Sources say that Jennifer Lopez is staging a major comeback as an actress and singer. (Pause for laughter.) Lopez, who gave birth to twins Max and Emme eight months ago, has reunited with her former manager, Benny Medina, and is set to appear in two new films. She’s also planning to release a CD of her “greatest hits.” I just have one question: WHAT greatest hits?

Almost eight months after the birth of her twins, Emme and Max, Jennifer Lopez is back in fine form – and she can’t wait to show the world. On September 21, Lopez was in Athens looking more glamorous than ever as she posed for famed Greek photographer Styros Poros for Greek In Style magazine.

During the latter months of her pregnancy, Jennifer ducked out of the spotlight, putting all her energy into becoming a first-time mom. But now, a friend says, “J.Lo can’t wait to make a huge comeback.”

And she’s doing everything she can to make it happen. “She’s working all the time and has so many projects coming up,” says an insider. Jennifer, 39, will soon start shooting two movies – The Governess and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits – and will release a greatest hits CD in February.

Relaunching her career
What’s more, J.Lo has reunited with her former manager Benny Medina, with whom she parted ways in 2003. While their relationship is not yet professional – Benny is spending two weeks in Europe with J.Lo, her husband Marc Anthony and the twins – the friend says that they are very interested in working together again. “If Benny signed Jennifer, he could help her be a huge star again.”

[From In Touch print version, Oct. 6, 2008]

Well, since Mariah Carey dumped Benny Medina as her manager in favor of her new boytoy husband, Nick Cannon, what else has he got to do but revive J.Lo’s sagging career? Somebody’s got to give her some decent advice. She keeps doing crappy movies. Here’s the synopsis of “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, courtesy of IMDB: “Aspiring Lawyer Emilia Greenleaf (Jennifer Lopez) thought she knew what she wanted when she went after the sexy, married Senior Partner, Jack Woolf (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).” I smell another Gigli!

As for her “music” career, her last CD, “Brave,” was a mess. Though its first single, “Do It Well,” hit number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, the CD itself peaked at #12 on the Billboard charts for one week before dropping into obscurity. The album prior to that, “Como Ama una Mujer,” her first Spanish language CD, did slightly better, peaking at #10. In fact, you have to go all the way back to 2003 to find her next number one hit, “All I Have,” a duet with LL Cool J. So, where are these “greatest hits” going to come from?

Jennifer Lopez is shown at a Dolce and Gabbana party in Milan, Italy on 9/25/08. Credit: WENN

Last week, we told you how Jennifer Lopez ducked out of her appearance as a guest judge on the season finale of “Project Runway” at the last minute, citing a foot injury. Well, this alleged foot injury – which her trainer denied – didn’t stop her from successfully completing a triathlon for charity over the weekend. Kudos to her for that feat. But what gives about the “Project Runway” snafu? Sources are now reporting that Lopez was upset about being denied a film role in a new project produced by The Weinstein Company, which also produced “Runway.”

A source close to “Runway” host Heidi Klum says that Klum was furious that Lopez pulled out.

“Heidi went from one big-name judge for the finale to none,” the source says. “It was embarrassing, especially the excuse that (Lopez) was hurt.”

Lopez is rumored to be throwing a birthday party for husband Anthony back in New York, and, according to the source, “She can forget about Heidi and (husband) Seal attending after this.”

One of the rumors swirling around Lopez’s sudden injury is that she had no beef with “Project Runway,” but instead was angry with The Weinstein Company, which produces the reality show.

“Jennifer was hoping for a part in an upcoming Weinstein film, and she was told the day before (the ‘Project Runway’ show) that she wasn’t getting it,” the source says. “She was angry, so she pulled out.”

Lopez’s rep, Leslie Sloane, denied the rumors, saying “(Lopez) pulled out (of “Runway”) because she had an injury and had to have it rehabbed so she could compete (in the triathlon).” She went on to say “(Lopez) has no issues with Harvey (Weinstein).”

[From MSNBC.com]

I don’t believe Lopez had a foot injury. If she did, how was she able to participate in a grueling triathlon? Why did her trainer say she was fine? If anyone would know, he would. However, pissing off Harvey Weinstein is not a smart move, and Jennifer is nothing if not a savvy business woman. How else does she manage to keep her name in the public eye despite not having a hit movie, album or anything else in years?

