First, the numbers: While G.I. Joe made $56.2 million, according to Time, it cost $175 million to produce and more than $100 million to market worldwide. Will the studio recoup those costs?

On the other hand, Julie & Julia cost $38 million to make. And Time's Richard Corliss notes that the Julia Child-oriented movie got loads of free publicity: "Nora Ephron, the movie's writer-director, was the subject of 15 New York Times articles in the past month."

Next, Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein offers some other numbers for perspective:

Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle opened in 1993 on over 1700 screens to a approx $17 million gross. It earned $126 million domestically. You've Got Mail opened in 1998 on over 2600 screens and earned a little over $18 million. Film went on to earn $115 million domestically.
And from Meryl Streep. The Devil Wears Prada opened in 2006 on 2,847 screens and grossed $27 million. The total domestic gross was $124 million. This film made more overseas with a total box office cum of $326 million. Mamma Mia opened on over 2900 screens and grossed approx $27 million on opening weekend. The domestic gross topped out at $144 million and the worldwide total is an astounding $600 million.

These women make hits.

But even more noteworthy is the fact that the true star of Julie & Julia is not a slinky young ingenue (coughMeganFoxcough) but 60-year-old Meryl Streep. Corliss writes: "With The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! both earning well over $100 million domestic, and her new picture on its way to hit status, she is arguably the movie's top female star. And she's 60. That's never happened in Hollywood history." (Yet who's on Vogue's August issue? G.I. Joe's Sienna Miller.)

Lastly, and maybe most important: Julie & Julia is a movie about two women whose romantic lives are secondary in the plot. While other comedies focus on beaus and babies, the movie manages to acknowledge that women have other hopes, dreams, desires and things to talk about. Which is, of course, something to savor.

Box Office Weekend: G.I. Just-OK, Julia Delicious [Time]
Julie & Julia By The Numbers [Women & Hollywood]

[Image via Sony Pictures]

As Laura Shapiro explained in a biography, excerpted in Boston Magazine, Julia was a woman who defined her life by her close marriage to her husband, Paul, and considered their married state the height of happiness.

For this reason, she found homosexuality outlandish-not immoral, and certainly not to be criminalized, but a rude disruption in the natural order of things. Homophobia was a socially acceptable form of bigotry in midcentury America, and Julia and Paul participated without shame for many years. She often used the term pedal or pedalo-French slang for a homosexual-draping it with condescension, pity, and disapproval. "I had my hair permanented at E. Arden's, using the same pedalo I had before (I wish all the men in OUR profession in the USA were not pedals!),"that little bunch of Pansies," a cooking school was "a nest of homovipers."

She was also known to toss the term "fag" around in private, and later, notoriously, blocked the appointment of a gay chef at the the American Institute for Wine and Food. Julia Child adored men, but "masculine" men, whose company she adored and who she felt, French-fashion, were natural masters of the kitchen whose involvement should be encouraged in order to further distance cuisine from drudgery. ( Of lesbians, she apparently said,"Can't be much fun.") While, as we know, this form of casual prejudice was hardly unusual in the era - and not even always as malicious as it might seem - in Julia Child's case the situation's complicated by the fact that, unlike many of her era, she'd actually had a lot of experience and contact with uncloseted gay men. Even in the 60s, there were a number of chefs whom everyone knew to be gay, and Julia enjoyed a close and enduring friendship with James Beard.

With the exception of the Wine and Food case, though, Child seems to have been able to put her personal feelings aside: her main concern, apparently, was talent, and she'd generously support young talent wherever she found it, helping people of all orientations. By the end, she'd apparently changed her tune.

By the 1980s, when the AIDS crisis began to unfold, the horror of what was happening to people she knew, and people she loved, dealt a significant blow to her longtime prejudice. "Last year my husband and I stood by helplessly while a dear and beloved friend went through months of slow and frightening agony," she told a crowd at the Boston Garden in 1988 during an AIDS benefit sponsored by the American Institute of Wine and Food. "But what of those lonely ones? The ones with no friends or family to ease the slow pain of dying? Those are the people we're concerned about this evening. And food is of very special importance here. Good food is also love."

That is the Julia we want to remember. To those of us who love Julia's forthrightness and idiosyncrasy, hearing about the ugliness of prejudice is difficult. Yes, her views were not unusual for the times, but we love her for her independence and departure from convention. And as stated, this was not the vague general prejudice of total ignorance, but a distaste directed at specific individuals. No one is perfect, of course: Flannery O'Connor, in many ways progressive, had many of the attitudes of a typical 1950s white southerner. Similarly, had Julia Child lived later, who knows what her views and attitudes might have been? But had she lived later, she couldn't have been the force for change that she was. It's unrealistic to expect modern sensitivity in retro idols, and I know that. But part of an idol's job is to reflect what we want to see and live idealized, and in some ways it would be an insult to their memory not to be disappointed. Does this tarnish Julia's legacy? Perhaps. But the ability to change isn't a bad one, either.

