New Year, new jobs: Tom Cruise has assigned Katie Holmes reproductive duties, Alec Baldwin's famous voice finally got him his dream job and Lauryn Hill is testing new mounts.
Amid 2008's many sex scandals, it was a miracle there was any time left to monitor an epochal presidential election. There were many genuine, dirty affairs — and some duds inevitably got overhyped.
The Screen Actors Guild took its finger off the nuke button long enough to select 2008 awards nominations, while the Academy narrowed its Best Song candidates to a modest 49.
• Rudy Giuliani is reportedly in negotiations to take over Bill O'Reilly's syndicated radio show when he steps down early next year. Whether Rudy could handle sitting still for three hours a day and what effect this would have on his rumored plans to run for office, remain unclear. [P6]
• Jennifer Aniston is "bizarrely obsessed" with Angelina Jolie, says OK! The proof: She wore a dress that was "almost an exact copy" of something Angie once wore, and she can't stop talking about the couple to friends. [OK!]
• Madonna now says the financial details her publicist Liz Rosenberg released last week concerning her divorce settlement with Guy Ritchie were "misleading and inaccurate." [People, Mirror]
• Anderson Cooper was supposedly spotted shopping for sweaters with a "young Frenchman" at Barneys Co-Op. Wait, what happened to Julio? [P6]
• Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo may have cancelled their first wedding at the last minute back in August, but it looks like the second time is the charm: The couple is reportedly getting hitched later today in a "top-secret, ultra-private" ceremony at his house in Greenwich. [NYP]
• Kanye West is supposedly thinking of moving to London next year to pursue his fashion career. [Mirror]
• Graydon Carter says he personally handles seating arrangements at the Waverly Inn. Oh, and his "three buzz words" for 2009 are "sophisticated, innovative and entitlement." [P6]
• Tragic news: Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony just spent their first weekend apart since the birth of their twins. [Us]
♦ Mary-Kate Olsen was "acting very oddly" during her stay in Miami for Art Basel. After getting into a fight with Kirsten Dunst at a party at the Delano on Wednesday night, MK—who "looked like she had not brushed her hair in a week"—spent the weekend drinking, chain-smoking, and hanging out with boyfriend Nate Lowman, which means she's probably not pregnant. [P6, P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan went to a party for Milk without Samantha Ronson last week, where she was spotted nuzzling with Sean Penn. [Fox 411]
♦ Amy Winehouse's husband Blake Fielder-Civil is reportedly threatening to write a tell-all book about Winehouse unless she gives him $1.7 million in the divorce settlement. [NYP]
David Beckham walking around town with his sons on Saturday morning and later joining up with Victoria to take them to see Jersey Boys ... Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond Jr. walking their dog and drinking coffee ... Britney Spears arriving at JFK yesterday ... The Jonas Brothers signing autographs outside their hotel ... Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes buying candy at the M&M's store in Times Square with Suri and Isabella ... Natalie Portman filming scenes for her new movie ... Hillary and Chelsea Clinton leaving Billy Elliot on Broadway ... Taylor Momsen standing on the Gossip Girl set ... Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts walking downtown with cups of coffee in hand ... Miley Cyrus arriving at her hotel, accompanied by her mom and boyfriend, Justin Gaston ... and Tyra Banks leaving dinner with boyfriend John Utendahl.
Allow us to introduce to you our Inverse Baldwin Theory, which goes a little something like this: whenever one Baldwin rises in the public's estimation, another Baldwin must descend to heretofore unknown levels of douchebaggery to balance out the universe. Thus, it is so that as Alec Baldwin enjoys near-universal acclaim and awards for his role on 30 Rock, baby brother Stephen has been reduced to stunts like becoming a right-wing Republican, Celebrity Apprentice, and now... this.Appearing today on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (the daytime chatfest hosted by Spaghetti Cat), Baldwin showed off the tattoo of Hannah Montana's initials that he had inked in a bid to appear on the Miley Cyrus-toplined show. Sadly, this misguided attempt to book an acting gig produced nothing but some strong guffaws from Cyrus, a round of boos from the confused Mike and Juliet audience, and Baldwin's preliminary placement on the Megan's Law registry. [The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet]
Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and otherwise avoidable at the movies. Today offers a little more variety than last week's Bond! Bond! Bond! World Tour, but only a little — a total of two major new offerings are crashing the multiplex this week, with a scrappy smattering of indies and upstarts shuffling onto screens behind them. And if that's not doing it for you, there are always a few thrilling DVD's to pick up the slack. As always, our opinions are our own, but you'll never see them schlepping off to Washington for a bailout. Invest wisely after the jump!WHAT'S NEW: Hopefully you enjoyed your mildly adult pleasures last week while you could, because it's an all-puberty weekend this go-around. Twilight finally crashes theaters after a hormonal, high-pitched tidal wave of anticipation, packing tween girls (and not just a few of their mothers) into as much as $70 million worth of sold-out shows. We don't have much to say about the vampire swoonathon that we haven't thrown your way already, but we will go ahead and call it for a $68.8 million gross, 237 fainting spells and a record 455 million shrieks drowning out the dialogue. Disney will represent as well with its 3-D canine superhero opus Bolt, voiced by John Travolta and Miley Cyrus among others. Tracking is close to $40 million, but with reviews well-above average and the imprimatur of ex-Pixar chief John Lasseter, we could see it overlapping quadrants a bit and maybe peaking around $45 million. Also opening: Actor Robert Davi's doo-wop/heist-flick directorial debut The Dukes; the imploding Irish marriage drama Eden; and the ethnically-charged lesbian love story I Can't Think Straight. THE BIG LOSER: For the second consecutive week, the box-office is America's last remaining growth sector. No losers to speak of here, though talk to us next week about Australia.
