and Cristina, and Juan Antonio and Maria Elena. This time Allen's philosophical musings emerge subtly from the interaction of these characters and their choices instead of through trademark dialogue. Though he relies too much on the curt observations of an omniscient narrator, the movie still feels more casual, more painterly, more about great characters than the invocation of Freud or Balzac or Ernest Becker. Through these characters and the natural performances, and without worrying about landing punch lines or wringing hands, Allen lets the movie unfurl toward a sublime conclusion and final shot, the kind that makes you sigh with gratitude (or relief) that he's in firm control of this phase of his career.

New York Sun:

Despite an awkward, third-party narration in an academic male voice (belonging to Christopher Evan Welch) that analyzes the characters as if they were test subjects in an anthropology experiment, the film may be the least abstract of Mr. Allen's more recent efforts, and the least yoked to the filmmaker's signature affectations. Perhaps, in all its talky inconclusiveness and postcard vistas, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is not very different from one of the more trivial Eric Rohmer comedies, all about the eye candy and some vaguely risqué business regarding the rules of attraction. But in its best moments, when Mr. Bardem and Ms. Cruz lay siege to the screen, reveling in their fever-bed chemistry, it's as if Mr. Allen has stumbled into an alternate universe — one where his movies are actually worth watching again.

NPR:

No matter what you end up thinking about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it's hard not be entertained by the Oscar-winning Bardem, who eats this role up like it's a hot fudge sundae. In fact, Bardem and Penelope Cruz, who plays his ex-wife, are so good they make the film seem better than it is.

The problem is that Vicky Cristina Barcelona is too intent on being taken seriously to end up being more than mildly diverting. Allen himself has said in interviews that this was a film about relationships, not a comedy — and he's right.

The New York Observer:

There are no easy answers for either Vicky or Cristina even in voluptuous Barcelona; the city serves extensively as the film’s fourth muse, making for delectable summer entertainment in time-honored travelogue fashion. But there is much more as well in the seriocomic intensity with which Woody contemplates his three contrasting goddesses of desire, and their assorted womanly impasses and vulnerabilities. I hope this film will confound his army of naysayers by becoming a huge commercial success. It is already an artistic triumph of heroic dimensions, considering that it has come much closer to the end of a career than its beginning. The magnificent acting ensemble alone is worth the price of admission.

Time:

Whenever Bardem or Cruz are on screen, VCB finds its heart. It sees them as fully in tune with their feelings: totally willing, and why not?, to act on impulses they've learned to trust. The Americans are children by comparison, a little stiff, so conditioned to overanalyzing every attraction that they would lose the moment — if only there weren't a Don Juan Antonio to send seismic shivers up their consciences.

Village Voice:

A whirling vortex of jealousy, passion, and lust, spewing her words in a melodic rush of English and Spanish, Maria Elena is at once too much to handle and the closest Vicky Cristina Barcelona comes to offering up its vision of the ideal woman. (And yes—ironically or not—she's also the one most likely to put a knife in you.) Surely, this will prompt the cultural guardians who remain unwilling to parse Allen the filmmaker from Allen the public figure to condemn Vicky Cristina Barcelona as an untenable defense of loose morals and male piggishness. But I for one found something oddly elating in the movie's conviction that it is better to have made passionate love and maybe almost died at the hands of a jealous mistress than never to have loved at all. To quote Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians: "Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think."

The New Yorker:

The way the women play against Bardem is fascinating. Rebecca Hall, a twenty-six-year-old English actress from a theatrical family (her father is the director Peter Hall), is tall, with a long face and a wide smile—she can look radiant one minute and neurotic, tense, and gloomy the next, as if she were channelling Allen’s stumbling anxieties (a common reaction in actors working with him for the first time). With Bardem, Hall goes back and forth between desire and panic, and she’s touching as none of Allen’s other female characters have been recently. Scarlett Johansson, who is still only twenty-three, has appeared in an amazing number of movies. There’s no mystery why: she’s charming and also pliant and openly sexual in a way that obviously pleases male directors. She’s at a stage in which her sensuality is more developed than anything else in her personality, but that configuration works for her this time. Going to bed with an attractive man is not going to tell Cristina all that she needs to know about herself. Allen has successfully captured a spirit of restless indeterminacy. Does Cristina have any artistic gifts? Before the summer is over, she begins to stir.

PS: For all you Allen-fiends out there, check out this short documentary about Woody Allen by Jean-Luc Godard. [via Videogum]

'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' opens today in wide release.

