Cele|bitchy

Elisabetta Canalis: Clooney was a father figure who brought out my feminine side
Maggie Gyllenhaal in Rome: busted, unflattering or lovely?
Melissa McCarthy covers EW: “I’m more confident than I’ve ever felt in my life”
Kim Kardashian vs. AnnaLynne McCord: who looked better for Halloween?
Christina Aguilera softens her makeup, straightens her wig: much improved?
Michelle Williams covers Elle UK, tries to explain her funky Marilyn voice

Elisabetta Canalis: Clooney was a father figure who brought out my feminine side

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:26 AM PDT

These are some new photos of Elisabetta Canalis at the GQ Germany "Man of the Year" awards, where she was the escort of Roberto Cavalli. She's wearing Cavalli too. She looks pretty good, but it's all kind of meh. She always looks kind of drag queeny to me. Plus, she just looks overly-thrilled to be on a red carpet, getting her photo taken.

Anyway, I think Eli has played her post-breakup, post-Clooney career rather poorly. I understand that she wants to be famous in America, but the way to do that is not through Dancing With the Stars and the odd monthly confessional interview. If I was running Eli's PR since the beginning, I would have encouraged her to do a big tell-all interview shortly after her split with George Clooney, and I would have encouraged her to give it to the highest profile American publication she could find. Perhaps Vanity Fair wouldn't have taken her, but she could have gotten a profile in Allure or Marie Claire, and definitely Us Weekly. Instead, Eli seems content to give increasingly strange and damaged-seeming interviews to Italian publications, and her "revelations" about her relationship with Clooney seem increasingly clingy and sad. Here's the latest:

Bacio and tell?

Elisabetta Canalis, the Italian TV personality who dated George Clooney for two years until their split last June, offers some surprising details about their relationship in Questo Amore (This Love), a new book by Italian journalist Bruno Vespa.

Praising the Oscar winner, 50, as “the person who valued my feminine side the most” and “also one of the best people I have met from a charitable point of view,” Canalis, 33, went on to say, “he has been a special for me, and very important, just as a father would be.”

Asked by Vespa to elaborate, she said, “between us there was more of a father-daughter relationship. I was unable to clarify this up ’til now.”

As for their breakup, Canalis – who competed on Dancing with the Stars earlier this season, denies reports that Clooney’s long-held aversion to marriage was an issue.

“George and I never spoke of marriage nor of having kids,” she says. “I don’t put limits to the possibility of having them, but neither George nor I had ever envisaged having kids together. The end of the relationship was not caused by a marriage issue, but instead by our personal needs.”

Although Clooney has since moved on with another Dancing alum, Stacy Keibler, Canalis has only kind words for him.

“George is a real gentleman even in his private life,” she says. “I was very much respected both as a woman and partner.”

[From People]

Skipping over the "father" stuff briefly, the part that caught my eye initially was that Clooney was "the person who valued my feminine side the most"??? I hope that's a weird translation, because it makes Elisabetta sound like a total drag queen. Now, going back to the father stuff - that's the most convoluted way of calling her ex an old fart. Which Clooney is, granted. He is an old fart, and his girls always stay the same age, and yes, at some point it does become more of a father-daughter type relationship. Some people think that's sick or gross, but… whatever. I understand it.

Still, I don't believe Eli when she claims that marriage and kids never came up. She wanted to get married. She said so in that now infamous interview, right before Clooney dumped her.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Rome: busted, unflattering or lovely?

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 08:25 AM PDT

Here are some photos of Maggie Gyllenhaal at the Rome Film Festival, where she's promoting Hysteria. The Hysteria photo call pics are where she's wearing that hideous black and turquoise Dries van Noten sheet dress, and the premiere photos are where she's looking matronly in a cream gown. If I have to choose, I guess I'd pick the matronly look, but just barely. She's aged herself terribly with that hairstyle and makeup… that being said, the hair and makeup look good (for a 40-something lady). But the real problem with the cream gown is that it makes her boobs look saggy, and it just doesn't flatter body. She needs more support for her girls, and maybe something more structured overall.

Hysteria is Maggie's film about the invention of the vibrator. Because ladies used to be diagnosed with "hysteria" when really they just needed a good orgasm. Previously, when discussing the film, Maggie said, "By the time I finished the movie I’d been sent 15 vibrators by different people in London with vibrator stores. It was a pleasant surprise. So I have this incredible collection, and I actually use one or two of them. I lend them to my friends, and they’ll take them for six months at a time." Yes, she lends out vibrators. Whatever happened to, "Here, I'm gifting you this vibrator. No, I don't want it back"???

