Do you remember the first time you became aware of Bradley Cooper? I sure do. It was sometime during the first episode of Alias, circa 2001, and Mr. Cooper played Will Tippen, best friend to Jennifer Garner’s Sydney Briscow.  What I remember is being distracted from the increasingly complicated plot by the fact that an actor as handsome as he had been cast in the dreaded “best guy friend” role. Come on! Like a guy like that would ever wait around for Jennifer Garner to dump dreamy French-speaking Michael Vartan? (Don’t even get me started on the Vartan.) Maybe if he was sleeping with four or seven of her closest friends. Maybe.

And so, I’m quite pleased to see that Bradley Cooper is playing the roles that I think he should be contractually obligated to play, namely the cad. The rake! The irresistible rapscallion! In He’s Just Not That Into You, he played the feckless husband who lied about smoking and how much he wanted to get into Scarlett Johansson’s pants. Believable! In next week’s very (very) funny The Hangover (look for an official review next week), Mr. Cooper plays that guy—you know the one—who has all the smooth-talkin’ answers. He’s got the McDreamy-like hair, he has the button-up shirt buttoned just so, and those freaky snake-charmy blue eyes that promise you nothing but trouble. The whiny guy who loses the girl to Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers? I think not. But a guy who wakes up in a trashed penthouse in Vegas with chickens and tigers but no memory of the night before but still looks kind of scruffy hot? Yes, please.

Perhaps the larger point should be made that just like life, Hollywood, too, has to obey the line between "regular-person hot" and "movie-star hot," even when they are all movie stars. Can you imagine Brad Pitt or Robert Redford or George Clooney or Paul Newman cast as the overlooked guy next door? Of course not!  Tom Hanks, you bet. Paul Rudd, sure thing. Which is where Mr. Cooper (who, for all we know, is a freakin’ saint in his personal life) must remember his responsibilities going forward. Being a bastard just looks good on him. And since he is a good actor, in fact, I see nothing wrong with him getting everything that would have maybe gone to the Matthew McConaughey of yore (A Time to Kill)  before he became today’s Ghosts of Girlfriends Past McConaughey. Just remember, Mr. Cooper, no Fool’s Gold, please. 

"I've been sporting braids for years now,” said Allison Pottasch, 20, who—stopped in Union Square on Monday, May 25—was wearing a loose-fitting purple shirt, jean shorts and a silver nose ring, her thick brown hair parted down the center and arranged neatly into two of spring 2009’s ubiquitous Heidi-esque braids (the Swiss orphan, not the Hills dingbat). “I like it because I can braid it when my hair’s wet, and then when I undo the braids, it’s wavy and nice,” she said. “I wear them not every day, but maybe every other day.”

Ms. Pottasch, an art student who lives in Fort Greene, did not claim Heidi as a conscious inspiration. Nor did she cite Nicole Richie, Sienna Miller, Anne Hathaway, Mary-Kate Olsen, Scarlett Johansson or the countless other celebrities whose braids have been steadily proliferating all year. “I would say they’re Pippi Longstocking–style, but just not, like, up in the air,” said Ms. Pottasch, who fastened them atop her head when she was Frida Kahlo for Halloween. “I used to live in Spain and I’d wear them, and people would call me Pocahontas! They never even bothered to learn my actual name!”

Modern famous women are appropriating and experimenting with braids en masse this season, wearing the once-casual style to do errands in Hollywood, on the red carpet at the recent Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum and to parties downtown. “I’ve been doing a lot of braids lately,” said Louise O’Connor, a celebrity stylist who has worked with Beyoncé and Jessica Simpson and owns OC61, a salon on 61st Street. For the Met, she styled model Coco Rocha in four braids that criss-crossed at the back. “She had sent me a picture, she said it was Grecian, but the picture she actually sent me was, it seemed, more Renaissance, or like the Elizabethan times, a very romantic cross between curls and braids.”