• "i just had to share something that came up today and it made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. so, here's the visual... two paparazzi come up out of nowhere (like usual) and start throwing questions at me... one of them being, 'Hey Lindsay, what do you have to say about people commenting on your sisters implants?' WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Did you really just ask me that? She is a 14 year old girl, and you are a pedophile! i am not judging people that do, but i am just saying that its not something that my family finds necessary to do, especially when you're not even fully developed yet! It is hard enough being 14 years old and you have enough insecurities to begin with, then add being in the public eye... i just find it really disconcerting that people have to focus on the negative and that some people are sooooo bored with their own lives that they need to manifest lies to hurt another person." — Lindsay Lohan, on her MySpace Celebrity blog. [Yahoo News via E!]
• Christian Bale will get a "caution" — is that like a warning? — for allegedly pushing and shoving his sister and mom. Meaning he won't go to court. [The Sun]
• Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi: "Getting married very very soon." [Perez Hilton]
• Jennifer Aniston's been seen with model Matt Felker. Also known as Selma Blair's ex-boyfriend. Also known as the guy from Britney's "Toxic" video. [Perez Hilton]
• Apparently John Mayer is "still mulling" his relationship with Jen and might be upset that she's seeing someone new right away. Whatever, dude. [Mirror]

• Angelina Jolie is not "the replacement" for Tom Cruise in the spy thriller Edwin A. Salt; Tom passed on the role. Spin control or correction? [MSNBC]
• Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise's production partner, is quitting MGM/UA. Again: Is Tom's career in the crapper? [Financial Times]
• "I'm writing every day, right here at the piano," Britney Spears says. The new songs are her "best work ever." [Reuters]
• Pam Anderson has a new man! He's from the United Arab Emirates and may be a member of Abu Dhabi's royal family. Think she'll live in Dubai part-time? [E!]
• Pictures of Chris Brown and Rihanna frolicking on the beach in Barbados will make you want to go on vacation. [The Sun]
• Is Mary-Kate Olsen, who has an estimated $20 million annual income, "burning through her money? [MSNBC]
• Meanwhile, Ashley Olsen's been seen "all over" new boyfriend Justin Bartha. [Page Six]
• Michelle Williams is careful about the paparazzi: "Before Michelle leaves the house with Matilda, she has a bodyguard go around her block and make sure there are no photographers," a source says. [Page Six]
• The phrase "wardrobe malfunction" has gone into the lastest Chambers English Dictionary. Thanks, Janet Jackson, for adding to our modern lexicon! [Mirror]
• While Madonna has plans to adopt a little girl from Malawi, she won't be adopting Dingiswayo Banda, David Banda's newborn half-brother. This paper is trying to make her feel bad about that. [Daily Mail]
• This report says Madonna is not planning to adopt another child from Malawi. [TMZ]
• Benji Madden and Paris Hilton: Dunzo? [E!]
• Kelly Brook and Billy Zane: Splitsville. "This time, for good." [Mirror]
• Winona Ryder and Blake Sennett from the band Rilo Kiley: Broken up. There are two eclipses this month and everything is all effed up, you guys. Hug someone. [Perez Hilton]
• Courteney Cox directed a short film for Glamour magazine's Reel Moments. "My short's about a girl, played by Laura Dern, who has a chance encounter on a bus that confirms the decision she makes to be single and reinforces her faith in herself," Cox says. "You don't have to have someone complete you." [USA Today]
• Kevin Federline was checking out spelling conundrum Brittny Gastineau at a club in L.A. recently, but Brittny was not interested. Unrelated: Would you like to buy a vowel? [Page Six]
• David Beckham, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Leona Lewis will be part of the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. If they do "Stairway To Heaven" my brian will explode. [Mirror]
• Sylvester Stallone will star in a Bollywood movie? Must. See. [Wall Street Journal]
• Some dude fell down a "large, concealed drop-off" on Sharon Stone's property and he's suing. [TMZ]
• A woman arrested on charges of stalking John Cusack has been found mentally competent to stand trial, and she'll be in court September 9. [Reuters]
• Dave Coulier speaks about being the inspiration for Alanis Morissette's song, "You Oughta Know." "I said, 'I think I have really hurt this person.'" Ya think? [Perez Hilton]
• If you've got a hundred bucks and an idea about who shot JR, you can go to the 30th anniversary party for Dallas, being held at a Texas ranch. Larry Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy have confirmed they will attend! [AP]
• Audrina Patridge has been offered a guest role on a new sitcom, Do Not Disturb, starting this fall. Not that you care. [People]
• "What have you done? You hardly know the boy!" — Peaches Geldof's dad, Sir Bob, upon hearing that his daughter got hitched in Vegas. [Mirror]
• "You can’t understand how a woman seeing a man who has been separated from his wife [Rosetta Getty] for months can cause such a scandal. It’s awful, I can’t tell you. You wonder when it’s all going to stop." — Jo Miller, Sienna's mom. [Daily Express]
• "I don't believe in God, I believe in Al Pacino, and that's true. If I ever get a phone call saying, 'Would you like to work with Pacino?,' I would go crazy." — Javier Bardem in Time magazine. [Page Six]
• "If anyone wants to win an Oscar, they can just work with me." — Kerry Washington to Giant magazine, referring to her Academy Award-toting co-stars Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker. [Page Six]

