People: Britney Spears, Derek Jacobi, Paris Hilton
Source: International Herald Tribune ()
Britney Spears launched her highly anticipated comeback at the MTV Video Music Awards last weekend, drawing ridicule by dressing up as a stripper and miming her new single. The 25-year-old singer performed “Gimme More” in a black sequined bikini and knee-high boots. No longer boasting the buff body that helped drive her to international superstardom almost a decade ago, the mother of two moved sluggishly around the stage at the Palms casino in Las Vegas, often with the support of a troupe of dancers. It was not the only excitement at the two-hour show. Tommy Lee and Kid Rock, both former husbands of model Pamela Anderson, got into a fight while Alicia Keys was performing. Almost lost in the shuffle was the fact that Spears's former boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, took home four statuettes, including male artist of the year. The R&B singer Rihanna won the top prize, video of the year, for her smash hit “Umbrella,” which also won for monster single of the year.
Hundreds of guests attended the first birthday party last weekend for Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn, at the home of Tricia Barnstable Brown in Louisville, Kentucky, where Smith and Dannielynn's father, Larry Birkhead, met at a party on the eve of the 2003 Kentucky Derby. Some guests arrived in limousines and stretch Humvees, bearing large stuffed animals and other gifts. Smith, a former Playboy Playmate, gave birth to Dannielynn a few days before the death of her son, Daniel, 20, in the Bahamas. Smith died of an accidental drug overdose in Florida in February at 39.
Yet another effort is under way to strip Shakespeare of authorship rights to the greatest plays in English literature. Some of Britain's most distinguished theatrical figures, including the actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, have lent their names to a “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” about who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare, …