Julia Child: Just a Pinch of Prejudice [Boston]
Can Meryl Streep Make Homophobic Julia Child Into a Gay Icon? [MovieLine]

The film, which comes out today, was written and directed by Nora Ephron and cuts between scenes based on Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and Julie Powell's 2005 book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. Both Julie and Julia are happily married, but not sure what they want to do with their lives. The film depicts Julia's life in France in the late '40s and '50s, as she enrolls in Le Cordon Bleu, discovers her passion for cooking and publishes the seminal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. About 50 years in the future, Julie Powell lives in an apartment in Queens and works in a government job she hates, tending to the families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks. In 2002 she decides to cook her way through every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writes about it in a blog originally published on Salon.com.

Julie & Julia is a rarity: A movie about the mentoring relationship between two women that doesn't focus on them trying to find a man. Both Julia's husband Paul Childs (Stanley Tucci) and Julie's husband Eric Powell (Chris Messina) are supportive of their wives' pursuits. Paul Childs accepts his wife's need to find her calling at a time when that was not considered a necessity for women. Eric Powell has to learn to take his wife's cooking seriously when many people consider cooking oppressive housework rather than a liberating activity. As one critic notes, the film makes "deboning a duck a feminist act."

Every review said the scenes featuring Julia Child were far better, as a modern day woman cooking in her apartment and blogging can't really compete with the iconic cook, her odd but passionate marriage, and the romance of post-war Paris. While critics said Amy Adams performance was good, they found her character Julie Powell hopelessly whiney and narcissistic. Or, as the Wall Street Journal review put it, her scenes were "dollops of margarine that barely hint at butter." (As noted on the blog Humor Slays Me, the reviews were teeming — or maybe boiling over — with bad food puns.) Many thought the film would have been better as just a Julia Child biopic, and one reviewer even suggested someone should make a bootleg edit excising all the Julie scenes. Below, we check out the reviews for Julie & Julia.

Salon

Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful — she's playing our ideaof Julia Child. When Streep's Julia nearly loses that omelette on TV, she pooh-poohs the possible dangers of dropping food on the floor: "You're alone in the kitchen. Whoooooooo's to see?" The line, and the way Streep draws it out, is just one measure of the intimacy of this performance. We're not observers here, but conspirators: We know exactly where the food has been, and we're not telling.

New York Magazine

That's the case with Meryl Streep as the middle-aged Julia Child in the comedy Julie & Julia: What begins as a great impersonation becomes a marvel of sympathetic imagination. The performance is transcendental. Streep's voice is deeply musical, starting in the chest and erupting into that burbling falsetto with its trills and diphthongs. The voice is Streep's way into Child's pleasure centers, and the body-stiff-shouldered, sloshing around like an ocean liner-follows along in a kind of daffy interpretive dance. Streep isn't tall, but she's photographed carefully and projects height; she understands that the six-foot-two Child learned not to be ashamed of her size but to go with it. Her Julia is a force. At one point, she falls into bed with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), and one's instinctive response-"Julia Child having sex … Ewww …"-gives way to, "Julia Child having sex … Awesome!" Anything to hear that voice in full, happy throttle!

But when Ephron cuts between Paris in the fifties and Queens in 2002 to show Julia and Julie as they both achieve autonomy through cooking, The Godfather Part II this ain't-the connection is strained. (The Child material is based on her memoir My Life in France, written with her nephew, Alex Prud'Homme.) Julie's character doesn't even track. She's referred to as a "bitch," but all we've seen is the patented Ephron adorable klutz. (Adams is too good to waste on Meg Ryan parts.) Ephron should make a film about the person she herself is (smart, acid) instead of the cutie-pixie of her dumb fantasies.

Associated Press

The Julia parts in Julie & Julia are a delight. The ones about Julie? More like an annoying distraction.,,,Julie, by contrast, isn't so well-defined; it isn't so easy to connect with her. The deeper she delves into her cooking project and the more she withdraws from her enormously supportive husband (Chris Messina), the more whiny, narcissistic and unlikable she becomes - which is surprising given Adams' seemingly boundless charm. Working her way through Julia's groundbreaking tome (co-written by Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck) feels more like a tedious chore or a source of wacky slapstick than a proud accomplishment, as Ephron focuses on Julie's culinary screw-ups. Despite the clever idea of juxtaposing both women's lives, this really should have been a biopic of Julia Child, if only to hear Streep say more things like "beurre blanc" in that distinctive, high-pitched voice. Now that would have been a meal worth sinking your teeth into.

Hollywood Reporter

Powell's story about her single-minded engagement with Child's cookbook has an almost unpleasant taste of self-absorption. And by sharing that story with Child's, Ephron throws the wrong emphasis on Child's delightful memoir of the early years in her ideal marriage to Paul Child. True, the movie shows that Paul — played with modest self-effacement by Stanley Tucci against Streep's larger-than-life Julia — encourages his beloved wife's every experiment in the kitchen and the writing of her seminal book. But by contrasting that memoir with Powell's, the movie somewhat distorts the life the Childs share as they revel in their love for la belle France and each other....Adams' Julie is more of a lost soul. She lives with a "saint," as she often calls her husband, Eric (Chris Messina), in an iffy apartment above a pizza parlor. She works in a federal government office overlooking the World Trade Center crater and laments that she has never finished anything in her life. Thus her determination to complete the cookbook marathon. She suffers for her blog. She drags herself to that cramped kitchen whether sick or well. She refuses to quit because it has become her identity. Without the "Julie/Julia Project," she'd revert to a frustrated wife with a dead-end job and another unfinished project. No joie de vivre here.

