[New York, December 22. Image via INFDaily.]

The Lovely Bones is the story of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), who is murdered in 1973 by her neighbor George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), after he lures her into his underground den. After her death, Susie, stuck in "the InBetween," watches as her father (Mark Wahlberg), mother (Rachel Weisz), grandmother (Susan Sarandon), sister (Rose McIver), brother (Christian Thomas Ashdale), and a detective (Michael Imperioli), cope with her death and try to solve her murder.

Reviewers say director Peter Jackson, who wrote the film adaptation along with Lord of the Rings screenwriters Fran Walsh (also Jackson's wife) and Philippa Boyens, doesn't do the book justice. While the novel allows readers to create their own image of the afterlife Susie creates for herself, critics dislike Jackson's tacky, overly-saturated CGI vision of heaven. Most of the performances are strong, especially Ronan's, but frequent interruptions by Jackson's fantasy world and a preachy, "Oprah-esque tone" undermine the emotional story of how each family member deals with their grief.

Though the film tones down the more disturbing aspects of the book by having Susie murdered off screen and only hinting at her rape, critics are still offended by how Susie's story is handled. While Jackson's early horror films and Lord of the Rings' work demonstrated that he's fascinated by gory details and Heavenly Creatures revealed an ability to tell a more delicate story, in The Lovely Bones critics say there is too much fantasy and horror, and Jackson shies away from the heart of his source material. Below, the reviews:

NPR

Sitting through Peter Jackson's film of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones is an ordeal. I'm not talking about the subject. The book opens with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, so even a good adaptation would be an ordeal. But Jackson's adolescent New Age computer-generated fantasyland is an excruciating fusion of the novel's primal trauma and his own sensibility, which is more at home with juvenile, male-dominated Lord of the Rings epics. There isn't a second that rings true - on any level.

Rolling Stone

The novel never flinched, the movie does. But Jackson, who builds jolting suspense when Susie's sister enters the killer's lair, is drawn to a spiritual dimension. He may oversaturate the Claritin-ad colors in Susie's in-between place, but he infuses the film with a sense that what lies beyond may have the power to heal. All this is conveyed in the remarkable performance of Ronan, an Oscar nominee for Atonement. She and Tucci - magnificent as a man of uncontrollable impulses - help Jackson cut a path to a humanity that supersedes life and death.

Time

Tucci plays the killer not with a madman's sneers and cackles but with a quiet malevolence; he's never more ice-shivery than when he's pretending to be normal. Such a performance could have upset the movie's balance if Wahlberg hadn't provided the solid foundation of parental devotion. The center, of course, is Ronan, the Irish teen best remembered as the girl whose lie set lives tumbling in Atonement. As the dead girl hovering over her family like a guardian angel, Ronan makes Susie seem an ordinary child whom catastrophe has made otherworldly-wise. Through Jackson's art and Ronan's magic, the obscenity of child murder has been invested with immense gravity and grace. Like the story of Susie's life after death, that's a miracle.

The Los Angeles Times

Other elements, including The Lovely Bones' imaginative notion of what Susie's afterlife looks like, are strong, but everything that's good is undermined by an overemphasis on one part of the story that is essential but has been allowed to overflow its boundaries. That would be the film's decision to foreground its weirdest, creepiest, most shocking elements, starting with the decision to give a much more prominent role to murderer George Harvey. Expertly played by Stanley Tucci, so transformed by makeup as to be almost unrecognizable, Harvey is such an unsettling, toxic individual that the actor says he came close to turning down the role. It's not only Harvey that we see in sometimes grotesque detail, it's the bizarre decorations of the underground murder site that we watch him ever so carefully plan and build, as well as the realistic bodies of his previous victims. And there is of course the chilling time the family spends trying to solve Susie's murder.

Entertainment Weekly

Jackson reduces his Lovely Bones, in the end, to the dramatic contrast between the menace of a hateful killer (will he be caught?) and the grief of a loving father (can he avenge his daughter's death?). Sebold's Lovely Bones, on the other hand, is fleshed out with the perilous, irresistible power of sex - the author acknowledges a real world of extramarital sex and sex between young lovers in addition to the heinous rape from which moviegoers are shielded. The filmmaker handled the sexual power of girls beautifully in 1994's Heavenly Creatures. But here he shies from the challenge, shortchanging a story that isn't only about the lightness of souls in heaven but also about the urges of bodies on earth. Jackson forfeits depth for safe, surface loveliness.

The A.V. Club

The Lovely Bones is often moving, almost in spite of itself. Jackson draws excruciating tension out of scenes where the audience knows exactly what's coming but the characters don't, and his dreamlike, allusive handling of Ronan's murder is stunning. The afterlife scenes are gorgeous, even though they often seem to be ultra-glossy updates of sequences he managed with more heart back in 1994 with Heavenly Creatures. And Ronan remains a tender, touching performer, though Wahlberg edges perilously close to his bug-eyed sincerity mode from The Happening. But for all its successes, Bones remains more crafted than sincere, more meant to look achingly pretty on the screen than to resonate in the heart.

The New Yorker

The book was brought off with considerable delicacy-it's really an affectionately detailed portrait of a suburban girl's life. Literalized in the movie, the material is closer to a high-toned ghost story. Jackson intermingles family goings on with Susie's gossamer interventions, and some of the brushed-with-ether imagery verges on the uncanny. Yet Jackson has become an undisciplined fabulist: the movie is redundant and undramatic. Heaven is notoriously harder to make interesting than Hell, but Jackson has outdone other artists in cotton candy-there are luscious hills and dales, and gleaming lakes and fields of waving grain, and sugarplum fairies with music by Brian Eno rather than by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Lovely Bones has been fashioned as a holiday family movie about murder and grief; it's a thoroughly queasy experience. The lesson that Susie has to learn is that she must "let go" of her past life. Meanwhile, skilled, opportunistic artificers like Alice Sebold and Peter Jackson won't let go of a chance to mingle life and death.

Newsweek

Onscreen, however, The Lovely Bones is a hybrid of unmatching parts-shuffling between thriller, police procedural, family melodrama, and mystical fantasy. There's even a section-when Susie's madcap grandmother (Susan Sarandon) shows up to help the grieving family-during which the movie verges on becoming Auntie Mame. How do you literalize heaven? It's a problem moviemakers have struggled with forever, and Jackson hasn't solved it. Sebold's notion was that everyone creates a heaven to fit her fantasies and wishes. Jackson creates the afterlife of a 14-year-old raised on '70s teen life and pop culture-a kitsch universe of greeting-card imagery and Renaissance Faire clothes. The tackiness, intentional or not, is jarring. Even worse is the vision of Susie and the other murdered girls as a happy, gamboling clan of free spirits. At such moments, the story's willful wish fulfillment seems downright cuckoo.

The New York Times

We all like children, and - at least in our capacity as moviegoers, book-club members and consumers of true-life melodrama - we seem to like them best when they're abused, endangered or dead. Nothing else is quite so potent a symbol of violated innocence, a spur to pious sentiment or a goad to revenge as a child in peril.

[Susie] is, in any case, obsessed with the lives that go on without her, in particular with the ways her siblings and friends and father (Mark Wahlberg, agonized) and mother (Rachel Weisz, narcotized) deal with losing her, something the audience never has to endure. We are always in Susie's company, soothed by her voice-over narration and tickled by her coltish high spirits. This puts a curious distance between us and most of the characters in the film - it makes us, in effect, Susie's fellow ghosts - a detachment that Mr. Jackson's stylish, busy technique makes more acute. His young heroine, played with unnerving self-assurance and winning vivacity by Saoirse Ronan, cares desperately about the poor living souls left in her wake, but it is not clear that Mr. Jackson shares her concern.... the problem with this Lovely Bones is that it dithers over hard choices, unsure of which aspects of Ms. Sebold's densely populated, intricately themed novel should be emphasized and which might be winnowed or condensed.

Slate

The Lovely Bones also exists in the in-between, located somewhere in the interstices between thriller, fantasy, crime procedural (Michael Imperioli, The Sopranos' Christopher, plays the detective who tries to catch Susie's killer), and family-in-dissolution drama. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz play Susie's grief-addled parents (they also have two younger children, played by Rose McIver and Christian Thomas Ashdale). There are moments that remind you what a master craftsman Jackson can be, like a pulse-pounding suspense scene in which Susie's sister ransacks the killer's house for evidence. But as Susie learns that avenging her death may matter less than giving her family a chance to heal, the movie takes on a weirdly Oprah-esque tone, as if determined to turn child murder into an occasion for personal growth. Scene by scene, the movie alternates between prurient violence and sentimental uplift. If it weren't for the luminous performance of Saoirse Ronan (who, I've said it before and I'll say it again, is going to be a huge star), this would be the kind of movie you'd give up on halfway through.

Variety

With reddish hair, brilliantly alive eyes and a seemingly irrepressible impulse for movement and activity, Ronan represents a heavenly creature indeed, a figure of surging, eager, anticipatory life cut off just as it is budding. Less quicksilver and more solidly built, McIver's Lindsey properly begins in her live-wire sister's shadow only to grow gradually into an impressive figure. Chain-smoking and depleting the liquor cabinet, Sarandon camps it up for a few welcome laughs, while Ritchie seems a likely candidate for teen idolhood. Mainly, it's Wahlberg and Weisz who are shortchanged by the film's divided attention between earthly agony and astral accommodation. Both thesps are OK as far as things go, but that's not nearly far enough.

The Wall Street Journal

And at this point in his working life he can use the prodigious digital resources of Weta, his production facility, to conjure up infinite worlds of special effects. Which, heaven help us, is exactly what he's done to visualize the Inbetween. The result is dumbfounding and ludicrous in equal measure, a too-muchness that makes the excesses of What Dreams May Come seem downright spartan. If Reader's Digest did music videos they might look like this. The screen pulses with bathos and swirls with surreal images, some of them shamelessly intercut with the life of Susie's bereaved family on earth-giant ships in giant bottles, fields of daisies, butterflies, cute dogs, cherry blossoms, baobab trees out of The Little Prince, a hot-air balloon, ice sculptures, snow-covered mountains, a gazebo in a lake, the same gazebo in a corn field, the same field lighted by a lighthouse. By the time Susie finally ascended to the highest realm, I was not only aghast but so exhausted by her surfeit of experience that I heard, as if touched by magic myself, those deathless lyrics from Talking Heads: "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens...."

The Village Voice

In Jackson's hands, The Lovely Bones is doubly appalling. Part Disney's Alice in Wonderland, part Fritz Lang's M, the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous... As the novel suggests a form of talk therapy, Jackson's adaptation is a misguided tribute to the magic of the movies-which have always specialized in reanimating the dead. But there is something to be said for representing the actual world and there are some things that can only be visualized in the mind's eye. What heaven could have been more radiant than a child's view of her suburban neighborhood-what spectacle more divine than Susan Sarandon's wig?

Salon

The Lovely Bones is a fiercely delicate and often funny piece of writing, a work of fantasy with a solid footing in reality, and it wouldn't be an easy book for any filmmaker to adapt. Jackson (aided and abetted by frequent collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote the screenplay with him) has reinvented Sebold's story in the most facile and heedless way imaginable: He's turned it into a supernatural thriller.

The Lovely Bones is a perfect storm of a movie disaster: You've got good actors fighting a poorly conceived script, under the guidance of a director who can no longer make the distinction between imaginativeness and computer-generated effects. The result is an expensive-looking mess that fails to capture the mood, and the poetry, of its source material. David Byrne once sang, "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." There's way too much going on in Peter Jackson's heaven — and yet it isn't nearly enough.

[Sydney, December 10. Image via Getty]

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 10: Susan Sarandon attends the Australian premiere of 'The Lovely Bones' at Greater Union George Street on December 10, 2009 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

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Let's face it: Susan Sarandon has earned the right to wear flats if she feels like it.


Ariana Grande is in the brief window where it's acceptable to wear shrink-wrapped velvet.


I'm over the 90s-floral, as modeled by Courtney Ford, but I guess given the film's subject matter, it's kind of apropos.


Speaking of current retro-trends: the early-90s/late 80s mini (on Rose McIver) has the virtue of (when worn with tights) being relatively warm.


Oh noes! Olivia Munn forgot her shoes!


Nikki Soohoo is so ready for Radio City!