• Jewel is hitched! She eloped to the Bahamas and married her man, rodeo champ Ty Murray. The bride wore a wedding gown, the groom wore blue jeans and a cowboy hat. They've been together for more than ten years. Congrats. [People]
• Morgan Freeman was released from a Memphis hospital yesterday following that serious car accident on Sunday night. He says: "I'm doing very well. I feel real good." He suffered a broken arm and elbow and "minor shoulder damage" but is expected to fully recover. Hopefully he'll go back to playing that awesome guy he always plays. [Reuters]
• Paul Newman may only have weeks to live. He's told his family that he wants to die at home. He's apparently finished chemotherapy and is frail and thin. Sadness. [Daily Mail]
• Ellen wants Oprah at her wedding! [Mirror]
• Madonna and Guy Ritchie are part owners of a London pub called The Punchbowl, and it's being investigated because the staff allegedly sell pints cheaper to locals than to tourists. Not surprising. [The Sun]

• Madonna's brother has stories the publishers wouldn't let him print in his book, so he's spilling them on his blog. There's stuff about her childhood hijinks, like walking in on her dad and stepmother while they were having sex. [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Oh, Madonna's documentary about the plight of orphans in Malawi, I Am Because We Are, will have a companion book of photographs by award-winning photojournalist Kristen Ashburn. Proceeds go to the Raising Malawi organization. [Perez Hilton]
• Though you may have heard that Helena Bonham Carter's daughter was named Indiana Rose, that name was never confirmed by Helena and partner Tim Burton. Apparently, Tim and Helena had a tough time agreeing on a name, but now they have revealed that the 7 month old is named Nell. [People]
• Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty were seen shopping in Malibu yesterday. Seriously. That's the news. [Yahoo News]
• She bought "slinky tops." [The Sun]
• Javier Bardem thinks his own sex scenes are hilarious: He was seen laughing at intimate moments during a screening of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Is his giddy joy enough to make you want to see this flick? [Page Six]
• Mariah Carey rented a gigantic mansion in the Hamptons this month, and she'll throw a party celebrating her marriage to Nick Cannon. It's only been four months since their quickie wedding, you can totally still get them a gift! [Page Six]
• Brad Pitt will indeed star in Quentin Tarantino's remake of Inglorious Bastards. The gist: Five court-martialed GIs in WWII escape toward Switzerland. [Page Six]
• Gossip Girl scandal! Someone has been RSVPing Blake Lively and Penn Badgely for events without their knowledge or consent. Blair Waldorf, looking at you. [Rush & Molloy]
• A custody hearing has been requested by Alec Baldwin regarding Kim Basinger and daughter Ireland. All has been quiet since that "little pig" voicemail in April 2007. Is the drama starting up again? [E!]
• Last week we heard that Jon Voight sent daughter Angelina Jolie presents for her newborn twins; today he says: "I haven’t had any contact. I heard they’re healthy, and I’m so delighted for them. I love all these kids. I haven’t seen them yet." [E!]
• Bernie Mac is responding well to treatment for pneumonia and should be out cracking jokes in a few weeks. [AP]
• Are Benicio Del Toro and Catherine Keener hooking up? Love them both! [ONTD]
• The buzz on Nikki Blonsky is that her mom is "obnoxious and difficult," making it hard to work with Nikki. [Perez Hilton]
• Lisa Kudrow is being sued by her former manager, who claims she stopped paying him his guaranteed cut of her earnings after she fired him. We're talking about $50,000 or so. [Yahoo News]
• Prison Break's Lane Garrison is supposed to be in a substance-abuse program, but it was cut by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whoops! [Yahoo News]
• A Paris Hilton/Stan Lee superhero cartoon? Not hot. [Perez Hilton]
• In a UK poll asking which famous lady you'd love to call, Brit dudes chose Kylie Minogue as number one. Keira Knightley came in second, Angelina Jolie was third and Scarlett Johansson fifth. [The Sun]
• A rare sighting of Bono without his trademark sunglasses! [The.Life Files]
• "I got cut out of the movie." — Dennis Hopper on Swing Vote. [Rush & Molloy]
• A blonde goes up to Brody Jenner in New York and starts talking to him. Brody looks to friend Frankie Delgado, who explains, "You slept with her in Cabo." That's what friends are for. [Page Six]