The San Francisco Chronicle

The movie just assumes that Powell is a sympathetic figure. Then it goes about justifying the juxtaposition of the two women by finding shallow parallels between them. In fact, their differences in moral stature and achievement are staggering: Julia Child passionately applies herself in an effort to do something worthwhile and finally achieves a foothold in success after 13 years of hard work and setbacks. Meanwhile, Julie, piggybacking on the efforts of a great woman, tries to get famous by writing a blog - and succeeds inside a year. On the way to her book and movie deals, she whines, throws tantrums and puts her poor husband (Chris Messina) through utter hell.

The Village Voice

The tome is an absolutely delightful read in which Powell uses Child and, in particular, Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, to discover "what it takes to find your way in the world," as she wrote. Yet all Ephron saw in that tale was just another dreary romantic comedy about a woman, played by a slow-simmering Amy Adams, who hates her job (tending to the families of people killed in the World Trade Center attacks-Powell's office was perched over the gaping wound), hates her friends (climbers as self-obsessed as she), hates her apartment (in Queens, over a pizzeria), and escapes into cooking and writing about cooking till she leaves behind her supportive husband, Eric, played by Chris Messina, but only briefly, whew. The book, originally shopped as a stand-alone project, could have made for a scrappy, scrumptious indie-all the outer-borough funk and main-course "fucks" of the book left intact, Bridget Jones doused in Béarnaise sauce and vodka gimlets. But Ephron has excised the heart (and gizzard and liver and so on) from Powell's tale. How could the writer-director not see that she had rigged this patently unfair game of Compare and Contrast?... Perhaps someone will do forJulie & Juliawhat one enterprising Star Warsfan did for Episode I: The Phantom Menace, when he released a bootleg shorn of that annoyance named Jar-Jar Binks and titled it The Phantom Edit. Surely there's room enough in this world for two Meryl Streep movies named Julia.

The Wall Street Journal

The remarkable thing about the Julia segments, given Ms. Streep's daring flirtations with caricature, is how full and affecting they prove to be. Yes, Julia's windmill arms are outlandish; so is her awkward, stentorian French and her religious belief in the miracle of butter. Yet she's an endearing figure, a woman who digests the life around her with enormous gusto while she's breaking the gender barrier at a Cordon Bleu cooking class or, much later, after fame has struck, digests with incredulity her husband's advice that she ought to be on TV. Mr. Tucci's Paul plays a subordinate role in the story, but his dry wit and calm love are perfect counterpoints to the intensity of Julia's enthusiasms.

Entertainment Weekly

Amy Adams nails the obsessiveness of Julie's devotion to her muse, Julia. She also captures the tactile pleasures, and challenges, of cooking (how in God's name does one bone a duck?). And Ephron gives us nothing less than the first full-scale Hollywood portrait of the life of a blogger, in all its creative fire and solitary, caffeinated, how many comments did I get?midnight narcissism. Yet the movie wants to make Julie an edgy ''bitch'' and soften her at the same time, which doesn't exactly jell.

The Los Angeles Times

Though both women have loyal and encouraging husbands (played by fine actors Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina) who are crucial to their success, this is the rare Hollywood film where it's the men who are the support team, not the women. Julie & Julia is very much a female coming to power story, which is one of several reasons why the producers were fortunate to get Ephron to write and direct.

Though a bit overshadowed by Streep (who isn't?), the gifted Adams is essential in making this two-part story work. Playing a character that is more ordinary than the actress' past efforts (think the princess in Enchanted) but still a tad eccentric, Adams turns Julie into someone we always care about no matter what shenanigans she is going through.

The New York Times

Julie & Julia proceeds with such ease and charm that its audacity - a no-nonsense, plucky self-confidence embodied by the indomitable Julia herself - is easy to miss. Most strikingly, this is a Hollywood movie about women that is not about the desperate pursuit of men. Marriage is certainly the context both of Julia's story and of Julie's (about whom more in a moment), but it is not the point. The point, to invoke the title of a book whose author has an amusing cameo here (played by Frances Sternhagen), is the joy of cooking.

The conceit of parallel lives is undone by the movie's condescending treatment of Julie and also by its ardent embrace of the past at the expense of the present. From the very start, Paris in the late '40s and early '50s is - well, it's postwar Paris, a dream world of fabulous clothes, architecture, sex, food, cigarettes and political intrigue. And New York in 2002 is made, a little unfairly, to seem drab and soulless by comparison. Queens, demographically the most cosmopolitan of the five boroughs and something of a foodie mecca, is treated with easy Manhattanite disdain, as a punch line and punching bag. The unevenness of Julie and Julia is nobody's fault, really. It arises from an inherent flaw in the film's premise. Julie is an insecure, enterprising young woman who found a gimmick and scored a book contract. Julia is a figure of such imposing cultural stature that her pots and pans are displayed at the Smithsonian. The fact that Ms. Ephron, like Julie herself, is well aware of this gap does not prevent the film from falling into it. All the filmmaker's artful whisking can't quite achieve the light, fluffy emulsion she is trying for.