Saoirse Ronan makes her official debut as the one of the chicest, awesome young actresses on the planet.


I think what AJ Michalka was going for...


...was done better by Stefania Owen!


Lea Thompson, you see, believes in Love.


Kat Kramer believes in being on every red carpet anywhere, in a houndstooth marching-band hat.


And Rachel Weisz? Subscribes the the school of gently daring pretty!

[Images via Getty]

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• "I don't think there's something particularly alluring or topical about vampires right now that our generation takes to. I think it's more just that Stephenie [Meyer] wrote these characters with really creative, really gloried character traits. He's a vampire - he sucks blood and all that - but being a vampire is really just a symbol of who he is. I think if you take all of the mythical aspects away from the story, these characters would still be interesting. And they'd still stand. That's what people have become addicted to. At least concerning the fans. I don't think it's a vampire thing." — Kristen Stewart [Time]
• New Moon director Chris Weitz says he's quitting making movies after doing one more film. "Every time I make a movie I'm pretty much convinced it's the last time I'm going to be able to do it and that really it's a rather silly occupation to undertake," he says. "But I think I have maybe one more film in me." [People]
• Pamela Anderson says she has told her sons about the sex tape she made with Tommy Lee. "I knew the kids were going to watch [Borat] and there was a reference to the tape in the movie and they're that age and, you know, people are going start saying things," she said. "I just said, 'Look, Mummy and Daddy were massively in love, we videotaped everything, everything was videotaped, and you're probably going hear about something at school.'" [The Sun]
• Pamela Anderson says, "I've tried it (cocaine) and I don't like it. I'm completely hyper and it actually doesn't work for me. I've dabbled in things." [Contact Music]
• Nicolas Cage, a U.N. ambassador, went to a jail in Kenya to talk to the suspected Somali pirates. "Then I'm in a position where I can actually make some sense and talk about it when I go back to the States where I go talk to different U.N. councils and discuss the matter," Cage said. [AP]
• Andrew Lloyd Webber has be re-admitted to the hospital after developing an infection following surgery for prostate cancer. [AP]
• Penny Marshall has liver cancer, according to The National Enquirer. "Most people would have been devastated, crying on the shoulder of friends and family. But not Penny - she was angry!" said a family source. "The last thing Penny wants is for anyone to feel sorry for her." [National Enquirer]
• Jennifer Hudson will play Winnie Mandela in Winnie, Clint Eastwood's movie about Nelson Mandela's ex-wife. "I was compelled and moved when I read the script," Hudson said. "Winnie Mandela is a complex and extraordinary woman, and I'm honored to be the actress asked to portray her. This is a powerful part of history that should be told." [People]
• Clint Eastwood says the U.S. is "becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits..." [Daily Express]
• The Black Eyed Peas' manager, Liborio Molina, won't face charges for punching Perez Hilton in the back of the head. Here's what Molina wrote: 'I apologize for what I did on June 22 of 2009, even though you engaged in highly offensive comments, including a homophobic slur to my clients, I acknowledge that these kinds of issues should not be resolved through a physical response." [TMZ]
• Liborio Molina has also agreed not to contact Perez HIlton and cannot carry any weapons for a year. [AP]
• Precious will be awarded the Producers Guild of America's Stanley Kramer Award, which goes to a film that tackles provocative social issues in a constructive way. [N.Y.T.]
• Kirstie Alley Tweeted about being the butt of Conan O'Brien's fat jokes saying, "ONE BITCH I'm gonna knck [sic] out next time I see her is CONAN O'BITCH O'BRIAN [sic]. That guy acts like I bit his dick off." Star Jones Tweeted back: "You know Conan probably 'wanted some' and you chumped him...I know a few brothers from Brooklyn who owe me! LOL" [Us]
• Roger Moore was named the 2009 Person of the Year by the U.K. branch of PETA for campaigning against foie gras. [Reuters]
• Mariah Carey was late to the British show This Morning, so host Phillip Schofield Tweeted: "Sitting here twiddling our thumbs waiting for Mariah Carey. la la la laaa," before adding: "It's her album... which we will talk about IF she hurries up!" [The Sun]
• Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair got into a fight at a press conference in Australia. Some say it was staged to promote a wrestling even, but in the picture at the link Hogan's head is coated in blood. [TMZ]
• Fantasia Barrino's fans are upset because she's dating a married father of two who left his wife and kids to move in with her. [Star]
• Robin Williams, who split from his wife of 19 years in 2008, has found love again with graphic designer Susan Schneider. A source said, "Robin truly believes it's no coincidence that Susan came into his life right before his heart operation. He told a pal, 'She saved me - she helped me heal.'" [Daily Express]
• Tyra Banks tried to get model Jessica White, who has been seen holding hands with Sean Penn, to confirm that they're dating, but she said, "I hold hands with my friends." [Us]
• Daniel Radcliffe will guest star in The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror XXI" next season. [ONTD]
• Hugh Jackman has forgiven his mother for abandoning the family when he was young, and was spotted spending time with her in New York yesterday. "My mother was not well," Jackman has said. "I always hoped she would come back, but I never blamed her for anything that went wrong. At the time, I was miserable and angry, and my brothers and I used to fight all the time." [News.com.au]
• Carrie Underwood says she isn't moving in with her boyfriend Mike Fisher. "Call me old-fashioned. He's there. I'm here... We're both doing our thing and it's good. The next guy I move in with will be my hubby. Whoever that is. I'm not saying it's going to be him." [People]
• Jessica Simpson Tweeted about her sister Ashlee Simpson-Wentz's Broadway debut: "I can't wait to watch @ashsimpsonwentz on broadway in all of her glory!!! I get chillbumps from toes to noggin thinking about it!!! YAY!!!!!" [Us]
• Pete Wentz said, "I just spent the last weekend – Mom was rehearsing for Chicago – being Dad without a nanny, without Mom, and didn't burn the house down, so I'm pretty excited about that." [People]
• Jessica Szohr says "we had fun" shooting the Gossip Girl threesome. "Penn is really easy to work with and very professional and [so is] Hilary," Szohr said. "We just went with it and tried to make it as easy as possible." [Us]
• Sandra Bullock says her family didn't like her going blonde for The Blind Side. "It was entertaining for a couple of months but it's not really my color palette," she said. Her husband didn't like it either. "Thank God an important person in my life didn't want me being blonde. He was like, ‘I don't like the blonde on you. You want him to say that!" [People]
• "I want boobs, a gentle six-pack and a perky butt," says Amanda Peet. "If I could choose an ideal body, I'd take Gisele Bunchen's. I challenge anyone to say she wouldn't want Gisele's body, deep down... Actually, I'd take a number of people's bodies. I'd take Jennifer Aniston's, too." [People]
• Susan Sarandon is going to meet table tennis legend Jan-Ove Waldner when she travels to Stockholm to receive an award next week. "It was on her initiative, we just made the effort to find him," says Git Scheynius, director of the Stockholm Film Festival. "She's actually involved in a table tennis club in New York — that's one of her greatest hobbies." [Reuters]
• "I feel like I have learned a lot. The movies could not be more different," says Penelope Cruz of her upcoming films Nine and Broken Embraces. "To be able to sing for the first time professionally and dance, it was a scary experience. Broken Embraces is like three women in one. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world." [Reuters]
• Vera Farmiga says she was drawn to the film Up In The Air because, "I thought it was a refreshing spin on feminine desire. It's something you don't too often get to see, a woman being so demanding and libertine and unapologetic about her sexual prowess. She's an adventuress; she's a full-blown romantic operative. That was pretty exciting. And tricky. Because usually, female characters who are so masculine in their needs can come across as lacking dignity. Alex represents to me what's so hard about being a woman, post-feminist. Wanting it all: a family, a career. That sort of pendulum between romance and respectability, virgin-whore, all these lady problems we have to contend with and there will never be an answer to. A modern heroine of sorts." [L.A.T.]
• Heidi Klum says she's wearing something sexy when she hosts the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, even though she wants to lose weight. "I have some great one-of-a-kind latex pieces that were made for me. I figure why not? I embrace that I have more curves right now," said Klum, "I'm definitely one of the heaviest of the bunch of the 30 girls in the show. And I still have 20 lbs. to go... But why not? I like my outfit. I like the way it looks on me." [People]
• "I have a really big scrapbook. I still actually have these notes that Marty Scorsese wrote to me while we were making The Age of Innocence. I save everything. I definitely have that gene in me. Someone was telling me about this show called Hoarders. I was like, 'Oh no!' I save everything. I'm scared I might be a hoarder." — Winona Ryder [Daily Express]
• Martha Stewart says Rachael Ray is "more of an entertainer ... with her bubbly personality, than she is a teacher, like me. That's not what she's professing to be," adding, "To me, she professed that she could — cannot bake... She — just did a new cookbook which is just a re-edit of a lot of her old recipes. She — and that's not good enough for me." Rachael Ray responded: "Why would it make me mad?... Her skill set is far beyond mine. That's simply the reality of it... I'd rather eat Martha's than mine, too." [Us]

• Someone broke into Kourtney Kardashian's home on Saturday night, taking thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. Hollywood: Step up your security! [TMZ]

