• Elle is letting Lindsay Lohan off the hook in regards to the 400K in jewels that went missing after a recent photo shoot she did for the magazine. A spokesperson said "Elle has no reason to believe that Lindsay Lohan was in any way responsible and has no further comment to make." And now Lindsay's pissed that anyone would have the audacity to accuse her in the first place because, you know, Lilo would never steal anything. [Daily News]
  
  
• Two insane Ohio cops tried to break into the home of the surrogate mother carrying the child of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick so that they could blackmail them or rip the baby from the womb and hold it for ransom or something. Who knows? [Daily News]
  
  
• Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are insanely jealous of—Wait for it—Jon and Kate! Apparently, these two are seething that Jon and Kate are hogging up all the tabloid magazine covers. For shame! [Page Six]
  
  
• Nick Hornby recently took both his current and former wife on an exotic vacation, along with his kids by both women, and they all stayed in the same vacation home together, which all seems like a very Nick Hornby thing to do. [Page Six]
  
  
• Justin Timberlake loves ordering rounds of nitrogen chilled tequila shots at douchey Manhattan clubs. [Page Six]
  
  
• Fox's Juliet Huddy's third marriage is coming to an end after just four months. Ok, so if you're under the age of 40 and you've been married three times, something's wrong. If your third marriage doesn't even last six months, something's seriously wrong! [Page Six]
  
  
• Well here's proof that the London theater scene is going to crap just like the New York theater scene—Mariah Carey is set to star in a new play on the West End next year. [Mirror]
  
  
• Britney Spears threw on some pink hot pants and went out for some McDonald's in London the other day, because Britney doesn't get any more painfully Britney than when she's running out for McDonald's in pink hot pants. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Madonna has enlisted Gwyneth Paltrow to decorate the bedroom of her new adopted African baby, Mercy, just because she's Madonna and can get away with asking people to do ridiculous things to please her. [Sun]

Hornby persuaded his wife, producer Amanda Posey, to option the memoir by Lynn Barber — a British journalist known for "devastatingly accurate profiles of celebrities," in Hornby's words. It was the author's first adaptation in 11 years (and his first ever of work besides his own); at Sunday's premiere, he described the learning curve that yielded arguably the festival's best film.

"When you get to the end of a screenplay, you realize you hadn't done anything you set out to do," Hornby said. "It's almost over before you know it. So the process of drafting and redrafting, to me, is much more important in film because it feels like an undercoat of paint, and then a coat on top of that, and a coat on top of that. That's the only way to give it the texture that you want. Whereas writing a book, my first drafts tend to be in reasonable shape. You have all the time in the world to get things going. And of course all that business about murdering your darlings: There are scenes that have to go. There's no reason, when you're writing a book, why any scene should have to go. If it's working, no one's going to tell you it costs too much money to print those three pages.

"The reason I want to do film is because I want to be part of a collaborative process. I'm happy writing my books, but for 15 years, I've been sitting on my own in a room. It's nice to discuss what I'm doing as I'm doing it, rather than years after finishing it. I really enjoyed the process of working with Lone, working with the producers and working with the actors. It's really a lot of fun. But now I'm back on the book side. I miss it."

Fine, Nick — take your time. And if you really want to challenge yourself next time, give us a sequel.

An Education all but blew the marquee off the Egyptian Theater, where over 100 latecomers were turned away onto a swarming Main Street before director Lone Scherfig nervously announced not even she had yet seen her film outside the lab. She had nothing to worry about: Led by 23-year-old Carey Mulligan in a breakthrough that makes Ellen Page's Juno turn look like a Lifetime reject, Scherfig's ensemble cast wrings a spry, otherworldly beauty from Nick Hornby's script and its corrosive glare at early '60s London. We have no idea if it's the festival's best film, as some have said, but if there is a likelier candidate for life beyond Park City —- as in awards-season, even canonical immortality — let's have it.

Mulligan plays Jenny, a middle-class 16-year-old with an eye on Oxford and a weakness for David (Peter Sarsgaard), the 30-something suitor who charms her domineering parents and introduces the girl to his swinging society lifestyle in the city. Suddenly determined to cultivate the high life, Jenny subordinates her studies in favor of romance, travel and adventure — naturally too good to be true, as David's professional and personal indiscretions soon reveal.

The chemistry between Sarsgaard and Mulligan — who yields an equally, almost unfairly sublime secondary performance in the otherwise blah The Greatest — would be enough to recommend An Education; as predatory as he is tender, Sarsgaard's David respects his intellectual match in Jenny even as he erodes her independence. And Mulligan, with a face as vulnerable and expressive as the soft smoke burnishing her voice, radiates authority even in the push-pull of submission. But abetted by supporting cast Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams and, in a haunting late cameo, Sally Hawkins, the lovers' respective endgames have their own charismatic coaching staffs watching from the sidelines and an able, attentive referee in Scherfig.

You can't really fuck up technically with talent like this, but you can overblow the prestige. The blockbuster Sunday premiere did neither, instead confirming Mulligan's arrival and An Education's status as one of the four or five most coveted competition titles of the festival. No sooner had the lights gone up than Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker and his deputy Dylan Leiner raced out of the theater; we hold fast to our prediction that it's their acquisition to lose, but who knows at this point, and who even cares? For another four or five Sundance audiences this week, the future is pretty much now. See it while — and whenever — you can.

"In my [Borders] last week the iLiad was piled high on the left, just as you walk in; on the right was their wall of bestselling paperbacks, many of which are being sold at half price. It was a quiet Monday morning, and there didn't seem to be too much interest in the 400 quid ebook reader; what was striking, though, was that there didn't seem to be too much interest in the four quid books, either.

Attempting to sell people something for £400 that merely enables them to read something that they won't buy at one hundredth of the price seems to me a thankless task. (A member of staff at Borders told me that he had attempted to persuade a young and famous comedian to buy an iLiad last week. He seemed interested, until he was told the price, at which point he swore loudly and walked away. So at the moment, they are priced too high for millionaire showbusiness entertainers.)"

[Photo: Flickr]

It turns out that the [NYT's] idea is not to find rockist crackers or closet bigots or plain old crabcakes who just wanna rail against music as it exists and operates now — the idea is to find people who are unable to hear music as it exists and operates now, and then ask them to write about it. And if you're looking for someone who can't confront or discern the present moment, there is no greater spokesbaldy than Nick "Mojo Magazine Invented Me In a Diabolical Laboratory And Now They Can't Kill Me" Hornby.

Hyphy! [S/FJ]