The Boston Globe

People who knew or worshiped Child will question some of the movie's details. Did she and Paul, for instance, really have this much sex? Was he this romantic? ("Where's my big sprig?'' Paul says to his wife.) But that misses the larger point of these scenes. When in an American movie do regular people have that much sex? Plus - and this is important - Stanley Tucci is very sexy.

A few people have worried that Adams's half of the movie isn't as lively or as brightly lit as Streep's (it isn't) - or that Adams isn't Streep. But it isn't that the Adams half suffers from Adams not being Streep. It's that Julie suffers (as all American cooks do) from not being Julia. And this is why the Powell parts of the film work. It's Ephron's way of coming to terms with a real consequence of post-feminism. Powell is a woman in a job she hates who finds a source of liberation doing something certain liberated women still see as oppressive housework. She turns to Child's book partly as therapy, partly as anthropology. Cooking used to be about cooking, but in so many ways it's became about politics, and the politics loosely start to take their toll on Powell's marriage. Powell's loving husband, having been trained to accept her as a professional equal, now has to learn to take his wife's kitchen work seriously. Paul Child is just as fully evolved, but free of any angst over his wife's success. He's rooting for her.

Slate

Because the movie turns on plot points no bigger than "Will my book be published?" and "Is the boeuf bourguignon overdone?," Julie & Juliamay be dismissed as insubstantial fluff, a ditzy "women's picture." And it's true that Nora Ephron doesn't rank among our nation's deepest thinkers, though she shows a surer directorial hand here than she has before. Still, the relationship at the heart of this movie-between a female mentor and pupil who never meet but who share a common passion and a drive to reinvent themselves-is one you don't often see depicted in the movies. Julie & Julia makes deboning a duck a feminist act and cooking a great meal a creative triumph.

The Worst Julie & Julia Puns [Humor Slays Me]

Jacques and Julia was a bizarre and inspired combination: him, long-suffering and patient and oh-so-French; Julia, completely un-self-conscious and batty. Almost every episode featured various skirmishes over proper procedure, and here's an awesome clip reel of some of the best.

Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home - Series Highlights [YouTube]

P.S. Just for kicks - or the totally baffled equivalent thereof - check out this beyond-odd interview.

When Julia and "Simca" wrote the first volume of MtAoFC, Child was the newly-taught American enthusiast, Beck the intuitive Frenchwoman. Doubtless it was this combination that led to the book's comprehensive and accessible feel. But as Julia's editor, Judith Jones, wrote in her memoir My Life in Food:

It became clear to me, in working so closely with Julia, that her relationship with Simca was growing more and more strained. How much Simca realized what a celebrity Julia had become is hard to determine...As Julia was becoming more and more confident and was looked to as an expert on everything French, Simca was more condescending and difficult. I was in Julia's Cambridge kitchen once when Volume II was just about completed, and a fat letter from Simca arrived. Julia started reading it aloud, doing a hilarious impression of the French hauteur (non, non, non, ce n'est pas francais), and finally she threw the letter on the floor and stamped on it. "I will not be treated like dog Tray any more," she cried. Paul cheered.

In this clip, from a 1971 episode of The French Chef, the tension's so thick you can cut it with a dull couteau.

Julia Child The French Chef (1971): Spinach Twins [PBS]

Earlier: Child's Play: Time For Luh-unch!
"Child's Play: The Temptation Of Eve" A Disaster
Child's Play: Collars & Cheese

In the early days, Julia cooked in a super-retro studio kitchen, in black and white, with a theme that sounds like the score of an old French cartoon. Back then, she was teaching America the basics: in this case, to look beyond sunny-side-up and towards a nice glass of wine and a crisp green salad. She was also way less poised and always seemed to have run a marathon. Can you imagine how dispiriting it must have been to deal with crappy supermarket produce after the farmer's markets of France? Today's cooks would swoon at the thought of a non-free-range egg! But we never hear a peep or a complaint; Julia wasn't about making us feel bad - rather, about sharing her enthusiasms.

Julia Child The French Chef (1964): Elegance with Eggs [PBS]

Earlier: Child's Play: "The Temptation Of Eve" A Disaster
Child's Play: Collars & Cheese

One of the most reassuring things about The French Chef was that Julia wasn't afraid to make mistakes - which is good, cause they happened, and she didn't have some perfect version waiting intimidatingly in the wings. So, when this tarte tatin turns out, not a perfect mahogany orb, but, "very badly," a sad-looking pile of pallid applesauce, well, that's when we break out the powdered sugar! But even more important than a ready supply of the white stuff is Julia's intrepid attitude: life goes on, and sugar and butter always taste good. Life lessons, people.