• As you may know, there's been a rash of burglaries involving young stars this year: Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Hayden Panettiere, Lindsay Lohan and Rachel Bilson's homes have all been broken into in the last 10 months. Oh, and Orlando Bloom was burglarized, too. [People]
• Meanwhile, Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush are back together, and things are going well: "We just made the decision that we want to make it work, and the time off was really beneficial for the both of us," KK says. "I think sometimes people need to take a break just to take time off to see how much they need each other and how much they really are compatible." [People]
• Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom now have a prenup. He'll keep the $33 million he makes in his 4 year contract with the Lakers. Khloe will get an annual lump sum, which will not go up or down throughout the marriage; and the two will have a joint account. Romantic! [TMZ]
• Hug your neighborhood Goth: Trent Reznor got married on Saturday. [E!]
• Beyoncé has postponed a concert in Malaysia; female performers there must be covered from shoulders to knees, with no cleavage showing. Time to rethink that "Single Ladies" leotard. [AP]
• Lindsay Lohan "shocked" people by being "in control all night" at a party. [Page Six]
• Courtney Love failed to show up in court on Thursday in a case involving Elite Maids and non-payment; the judge ruled against Courtney and she needs to write a check to the cleaning service for $3,058.48. [TMZ]
• Headline of the day: "Paris Hilton Lands Movie Role, Demands Lobsters." [Page Six]
• Stephanie Pratt was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence early Sunday morning in Hollywood. She'd just left Holly Montag's birthday party and apparently didn't arrange for a designated driver. [TMZ]
• Stephanie Pratt was "cooperative" and there were no issues with her arrest. She was taken into custody at 3:45 am and released at 10:30 am. [People]
• Here's a picture of Stephanie partying before her DUI. What's with the tongues? [TMZ]
• Liz Taylor took Michael Jackson's three kids to a theme park on Friday. From her wheelchair, she watched the children go on rides and enjoy the Halloween Horror Nights event. [Daily Express]
• By the by, Liz Taylor saw the new Michael Jackson documentary, This Is It at a special secret screening. Word is: She loved it and thought it was "brilliant." [Showbiz 411]
• "Michael Jackson's embattled physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, is quietly trying to sell his story." [Rush & Molloy]
• Susan Boyle must have liked the makeover she got from Harper's Bazaar: She used the images from that photo shoot as cover art for her album. [WWD]
• Kelly Bensimon flashed folks at a fête: "Raising her arm to wave goodbye, the Real Housewives star 'accidentally' revealed she was 'commando.'" [Page Six]
• Expect Josh Brolin's performance in Wall Street 2 to be Donald Trump-inspired. [Page Six]
• "The octomom's doctor has been expelled from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the main infertility professional organization." Nadya Suleman has said that her physician, Michael Kamrava, transferred six embryos, which exceeds the ASRM's guidelines. [USA Today]
• Did you know that Jon Hamm auditioned for the role of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock? [Reader's Digest]
• "Madonna's 'Hung Up,' in which she dances provocatively in a pink leotard, has been voted the least sexy music video of all time." [Telegraph]
• You guys, stop talking about how Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy might be broken up. She says: "I'm not going to lie – it's not annoying, it's hurtful. Because he is like the most awesome person." And! "We are just trying to be really happy. It makes it hard to do that when everybody is putting negative energy out there." [ONTD]
• Guess what Susan Sarandon is going to be for Halloween? Think "Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me"! [Page Six]
• Cameron Diaz stars in sci-fi thriller The Box, based on a 1970 short story and adapted and directed by the twisted genius behind Donny Darko, Richard Kelly. At 37, she gets asked about the quality of roles for women over 40, and says: "I'm not 40 yet and I don't know what I am going to want. I'm certainly not sitting here worrying about where I am going to be at, I am just making the most out of the life I am living as I have been doing all along." [News.com.au]
• Conan O'Brien and Newark mayor Cory Booker have ended their feud. Sort of. There's now a joke jar: jar. "Every time I made a joke about Newark… $500 would go into that joke jar," says Conan. Yet he adds: "You can rest assured that the money is safe, because the jar isn't in Newark." [NY Daily News]
• Gaga Ooh La La! New Lady Gaga song! Click to hear. [ONTD]
• Martha Stewart's deal with Kmart is dead. Long live Martha Stewart's deal with Home Depot. [NY Times]
• Nas has tax issues. [TMZ]
• Where The Wild Things Are made a monstrous $32.5 million at the box office. [AP]
• So you know how some dresses have little plastic straps inside for more stability on a hanger? And sometimes the straps pop out from under your armpits and look unsightly? Whitney Houston's dress straps broke while she was on TV. [The Sun]
• Monty Python: The Original Kings Of Gore. [Newsweek]
• Dan Aykroyd's father has a new book called A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts and Ghostbusters; Dan has written the forward and says: "I've had to sell some really bad movies in my time, so it's great when you can get behind a good product." [USA Today]
• Someone paid $15,000 for a clump of Elvis' hair. [AP]
• Ted Danson upon meeting Dave Chappelle: "You are like a hero in my family." After the meeting: "Wow. That was cool. That was my claim to hip right there. That's my only claim to hip." [LA Times]
• Do red carpets make you nervous? Or the paparazzi? 
"Horribly nervous. The red-carpet thing is more of a problem. I had braces when I was a teenager and taught myself not to smile. I never deprogrammed myself from that. When they're shouting 'Smile!' I get nervous. You don't want to see my smile." Are you on Facebook? "I left Facebook. People contact you and they're out of your life, and I don't know why they want to come back in. It's weird." — from a Q&A with An Education's Carey Mulligan. [Newsweek]
• Def Leppard has canceled the last segment of its North American tour — 23 shows — "due to unforeseen personal matters." [USA Today]
• "When I was 11, I auditioned for the part of Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at school. I didn't go to an all-girls school, but the boys didn't want to do theater: the girls could then play the boys. I remember that I didn't get the part of Joseph and I was really upset. They cast me as the Pharaoh, and I remember doing an Elvis impression as the Pharaoh. I had this one moment when I realized that the Pharaoh part was actually more interesting than Joseph's. And, in some ways, that set the tone for my career. For me, it's often better to play the great character than the lead." — Samantha Morton. Click through for gorgeous photo shoot. [T Magazine]
• "He's one of the very few completely brilliant directors that I've worked with. There aren't really very many, I have to say, or it's a shame to say. To be an artist in terms of what you see and what you want to feel out of each scene, a kind of master of the technique and the technicalities of filmmaking, and a master of directing actors, which is usually the one that's missing — there are many who have no idea how to speak or to pull good work out of actors — is very rare. Roman was all those things." — Ewan McGregor on Roman Polanski, who directed The Ghost, in which Ewan stars. [LA Times]
• "The best part for me now is that I think for the first nine months mom is so essential. When they start hanging out with dad more you're like, 'Wow I feel like a dad.' You go to music class and do fun stuff together, it's cool. It makes me realize all of the little things that my dad sacrificed when he had me. It's sad it took 30 years but I totally realize it now." — Pete Wentz on fatherhood. [UPI via People]
• "When I was away [in prison], I wrote a lot of stuff, which will be released next year. I wrote a diary and songs. I got into trouble because I wrote on the wall: 'Some things are past understanding, you just need a place to land.' It was part of a lyric. I actually wrote a song about Amy [Winehouse] when I was in prison." — Boy George. [Daily Express via The Times of London]
• "I'll be honest: When I went on that morning show, I was drunk. Yes, I was on sleeping pills and I was jet-lagged, but I was also just plastered. And I never said I wasn't, but that whole Warner Bros. publicity machine got involved and said, 'Just say he was jet-lagged.' I said, 'No, tell 'em the truth! I was fucking drunk in Australia. Big deal.'" — John Stamos, in reference to his bizarre appearance on Mornings with Kerri-Ann in 2007. [Us Magazine]
• "I think I underestimated the way people bracket you. I thought I could wear what I wanted and be an actress and live my life in a certain way, and it would all be all right. I feel we live in the kind of culture now where you have to be very smart to navigate the right way, and I just don't have those smarts. I think with age and time it will change, but I can't obsess about it… This is what I have always wanted, to be on Broadway. I'm living my dream, and that's all you can ask for. At a certain point you have to ignore all the rest." — Sienna Miller, who is in After Miss Julie on Broadway. [NY Times]
• "I've had some absolutely great relationships and some not so great relationships. I've been in some relationships where I've felt terribly alone. Just because you're with someone it doesn't mean you're incredibly happy and complete. I've had some easy and natural, made-sense breakups as well as some rough ones. I deal with them the same way we all do: I'm successful with some and not so successful with others. I don't think my experiences are any different than anybody else's, they've just been amplified a little more." — George Clooney. [Mirror]
• "Parenting is something you can't delegate. Yes, you can find help with the daily things, but that doesn't release you from the guilt and anxiety and concern. Is there ever a time when putting your needs ahead of your children's is acceptable? That is the overarching question." — Uma Thurman, on new film Motherhood. [NY Times]
• "Losing my mother was very traumatic. I don't know if I'll ever get over it. And now I'm older than my mom was when she died, which is pretty strange. She died when she was 35. [I lived with my father after that], he was a salesman and only in his early 60s when he died [of complications from diabetes]. I was 20. I miss him every day. He had a wild streak. He was funny, larger than life, and sad. He's probably in my performance more than I know. I started acting in grade school and kept returning to it in high school and college. Theater departments are usually a big collection of orphans and screwups-sort of lost tribes-and I found kinship there. When I started thinking about what to do with the rest of my life, acting was the only thing I kept coming back to." — Jon Hamm. [Reader's Digest]
• "When I look at digital, the dark side of it for me is the physicality that's being presented alongside the Internet. I think about that movie The Matrix, and about these bodies that are human batteries that support computers. I met this guy who was creating software where you could watch Mad Men and you could chat with your friend while you're watching it, and things would pop up, and facts would pop up, and I said, 'You're a human battery. Turn the fucking thing off! You're not allowed to watch the show anymore. You're missing the idea of sitting in a dark place and having an experience. Are you just like sitting with your phone and you're kissing your girlfriend and saying, "I'm kissing my girlfriend! This is so great, we're having sex!'" EXPERIENCE THINGS!" — Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, at the New Yorker Festival [NY Magazine]

• Lady Gaga, Gay Activist! She "was the highest-wattage celebrity to attend both the Human Rights Campaign dinner Saturday night and the National Equality March on Sunday." Reporter Dan Zak writes:

"Nearby rally-goers screeched her name. She had marched with the crowds from her hotel after shrugging off security concerns, and had just finished a short speech to an enraptured throng of tens of thousands on the West Lawn. Glittery signs reading 'Gay for Gaga' and 'Lady Gaga {heart} Equality, U Should 2' poked up from the rainbowed masses." "I will never turn my back on my friends," said Lady Gaga, before disappearing from the rally. "Today is not a one-off performance."She also said: "In the music industry there's still a tremendous amount of accommodation of homophobia," she said. "So I'm taking a stand… I'm not going to play one of my songs tonight because tonight is not about me. It's about you." She sang John Lennon's "Imagine," but changed some of the lyrics. [WaPo]

