It’s a daunting task to isolate the Stephen Sondheim musical that would have the least commercial appeal as a big-screen release, but Tim Burton has risen to the challenge, moving forward with a DreamWorks production of Sweeney Todd. True to form, he’s asked the individual who we, at this point, simply must beginning referring to as his muse — Johnny Depp — to play the lead. The feel-good cannibalism film of the decade is slated for a late 2007 release. With any luck this will tie up Depp’s schedule long enough that we, as a nation, won’t have to cope with Pirates 3 until 2008; at that point, the 17 hours of Mr. Depp drinking gin from potted plants and sporadically penetrating Keira Knightley with a rotted oar while reading Leaves of Grass aloud will casually out-gross the GDP of Finland.

There’s more where that came from. Note that the other woman present is her mother.

You’re going to want to be sitting down for this.

Kate Hudson, the attractive, talented and successful half of the Kate Hudson/Strange Bearded Man union, may have been motivated to end her impulsive, youthful marriage because she is falling in love with someone more attractive, talented and successful than the Strange Bearded Man to whom she is married. Luckily this person is no other than the lovably stoned-on-the-Daily-Show Owen Wilson, her You, Me and Dupree costar. See? Something good did come out of that movie. Just not for Steely Dan. Or anyone who went to see it, for that matter.

Excuse the brief leave of absence, folks; in the wake of the Kate Hudson/Strange Bearded Man separation, I needed a mental health day. It happens. I’m much better now, thanks for asking.

So let’s catch up, shall we?

For no discernable reason whatsoever, Justin Timberlake went on record with Vanity Fair to announce his unbridled ire for the vocal stylings of American Idol’s Taylor Hicks. From MSN:

“People think he looks so normal, and he’s so sweet and he’s so earnest, but he can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Timberlake told Fashion Rocks, a supplement of Vanity Fair. Timberlake also thinks that Hicks’ fame is fragile. “If [Hicks] has any skeletons whatsoever, if God forbid, he’s gay, and if all these people in Mississippi who voted for him are like [then he takes on a thick southern accent], ‘Oh my god, I voted for a queer!’ It’s just too much pressure.”

We get it, Justin. You smoke weed, you sport a tat, you’re banging Jordan Catalano’s ex, and you’ve risen to that pined-for pinnacle of your career at which your album titles can eschew the space bar entirely. No more Mr. Nice Guy for you, JT. You are hardcore, and what better way to put the nail in your boy-band image coffin than to go on record questioning both the vocal skills and heterosexuality of last season’s AmIdol winner? You are so. Fucking. Cool. Yo.

Regarding his raven-haired former flame, he says “I dated Britney half my life, but I don’t know that woman anymore.” Okay. Memo to Brit: the win-him-back plan didn’t work. Cut your losses now.

Yes, Jessica Simpson’s ultra-annoying former BFF and the kick-ass Zack Braff sidekick from Scrubs are rumored to be bumping uglies. I heard about this on Molly Good, who has some interesting observations on the subject (”either she’s bearable or he’s not nearly as cool as he comes off”), and I suggest you instruct your RSS to track further updates through her, because I don’t know how much of this I’ll be able to follow without feeling queasy.

I’m still paying penance for that Indra Nooyi bit (you know, you can tell your friends about it tonight and sound really smart), so here ya go. I figure between Lindsay Lohan’s decision to “accidentally” flash some photogs today and PepsiCo’s decision to appoint its first female CEO, we average out somewhere around Paris Hilton burying her goat in the plot next to Marilyn Monroe (for the record, I’m fairly certain this is a joke that fell into the wrong hands, but only time will tell).

Anyway…

It actually looks real. And pretty hot. I gotta hand it to La Lohan lately, her body’s been rocking, although I could do without most of her “fashion” misadventures.

Finally. Okay, brutal honesty from me: these two drive me insane. She is so young and beautiful and talented and famous, and he is so old and horse-faced and bearded and irrelevant, and I absolutely hated the possibility that true love could have triumphed over all of that.

Phew.

Kate Hudson’s rep confirmed today that the Almost Famous star will be splitting from her not-even-in-the-same-room-as-famous-anymore hubby of six years, former guitarist singer for some band that the kids at your high school who hung out on the grassy knoll and drew anarchy symbols on their Skechers may have heard of, Chris Robinson. Tossed amid the wreckage will undoubtedly be their 2-year-old son, Ryder.

Kate, in exchange for your decision to spare me a lifetime of nauseating interview quotes about the pureness and unquestionable staying power of your love for the man you married at 21, I will end this entry without making any play at all on How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days; this puts me on a road far, far above everyone else who has written about your glee-inducing marital cataclysm in the past two hours. You’re welcome.

I know, I know, this is supposed to be a gossip blog, and I made you look at Yahoo’s (plummeting) stock chart last week, and now this headline, and it’s really not fair, and you’re getting kind of squirmy, and, like, uugggghhhhh, but this is important, so sit down and shut up.

PepsiCo (they make Pepsi, in case you were confused, in which case don’t even bother with the upcoming words) announced today that CFO Indra Nooyi will take over the CEO position from Steven Reinemund, who plans to retire; this makes PepsiCo the second-largest company based on revenue to have a female CEO (Patricia Woertz at Archer Daniels Midland leads the largest) , and puts Nooyi on a very short list of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, not to mention among the Fortune 100, where PepsiCo resides (interestingly enough, PepsiCo is #1 in revenues in the Food Consumer Products industry; position #2 is held by Brenda Barnes’ Sara Lee). Nooyi is well respected by analysts and peers, and PepsiCo stock was up slightly with the news. Thank you, Carly Fiorina.

Okay, sorry, I know that was really really painful, so to make it up to you, Paris Hilton is still getting paparazzi mileage out of that firecrotch thing. TMZ got it on tape. Hopefully watching that can help you feel a little less dirty about knowing something about the business world today.