Julia Child The French Chef (1971): La Tarte Tatin [PBS]

Earlier: Child's Play: Collars & Cheese

Behold: classic Julia! The drama! The showmanship! The voice! The collar! In this case, we have both the foil varietal that allows M. Soufflé to puff up with maximum elan, and the glorious 70's specimen around Madame Chef's neck. You can imagine thousands of burgeoning gourmets rushing off to yellow and lima-hued kitchens to produce equally spectacular brunches for their guests, sweating with anxiety and fear, and hoping everyone has enough amaretto sours that they won't notice how late the meal is.

If you're new to the land of Julia, this is a perfect example: classic cuisine, common-sense advice, and a whole world of un-self-conscious weird. To those of us who grew up with PBS in the background, there are few things more comforting than the aggressively cheerful theme, that triumphant warble, the mix of competence and mishap, and the sense that, in 30 minutes, Julia will be sitting down to a butter-laden specialité and all will be right with the world.

Julia Child The French Chef (1972): Cheese Souflee [PBS]

To Michael Pollan, the nascence of Julie and Julia's paeon to celluloid gastronomy prompts a New York Times Magazine meditation on why the birth of American cuisine should have coincided with the death of the American diet. To be sure, he concludes, there's a corollation between cooking-as-specttaor sport and that Julia Child ushered in and, you know, actual cooking. But for all the disspiriting conclusions Pollan can't help drawing about our culture and our planet, there are some serious bright spots amidst the rubble. And a major one is Child-as-empowerer.

Says he,

Julie Powell operates in a world that Julia Child helped to create, one where food is taken seriously, where chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and where cooking has become a broadly appealing mise-en-scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out. How amazing is it that we live today in a culture that has not only something called the Food Network but now a hit show on that network called "The Next Food Network Star," which thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become? It would seem we have come a long way from Swanson TV dinners.

And Julia Child, he adds, had a lot to do with this. More than just the popularizer of soigne French cuisine, Child, ironically, managed to free women from kitchen drudgery with her laborious, multi-pan recipes.

Even as The Feminist Mystique was lambasting housework as drudgery - enter Friedan - Julia Child was presenting cooking as pleasurable, luxurious, spiritually sustaining. In popularizing French cuisine (which has so aften been the purview, famously, of the male chef) she was making the love of food a less-gendered and more sybaritic subject, a sign of sophistication rather than imprisonment. Indeed,

Julia never referred to her viewers as "housewives" - a word she detested - and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read "The Feminine Mystique" that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman's attention.

On a personal level, like Friedan, Child was a housewife who'd found herself and made a career. Maybe a career that centered on a traditionally feminine sphere, but never one that depended upon an exaggerated femininity or sense of debasement. Child was, famously, "alone in the kitchen" - not preparing dinner for a husband or children, but for pleasure and accomplishment.

To suggest that Child destigmatized cooking for women, or removed the burden of context, would be absurd - the reactions to Amanda Hesser's recent piece on Michelle Obama's lack of interest in cooking is testament to this. And it also can't be denied, as Pollan points out, that obviously both parents entering the workforce had an adverse effect on the nation's eating habits, since we had never learned to balance domestic and professional duties, seeing them as stubbornly either-or. But, as Judith Jones points out in her wonderful The Tenth Muse, Child made good food democratic, removed some of the barriers that separated "fine cooking" from "cooking" and in so doing added an element of discovery and pleasure to an everyday ritual. It's not an unmixed legacy; many would surely claim that Child's focus on French cuisine served to maintain the underlying classicism of fine cooking that persists to this day, making good food's proliferation more fraught and tricky. But this was not her intention. And no one can deny that Julia's influence directly impacted on the American cuisine movement, and later, local, slow, and organic food in this country - all of which have been heavily influenced and run by progressive women.

And, as Pollan says, it's Child who allowed Powell to recapture an identity and a career, through food - a career that plays with traditional roles while confident in its autonomy. And be played by Amy Adams. And if that's not progress of a certain measure, well, I don't speak fluent American dream.

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch [NYT Magazine]

Related: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?

• Last night Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson called a locksmith because Sam lost her house keys. While he was working Lindsay found an open window crawled in. The locksmith asked for his $39 fee, but Lindsay wouldn't pay.

