Adam Brody likes gals from Down Under. news.com.au's ShowBuzz site reports that star of now defunct teen* drama series The O.C has been spotted around town with an Australian model named Tiah Eckhardt.

The flaming redhead was apparently snapped snogging Brody around the US and Europe. A Perth paper, Eckhardt's home town, claims the WA beauty hooked up with the actor after they met at an aids fundraiser on May 26 in Vienna.

She allegedly met Brody on her first night in the city at the Discothek Volksgarten club, where they spent time talking and "making out.''

Is this the same bird he was photographed dry rooting on a lawn during a Hollywood party? Class!

*Who are we kidding? We inhaled the first series with gusto.

A short note to let you know that we hear Ricki-Lee is rumoured to have hired a new stylist hell-bent on ridding La Coulter (and eventually, we hope, the Young Divas) of a pleather-happy existence. The word is her new look will be "Beyonce Badass!!!!" which we are quite thrilled about, to be honest.

We are very excited that her Australian Idol wish to bring a Beyonce vibe to the world will start with her wardrobe.

In addition - yeeeeaaaaars later this blogpost still tickles us to bits.

News story of the day has to be news.com.au's online gallery outlining with awesome Microsoft Paint-based skill just what some of your favourite movies would have looked like had the actors originally wanted for the various roles actually appeared in the flick. Check it our for yourselves.

We are quite grateful that Matthew Newton never landed the role of Frodo in Lord Of The Rings - as are, no doubt, the ladies of Hobbiton.

Actually, that's not fair. Matthew's got Pia Miranda and John Foreman in his corner! So just you stop sooking, Brooke Satchwell! For fuck's sake!

(Thanks Clem!)

Even the saga of Lisa Oldfield's cat's bum mouth wasn't enough to keep the homemakers of Australia interested in watching The Catch-Up, it would seem, with the show being canned by an increasingly bone-happy Channel Nine.

Staff of the Monday to Friday program were told it had been scrapped today at 1pm just as the four hosts came off air. The final episode of the live show will air on Friday.

The axe fell minutes after the girlie gab-fest's creator Mia Freedman resigned from Nine and PBL after 16 years with the company.

It was the latest upheaval at the network since it was taken over by new management and follows last week's announcement that Alan Jones will be leaving the Today show after more than 20 years.

The Catch-Up was launched in February with Libbi Gore heading a panel including radio presenter Zoe Sheridan, author and documentary maker Mary Moody and Lisa Oldfield, outspoken conservative and wife and member of One Nation co-founder David Oldfield.

Vale The Catch-Up. Your up-to-the-minute live crosses to the Woman's Day newsroom (a place renown for being a hotbed of serious investigative journalism) will be sorely missed by all three viewers.

Note to Libbi Gorr - please do something a bit ace now. We like you!

PS: "Something ace" may involve beating The Nation's Jackie O to a bloodied pulp. METAPHORICALLY OF COURSE, WE DO NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE.

PPS: (winks conspiratorially)

Spending too much time on any one of this morning's roughly five thousand Paris Hilton-related items is clearly the path to madness, and so we offer this smattering of easily digestible links out of concern for your mental health: · Rick Hilton may be planning a "Get Out of Jail" party for his unfairly persecuted daughter in Vegas, an orgy whose decadence would rival the nightly "Home Imprisonment Thrown Downs" the heiress would have hosted had she been allowed to serve out her sentence in the comfort of her own mansion. [Page Six] · Hoping to take advantage of Hilton's jailhouse conversion from self-described "dumb girl" to "person who, like, cares about stuff and junk?" publicity-shy animal rights advocacy group PETA asks Paris to narrate a video about the plight of fowl unjustly imprisoned by KFC. [The Scoop] · The unquestioned breakout star of the Hilton Home-Arrest/Rejailing Fiasco is Sheriff Lee Baca, who turned up at the Sinai Temple in Beverly Hills to talk to his best Jewish friends about the responsibility that comes with great power. [Radar]

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If nothing else, this Age of YouTube has given us a deeper understanding of the bizarre international promotional obligations to which our cherished, movie-pimping stars are subjected upon each new worldwide release. Hollywood's latest press tour victim is Johnny Depp, who recently appeared on Japanese TV (clip above, and more here) on behalf of his recently released Pirates of the Caribbean sequel; to his credit, Depp does his best to be a good sport, humbly accepting gifts in the John Lennon-inspired persona he's working on for an upcoming project. Ultimately, however, the actor had no choice but to offend his hosts by politely refusing their ceremonial offering of the country's four most talented children, perhaps not realising that the cultural affront will doom his film's local box office prospects and result in the disgraced tykes being sold off to the cast of Fantastic Four 2 when they pass through on their upcoming junket.

• Entertaining Johnny Depp [Japan Probe via BoingBoing]

[Do we still need to say there will be spoilers in a post about the Sopranos finale? Well, there will be. Adjust your reading accordingly.--Ed.]

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If we've learned anything from the The Sopranos finale, it's that nothing punches up a scene emotionally like Journey's "Don't Stop Believin". There has been no shortage of media coverage asking the members of the 1980s supergroup with the penchant for winged scarab cover art what it feels like to be immortalised in the Most Important Final Scene in TV History: · Guitarist Neal Schon "was like, 'Awesome!'" when he heard the news, and suspects the song was chosen because it hints at a Sopranos resurrection, for which the Jersey native would love to be considered for Featured Goombah status. [EW.com]

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Abandoning Paris Hilton at precisely the moment she needs the kinds of loyal Hollywood friends who can quickly package a project about her prison experience the most, talent agency Endeavor has announced that it's dumped the incarcerated heiress, reversing partner Ari Emanuel's recent policy of embracing the agency's unfairly persecuted friends. Expect evil-collecting rival CAA to show up to Hilton's next scheduled public visitation session with a bouquet of flowers and a cake concealing a stash of Adderall; even if they aren't sure what to do about her career once she's out of jail, we're sure they'll at least figure out a way to exploit the relationships she's forming with hardened felons, as there's always room on an agent's desk for someone who's handy with a shiv.