The currently flame-haired Ms. Rocha’s look took an hour and a half to achieve—“It was a very intricate hairstyle,” Ms. O’Connor said—and she wore it with sparkly gold Isaac Mizrahi, vamping on the red carpet with the designer himself, surrounded by other imaginatively braided heads belonging to Tyra Banks, Jessica Alba and this leggy model or that.

Ms. O’Connor argued that this is not a Swiss Miss movement. “When you mention braids to people, they’re like, ‘I don’t want to look like Heidi,’” she said firmly. “They want something a little more glamorous, goddess-type.” The assistants at her salon, she added, have been wearing small side braids at the front of their hair, like Jennifer Aniston did for this year’s Oscars
and Lauren Conrad has been doing on The Hills. “Angelina Jolie wore braids in some movie,  also!” (The forthcoming Salt, which was recently filming in New York.) “And anybody that goes away to the islands, they come back with braids. Like that movie—is it 10? With Bo Derek?”

Dickey, a celebrity stylist who has worked with everyone from Michelle Obama to the singer Kelis and just styled a photo shoot involving braids for Self, cautioned wearers against the Bo look. “Not the most flattering,” he scoffed. “You don’t want your hairstyle to say, ‘Oh, she just came back from Club Med.’” (Still: Heidi Klum recently wore a full head of cornrows to renew her vows with Seal at a reportedly “white trash”–themed celebration. )

Done well, Dickey said, braids “have always been a fashion-forward way to wear your hair, particularly in New York”—perhaps because of the very incongruity of the rustic style on our concrete streets.

Teddi Cranford, a stylist at Bumble & Bumble downtown, agreed. She said she was seeing a lot of braids in New York several months ago, but that L.A. is just now catching on. “Hair kind of follows fashion,” she said, citing flowing, bohemian looks being sent down the runway by designers (many of whom have also featured braids, among them influential and decidedly non-bohemian Alexander Wang).

“There are a million different ways,” Ms. Cranford enthused of braids’ permutations. “When they get a cut, I’ll style them with a really natural blow-dry and then just do a cute little braid in the front, and it kind of spices things up a little bit. But I’ve seen women come in and they’ll get a big braid off to the side and then pin it back into a low chignon, a low bun, and then they’re going to put on their fancy dress and off they go!”

And for those of us who can no longer afford regular blowouts: “It lends itself to kind of being able to get out the door in a hurry and look formal and fabulous,” said Dickey.

Of course DIY Williamsburg lasses, glimpsed over the weekend throwing softballs in McCarren Park and whizzing by on bicycles with baskets, are totally bonkers for braids.

“My sisters take, like, 45 minutes to do their hair,” said Zita Thomas, 30, a comely brunet graphic designer cruising Berry Street on Memorial Day with two braids protruding from under a low-slung pageboy cap. “I could never do that. On a good day mine takes five minutes, and if my hair’s being an asshole, it takes close to seven.”

She called her look “a traditional plait” (pronounced correctly). “From when I was 14 to when I was 27, my hair was shorter than most boys’—in Williamsburg, at least,” she said. Three years ago, she started growing it out, and she planned eventually to donate it to Locks of Love, which provides hair to young chemo patients. Braids facilitated this process. “I don’t curl it, I don’t blow-dry, I can put it up in a bun, I can put it up Björk-style or I can plait it,” she said. “I don’t like my hair touching my ears.”

Ms. Thomas paused at length when asked to name what famous person might have inspired her style. She couldn’t actually think of one. (Didn’t Elliot on Scrubs have braids a few years ago, she wondered?) “To be honest, I am so far removed from the media,” she said with a sigh.

mbryan@observer.com

Monday: Jurassic Park
We happened to catch Jurassic Park last week and we’re happy to report that the film holds up. Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the best-selling Michael Crichton novel has it all: Scares, laughs, action, thrills, awe-inspiring moments, crazy special effects, red herrings and Jeff Goldblum, strutting around like he’s a geek version of John Wayne. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a summer blockbuster! [HBO Family, 8:15 p.m.]