• Lindsay gave him $20, then she and Sam locked themselves in the house and refused to give him the other $19. [TMZ]
• Authorities have revised the price of the jewels stolen from a Lindsay Lohan photo shoot for British Elle. They were worth $38,500, not $400,000 as was originally estimated. [People]
• Sam Lutfi is suing Britney Spears and her family because he says Lynne Spears' claims in her book that he ground up pills into Brit's food are untrue. He says that as a result he's "constantly in fear for my life" and is "harassed and cajoled by the public." [TMZ]
• The Jackson family is fighting over where to bury Michael Jackson. Jermaine Jackson wants Michael buried at Neverland, but local laws prohibit a burial on private property. He could be cremated and his ashes spread at Neverland, but Katherine Jackson is against it. "Michael left Neverland for good, never to return," says a source. "He felt violated by law enforcement after his molestation trial. He felt this place he had built had been tainted. Katherine continues to be her son's protector even after his death." [Radar Online]
• Police sources say the Jackson family gave them a list of doctors they think may have been misprescribing drugs to Michael Jackson and dermatologist/possible sperm donor Arnold Klein's name is on the list. [TMZ]
• After Michael Jackson's memorial service, his sisters La Toya, Janet, and Rebbie went across the street to the Nokia Theater to address the overflow crowd and thank fans for their support. La Toya said: "As you well know, Michael loved his fans more than anyone else in the world. He has always said that his family is first and his fans are second... I know he's watching every last one of you." Janet said: "Thank you for all of your love, all of your support. Michael will live in our hearts forever." You can watch the video here: [TMZ]
• Diana Ross says she didn't attend Michael Jackson's memorial because, "I have decided to pause and be silent. This feels right for me. Michael was a personal love of mine, a treasured part of my world, part of the fabric of my life in a way that I can't seem to find words to express." [UPI]
• John Mayer says he was surprised that the Jackson family invited him to the memorial since he never met Michael Jackson. He said he decided to make orgasm faces in lieu of singing because he doesn't have a strong vocal range. "The decision to not sing is just out of knowing what's best for me," said Mayer. "I think it's quite a mine field to go into trying to in any way replicate vocally what Michael Jackson has done. And in a way, it was sort of respectfully leaving an absence, you know, sort of the presence of his absence." [Us]
• Mariah Carey apologized for her performance at the memorial Tweeting, "Trying to sing today was basically impossible for me. I could barely keep myself from crying. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to pull it together and really do it right, but I was literally choked up when I saw him there in front of me." [The Daily Express]
• According to Nielsen, 31 million people watched Michael Jackson's memorial service on TV. For comparison, 35.1 million watched Ronald Reagan's memorial service and 33.3 million watched Princess Diana's, but no one was watching on the internet back then. [Time]
• Debbie Rowe (like everyone else) cried when she saw Paris Jackson speak at the memorial. A friend who comforted Rowe said, "It was heartbreaking. However strange her relationship with Jacko, she is still Paris' mum. To watch your child so upset on TV in front of millions of people is more than any mum could stand." [The Sun]
• Also not in attendance: Quincy Jones. He said, "I just can't take it anymore, I've lost so many friends over the past years. Ray Charles, Marlon Brando, Michelangelo Antonioni. I just don't want to be standing there looking at some casket." [Variety]
• Paul McCartney says, "Some time ago, the media came up with the idea that Michael Jackson was going to leave his share in the Beatles songs to me in his will which was completely made up and something I didn't believe for a second. Now, the report is that I am devastated to find that he didn't leave the songs to me. This is completely untrue. I had not thought for one minute that the original report was true and, therefore, the report that I'm devastated is also totally false, so don't believe everything you read folks!" [The Mirror]
• Michael Jackson took 10,000 pills in the last six months of his life... according to The National Enquirer. The mag claims he was taking 50 pills a day "for a variety of real and imagined problems." [The National Enquirer]
• Michael Jackson's wax statue at Madame Tussauds in New York City has been on loan to the museum's D.C. branch, but it will be shipped back on Friday. [N.Y. Times]
• Cameron Diaz is in talks to play the female lead in The Green Hornet opposite Seth Rogen. [Hollywood Insider]
• The judge in Kate Walsh's divorce ruled that Alex Young can make ABC president Stephen McPherson sit for a deposition and answer questions about her financial prospects at the network. [TMZ]
• Lorenzo Lamas left his fourth wife, Shauna Sands, when he found out she was sleeping with his son A.J. Lamas, who was 18 at the time, according to a family friend. The family is currently filming a reality show for E! [Star]
• Pink on husband Carey Hart: "Everything is good again now and we're having a blast. Carey and I spend a lot of time wrestling in our hotel room. We have naked dance parties too. It's so much fun. We have a lot of fun together. He's so yummy." [The Sun]
• Check out a 30 second preview of Beyonce's video for "Sweet Dreams" at the link. It's yet another variation on the "two backup dancers and leotards" theme but this time they're wearing shorts. [The Life Files]
• Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields will release their debut album in October under the name Dead Man's Bones. [People]
• Lita Ford is coming out with a new album called Wicked Wonderland in September. [Rolling Stone]
• HBO will air Robin Williams' comedy special Weapons of Self-Destruction, which was filmed on his recent tour. [N.Y Times]
• Bruno isn't as bad as it looks, according to Australians. It's opening this weekend was the third biggest comedy opening in the country's history, behind Meet the Fockers and Sex and the City. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
• Vanity Fair has devised a cunning plan to lure in more 14-year-old readers: Robert Pattinson will be on an upcoming cover. The issue will probably come out in the fall to coincide with the release of New Moon. [E!]
• Jodie Sweetin says things are looking up since she filed for separation from her husband Cody Herpin and was accused of substance abuse relapse. "[Cody and I] have managed to work things out a little bit better," she said. "We share custody right now and it's going really well." [People]
• Justine Bateman has resigned her position on SAG's national board, party because of a new contract approved by other members last month. "SAG members ... have now voted up a contract that will cause 50% of the working members to leave the business," she wrote in her resignation letter. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Jessica Biel says she doesn't understand why some stars go out without underwear. "I don't really get that, it's not my thing - I'm a knicker person," she said. "I actually know a handful of people who aren't knicker people, but I don't get it!" Question: Did Jess use the term "knicker" or was her statement translated into British by the newspaper? [The Mirror]
• "I'll be 34 in October. I can't keep getting away with [nudity]. There was so much of it in The Reader because the story required it, but people have seen enough of my bum and my boobs. I have to put them back." — Kate Winslet [People]
• "I've never cared for the idea of a career path, or where a film might "take me". My love is for acting not money, so I only take on roles that I find challenging, in stories I find interesting. I was brought up the Mexican way, where actors are paid very little and every part you take is an act of faith. If people respect that, then great." — Gael Garcia Bernal [The Telegraph]
• Meryl Streep put on weight to play Julia Child. "I gained 15 pounds, I'm still trying to lose it," said Streep. "It was worth it." [People]
• Meryl Streep says of playing Julia Child, who was happily married to Paul Child for nearly 50 years, "When you're playing romantic characters, a great part of my attention has to be that I look really attractive. Obviously you can't play a romantic character if she's not really pretty. What's liberating about these characters is that there's this huge throbbing love between two people who don't look like our normal package of lovers. It made it more real and intimate because somehow those concerns were thrown away. If you've been married for a long time you love without looking. I don't assess how my husband looks every single day and think, Is he cute enough or whatever? And I sure hope he doesn't do it to me!" [Ladies' Home Journal]

