I resent how Britney keeps outdoing herself and forcing my hand into writing about her. Yesterday she apparently refused to hand over her two and one year-old kids to ex-hubbie K-Feddy, and partook in a four-hour stand-off, causing “several police helicopters, cop cars, ambulances and fire trucks” to arrive at Spears’ LA home along with “additional back-up vehicles and officers”. This is evidently absurd. Spears has been taken to hospital for a long overdue psychiatric evaluation (can’t imagine the results of that one). It represents a triumph for Hell-A’s Emergency Response Units, who are claiming they were ready for any potential Spears action, whether it was donning a jet pack and taking off over The Hillz or spontaneously combusting in situ.

The problem with a writer’s strike, is that shows seem like they are breeding asexually and writing themselves. New York is now the setting for two wonderful sounding new dramas … the decidedly female-oriented-sounding Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle. The first stars Lucy “Rise: Blood Hunter*” Liu, Mirando Otto and France Conroy as female execs balancing work and family, and the latter stars Brooke Shields, Kim Raver** and Lindsay Price as three high-powered women, um, balancing work and family. Never been done before.
*Incidentally, how the hell do you cast The Shield's Michael Chiklis as a hard-ass cop, and make him boring? Good job.
** The one from 24 that never stops crying. Except to have a nervous breakdown after being tortured and never talks again.

The wankers over at David Duchovny’s show Californication failed to check with one-time-good band Red Hot Chili Peppers whether it was OK for them to appropriate the name of their most famous album. “For some TV show to come along and steal our identity is not right” says notoriously-moral Anthony Kiedis, the tattooed front man of the second-best-band-with-the-word-Pepper-in-its-title…ever (TM). Any attempts to claim it was coincidence can be silenced with a reminder that there’s a character called Dani California, which is of course a track from the Chili’s last album. Depending on how this case goes, maybe I should sue this movie.

...and they're trickling in.

MITCH'S TOP FILMS
1. No Country For Old Men
2. There Will Be Blood*
3. Eastern Promises
*=Mitch has yet to see There Will Be Blood, but intends to in 2008.