~*~ Star Flash ~*~

News u might have allready heard of or not

TLC
After 5 years,R&B's sexiest all-grrrl trio is back on the scene! Their 3rd release,Fan Mail,hits stores on February 23rd.
Puffy + Jerry
The New York Post reports that Jerry Seinfeld and Sean "Puffy" Combs became fast friends while posing together for a Forbesmagazine cover.The duo will be featured in a forthcoming Forbes story on the Top 100 celebs.
Knick Fans peak over Jay-Z
The Post also reports that when Puffy and Jay-Z were spotted on the giant screen at the Knick game the other night,the crowd was luckewarm when they saw Puffy but went nuts for Jay-Z.
Britney Spears
MTV reports that 17-year-old Britney Spears,who has the top-selling single in the US for the past couple of weeks with "Baby One More Time" and toured with "N Sync,is now about to pop up on Dawson's Creek. Britney,who once acted in an off-Broadway play when she was 10 and was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club told MTV"s John Norri "There was a talk for me to do some appearences on Dawson's Creek." Britney said, "I love that show,and Katie Holmes,Yay!". Norris asked what would her character be and she said : "We don't know yet". She does know that she's expected to shoot three episodes.According to MTV,Britney is expected to shoot her episodes of Dawson's Creek in March or April.
CLINTONS DIS PEOPLE MAG President Clinton and the First Lady last night "blasted People magazine for today's cover story on the relationship between Hillary and Chelsea - an article that discusses the First Daughter's feelings of "betrayal" over Sexgate," according to a story in today's New York Post. "We deeply regret and are profoundly saddened by the decision of People magazine to print a cover story featuring our daughter, Chelsea," the Clintons said ina public statement. "Other than at public situations where she is an integral part of our family, Chelsea has not taken on a public role. We have been very grateful for the media's restraint in allowing Chelsea the privacy that any young person needs and deserves." People pointed out that Chelsea is no longer a child. She "is nearly 19 years old and a poised young adult," the magazine said. "We feel that because she is an eyewitness to the family drama and history unfolding around her, she is a valid journalistic subject." But a friend of Chelsea at Stanford University told The Post the First Daughter will see the story as a serious invasion of privacy. "If this article tries to bring the bond between her and her mother under the microscope, if it scrutinizes it in any way, Chelsea will have a hard time shrugging it off," the friend said. The article contains no blockbuster revelations, but includes a few new details about Chelsea's reaction to her father's infidelity.People paints a portrait of a sometimes lonely Chelsea waking up before her seven Stanford housemates, sitting alone in the kitchen they share, and reading up on the scandal in USA Today, reports The Post. Another longtime friend said Hillary's advice to "just keep keeping on" has likely helped Chelsea get through the worst days.

FOXY'S #1 Foxy Brown will be at the top of the charts this Friday with Chyna Doll, which sold more than 172,000 copies in its first week of release. Following Brown is Britney Spears, up a notch to No. 2, selling just shy of 150,000 copies of …Baby One More Time. Silkk the Shocker, who was No. 1 just a week ago, slides to No. 3, selling 116,000 copies of his Made Man, while the Offspring's Americana remains at No. 4 for the third week in a row.

BUFFY AND DUCHOVNY SWEEP TV GUIDE AWARDS The big winners at Monday night's first ever TV Guide Awards were David Duchovny and the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. TV Guide readers — 1.2 million of them according to the publicattion — mailed in their votes naming the Duchovny the Favorite Actor in a Drama, while an online poll ranked him Best-Dressed Male and Sexiest Male. Buffy dominated the online categories, but failed to make a dent in the mail-in survey. Sarah Michelle Gellar was named Sexiest Female and Best-Dressed Female, and took the Best Female Hair-Do category. Buffy was also voted Best Teen Character. David Boreanaz, who plays Angel, took Best Men's Hair-Do; Spike (James Marsden) won Scariest Villain; and the WB series was named Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Show. Other winners included Home Improvement's Tim Allen and Dharma & Greg's Jenna Elfman, who took Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy, respectively. ER and Frasier won for Best Drama and Best Comedy, while Martial Law won for Best New Series.