Tuesday: Desperate Hours
Watching Mickey Rourke’s devastating turn in The Wrestler, we couldn’t help but notice how simply exhausted the man seemed. It was as if the weight of a lifetime came crashing down on him all at once; the performance wasn’t so much acting as it was lived. With Desperate Hours, the opposite is true: Mr. Rourke is a live wire of manic and dangerous energy, an unstoppable force unconcerned with anything that the future might hold. The film, a remake of the Humphrey Bogart non-classic, has plenty of flaws—notably Lindsay Crouse’s Southern accent—but Mr. Rourke’s committed performance isn’t one of them. [Encore Mystery, 4 a.m.]

Wednesday: Lost
Things to keep in mind as we head into the two-hour season-five finale of Lost: Once pragmatic leader Jack (our beloved Matthew Fox, unfortunately pushed to the sidelines over the course of the past season) is planning on detonating a hydrogen bomb in 1977 to ensure that everything we’ve seen happen over the course of the series never does. Meanwhile, in the present day (or do we call it the future?), John Locke (Terry O'Quinn, full of purpose) is on a pilgrimage to kill the may-or-may-not-be-real mystic known as Jacob, an entity he’s been obsessing over for three seasons. There's also something lying in the shadow of the statue. Or so we've been told. Lost, as always, is mandatory viewing. But this season, with its confusing leaps of time travel and logic, has been frustrating us from the start. The answers have been plentiful (in the finale, expect to find out more about the Numbers), but we're starting to get a little bit tired of the questions. [ABC, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: 30 Rock
Is it possible for a television show to be too good? If so, 30 Rock definitely fits into that category. Each week, Tina Fey’s still-fledgling baby—despite being considered a “hit,” 30 Rock draws in only around six million viewers per episode—is so perfectly executed from top to bottom that we’ve begun to take it for granted. The season-three finale—featuring guest stars Clay Aiken, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Mary J. Blige and Alan Alda—is sure to be loaded with more laughs per capita than any other sitcom on television. We only hope that when it’s over, we don’t just shrug it off. [NBC, 9:30 p.m.]

Friday: Ghost World
If we were forced to make a list of our 20 favorite movies of all time, there is a very good chance Ghost World would find its way on there. Terry Zwigoff’s adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel—Mr. Clowes also wrote the taut script—is, simply, caustic brilliance. Consider the cast: Scarlett Johansson, never better, in one of those early roles that pointed her in the direction of “indie darling”; Steve Buscemi, shy and touching, as a reclusive loser who is resigned to his social standing; and Thora Birch, playing just about the biggest pill we’ve ever seen (and that’s a compliment). After spending the week dealing with unctuous co-workers and sweaty commutes, sit back on Friday night and wallow in Ghost World’s bitterness. You won’t be sorry. [HDNet, 4:30 p.m.]

Hypocrisy alert! A couple of weeks back, The Daily Beast did a story about how Hollywood studios are slashing star salaries left and right—for reference, they brought up Iron Man 2, for which Scarlett Johansson is earning a “measly” $250,000 to squeeze into latex tights as The Black Widow. It certainly makes sense: in these troubled economic times, when even major box office draws like Will Smith (Seven Pounds), Julia Roberts (Duplicity) and Tom Cruise (Valkryie) can’t pull down the grosses they used to, what are the chances of someone like Ms. Johansson earning back an overly inflated salary as the fifth lead in a summer blockbuster?

Today, in seemingly direct contrast to that logic, comes news that noted hack Eli Roth wants to make a Cloverfield-like disaster movie for the cost of $80 million dollars. And, as if that weren’t enough, Warner Brothers and director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) are going ahead with a $150 million dollar adaptation of The Green Lantern, despite the fact that they don’t even have a male lead locked down yet. So let’s see if we have this straight: spending some money on bankable movie stars, bad; spending infinitely more money on crappy ideas, good.