♦ Paris Hilton has broken up with Benji Madden after nine months of dating, reportedly so she can return to the party circuit and possibly reunite with her ex, Stavros Niarchos. The second part of Paris' plan might be tougher than she thought, though, since Stavros may have his eye on Annabelle Dexter-Jones. [Star, People, P6]
♦ Anna Wintour's reps say she has no intention of leaving Vogue. And she has no plans to accept a "cultural post" in Barack Obama's White House either, just so you know. [MSNBC]
♦ Have Madonna and Guy Ritchie finally reached a divorce settlement? The couple has supposedly sealed a deal that will let Madge keep her cash and allow Rocco and David to spend half their time living with Guy in England. [ThisIsLondon]
♦ Winona Ryder's British Airways flight had to make a special landing in London yesterday after she fell ill, allegedly because she "accidentally overdosed" on Xanax. [The Sun, NYDN]
Miley Cyrus kicked off her "I Wasn't Killed By a Drunk Driver, Regardless of What My Hacked YouTube Page Sez! :D" tour with a stop at Ellen DeGeneres's show, which won't air until tomorrow. Ellen has become somewhat of a tween superstar guidance counselor in recent weeks, having lent Taylor Swift a shoulder to cry on as the country star recounted her brutal, half-minute Jonas brother tele-dumping. Cyrus, however, proved a tougher nut to crack, offering nothing but a series of guttural grunts and snorts in response to DeGeneres's line of underwear-model-boyfriend questioning. So embarrassed is she by the prospect of revealing the true nature of her relationship with the recipient of her obscene, catwalk-side tongue-gestures, Cyrus eventually tumbles sideways inside her chair—a bout of forced-coyness rendered all the more unsettling by her raspy giggles of fake embarrassment. *Shudder.* [Ellen]
Miley Cyrus hackers continue to represent one of the fastest-growing segments of the American tech sector, returning to haunt the Disney superstar once again over the weekend. This time around, however, the ambitious intruder bypassed Miley's generically scandalous shirt-chomping escapades in favor of spreading the much more dire gossip that she was dead. Spoiler alert: She's not! But that doesn't mean she won't seek vengeance anyway.E! saw through the stunt, blowing a golden opportunity to welcome Miley's ghost to last night's Daily 10. Instead, host Michael Yo gave the whole game away from the start, prompting a gaping incredulity that Miley's BFF Mandy soon mitigated with her urgent MySpace update: "MILEY IS OK!! Some1 hacked our youtube account." Miley is naturally shocked, and the search is on to track down the culprit, despite investigators' lengthening list of suspects with both opportunity and motive. We'd look closely at Disney ourselves; Bolt can't rocket to number one this weekend on John Travolta's goateed charm alone.
Life is getting harder and harder for 'Bolt' star Miley Cyrus in her 16th year, faced with so many of the crises that make our mid-teens such a dramatically turbulent era. Like the driving instructor taking less than kindly to her defiance behind the wheel ("I don't wanna turn left, I wanna turn right!"), all those cheapskate hangers-on who won't buy tickets to her shows, and the father whom the young phenom reduced to a punchline last Friday while in late-night conversation with Jay Leno. It must have been 'Miley Day' again; these rituals just get more and more painful for poor Billy Ray. [The Tonight Show]
Did Barack or Michelle deliver some stern words to Billy Ray Cyrus after he invited the Obama children to be on the Hannah Montana show anytime they wanted? After all, we begged the Obamas not to do it—too much potentially damaging child-star drama!—and now Miley's Dad seems to be backtracking. Billy "Achy Breaky Heart" Ray sounds chastened:
John Mayer shopping at Paragon Sports on Broadway and later leaving Gold Bar in SoHo with Jennifer Aniston (left) ... Jeff Daniels riding around town on a tiny bike ... Miley Cyrus arriving at the Sirius studios in Midtown for an appearance on Howard Stern's show ... Matthew Broderick walking son James to school in the West Village ... Regis Philbin and Don Rickles arriving at ABC's studios ... Famke Janssen crossing the street with her dog ... Leighton Meester hanging out on the Gossip Girl set ... Katie Holmes talking on her cell phone ... and Natalie Portman leaving her trailer on the set of her new film.
When it comes to satisfying their children's tween dreams, Barack and Michelle Obama have been fairly generous, arranging a Jonas Brothers meet-and-greet on the set of Ellen that found Joe practicing his phone breakup techniques on Malia and left Sasha, weirdly, with a purity ring on her left thumb. Still, there's one place that even the Obamas deem too frightening for their girls: the set of Hannah Montana! After Billy Ray Cyrus issued an invitation for the younger Obamas to make an appearance on the show that was greeted with a firm "Uh...," Miley's father attempted a retraction tinged with some unexpected advice:
