Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin have added to their family. Their second child, a son named Moses Martin, was born this weekend, the actress's rep tells PEOPLE.
The Shakespeare in Love Oscar winner, 33, and her British-born Coldplay frontman husband, 29, already have a daughter, Apple, born May 14, 2004. Moses is the name of a song Martin wrote for his wife in 2003.
Following months of speculation that she was pregnant, in January Paltrow confirmed that she and Martin were expecting.
After a Screen Actors Guild screening of Paltrow's movie Proof, Lou Diamond Philips, about to moderate a panel on the film, introduced Paltrow as "a pregnant woman" and then asked her, "How far along are you?" "Far enough along to feel very cumbersome," Paltrow answered. When a member of the audience asked her how she got her hair so shiny, Paltrow replied, according to TV's The Insider: "It must be the prenatal vitamins ... I've been taking them for a few years."
Three months after the birth of daughter Apple, the new mother appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and admitted she couldn't understand why people were making such a fuss over the baby's name, which, in its entirety, is Apple Blythe Alison Martin.
Paltrow said that her husband suggested the name soon after she discovered she was pregnant. "It conjured such a lovely picture for me – you know, apples are so sweet and they're wholesome and it's biblical – and I just thought it sounded so lovely and ... clean," Paltrow told Winfrey. "And I just thought, 'Perfect!'"
"We love unusual names in the family," Paltrow's mom, Blythe Danner, told PEOPLE in January. As for being a mom, Paltrow told Winfrey that the overwhelming love she feels for her child is "a whole new dimension in emotion that I've never experienced. It's crazy."
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Ryan Seacrest Buys Kevin Costner's House
Ryan Seacrest, and Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner's loss is Ryan Seacrest's gain. The American Idol host and E! News anchor, 31, has bought the Rumor Has It star's Hollywood Hills spread for $11.5 million, the Los Angeles Times reports. Costner has owned the Spanish-style 10,000-sq.-ft. gated residence – which has five bedrooms, a media room, billiards room, tennis court, gym, pool, spa and staff quarters – since 1995, but has been too busy making movies lately to enjoy it, according to the Times.Costner, 51, and wife Christine Baumgartner also have a home in Santa Barbara and a ranch in Aspen, Colo., that offers fishing and horse riding, the Times says.
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Ali Landry Weds in Mexico
Alejandro Monteverde and Ali Landry
Landry, 32, wore a strapless, ivory Monique Lhuillier drop-waist wedding gown with a sweetheart neckline and full ball gown skirt. The dress was made of hand-sewn layers of organza, tulle and chiffon.
In keeping with the Mexican setting, Landry wore a paprika feathered bolero after the ceremony. "He is so beyond amazing," the Eve actress recently told Dolan Media Newswires of Monteverde. "
When you dream of 'the guy' as a child, reading your fairy tales and thinking of Prince Charming, you think of all the things you want in a man. And he's everything I thought was possible. He's creative, passionate and would love to help change the world. I respect him so much." Landry, 32, and Monteverde, who reportedly met at Bible study last year, got engaged over Memorial Day weekend in 2005, and Landry will appear in the 2006 film Bella, which Monteverde wrote, produced and directed.
This is the second wedding for Landry, who wed Saved by the Bell star Mario Lopez on April 24, 2004. The couple split in June after seven weeks of marriage. "I thought I had my life figured out and all of a sudden, the rug was ripped out from under me," Landry said of the breakup. "I feel blessed that God has given me a second chance at my life."
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Race to Replace Vieira Heats Up
Joy Behar, Barbara Walters, Meredith Vieira, Star Jones Reynolds and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
The game of TV musical chairs continues with the search for a replacement for Meredith Vieira, who will leave ABC's The View to cohost NBC's Today show now that Katie Couric is jumping to the CBS Evening News."I think every agent in America is calling," View vet Barbara Walters, 76, tells the Associated Press.
