Following the New York Times' non-bombshell "exposé" about how Angelina Jolie expertly controls her image and weaseled People magazine into only running good coverage on her and her family, People fired back denying everything. And, yawn, now the whole non-issue has carried over to Washington Post sadsack Howard Kurtz's CNN show Reliable Sources. Kurtz spoke with people like an Extra junket correspondent who basically said what we all knew: that every celebrity blurb is heavily padded and protected and handled. Duh. Let's not treat frigging press junkets like some serious journalistic endeavor. They are the exact opposite. People editor Larry Hackett was on too, and he made only one thing clear:

• Alex's Rodriguez's people did their best to spread word he wasn't going to ditch his kids and ex-wife at Thanksgiving to see Madonna in New York, as had been previously rumored. After everyone duly printed the Yankees slugger would be in Miami with his family instead, it emerged Madonna would accompany Rodriguez to Miami, via private jet. Should make for interesting dinner conversation!

Every movie star everywhere is quitting! In today's case of old Clint Eastwood it makes sense, because he's, y'know, old and his directing career has been a lot more illustrious than his acting career has for the past decade or so. But the once-promising, now-squandered Joaquin Phoenix? Baby mill Angelina Jolie? Nicole Kidman?? If they leave, then what are we to do? Find new movie stars, I guess. Trouble is, there aren't really any good, young understudies waiting in the wings. But there might be some! We'll take a look at who could replace these four retiring (or maybe semi-retiring) actors after the jump.

It really is about time psychologists gave a name to whatever personality disorder Angelina Jolie suffers from, because "narcissistic control freak with a Mother Teresa complex" (see also: Princess Diana, Mia Farrow) is a bit of a mouthful. Anyway, Angie must have pissed off someone at the Times, because today the paper does a mild hatchet job on her, raking over various details that we already knew: She micro-manages all aspects of her tabloid interviews especially her coverage in People; she supposedly doesn't employ a publicist or agent; she and Brad make a big song and dance about giving the proceeds of their media deals to charity, but only a small slice seems to reach the beneficiaries; and, most importantly, when that bitch Jennifer Aniston is winning the hearts and minds of US Weekly readers, all Ang has to is don a headscarf, be photographed helping the tragedy-stricken in a third world country, and she's back in the game.

As a member of the vaunted Time Inc. magazine empire, People has always stood a cut or two above most celebrity magazines, ethically speaking. But Angelina Jolie is "scary smart," in the words of celeb-mag editor Bonnie Fuller, and the actress seems to have had little trouble corrupting People's soul. Set aside the now-common practice of paying for baby pictures. Judging from a Times exposé, Jolie also banished the word "Brangelina" from People's pages, dictated coverage of her charitable work in Cambodia and won from People the "positive" tone she demanded. She seems to have pulled this off with a little editor-source dance that gave People plausible deniability.

• Anne Hathaway's new actor boyfriend "went after all the young heiresses" when he was at Brown University, which makes him as terrible for her as jailed fraudster Raffaello Follieri, according to Page Six's tipster. [P6]

♦ Although her life looks like it's finally back on track, a new documentary suggests Britney Spears thinks her new life is like prison and lacks "excitement" or "passion." Hopefully she'll be in a better mood in two weeks when she makes an appearance at the Rockefeller Center tree lighting ceremony. [The Sun, OK!]
♦ Could Anna Wintour be planning to retire? Page Six says the Vogue editor is thinking about leaving the mag once her contract is up, and she's even been recommending possible replacements to Si Newhouse. [P6]
♦ Kiefer Sutherland may be planning to move to NYC so he can be closer to his girlfriend, Allure style director Siobhan Bonnouvrier. [Daily Star]
♦ Madonna is reportedly making $10 million to appear in her new Louis Vuitton ad campaign. [P6]

♦ Is Kate Hudson trying to steal Alex Rodriguez away from Madonna? She was spotted with her "arms completely wrapped around" him at a party in Miami this weekend. But she might just be trying to steal Jason Statham away from his girlfriend, since the two were seen downing dirty martinis together. [NYDN, P6]
♦ A PETA activist pelted Lindsay Lohan with a bag of flour at an event in Paris on Saturday. Sam Ronson responded by dissing the activist on MySpace: "My dog is far more civilized than that person." [People]
♦ Kanye West was arrested in London on Friday after an altercation with a photographer. Now he's suggesting the entire episode was "bogus," and has upset some Brits by comparing himself to Princess Di. [People, The Sun]
♦ Sarah Palin may collect a $7 million advance if she writes a book. [MSNBC]

The BBC on Thursday unveiled quite the scoop in a world-exclusive interview: Angelina Jolie is going to quit acting! Like, soonish. Sort of. Perhaps a few years from now. Or longer. Like decades, if her stream-of-conscious threat to "fade away" is any indication: Maybe a Kung Fu Panda installment here, a Lara Croft sequel there, and gratuitous Oscar bait every five years or so, carefully timed to coincide with the next collection of candid mealtime snapshots issued by Brad Pitt.It's a far more graceful exit strategy than that of her contemporary Joaquin Phoenix, if only for its intelligibility and lack of knuckle-writing, but all the more jarring for her anticipation of her grandmother years. We'd heard Maddox is precocious and everything, but come on. That's genuinely uncool.

With hazmat-suited Harpo workers running Geiger counters over Jennifer Aniston on her way out of the Oprah Winfrey Show studios and failing to find even the slightest traces of irradiated uncoolness, we thought we were finally in the clear with regard to the deadly sexual politics meltdown to contaminate America's superstar love triangles. Alas, a new uncool hot spot has been identified in the Brangelina household, where Aniston-dumping Brad Pitt is reportedly fuming over his ex's totally uncool calling out of his current partner's uncoolness:

♦ Things are going from bad to worse for Damon Dash and Rachel Roy: Three months after a bank foreclosed on their two Tribeca condos, Dash's Chevy Tahoe was seized this week after he failed to make the monthly lease payments. Does this mean he's already lost his Maybach? [NYDN]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson were supposedly getting engaged yesterday. Today the relationship is supposedly "heading for choppy waters," because Lindsay wants to "explore her heterosexuality." [The Sun]
♦ How is Lindsay's publicist explaining her client's description of Barack Obama earlier this week as the country's first "colored President"? She says no one knows what LiLo really said, since it was "unintelligible." [MSNBC]
♦ Katie Holmes is supposedly refusing to move back to LA after she's finished on Broadway. Why? Because she doesn't get dragged to as many Scientology events when she's in NYC. [NYDN]

Months of sex with pop crooner John Mayer is enough to kill anyone's sense of humor, but Jennifer Aniston appears to have survived it tolerably if her 30 Rock guest spot is any indication. In tonight's episode Aniston plays an old friend of Liz Lemon who becomes an extremely clingy accessory to Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy. Of course, we can't help but connect the cameo with the real life Vogue cover story where Aniston lashed out at Angelina's poor manners. Since there's been some extremely unsourced talk about Aniston joining the series as a regular, so now is the time to figure out from these three hot preview clips if Desperate Jen is funnier as a character than she is in real life.This W photoset showed us what life is probably like in the Pitt-Jolie household, but we never got to be a fly on the wall in the early days. This month's Vogue cover story featuring Aniston takes us as far back as the beginnings of Brad's affair: "I felt those details were a little inappropriate to discuss. That stuff about how she couldn’t wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool." Amazingly in the same interview she relates her feelings about whining and complaining, with Vogue providing the emphasis:

We can tell by your reactions to Jennifer Aniston's recent Vogue indictment of Angelina Jolie (e.g. "She needs to build a bridge and get over it") that there remains plenty of demand for Aniston to swing away at her spouse-snatching archnemesis. So off she went to visit Oprah Winfrey, who, in an interview to be broadcast later today, wouldn't let Aniston out of the studio without claiming her own stake of the fuss. Hint: That bridge may be on the way! To Pitt, anyway:

• Kanye West is astounded by the lack of sober judgement and integrity in the MTV Video Music Awards. He thinks they're fixed! The cable network is shocked he would question the ethics of the "MTV Academy." [Sun]

♦ Remember last month when Gwyneth Paltrow said she was trying to be supportive of her good friend Madonna during her divorce? It seems Madge was less than moved by the gesture and now she's warning Gwyneth to keep her mouth shut and "say nothing about me or my divorce." [National Enquirer]
♦ Meanwhile, Madonna has supposedly been telling a "close pal" that Alex Rodriguez sends her poetry and "has the heart of a poet trapped inside an insanely gorgeous body." [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are supposedly planning to "officially get engaged" while they're in Paris this week. [The Sun]
♦ Now that she's back from London (where she reportedly brought 20 pieces of luggage on a three-day trip), Mariah Carey is supposedly organizing her holiday vacation to Aspen, where her plans include rolling around in the snow in a red bikini and decorating her bedroom to look like the North Pole. [MSNBC, The Sun, P6]

While we think this town is probably big enough for both of us, we admit that the right-wing outlet Newsmax spooks us a little with its encroaching "celebrity heathen" beat. The coverage is perhaps best exemplified today by the feature "Hollywood's Top 10 Atheists," a bracing survey of Angelina Jolie, Keanu Reeves, Woody Allen and few other wretched infidels whose names might even surprise you.Take Bruce Willis for example (whose "conservative credentials often are exaggerated," according to the author), Ian McKellen ("Tom Hanks' co-star in The Da Vinci Code," we're reminded) and Jodie Foster, who is, of course, a lesbian and thus thoroughly godless by default. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are outed as agnostics, meanwhile, and the feature ends with the obligatory bone-throw in the direction of God-fearing GOP actor emeritus Jon Voight. Like you, we wondered what the real Newsmax angle might be here — if maybe they really are turning a new celeb leaf, or if this was Plan B after "Hollywood's 10 Jewishest Jews" simply proved too unwieldy a subject to whittle down on deadline. But after a second, closer, read, we think we get it: Straight-up bitterness. And not of the post-election variety either, but something far more ingrained: "You'd think hollywood stars would drop to their knees every day to give thanks for their fame, fortune, and beauty," the author notes. Maybe so, but his kind are technically responsible for The Love Guru, so let's just call it even for now, OK?

• Jennifer Aniston has an "unbelievably warm and respectful" relationship with ex-husband Brad Pitt, but that skank new wife of his? Who recently told the Times she and Pitt fell in love on the Mr. & Miss Smith set, while he was still married to Aniston? She's a piece of work. "That stuff about how she couldn't wait to get to work every day? That was really uncool."

♦ Jennifer Aniston is finally speaking out about her breakup with Brad Pitt. In the December issue of Vogue, she says what Angelina Jolie did was "really uncool," and that she had no idea that Brad had cheated on her until she read about it afterwards. [MSNBC, NYP]
♦ The security guard who roughed-up Brad Pitt at the premiere of his own movie on Monday night says he was only trying to protect Brad by helping him get away from a pack of aggressive photographers. [ET, NYP]
♦ Madonna is supposedly considering a career as a movie director so she can "rival" her ex, Guy Ritchie, at least according to her nutty brother Christopher Ciccone. She should have more time to pursue a directing career if she chooses to: Officials in Malawi have said she can "forget" about adopting another baby as long as she plans to bring it into a "broken home." [The Sun, MSNBC]
♦ Billy Ray Cyrus says he is trying to get Malia and Sasha Obama to appear in an episode of Hannah Montana. [NYDN]

We already know Jennifer Aniston thinks Angelina Jolie's spouse-theft is the very picture of "uncool." But a little context couldn't hurt in understanding the true depth of Aniston's lingering antipathy over her split from Brad Pitt — like that whole part about Jolie's "detailed timeline" of their illicit courtship on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Definitely uncool, says Aniston:

So, have you heard that Jaden Smith, son of mega movie star Will, is going to be the next Karate Kid? Yeah, they're rebooting that old franchise—about street tough kids getting lessons in fightin' and thinkin' from mystical Asians—as a star vehicle for the kiddie. Sure, he's already starred (with Pa) in The Pursuit of Happy[sic]ness and has a role in the upcoming The Day The Earth Stood Still. But, the savvy tyke he is, Jaden's booked himself in the update of an iconic role that can shake off the simple title of "Will Smith's Kid." Now he'll be, well, "that new Karate Kid." He's not the first celeb spawn to go into the industry, and he won't be the last teetering into the fray to ditch associations with their famous folks. So who's next?? Who will be the next children of celebrities to hurl themselves in front of the camera in search of non-genetic fame? We'll take a look at some other famey babies after the jump and cast them in ideal (read: fake) break-out roles!