• Miley Cyrus and her sister Brandi ate $70 worth of meat and mac 'n cheese at the Outback Steakhouse in Burbank last week. Miley paid with a $100 bill… and kept the change. Her spokesperson explains: She didn't know she was supposed to tip unless she was eating inside." Pardon? When has that ever been the case? [Rush & Molloy]
• Christina Hendricks married Geoffrey Arend — he was hilarious in 500 Days Of Summer! — at Il Buco restaurant in New York on Sunday. Congrats! [People]
• Jon Gosselin says that he wasn't the only one who took cash out of the joint account; Jon filed papers claiming Kate withdrew over $60,000 from their joint account between July and September 2009. But a source says Kate's transactions were legal; Jon didn't have permission. [TMZ]
• Jon Gosselin believes that Kate has control of more than one million dollars and that if she doesn't have a job, it's not his fault. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Jon Gosselin will light a menorah this year, partly because of gf Hailey Glassman. "This is the first year I will celebrate Chanukah. Everyone in my life is Jewish now, my attorney. I love it. I'm now half Jewish and half Korean. The family values are great… They gave her a free tummy tuck, worth $20 grand." I'm sure I'm not alone here when I say: Oy. [Rush & Molloy]
• Dina Lohan says that Lindsay's brother Michael is on academic scholarship at Ithaca (college)… and "He's also is doing a movie!" This paper reacts with the headline, "Oh no! Not another one!" [The Sun]
• Katie Holmes wants to send Suri to Catholic School, and noted Scientologist Tom Cruise is okay with it. Suri is already enrolled in Catholic Charities Yawkey Centre For Early Education And Learning in Boston, where Tom is filming the movie Wichita. [Daily Mail]
• Angelina Jolie is in talks to replace Charlize Theron in the thriller The Tourist. [JustJared]
• Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy: So on. [People]
• Nick Cannon is married to Mariah Carey. He's also a stand-up comic, a rapper, an actor, a D.J., a screenwriter and a television host and the chairman Nickelodeon's TeenNick division. [NY Times]
• At the BET Hip-Hop awards on Saturday, T.I. won, though he is in prison; Jay-Z was honored as MVP of the year; the late DJ AM won "DJ of the Year." Kanye West did not attend. The show airs October 27. [AP]
• Unsolicited uterus update: Kourtney Kardashian is expecting a baby boy. [NY Daily News]
• Mad Men's John Slattery doesn't want a garbage trucks garage in his New York neighborhood. [AP]
• "Fergie is Condoleezza Rice - if Condi knew how to execute a booty shake…" claims this profile of the singer, in which she talks about ecstasy; crystal meth ("it ruins you"); dating Mexican gang members and being a child star. The reporter also writes: "There is some speculation that Fergie is older than she lets on (seems unlikely; she grew up on TV), as her unquestionably sexy features can look a touch - how can I put this? - ravaged." [Times Of London]
• Kelly Bensimon was doing man-on-the-street interviews for Gotham magazine yesterday… and her efforts were taped for Real Housewives. [NY Post]
• Debi Mazar helped Maksim Chmerkovskiy get over ex-fiancée Karina Smirnoff with home cooked meals. Heartache doesn't mean stomachache. [People]
• Remember when Michael Jackson played a character on The Simpsons? The folks of The Simpsons were freaked out by him. [NY Post]
• Speaking of Michael Jackson, a snippet of his song "This Is It" has hit the interwebs; listen at the link. [TMZ]
• By the by the illuminated white glove Michael Jackson wore on his 1984 Victory tour sold for almost $70, 000 at auction. [The Sun]
• Katherine Jackson will not inherit 40% of her son's estate. [Carey Hart are HOT in this photo shoot for his tattoo shop's clothing line. [Daily Mail]
• Amy Winehouse "looked frail and unsteady" singing backup for her goddaughter on the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. [Mirror]
• Couples Retreat raked in $35 million at the box office; this column suggests the film "offers a lesson in moviegoing: add one beautiful location to a comedy that is not very funny, add to it actors who aren't really very famous, and you can make a movie that opens to reviews that aren't very good, yet still make cash hand over fist." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader has a new baby and says of fatherhood: "I think it's going to be awesome." [Celebrity Baby Scoop]
• In a poll of 100 New Yorkers, 26 women and 27 men think David Letterman is a "hypocrite for making jokes about the affairs of Bill Clinton and other politicians." 22 women and 31 men have worked at a place where the boss was having an affair with an underling. [NY Mag]
• Singer Stephen Gately, of Irish group Boyzone died Saturday while vacationing on the Spanish island of Majorca. [CNN]
• Stephen Gately may have chocked on his own vomit after a "drinking session." [Daily Mail]
• "Matt Lucas will not return to his stage role following the death of his ex-partner, it has been announced." [The Star]
• Mickey Rourke talks about using the word "faggot." Sorta. [TMZ]
• Dannii Minogue was judging X Factor when this guy Danyl Johnson sang "And I'm Telling You" from Dreamgirls. Danni insinuated that he was gay by telling him he didn't need to change the gender references in the song. Simon Cowell was pissed about that. [Daily Mail]
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is on Twitter now, posting pictures of the happy face in his morning oatmeal and so on. [NY Post]
• Sigourney Weaver is trying to promote a Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education, (GRACE) in the Congo, which will rescue and rehabilitate orphaned gorillas, saying: "These little gorillas just steal your heart. They're very sensitive creatures. So it's no surprise that this is a very demanding and ambitious project, the GRACE Center, but we need it. We have to have it." [AP]
• "Pierce Brosnan almost turned down the chance to star in his upcoming flick, The Greatest, about two parents struggling to move on after their son dies in a car accident — because his own son Sean survived a similar crash in 2000. "When I first got the script, I looked it over and put it under my bed for a week," he says. "I eventually decided to do it because I liked it, but it was hard to go to those deeper places in my heart." [Gatecrasher]
• Director Mike Nichols has been selected to receive the American Film Institute's 38th AFI Life Achievement Award. Nichols won an Oscar for directing The Graduate; was nominated for a best picture award as a producer for The Remains of the Day and his credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, Primary Colors, Angels in America, Closer and Charlie Wilson's War. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Horn Lake, Mississippi's Circle G Ranch — also known as the Elvis Ranch, is up for sale, if you have $6.5 million. [UPI]
• High-brow PBS soap opera Upstairs Downstairs is being remade. [NY Post]
• Blind item! "What Oscar-winning actress and her Oscar-winning husband are said to be close to splitting? She's telling friends, 'We've grown apart.'" [Rush & Molloy]
• "I get why chicks dig him. He's extremely kind, incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, creative and respectful. I don't discuss my love life because it's always misinterpreted or put under the microscope. It's especially annoying when you're dating someone else who's well-known, which is why I normally would never go out with a famous guy. Let's put it this way… I'd be flattered if someone hit on me tonight, but I really can't say if I'm available or not." — Emmy Rossum on Adam Duritz. She also says: "I used to be an artsy, quiet, kind of chubby kid — which no one believes. But now I'm really comfortable with my body and my sexuality. I can be naked with the lights on." [People]00
• "My hair has never been that great. I had a Jheri curl at one point in my life. I had to go to rehab and confess, 'I'm Chris, I have a curl.' But, I don't think men are into their hair that much. Guys are concentrating on other things. When I was younger, I had a complex, and probably still do, about just not being buff and big. I think that's what guys are into. There are some right here in Hollywood, men on television right now, with fake pecs and stuff." — Chris Rock made Good Hair, but he doesn't think about his own that much. [Parade]
• "I think if she were playing something that was going to be really hard for her psychologically or damaging, I'd be more concerned, but she had a really good time with the sex thing, She plays a woman who, as far as I can tell, is really in charge of her life and is not a victim. So it sounded to me like it would be a blast. I've already seen little bits and pieces of some of the nudity and she looks beautiful. If you have it, why not?" — Susan Sarandon, on her daughter playing a student by day and a stripper by night in Californication. [Gatecrasher]
• "I've been corresponding with Anya Camilleri [the director] and we've been looking at historical paintings where the concept 'cougar' was depicted to try and see where it came from. I think 'cougar' is a way to make it appear as women are looking at their men as prey, and gaining something from it. Like when men are enhancing their own virility by going out with younger women. Why is there not a term for older men with younger women? I don't think Mrs. Robinson was a cougar — I think she was a woman having a breakdown, and it was played wonderfully." — Sharon Stone, who will play a woman who hires a much-younger gigolo in upcoming flick Satisfaction. [Gatecrasher]
• "I had dairy a few weeks ago by accident and I knew because the next day I was all phlegmy. And I was farting and it was gross. And then I knew. It was dairy. Plus it makes you fat. Instantly. [There] was a time in my life where I was not interested in health at all; health was a dirty word. And when I look at pictures now, I see that I looked tired and puffy and stressed." — Alicia Silverstone, whom this paper calls "the most non-annoying vegan on the planet." [NY Post]
• "I guess everyone has their wild side, and mine was halfway between being really shy and kind of a goofy spazoid. I never bit anyone, like Max, but I slapped a lot of butts. I don't know if you've seen kids do that-butt-slapping. Like, slapping the butts of my grandparents and babysitters. When I wasn't shy, I overcompensated." — Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who did the soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are. [NY Mag]
• "In an interview, Lars said he thought he reminded me of my father… and now, of course, I could make that link. He's very sincere with his questions and fears. He's a real artist in that way. He never censors himself... It was a weird relationship. The moments when it was just the two of us were pretty awkward… [Still] I had the feeling that he was inside me. He understood every blink, every detail. I felt as if I were portraying him, even though we were dealing with female sexuality. The anxiety and fear in my character was pretty much him." — Charlotte Gainsbourg, on Antichrist director Lars von Trier, whom this article notes has been called "Misanthrope. Misogynist. Pornographer. Xenophobe. Enfant terrible. Child." [BlackBook]
• "President Obama seems very authentic… I wonder if there's a white man inside of him." — Lars von Trier. [BlackBook]

• Courtney Love "went nuts" when a guest at a party opened an unlocked bathroom and saw her on the toilet with her skirt around her ankles.

Apparently she launched herself at the dude, and though people tried to calm her down, a security guy told the man: "It's best you get away as fast as possible." [Page Six]

• Backstage at the Emmys, Paramedics were called for Kristin Chenoweth, who complained of a migraine headache and then said she couldn't open her eyes. [Access Hollywood]
• More backstage Emmys drama: A fight between Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff got "kind of loud." Apparently they were "screaming at each other"after he said she took too long in hair and makeup. [E!]
• Mad Men and 30 Rock were big winners at the Emmys last night. [NY Daily News]
• Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs won the weekend box office; Jennifer Aniston's Love Happens came in fourth — one of her worst openings in years — and Jennifer's Body placed fifth. [Ny Daily News]
• "Mr. T's Chance of Meatballs character fits him to a T." [USA Today]
• Kate Gosselin taped her Mom Logic TV show pilot over the weekend, and even though guests Mel B and Christie Brinkley were nixed, a source says the taping "went extremely well" and "Kate did great." [Radar]
• Congrats! Zooey Deschanel married Death Cab For Cutie singer Ben Gibbard Saturday night near Seattle. [People]
• Did you know that Susan Sarandon has been a member of a Ping-Pong society for years? [NY Magazine]
• From a profile on Madonna: "Scented Christian Dior candles fill the air in a space so dimly lit, it seems both slightly theatrical and quasi-religious. A huge telephone with multiple extensions bears labels such as M study, M dressing room, M bathroom, Laundry, Music Room, Kitchen, Mews." And: "A lot of people are just really confused by me… They don't know what to think of me, so they try to compartmentalize me or diminish me. Maybe they just feel unsafe. But any time you have an overtly emotional or irrational, negative reaction to something, you're fearing something that it's bringing up in you." [Times Of London]
• Paula Abdul almost refused to co-present with Kathy Griffin at the VH1 Divas concert because of all the insulting jokes Kathy had made. [Gatecrasher]
• Amy Winehouse was leaving a nightclub recently when a passerby shouted "Oi Amy, where's your crack pipe?" [The Sun]
• Heidi Klum and Seal can't decide on a name for the baby girl they are expecting. Seal says: "It has been the topic of debate for the last month. We can't quite figure it out. I'm a firm believer that she will pop out and will tell us what she wants to be called." [Mirror]
• Charlize Theron's nude scene in The Burning Plain — in which she smokes a cigarette while standing at a window in full view of passersby in Portland, OR — was shot at 6 a.m. to avoid paparazzi. [Page Six]
• Oprah had a block party in Chicago and paid more than $54,000 for city services. [Ny Post]
• Joy Behar would love to get Sarah Palin on her new show on HLN and talk to her about the "real America." "It's insulting to men like my father, who fought in World War II, whom she doesn't think are real Americans because we don't agree with her." Joy also says: "Look, it's not that I'm contentious; I'm uncompromising. I'm friendly, but I can't let things go unchallenged. And I intend to give my opinions quite profusely. I might even have to interrupt myself." [New York Magazine]
• New couple? Kid Cudi and Amanda Bynes??? [Gatecrasher]
• They're saying Mischa Barton's a mess in the morning and needs someone to "fix" her coffee, but who isn't and who doesn't? [Page Six]
• So what is up with that Taylor Momsen record contract that allows her singing on Gossip Girl and the "Runaways Project"? She's not in the Runaways movie! Was she was supposed to get Dakota Fanning's part? Or does she have a secret cameo? [TMZ]
• Beth Ditto has banned her girlfriend from touring with her: "[It's] not because I don't think she can handle it, but because that's my life. Say what you want about me. Say it to my face, say it behind my back, write it on the fucking bathroom mirror, I don't care. But do not talk about the people I love. I will lose my mind." [NME]
• An ambulance was called to David Hasselhoff's house yesterday; apparently his 17-year-old daughter, who was home with him, called her mother, saying that David was extremely drunk. A friend of Pamela's called 911. [TMZ, TMZ]
• January Jones, aka Mad Men's Betty Draper, has purchased a lovely home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A., and you can see the pix at the link. [The Real Estalker]
• The Guinness World Records board has refused to let the White Stripes into their record book for playing a one-note concert, due to insufficient interest. Twelve hundred people showed up to a gig in Canada where Jack White played an E. [Mirror]
• Stephen Moyer on his engagement to Anna Paquin: "It was very intimate and quite surprising for her, I think, and we were by ourselves at dinner in Hawaii and...I surprised her. But it was something that surprised me probably more than it surprised her." He also says: "She is very funny and very frank and very direct and beautiful… She doesn't take any of my nonsense." [E!]
• David Arquette and Ben Harper have a clothing line called Propr, and Arquette says: ""We love the idea of chivalry and going in an old-school barber… There's a quality that's in the finer details, like they really thought it out a step further." More from "A Night Out" with the duo at the link. [NY Times]
• Ryan O'Neal visited Farrah Fawcett's grave after their son, Redmond, was ordered to leave jail and go to rehab for a year. [Daily Mail, USA Today]
• Nicole's sister Antonia Kidman is engaged to Singapore-based banker Craig Marran. [News.com.au]
• Terry Gilliam got Johnny Depp to tango for The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus even though Johnny allegedly said "Men don't dance." [Mirror]
• Oy: Sacha Baron Cohen will play an Israeli tour guide on The Simpsons. [UPI]
• From a piece on John Malkovich's new film, Disgrace, set in post-apartheid South Africa: "[Malkovich's character] Lurie appears the virtual embodiment of white male arrogance, an English professor who views himself through the prism of Romantic poetry and who pursues an exploitive, obsessive affair with a much younger, mixed-race student. You can't say that he rapes her, but the issue of consent between an inexperienced young woman and a practiced seducer — one with direct power over her academic future — is complicated, to say the least." [Salon]
• Will Diddy switch record labels? [Page Six]
• Scott Weiland had a seizure on a plane while en route from Los Angeles to Florida, causing the plane to land in Dallas-Fort Worth; he is "doing great" now. [E!]
• Larry King hates frivolous lawsuits. [TMZ]
• John Travolta may be a witness at the trial for two people accused of trying to extort $25 million from him after his son died in the Bahamas. [AP]
• John Travolta says if he is called to testify, he will do so. [ET]
• Sources say John Travolta's testimony will be dramatic and emotional. [TMZ]
• Ozzy Osbourne's new memoir describes appearing on the MTV show The Osbournes as "terrifying" and like being "strapped to a rocket and being blasted through the stratosphere at warp factor ten." [Mirror]
• Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing on stage during a show in Spain; he reportedly had food poisoning. [UPI]
• James Blunt is accusing internet service providers of "handling stolen goods" by allowing file sharing and illegal downloads. [Telegraph]
• Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar's daughter, had been the victim of a blackmail plot; an arrest has been made. [Independent]
• District 9 is not welcome in Nigeria. [NY Post]
• "Frustrated cops probing Jordan's claim to have been raped by a celebrity said yesterday they could do no more unless she co-operates." [The Sun]
• "You're not going to be successful. You're not going to be millionaires (with the exception of MAYBE Kris and Adam). No one will care about you. Those fans who've been asking for your autograph all tour long - 98 percent of them don't give a flying poo about you once next season of Idol starts. In other words, your days of being a star are over. But that's all right - so are mine… The music business, for the most part, will treat you like an outsider… You are just a game show contestant who still needs to prove why you should be here. Move to a music city. L.A., New York or Nashville Leave home and live WAY below your means." — Chris Sligh, former American Idol contestant, to other Idol singers, on his blog. [NY Post]
• "I was never in the high, high fashion industry. I was never one of those superskinny, supertall waif girls who goes from show to show. When you do more commercial things, your weight is allowed to fluctuate a bit. Not every inch counts. It's hard for the girls. How old are they? Fifteen, 16? Some girls are naturally thin and can eat whatever they want. When I was 15, 16, there was not one ounce of fat on me, but some other girls have to work hard to stay like that. But the rules are not made by the models. To be part of this, they have to be the size the designer wants them to be. I'm not that skinny, and I never was, but I can pretty much eat whatever I want." — Heidi Klum. [Page Six Magazine]
• "My dream was always to work in a candy store. It was because of my obsession with candy; I don't have it any more, now that my teeth are all rotten. I did go to a university for a year, as shocking as that might sound to people, and there was a candy shop that I used to go to all the time, an old-fashioned one where all the candy was in these big glass jars. I used to go in there and look at all the candy and think, ‘God, it would be really cool to work in here; I could have candy whenever I wanted.' So I did want the keys to the candy store, but I had different keys." —Madonna. [Times of London]
• "At first, I didn't know whether I'd be healthy enough to film a full season of an action-packed drama series. But soon I realized there was nothing I wanted to do more. We got in touch with the network to let them know about my diagnosis and I sent this message: 'Don't count me out. I can do this.' All I could think was: 'If I'm going out, I'd rather go out on a high note, doing quality work I believe in.'" — From Patrick Swayze's memoir, on doing The Beast with a cancer diagnosis. [Daily Mail]
• "We need to be the example of respect, of tolerance, and just how to be civil, can we do that? Even though I didn't win the crown that night I know that the Lord has so much of a bigger crown in heaven for me. I never asked to be thrown into politics… but you know what, I'm proud of the stance that I took and I'm glad that God upheld me for such a time as this." — Carrie Prejean. [NY Daily News]
• "Forget about playing Tony Blair. When I told her I was definitely playing vampire Aro in Twilight, she cried. She was so overwhelmed and annoyed that I muscled in on something that was hers. She's already told me she'll be my date for the premiere." — Michael Sheen's 10-year-old daughter, Lily is excited about his career for once. [Page Six]