Vieira tearfully announced her departure on Friday's episode, although she will remain on the program through next month. Her replacement is due to begin in September. Walters says that "chemistry" and "humor" are key ingredients for the new costar who will sit alongside herself, Joy Behar, Star Jones Reynolds and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
"We're looking for somebody who can do the interviews and also the hot topics at the beginning of the show," she says. And while she won't name names, Walters admits, "I've seen rumor after rumor after rumor."
Among those rumored to be in the running, according to published reports: CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Everybody Loves Raymond Emmy winner Patricia Heaton, actress Mimi Rogers and the latest, according to the New York Post, newswoman Connie Chung. (Heaton is already developing a talk show of her own for Disney, which owns ABC.)
Walters insists that no matter who lands on the program, The View will not undergo an extreme makeover. "It will change because we have a new person," Walters, herself a Today veteran, tells the Post. "But as much as we will miss Meredith – and we will – it's exciting for us to have a new member of our panel, just as it's exciting for the Today show and for CBS."
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Couric's Move May Give CBS Evening Boost
Katie Couric
Stack a quarter for every obituary written about the network evening newscasts and soon there would be enough to pay Katie Couric's salary at CBS.
Couric's move to the "CBS Evening News" promises a jolt of energy for a television institution that is too often written off, even while in the midst of its most significant transition in a generation, both on and off-screen.
"I think it's terrific that somebody of Katie Couric's caliber and talent is going into that genre, because that says to me that there is real importance in that evening-news format and there's going to continue to be real investment in it," said Steve Capus, whose work at NBC's "Nightly News" led to his elevation to network news president.
Morning news is considered the growth area in television, and Couric was its cover girl. The evening news has been slowly and steadily waning in influence and audience, the victim of cultural changes that make fewer people available to watch a half-hour news summary at the dinner hour.
All three networks have different anchors than just 16 months ago, with changes expected again at both ABC and CBS before summer's end.
Somewhat remarkably, the on-air changes have resulted in no changes in the network pecking order. NBC's "Nightly News," which executed a neat transition between Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, still leads in the ratings, with ABC second and CBS third.
Yet an Associated Press-TV Guide poll taken last week illustrated how audience loyalty is still up for grabs and that the American public hasn't fully made the transition from the Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather era.
Asked to name their favorite network-TV news personality, only a total of 10 percent named any of the three people anchoring the evening newscasts now: Williams, CBS' Bob Schieffer or ABC's Elizabeth Vargas. The rest either named someone else or, nearly half the time, no one at all.
Couric, who will start at CBS in September, gives that network a very recognizable personality. Behind the amiable Schieffer, the "CBS Evening News" is the only nightly newscast to gain viewers in the past year. But CBS executives hope Couric can attract more people, particularly young people, who had liked her in the morning.
"This is a very good move for CBS, for Katie and, frankly, for broadcast news more generally," said Frank Sesno, a journalism professor at George Mason University and CNN special correspondent. "I think the evening news has become formulaic."
Actually, each network has aggressively tried to change the institution, often in ways not noticeable on-screen at the dinner hour.
NBC has fostered connections with viewers by enlisting Williams and correspondents like David Gregory as bloggers. The network also makes "Nightly News" available on the Web, although not until after it is aired on television in each time zone.
"You can't just do the broadcast alone," Capus said. "You have to be on every platform you can."
Similarly, CBS has moved aggressively to try to make its news Web site akin to a cable-news network online. On the Internet it will often feature more extensive versions of evening-news stories, said Rome Hartman, "CBS Evening News" executive producer.
"I'm thrilled that more people are watching the broadcast at 6:30 on their television sets," Hartman said, "but I will also be thrilled if people see things like Steve Hartman's story (on an autistic basketball player) on the Internet."
CBS took the rare step of repeating that inspirational story from last month on a subsequent evening newscast.
While the NBC and ABC newscasts don't look significantly different from when Brokaw and the late Jennings were on the air, there have been real changes at CBS. Schieffer has drawn praise for showcasing network correspondents by "debriefing" them on-air with plainspoken questions.