PS… it just occurred to me as I was looking through the photos again… do you think Maggie is knocked up? She has a little bit of a bump happening…or is the white dress just THAT unflattering?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Melissa McCarthy covers EW: “I’m more confident than I’ve ever felt in my life”

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 07:56 AM PDT

I LOVE this Entertainment Weekly cover. This is one of the most fantastic things I've ever seen. I love Melissa McCarthy's "Queen-face". I love the corgi! Is that a real corgi, or is it a cartoon? I'm asking because his expression and his eyes are so cartoony. It's amazing! In the early EW excerpts from the cover story, Melissa talks about body image and how she used to be a goth when she was a kid (I want pictures), and she also discusses that controversy last year with the Marie Claire blogger who went completely crazy criticizing Melissa's body.

Bridesmaids, Mike & Molly, and a winning SNL gig have turned Melissa McCarthy into a red-hot star, as well as the cover girl for our 2011 Comedy Issue. EW sat down with the hilarious McCarthy for a little steak, a bunch of drinks, and an unexpected amount of tears.

"Comedy to me is all about the bumps and bruises and weird tics," says McCarthy. "It's everything you find out about somebody when you fall in love with them that on paper is really creepy but you find adorable."

When McCarthy was a teenager at an all-girls Catholic school in Plainfield, Ill., she stunned her mild-mannered parents by diving deep into a wickedly surly goth phase.

"There was a three-year chunk as a teen where I should have been tranquilized and put in a cage," she says. If her daughters ever try to pull some of the crap she did in high school, she has a plan. "I will embarrass my kids to their core. I will threaten to show up in hot pants and a tube top. Their dad will drive me. And he'll let me and my friend Lisa get pretty drunk in the backseat and we will come into that party and just rip it up."

Now she's suddenly finding herself one of comedy's most sought-after actresses, even though she doesn't look like your typical movie star. "Do I sometimes hope I wake up in the morning and people are like, 'What's wrong with her? She looks emaciated,' " she says. "Of course I would love that. I'm such a clothes whore I would love the opportunity to be a hanger. But I think I'm more confident than I've ever felt in my life."

The Emmy Award winner also spoke out about how she felt when a blogger famously commented on her weight and said: "My first thought was 'Gosh, I hope she doesn't have a daughter.' And then after a second I thought, 'What a sad, troubled person. You're making such a sh**y judgment on people.'"

[From Entertainment Weekly & The Mail]

I'm glad that Melissa is being crowned the "Queen of Comedy" and that she's getting so much love from so many people. I like that she seems to have a plan too - she's producing and developing her own projects and not just waiting for people to hand her work. That's very smart.

As for her comments about body image and all of that - isn't it refreshing to hear from someone who isn't completely delusional? I mean, Melissa knows what size she is. She's not trying to convince us or herself that she's a size 4 (side-eye at Kim Kardashian and Kirstie Alley). Melissa has a realistic self-image and she's not putting on airs. I really like that about her.

Cover courtesy of EW, additional pic by WENN.

Kim Kardashian vs. AnnaLynne McCord: who looked better for Halloween?

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 07:08 AM PDT

I'm not some huge fan of Halloween, mostly because I'm not one of those people who enjoy being scared. I get freaked out pretty easily - I was traumatized by Creepshow as a child, and Paranormal Activity as an adult. It's even difficult for me to watch the "Best of Horror Films" specials, because even the brief clips of scary movies freak me out. The area that I live in has a decent number of kids, but they don't even get to go trick-or-treating like I used to - most Halloweens, the local churches throw parties for the kids, so they won't be out on the streets. So I don't even get to enjoy handing out candy, unfortunately.

But! I do enjoy looking at costumes. I admire the work, the time, the effort some people take into dressing up for Halloween. But things have changed since I was a kid - now, every adult woman seems to use Halloween as an excuse to get dressed up in a "slutty" version of a costume. Here are two great examples - Slutty Marie Antoinette versus Slutty Poison Ivy. Otherwise known as AnnaLynne McCord versus Kim Kardashian.