Jennifer Lopez is shown out in NY with her husband last night for his surprise 40th birthday party. Credit: WENN

Jennifer Lopez is richer than just about everyone, but the NY Post claims she still had the gall to demand 50% off at a boutique store in Long Island. She also tried to get the place shut down so she could try on whichever items she wanted to buy at a deep discount. The staff balked at her request, and she left a pile of clothing on the floor in the dressing room and didn’t buy a single thing. What’s more is that she had eight people with her including bodyguards with guns showing:

JENNIFER Lopez was a diva with a capital D shopping last week at the Catherine Malandrino boutique on Manhasset’s Miracle Mile, near where she lives with hubby Marc Anthony. “She demanded the store be shut down for her to shop alone, but they said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” said our spy. “Then one of her eight-person entourage, including two bodyguards with their guns showing, was yelling at the clerk that Jennifer gets a 50 percent discount. Jennifer also tried on about a million outfits, then just threw it all in a pile in the dressing room and didn’t buy one thing.” J.Lo’s rep did not return a call.

[From NY Post]

It’s a good thing her mom is home to watch her four months old twins or J.Lo wouldn’t have the opportunity to terrorize small stores. She scared away her last nanny and has to rely on her mother to take care of her newborns, even though her husband Marc won’t acknowledge that his mother in law is staying with them and taking care of the twins.

This isn’t the first time Lopez has been known to be demanding. She regularly sends lists of items to hotels and recording studios so that they may better prepare for her arrival. Some of J.Lo’s food preferences include Skittles, Dentyne Ice Spearmint gum, and sour cream and onion potato chips. She also likes soft lighting and white roses.

Lopez performed a surprise concert at the graduation of a group of 10-12 year-old autistic children last week in Staten Island. The class wrote her a letter that they loved her hit “Let’s Get Loud,” so she showed up in person and performed it at her insistence. That makes up for trashing one boutique, but she doesn’t get a pass for any future diva behavior. Maybe if she did more charity work she would get enough good press to balance out all the stories about her sense of entitlement.

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are shown at the Christian Dior Cruise 2009 Collection on 5/12/08, thanks to WENN.

Rumors are swirling once again that JLo is in labor. So many questions! Will she push, or have her doctors recommended a C-section? Will she take drugs, or will she tough it out? Will she have white candles, white curtains, and white flowers all over the room? Will she listen to her own crappy music? Is she really having twins, or is she just really big with one baby?

Page Six is reporting that her highness has checked in to her luxury maternity room at Long Island’s North Shore University Hospital to give birth to her alleged twins, fathered by cadaverous singer Marc Anthony.

The private room being held for Jennifer Lopez at North Shore University Hospital is finally occupied. Monday, we reported the room, which is furnished with a leather couch, had “been sitting empty for two weeks” in preparation for the pop diva’s twins. But a recent patient at the hospital told Page Six that during her visit, staffers were aflutter, exclaiming, “J.Lo is here!” A rep for the expectant songstress did not return calls for a comment.

[From Page Six]

I’m disappointed. I have to admit, I loved seeing JLo waddling around, looking miserable. I was hoping she would stay pregnant forever, and just keep getting larger and larger, like Violet Beauregard in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” It couldn’t happen to a better person.

Hopefully this isn’t another false alarm, though. And whether it’s one or two babies, we will have the privilege of seeing them on the cover of People Magazine – the publication is reported to have paid a whopping $6 million for photos.

Note by Celebitchy: MSNBC’s The Scoop reported that OK! Magazine also bought the rights to run JLo’s baby photos, but only in their International versions and not their US publication. They quote an insider as saying “Look at her track record with her movies, and look at her album sales. The U.S. market hasn’t been fascinated with her in some time.”

Jennifer Lopez is shown at fashion week on 2/6/08.

Jennifer Lopez is so adverse to spending time in ex Ben Affleck’s hometown of Boston that she refuses to perform there. The Northeastern city has too many bad memories for her after her broken engagement to Ben and she’s not about to go back voluntarily:

Jennifer Lopez is touring cities from Los Angeles to Miami to promote her latest CD, Brave. But there’s one city where she won’t be performing – Boston! “Jennifer has very bad memories of the city,” a friend tells Star. It’s where [ex-boyfriend] Ben Affleck proposed to her and where Ben is from.” Since their 2004 split, J.Lo and Ben “have not been friends,” adds the pal. “She’s mad that he continues to trash her and their relationship in the media.”

[From Star Magazine, print edition, October 29, 2007]

Affleck told Details Magazine recently that dating J.Lo “was probably bad for my career,” and that the tabloids made up a lot of crap about them. It’s possible this story is made up too, and that Lopez isn’t playing Boston because she couldn’t fit it into her schedule or something and that it has nothing to do with Ben.

Lopez is definitely pregnant despite not making a public statement or confirming the rumors. Her stomach is clearly visible, even in the loose fug outfits she’s been wearing on tour. At a joint gig on Friday in LA, Lopez’s husband Marc Anthony sang the Journey hit “Faithfully,” dedicating it to her and saying that “[the] song has a whole new significance.” It includes the lyrics “They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family.” Isn’t that song about an impoverished musician being separated from his wife? It doesn’t really seem to apply to a multi-millionaire couple that gives detailed requests of how the room should be stocked before they stay in five star hotels.

Lopez is shown on 10/11/07 celebrating the release of her new album, Brave. Thanks to Splash News and WENN.

I was certain that J.Lo was the one pressuring her husband Marc Anthony to join Tom Cruise’s Scientology cult, but a recent article in The National Enquirer suggests otherwise. Lopez recently said that she didn’t understand the negative portrayal of the soul-sucking Scientology cult in the media, because it seems benign to her since she’s buddies with so many brainwashed members and given the fact that her dad has been involved with it for 20 years.

It may be the case that if her dad couldn’t convert her that promises of movie roles from Cruise won’t either. The story has it that Lopez and Anthony were arguing at their Miami Superbowl show over whether they would tell an attending Tom Cruise that they were ready to join the cult for real instead of just trying it out and dabbling in the courses. Anthony urged J.Lo to say she was ready, but she told him she wasn’t so sure and that they should wait:

“Marc’s pushed Jennifer to embrace Scientology because he thinks it will boost her career. He also thinks it will benefit him and raise his profile in Hollywood,” revealed a source…

“It’s become a sore point in their marriage. And J.Lo’s unwillingness to accept Marc’s demands led them to fight in Miami, where they argued loudly and she was left in tears…”

“Tom and Katie (Holmes) travelled to Miami to see them perform at a pre-Super Bowl party, and Marc had wanted to tell Tom that night that they were fully committed, but he couldn’t – and that’s what led to the fight.”

[From The National Enquirer print edition, March 12, 2007]

They say that Lopez’s mother Lupe, a devoted Catholic, advised her against joining Scientology and said it could hurt her career. Marc Anthony has been influenced by a Scientology teacher with whom he’s been seen out with lately, and that likely prompted him to pressure his wife into joining.

If this news is true then good for J.Lo, it’s only going to cost her money and common sense if she joins Scientology.

Lopez is set to sing on American Idol on April 11, which is sure to be better for her career than being known as a cult member.

Here are pictures of Lopez and Marc Anthony performing at the Viva Romance concert in Miami on March 3rd. What lovely outfits she’s wearing. Pictures [via]

J-Lo’s ongoing quest for cinematic success and praise has hit a serious bump. A public viewing of her latest film. The kind of bump that really can’t be avoided. Even the socks and sandals crew isnt sold on her latest offering:

Jennifer Lopez’s new movie was booed at the 57th Annual Berlin Film Festival at the weekend.
‘Bordertown’ premiered at the event but the reception it received was less than favourable.
According to reports, most of the audience voiced their disappointment by booing and jeering

via Female First

Jennifer hasn’t had overwhelming success of late in her movies and hasn’t really had good critical response since Out of Sight. The early promise of her movie career was so massively derailed by the infotainment industry that turned her life into the show and her major attraction. The launch of the celebrity name merger really dates from Bennifer: the primordial soup from which all other two headed monsters emerged. Maybe the movie she should have gone for was Bennifer Versus Brangelina: the two could stomp over downtown Tokyo.

A source claims J.Lo fled the cinema in tears after hearing the cacophony of boos and is now said to be worried the movie will be panned by critics.
In ‘Bordertown’, the 37-year-old actress plays an American journalist investigating a series of murders near American-owned factories in Juarez and El Paso, in Mexico.
J.Lo, known for her roles in romantic comedies, has starred in several box office flops, including ‘Gigli’ and ‘Jersey Girl’.
She was hoping her performance in ‘Bordertown’ would prove her worth as a serious actress.