CAMERON + ED NORTON Cameron Diaz and Edward Norton were "very public with what looked like a romance on Super Bowl Weekend, all over each other at Tommy Hilfiger's big Saturday bash in Miami," according to USA Today. Some reports were even more detailed. According to the New York Daily News, Cameron and Ed were "dirty dancing" on a balcony for all to see. Good thing Courtney Love is out of the country and on tour with Marilyn Manson. Otherwise, we have a feeling Cameron would have been pushed into the pool.

  February 4, 1999   New Backstreet Boys Coming in May The Backstreet Boys have announced a release date for their forthcoming album, Millennium. The new record, their third worldwide release and their second in the United States, is due May 18 on Jive Records. The band's eponymous album, which sold more than 5.7 million copies in the United States last year, became the country's third-best-selling album of 1998, following the Titanic soundtrack, and Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love. Internationally, the band has also released Backstreet's Back. Produced by Max Martin, Mutt Lange, and Steve Lipson, the first single will head to radio in early April. Tracks on the new album include "That's What She Said," "Back to Your Heart," and "Perfect Fan." The Boys, who are nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Artist category, will also be presenters at the awards ceremony on Feb. 24 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Calif.

Boyzone and Geri Halliwell At Comic Relief Launch Boyzone, Geri Halliwell and Dawn French were among the stars at the launch of this year's Comic Relief at the Sound Republic in London’s Leicester Square on Thursday. The charity's been running since 1985 and since then has raised more than £139 million for charities across Africa and the UK. This year’s theme is Record Breakers and the idea is, as always, to do bigger and better than ever before. Griff Rhys Jones was speaking at the launch: "We want every person in the country to try to break some kind of record this year", he said. "Comic Relief is the best, there is no other fund raising system quite like it. All the money goes directly to the charity. So pick a nose and break a record." A new single, ‘When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going’ by Boyzone, will be launched on March 1st in aid of the appeal and a record-breaking range of merchandise will go on sale in shops, including 250,000 T-shirts, a new celebrity chef cookbook and products such as detergents, cheeses, milkshakes and yoghurt. Geri and Co’s ‘Message To Mandela’ One of this year's main features will be a series of documentaries called ‘Message to Mandela’, made when a whole group of stars went to Africa to see for themselves where the money goes. Geri did her bit and said: "It’s not until I’ve come here and realised the reality of their lives. I feel really humbled, I really do". The date for the TV show is Friday March 12th and highlights of the night will include a rumoured appearance from Johnny Depp, Victoria Wood's ‘Wetty Hainthrop Investigates’, a thousand people getting gunged, and an appearance by Nick Hancock and Paul Bradley who revealed more to The Net: "Lots of the usual sort of wacky changing around of shows. I think there’s a ‘Vicar of Dibley’ special, there’s a ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You Buzzcocks, Have I Never Mind You’…something like that. Tons and tons of stuff". If Comic Relief 1999 plans to break records - it had better move fast. More than £27 million was raised last time around in ‘97. And another big change this year - the noses have a hidden extra...they squeak!

February 4, 1999 Winslet Fights Stardom Kate Winslet says that despite the worldwide success of Titanic, she doesn't consider herself a movie star. "I'm not one," the curvaceous beauty insists to the BBC. "I never aimed to be one. I love my job too much." And besides, explains Kate, "Being a film star is a label and seems to me not to be about whether you are a good actor, but about the size of your breasts, the size of your body, whether you've had a facelift or a nose job. None of that stuff interests me." Winslet, who is out promoting the release of her upcoming film Hideous Kinky, a small-budget picture about a single mother in 1970s Morocco, says she's still adjusting to life in the spotlight. "It's an extraordinary and bizarre thing," the recently married star says. "I'm as fascinated by fame as everybody is. I think, 'I'm famous,' and it just seems daft. I don't quite understand it. I haven't quite come to grips with it, and I don't think I ever will because it's not really me." As for her future career plans, Winslet says she has no intention of selling out with big-budget Hollywood fare. "I'm not saying I want to avoid Hollywood like the plague, but I don't want to be the kind of actor who does lots and lots of big films," she says. "I love acting, and I always want to love acting, and I think it can be quite destructive to just do those big things," adding, "I'm an English actor and just because I've done one really big film doesn't mean I don't want to keep a finger heavily in the British film industry." Hideous Kinky hits U.S. theaters in April.