• Has Britney Spears "fallen" for her backup dancer, Chase Benz?

A source says: "Brit really loves the way Chase looks, and she has a thing for Southern boys with loads of charm. She's totally into him. And being on tour again, plus having a sexy new guy to get close to, has put Brit in a great frame of mind." And that metal codpiece is just a bonus! [Daily Mail]

• Chris Brown denies that he has a new girlfriend. A source says that he and the lady in question "met recently. They're friends. That's it." [People]
• Amy Winehouse heard that hubs Blake Fielder-Civil got some other woman pregnant, and she is working on a song about it! The tune, called "The Ultimate Betrayal," goes: "Blake a baby, no, no, no." A source says, "It's very haunting." And by that you mean familiar and repetitive? [The Sun]
• This story seems mildly preposterous but here it is: John Mayer used to tell Jessica Simpson: "I'm really attracted to your spiritual side." A source says: "He'd tell her that every time she opened her mouth to speak. It was a nice way of basically saying, 'Just sit there and be pretty, and don't ruin it with talk.' The sad thing is she started to tell people, 'I'm working on being more spiritual,' and then just sit there quietly." [Page Six]
• In a Vanity Fair poll, 58% of respondents named Angelina Jolie "the most beautiful woman in the world." Gisele was a distant second with 9% of the vote. And what is the point of pitting women to compete against each other in a completely subjective competition again? [MSNBC Scoop]
• Madonna's former nanny was on Australian TV saying things like Madonna is a "fantastic mother" and so this column wonders if she is still on the payroll. [MSNBC]
• Apparently Lil' Kim's top nearly dropped on during a jive on Dancing With The Stars; she told a reporter after the show: "I don't know why this happens a lot of the time, but ... the girls were tryin' to come out." [AP]
• Deaf actress Marlee Matlin spoke to Joy Behar about sexual abuse, drugs and her volatile relationship with actor William Hurt; the transcript is up. She was molested by a babysitter at age 11; she was molested again by a teacher at age 14 and of her relationship with William Hurt, she says, "there was violence." [CNN]
• Meryl Streep plays Julia Child in the new flick Julie & Julia, but how did the 5 foot 6 actress play the 6 foot 2 chef? "Meryl believed that in order to capture the essence of the character, you had to believe Julia Child is 6-foot-2," says writer/director Nora Ephron. "Actually, our ambitions were more modest. We made her 6 feet. We used a whole bunch of fabulous tricks. Everything we could think of. Ann Roth did amazing things with costumes." [USA Today]
• Former Fugees star Wyclef Jean was the target of an assassination plot in Haiti. "They had a plot to assassinate me, but it obviously didn't go down. I take what I do very seriously, but I fear nothing... except my mamma." [Daily Express]
• Eminem's path back to the spotlight continues: He'll perform at the MTV Movie Awards next month. [UPI]
• Zac Efron is super adorbs on the cover of GQ, and inside he talks about getting advice from Leonardo DiCaprio: "He said, 'There's one way that you can really fuck this all up. Just do heroin.'" [People]
• Goop poop: Gwyneth Paltrow wants another baby. "At first I thought 'OK, that's it, I'm done, no way will I have more.' Then my son turned two and you think, 'Oh, I don't want this to be the last two-year-old I have. Maybe I'll do one more." The real question is, what will she name the sibling of Apple and Moses? Eden? Plum? Cain? Abel? Jesus? [The Sun]
• By the by, Gwyneth threw Moses a superhero-themed party in Los Angeles over the weekend. [Mirror]
• Guess who else wants another kid? Jessica Alba. We know this because she was shopping for real estate with her husband and wanted a place big enough for another baby. Says a source. [Ok!]
• Real Housewife LuAnn De Lesseps has been invited by Judge Lynn Toler to appear on Divorce Court. Is it classy enough for the Countess? [NY Daily News]
• ANTM hottie Nigel Barker wants you to know about baby seals being clubbed to death in Canada: "It's not a hunt, it's a massacre on the ice. Its barbaric." [NY Post]
• In this video, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Henney woo ladies on a Korean TV show in the most hilarious ways. [YouTube]
• After the director of the brand made what Jay-Z thought was a racist remark, Jay started boycotting Cristal and supporting Armand de Brignac champagne instead. Now Armand De Brignac is selling out its entire production run of 60,000 bottles. [Independent]
• Oooh: Lily Allen was the secret voice of Atomic Kitten, when she was 14 years old. [The Sun]
• Your friend Kanye West was supposed to be arraigned on misdemeanor charges — he's accused of breaking a paparazzo's flash last September — but his court date has been delayed until May. [Yahoo News via AP]
• Mel Gibson was heard telling people at the Roman Catholic church he had built in 2005: "Well, she's filed for divorce." [People]
• Jamie Foxx's Sirius radio show, The Foxxhole, spent a good minute and a half making fun of Miley Cyrus, calling her "that little white bitch," "the one with all the gums," who needs to "get like Britney Spears and do some heroin" or "go get chlamydia from a bicycle seat." Charming. [Perez]
• Prince William made a mistake in a £1 million Royal Airforce plane during training — flipping the wrong switch and "overcooking" the engine — but apparently the plane is fine and the prince is fine and everything is fine. [Daily Mail]
• Not that you care, but Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo are on the rocks and argue all the time. [Gatecrasher]
• Jenna Jameson has blogged about giving birth to her twins, Jesse Jameson and Journey Jette. She says: "I truly believe the 500 sit ups a day paid off. I was able to push my 5 pound Jesse out in 5 pushes." [ONTD]
• Lost star Josh Holloway and wife Yessica are the proud new parents of a baby girl named Java Kumala Holloway. [People]
• Animal guy Jeff Corwin is getting a show on the Food Network. He'll travel the world, meet with natives, sample "exotic" foods and learn about local customs. Kind of like Anthony Bourdain does? [EW]
• Is it the hair, the eyes or the mouth that make Phil Spector's mug shot so creepy? [TMZ]
• The high school in Kalama, Washington which was used in the filming of Twilight has become a tourist attraction. Fans have come from as far as Germany to visit the parking lot. What a world. [AP]
• The late George Harrison of the Beatles will get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. [Mirror]
• Blind item! "Which young songbird not only had lipo on her stomach, but even got the "back fat" sucked out from under her bra line?" [Gatecrasher]
• "You haven't responded to my emails, phone calls and text messages. You say you look at my website, so I'm trying to reach you that way. I want to see you and your family – in private, like the 'normal family' you say always wanted." — Candy Spelling, to Tori Spelling, on CandySpelling.com. [People]
• "I hate the internet. I find it dehumanising to constantly check emails or social sites which have become so fashionable. I'm not a celebrity. I don't go home or out with friends saying I'm a celebrity and I don't ask to be treated like a queen. Mum and dad wouldn't like that." — Keira Knightley. [The Sun]
• "I wasn't programmed by Disney. It's common sense. If you're gonna be drunk with your friends, don't get wasted at the Chateau Marmont and hook up with some famous chick. It's not rocket science." — Zac Efron. [People]
• "I like going to England. Women in England are really racy. Very very — uh — very fast. Very very nice. I like it." — Danny DeVito. [Mirror]
• "The movie poster should say, 'Starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and boeuf bourguignon.' My car crashes are burnt stews. You cannot begin to imagine how much eating there was, how much food. There was a huge kitchen on a soundstage with two fantastic people in it. Whenever a dish had to be made for the movie, they had to do at least seven of them. And there were always several left over." — Nora Ephron, on her new movie about Julia Child, Julie & Julia. [USA Today]
• "Age holds absolutely no fear for me. There is so much enjoyment ahead. Sophia [Loren] is 74 and amazing – every time I talk to her, she's full of wonderful stories about old actors." — Penelope Cruz. [People]
• "It's all about a woman's reproductive cycle and how we become fertile in terms of bearing children at a young age and then at a certain point in life we are no longer fertile in that sense. I think women can be at their most creative, their most dynamic, when their biological fertility cycle is over. So that's basically what that's all about. Just when I thought it's all over for me, I find myself in the most exciting, creative time of my entire life." — Kathie Lee Gifford, on her new book, Just When I Thought I'd Dropped My Last Egg. [Time]