I love the Swiss. Up until now my feelings for them had been mostly neutral (ha). But now I have a special fondness for them, and their complete refusal to fall for any of Roman Polanski’s bullsh*t. And his lawyers have tried to pull so much stuff, I can’t help but think they might have had some success in another country. But today the Swiss made it clear they’re not letting Polanski out of jail for any reason, and they know exactly what he’s up to. He was officially denied bail, though he does have 10 days to appeal.

That’s strike two. For the second time since his controversial bust last month, a Swiss court has denied director Roman Polanski bail, deeming the 76-year-old auteur a high flight risk and ruling that he will remain in jail ahead of his possible extradition to the United States. In handing down her trilingual ruling, Swiss Federal Criminal Court Judge Cornelia Cova this morning also rejected any number of alternative proposals from Polanski’s team, among them allowing the director to post bail or be placed under house arrest at his chalet in Gstaad.

You know what they say: Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the luxury resort-accommodated time… “The court considered the risk that Roman Polanski might flee if released from custody as high,” the ruling read. Typical measures, such as revoking his passport and requiring him to report daily to police, were not strong enough guarantees he would stay put, per the court, particularly as the well-connected Polanski potentially has any number of private jets or helicopters at his disposal.

Handing in his travel documents would also not stymie him for long as his dual citizenship in both France and Poland would make it easier to obtain a second, new set. “The detention of the accused during the entire extradition proceedings is the rule. This allows Switzerland to meet the obligations of its extradition treaties.” What’s a guy got to do to get a jail break? Other than fall mysteriously ill, or, you know, not have sex with a 13-year-old in the first place.

Polanski has 10 days to appeal the ruling to the Swiss Supreme Court or to the Swiss Justice Ministry, which also has the power to step in and free him. The United States, meanwhile, has until Nov. 25 to formalize its extradition request.

[From E! News]

It sucks when you can’t chill in your chalet instead of your jail cell. I love the way the judge saw through each and every argument. Most of the time judges do, but they sometimes will grant requests based on technicalities. But in this case, you can just tell there’s nothing Polanski’s lawyers could have said that would get him home. The guy would run, it’s that simple. I don’t know the future but I’m not a dumbass.

Enjoy Swiss jail while you can, Polanski. It’ll seem like a chalet compared to American jail.

Star Magazine is reporting that Brad and Angelina’s ever-increasing roster of kids are undisciplined, poorly behaved brats who can’t keep their hands to themselves, and their favorite punching bag is little sister Shiloh. Supposedly, Star interviewed a family insider who says that all the traveling, relocating, and their hectic schedule has affected the kids, and that neither parent likes to be the disciplinarian. This alleged insider also says that Pax and Maddox fight constantly, but that Zahara is the queen bee who likes to scratch and pull hair. Apparently, Shiloh got in the middle of a kid skirmish and ended up chipping a tooth.

With four children to manage and two more on the way, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt make it seem so easy. They travel around the globe at a moment’s notice with their kids in tow, but sources reveal to Star that behind the scenes, they’re losing control of their unruly brood.

With four kids come four very different personalities, which all seem to clash. And the sibling rivalry is brutal.

Maddox, 6, is constantly pushing Pax, 4, around in an attempt to show him who’s boss, says a source. “But Pax is no wimp, and he fights back.”

But it’s little Zahara, 3, who really rules the roost! “She screams and shouts at the boys when she doesn’t get her way,” says the source. Not even Shiloh, 22 months, is safe — and the toddler has the battle scars to prove it. “Z is always pushing or scratching her.”

Zahara’s picking on Shiloh is usually motivated by snacks. “Z once clawed Shiloh’s cheek after she tried to take her cookie,” says an insider who witnessed one incident. “She’s always pulling on Shiloh’s hair so she can steal her food.”

And little Shiloh has more than her hair to worry about! Recently while Shiloh’s three older siblings roughhoused, she got knocked down and chipped a tooth! “Angie gets worried when Shi plays with them,” says the insider. “She always comes back with a scraped knee or a fat lip!”

In fact, another source says food is a problem with all the kids and blames much of their rowdiness on a poor diet. “They eat fast food, pizza, chips and sugary soft drinks,” says the source. “Brad and Angie let them eat what they want because it brings harmony to the chaotic household.” To make matters worse, the insider adds, “because bedtime is whenever the kids feel like it, they get overly tired and cranky. Brad and Angelina don’t like to be too strict.”