DiCaprio, De Niro, Da "Gangs of New York" by Daniel Frankel February 4, 1999, 2:55 p.m. PT Leonardo DiCaprio is going gangsta. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Titanic ticket winner has committed to star in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, a turn-of-the-century Irish wiseguy flick the director developed at Disney. Robert De Niro, meanwhile, is negotiating for a part in the film. If he gets in, it will be the eighth time he's worked with his Taxi Driver pal, Scorsese. De Niro played DiCaprio's father in 1993's This Boy's Life, too. Disney reportedly got hot on the project when the studio heard that DiCaprio would be starring. And the studio--keeping with its just-announced intention to do more cooperative ventures--is apparently looking to team with Warner Bros. on the film. Scorsese, who just wrapped his Nicolas Cage-as-paramedic-in-a-bad-neighborhood drama, Bringing Out the Dead, is said to be currently retooling the Gangs script with writer Jay Cocks. DiCaprio is currently filming The Beach in Thailand (and cozying up to Thai officials so they won't let environmentalists interfere with 20th Century Fox's work there). To get Gangs made, however, Scorsese, De Niro, DiCaprio and Associates might have to deal with the Gangs of Hollywood--i.e. the rival talent-rep camps of Creative Artists Association and Mike Ovitz's newly founded Artists Management Group. AMG (which represents DiCaprio and Scorsese) and CAA (De Niro) are currently engaged in a bitter feud, and last week CAA executives declared they wouldn't do business with Ovitz's new company anymore because they believe it's raiding their company of its agents and clients.

Margulies to Kiss "ER" Goodbye by Bridget Byrne February 5, 1999, 2:15 p.m. PT ER's latest casualty: Julianna Margulies. Emmy-winning Nurse Carol Hathaway announced that she'll be leaving the top-rated hospital drama during an appearance Wednesday on Howie Mandel's talk show. Margulies told Mandel (himself a former medical type on NBC's St. Elsewhere) that she will only stay on until her current contract expires at the end of the 1999-2000 season. She says she wants to return to New York because she's "homesick" and wants "to get back on the stage and do some independent films." Of course, Margulies' onscreen love interest, George Clooney's Dr. Doug Ross, is scheduled to exit the series on February 18. It is not known what Hathaway will do next season without Ross around but, says Margulies, "You are all going to be happy with the way my character turns out." As Carol Hathaway, Margulies almost didn't survive the September 1994 pilot episode, during which the emotionally troubled nurse tried to commit suicide. However she lived on, snagging an Emmy winner and becoming one of ER's most popular and enduring characters. County General's had a hard time keeping females around. Sherry Stringfield, who played Dr. Susan Lewis, walked away from the show in the middle of its third season to move back to New York, and then Maria Bello, only featured briefly last season as Dr. Anna Del Amico, decided to trade in her scrubs for a film career. Piquing fan interest this fifth season has been Hathaway's increased emotional involvement with Ross. Margulies said she cried after Clooney completed his final scene, filmed last week in Chicago. She said Clooney hugged her and assured her he'd "be back"--meaning he hasn't ruled out appearing in guest spots on the show next season. Since becoming an ER star, Margulies has appeared in such movies as The Newton Boys and A Price Above Rubies. NBC had no comment on her announcement, but her personal publicist said, "It's no surprise. She's just living out her contract, which, as everyone knows, ends next year."