The makers of an upcoming feature documentary about the Sunset Strip unveiled their debut trailer this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival.

Written and directed by LA filmmaker and musician Hans Fjellestad, Sunset Strip features reminiscences from Johnny Depp, Pamela Des Barres, Hugh Hefner, Courtney Love, Alice Cooper, and many more recognizable faces. Fjellestad is himself a musician and current artist-in-residence at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, where he programs and hosts the monthly concert series ResBox.

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The title of Neil Strauss‘ new tome Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, out today from It Books, is apparently something rocker Courtney Love was once willing to take very much to heart.

As part of his ongoing promotional activities for the compilation of expanded celebrity interviews, Strauss tells Radar Online that he and the singer almost came together for a once-in-a-lifetime posthumous ritual. If not for the fact that the journalist-author was saying no at the time to drugs, things might have turned out very differently:

“She was serious when she made the offer,” Strauss revealed. “She actually said she would offer his [Kurt Cobain] ashes to me first to snort and then said she would like them to. But the idea was nixed as I don’t do coke.”

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Twitter rock star Charlie Sheen, take note.

In an arrangement being finalized today and set to be officially announced next week, Courtney Love will pay $430,000 to settle the infamous Twitter defamation lawsuit filed against her by Texas fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir (@boudoirqueen). The Hollywood Reporter this afternoon has the exclusive details:

“The amount of the settlement says it all,” Simorangkir attorney Bryan Freedman tells THR. “Her reprehensible defamatory comments were completely false and $430,000 is quite a significant way to say I am sorry. One would hope that, given this disaster, restraint of pen, tongue, and tweet would guide Ms. Love’s future conduct.”

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We thought the guaranteed highlight of the upcoming defamation lawsuit trial between Courtney Love and fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir was going to be the testimony of Love.

But per the THR, Esq. preview of proceedings set to begin in LA January 18th, that honor may very well belong instead to Jessie Stricchiola (pictured). She is the San Francisco based expert witness for hire who has been enlisted, on behalf of plaintiff Simorangkir, with quantifying the damage done by Love’s allegedly abusive torrent of spring 2009 tweets.

To aid her case, Simorangkir plans to call to the stand Stricchiola, a social media expert who was tasked with studying how many people saw the Love rants and what kind of credibility is given to statements made on a casual forum like Twitter. Stricchiola will report her findings at trial.

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March 4th is National Grammar Day. The day we donate all our typos to charity.

And it’s the time for the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar to hand out their awards for the worst.

From their site:

This year, the award goes to President George W. Bush, who does not realize the plural of “child” is “children,” not “childrens.”

He beat Paris Hilton, who produced T-shirts that say “THATS HOT” without the apostrophe, and Courtney Love, who generates so many errors per inch of text on her blog that even the best instruments known to grammar scientists have failed to record them all.

Poor Courtney – she just can’t catch a break from anyone…

Allison Hope Weiner might want to do some research into the curious case of Jim Taricani, the Providence, RI investigative reporter who did 6 months for refusing to name a source.

Weiner, readers may recall, got served a temporary restraining order aimed at stopping her from posting audio tapes of Anthony Pellicano and his clients on her HuffPost blog. The NY Times made the tapes available as well (Pellicano and his indicted lawyer Terry N. Christensen), but where’s their TRO? Christensen’s trial will start about a month after Pellicano’s ends, and his legal team says that the tapes compromise his right to a fair trial.

The NYT has lawyers just sitting around, waiting for someone to try interfere with freedom of the press, but is the Huffington Post likely to stand by their blogger? Weiner’s represented by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. The hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet.

While covering the Plunder Gate case of former Providence mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr, Tarcani received a surveillance tape from a source to whom he promised anonymity, and aired it, in defiance of a federal court order against the dissemination of such evidence. He was cited for contempt of court, fines ratcheted up, and he did 6 months of home confinement, with NBC underwriting his legal defense.

Robert Iafolla, writing in the LA Daily Journal, takes the “it can’t happen here” tone. Weiner’s CDs were subject to a protective order issued in April 2006, although she’s not actually bound by that order. It’s a safe bet that Pellicano didn’t give them to her, and unlikely that she found them at a yard sale, so that leaves, oh, who knows? the defense team?

The whole motion is probably designed not to not put a gag order on Weiner but to get her testimony per the source of whoever actually violated the protective order. Or course, that puts the Huffington Post in an uncomfortable spot.

Earlier:
HuffPo Blogger Weiner Served –Restraining Order at Pellicano Trial

Glossed Over takes a look at the March Bazaar. There’s a self-serving service piece that explains why luxury goods cost so much:

…the article gets progressively more grating, predictably returning to the justification of the positively vulgar price tags of luxury goods. What else can be expected from people whose livelihoods are dependent on the public buying costly stuff they don’t need?

Bazaar also has the most embarrassing celebrity fashion spread in months–Francis Bean Cobain, all puppy fat and potty mouth, posing uncomfortably as characters from her favorite musicals. She’s fifteen, and you know as well as we do, it’s no good asking where her mother, Courtney Love, is or what she was thinking. The shots are hardly photographer Jeff Reidel’s best work, and she looks both pretty and mortified. Proud mama’s remarks:

She’s a gay man trapped in a woman’s body, like me.

The Stiletto Blog lives up to its name by impaling Courtney Love and People at the same time.

Love claims to have gained 52 pounds eating brown mush prepared by a macrobiotic chef, and then lost it by sheer force of will:

All my [size] sixes and eights are on eBay. Most of the money is going to the Chrysalis Foundation for battered women in L.A. The other is Fair, which is fairness and accuracy in reporting which is a media watchdog group. They’re both fabulous.

The high-heeled blogger points out:

How credulous (that’s just a polite way of saying “stupid”) does one have to be to believe that a woman who is 182 pounds can fit into a size 6 or 8?

Sting allegedly told Love to lose the love-handles.

But Love’s not going to extremes:

If I got under 120lbs that would be a problem–I’d start looking like a crazy person.

Courtney Love has convinced punk shoe brand Dr. Martens to drop their ad campaign featuring her dead husband, Kurt Cobain. Corbis licensed the images to Saatchi & Saatchi for the campaign, and in the UK, didn’t need publicity clearance from deceased celebs. Translation: Love didn’t get paid. Tony Pierce grilled Kate Stanners, the Saatchi account exec. about the ads.

Love, whose good taste is legendary, complained that the use of Cobain’s image without permission is despicable.

Selling off his childhood possessions is not.

Use of Cobain’s music in CSI:Miami is not.

The ringtone contest is not.

Kurt Cobain, who shot himself in 1994, earned over $50 million last year.

Fire in the Hollywood Hills.

Quinceanera might become a series.

Mia Farrow doesn’t seem too worried about starring in E.T.: Back on Planet Earth or any other Spielburg opus.

John Travolta is ready to move back to the mothership, if global warming gets worse.

Courtney Love cares only that her self-esteem is limitless and intact.

The LA Times might think Donald Trump is a figure of fun, but wait til he’s the boss. Or some other rich guy takes over.

Britney and Kevin are finally split up.

Persecution of Christians goes on–Chris Sligh booted from American Idol.

The LA Times should get an online game–Be An Editor–just like Seventeen.

Miss America dumped by CMT. Second Life, anyone?