[From Star Magazine]

There is probably a kernel of truth to this: as a mom of four, I will be the first to admit that kids fight, and sometimes it gets physical. But I find it hard to believe that Brad and Angie would let it escalate to the point that anyone would get hurt. It would not surprise me at all to learn that the two boys get into occasional shoving matches- it’s standard operation for little boys. And I do believe that little Z is probably running the show. I love that kid! But this whole story sounds like an exaggeration to me. Where are the photos of Shiloh’s chipped tooth? Where are photos of the boys with bruises or scratches? There aren’t any, because the story is bogus.

Shiloh, Angelina and Maddox are shown at an art store in June, 2007 in the header image, thanks to WENN. The Jolie-Pitt family is shown going to the Field Museum in Chicago last August in the image below, thanks to Splash News.

The movie industry must be getting desperate. Cinemas are trying to find new ways to get people to see movies in the theater rather than waiting for them to come out on DVD. These methods include selling “upscale food and beverages” including alcohol, and adding plush, comfy seats. All of this comes with a price to viewers, however: some of these luxury theaters are charging upwards of $35 per ticket.

Get ready for the $35 movie ticket.

That’s the estimated admission charge for a new deluxe cinema opening in October in South Barrington, one of 50 Gold Class Cinema multiplexes coming from a joint venture headed by Australian conglomerate Village Roadshow.

The theaters will boast boosted amenities, including plush reserved seating, digital projection and sound, and upscale food and beverage offerings with seat-side waiter service. No auditorium will have more than 40 seats.

”It’s an absolutely different environment than anything else that exists,” Village Roadshow CEO Graham Burke said.

[From The Chicago Sun Times]

I beg to differ. There is a place where I can watch a movie in high definition, with my favorite “upscale” foods and beverages, in an intimate setting. It’s called my living room. And I don’t have to pay 35 stinkin’ bucks to go there! Are you kidding me? Yeah, high-end movie theaters sound like a GREAT business to get into, with the economy in the dumper.

I am not the only one who has problems with this concept. State representatives from several areas where these theaters are taking off are saying that serving alcohol at movie theaters is a bad idea.

Movie theater owners from California to Massachusetts are increasingly giving patrons the option of sipping a beer or a glass of wine with an expanding array of snacks.

About 150 first-run theaters serving alcohol have opened within the past three years, bringing the total of such establishments from 14 in 1997 to more than 400 today, says Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theatre Owners.

The growth is happening, Corcoran says, despite concerns that those theaters could draw underage drinkers — concerns that have kept some theaters in Illinois, Idaho and California from selling alcohol.

“The boyfriend’s 21 and the girlfriend’s 19, and next thing you know, she’s already had three drinks underage,” says Alderman John Hanson, who voted against a proposal last year by a theater in Bloomington, Ill., to serve alcohol.

The increase in alcohol at the movies comes amid a decline in ticket sales in the USA and Canada. About 1.40 billion movie tickets were sold last year — up slightly from 1.395 billion in 2006 but lower than the 1.52 billion in 2003, according to the theater owners’ association.

[From USA Today]

These people are clueless! Here are some sure-fire ways to get people to go to the movies:
1) Make good movies. A couple of weekends ago, my daughters were bored and the only family-appropriate movie we had to choose from was that Raven Symone-Martin Lawrence atrocity, “College Road Trip.” It was painful, folks. I don’t know if alcohol and upscale food would have made the suffering less on that one.

2) Get rid of rude patrons who refuse to STFU during the movie! I’ll tell you this: if I paid $35 to see a movie and the people around me were blabbing nonstop- either with the people next to them or on their cell phones- I might choke someone. If the cinema management would kick out these morons, I might actually start going to the movies again.

3) Get rid of all those annoying commercials! I am willing to deal with 20 minutes of coming attractions, but not commercials. We see those at home on TV every night- we don’t want to sit through them at the movies too!

Photos from Cinemablend and USA Today.

Jessica Seinfeld appeared on The View today, and she answered Barbara Walters question about whether she plagiarized Missy Chase Lapine’s book, The Sneaky Chef, by immediately launching into a diatribe about how people are jealous of the success of her book and “must be looking for cracks” to exploit.

Seinfeld came out with a book called Deceptively Delicious this fall about sneaking vegetables into your kids food by pureeing them up. It was a huge success thanks to Oprah, who featured Seinfeld and her duplicitous recipes on her show this October. Seinfeld has a marketing background and no experience as a chef. Missy Chase Lapine, the author of the earlier book The Sneaky Chef, which is suspiciously similar in both concept and content to Seinfeld’s book, is a chef on the faculty of The New School in NY City

When addressing the plagiarism charge on The View, Seinfeld appeared defensive and annoyed, like she was trying to hold back her feelings. After explaining that people try to cut you down when you’re successful, she quickly added while gesturing wildly with her hands that “I never saw her book, I never saw her recipes.”