I think I'm going to give Kim credit for keeping her costume pretty true to the character, plus the Poison Ivy dress looks very well-made. AnnaLynne as Marie Antoinette… YIKES. And she and her sisters all did the "period" costumes too, so they look like corpse extras from Dangerous Liaisons. I give AnnaLynne points for originality (I guess), but I give Kim points for actually looking better/cuter.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Christina Aguilera softens her makeup, straightens her wig: much improved?

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 06:38 AM PDT

OMG. Christina Aguilera looks… good? Well, she looks much better than she's looked in a while. These are photos of Christina at the LA press junket for The Voice over the weekend. What's the big difference? I guess the makeup… the makeup has greatly improved. She's still wearing way too much, but someone made the effort to give her a makeup style that flattered her face and makes her look younger and less garish. Softer lips, a less heavy eye… generally less "I reapplied this junk in a dark bar after winning a drinking contest, beating all of the Hell's Angels." The hair is still pretty busted, but at least it doesn't look like her wiglet is all drunk and askew. Bitch got her roots done.

As for her body… well, the problem is still the fact that Christina doesn't wear clothes that flatter her figure. The skirt doesn't so anything for her, and the blouse looks cheap. That being said, it's an improvement over her recent concert outfits, and her casual outfits. The last time I wrote about Christina, she was wandering around Agent Provocateur pantsless and wearing a trucker hat, and she was desperate for attention and validation - I hope she sees that she can still get attention just by putting some effort into looking "nice" for her public appearances.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Michelle Williams covers Elle UK, tries to explain her funky Marilyn voice

Posted: 30 Oct 2011 05:35 AM PDT

Michelle Williams covers the December issue of Elle UK, and these are the two covers (subscribers and newsstand). I don't get it - why is she still doing the Mia Farrow thing when she's promoting a film about Marilyn Monroe? Sigh… I want to like Michelle, I really do, but I'm really tired of her fragile-Mia-Farrow thing, and I'm really concerned that My Week With Marilyn is going to be a disaster. Yes, people are already claiming that she'll get an Oscar nomination for it, but the trailer did not inspire confidence with me.

Unfortunately, we don't have any excerpts from the Elle interview, but Michelle's publicity for the film has begun in earnest, so I do have some highlights from other interviews she's given recently.

Speaking to Marilyn's ghost: “While we were filming, something came out in the National Enquirer that a psychic had spoken to her and that she approved of what we were doing and she thought I was doing a really good job. So maybe she likes it!”

On Marilyn's voice: “I studied tapes,” Williams said. “There’s really nothing that exists of her, that I could find anyway, that exists of her having a conversation with a friend…So there wasn’t a template that existed for her everyday vocal pattern, so at a certain point you have to make it imaginatively.”

Taking the role: "I was so apprehensive," she says, "it was daunting living up to people's expectations as well as my own expectations."

Parallels with Monroe's life: "There were so many connections and parallels for me in making this film. I was 30 when making the movie, the same age Marilyn was when she filmed The Prince and the Showgirl, the picture our film is based around. We filmed in the same studio at Pinewood where that movie was made. I had the same dressing room Marilyn had used and we also shot at the same house, Parkside, where she had stayed during filming."

Wanting to know the real Marilyn: "I had always been more interested in the private Marilyn, and the unguarded Marilyn. Even as a young girl, my primary concern wasn't with this larger than life personality smiling back from the wall but with what was going on underneath."

What Marilyn's experience was in England: "What Marilyn anticipated happening and what actually happened were two very different things and they created discord and unhappiness for her in England. She was expecting to go to London and make a movie with the most esteemed actor of the time and hoped it would bring her the respect that she deserved and craved. When she arrived she felt she was being mistreated and laughed at. Olivier sneered at her and didn't treat her with the kind of attention she was hoping for but when you watch the film now, you can see Marilyn wipes the floor with the rest of the cast. They are all very stiff, mannered and archaic but if she were making that movie today there is nothing about her performance that has gone out of fashion or faded. She is very real, very in the moment and so beautiful."

[From The Express UK & E! News]

Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde describes a similar situation when Marilyn came to England having just married Arthur Miller - apparently, Olivier was a harsh taskmaster, and he thought Marilyn was the weak link in his film. When the film came out, though, Marilyn's performance was the only thing people liked. So that part of Hollywood history seems authentic.

A new clip from My Week With Marilyn has come out - Michelle singing in the tub:

And here's the trailer again and a new poster for the film: