The first time Lindsay Lohan was ever accused of stealing, it was by an unattractive female DJ who then pretended she couldn’t find her heart.

The next time she was accused of stealing it was by the Mexican government – who claimed they couldn’t find Monterrey or three of its suburbs after she stayed there for a long weekend.

The third time she was accused of stealing, allegations included allusions to corporate espionage and reports of illicit Hollywood spray tans.

That last one - it’s unfolding even as we speak.

When Lindsay Lohan isn’t taping two different roles for Disney movie sequels about legalising identical twin incest (or something), she likes to dress in black, sneak into Coca Cola headquarters after hours and rummage through file cabinets looking for that stupid syrup recipe. We’ve heard that once she finds it she just wants to add something that’ll make it a little more egg-noggy.

“Because every day would taste like Christmas,” that’s what we heard she always says. It’s ridiculous, really.

Actually, Lohan probably hasn’t ever really broken into Coke headquarters – but that’s not to say she hasn’t had her skinny little hands in other sorts of corporate thievery. For instance, the Daily News says this:

“[Lohan] is being sued by a St. Petersburg, Fla., chemist for stealing the formula for her sunless tanning spray. Jennifer Sunday filed the lawsuit in Tampa, Fla. Federal court against Lohan and Lorit Simon, a Las Vegas businesswoman who air-brush tans celebrities and partnered up with Lohan to produce Sevin Nyne. Lilo and Simon claim credit for creating the tanning spray over the last three years. But Sunday’s attorney, Marcia Cohen, insists her client only recently perfected the formula used in the spray tan. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Sunday is suing Lohan, Simon, and Simon’s company for breach of contract, theft of trade secrets, civil conspiracy, intentional interference with contractual relations and deceptive and unfair trade practices.”

Well that sounds downright serious. Don’t worry though. We have a feeling that if deciding who actually invented the spray tan gets all the way to court, Lindsay will be able to supply several stained lab coats and cracked protective eye-wear as solid evidence that she was extremely hands-on since day one. Also we’re pretty sure Nostradamus mentioned something about Lohan’s fake tannery several years ago. It’s in the book of Nostradamus Genesis we think. Chapter 3.

If the Lohan lawyer gets a chance to say any of that in court, he really probably should. After all, several needy Hollywood complexions are at stake here. Can you imagine having to watch a Twilight sequel where the actors are even whiter?

Get your nozzles ready Lilo, your services are required.

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It’s no secret that everybody wants a piece of Michael Jackson – granted the pieces people generally envision themselves having are little chunks of nose in a sandwich bag or the darker skin he used to always wear in the 80s. The latter we think would look great spread out in front of our gas-powered fireplace.

But not everybody aims to have Jackson’s skin stored somewhere in their house. No – some people would rather have his money. Take his old PR rep for instance – she’s currently suing him for 44 million dollars.

Just when Michael Jackson catches a break and finds out several governments around the world are no longer intending to force a public auction of everything he has ever owned (or whatever), he finds out that the only person he has ever actually liked is throwing $44 million onto the pile of lawsuits already raging against him.

Right when his lungs started working properly again, too.

We actually don’t know if Jackson really liked Raymone Bain – but she sure thinks he did. At least enough to contemplate for a millisecond actually paying her that much money in a court ordered lump sum. $44 million is a lot of dough you know. Sure – you may think it’s not a big deal for Jacko since his under-age son is about to become an indentured singing sensation, but it would still take an awfully long time to stockpile that sort of loot.

We’ll let TMZ break everything down for you:

“We just got our hands on the lawsuit filed by Raymone Bain, Michael Jackson’s longtime publicist. This is the best …she’s suing for $44,000,000, plus attorney’s fees…In all fairness, Bain claims she ran every single aspect of Jackson’s life … which raises the question, shouldn’t he be able to sue her? Bain says she arranged his housing, paid his bills, ran his companies [into the ground?], saved him from foreclosure, and on and on.”

This probably sounds like a pretty unfortunate situation for ol’ Mikey – that is until you realize it presents him with a rare opportunity. Think about it – Bain says she did absolutely everything for him. Sure, it’d be pretty expensive, but this is a chance for him to lay the blame for Invincible squarely on somebody else’s shoulders.

If he plays his cards right he could settle out of court, dust himself off and return to a musical legacy that’s back to only being semi-tarnished.

You didn’t forget about Dangerous, did you?

You seem angry. You did forget about Dangerous.

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And we don’t know about you, but that’s a smell we’d love to imitate – that way people might think we’re a tiny androgynous control freak with no real sense of quality control, too. Oh, why can’t Prince ever get around to creating his own perfume? Why?

What’s that? Prince did create his own perfume last year? But it didn’t really sell because Prince refused to promote it? And now the makers of the perfume are suing Prince because they’re unhappy with his lack of cooperation? Oh. You do realise that we were only joking back there, don’t you? We don’t really want to smell like Prince. That’d be quite creepy. Who’d want to do that?

Prince, as we all know, is a creative polymath. He can sing, he can dance, he’s one of the best guitar players on Earth, he can make good films, he can make really shit films, he can make hit singles, he can make album after album of suffocatingly indulgent wank that’d even test the patience of his biggest fans, he can even eat vegetables convincingly. There is nothing that Prince can’t do.

Except sell perfume. Prince quite clearly can’t sell perfume.

Although the celebrity perfume market is already uncomfortably full – with people being able to smell like anyone from Kerry Katona to Sarah Jessica Parker to Paris Hilton provided they’ve a) got more money than sense and b) taken quite a sharp blow to the head – in 2006 some bright spark at perfume company Revelations decided that what the world really needed was a scent based on the world’s smallest, creepiest, most polarising 1980s hasbeen. And, since Mick Hucknall couldn’t be contacted in time, they decided to make a Prince perfume instead.

It was all set – the perfume was made, a suitably wonky-looking bottle was created, it was given the name 3121 after Prince’s current account PIN number – and then Revelations made their first mistake. They expected that Prince would help out with the marketing.

Now Revelations is claiming that Prince didn’t do any of this, and that’s why he’s being sued for $100,000 in a breach of contract lawsuit, as Reuters reports:

“Since July 2007, despite repeated attempts by Revelations there have been virtually no communications from anyone who could commit to or coordinate any promotional efforts by Prince,” the breach of contract lawsuit said.

If these claims hold any truth, it’s not particularly surprising. Prince is a law unto himself and whatever he wants to do – like partially demolishing some rented accommodation or demanding that all YouTube videos featuring babies dancing to songs are removed or doing a greatest hits concert and then playing a titting Foo Fighters song instead of, say, Raspberry Beret – then that’s just what he’ll do.

However, we get the feeling that even if Prince had decided to dedicate his entire life to promoting the 3121 perfume, it still wouldn’t have been a success. After all, everyone knows that anything baring Prince’s name that was created after 1988 smells like a dead dog’s arse, right?

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But at other times Michael Jackson falls out with people because he goes to live with them and then doesn’t pay his way. That’s the case with Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa of Bahrain, who’s suing Michael Jackson for taking an advance on a recording contract and not seeing it through, amongst other things.

Apparently Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa paid Michael Jackson a $7 million advance for his participation in a joint recording project that never happened. Some observers are claiming that this lawsuit could spell financial ruin for Michael Jackson. However, given that the alternative is the release of an album of duets by Michael Jackson and a rapping sheikh, that’s something we’d be absolutely happy to live with.

If we were Michael Jackson, this week would be the worst week of our lives. Just a few days ago Michael Jackson lost his beloved Neverland ranch and now he’s being sued by a vengeful sheikh for millions of dollars. That’s a double combo of misery that not many could take.

However – simply because no children have accused him of wanking them off and no large chunks of his face have plopped off into his soup during dinner – this actually counts as a fairly decent week for Michael Jackson. Oh Michael Jackson, you’re such a glass half full kinda guy.

But, anyway, that doesn’t detract from the fact that Michael Jackson is being sued by Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa of Bahrain. Remember Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa? Of course you do – he’s the man who Michael Jackson hightailed it to after he was acquitted of child molestation. He put Michael Jackson up in Bahrain while Jackson decided to make his comeback by recording an album with the sheikh.

Somewhat predictably, the deal fell through a few months later and Michael Jackson hightailed it out of Bahrain just as fast as he’d gone there. Which would be fine, except that Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa says he paid Michael Jackson $7 million for the album, and he’s suing Jackson to get it back. AP reports:

Al Khalifa wanted to work with Jackson on rebuilding his career. To that end, the sheikh spent millions paying Jackson’s legal fees, moving him to Bahrain and supporting Jackson, his family and entourage. The expenses included $350,000 for a European vacation for Jackson and his associates. “The cost even included the expenses of bringing out Mr. Jackson’s hairdresser. It’s not a conventional commercial dispute.”

Now, this isn’t the first time that Michael Jackson has been sued before, and we think we know the deal here – Michael Jackson will stall for as long as he can and then an arrangement will be made that involves about 15 oddly-named umbrella finance firms which are all subsidiaries of one another who’ll shunt Michael Jackson’s debt around with such confusing frequency that it’d even make Carol Vorderman lose all semblance of bowel control.

Or Michael Jackson could win the lawsuit, which could happen. Or, worst case scenario, Michael Jackson could agree to pay the $7 million outright. And that’s a lot of handshakes.

Really, though, we’re just disappointed that Michael Jackson didn’t make the album he’s accused of bailing on. After all, who wouldn’t want to hear the fruits of a recording session between Michael Jackson and an obscenely wealthy Middle Eastern sheikh who fancies himself as a bit of an amateur songwriter and performer?

But sadly it didn’t happen, and so we’re left with only dreams of what could have been. Those dreams, incidentally, include the release of the following songs:

Hippy Hippy Sheikh

Sheikh Down

Sheikh A Leg

Sheikh Your Groove Thing

Sheikh That Ass

Sheikh Appeal

Chicken Sheikh

Sheikh Dog Sheikh

Boom! Sheikh The Room

OK, we’re just going to go and kill ourselves now.

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Or it’s because Keanu Reeves is quite private and stuff. One or the other. But photographer Alison Silva probably thinks it’s the first one, because he’s suing Keanu Reeves for allegedly hitting him with his car last year, causing career-threatening injuries to his wrist which, coupled with the fact that he’s got a girl’s name, must have really ticked him off.

But yesterday Keanu Reeves showed up in court to spread some of the trademark Keanu Reeves moviestar razzle dazzle around and convince everyone otherwise. Sadly, the Keanu Reeves version of razzle dazzle involves standing around looking blank-faced and a bit confused and occasionally saying “woah.” We aren’t anticipating a good outcome for him.

There’s a deeply complex relationship between celebrities and the paparazzi. On the one hand the paparazzi financially gain from essentially endorsing the lumbering self-worth of the celebrities they follow and the result in beneficial to everyone. But on the other hand, sometimes Pierce Brosnan will thump a photographer in a car park.

It’s not just Pierce Brosnan, though – every now and again Kanye West will get angry and shove some photographers around too, or maybe Matthew McConaughey will get his surfer mates to rough them up a bit. Or, you know, Keanu Reeves could run them over or something.

Or not, because there’s a chance that Keanu Reeves doesn’t run photographers over. But that hasn’t stopped paparazzo Alison Silva from claiming that he did. Last March it was reported that Keanu Reeves bumped into Silva with his Porsche, and now Silva has sued Keanu for all the injuries and whatnot he gained from slowly falling to the floor in front of a barely-moving vehicle.

The upside of this is that Keanu Reeves got to go to court yesterday to refute Alison Silva’s claims, and it was a rare chance to see Keanu Reeves saying some words that he’d thought up himself, and that therefore didn’t obviously confuse him the instant they came out of his mouth. E! Online reports:

Under cross-examination, Silva’s lawyer, Joseph Farzam, tried to nail down the Matrix man on whether he really made an effort to avoid hitting Silva, asking Reeves if he used his horn or hand signals to get Silva to move. “He was in front of a starting car,” Reeves replied. “It’s common sense to me.”

Keanu’s argument seems to be that Alison Silva was walking backwards while trying to take pictures when he tripped and fell of his own accord. It might have happened. It might not have happened. Frankly that’s not for us to decide – and a good job too, because if it was then we’d probably try sawing our own legs off as a protest to the futility of our own lives.

But we hope that Keanu Reeves is telling the truth. Not because we trust and respect him as an actor and as a human being, but because we’re scared that if he loses this lawsuit he’ll make another Matrix film to recoup his lost money. Because, if the quality pattern of Matrix movies holds, The Matrix 4 will be so bad that watching it will feel like you’re being slapped with the guts of an infected Ebola monkey. So fingers crossed that doesn’t happen.

The Iron Man star is totally getting sued by a guy that claims to have been on the knuckle end of an encounter with him last winter.

Terrence Howard is getting sued by music composer Andrew “Tex” Allen for five million dollars, which is ironic because that’s the exact amount Howard was gonna get for Iron Man II. Talk about coincidence.

Howard and Allen were both working on a Broadway play called Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which, as we understand it, revolves around a very poor family that makes a fortune selling feline bacon cooked in an ‘out of the box’ sort of way. We don’t have the recipe.

Anyhow – both men worked on the musical. Allen was sitting innocently at the piano playing a song about rainbows and butterflies one day when Howard allegedly stormed in with one fist taped to a wet sponge, and the other to an open packet of delicious Pop Rocks candy.

Then, alternating fists,  Howard began hand-bashing the musician in the head and face. We hear the whole encounter was apparently very sticky and loud.

Then, to finish him off once and for all, Howard gave the most awesome round-house kick anybody has ever seen. Can you believe it?

Our details were exaggerated where necessary. The New York Post’s aren’t though:

“The suit alleges that Howard confronted Allen while he sat at the piano at around 2:30 p.m. during a Jan. 24 rehearsal at the Walter Kerr Theatre and punched him repeatedly in the face and head. The suit does not divulge the reason for the fight.”

Allen, the wounded victim, states his music-playing ability has been ruined forever due to the assault.

All we can say is this – Good thing Howard didn’t already have access to the War Machine suit his former character is rumored to play in Iron Man II.

Imagine if all those face punches were thrown with metal-covered, hydraulic powered fists and backed up with sleek-looking shoulder torpedoes?

Why, had that been the case, Allen’s next musical performance would probably have been for the likes of St. Peter, Joan of Arc, and possibly a resurrected, nicer version of the giant, town-eating monster that got blown up in the end of Cloverfield.

Yes, that’s how Cloverfield ended. Now you have one less reason to see it.

Really interesting, too – there wasn’t any of this ‘occasional blogging about her implied lesbianism’ malarkey going on back then. Because, back then, Lindsay Lohan could hardly go a day without getting hammered on one substance or another and driving around all over the place like a cackling bug-eyed lunatic until she was arrested. It was fun.

But if you can’t remember that, you soon will – because some peripheral characters from one of these bug-eyed driving encounters have decided to sue Lindsay Lohan for causing them ’surprise, shock, fear and panic’. Well, hey, we’ve seen the trailer for I Know Who Killed Me – and if fear and panic are legitimate reasons for suing Lindsay Lohan, then we’ll just go and put a downpayment on that hillside mansion right now.

What exactly is Lindsay Lohan famous for these days? It’s certainly not being an actress. Is it occasionally holding a boyish girl’s hand? Her thundering political wisdom? Whatever it is, it’s rubbish.

The new Lindsay Lohan isn’t a patch on the constantly-shitfaced troublemaker that was the old Lindsay Lohan. In fact, thanks to Living Lohan and her dad’s reaction to it, it’s safe to say that Lindsay Lohan isn’t even in the top three most objectionable people in the Lohan family any more. True, it’s quite a hard family to crack – Mugabe would be hard-pressed to make the top five – but, come on, this is Lindsay Lohan we’re talking about. We expect more.

But, since Lindsay Lohan seems determined to continue down this dreary path towards cable-subscription erotic thriller career oblivion, Lindsay Lohan’s past has no option but to come back to take the slack a bit. How does it plan to do that? Only by cajoling some guest-stars in one of history’s most iconic Lohan meltdown moments to rear up and hit Lindsay Lohan with a gigantic lawsuit, that’s how.

Remember the last time that Lindsay Lohan was arrested for DUI? When she jumped into a car with her pockets full of cocaine, told the passengers “I’m a celebrity, I can do whatever the fuck I want” and chased a car full of terrified women around town until the police were called? Well, even though that happened over a year ago, those passengers have decided to sue Lindsay Lohan for it. E! Online reports:

“As it became clear what Lohan intended, the startled and fearful passengers cried for their lives,” the suit states… [plaintiffs] Blake, Sutter and Nigre are seeking at least $50,000 in damages to cover negligence, assault, battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, conversion, trespass and slander.

This isn’t the first time the passengers have tried to sue Lindsay Lohan – there was talk of a lawsuit right after the arrest – but this time it looks as though they mean business. Or at least they would if Lindsay Lohan’s lawyers were taking it seriously. This is genuinely what lawyer Ed McPherson said in response to the lawsuit:

“If this was truly the ‘worst night’ of their summer, and not their best night, one has to wonder why they didn’t just get out of the car during the many opportunities they had to do so.”

Wow. Maybe he’s right, though. Maybe being driven around at terrifying speeds by a shitfaced Lindsay Lohan really did constitute the best night of those passengers’ summer. You can’t help feeling, though, that if that was true, those boys must have had a really shitty summer.

What was their second best night? The night that one of them had their eyed pected out by a rabid owl? The night that one of them fell out of a helicopter into a skip full of dirty HIV needles? The night that they all went to see Georgia Rule at the cinema?

No, we’ve gone too far.

Back in the old days Lil’ Kim could usually be relied on to cause a ruckus by lying about shootings and getting sent to jail for it or whatnot but, now that she’s a little bit older, Lil’ Kim seems to have taken her eye off the balls. Sure, Lil’ Kim still gets in trouble, but only for not delivering albums she’s been paid to make.

As such, Lil’ Kim is being sued by her record label. Although a little lawsuit might not seem like much, it’s actually an indication of something far far worse than any of us could have ever imagined – there are a handful of people on earth who actually want to hear a new Lil’ Kim album. We’re scared. Hold us.

Ever since she had a year in jail after being found guilty of conspiracy and perjury, Lil’ Kim has pretty much kept herself to herself. But don’t think that her legacy has diminished any – her music is still used by millions as a silky smooth lovemaking soundtrack. In fact, if we had a pound for every baby that was conceived to Lil’ Kim songs like Shut Up Bitch or Suck My Dick or Fuck You, then we’d have quite a hefty donation to give to that charity for children with really angry parents.

But just because she’s had a few years of downtime, it doesn’t mean that Lil’ Kim hasn’t been busy. She has. Lil’ Kim has been fantastically busy not doing stuff that she’s been paid to do, and that can take a lot out of a girl. Back in July Lil’ Kim was sued for failing to submit the manuscript for her autobiography that she’d been paid $40,000 to write.

And, while we don’t think we’ll ever get over not being able to read an autobiography by a woman we barely even remember exists most of the time, that’s not the end of Lil’ Kim’s problems. Apparently she’s also failed to finish an album she’s been given ages to make, as People reports:

In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, record label Brookland Media claims the Grammy-winner hasn’t delivered the tracks she promised after the company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on recordings and equipment. The label also claims it spent $12,000 per month to rent a house near Lil’ Kim’s New Jersey home.

Hopefully this lawsuit can be worked out without it becoming too serious on either side. We expect that Lil’ Kim hasn’t finished the album because she’s just suffering from a touch of writer’s block at the moment.

After all, when you’ve had a career as long as Lil’ Kim’s, it has to be hard to think up new offensively blunt sexual song titles without repeating yourself. So, in our role as unofficial and unappointed Lil’ Kim lawsuit mediators, here’s a handful of song titles that Lil’ Kim is welcome to use for her new album:

* Queef In Ya Mouf

* Look At My Tits

* Pussy Like A Large Hadron Collider

* O Do B Kwyit

* I Like Sex

* Pot Noodle Clodge

* Give Me Your Dick, Actually Give It To Me, Saw It Off With A Hacksaw Now And Give It To Me Or You’ll Never See Your Family Again

* Acorn Of Bum

No really, you will pay $20. Don’t think you can go snapping pictures of Gary Coleman on your phone without paying $20 first. Do that and you’ll get beaten up by Gary Coleman and Gary Coleman’s wife, and get your phone stolen, and then get knocked to the ground by Gary Coleman’s truck. Allegedly.

Alternatively, do do that. That’s apparently what happened to Colt Rushton earlier this month and, as well as making sure that Gary Coleman has been charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct for it, he’s also hit Coleman with a lawsuit. This has to make today the worst day for Gary Coleman since, dunno, yesterday? He doesn’t exactly look as if his days are filled with sunshine and monkeys, does he?

It must be hard being Gary Coleman. Nobody you meet ever likes you for you – if they’re aware of your work their affection is going to be ironic, and if they’re not they probably think you’re some sort of hideously deformed infant scald-victim or something. No wonder you think your life is such a swirling cesspit of existential misery that you occasionally attack the inside of your own car.

That’s why it wasn’t exactly a surprise to hear that Gary Coleman had apparently run a man over in his truck after an argument recently. After all, it was a perfect storm of potential rage. All the ingredients were there – Gary Coleman, Gary Coleman’s on-off wife, alcohol, photographs, a bowling alley, a truck, the inescapable sensation that nobody involved will ever leave Utah – how could that not end up with Gary Coleman knocking a man over with a truck?

And now, ten days after the alleged incident, police have finally charged Gary Coleman with reckless driving and disorderly conduct. It originally wasn’t going to take that long to charge Coleman, but the police had to go through all the angry black truck-driving midgets in the surrounding area to make sure they’d got the right one. And there sure are plenty of angry black truck-driving midgets in Utah, trust us.

Better still, Colt Rushton, the man who Gary Coleman allegedly attacked, has decided to sue Coleman for the injuries sustained during the incident, which means we all get to hear his side of the story in explicit detail. E! Online reports the good part, after Rushton had been beaten up by Gary Coleman and his wife and bodyguard for refusing to pay $20 for a photo of him:

When Rushton attempted to retrieve his phone, Coleman, at this point behind the wheel of his vehicle, “slammed the truck into reverse, swerved and swung the front of the truck into [Rushton], hitting him, throwing him to the ground and possibly running him over,” according to the court documents.

Actually, if we were Gary Coleman we wouldn’t worry too much about any of this. The man he allegedly his with his truck is called Colt Rushton. Colt Rushton, for God’s sake. Everyone would hit someone called Colt Rushton with a truck if they had the chance, just to get him back for his stupid name.

We can’t even drive, but if we ever met anyone called Colt Rushton we’d go away, slowly and methodically learn the basic principles of driving, work really hard to save some money, spend it all on a brand new truck, go back to Colt Rushton’s house, ring his doorbell, wait for him to answer, run back to the truck and knock him to the floor in it. Of course we would. His name is Colt Rushton. He deserves that to happen to him.

So, basically use that defence and you’ll probably be OK, Gary. Our bill’s in the post.

That’s why most of the films released these days are either remakes, adaptations, sequels or big honking primary-coloured idiot trumpets starring Adam Sandler called Duh: My Is Yes LOL. But at least we can all say that the Shia LaBeouf movie Disturbia is completely original and pioneering and one of a kind. Even though it’s sort of identical to Rear Window.

That’s something the estate of the man who owns the rights to Rear Window seem to have just figured out, because they’re suing Disturbia producer Steven Spielberg over all the similarities to their story. But it’s obvious that Disturbia and Rear Window are completely different movies – Rear Window didn’t want to make us punch ourselves unconscious, for example.

The movie industry thrives on remakes. That’s why the box office chart this weeks features a remake of Bangkok Dangerous, a remake of Death Race 2000, a remake of the musical Mamma Mia, a remake of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, a remake of Brideshead Revisited and Meet Dave, a remake of every single bad film Eddie Murphy’s ever been in.

Usually nobody has a problem with Hollywood’s self-cannibalisation – everyone makes money, so everyone’s happy – but when films start allegedly remaking other films without acknowledging the remake, that’s where the trouble starts.

And that’s what has happened between the owners of the Rear Window rights and Disturbia, a film that – even to our sludgy brains – couldn’t really hide its resemblance to Rear Window. And that’s why Disturbia’s producer Steven Spielberg has just been sued by the estate of the man who owns the Rear Window rights, as E! Online reports:

With a $20 million budget, Disturbia was considered a modest hit last year, taking in $80.2 million at the U.S. box office. None of which was shared with the estate of the late Sheldon Abend, who bought the rights to Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 story It Had to Be Murder after the author died in 1968, according to the lawsuit.

It’s an interesting case, because both Shia LaBeouf and director DJ Caruso both cited Rear Window during the promotion of Disturbia, although both pointed out that they were both their own films. Which is sort of true, in a way. Here’s our comparison:

REAR WINDOW

* About a man trapped in his house due to injury.

* While trapped, the man spies on his neighbours, including a pretty girl.

* He sees a murder through some binoculars.

* He sends his girlfriend out to help catch the murderer.

* It starred Jimmy Stewart and is one of the most famous films ever made.

DISTURBIA

* About a man trapped in his house due to house arrest

* While trapped, the man spies on his neighbours, including a pretty girl.

* He sees some murders through some binoculars.

* He sends his girlfriend out to help catch the murderer.

* It starred Shia LaBeouf and was so bad it made us want to cry and commit hate crimes against animals.

Does that warrant a lawsuit? It’s not for us to say. However, Shia LaBeouf is probably praying that the Rear Window people win their case, because if they do it’ll open up all his other movies to the same sort of action.

For instance, you could say that – judging by the trailer – his new movie Eagle Eye seems fairly similar to the first season of 24, or that Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull plagiarised the first three Indiana Jones movies.

And, what’s more, our lawyers are already putting together a watertight case around the fact that Transformers is a direct shot-for-shot rip-off of a noisy, brightly-coloured, totally formless nightmare we had after eating four kilos of Haribo when we were seven. See you in court, Shia.

Don’t worry about it too much though, because taking dogs onto planes has its downsides – like, for instance, when the dog goes berserk and bites a flight attendant and she falls over and hurts her back and can’t work and sues you for $5 million. That’s what a flight attendant is claiming happened when Jennifer Lopez took her German Shepherd on a flight, anyway.

The lawsuit hasn’t gone through yet, so we don’t know if this savage dog attack really happened or not. But if it did, good for Jennifer Lopez. $5 million is a small sum to pay so long as it reminds the flight attendants of the world that when Jennifer Lopez wants her complimentary peanuts, she jolly well wants them now.

She might be blissfully in love with the man, but Jennifer Lopez hasn’t exactly had an easy time of it since she’s been with Marc Anthony, has she? First she had to deal with a tenuous implication with a tax scam, then a tenuous implication with a heroin dealer, and then the flipping man went and knocked her up.

But if that’s not enough, Marc Anthony has also started legally registering dogs in his name that may or may not go on to savage a flight attendant’s leg two years ago. What a sick bastard he is.

Or what an unsick non-bastard he isn’t, depending on whether the German Shepherd he owns with Jennifer Lopez ruined the professional career of flight attendant Lisa Wilson by biting her in 2006 or not.

Wilson certainly thinks it did – in a $5 million lawsuit, she’s claiming that a German Shepherd that Jennifer Lopez took onto a plane in 2006 reared up and savaged her in the leg, causing her to fall over and bugger up her back enough to get time off work as a result. The New York Daily News reports:

At first, only Lopez, was named in the court papers. But now her husband Marc Anthony has been added as a defendant after lawyers for her said he is the registered owner of the dog, called Floyd.

You what the problem is, don’t you. It’s that Jennifer Lopez isn’t playing by the rules. As a celebrity, all dogs she owns have to be small enough to fit into a handbag. Not only do they look cuter that way, but if one attacks you, you can easily break its jaw off or fling it under the wheels of an oncoming train or something.

But a German Shepherd? That’s hardly fair at all – unless of course we’ve got the wrong end of the stick and Lisa Wilson was attacked by the German man employed to look after Jennifer Lopez’s sheep. If that’s the case we’re only happy to take it all back.

It seems clear to us that if celebrity dogs are really going to start attacking flight attendants on planes, then it’s only fair that the flight attendants should be allowed to bring their own wolves onto planes to retaliate. We’ve thought this through and, although the only logical outcome of this scenario involves aeroplanes full of bears and dinosaurs attacking each other, it really is the only sensible thing to do.

Either way it’s a mess. Let’s hope Jennifer Lopez learns from this experience and restricts her future contact with animals to the ones that she mutilates purely to annoy Heather Mills. That way everyone wins.

Does anybody else remember when Kate Hudson’s hair was nominated for an Oscar back in 2001.

There’s reason for that you know. It’s been enrolled in acting classes since the age of four. It’s done stage work since the age of 12, and sometime in the sixties it got its big break playing the part of Charlton Heston’s beard in that Moses movie. We believe that the hair is actually what the Israelites volunteered to follow – it emoted smoke by day and fire by night.

We know this because we’ve seen the original script. It’s quite tattered.

Normally Kate Hudson’s hair earns her nothing but accolades and free head-strokings everywhere she goes. Now though – it’s kind of gotten her into a pretty big lawsuit.

The secret, apparently, to a terrific shampoo is volcanic ash. Think about it – why do you think everyone in southern Washington had such full-bodied heads right after Mt. St. Helens erupted way back when.

It’s a secret everyone in the hair-care industry knows – but they’re not supposed to tell anyone. Kate Hudson did though. She’s allegedly been saturating the media in sudsy shampoo secrets. Or something. Fox News has details:

“In June [Hudson] created and launched her own line of hair-care products alongside her longtime celeb stylist David Babaii, entitled David Babaii for WildAid. The eco-friendly collection of shampoos and other styling aids boasts a unique key ingredient, volcanic ash — but perhaps this isn’t so unique after all.

“The company 220 Laboratories Inc. filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday against Hudson, Babaii and their manufacturer, Universal, for 17 offenses, including the misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud and breach of contract and confidence.”

What most of us don’t know is that the shampoo industry is absolutely cut-throat. An example of this could possibly be seen in the 2006 incident in which a Pert-Plus strike force hijacked a tanker filled with Head & Shoulders, and then dumped it into a lake where seagulls weren’t found with a single flake of dandruff for more than six months afterwards. Sure, it sounds like a win-win, but stocks really spiraled down.

You guys have really got to start thinking more about Wall Street.

The Hudson-related shampoo company defended themselves in an email, and here’s an excerpt:

“We stand by our actions during the research and development process of the David Babaii for WildAid hair care line and believe that 220 Laboratories’ allegations are baseless and without any merit. If we are formally served with the complaint, we will vigorously defend this claim.”

Well however this all goes, we just hope Hudson’s shampoo supply isn’t affected – the 2010 summer movie season pretty much depends on it.

Would you pay to see a predictable romantic comedy where her hair is totally flat? Neither would we. Owen Wilson would though. He says he’s got to feed his collection of her ticket stubs.

It’s not creepy, They’re meant to be.

They may have to resort to begging, borrowing or even stealing to get through this one – being sued by Virgin Records for $30 million isn’t the kind of thing you can get by simply by using the cash you carry in your wallet. Maybe they could sell their instruments and equipment – though this would of course mean they can no longer play as a band…

So in other words, it would be win-win.

But why such a huge amount? Well, according to Virgin, Jared Leto and 30 Seconds to Mars were contracted to provide three albums, but didn’t. Apparently this is worth that much money to the company, so they’ve gone and sued that movie star from the band to get what they think is rightfully theirs.

$30 million though? Crikey.

And it seems it isn’t just hecklerspray that thinks the figure is a bit – shall we say – ‘excessive’. In a post on the official 30 Seconds to Mars forum, Jared wrote these words with his fingers, and possibly toes:

“So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.”

But what was the actual story behind it? Well, Messr Leto wasn’t about to leave his legion of 14-year-old female fans in the lurch when it came to the legalese, going on in the post:

“We had been signed to our record contract for nine years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than seven years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.”

And not one to leave it with a short, concise explanation of the matter – nor, seemingly, one to avoid underhanded bitchy comments, that one from Fight Club went on about a feud with more point than his last one:

“Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for ‘quitting.’ We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void. We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won’t go into here (we’d rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.”

To be fair, being sued for $30 million is probably a good enough reason to get at least a bit bitchy, and it’s the kind of thing that will make you feel as depressed as if you’ve been forced to sit and watch Requiem for a Dream 17 times in a row. Yes – that bad. So it is understandable that some complaints would be aired.

Shockingly enough, EMI (the group that owns Virgin Records) countered with some statementage of their own, offering these nuggets up:

“EMI’s relationship with 30STM has been extremely rewarding and successful for both the band and the company. The hard work of EMI’s global team and of the band has resulted in sales of three million albums and singles, multiple awards and a growing, global fan base.”

To be honest, you’d think that if they were suing a band for such an incredible amount of money they’d bother to write the full name out, not abbreviate it like it would take too much of their valuable lawsuit time up. Anyway, it went from amicable and half-written to some of the usual ‘we’re not an evil major label, honestly’ gubbins:

“However, we have been forced to take procedural, legal steps in order to protect EMI’s investment and rights during contract renegotiations initiated by the band and management. We hope to resolve these matters amicably and put them behind us so we can continue working in partnership with the band to take them to even greater levels of success.”

While it isn’t very fair for a band to go back on a contractual obligation, it does feel a bit like EMI are saying ‘either they come back to us and release more albums, thus making us money, or we get $30 million out of them anyway. Not like we’re trying to hold them hostage or anything’. A bit, at least. We mean – he may have missed out an album, but he’s given his blood for this band – is that not worth anything?

Well, no, probably not. But still.

We’re not exactly fans of 30 Seconds to Mars at hecklerspray, nor do we care much about Jared Leto and his face (apart from that bit in Fight Club), but… well… thirty million dollars? Are they shitting well kidding?!

If EMI expected to make that much money from a new album then they either have a severely skewed view of the world or there are far more fools with no taste buying music in this world than we originally thought.

But she’s getting sued for not promoting a film she was in? Well – stranger things have happened.

There is also the chance that this is the first time in her life that Paris Hilton has done something that made sense, with the film in question being National Lampoon’s Pledge This!. Why anyone in their right mind would bother having anything to do with what is an utter pile of pump we do not know, and when someone who doesn’t come across as if she’s in any kind of right mind knows to keep away from it then, well – you know something just isn’t right.

Yes, the political campaigner extraordinaire is being sued by the company behind Pledge This! for $75,000 thanks to her apparent lack of effort in promoting the film. According to Worldwide Entertainment Group, the action is being taken against Paris Hilton as she was paid $1 million for her “acting services” and “reasonable promotion and publicity” of the film.

It would seem she brought neither to the table, though she did at least try to do some acting. She failed, and frankly we’d sue her for a lot more than 75k for the botch job she did – but that goes without saying, really.

The actual point WEG are making is that she didn’t appear on talk shows or conduct the interviews she was meant to be involved in. Which is sure to have left legions of her fans heartbroken, as they missed out on the heiress once again sitting there, looking thick as pigshit and talking crap about nothing with the dumb smile that only someone born into such unworthy privilege could possibly wear.

Jealous? Hecklerspray? Nah.

It does make you wonder why Paris bothers with any films that don’t involve her putting the male member in her mouth – that’s surely the only celluloid success the dippy bint has ever had. Her experiment with that form of cinema was popular, well-received and must have made a pretty penny. She even acted pretty well in it, truth be told.

But no, it would seem Miss Hilton likes to think she can make a go of this ‘genuine’ acting stuff. It would also seem that she is greatly, greatly deluded in that respect, and it would seem that she doesn’t want to even bother telling people when she has acted in anything.

Though we should point out again, the movie in question was National Lampoon’s Pledge This!, and National Lampoon films haven’t been funny since the days of Animal House or Vacation. At least Chevy Chase bothered to promote his films, even if he was off his tits on whatever concoction of substances he rammed down his throat that day.

That’s graft, right there. Something Paris Hilton doesn’t seem to know anything about.

She then drew up blueprints for a restaurant that would use this as its niche. We told her this was a foolish concept, as nobody would come to a restaurant that only served crackers with mashed Chinamen on them. She said we misunderstood, and that she would use a wide variety of crackers to offer her patrons several palatable options.

And that was the line she used to sell us 20% of her stock. If all goes well, we’ll be able to retire several months ahead of schedule. We actually can’t remember if any of that was true or not. What is true though is that 1,000 Chinese people are on the verge of sueing Stone for one billion dollars worth of stir fried beef and broccoli for her ‘Karma’ comment a while back.

Or did they just want a billion in cold, hard cash? We’re pretty sure it was the latter.

After China got hit by an incredibly violent people-killing, building-destroying earthquake a few months ago, Sharon Stone said it seemed like Karma. Her inference was that the universe was hitting China with a little deadly wrath for the poor treatment of Tibetans.

Many Tibetans, no doubt, agreed. PETA did not.

Neither did China – and neither did some New York lawyer who’s possibly looking for a way to pay off law school real quick-like. Fox News specifies:

“The Basic Instinct star was recently served with legal papers announcing attorney Ming Hai’s intention to sue her for harming Chinese people when she suggested the catastrophic quake last May was ‘karma’ for the regime’s occupation of Tibet. ‘For the families who have lost their loved ones or lost limbs or suffered severe injuries, your … statement and act has caused extreme emotional distress’, Ming wrote, citing the controversial comments Stone made at the Cannes Film Festival.”

Hai has over a thousand Chinese people standing at the ready to publicly announce Stone really hurt their feelings, and only a paycheck with a one followed by several thousand zeros could mend their hearts. Those ones and zeros, of course, would all have to be translated into Chinese characters.

If Ming was smart, he’d strengthen his case all the more by including all members of the western world in with the emotional distress thing. After all, it was them who primarily had to look at Stone’s woo-woo halfway through Basic Instinct.

We know two people who still stay up nights because that thing hovers in front of them whenever they close their eyes – and one of them is our grandma.

No word yet as to whether the Chinese have plans for the one billion dollar payout they intend to seize from an old lady in a foreign nation’s court.

They should probably use it to build something like giant pool skimmers for their sky – and fast! After all, we heard their atmosphere is so thick you could bump your head on it – and that is not something you want your Olympic visitors to go home remembering.