"We've made significant changes, not so much in the format but in the approach and in the style of the evening news, and I feel like we're just in the beginning of the process," Hartman said.
Expect a new set and new graphics when Couric takes over, along with a format that plays to her strengths as an interviewer.
For about three weeks earlier this year it looked as if ABC's "World News Tonight" had made the most revolutionary changes.
The network installed the anchor team of Vargas and Bob Woodruff and set them on a schedule where one would almost always be on location at a story. It instituted an afternoon Webcast that previewed the evening's broadcast, and committed to doing separate versions of "World News Tonight" for Western time zones.
Tragedy struck when Woodruff was severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq on Jan. 29. He's still recovering, and Vargas is going it alone. That has cut out the travel, which ABC had hoped would make its newscast distinctive. To keep Vargas from burning out, ABC doesn't always do separate West Coast versions. The Webcast continues, and last week was the top-downloaded news podcast on iTunes, the network said.
With Woodruff out indefinitely and Vargas pregnant, ABC is expected to soon introduce another anchor to the mix most likely Charles Gibson.
"This is a time of amazing change for all of the evening newscasts," said CBS' Rome Hartman. "The last one has been a year unlike any we've seen across the industry in 20 years."
Hartman believes a news event like Hurricane Katrina underscored the format's importance. While the story received continuous coverage on the cable networks, rarely did they stand back and put the day's events in perspective like ABC, CBS and NBC did each evening, he said.
With Couric aboard, the competition will undoubtedly heighten.
"I look forward to having a good fight," Capus said.
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K-Fed: Blinded with Sampling?
Kevin Federline
Hyperbole aside, K-Fed is working hard to live up to his self-proclaimed stature as "America's Most Hated." This week, he added another name to the enemy list.
New wave pioneer Thomas Dolby says he's contemplating legal action against Britney's other half for allegedly sampling Dolby's 1983 hit "She Blinded Me with Science" without permission.
Federline's latest song, "America's Most Hated," was recently released through the aspiring rapper's MySpace page and seems to sample Mobb Deep's "Got It Twisted," which in turn had (legally) sampled a riff from Dolby's smash single.
"Kevin Federline, whom I'd never heard of until a few days ago, appears to have illegally sampled one of my compositions," Dolby posted on his blog after getting tipped off to the track by a fan. "And laws aside, he owed it to me as an artist to ask if I minded that he recorded a vitriolic rap over the top of my music."
Federline's expletive-laced song, which starts off with the line, "This is for the haters," addresses his demonization by those in the press, with extra special shout-outs to Us Weekly--a false tabloid, as his wife might say, and one that the Federlines are currently waging a lawsuit against--and, of course, Bryant Gumbel.
Dolby said he first heard the song after being clued in to its existence via a posting on his Website's message boards. He responded with a blog entry requesting that the song be removed from the singer's MySpace page.
"So, K-Fed, if you're reading this, I'm asking you nicely to take the track down ASAP. Or maybe you'd prefer me to come after some of your wife's ill-gotten gains?"
While Federline's reps had no comment on Dolby's diss, the song was removed from Federline's Website on Wednesday.
Dolby posted another entry on his own site later that day: "Success!"
"You can't just take a very well-known piece of music and add your own vitriolic rap over the top of it and get away with it," the new wave singer told MTV News.
"I considered turning a blind eye to it other than, as I mentioned on my site, asking him politely to take it down. But I found out today that it aired on VH1 last week. So, it's more than just an MP3 download.
"It's like what Vanilla Ice did with 'Ice, Ice Baby,' " Dolby said, "although I think Vanilla Ice is a superstar compared to this guy."
Ouch.
"Mobb Deep came to me and asked for a license," Dolby continued. "We issue licenses all the time, for movies and TV shows and so on. I was aware of the Mobb Deep one, but I certainly never issued a license to Kevin Federline."
Nor would he have.
"I wouldn't have turned it down because of who he is," Dolby told MTV. "I knew nothing about him, quite frankly, and just because he gets a bad rep in the press doesn't make him a bad guy. But just on the merits of the song, I would have said no...The lyrics are pretty evil, and I just don't think it was appropriate."
Dolby also noted in his blog that Mobb Deep's copyrights were equally violated, though since that rapper's label, Jive Records, is also home to Spears, he didn't suspect anything would come of that violation.
"[Jive's executives] don't want to rock the Britney boat, so they are turning a blind eye," he wrote.
A spokesman for Jive Records, meanwhile, told MTV News that lawyers were investigating the issue. Dolby has also turned his claim over to a legal team.
Meanwhile, Dolby is preparing to kick off his first tour in more than 15 years next week, with a series of dates in clubs across the country.
The musician also recently helped out fellow synth player JJ Abrams with the score of the Abrams-helmed Mission: Impossible III.
Even though Federline doesn't have a record deal, is widely mocked for his musical shortcomings and is now facing a potential lawsuit, he announced last week that he's planning to release his debut album, Playing with Fire, in August.
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Hefner, at 80, Says Playboy Still Relevant
Holly Madison and Hef squire Holly's Chihuahua Duke to Animal Fair's star-packed Paws for Style fashion show at the Loews Beverly Hills.
The statue's nude breasts were in the shot and that might not pass muster with TV decency standards."As much as things change, they stay the same," Hefner remarks, disappointment in his voice. "There is still controversy about, maybe even more than before, not just nudity a nude statue."That is Hefner's point that Playboy with its mission of sexual liberation is as relevant as ever in these days of federal government crackdowns on television content that some consider indecent."Attitudes toward nudity and Playboy have changed, in many ways, very little," says the man who gave the world the Playboy centerfold. "
In some ways it is even more political than it was in the '50s and '60s."The invitation to Hefner's 80th birthday party Sunday unfolds to show three photos of him: one as a toddler, one holding his new magazine in 1953, and one showing a smiling young Hefner with wavy black hair and his iconic pipe.The hair is thinner now and gray, almost white in places.
His hearing is gone in one ear and he has the slightest bit of trouble getting up from his library couch after the interview. He quit smoking after a stroke in 1985.
But otherwise, the man dressed in black silk pajamas and a scarlet silk jacket with black lapels shows few other signs that he is becoming an octogenarian."Maybe to some extent 80 is the new 40," he says, smiling. "I truly believe that age if you're healthy age is just a number.
On many levels I feel younger today than I did 10, 15 years ago."Hef has a lot to make him feel young. He lives with three young, blonde girlfriends in his ornate mansion in Holmby Hills. Their life is being documented in a hit reality TV show on the E! channel, "The Girls Next Door."His company is opening a new Playboy club in Las Vegas and a new edition of the magazine has debuted in Indonesia, sparking controversy in that largely Muslim nation.
The famous mansion, with its free ranging exotic birds, stone grotto and game room, is a part of the fantasy he has carefully crafted around himself.As Hefner reflects on his life and career, he recalls that he first reinvented himself at 16, when he was rejected by a girl he had a crush on.
He began referring to himself as Hef instead of Hugh, learned the jitterbug and began drawing a comic book, "a kind of autobiography that put myself center stage in a life I created for myself."He did it again in 1960, when he began hosting a TV show, bought a fancy car, started smoking a pipe and bought the first Playboy mansion, in Chicago."I came out from behind the desk and became the living personification of the dreams and fantasies that were in the magazine," Hefner said.Although he continues to personify the Playboy philosophy, he is not unaware of the passing years.
"You come to a point in life in which you begin to lose some very dear friends, some of whom are peers in terms of age," he said. "In the last few years, I have lost some very dear contemporaries, including my best buddy in high school, the first girl I went steady with, Mel Torme, one of my closest friends."Any regrets?"Certainly it is a life well-lived and I wouldn't trade places with anybody," he said. "My life has been so rewarding and so satisfying, I would be hesitant to change anything."
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