It’s not that we think stars are underpaid—quite the opposite! A quick look at the biggest box office hits of the year finds names like Kevin James, Liam Neeson and Paul Walker in starring roles, something that proves the studios’ main point. But, at the same time, does anyone think giving Mr. Roth $80 million (to be fair, no studio has yet to back his ridiculous pitch) or spending $150 million on The Green Lantern is the path to good business? And this is all coming just a month after Warner Brothers willingly gave Zack Snyder another $100 million to flush down the drain. (Clearly they’re still counting all the money The Dark Knight made.)

We get that everyone want the next big thing—the next Dark Knight as it were—but it just seems totally egregious to throw good money after bad. You can’t preach poverty on the one hand and then spend millions of dollars like a drunken CEO. Plus, by the time The Green Lantern hits theaters in 2010, the model for what makes a hit movie could be totally different. Trends come and go, but the one thing that never goes out of style for an audience is their love of movie stars. And even if we no longer like some of the old models—Harrison Ford, we’re looking at you—there will always be new ones just around the corner—Zak Efron, perhaps. Stars are Hollywood’s renewable resource, and, no matter what, spending money on them is still less risky than an expensive flop. Just ask Watchmen.

A couple of years ago, Jordan Osher spotted Kanye West in SoHo, chomping on a hotdog and spilling mustard on his shirt. Naturally, he took a picture.

"You get a photo of it and, what do you do with it?" Mr. Osher asked The Observer. Well, put it on the Internet, of course! "The average person gets a photo of a celebrity and they save it to their desktop, they email their ten best friends and family, maybe they put it on their social networking site like Facebook and the story dies there," Mr. Osher explained. He decided to help keep these real-life encounters alive by creating MeetTheFamous.com—a site that enables its users to become their own celebrity blogger. Its tagline: "MeetTheFamous.com: Where YOU Are the Paparazzi."

"What I want to do is provide a home for these people," Mr. Osher, the site’s creator and chief executive, told The Observer from his Fifth Avenue office. "Instead of the story just dying on their desktop, is to share their encounter, share their experience, share their photos with the world and get paid for it."

At MeetTheFamous.com, users can create a profile and upload their own pictures and videos of celebrities. The site has signed an exclusive partnership with a top photo agency (Mr. Osher declined to disclose the name of the agency) to license and sell their photos to sites like TMZ and Just Jared and magazines like InStyle. Whatever the photo agency sells, users receive 50 percent of the commission through PayPal. Also, MeetTheFamous.com staffers choose several posts to be featured on the site's home page every day. Users who create those featured posts get a $25 bonus.

For "Jenny from Idaho who has never seen a celebrity in her whole life," Mr. Osher said, she can become their "own Perez Hilton," by blogging about photos posted on the site. There’s also a Celebrity Trivia game and a Celebrity Clue game that offers daily and weekly cash prizes. Features like Celebrity Closet also note the brand names of the clothing celebrities have on and where users can snag that skirt for themselves. The site also ranks the "most popular paparazzi" (based on profile views) and the best money-making "top paparazzi."

Launched in mid-October 2008, the site (which is funded by V.C's s in New York, Ohio, Connecticut and Chicago) has collected more than 16,000 photos of photos submitted by its 5,000 users. Headlines include: "Nicolas Cage Does a Hairplug Check"; "Lady Gaga Gets Horny On Stage"; and "Scarlett (Johansson) is one Transtastic Starlet." Mr. Osher said some of the most interesting submissions include one of Gerard Butler—the Hulk-like actor who played a king in 300. An old acting classmate submitted a photo of him looking much thinner, with floppy hair and a nerdy look. Mr. Osher said publishers were clambering to create a "before and after" feature with the picture.

Another was submitted by a tattoo artist of his recent work on Rihanna—two guns on her ribcage. "This was picked up by Extra TV and TMZ was on it," Mr. Osher said.

Mr. Osher came up with the idea for the site from his cubicle. "Just like the next person, I love the celebrity news and the celebrity gossip and I found myself going to these blogs," Mr. Osher said. "But there was never anything to do there. I was always, 15 seconds and I'm done, I'll wait for the next story to come. I always wanted more."

"If someone posts something like Madonna was spotted at a Starbucks at 43rd and 2nd at 9 a.m., what am I supposed to do with that? Am I supposed to sit at Starbucks the next day and wait for her?"

Mr. Osher said users can bank on getting photos that even the paparazzi can't get. Most celebrities know when paparazzi are watching and act accordingly. But if undercover, everyday folks are camera-ready with their iPhones, what will MeetTheFamous.com users catch them doing next?

For example, Mr. Osher used to live in Los Angeles and was "'attempting' to be an actor," he wrote in an email. He had a small part in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith, starring then-undercover lovers Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. "I filmed a scene with only Brad and Angelina when the whole rumors of 'are they hooking up or not' were swirling around. If I had a camera phone back then, let's just say I could have taken a photo that would have been in all the celebrity magazines the next day. Unfortunately, there wasn't a place like MeetTheFamous.com to go and post the photo to back then."

Perhaps most MeetTheFamous.com users won't be so lucky and many of their submissions will capture celebrities going about their daily routines—getting coffee, picking up dry cleaning, picking their noses. But for some reason we’re just as obsessed with those pictures as the scandalous shots—just pick up an issue of In Touch for proof.

"Celebrities are everyday people," Mr. Osher continued. "They take their kids to school, they walk their dogs, they go to restaurants, they cheat on their spouses and they get in fights. And they're not ghosts. People see them on an everyday basis."

Mr. Osher might consider geo-targeting and mobile applications for MeetTheFamous.com. But for now he and his five other staff members, are focusing on getting the product right, building partnerships, and "'getting out into the mainstream,' of course," Mr. Osher added. "It has to get to the point where people are like, ‘I gotta get a picture on MeetTheFamous.'”

I was really looking forward to seeing He’s Just Not That Into You. Don’t judge! Admit it—you were, too. It’s been a cold, dark and depressing winter (and I’m not just talking about the weather), so is it any wonder that the ubiquitous and sunny trailer for the film—chock full of beautiful people like Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly, Drew Barrymore, Kevin Connolly and Bradley Cooper, bumbling around in matters of the heart—might be appealing? In fact, the aforementioned trailer includes the opening scene of the film, a quick vignette that won me over instantly. Here’s how it goes:

A little girl gets shoved by a boy at the playground and told she smells like dog poo. Weeping little girl runs to her mother, who wipes her face and explains that the little boy did that because, in fact, he likes her. Little girl wrinkles adorable nose and looks skyward while a voice-over from Ms. Goodwin dramatically intones, “That’s the beginning of our problem. We’re all programmed to believe that if a guy acts like a total jerk, that means he likes you.”

And—ha!—that’s kind of funny because it’s kind of true, right? (For those wondering, the answer is yes and no and it depends.) Sure, it’s well-traversed ground—and I don’t even mean to conjure memories of Sex and the City, which first coined the quip “he’s just not that into you” (instant Occam’s Razor philosophy for the lovelorn) and inspired a best-selling book before giving birth to this film. Think of the countless romantic comedies before it that had hard-and-fast rules along these same lines: the man whom the woman has been sniping with throughout acts one and two becomes the man she can’t live without by act three. The platonic friend you never once considered a romantic prospect is, in fact, your soul mate. The most boorish of cads will become downright princely if you can just hang on for 90 minutes. Do these things tend to happen in real life? No! But you know what? Who cares? Because, after all, they’re just movies and, besides, it’s February. And often these films make you happy. (Two Weeks Notice, we’re looking at you.)

So, with that being said, how can I explain the feeling of rage that had me white-knuckling my armrest by the end of He’s Just Not That Into You? Unlike the best of romantic comedies—the ones that send you swooning home with thoughts of first kisses and your own private montage of slo-mo paint fights in your first shared apartment, chasing lobsters or dragging a Christmas tree down a West Village cobblestoned street (somebody cue up “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”!)—this movie honestly made me never want to date again. It kind of made me not want to be a woman! Wait, scratch that. It kind of made me not want to be a member of the entire human race.

A GROSS OVERREACTION? A byproduct of mounting zeitgeistian anxiety and recent singlehood? Perhaps. But let’s break it down anyway, because unlike a straight-up bad movie à la The Love Guru, this film is not easy to dismiss.

He’s Just Not That Into You is something much more sneaky and nefarious than your garden-variety romantic comedy, because it almost gets at something true and dark about people: how even the best of us can behave really badly. After the playground scene, as we’re getting to know the interwoven cast of couples and singletons, a woman goes on a first date with a guy, and walks away thinking it has gone great, while said man goes home and calls the girl he’s really interested in. That particular girl is gunning for a married man, but when her ego needs stroking, she rings up the fallback guy, who is still ignoring the girl he went on the date with. All that sort of sucks, but then again, so do people. I wondered, could He’s Just Not That Into You be a sort of scary-realist film dressed in funny clothing à la The Break-Up?

Alas, the answer is no, for at every opportunity to show the dirty underbelly of all of our collective romantic foibles, the film spooks itself and scampers away to safer and sunnier ground. (Do not finish reading this paragraph if you don’t want to know some of the happy endings of this film!) Take, for instance, the story of Beth and Neil, who at the beginning of the movie have been happily dating for seven years. They’re committed and in love, but when Beth’s sister gets married, she spazzes out about their lack of wedded-ness, though Neil is one of those guys who is highly principled on the topic of why he doesn’t believe in marriage. It’s realistic! Seriously. So is her freakout, which of course inspires her to break up with him. Later on, he shows up when she needs him most and she (aha!) realizes that she doesn’t need to be married to be happy and tells him that, in fact, he’s been more of a husband to her than most husbands she knows.

He’s Just Not That Into You
Running time 129 minutes
Written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein
Directed by Ken Kwapis
Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson, Justin Long

Up to the eyeballs in dumb movies about zit-faced teenagers trying to get laid, we now have to suffer through a disturbing trend toward Gen Xers trying to get laid. The boring clods in the wasted all-star cast of the dismal He’s Just Not That Into You swim with sharks through the infested waters of dating hell into the cesspools of marriage; it has all the depth of a television sitcom parody. In the end, it’s hard to tell who is more miserable—the losers on the screen or the victims in the audience.

This doggie doo was adapted from the stupid self-help book of the same title by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, two of the writers on Sex and the City, and the derivative influence wincingly shows. In fact, the title is an old line from the show. The book asked probing questions like: Why don’t men call back? And why doesn’t he want to sleep with you anymore? Or what do you do if you find lipstick on his Calvins? As with paste jobs based on other gimmicky beach-bag totes, like Sex and the Single Girl and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein were forced to tackle first things first—like a plot. They threw in the beach towel early. Result: no plot at all. Just a lot of aimless people wandering around downtown Baltimore trying to connect the dots, finding loss and rupture everywhere except where it really counts, and blaming everyone else for their misery. In this chick flick, the one-dimensional men are like afterthoughts, and the stereotypical women have all been treated like dog poo since childhood. Divided into chapter heads like “If he’s not sleeping with you …”, the movie applies Band-Aids as it plunges into endless brick walls, with a gridlock of characters and plot twists that left me with a pounding migraine. It’s like a soap opera that never ends, with one-liners.

Let me see if I got this right. Scarlett Johansson is Anna, a hippie yoga instructor and wannabe pop singer who meets and falls for a talent agent named Ben (Bradley Cooper) in the supermarket, but Ben is married to Janine (Jennifer Connelly), who wants to dump him because he lies about smoking hidden cigarettes; Ben confides in his dedicated bachelor buddy Neil (Ben Affleck), a photographer who breaks up with his longtime girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Aniston), who works in the same ad agency with Janine’s neurotic sister Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who is madly smitten with Conor (Kevin Connolly), a realtor who is also hooked on sexpot Anna, so Gigi turns to Conor’s best friend Alex (Justin Long), a bar manager and terminal babe-abuser who mysteriously falls for the pathetic Gigi, who gives up on Conor, who finds a new squeeze named Mary (Drew Barrymore), who makes the fatal mistake of seeking advice from gay boys, and … oh, the hell with it. Although some of these people know each other only tangentially, the threads all connect in ways that are greatly contrived, but less than riveting. The fact that the women in this movie are all neglected, betrayed, used and hurt by a succession of men who are all arrogant, selfish jerks is not entirely credible because the girls are too ridiculously beautiful to be so desperate. (Excuse me, but are they asking us to believe no man will return a phone message left by Jennifer Aniston?) Sorting out the stars like dirty laundry, Ginnifer Goodwin steals the movie. Already a weekly favorite of mine as Bill Paxton’s youngest sister-wife on the HBO series Big Love, she’s convincingly bubbly and heartbreaking at the same time.

He’s Just Not That Into You may appeal to the same people who managed to sit through Sex and the City. It gags on the same slick, pointless, forgettable jokes that make you chuckle softly and then induce instant amnesia. Director Ken Kwapis has made a sappy movie that does everything to win your love except lick you in the face. But there’s more to filmmaking than listing the reasons why dating hell leads to canceled MySpace accounts.

rreed@observer.com

Katie Holmes put in "two minutes" at her apartment building's Christmas party before making her way to her waiting SUV. [P6]

Citing cost issues, designers Betsey Johnson and Carmen Marc Valvo have decided against staging shows in the Bryant Park tents at this Feburary's Fashion Week. [WSJ via Racked]

Unsurprisingly, heiress Agnes Gund regrets telling W that she thinks many of the people she sits with on the Museum of Modern Art board are cheap. [P6]

Contrary to earlier reports that he wasn't after his ex-wife's money, Guy Ritchie will walk away from his divorce from Madonna with $76 million to $92 million. [Us Weekly] 

Mort Zuckerman says he'd never heard of disgraced investor Bernard Madoff until last Friday, when a third party investor informed him that Mr. Madoff had lost $30 million from a charitable trust he runs. [Daily Intel]

Scarlett Johansson is suing the UK Cosmopolitan for fabricating an interview with her in its August 2008 issue. [Us Weekly]

Ryan Reynolds, the actor best known for his role as Scarlett Johansson's new husband, is running the New York Marathon this year! In an entry on Huffington Post this morning, he begins by recalling his previous experience as a spectator of the 38-year-old race:

But that's not all! He adds, "But most importantly, people were experiencing a sublime rapture that I couldn't even hope to understand. They were touching something magical no stalk-still mortal simply watching the race could comprehend. These people had accomplished something real."

O.K., we're probably doomed to be "stalk-still mortals." As, apparently, Mr. Reynolds was doomed to remain, until he found he could run on behalf of Michael J. Fox's Fox Foundation. Mr. Reynolds' father has suffered from Parkinson's Disease for the last 15 years, he writes.

And, if this little essay is any indication, he's training very charmingly! He describes himself as "not a runner" but "a running joke." He wonders whether "giving birth to a professional basketball player through one of [his] tear ducts" could be more painful than his morning running sessions. He even name-checks the writer Haruki Murakami's recent What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

So, you know, good luck, Ryan!

Scarlett Johansson married Ryan Reynolds in Vancouver this weekend. [People]

Real Housewives of New York City star Luann de Lesseps managed to give dating advice to two women at the St. Regis that was at once unsolicited, racist, and sexist. [P6]

Drew Barrymore's friends think she start seeing guys her own age after she was spotted with three different twentysomethings last week. [Full Disclosure]

Dennis Quaid is unhappy that ex-wife Meg Ryan discussed their breakup while promoting her new film, The Women. "I, myself, moved on years ago," he said. [R&M]

Jermaine Dupri drank "Jay-Z's Ace of Spades Champagne and Patrón tequila" until he vomited in girlfriend Janet Jackson's lap at Tenjune. [P6]

Heather Locklear was arrested in Californa for driving under the influence of prescription medication. [US Weekly]