Celebrity News:

The Police came back, Paris Hilton got thrown in jail and Harry Potter took an early retirement.

Hannah Montana created a Beatles-esque frenzy when she stepped out of the TV and onto the concert stage. When she gets back inside the set might depend on when the Hollywood writers settle their strike with the producers of film and television projects.

Orange County's housewives and teens presented a fake kind of reality to the TV world. While at the movies we dutifully checked out the latest chapters in several old series even if we really weren't that impressed with what we saw.

These are a few of the pop culture moments that made 2007 memorable.




Can we all get along?

All you need is love? More like money changes everything, at least when it comes to the biggest - and most buzzed about - concert tours of 2007.

If we'd asked you last year to predict which legendary acts might get back together to head out on the road, OK, some of you would have guessed that Bruce Springsteen would reconvene the E Street Band.

And sure, a few more of you livin'-in-the-'80s types might have come up with the Phil Collins-era Genesis, too. Su-su-sudio to you-dio!

But c'mon, Sting and Stewart Copeland putting aside their differences and hooking up with Andy Summers to reunite the Police?

David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen finding the right combination of hair replacement and sobriety to take the classic Van Halenlineup out for a spin?

Rage Against the Machineputting aside the old rages that caused their fractious split?

Smaller-but-beloved acts such as Crowded House, Jesus and Mary Chain and Squeeze?

Even the Spice Girls said if you wanna buy our tickets we'll be happy to oblige.

Looking ahead: One word: Led-freakin'-Zeppelin. Surviving members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones with dead drummer John Bonham's son Jason taking his spot got back together for a concert in London that reportedly attracted 1 million requests for tickets and created a building buzz about a possible tour in the year to come.




The O.C. reality

We loved "Arrested Development," though apparently most of you apparently did not, leading to the premature cancellation of this very funny Orange County-based sitcom.

Many more of you loved "The O.C.," though it, too, ran its course and was canceled earlier this year.

So what does Orange County see when it looks in the TV mirror today? Reality, at least in the not-entirely-real way that television portrays it.

Our favorite reality star this year was Sabrina Bryan, the Cheetah Girl from Yorba Linda who broke out of her tween demographic to find more mainstream celebrity thanks to a nice run on ABC's hit series "Dancing With The Stars."

Bryan, whose just as nice as she seems on TV, should have won the darn thing - what where those voters thinking? But even with her exit halfway through the season, her exposure to millions of viewers each week should give her a nice boost as she looks to the next stage of her career.

Finding smaller if just as fervent audiences on cable shows were folks like Lauren Conrad on MTV's s "The Hills," a spinoff of "Laguna Beach: the Real Orange County." The latter show morphed this year into "Newport Harbor: the Real Orange County."

MTV also made its way back to the O.C. this year for "Life With Ryan," a reality show wrapped around San Clemente pro skater Ryan Sheckler.

Bravo also did well with O.C. peeps. Real estate flipper Jeff Lewis - now living in Los Angeles - let viewers into his temperamental world in "Flipping Out" over the summer.

And the cable network also came back for a third season of "The Real Housewives of Orange County," a voyeuristic look behind the gates of Coto de Caza at a handful of the spoiled, cosmetically enhanced creatures who live there.

Looking ahead: "Life With Ryan" will return in 2008 and a few new O.C. reality shows are about to hit the harder-to-find channels on your cable box.

"Ocean Force: Huntington Beach, OC" follows Huntington Beach lifeguards on the job and debuts on Jan. 1 on the Tru TV network. And "Top This Party: Orange County" debuts on the Lifetime network on Jan. 4.

At this rate, we fully expect to find ourselves starring on "Newspaper! And Web Site! The Real Orange County Register" by 2009. Look for us at the messiest desk!




Holy Trinity of Trash!

A year or so ago, celebrity gossip started to gain ground on porn as the reason why the Internet exists - that's a joke, people! - with sites such as TMZ.com, X17online.com and PerezHilton.com serving as the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News respectively of trashy, paparazzi-based celebrity news.

Little did they or their viewers know what a perfect storm of sensationalism awaited them in 2007.

Anna Nicole Smith died in a Florida hotel room, the end of a life that many of us laughed at while she lived it, but which somehow seemed sad and depressing once she was gone.

Britney Spears continued her descent into trailer-park nuttiness - shaving her head, attacking photographers with an umbrella, driving into parked cars, losing her kids, staggering around the MTV Video Music Awards in a daze.

And in our moment of the year, spoiled party girl and hotel heiress Paris Hilton went to jail, sobbing in the back of a squad car as she was hauled out of her Hollywood Hills home to court in downtown Los Angeles.

Next to these three, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Kim Kardashian almost seemed model citizens despite their own encounters with rehab, jail or sex-tape notoriety.

Looking ahead: Apparently our celebrity bad behavior is going to skew even younger than the old-enough-to-party 20-something set.

School yard rumors included Miley Cyrus of "Hannah Montana" getting pregnant and Zac Efron of "High School Musical" going to jail for selling drugs - false, false false! Unfortunately, the tween set did have to deal with Vanessa Hudgens of "High School Musical" surfacing nekkid in photos on the Internet and Jamie Lynn Spears - Brit's little sis and star of the tween hit "Zoey 101" - acknowledging her underaged knocked-upitty-ness.




Tweens rule, networks drool

"High School Musical" was the tween-ertainment sensation of 2006 but if any of you expected the kids to relinquish their grip on the remote control - and the transfer of wealth from mom and dad to Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network - well, you had another think comin', didn't ya?

"Hannah Montana," the new kid on the block in '06 became the mega-hit of '07, with a hit show on the Disney Channel and a hit CD which smartly featured a Hannah disc and another under the name of star Miley Cyrus.

But where Hannah really ruled was at the box office. Her tour sold out arenas - including Honda Center in Anaheim - within minutes of seats going on sale, and desperate parents with too much money to burn spent hundreds, even thousands, to buy tickets from brokers.

We reviewed it and it was a fun show, but c'mon!

Of course, the HSM franchise had plenty of life left in it, too, as "High School Musical 2" set all kinds of ratings records when it debuted in August and its soundtrack was the year's second biggest-selling album. Still, without an HSM tour this year, the reigning champion is Hannah Cyrus Miley Montana or however you'd like to refer to her.

Looking ahead: The Hannah Montana tour continues, and for those who couldn't score tickets, a limited-run concert movie arrives in February. "High School Musical" is also expected back, this time with a theatrical release. But we're hoping that Nickelodeon gets a bit more of the action with "iCarly," a fun, tech-savvy sitcom which debuted this fall and stars Garden Grove's Jeannette McCurdy as sidekick Sam to star Miranda Cosgrove's Carly.




Year of the Threequel

Spiderman, Shrek and the Pirates all came back for thirds.

The Oceans gang pulled off their third caper, the Rush Hour guys quipped and quarreled, and the relentless Jason Bourne swiftly dispatched more baddies.

All of them big film franchises, all of them eagerly awaited. But were you satisfied once you'd watched them? Or did the buzz quickly fade?

Most of them performed strongly at the box office. "Spider-Man 3," "Shrek 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" finished the year first, second and fourth in the box office tallies, with more than $300 million each.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" placed sixth with almost $230 million, "Rush Hour 3" came in 12th {+ }with $140 million while "Oceans Thirteen" ended up No. 21 on the list with $117 million.

Yet the critics mostly sniffed at these - only "Bourne Ultimatum" made the Top 20 at metacritic.com, placing 10th on a list that aggregates the critical consensus.

Instead, the movies we talked about - and that the critics loved more - were things such as the animated critters of "Ratatouille," the cold-blooded tale told in "No Country for Old Men," the bittersweet romance of "Once," and the bawdy humor of "Superbad" and "Knocked Up."

Which proves, we suppose, that you can get our money based on your track record, but the way to our heart is perhaps best found through something a bit fresher.

Looking ahead: Big movies on the slate for '08 include a decent slate of sequels with more Batman in "The Dark Knight" and more Harry in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." There are the usual high profile remakes of TV shows ("Get Smart" with Steve Carrell, "Speed Racer" by the Wachowskis) and films with growing Internet buzz ("Cloverfield," the JJ Abrams flick with a trailer all the Web was talking about).

We're sorta curious to see how the kids' book adaptations do, both creatively and at the box office. Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, Seth Rogen among the voice cast in "Horton Hears a Who"? Spike Jonze directing Forest Whitaker, James Gandolfini and the always reliable Catherine Keener in "Where the Wild Things Are"? Check back in a year we'll see how these all unspooled. …




Harry Potter, RIP

Regarding that RIP - we're not saying Harry died, mind you, and we won't tell the five of you who haven't yet read the book who does. But the book series that made the TV-and-video-game generation put down the clicker and the mouse and pick up one massively thick book after another wrapped up this year with publication of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

Now there's nothing left to look forward to in the world of Harry fiction. Sure, there's a new movie coming in 2008, but the stories now are all told. Even the stories that weren't actually told - Dumbledore is gay, didja hear? - are being told now by Rowling and others.

So if you see frazzled parents looking puzzled in the aisles of our few remaining bookstores, be kind. They never had it so good when it comes to reading as they've had since Harry hit the scene 10 years ago.

Looking ahead: If you or the kids haven't already read them, "The Spiderwick Chronicles" by Holly Black are a popular choice, fitting somewhere between Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events" series. And the first movie based on Spiderwick arrives in '08, too.

We also think "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," by Brian Selznick, which came out this year, is a nice Potter replacement, given that it's more than 500 pages long, has a neat twist - and many pages are drawn, continuing the storyline in purely visual form. Director Martin Scorsese is said to be looking at it for a movie, too.




No words for film or TV

Imagine there's no TV, it's easy if you try. No movies at the cinema, above us only sky.

When the Hollywood writers went on strike this fall the flow of new shows to our TV sets quickly trickled out, leaving the television networks and cable channels scrambling to replace their scripted programs with reruns, shows imported from cable to broadcast, and more of the easiest thing to produce: reality TV.

The strike ended the late-night talk and comedy shows first, though Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien are coming back, and David Letterman looks like he will too. Dramas and sitcoms, once they'd exhausted their already filmed episodes, went away, too.

At issue is a debate over how writers should be paid for the new ways we consume our entertainment - DVDs, the Internet, cell phones and video iPods and so on.

Does the average consumer care? Well, when "24" cancels its season and all you can find on the dial come January is Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice," you tell me.

Looking ahead: Assuming the strike settles before much of the new year is gone, some shows could return by spring, and the fall season might be saved. But there's more trouble on the horizon - the Screen Actors Guild contract expires in June so it's not impossible to imagine a scenario in which the writers are writing but there's no one around to say their words.