• Gerard Butler had to shoot a wedding photograph with Jennifer Aniston as a prop for their characters in The Bounty. Gerard says:

"It was quite romantic. We were joking about it: 'We might as well make this real. Keep everybody happy.'" As Gerard slipped the ring on Jen's finger, his phone rang. It was his mother. "I have to call you back. I'm getting married," Butler deadpanned — on speakerphone, so the crew could hear. "She goes, 'What?' " Butler clarified: " 'I'm marrying Jennifer Aniston!' and she's like: 'Oh, good. Well, I'm glad you made the right choice.'" [USA Today]

• Lindsay Lohan feels "scared" and "violated" after the break in at her Hollywood Hills home. She Tweeted: "I know it was not a ROBBERY. electronics weren't taken... just things that a certain old friend knew meant a lot to me. It really makes me sad, and well, obviously-scared. :( and I'm sorry i haven't been on in a bit... my life has been kind of in shambles considering my house was broken into and i feel really violated." [The Sun]
• Uh-oh: The "real reason" Lindsay is upset about someone stealing the safe from her house? She had some "very incriminating" videos, photos and legal documents inside. Will they go public? [Chicago Sun-Times]
• Oh Lord. Britney Spears is "still madly in love" with Adnan Ghalib, the paparazzo she dated for a few months early last year. Notes this column: "The pap-turned-celebrity-by-association was later charged with assault, hit-and-run and battery stemming from an incident in which he allegedly attempted to run over a court official who was trying to serve a restraining order on him." A catch! [Fox News]
• Britney has been catching shows while in New York: Wicked and The Little Mermaid, for instance. But her lawyer Larry Rudolph is with her, not alleged boyfriend/manager Jason Trawick. What does it mean? [Page Six]
• MSNBC Scoop columnist Courtney Hazlett went to the Britney Spears concert in NYC and reports: "When Spears wasn't changing from one fabric swatch to another, her time onstage could be summed up in one word: walking. There was walking from one side of the stage to the other. There was walking from one backup dancer so she could be flung toward another. Sometimes you could find Spears walking to a cage, entering and having another person push it, so the cage could do the walking for her." [MSNBC Scoop]
• The 53-year-old man charged with stalking Miley Cyrus told an investigator he planned on visiting her movie set and "finishing things." [AP]
• Jon and Kate Gosselin are accusing each other of financial deception. Prediction: It will get uglier than an Ed Hardy T-shirt. [Radar Online]
• The real reason Kate called the cops on Jon recently? She heard Jon was going out drinking and leaving the kids with babysitter Stephanie Santoro. [Radar Online]
• Jon was spotted wearing a shirt with the words "Lies lies lies lies." [Gatecrasher]
• On August 13, Jon and Kate's plus 8 — the children — staged a rebellion, refusing to be videotaped for the show. "The kids staged a sit-in — a revolt," Jon tells Life & Style. "They didn't want to work." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Now it comes out: Documents released by the court show that Chris Brown and Rihanna had a history of violence. She had slapped him during an argument three months before the February incident in which he assaulted her; his response was to shove her into a wall. A second fight, in January, involved an argument inside of an SUV in Barbados. Chris Brown "exited and broke the front driver and passenger side windows of the car. No one was injured during the incident." [People, TMZ]
• Before Chris Brown was sentenced, his record label CEO, a lawyer who has worked with Oprah and Brown's pastor all wrote letters to the judge. [TMZ]
• Chris Brown has been "depressed" since the assault on Rihanna. [TMZ]
• Court documents also show that in June, Chris Brown said that he was "ashamed and embarrassed" about the Rihanna beating. He wanted to plead guilty, but his lawyer, Mark Geragos, would not let him. Brown also told probation officers that he wanted to attend domestic violence counseling and "do it right." [TMZ]
• An official transcript of the incident between Chris and Rihanna is at the link; it is detailed and disturbing. Just a snippet: "As he drove, he continued to punch the victim in the face with his right hand while steering the vehicle with his left hand…
  [Brown] looked at [Rihanna] and said 'I'm going to beat the shit out of you when we get home! You wait and see!'" [TMZ]
• Kari Ann Peniche, whom you may have seen topless in Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane's nude video, says that she is a sex addict but not a madam. She says her hard drive has pictures of reputed madams because she once wrote a college paper about prostitution. She also says: "My biggest concern is my family. My brother is saying he wants to change his last name now. He goes, 'You're not my sister anymore.'" [E!]
• Six words: Neal Patrick Harris on American Idol. [Gatecrasher]
• Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer got together during the pilot of True Blood, but kept it very quiet. Costar Carrie Preston says: "They were very cool and professional about it." [People]
• John Mayer and Taylor Swift will be making music together, and that is not a euphemism. [Gatecrasher]
• Beyoncé has been named Billboard's Woman of The Year. [AP]
• Paula Abdul has gotten the boot from Ugly Betty "over her outrageous demands" — including a private jet. This report claims she will host a VH1 show called Divas instead and Kristen Johnston will take Paula's part on Ugly Betty. [The Sun]
• Danielle Staub from Real Housewives Of New Jersey needs a cover shot for her upcoming memoir, and is trying to get photographers to take a picture of her for free. A source says, "It's embarrasing and tacky!" [Gatecraasher]
• A "skripper" pal of Amber Rose claims that she got illegal injections from a "hood doctor" to make her butt bigger. [Media Takeout]
• Chelsea Handler and her boyfriend have broken up. But as you may know, her boyfriend is Ted Harbert, CEO of Comcast, aka her boss. He's moved out of the house and into a hotel. [Gatecrasher]
• Joe Francis is facing a criminal trial, and his defense team will try to legitimize Joe by linking the Girls Gone Wild mastermind to stars like Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn and Jack Nicholson. Too bad Jen's name is misspelled in the presentation slide. [The Smoking Gun]
• Curious about Martina Navratilova's love life? Want to see the word "galimony" used in a sentence? Click the link! [Page Six]
• A&E is planning a reality series about the Jackson brothers. The network had already ordered a show before Michael Jackson died, but now the series will be expanded and focus on the band as they reunite as brothers — "underneath a cloud of tragedy." [NY Times]
• Comedy Central has been doing research on its fans and finds that viewers say that "people think I'm cool because I watch" Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. [NY Times]
• Drag performer Erickatoure Aviance went to a taping of the Wendy Williams show, but was told that she could not appear on camera or ask any questions because she was "in violation of the no-costumes dress code." Aviance said: "This is not a costume." And someone connected with the show said: "Well, it's a costume to us. We don't want the show to turn into Let's Make a Deal, where everyone comes in crazy costumes." Aviance was stunned: "So you're comparing me to a man in a gorilla suit?" Aviance notes: "I was wearing a ponytail piece and a bang piece. It was much less hair than Wendy was wearing and, p.s., much less hair than any of the other black women in the audience." Now Lonnie Burstein, the VP of the company behind the show, has issued an apology to Aviance and to GLAAD. [Advocate, Advocate]
• Susan Sarandon: Joining the cast of Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2: Electric Boogaloo. [Variety]
• Redmond O'Neal, son of Farrah Fawcett, has signed a reality show deal — brokered by his dad, Ryan O'Neal — that will chronicle hus strugle with addiction. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "Eddie Cibrian and Wife 'Both Happy'...Now That They're Getting Divorced." [E!]
• The Who's Pete Townshend has written a new musical, Floss, about the aging process. It's like, "Tommy can you hear me? Turn up your hearing aid!" [AP]
• Whatshername's new boyfriend tells her he loves her 50 million times a day, which seems excessive. [Daily Mail]
• "It was exhilaratingly humiliating. But I completely became giddy in a strange way the moment I put on the dress. Vanity quickly set in, and I thought to myself, 'I wish my belly was flatter.' Let's face it, I don't look great in a dress, but it's nice to hear I have nice legs." — Liev Schreiber on playing a transvestite in Taking Woodstock. Click for pic! [People]
• "The Runaways is absolutely not a biopic. It's not fact-for-fact. What they did was basically take elements from the Runaways story and created a parallel narrative. We're hoping it will be great. They exceeded our expectations with the casting. ... Even if it's not a huge movie, it's going to have a colossal effect on young girls playing rock 'n' roll, for sure. Kristen [Stewart] was so into it, into the whole vibe of doing this. I think she felt a weight and a responsibility to interpret it correctly. She was really serious about it and was watching me and asking me all sorts of question, from speech aspects to watching my body language, watching where I stood, watching my guitar playing. She really worked hard to get it right." — Joan Jett. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• "Everything in our movie, it's such a heightened version of reality. People don't just break up [in the films] – they break up and it literally kills you. It's not like you just say, 'Oh, I'm really depressed and crying.' I always had a really hard time figuring out, 'Am I doing enough? Do I look like I'm going to die?' My favorite line in the book is when I have to say to [Jacob], 'It's him; it's always been him!' Yeah, it killed me. It killed me." — New Moon star Kristen Stewart. [People]
• "I do get men trying to pick me up and it's funny because a year ago, when I was dressing like this, with a very avant-garde fashion sense, I think I intimidated men much more. It was funny the other day when I was wearing my cone head and this radio DJ was saying, 'Oh you're so sexy', when the mic was off. I thought, 'I can't believe that after a whole year, they finally think my cone head is sexy." — Lady Gaga. [Mirror]

