Is Nicole Kidman overexposed? Can anyone be overexposed these days or is too much not enough? The latest role for the hot actress is as the face of Chanel. Why a non-French actress is the best person to represent the most French of perfumes is a mystery -- and Nic is cute, but she's no Catherine Deneuve. Let's hope that the choice of a non-French female is not a reaction to the Franco-American feud. After all, beauty is beyond politics. (WENN)
Bob Geldof thinks he may have lost his music cred by becoming too political, saying he's become a kind of "Brother Teresa" because of his commitment to charity. "If you, as a musician, leave the narrow circle of the music scene, you lose some of your credibility," he said recently. Hey Bob, stop whining and give Bono a call. (Ananova)
Emma Thompson had a thing or two to tell a gathering of the U.K. charity ActionAid in London. The group is raising money to fight AIDS, TB nd malaria around the world. The actress, who won an Academy Award for her screenplay of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility," said, sensibly, "Why in this world do we find money for war when we are faced with the AIDS virus -- the greatest threat to human existence in our history?" (BBC)
If reruns of "Friends" aren't enough to keep you entertained this summer, "Monk" might be the ticket. In the series, which will start up again Friday on the USA Network, Tony Shalhoub plays an obsessive-compulsive detective and keeps it subtle enough that it's intriguing instead of camp. If the actor looks familiar, his best role was as Primo in "Big Night" opposite Stanley Tucci and he was wonderfully uptight in that one too -- as a chef who wouldn't cook to please anyone but himself. Tony's a treat. (NY Daily News)
Let's let ex-hubby Bruce Willis have the last word on the oh-so-scandalous May-December relationship between Demi Moore and 15-years-younger Ashton Kutcher, shall we? Bruce, when asked to comment on the romance, said "You, me, everybody, we're all 25 in our heart." He added, "Happiness and love is a very intransigent subject and wherever you can find it and however you find it, you should go and find it," Willis said. "I'm happy for anyone who finds romance." (ABC News)
-- Karen Croft
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If Hillary Clinton does make a run for the White House, she won't face any competition from Will Smith. Despite having hinted in the past at having presidential aspirations, the Fresh Prince is apparently not a pretender to the Oval Office throne. "He's talked about it, but he can't see himself as President," his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith tells the New York Daily News. Seems he's put off by the toll running the country takes on a person's looks. "It's a lot of hard work. Look at how gray [Bill] Clinton got," Pinkett Smith points out. "Will looks at [President] Bush and sees how torn he is. [He's] been [under] so much pressure."
New York Times culture czar Frank Rich is chalking the whole Jayson Blair "mediathon" up as a learning experience. Among the things Rich has learned? To have "greater sympathy" for Martha Stewart, for one. "I don't know whether or not she's guilty as charged," Rich wrote in Sunday's Times, "but whatever she did or didn't do, is it worthy of a mediathon? Is her predicament really, as Christopher Byron wrote in setting the vigilante tone in The New York Post, 'the most polarizing criminal case since the O.J. Simpson murder trial'? Or is it just a divertissement to amuse us while we wait to see if there's another twist in the cult angle in the Peterson case?" Then again, Rich is taking comfort in the idea that the "'Scandal at The Times' may soon go the way of Lizzie Grubman, shark attacks and Winona Ryder." And Hillary Clinton, whom Rich says is teaching us all "a lesson in the replay."
Can't keep a good Spike down? TNN says it's going ahead with its Spike TV programming, despite the injunction preventing the cable network from adopting that name as planned starting today. Though it will continue to be called the New TNN until the moniker matter is resolved with Spike Lee, who's contesting the name in court, alleging that the network is trying to nose in on his brand, the network will roll out shows like "The Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon" and "Stripperella," which Lee has called crap. (Washington Post)
Carrie Bradshaw at 81? Helen Gurley Brown acknowledges that the HBO show "Sex and the City" might owe something to her 1962 book "Sex and the Single Girl," which is being reissued after 20 years out of print. But the veteran magazine editor says there's one key difference between the cosmo-swilling characters in the show and her old Cosmo friends. "We would not have talked about the size of people's penises!" she sniffs. (Newsweek)
"Mr. Front-of-Line" Greg Packer may be the world's most quotable man, but the Associated Press is blackballing him from its stories unless he says "something really incredible." And no, wearing a green wig and moustache doesn't count. (Wall Street Journal)
Newly sober British artist Damien Hirst says drunk art is bad art. "Everything is better when you are sober," Hirst tells the London Evening Standard. During one bender, "I was going to have a pig in a freezer covered in vibrators so it looked like a hedgehog. And it was going to be called Pork-U-Pine. And I was thinking there was some great idea there," he says. "I never made it, thank God." Perhaps that explains the half-cow in formaldehyde then? (New York Post)
Despite his father's questionable views on the Holocaust, Mel Gibson says that nothing in his film about Jesus, "The Passion" -- with dialogue all in Latin and Aramaic and no subtitles -- will upset either Catholics or Jews. '"The Passion' is a movie meant to inspire not offend," Gibson told Variety. "My intention in bringing it to the screen is to create a lasting work of art and engender serious thought among audiences of diverse faith backgrounds." (Associated Press)
-- Amy Reiter
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