Today, People has revealed that Kate Hudson will appear as the cover girl for their 2008 Most Beautiful People issue, and we'd certainly like to send out a hearty congrats to the recently divorced single mom who's currently nursing Owen Wilson back to health. But after taking a look back at the list of stars who've previously nabbed the annual issue's cover spot, we fear there may be a curse accompanying the glossy honor. Sure, Leonardo DiCaprio (1998) and Julia Roberts (2000, 2005) haven't slipped up since having their smiley visage top the list, but a sizeable chunk of the winning alumni eerily saw their public and private lives undergo a downward spiral following their appearance on the issue's cover. We took a closer look at the possible curse-laden honor after the jump:

Until now, most onlookers have been noting just how much little Lourdes Ciccone Leon looks like her mother, the vitamin-injecting, leg-spreading Madonna. And while she does have her mom's naturally dark hair and piercing eyes, we think the 12-year old mini-Madge looks much more like another pillow-lipped celebrity you may have heard of. Particularly when we place Lourdes' current visage next to the star-in-question's glamour shots when she was just a teenager herself:

When it comes to celebrity couples making out in public, you'd think all those beautiful people would know how to make a kiss look hot. They manage to do it on-screen with complete strangers, and frankly, a large part of their job is to hook up take after take and make it still look steamy and unrehearsed, right? But as our slideshow-happy friends at Us have shown us, stars are seriously lacking in the hot and heavy PDA department. While some couples (Drew Barrymore and Justin Long) are downright sweet, and some are disturbingly turning us on at such an early hour (Enrique and Anna Kournikova, natch), we'd like to officially ban any future photos of a select few couples getting down and dirty ever again. The good, the bad, and the nauseating, after the jump:

Vice chairman of Lionsgate Michael Burns' mission to grab the screen rights of me-first philosopher Ayn Rand's libertarian soap opera of a novel Atlas Shrugged ended at a strange place: his Catholic Church. As Burns tells it in an interview this week, he was leaving mass one Sunday when he ran into Ray producers Howard and Karen Baldwin, telling them, "I heard you have the rights to Atlas Shrugged and I'd like to talk to you about that because that is truly one of my favorite books." As all good Rand acolytes know, the stern founder of the philosophy of Objectivism wasn't a huge fan of God or the Catholic Church, once informing the late devout editor of National Review William F. Buckley, "But you are too smart to believe in God!" Burns, who says he attended Rand's funeral in 1982, is all too aware of his heresy, adding, "Ayn Rand's probably rolling over in her grave to think that happened in a Catholic church." Forget about rolling over, Michael. She might be assembling an army of the undead to take care of yo' ass.

• Jennifer Lopez is going to star in a TLC reality show about raising her twins. Oh this is going to be awesome. We're going to get to see all of the crazy stuff Tom Cruise and Lopez's other Scientologist advisers had installed for the little ones: the security cameras, "sterile" baby wing, sanitized flowers and the staff of baby bodyguards and color therapist.

The Cannes Film Festival announced this morning it will get four hours of Che Guevara after all — not to mention additional Oscar bait from Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie and Charlie Kaufman in this year's competition program. As recently as last Friday, the Steven Soderbergh/Benicio Del Toro all-or-nothing two-fer of Guerrilla and The Argentine was looking doubtful for the Cannes deadline, but the festival announced this morning that it is indeed in. Out of competition, meanwhile, world premieres Indiana Jones 4 and Kung-Fu Panda will do battle for the honorary Jerry Seinfeld Award For Shameless Publicity Hijacking.

We are shocked (shocked!) to hear this, but word on the street is that the lovely and ever-growing multicultural soccer team united by Brad and Angelina isn't exactly getting along of late. According to Star, animosity and friction is growing among the four little Jolie-Pitts, with personalities growing bolder and fights getting messier. And, unsurprisingly, The Chosen One is allegedly on the brunt of most blows. Most disturbing of all? As a source claims, those cushy lips of hers are only getting bigger as a result of actual physical blows from her siblings:

As Jennifer Aniston announced her plans to launch a new production company called Echo Films with longtime producing partner Kristin Hahn (formerly partners with Aniston and Brad Pitt at Plan B), we couldn't help but notice a running theme associated with the majority of their projects in the works. It seems that recent disses from Angelina Jolie and those gushy rumors in all the weeklies claiming she's fallen for (yet failed to nab) co-star after co-star have inspired Echo to pursue production of a number of Women Seeking Revenge Against Men themed films. These flicks will provide Aniston with the opportunity for Aniston to use the power of cinema to address everyone in Hollywood who has labeled her as a Pity Party Girl. After the jump, we take a closer look at the projects they've lined up to get a sense of what kinds of stories Aniston wants to tell moviegoers.

• Heath Ledger may have a love child in Australia, the late actor's uncle said, which would mean he has two children. Isn't that straight out of Lost? I mean, except for the part about Heath fathering the child while 17 and still in grammar school with a woman eight years older who already had a boyfriend. [Daily Telegraph via HollyScoop]

Star overlord Bonnie Fuller is getting her ass kicked this morning. "Online reports that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt tied the knot in New Orleans Saturday are 'complete and total bulls—t,' a source tells Us. 'Bottom line, they aren't even in New Orleans.'"