• Oprah's been gushing about meeting Shawn Carter:

"Jay-Z is my new best friend!" Oprah told Gayle King. "He was so charming and delightful - and he smelled so good." [People]

• If I'm reading this story correctly, Lily Allen's "brickie boyfriend" ran away down the street to avoid being snapped by the paparazzi and she was left holding some Indian food and a pair of pants. [The Sun]
• The latest on Jon and Kate Gosselin is that he's still trying to appear on that show Divorced Dad's Club; which does not make TLC happy. And they're not happy about his conduct lately; apparently his contract has a "morals clause" that does not include being seen going in and out of bars and drinking. Kate's been "pulling up the slack" Jon's created. Plus! All the money made last season from Jon & Kate Plus 8 went into a joint account. Kate put some into a college fund for the kids; Jon spent his share. "Kate's people say Jon is making money
  on the side by selling pictures and stories of him and the kids to the tabloids." [TMZ]
• "When pictures emerged of Kate Moss looking haggard as she sunbathed in St Tropez, nobody was more shocked than the supermodel herself… now she has planned a '10 years younger' health plan to regain her youthful complexion." [Daily Mail]
• Survivor winner Richard Hatch was sent to jail after doing an interview for the Today show, even though the interview was cleared by the Bureau of Prisons. (Hatch had been on house arrest.) [AP]
• Naomi Campbell, Queen Rania, and Jacques Chirac are in Saint-Tropez, and you are not. [Page Six]
• Pregnant Penelope Cruz: Avoiding the spotlight. [Page Six]
• Mariah Carey's album has been pushed back to September 29, which means that she'll miss the Grammy cutoff date by just one day and won't be in the running. She also won't hit shelves the same day as Whitney Houston's new album, which comes out September 1.
• You know how Dr. Conrad Murray has released a video statement? Columnist Courtney Hazlett points out that Michael Jackson really pioneered the scripted, recorded statement. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "Michael Jackson 'self-harmed' to get painkillers"… "He'd bang his head against the wall, hit his fists and arms against furniture, anything to cause a cut or bruise." [Mirror]
• Michael Jackson's funeral could cost $50,000 when you add in police and pther city services. [TMZ]
• Cue screams: Joe Jonas will be one of the celebrity judges on American Idol. Victoria Beckham, Mary J. Blige and Shania Twain will also appear in the spot vacated by Paula Abdul. [People]
• Yesterday, a judge ruled that Paris Hilton won't have to pay investors from failed flick Pledge This, who were claiming she didn't promote the movie enough. [Page Six]
• "Russell Brand shows off sex moves." [UKPA, Twitter]
• Ask Katy Perry a question her manager doesn't like, and he will pull the plug on your interview. Literally. Like, the lights will go out. Despite this, Katy was "delightful." [News.com.au]
• Inglourious Basterds prequel? "If the movie proves to be very popular, then we'll do it," says Quentin Tarantino. [Gatecrasher]
• Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush went to dinner together on Monday — strolling into a Ruth's Chris Steak House in New Orleans. Back together? Just friends? [People]
• "Kourtney Kardashian Agonized Over Whether to Keep Her Baby." [People
• Susan Sarandon's daughter Eva Amurri took pole-dancing lessons to appear as a stripper in the third season of Californication. "I have such a respect now for women who do this. It's very athletic, I mean, they're athletes!" she says. And her mom came to a few classes: "We didn't, like, do it together, although I'm sure that's a nice visual for people." Of appearing naked on TV, Amurri says: "You basically see boobs and butt. It's the same as you would see on a European beach. It's nothing scandalous… Men are naked as much as the women are on that show, which I really like. If you're going to be naked, at least it's equal-opportunity nudity." [Observer]
• Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming took a tour of L.A.'s "megapricey" Carlyle Residences, where apartments start at $2.9 million and penthouses go for as much as $15 million. [E!]
• A Leona Lewis track leaked on to the Internet, and Simon Cowell, quite naturally, called the cops: Looks like her record label was being targeted by hackers. [The Sun]
• Jon Hamm has joined the cast of Sucker Punch, an action fantasy flick with Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish and Carla Gugino, among others. It's set in the 1950s and directed by 300's Zack Snyder. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• American Idol's David Cook, 26, has an "older woman" in his life: She's 35. [Page Six]
• Liam and Noel Gallagher no longer speak to each other. "He doesn't like me and I don't like him, that's it," Liam says. Nevertheless! Oasis will headline the V festival this weekend. [Independent]
• "Mindy McCready Wouldn't Leave My Daughter's House Says Kari Ann's Mom." [Radar Online]
• Rhea Perlman and her daughter, Lucy DeVito, will appear in Love, Loss And What I Wore, an Off-Broadway production produced by Nora and Delia Ephron. [Variety]
• The surviving members the iconic British comedy troupe Monty Python will be presented with a special BAFTA honor this fall. [UPI]
• "I'm a fan of the traditional Speedo. I think it's time to bring back the ass cleavage." — Vivica. A. Fox. [WWD]
• "This is the first time someone gave me a part where I'm strong, where I'm the engine, the motor of the scene. Many times actresses are an accessory to a story line. To be handed intelligent dialogue was nice. It was a very new experience for me." — Diane Kruger, on Inglourious Basterds. [Reuters]
• "I love the way my mother wore clothes. She used to cut her own hair and wore very little make up and she just did things differently. She used to wear odd, different-colour argyle socks but then she also wore beautiful British tailored suits and little tea dresses with platform shoes. That's sort of how people dress now so she was very modern and ahead of her time in many ways. She really didn't give a damn about what people thought and back then it was all about conforming. It really wasn't the done thing to reflect your own personality through your clothes. She was also an amazing photographer. Much of her work launched Rolling Stone magazine and at the same time she was very modest. If she had met the Queen she would probably have been more interested in talking to the butler. That's just the way she was." — Stella McCartney on late mother Linda, to Harper's Bazaar. [Daily Express]
• "It's awesome and has great margaritas and tacos... How fun is that? I just go and sit on a bar stool and it's fun, like, 'Oh, I'm hangin' here at my place.'" — Renee Zellweger, on the East Hampton taco bar, Blue Parrot, she co-owns. [Daily Express]
• "I'd be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. And then I would jump in the pool and swim — and I always get in the pool naked. I used to spend a lot of time with Woody Harrelson, and he's not afraid to get naked." — Alicia Silverstone on gardening naked. [Page Six]
• "[Our relationship] was amazing… [But] Jon said he couldn't be seen having a girlfriend, so he told me to drive to a neighbor's house after midnight, when the kids were asleep. He said he'd pick me up in his four-wheeler, take me to his house and drop me off again at 6 a.m." — Kate Major on seeing Jon Gosselin, with whom she claims she had three sexual encounters. More in Midweek Madness. [Gatecrasher via Life & Style]
• "HIV/Aids is a huge pandemic that to be fair, to be honest, governments have not responded to effectively enough. Churches can do a tremendous amount, and I know they do, but then again they can do tremendous harm, because when the Pope goes to a country in Africa and tells them that they shouldn't be using condoms when we know that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, I don't think that makes any sense at all. I'm comfortably wealthy, white, educated — I'm one of the lucky ones. I have had good healthcare and my children have good healthcare. I want that for everybody, I want people to have fundamental access to the most basic things. Everybody can do something, I really believe that, that each of us have a sphere of influence, whether it be your friends, your family or workplace, or colleagues." — Annie Lennox, at the Festival of Politics at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. [BBC News]

• Change! Stately old American Vogue is apparently seeking to revamp itself. Says Wayne Sterling, the mag wants "a new circle of models, an influx of fresh, young photographers and a desire for 'unpredictability' in the stories." Unpredictability. In Vogue. [TI]

• Marc Jacobs has added two pro-marriage equality t-shirts to his Marc by Marc line. One shows a line drawing of a lesbian couple with a child, and the other shows an American flag and a dollar sign; both have the tag line "I pay my taxes, I want my rights." The tees cost $24 and are available now. Jacobs is of course looking forward to his own gay marriage, in Massachusetts, later this summer. [PerezHilton]
• Jacobs, along with Patti Smith and David Rockwell, has been named one of the Pratt Institute's Legends of 2009. [WWD]
• Madonna wears diamond dust on her eyes. For that extra sparkly something. [People]
• Patrick Demarchelier shot Gossip Girl's Taylor Momsen in Central Park for the September cover of Teen Vogue. [TFS]
• The Kaiser's Chanel accessories ads featuring Lily Allen, who recently launched her own jewelry line, are also out. She wears a tiara in one; in another, she looks like she's hiding behind a carry-all. [FWD]
• Amanda Hearst, the model/heiress, is rumored to have been offered a job sinecure at Hearst-owned Marie Claire. [P6]
• More details are emerging about the only bid for the house of Lacroix that the bankrupt company's administrator has yet deemed "serious": Italian department store company Borletti had bid jointly with Christian Lacroix himself. Borletti bought the Printemps department store chain from Pinault-Printemps-Redoute in 2006, and owns the Italian department store La Rinescente jointly with Deutsche Bank. French turnaround firm Bernard Krief Consulting made a bid that the administrator described as "insufficient" for the fashion house, and which it has promised to revise upwards. No dollar values for these bids has been revealed. [Reuters]
• Maybe one way Christian Lacroix could make a little cash would be licensing his name to an unaffiliated uniforms division, since that's exactly what Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga did. Air Tahiti Nui sent out a very happy press release yesterday announcing the introduction of its brand-spanking-new Balenciaga uniforms — but further investigation has revealed that the gear was made under license by a uniform company using the Balenciaga name. Our visions of flying with space-age Ghesquière creations were crushed. [The Moment]
• The rumors were true: Coach is launching — and fully funding — a signature line for its creative director, Reed Krakoff. The designer's eponymous accessories collection will launch for Fall '10. [WWD]
• This is despite the fact that Coach suffered a 32% decline in quarterly profits for the period ended June 27. Net income fell from $213.5 million last year to $145.8 million. [WWD]
• Rachel Roy and Estelle are working together on a jewelry line. Roy announced this via Twitter. [WWD]
• Zappos earned $10.7 million from total sales of $635 million worth of sales last year, according to new owner Amazon's SEC filing. [TBI]
• New York City charity HousingWorks, which sells used clothing and furniture and donates its profits to fund AIDS and homelessness, has been doing great business in the recession — understandable, considering so many of their offerings are designer. Susan Sarandon, Bill Clinton, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chloé Sevigny, as well as, one presumes, a whole slew of regular well-dressed folk, all recently donated clothes and goods. [NYObs]
• Bravo, still reeling from the loss of Project Runway, is launching another fashion-themed reality show: Launch My Line. The concept pairs new designers with established industry lights in order to develop the youngsters' businesses — the best mentee gets his or her line launched, and the best mentor gets $50,000. It all unfolds under the watchful eye of hosts Dean and Dan Caten, of DSquared2, and judges Stefani Greenfield, formerly of retail chain Scoop, and Lisa Kline. [FabSugar]
• Profits at the multinational luxury company LVMH, which owns everything from Louis Vuitton to Dior to Sephora, dropped 23% in the first six months of this year, to 687 million euros, or $934.3 million, from 891 million euros, or $1.39 billion, a year earlier. Sales during the same period rose 0.2% on a year earlier. The top performing brands was Sephora, and Louis Vuitton handbag sales remained strong. [WWD]
• Maybe, just maybe, one reason profits are down is the fact that Louis Vuitton is trying to sell a $450 USB key? Hermès, in any case, is jumping on the lux-tech bandwagon with a bluetooth device "made of super lightweight carbon fiber, aluminum and supple leather ... [with a] custom-built silicon earring." [Racked]
• Men's control underwear is still being talked about as if it's a new idea. It isn't. [Telegraph]

[New York, May 26. Image via Bauer-Griffin]

Jennifer Romolini of Shine attempts to break down the "age appropriate" question by bringing up recent examples from the Screen Actor's Guild awards. Romolini praises 59-year-old Meryl Streep for her "great, classic, age-appropriate outfit," but then goes after Susan Sarandon for "wearing a massively low-cut sleeveless gown. It showed tons of cleavage and also her arms, which are not what they once were." Romolini tries to cover this bit of nastiness by explaining, "I'm not knocking her, we all can relate to this. Even with working out, at 35, my biceps have begun to resemble grande burritos."

