1. The Quentin Tarantino co-produced shock horror Hostel, for landing the number one spot at the North American box office last weekend—enough to convince movie bosses to commission a sequel.
2. Alicia Silverstone and Mary Steenburgen, for playing early Victorian lesbians in the saucy new David Mamet play Boston Marriage, which debuts in Los Angeles at the end of January.
3. Party star turned teetotal Joaquin Phoenix, for making sobriety cool. “I feel rather liberated than boring,” said Phoenix, who recently battled an addiction to alcohol.
4. Teen star Lindsay Lohan, for quick thinking. Lohan bought the bloodstained chair she sat on in a Hollywood antiques shop, after crashing her Mercedes Benz when paparazzi swarmed around her last October–so it would not end up on eBay.
5. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hotel in Brisbane, Australia, for capitalizing on Russell Crowe’s stubble. The hair clippings, found in Crowe‘s bathroom, are being auctioned on the Internet for $205.
6. Filmmaker Ari Grief and his satirical documentary Flush! Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Toilet, for being the strangest film to premiere at this year’s Toronto Film Festival.
7. Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, for keeping Mary J. Blige off the top of the album charts with his new album Unpredictable. Foxx‘s R&B record sold 131,000 copies in its third week on release.
8. The O.C. star Mischa Barton, for her burn on Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson. “I’m not friends with Paris. It is a common misconception that everybody is friends with each other. Not that I know anything about them. I don’t have an opinion on them.”
9. The O. C. star Adam Brody, for branching out into the unknown–sans Mischa. Brody is developing a new TV series with Mr. and Mrs. Smith director Doug Liman about a Los Angeles vampire detective.
10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for being confirmed as the best-selling book of 2005 in the U.S., selling 7.2 million copies in total, including 4.1 on its first day on sale.