Collapsing the private and the professional seems to have backfired in the longterm, but ironically the general buzz seems to indicate that while Bordertown may tank … her smaller more personal, straight from her personal life, co-starring her latest husband flick – El Cantate- may be the film that gets her all that love and success she so sorely lacks.

pics via stuff.co.nz

J.Lo shocked employees at a recording studio by sending over a list of remarkable demands a mere two hours before she was due to record. She wanted a specific type of fresh hot Cuban bread, all kinds of Skittles, and most incredibly, all low-watt bulbs set at specific angles to replace the lighting throughout the studio. I really hope she was being video recorded, because that sounds ridiculous if she was just showing up to sing:

Top of the crackpot catalogue given to staff at Santa Monica’s famous Westlake Studios in LA was: change all the lights for dimmer ones and place them at angles to make the singer look “desirable”.

One record executive told us: “J.Lo was such a diva when she was here last week. Her people sent us a three-page rider request for her dressing room which was absurd. It was so last-minute.

“All the lights had to be at a certain wattage and an angle to make her look good. We’ve never seen anything like it since Michael Jackson asked for a room to be made above the studio so his monkey Bubbles could watch him record.”

Her food needs also went into agonising detail. Our insider continues: “She wanted fresh, piping-hot Cuban bread which we had to trawl 10 bakeries to find and dozens of packets of Skittles – including the new sour flavour. She also wanted a gourmet meat selection, a separate cheese platter and crates of water and fruit and scented candles.

“We needed to get six extra members of staff to fetch all she needed and lug all the food and crates over.”

But then the star – who is making her new album – hardly touched her grub.

Our exec added: “There was enough to eat for about 20 people in the end, but she barely so much as looked at it.

“No one here could believe it – we knew she was a little demanding sometimes but this was absurd.”

It’s not like she was performing for thousands of people – she was making an album. Maybe there was a film crew with her for her dance contest reality show and that’s her excuse.

J.Lo’s first ex, waiter Ojani Noa, has been ordered to go into private arbitration in her lawsuit seeking to block his tell-all book. That’s a victory for Lopez, because it means that details of the book will not be made public.

Noa tried to blackmail Lopez, claiming he’d publish the book unless she paid him $5 million. She sued him, citing a confidentiality agreement he signed in late 2005 as part of his payout for leaving his job as a manager at her restaurant.

Among the rumored details in the book is Noa’s claim that J.Lo cheated on Diddy with Marc Anthony back when Anthony was married, and that she had “multiple duplicitous sexual affairs” on the set of Anaconda in 1997. Noa also is said to claim that J.Lo is into the voodo religion Santeria and that she performed spells on her enemies and lovers. Scientology might not be so much of a stretch for her then.

Here are pictures of J.Lo and her corpse bride promoting her Spanish language CD, Como Ama Una Mujer, in Miami on January 23. Pictures from Go-JLo.com

J.Lo said in a radio interview that her father is a Scientologist and that it’s oh so sad that people are trying to make the mudering, money-grubbing, insular cult into some negative thing. She affirmed that she’s Catholic, but when she defends the cult it seems like she might be open to a conversion:

When asked about what she thought about the negative perception some people have about Scientology, Lopez replied, “I, myself, am Catholic. But it’s just sad that people would look at it (Scientology) in that way.”

J.Lo also has a personal connection to the Church of Scientology.

“My dad has been a Scientologist for 20 years,” she said. “It’s weird people want to paint it in a negative way.”

[via TMZ]

Everyone was speculating that Catholic J.Lo would convert to the celebrity-courting cult after she started hanging out with Scientologist Leah Remini and went to TomKat’s Rome wedding/Scientology pitch. She was said to be using Scientology-speak in everyday conversation, and was rumored to be trying it out in a vain attempt to get pregnant.

We’ll see how long it takes J.Lo to fall prey to Scientology. It might seem A-OK to her, because celebrities are given special treatment and aren’t forced into servitude for years during their quest for brainwashed enlightenment. Maybe she’s not ready for a full conversion yet because she realizes how much money it would cost her.

Drew, J.Lo, and Evangeline all looked lovely at the Golden Globes. I’m impressed with J.Lo’s makeup, which has looked mismatched recently but seems just right and not overdone here. Drew is a vision in white. She’s appearing in the upcoming film Music and Lyrics By with Hugh Grant, and judging from the way they’re posing kind of far from each other I would say this appearance is for professional reasons, but I would like to be wrong.

Evangeline Lilly’s dress is a gorgeous swirl of muted pastels and I love her loose curly hair.

Cameron Diaz is a haughty mess. She tried to pull off upswept carefree hair, but her hair is too straight and it just looks messy. Those bright red glossy lips look clownish, and I can’t stand her frilly white dress. She’s taking too many risks here at once, and falls flat. Am I being too harsh on her?

Pictures from Gossip Rocks.