In her defense, Romolini notes that as we get older, what is "sexy" changes, and that's a fair point. Usually it's because we realize the things we thought were "sexy" at a younger age now come across as a bit skankified in a way; as we become older, and more comfortable in our bodies and with our sexuality, we don't feel the need to wear club gear out on Thursday nights in order to attract attention. As Romolini notes, "some of what I used to wear now just makes me feel dumb."

"There are two sides to this, obviously," Romolini writes, "One could argue that Sarandon looks great and younger than her 62 years." Well guess what? I'm on that side! Because honestly? Susan Sarandon is 62 years old and wore the hell out of that dress. And for those of us in our 20's and 30's to knock her for her body not being what it "once was" is to perpetuate the idea that women should cover up and sit down once they reach a certain age, thereby setting up a future in which we, too, will be expected to keep our bodies hidden under suitable pantsuits and long sleeves.

Yes, the idea of what is "sexy" and "age appropriate" can change, but to attack a woman for having the confidence to wear a dress that makes her feel sexy is to essentially tell her to cover up because society might not agree. Was she showing some cleavage? Yes. Was she on the red carpet in a Rock of Love Bus ensemble? No. So picking on her body for—gasp—aging! is unfair and unnecessary.

Perhaps instead of attacking older women for continuing to embrace their bodies and carry themselves with confidence and style, we should celebrate their choices. Both Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon represented women of their age that night, and continued to prove to Hollywood that sexiness can come in many styles, at any age.

Do You Dress "Your Age?"[Shine]

• Michael Jackson is supposed to share 50% of the profits from the Thriller video with director John Landis, but now he's suing because MJ hasn't paid in four years. As always, there's a weird twist.

• There doesn't seem to be anyone in charge of Jackson's finances except for a "mysterious Los Angeles physician" named Tohme Tohme. [Perez Hilton]
• Patrick McDermott, the former partner of Olivia Newton-John, disappeared almost four years ago, but now investigators say he is alive and on the run and has been traveling along the Mexican and South American coastline. Investigators believe he disappeared so he could avoid paying debts and enable his teenage son to collect a $150,000 life insurance payout. [News.com.au]
• Benicio Del Toro walked out of an interview with The Washington Times about his controversial new Che Guevara biopic. Del Toro was offended by a question about the film's portrayal of the Bolivian and Cuban revolutions. "I'm getting uncomfortable," said Del Toro. "I'm done. I'm done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don't give a damn." [Media Bistro]
• Ricky Gervais says that according to his mother, his middle name is spelled "Dene" on his birth certificate because his father was drunk when he filled it out. [The Daily Mail]
• Gervais also says that he's started writing a skit for Sesame Street that he will also star in. It probably won't focus on that charming family anecdote. [The Sun]
• Apparently Scarlett Johansson didn't get the hint when her album was a critical and commercial flop. She recorded a cover of the Jeff Buckley song "Last Goodbye" for the He's Just Not That Into You soundtrack, which you can listen to here. [Perez Hilton]
• Rosie O'Donnell's Maravel Arts Center, a Fame-like after school program for poor New York City kids interested in musical theater, opened yesterday. Rosie said at the event that she stopped blogging because it "wasn't providing the joy that it used to," but says she'll start posting again soon about Rosie's Broadway Kids "more to showcase things that I'm doing as opposed to my inner angst or thoughts." [People]
• Susan Sarandon will guest star on ER but only in an episode with fellow Oscar winner George Clooney. The episode will air toward the end of the season. [E!]
• K-Fed went to Britney's new house to pick up their sons, and stayed for a barbeque in the back yard after Jaime Spears invited him in. [People]
• Simon Cowell was cursed by a witch after he and the other judges voted her off Britain's Got Talent. It was bound to happen eventually. [The Mirror]
• Paris Hilton has launched a new reality TV show in the UK to finder her "British Best Friend" but she says she won't consider Amy Winehouse. Maybe Paris should spend a little less time rejecting potential BFFs and more time wondering why she can't make friends without the aid of a reality show. [The Star]
• Matt Damon narrates a show about environment for PBS called Journey to the Planet Earth and producers say he refused to read lines about rising Chinese soybean consumption leading to slash-and-burn farming in the Brazilian Amazon until they brought in scientists to confirm that it was true and they weren't just bashing China. [The Miami Herald]
• Jessica Alba defended herself on her blog, saying she's not stupid because she told a reporter "Be neutral about it, be Sweden!" Jess writes: "It's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: [Wikipedia link] if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!” [E!]
• Dick Van Dyke says in a new interview that Walt Disney didn't hire him for Mary Poppins just because he was a talented singer and dancer. "[Disney] had heard me in an interview talking about what was happening to family entertainment," says Van Dyke. "I was decrying the fact that it seemed like no holds were barred anymore in entertainment. ... That's why he called me in, because I said something he agreed with." [CNN]
• Molly Ringwald is writing a book about living as a 40-year-old. Says Ringwald: "[The book is] not just about 40, but people who are of my generation, catching up and what that's like and how you have to reidentify yourself at that age in a culture that's pretty youth-driven. But it's fine actually! Leading up to 40 is much worse than being 40. The sort of tick-tock — everything just seems so much weirder and scarier than it actually is." [Media Bistro]

The Good:

Was Michelle Obama's Jason Wu (which I've already heard called "bridal" and "toga-like") the gown of our dreams? Maybe not, but she looked stunning. Here, at the Western Ball.


How gorgeously festive is Jill Biden at the Commander in Chief's Ball?


Kerry Washington - at the Creative Coalition Ball at the Harman Center- heats things up a few degrees!


Love, love, love how much fun Marisa Tomei - at CC - is having with this!


Speaking of retro! Beyonce was Etta James-glam at the Neighborhood Ball!


Anne Hathaway (at Creative Coalition)does classic glam like a pro.


Amy Brenneman (at the Inaugural Purple Ball at the Fairmont Hotel) is a brave woman in 30's-style silk!


Heather Graham's CC gown is subdued, but undeniably elegant.


Alfre Woodard (at the Harman) is absolutely pristine.


I love the boldness of Susan Sarandon (at CC) doing menswear!


At Creative Coalition: Kim Raver rocks the ethereal trend to good affect!


The Bad:
Danielle Bisutti's Purple Ball gown is like "Poison" perfume in dress form. If that's what you're going for...!


Rachael Leigh Cook's CC gown has about ten too many tiers.


Another ruffly choice: Ashley Judd's PB pick reminds me of the toilet paper gowns I used to make my dolls!


Loving Shani Rigsbee's squash-like color choice for the PB, but why so tight?


I like plenty about Kate Walsh's CC dress...but what's with the belt notches?!


[Images via Getty]

• Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony had trouble getting into the Neighborhood Ball last night, because they were late. You gotta get there before the President! [Page Six]

• An aside: Was Jennifer Lopez seen sneaking out of the Scientology Center in L.A.? Even though her dad and her friend Leah Remini are Scientologists, J. Lo has always said she's not into it. [Gatecrasher]
• Whoa, the American Music Ball was canceled hours before it started. Performers George Clinton, Ben Vereen and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had to go to the Heroes Ball instead. [Page Six]
• Susan Sarandon got a Politico blogger kicked out of a Creative Coalition brunch in D.C. What did the blogger do? Ask Sarandon if she'd say a word or two about Obama's speech. [Politico]
• Here's how Kerry Washington watched Barack Obama's swearing-in yesterday: "I dressed as if going for skiing. I had many layers — tights, jeans, thermal underwear," she says. "We stood in line for the hours everyone else did. I had a seated ticket to the swearing-in, but I gave up my seat and went up to the front area and kneeled." [USA Today]
• By the by, a new musical called Obama On My Mind opens in March in London. No, really. [People]
• Get ready: Thursday morning, Forest Whitaker will announce this year's Academy Award nominations. Then the Oscars will air live on February 22. [People]
• Presenters at the SAG Awards include Christina Applegate, Kyra Sedgwick, Jon Hamm, John Krasinski, Angela Bassett and Eric McCormack. The event takes place Sunday night at 8 p.m. and will be simulcast on TBS and TNT. [Variety]
• Date alert! Renée Zellweger was spotted having dinner with MSNBC legal correspondent Dan Abrams. [Page Six]
• Amy Winehouse is a heroine! Not on heroin, but a lifesaver: A tourist was having a sailing lesson in the Caribbean when she was thrown out of the boat by a big wave. The woman landed on some rocks and Amy dashed to her side, keeping her from being swept back into the sea. [The Sun]
• Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who saved Flight 1549, was seen dining on bird (chicken) at a D.C. restaurant called Hudson last night. [TMZ]
• Joaquin Phoenix threw a fit when Casey Affleck and the documentary crew arrived late to his rap performance in Las Vegas. "Thanks for fucking everything up," Phoenix yelled before throwing a CD on the floor. A source says: "Nobody can tell if he is for real or if this is all a big joke." Sorta hoping it's a joke. [Page Six]
• Oh God: When he was performing in Vegas, Joaquin Phoenix's pants had a massive hole in the crotch. "It was hard for anyone to focus on his singing," laughed one witness. "The worst was that the hole was at eye [level] for most of the crowd." [Gatecrasher]
• Sean Penn's been criticized for meeting with people like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, but his publicist says: "Sean is a champion of civil rights." [Perez]
• A California appeals court has put the Roman Polanski case on hold. [Reuters]
• A month after his brother died of a gunshot wound, Mark Ruffalo is back at work, directing and starring in Sympathy For Delicious, a flick about a paralyzed DJ who seeks out the world of faith healing. [Yahoo News via E!]
• Kristen Stewart is at Sundance plugging a new flick, Adventureland, but she reluctantly spoke about the Twilight sequel, sorta. Click for "um, like" video. [E!]
• Kevin Federline's new girlfriend "played mommy" when she and K-Fed took Sean Preston and Jayden James out to dinner over the weekend. [TMZ]
• Jude Law was wearing a neck brace after "tweaking" his neck while working out, but you can relax, he's fine. [Page Six]
• Danny Boyle is in Mumbai, defending Slumdog Millionaire: "The thing that I wanted people to take away from the film was ... this breathtaking, breathtaking resilience of people and the joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life," he says. "What we tried to do in the film was include as much of the city as possible." This paper notes that half of the city's 17 million people are homeless. [Hollywood Reporter]
• Blind item! "Which married morning-show producer rumored to be having an affair with a married on-air colleague was 'fidgeting incessantly' during inauguration weekend parties with her recently ringless ring finger?" [Page Six]
• Blind item! "Which supermodel had to have an uber-rocker’s teeth marks photoshopped off her bared bottom after her magazine photo shoot?" [Gatecrasher]
• Simon Cowell has fired Britain's Got Talent judge Kelly Brook after just six days on the job. Guess she didn't "bring the crazy," which is what a "judge" has to do these days. [Perez]
• Paul Giamatti plays himself in a Sundance flick called Cold Souls and says: "I kind of forgot that I was playing myself in this... I kind of felt that [director Sophie Bart] captured, in a funny way, an archetypal type of neurotic New York self-involved actor." [ONTD]
• Star Jones and chef Herb Wilson: It's on. [Perez]
• Ralph Macchio is not happy about the Karate Kid remake Will and Jayden Smith are plotting. Macchio says: "From my personal view, filling the void of what Mr. Miyagi was - and the magic of that character - is going to be the toughest task. I don't know where the romantic story-arc goes [with Jayden Smith] at that age." [Perez]
• Alyssa Milano has received a restraining order against a man who has "increasingly" harassed and stalked her. [ET]
• James Taylor wore a hat and sunglasses during his performance at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday because he either "fell during rehearsal" (official story) or had some sort of fisticuffs with a "wooden parrot in his hotel room" (unofficial story). Either way, he got 50 stitches in his forehead. Stupid parrot. [Page Six]
• Wesley Snipes has a pending three-year jail sentence for tax evasion, but has been loading up on tax-free swag at Sundance. [Page Six]
• "If someone rapes a girl he should be bent over and the same thing done to him. I’m sorry that’s just the way I feel. I’m very strict. If someone is done for drink-driving they should have their licence taken away for life. And if someone steals they should have to wear a dye on their skin, like a tattoo on their ear or somewhere it can be seen – like across their face! That would stop people stealing." — Katie "Jordan" Price. [The Sun]
• "I really know how to think. If I decide to make a coat red in the show, it's not just red. I think: is it communist red? Is it cherry cordial? Is it ruby red? Or is it apple red? Or the big red balloon red? I mean there's like so many fucking different kinds of red. And so you have to say, well, what are we trying to say in this scene? Is it a happy red? Or a sad red? Is it a lace red? Or a leather red? Or a wool red? It's like there are so many components to making a show and making art… I strive to be a female Warhol. I want to make films and music, do photography and paint one day, maybe. Make fashion. Make big museum art installations. I would be a bit more mixed-media than him probably - combining mixed media and imagery and doing more of a kind of a weird pop-art piece." — Lady GaGa. [Guardian]
• "I wanted to reach out and let you know that due to scheduling conflicts with certain cast members and location/weather considerations, we had to wait until now to shoot a couple of scenes. Please rest assured that Wolverine will be badass and hopefully meet all of your expectations." — Hugh Jackman. [Page Six]
• "It's intense, and there are no weights involved. And some of it's like girly stuff, like just kicking your leg, but it’s muscles you don’t really ever work at. Men don’t usually go to the gym and say, 'I’m going to develop my ass. This’ll be the J.Lo workout.'" — 50 Cent, on his fitness regimen. [Gatecrasher]
• "His attitude in the play is, 'Hey, I'm pretty kickass. Sure, I made some mistakes, but any president does, and, for the most part, I did a good job.'" — Will Ferrell on playing Dubya in You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush. [Village Voice]