Barbara Walters – “There were those who said you copied [the Sneaky Chef] so that must have been very upsetting.”

Jessica Seinfeld – “Well, I can understand why she would have been upset.

You know, first of all when you have a huge success, you know this, people tend to look for the cracks, look for anything that could break you down a little bit. You know there’s always a negative when there’s a positive. This was such an immediate success, this book, that I think that probably people were looking for things to pick apart. But anyway I can understand why she would have been frustrated. She did a book with a similar topic a few months earlier and, you know, it must have been hard to see how quickly my book took off.

(Gestures wildly) I never saw her book, I never saw her recipes nor as a person would I ever do something like I was accused of doing, but you know what ..”

Sheri – “You just got three kids and you were trying to get them to eat their vegetables”

Jessica – “I really didn’t have to do this book, it was something I really wanted to do, and I really wanted… ”

Barbara – “As we said you didn’t exactly need it to feed the family.”

Jessica – “No, we’re doing alright. (Laughs)

[Transcribed from The View video segment available on the Huffington Post and shown below]

So instead of acknowledging Lapine’s case against her, which is incredibly strong, Seinfeld simply said she must be jealous. Her husband responded earlier to the plagiarism allegations in an appearance on David Letterman by calling Lapine a “wacko.”

The two books are not only similar in their idea of getting kids to eat vegetables by working them into foods they will eat, like adding cauliflower to mashed potatoes, they include remarkably similar food combinations and even some suspect wording. The NY Daily News noted how similar the recipes really were:

Seinfeld writes about having an epiphany that, “While I was cooking dinner, pureeing butternut squash for the baby and making mac and cheese for the rest of us, I had the crazy idea of stirring a little of the puree into the macaroni. … The colors matched -you couldn’t really see the squash in there -and the texture was perfect.”

Lapine, who founded the Baby Spa natural products line, writes: “If you want to hide something in macaroni and cheese, you have to match the color of the dish. You could easily introduce white bean puree in the mac and cheese.”

Seinfeld and Lapine both have recipes for mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower, grilled cheese with secret sweet potatoes, green eggs made with pureed baby spinach, and carrot-laced tacos.

[From The NY Daily News]

I’ve already written about this, but there’s no way all those same recipes are a coincidence. One or two might be explained away by similar thinking, but four recipes that are nearly the same?

Jessica Seinfeld told The Wall St. Journal when the allegations first came out that “I’ve never held that book in my hands, and I swear that on my life.” That’s quite different from saying she’s never seen it.

There’s no official lawsuit against Seinfeld yet, but I hope that she gets the pants sued off of her.

Jessica Seinfeld is shown on 11/15/07 at the “7th On Sale” Black Tie Gala, thanks to PR Photos.

Here’s the video, thanks to The Huffington Post:

Our dear little Amy Winehouse was rushed to the hospital this morning, amid much fanfare. No one seems to know why, but her very creative PR rep searched the annals of medicine to come up with the most creative malady known to the entertainment world: Exhaustion. That’s right, Amy Winehouse is suffering from one of the most extreme, debilitating, and life-altering cases of exhaustion ever known to man. Doctors really should study her and write the case up for publication in every known medical journal. Because truly, this is a case of unparalleled severity. Most shocking is that Winehouse will have to cancel the rest of her well-attended tour.

“TMZ has learned that Amy Winehouse was rushed to the hospital this morning after some sort of incident.

“Winehouse’s rep confirms to TMZ that the tatted up singer was taken to a London hospital and treated for ‘exhaustion.’ The rep says Winehouse has since been discharged and is currently at home. She has been ordered to take ‘complete rest.’

“When asked what prompted this, the rep would only say ‘it came about quickly.’ No other details were available.

”Winehouse’s rep says that the singer’s grueling world tour schedule is most likely to blame.

”For now, no no no more shows for Amy. They’ve all been canceled.”

[From TMZ]

Ooh Ooh, look how surprised I’m not. Why won’t anyone explain to Amy Winehouse that too much alcohol + too many drugs – enough food = exhaustion. It’ a pretty consistent equation. I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to sit around and do some math, you could calculate the average of how many shows Amy Winehouse has actually shown up for, and it’d be around 50%, max. You might think to yourself, “Hey, 50% is half, that isn’t that bad.” But let me take you back to your college days and remind you that 50% is an F. So I’m giving Amy Winehouse a big F on life. Or at least on creativity.

I should give a shout out to all the commentors who bought tickets. I’m pulling for you.

Picture Note: Amy Winehouse is shown out in London yesterday. Thanks to WENN for these photos.