• Beverly Hills talent agency drops Paris Hilton as a client [USA Today]

While fans of comedian Kathy Griffin may be disappointed to hear rumours that she was passed over in favor of Whoopi Goldberg for a regular slot on The View, they can still keep tabs on their favourite Spielberg Shit-List Topper on her Bravo reality show, My Life on the D-List - now in its third, gripping season of chronicling her every celebrity-alienating exploit. The juicy backstory that dominated the first two seasons - regular-guy husband Matt Moline allegedly swipes $72,000 from her, a betrayal that ends in divorce and a surfeit of new material for her act - is still very much a topic of conversation, with a weepy Griffin telling cameras in the season premiere, "I thought he was a nice guy who loved me. Now, I don't think he ever loved me." Moline responds on his blog:

Tom Waits summed it up well: "Come down off the cross, We can use the wood". I concur. Anyone remember the end of Broadcast News? ... William Hurt's character uses tears to promote himself and further his career

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This summer's prolonged barrage of blockbusters with extensive toy tie-ins - Spider-Man 3, Pirates 3, Transformers, etc - provides parents with an unprecedented opportunity to divert an unhealthy chunk of their discretionary income to Hollywood, as any trip to the multiplex must be immediately followed by one to the toy aisle, lest this generation of savvy youngsters report their miserly guardians to Child Protective Services for their neglect. Today's LAT looks at the competition to see which studio/manufacturer combination can extort the most money from families with their pirate-themed televisions, robot-concealing trucks, or splooge-launching Spider-guns (now with spiral-squirting action!), offering up a brief encounter with a local dad who's losing his battle with the wallet-plundering, merchandising menace:

Hasbro hopes it can count on people like Juan Reynoso to make that profit a reality. Wearing a "First National Bank of Dad" T-shirt, Reynoso ran into a Target store recently on an "emergency diaper run" only to get stuck in the toy aisle. Reynoso's 4-year-old, Matthew, scored Chick Hicks, the only missing piece in his collection of dozens of car toys from last summer's hit, "Cars".

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We'll admit to a little cheating by peeking at MichaelBay.com to pinpoint the Transformers director's whereabouts, but yesterday the peripatetic master of blowing shit up brought his Giant Fucking Robots roadshow to Seoul to generate some excitement for the movie's June 28th premiere. According to the Korea Times, after some banter about how "foxy" lead Megan Fox got her job ("Just look at her."), Bay got down to the deadly serious business of scaring his assembled Koreans fans shitless with his apocalyptic vision of our robot-controlled future:

Bay continued, "I like to do ideas that are big ideas that really travel around the world" [...]

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· Universal is partnering with environmentally conscious marketers to promote Evan Almighty, culminating in a spectacular stunt in which the studio will flood its Universal City theme park, washing away thousands of tourists to emphasise the film's uplifting, "green" message that God will kill us all if we don't take better care of our planet. [Variety] · Michael Moore seeks out, receives free publicity for upcoming film about the American health care system. [THR] · The details of the project are unimportant to us, but let it be known that Jennifer Connelly, whom we would pay to watch folding laundry or waiting in line at the DMV, has taken on a new movie project. Unfortunately, the husband is also involved. [Variety] · CBS Corp despot Les Moonves calls Dan Rather's critical remarks about successor Katie Couric's "dumbing down" and "tarting up" of his beloved evening news broadcast "sexist". Expect the mouthy ex-anchor to be found dead of an apparent heart attack by the end of the day. [THR] · The ratings for Sunday night's Sopranos finale are in, and its average of 11.9 million viewers easily surpassed the mark set by HBO sibling Sex and the City's controversial last episode, in which the sassy, shoe-loving ladies were unexpectedly whacked by a vengeance-obsessed Mario Cantone. [Variety]

· Seth Rogen is a vacuum of not caring about Paris Hilton. · ABC News hands the world a hit list that could prevent the rise of the next ubiquitous celebutard menace. · One is in jail, one's in rehab, but one is still at large, picking up all the nipple-flashing slack. · God always takes the best TV scientists too young. · We're still divided over whether Colton and Aboud's "Jane" or "Amanda" is the hotter Melrose recreation, but leaning toward the Bisset-inspired one.

We feel it is our duty to pay semi-regular visits to Andy Cohen - cutthroat Bravo TV executive by day, blogger extraordinaire by night - but after a year of following his name-droppy exploits, we reluctantly have to admit that we're still not entirely sure what his job entails. (It's almost definitely something reality-TV-related.) In today's installment, Andy practically does backflips over Top Chef Day in New York City ("Literally. We have a certificate from the Mayor or Deputy Mayor or someone saying it is so!"), conjuring nightmarish images of a sparsely attended Top Chef parade down Fifth Avenue, featuring Godzilla-sized Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio floats terrorising children as far away as New Jersey. It's not long, however, before Andy shifts gears to topics far closer to his heart - dermatology and the gym:

Like many of you, I find it hard to sleep on Top Chef Day in NYC. I'm like a kid on Christmas morning, so I started the day early at Equinox. I have something of a black eye because of a sun freckle I had lasered off at my dermo, which again crosses the bounds of TMI. So four people at the gym asked me how I got the black eye. I knew two of the questioners and two were complete strangers. I told the two amigos that my boss hit me. I told the two strangers that it was a long and upsetting story.

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