• More from Jennifer Aniston, whose Vogue interview has been leaking all over the internet: "There is more to me than just a tabloid girl. This whole 'Poor lonely Jen' thing, this idea that I'm so unlucky in love? I actually feel I've been unbelievably lucky in love. I don't feel like I'm supposed to be any further along or somewhere that I'm not. I'm right where I'm supposed to be." Oh! And she also says: "I never liked Sex and the City, the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find the Man. It is just not up my alley. I don't believe in it. There is nothing you can control about love." [Perez Hilton]
• Oh, Jen also says when it comes to John Mayer, "People need to mind their own business." But! She gushes: "I deeply, deeply care about him; we talk, we adore one another. And that's where it is." [People]
• You know how Jennifer Aniston has a cleavage-baring red dress on for her Vogue cover? So did Angelina Jolie, for her January Vogue cover. Also? They both posed on sand! (Click to see both covers.) [The.Life Files]
• Paul Sculfor, who previously dated Aniston and is now Cameron Diaz's boyfriend, is taking Cammie home to the UK to meet his family. Christmas in England! [Daily Express]

• George Clooney on Prop 8: "At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black." [E!]
• Daniel Craig doesn't hold the umbrella over his girlfriend when it rains. [The Sun]
• "Quantum of Solace is not a great movie. It's full of explosions and set pieces, and reminds everyone who sees it of the "Bourne" movies. But as a James Bond movie? It ranks far below the usual standards." —Roger Friedman. [Fox 411]
• BREAKING: A dead body was found outside of Paula Abdul's house. [TMZ]
• By the by, Mark Ronson is still sad that Amy Winehouse couldn't get her shit together enough to finish their Bond theme. [Daily Express]
• Baz Luhrmann admits that Australia isn't finished yet! "I'm going back to the mixing desk to finish it in 24 hours," he said Tuesday, just before he left for the airport. Hurry! [Reuters]
• Brad Pitt's bodyguard had to protect him from a gaggle of paparazzi at the premiere of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, and Brad says: "Though they [the paparazzi] were exceptionally more aggressive than usual, breaking through a security barrier and into a private holding area, ultimately just another day in the life." [Yahoo News]
• Three years after the incident, Suge Knight is suing Kanye West over a shooting and the loss of a diamond earring. [TMZ]
• Donald Trump has been housing Jennifer Hudson and some of her relatives at the Trump International Hotel & Tower free of charge. "She's a great girl. And we're protecting them well," Trump says. "They are very safe." Wow, dude did a good deed. [People]
• Ouch: Jesse Metcalfe fell 40 feet, down two flights of stairs, and was knocked unconscious. He broke his leg, but an MRI shows no brain damage. This happened right after the World Music Awards, so one can't help but wonder if he was drinking… [The Sun]
• The story about Lauren Conrad throwing a fit at the airport? LC says it's false. "While it is a very entertaining story, I just don't think that highly of myself." Neither do we, dear. Neither do we. [People]
• Dear all you people who watch How I Met Your Mother: What is up with your show? First Heidi and Spencer, now Kim Kardashian. No, really. [E!]
• Kim Kardashian and boyfriend Reggie Bush love playing video games together. Zzz. [AP]
• Kevin Federline's lawyer says there won't be a hearing in family court to investigate his son's health. See, little Jayden got sick in Louisiana due to a "terrible allergic reaction" the first time Britney was allowed to take her kids out of the state since losing custody earlier this year. [People, E!]
• Mischa Barton was hounded by paparazzi outside of a club in L.A. and was very annoyed; the story takes the stance of "shouldn't she be glad people are still taking her picture?" but when you watch the video of aggro guys swarming around her, you get it: It's annoying. [E!]
• Warning: There will be full-frontal nudity in Sacha Baron Cohen's flick, Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Male. Cohen auditioned gay "adult" stars recently. [Rush & Molloy]
• UK TV presented Cilla Black says she once talked to Jennifer Lopez's then-husband, Chris Judd, and Lopez "started fuming." "She was screaming to her entourage: 'What's that woman doing with my man? Get rid of her.' It was so funny.'" [Daily Mail]
• Christina Aguilera says her son Max inspired her music: "I talk about being a super girl in the song 'Keeps Getting Better' and really that's due in great deal to the fact that I've had a complete new appreciation for women in general, for what we're capable of doing, of what our bodies are capable of undergoing, and creating." [People]
• Josh Brolin swears he heard George Bush saw W and "liked it very much." Karl Rove, on the other hand… [CNN]
• Blast from the past: Small Wonder, the robot girl sitcom. [BoingBoing]
• David Beckham has the best-selling calendar in the UK, yawn. [Mirror]
• LOL at this picture of a lady in curlers gazing upon Barack Obama. [Concrete Loop]
• Elton John and Billy Joel: On the road! Dueling pianos? Elton says: "It's two for the price of one. Our ticket prices are the same as anyone else's, but there's two of us. In this day and age, we hope to be getting people value for their money." [Mirror]
• The finale episode of TRL happens this Sunday. A huge finale show is planned; Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg, Kid Rock, 50 Cent, Fall Out Boy, Christina Aguilera, Travis Barker and Beyoncé will appear. [MTV]
• Joe Jonas and Camilla Belle: It's on. He's 19, she's 22. [TMZ]
• Headline of the day: "Jason Priestley on Brenda Walsh's Rumored Illness: 'That's Awesome!'" [E!]
• Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis is developing a series for HBO based on his unconventional, rock 'n' roll childhood. His dad, Spider, sold drugs and hung with rock stars on the Sunset Strip. Get a hot hottie to play Spider and this sounds like a show worth watching. [Variety]
• Spotted: Billy Corgan leaving the White House, on the same day as the big Obama visit. Secret mission? [Washington Post]
• Will Russell Crowe replace Heath Ledger in a flick called Dirt Music? Isn't that taking the casting in a really different direction? [Daily Express]
• Word association with Tracy Morgan: Waffles, vampires, Michelle Obama. Etc. [Comedy Central]
• Natascha McElhone was spotted with her newborn baby, just five months after the tragic death of her husband. Sadness. [Daily Express]
• Have you seen this Elizabeth Peyton portrait of Michelle Obama yet? [LA Times]
• News you can't use: Katie "Price" Jordan and husband Peter Andre are going on vacation, where, Jordan says, "All we are going to do is have spa treatments, relax, have sex, eat and sleep." [The Sun]
• Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown renewed her wedding vows in a four-day extravaganza in a plush Egyptian resort. There was a swimming pool with disco lights, glitter confetti and belly dancers. A low-key affair. [The Sun]
• Martina Navratilova will be on UK show I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. She'll totally win any tennis challenges! [Mirror]
• A Rolling Stone poll has deemed Aretha Franklin "the greatest singer in the rock era." All hail the queen! [Reuters]
• Brooke Shields is trying her very very best to be optimistic about the future of Lipstick Jungle, despite the fact that the show recently moved to kiss-of-death night, Friday: "You know, people get very nervous when they see a show that switched nights. For us, it's a positive thing. Especially with the economy — more people are inclined to stay home on a Friday night or watch television live. Or moms are more likely to stay up and watch a 10 o'clock show if they don't really have to get up with the kids. Well, kids don't sleep on the weekends, either. But at least they don't have to rush to get them to school. So I think that that's … there is that audience." Sure, sure. [NY Mag]
• Adam Sandler's wife welcomed their second child into the world, a girl named Sunny Madeline. [ET]
• Did you know that Lindsay Wagner, aka the Bionic Woman, is working on some kind of acupressure project that helps people deal with negative experiences with inner healing? [The Star]
• Paul McCartney: Revealing details about the real-life Eleanor Rigby? [Daily Mail]
• A dude who illegally posted Guns N' Roses songs online is pleading guilty of copyright infringement, uh-oh. He could get three years in prison. Welcome to the jungle! [Reuters]
• Roger Moore on the new Bond: "I'm sad that it has turned so violent." [Reuters]
• "In the middle of an orgasm, do I think 'do I have too much flab around my middle?' I mean when you are really in an ecstatic place and you look at your child’s face and you are completely happy and you have your family around you – you certainly don’t think about that!" — Susan Sarandon. [The Sun]
• "Everyone tells me that there will never be a good time, that I will always be busy, but I just think when the stars are aligned it will happen." — Janet Jackson, on having a baby. [Daily Express]
• "I write a lot of my songs for women. A lot of the songs are about things that we need to hear. Things I wouldn't really say, or I wish I could say. I'm kind of a voice for a lot of young women. I feel that women understand men a little better. I really don't feel that men understand women as much. And it's something that we go through all the time. But I also feel like we learn a lot from each other, and when we're connected it's amazing." — Beyoncé. [Telegraph]
• "Apparently she wants to be directing and that's what she'll be doing. Two directors in the family is never going to work." — Christopher Ciccone, on sister Madonna's future. [The Star]
• "I grew out of my leading boy days. It's good. It's the natural progression of things… What you can achieve on television now, and I sound like an ancient man when I say these things, but what you can do on TV now is worlds away from what we could even think of doing 10 years ago." — Josh Jackson, talking about his role on Fringe versus his time on Dawson's Creek [The Star]
• "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing. But I'm not anyone to give advice to anyone about anything." — Katie Couric on Sarah Palin. [Page Six]
• "Coco will probably follow in our footsteps, unfortunately. She has a really strong personality. She’s a funny, quirky kid. But she doesn’t like people laughing at her so it should be drama!" — David Arquette, on his four-year-old daughter (with Courteney Cox) getting into show biz. [Daily Express]
• "I've got to tell you, it's so vague at this point, it's so faraway in my mind, I can't even remember the darkness. I mean, in the end, we really had an amicable split. … And pretty soon after we separated, we got on the phone and we had a long, long conversation with each other and said a lot of things, and ever since we've been unbelievably warm and respectful of each other." — Jennifer Aniston, on Brad Pitt, in Vogue. [Perez Hilton]
• "Three and a half years ago a man came along and said, 'I'm going to take you to Tennessee. And he took me down there and he said, 'I think you deserved to be loved. Let me love you, let me give you a home, and let's make a baby.' So thank you, Keith Lionel. I don't believe that you can [have it all]. But I believe you can have balance. Three and a half years ago I had a wonderful career, I had two kids, I had movie offers, great directors offering me things, but I wasn't loved." — Nicole Kidman. [People]
• "I am not darker, angrier or moodier these days. In fact, it's just the opposite. All that's happened is that I've given up on trying to find a way to use unwanted media as a form of entertainment. (It still was worth a try.) A walk to the car isn't the best time to try and analyze my mood or disposition, so you'll probably always get a bad read from it. Things have changed a bit, and the decision to slide on and off your radar isn't so much my own anymore. But I'm too young to stomp my feet about it. All I can do is concentrate on keeping my heart and soul correct and then redecorate around it." — John Mayer. [People]