The poor, poor bastards Star magazine spent Saturday evening furiously shoving out their scoop that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had gotten married in New Orleans yesterday. It was "an intimate wedding ceremony in the couple's adopted city" editor-in-chief and horrible person Bonnie Fuller's scribes report. And that got the kids at People magazine crazy! A couple hours later, they had tracked down a "source" who declared "There was no wedding." Then Star got slammed with The People's Elbow when the rag claimed that Brangelina wasn't even in New Orleans yesterday!

As the country plods along to what seems like inevitable recession, not all trends suggest our economy is necessarily swirling clockwise down the shitter. Take the celebrity-baby-photo market, a financial spit-up bubble seemingly incapable of bursting. Leading the way is People magazine, who apparently have a budget surplus in the trillions to lavish on Hollywood's most recognizable faces and the powerblobs they spawn. They rocked the status quo back in 2006 by shelling out $4.1 million for a glimpse of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, and more recently paid $6 million to Jennifer Lopez for a stunning photoset in which her adorable newborns were woven into a plexus of mother's hair extensions, like nested baby sparrows awaiting their next grub feeding.

• Amy Winehouse will be airlifted away from her crack and into rehab, possibly in Israel or South Africa. A doctor told the Sun the singer's skin damage is common among crack addicts. [Sun]

Brangelina has yet to officially support any of the current presidential candidates, but now that they have learned that they're related to two of them, we can expect that an endorsement (or two!) is forthcoming. According to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Brad Pitt is "ninth cousins" with Barack Obama, and Angelina Jolie is coincidentally "ninth cousins" with Hillary Clinton. So will the couple happily add the Dems to their "soccer team" or will the wildly varying family trees tear 'em apart? After a bit of research, we discovered that even if the pair did welcome them into their many homes with welcome arms, one of the candidates isn't quite as enraptured with the Jolie-Pitts as the rest of the world...

So this is what People's $6m bid has bought. The Time Inc. magazine is finally publishing those pricey photos of Jennifer Lopez and her new twins. But no Marc Anthony: the performer's husband, unlike Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt, for instance, isn't famous enough to add value to the image-which makes the price paid by People all the more extraordinary. Not only is Marc Anthony a net negative; Jennifer Lopez herself is past the peak of fame that she reached when dating Ben Affleck. But competition between celebrity weeklies has sharpened since the weeklies paid $4m for Brangelina's baby; that has caused general inflation in the price of photos; and nothing trumps the visual appeal of twins except, maybe, triplets. Awww.

It's been nearly two months since we first heard about The Chosen Two's impending arrival, but judging from the size of Angelina Jolie's widening waistline, we suspect Brad's super sperm went into baby-making action a bit earlier than that. Seen yesterday shopping for books in Austin, Texas, Angelina's belly seems to be expanding at an exponential rate not yet seen in celebrity pregnancies. Which got us thinking, what if we saddled Jolie up next to J. Lo and Julia Roberts just before they burst? That way, we can begin to suss out just what size muumuu to FedEx to Casa Brangelina come spring.

While AOL has put together a rosy list of the "hottest on-set hookups," complete with lusty make-out pictures and lovey-dovey tales from between the sheets, we feel obligated to point out that not every "hot" and heavy on-set romance leads to a fairy tale ending. In fact, a few of these couples' choices to get busy in between scenes wreaked havoc on both their personal and professional lives, leading some to lose their spouses, their reps and, in Angelina Jolie's case, a tattoo or two. We put together our own list of the top five most ill-fated on-set hookups, mainly to remind these bed-hopping stars that sometimes it's best to just say no to illicit trailer sex.

Whatever quasi-Chosen One Maddox Jolie-Pitt wants, he will get. Even if he walks into a candy store and the first thing he lays his pretty eyes on is a pack of gum labeled "I Heart My Penis." And we couldn't be more thrilled to report that mom/saint Angelina Jolie hasn't given up her kinky ways just because she's a grown women with a soccer team for a family. As an Us source claims, "[Angelina] laughed and bought it." If you'll allow us one crude attempt at humor on this Friday afternoon, we're left wondering this: if little Mad hearts his penis now, what's he gonna do when puberty hits? Here's hoping there's an "I Really, Really Heart My Penis" gum brand in the works. [Us]

Having just returned from a trip to Iraq, Angelina Jolie has penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post, in which she assessed her findings on how the war has devastated the people of that region: "More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country — without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man's land. Many of the survivors huddle in mosques, in abandoned buildings with no electricity, in tents or in one-room huts made of straw and mud." By way of fairness, the paper has opened up their op/ed section to Jennifer Aniston too, whose own column, "Whole Foods: Why Can't They Stay Open Until 11?" should appear early next week. [WashPo]

Poor Jennifer Aniston. After mustering up the courage to show up to a pre-Oscars party where she was supposed to finally come face-to-face with her man-stealing rival Angelina Jolie, the rug got swept out from under her when Jolie failed to show up for the event. But the glossies seem to be getting the angle all wrong. While Us paints Aniston as the victim (their hed: "Angelina Jolie continues to keep the power over Jennifer Aniston"), we have to disagree with their hypothesis. The tabs have relentlessly portrayed Aniston as a helpless single gal who can't catch a break, but the sheer fact that she dared show her face proves once and for all that Jen finally grew a pair. After all, for all Jolie's pre-show talk, when the time came for long-hyped matchup to go down, Angie couldn't walk the walk.