Quick Takes: Gervais is Golden again

NBC and the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. announced Wednesday that the British actor-writer-comic will make his encore appearance on the Jan. 16 live broadcast.

Before Gervais, the Hollywood award show had gone more than a decade without a host.

—Associated Press

Jessica Seinfeld gets court’s nod

Jerry Seinfeld’s wife did not copy a cookbook author when she released her own techniques for getting children to eat vegetables, a federal appeals court concluded Wednesday.

In a written ruling issued just two days after it heard oral arguments, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan sided with Jessica Seinfeld in a 3-year-old copyright and trademark dispute with Missy Chase Lapine, saying the books were “not confusingly similar.”

“Stockpiling vegetable purees for covert use in children’s food is an idea that cannot be copyrighted,” the appeals court wrote.

Lapine, the author of “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals,” sued Jessica Seinfeld over her cookbook titled “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.” The Seinfeld book was published several months after Lapine’s in 2007.

—Associated Press

Frank diaries return home

Nearly all of Anne Frank’s diary went on display Wednesday for the first time at the house where she wrote it during the two years the Jewish teenager was in hiding from the Nazis.

The notebooks and pages that constitute the World War II diary have been moved into the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam to mark 50 years since it opened its doors to the public.

The original red plaid diary in which Anne began writing on her 13th birthday has been at the museum for several years. But that covered just six months of the 25 months she hid with her family and four other Jews in a concealed canal-side apartment in Amsterdam. Two other school exercise books and other pages were stored at the Netherlands War Documentation Center, the government war archives.

The diary and other papers have all been studied, published and in some cases reproduced in replicas. But this is the first time visitors can see nearly the full collection in Anne’s own hand in one place.

—Associated Press

Bullock to adopt and divorce

Less than two months after winning the lead actress Oscar for “The Blind Side,” Sandra Bullock has filed for divorce from her husband, Jesse James, citing discord and conflict of personalities without “any reasonable expectations of reconciliation.”

James and Bullock separated in March after five years of marriage, following reports that the celebrity motorcycle builder and reality-TV star had been unfaithful to her.

Meanwhile, the 45-year-old actress revealed Wednesday on People magazine’s website that she is adopting a 31/2-month-old boy, Louis Bardo Bullock, who was born in New Orleans.

—Associated Press

Peter Jackson

is knighted

“Lord of the Rings” filmmaker Peter Jackson has been made a knight, accepting the honor Wednesday in his native New Zealand on behalf of the thousands of people who helped make his movies.

“I feel incredibly humbled,” Jackson said at an investiture ceremony in the capital, Wellington, where New Zealand’s head of state, Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand, did the honors in lieu of Queen Elizabeth II. His knighthood was for services to the arts in New Zealand.

—Associated Press

Banksy art rat

is exterminated

A street-cleaning crew in Melbourne inadvertently painted over a stencil of a rat by British graffiti artist Banksy, leaving officials in Australia’s second largest city scrambling to explain the goof on Wednesday.

Melbourne Deputy Lord Mayor Susan Riley sent the cleaners to Hosier Lane last week after residents complained about the dirty condition of the alley, a tourist attraction known for its elaborate street art.

In the process, they painted over a stencil of a parachuting rat by Banksy.

“Unfortunately, the contractors were not made aware by us that that was an important piece, and unfortunately that means the piece is gone,” Melbourne Chief Executive Kathy Alexander told a radio reporter.

—Associated Press

Finally

Report: The death of Alexander McQueen was officially ruled a suicide Wednesday by a British coroner who said the fashion designer hanged himself after taking cocaine, sleeping pills and tranquilizers.