In the new historical melodrama “The Other Boleyn Girl,” which opens Friday, Natalie Portman plays Anne Boleyn, the woman who would become the second of six wives of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana), only to be beheaded. Scarlett Johansson plays Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister, and rival for the hand and the bed of the handsome Henry.

What would happen if we pit Portman and Johansson together as rivals? Who would win that competition? They are popular, highly in-demand young women in their 20s who mix major studio films with small, independent fare. They have both made successful transitions from child actress to adult, received major award nominations and been the muses of legendary directors. Neither has shied away from nudity. But who is actually the better actress? Or are they on an even playing field?

After “Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby,” and “Blades of Glory” in which Will Ferrell parodied NASCAR and figure skating, this year he turned to basketball in “Semi-Pro,” another sport comedy, which opens this Friday, Feb. 29.

The movie is set in 1976 and Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, an owner, player and coach of the Flint Michigan Tropics, the worst basketball team in history.

Moon achieved his dream of having his own basketball team after he recorded a success with one hit wonder, “Love Me Sexy.”

As the American Basketball Association announce that it will merge with NBA and that only four teams will be qualified, Moon sees himself in a difficult position: to win the game in order to survive.

As the movie parodies basketball, it also gives attention to the disco era, with big hair, shorts and stunts made in order to get attention.

In the movie Ferrell seems to be same old him, trying to deliver pure stupid comedy with ridiculous scenes. Take for example the stunts he makes during halftime: he has to wrestle a bear or get shot out of a cannon.

Speaking about those stunts Ferrell said: “I loved those, because if you look at what they were doing in the ABA, that’s how the league survived. They did all these stupid promotions to just get people in,” Bostonherald.com reports.

The movie also stars Woody Harrelson as Monix, a real basketball player Moon hires to win the fourth place. Monix used to play in the NBA, but now suffers from a knee injury, bad temper as well and has a weakness for alcohol.

Even so, he arrives just in time to save the team and knows much about the real game.

The movie doesn’t quite hit the note of comedy. Ferrell does the entire job in the movie in his old fashion way, running around with no reason whatsoever, wearing too much hair.

Ferrell mentioned that even though it looks like he has an obsession with sport movies, is not like that.

He said: “I love them, they’re fun, but I’m not really always like, ‘OK, I gotta do a wind-surfing movie now,’ ” Chicago Tribune informs.

The Oscars made history Sunday night. But not the good kind.

The three-hour-plus ABC telecast averaged 32 million viewers, the smallest crowd on record—ever, per Nielsen Media Research estimates.

The show “topped” the 2003 ceremony, which, with 33 million viewers, was Oscar’s previous low.

Even worse, if possible, the show was a shadow of its 2007 self, shedding more than 8 million viewers, or one-fifth of its audience, from last year to this. Even in an age where everything is the lowest rated something ever, that’s a significant blood loss.

Oscar’s main trouble seemed to be female trouble: Based on ratings of the show’s prime-time hours, it struck out with the chicks.

Last year, with host Ellen DeGeneres at the helm, the Oscars was up across the board with women viewers.

This year, with male Jon Stewart dealing, the show looked to be down, a lot, in all the major female demographics.

The show’s disconnect with its target audience might have stemmed not so much from Stewart, who generally won good reviews, but from the top nominees, a pack of films with nary a female touch, led by Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men, that Stewart himself jokingly described as “psychopathic killer movies.”

Another ratings challenge cropped up when Hollywood’s biggest night turned into another continent’s crowning glory.

For the first time since the 1965 Oscar ceremony, all four acting awards went to residents of Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, the ‘65 show, honoring the international likes of Zorba the Greek, suffered the ceremony’s third smallest audience share of the 1960s.

For whatever reason, this year’s Oscars repelled viewers as it went on. What began as a show that averaged 32.3 million viewers in its first half-hour, devolved into a show that averaged 25.4 million in its final half-hour of prime time.

Stewart, who previously presided over the 2006 Oscars, now goes down as the host of two of the three lowest rated Academy Awards in TV history. And in defense of Steve Martin, who hosted the 2003 misfire, that ceremony competed for attention with the start of the Iraq War. Stewart, thusly, stands alone as the lowest-rated host of relatively peaceful Oscar nights.

ABC did its best to turn its frown upside down, noting that Sunday’s telecast was far bigger than the rest of this year’s crop of low-rated award shows, including NBC’s Golden Globes debacle.

The network said the show rated highest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, West Palm Beach, Florida, and Oscar’s hometown of Los Angeles.

Stewart’s notices were another bright spot. From Britain (the BBC called him “sparkling”) to Los Angeles (the L.A. Times found the comic “cool and loose”), and back to Missouri (”Second time’s the charm for Stewart,” headlined the Kansas City Star), Stewart won over critics.

Unlike the show.

The telecast, both a celebration of the ceremony’s 80th anniversary and, as the Hollywood Reporter pointed out, a reminder that Stewart’s writing staff was only recently back from the picket lines, was dinged for being clip-heavy.

“This wasn’t an Oscars,” wrote Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke. “This was a slightly longer version of the Golden Globes announcement.”

The Washington Post’s Tom Shales said the show went “clip-clip-clipping along.” “This is not a good thing,” he decided.

Shales chided the telecast for waiting to get to the acting categories, and for waiting to present presenter Miley Cyrus until the unfriendly kid hour of nearly 10 p.m. ET.

Riffing on Oscar’s birthday, Time’s Richard Corliss said the ceremony “had the tone and pace suitable to an octogenarian’s temper.”

They each won three gold spray-painted trophies worth $4.89 (£2.48).

Murphy won three of the four worst acting categories for his comedy Norbit, which was mauled by critics.

Lohan won two worst actress Razzies for I Know Who Killed Me. The film broke records by winning eight of its nine nominations, including worst film.

This shattered a record for seven Razzie wins, previously held by Showgirls and Battlefield Earth.

Lohan also won worst screen couple for a scene in which she appears opposite herself.

In I Know Who Killed Me, she plays a small-town girl abducted by a psychopath, and an alter-ego stripper who is missing body parts. It was a major box office flop, with takings of $9m (£4.5m) worldwide.

We can now add German supermodel Heidi Klum to the ever-growing list of celebrities willing to take troubled pop icon Britney Spears under their protective wing.

Victoria’s Secret star Heidi Klum recently granted an interview to German broadcaster ARD and made candid comments about Britney Spears’ current plight and how she would help the beleaguered pop star.

“She can call me and come live in our house with us for a couple of months. I would help set her straight,” the 34-year-old supermodel, a mother of three, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying of the 26-year-old singer, a mother of two.

Heidi Klum, the host of Bravo’s “Project Runway,” is married to singer Seal and lives in Beverly Hills, California. The sky must look clearer on her side of town, as she confessed in the same interview, which is set to air Monday in her native country:

“I have never been as happy as I am today. I have found the man of my life and we have three great kids. They are all so different and fantastic that it really can’t get better than this.”

Heidi’s happiness does not blind her of other people’s distress though, as she told ARD: “I am sorry when a young person gets thrown so off track,” referring to Britney. “She has, of course, lived an extremely wild life.”

Britney’s “extremely wild life” seems to have cooled off lately, the most recent positive example of this being her dinner Sunday evening with dad Jamie Spears, currently co-conservator of her estate.

Britney was photographed going to a Los Angeles restaurant and looking more composed and graceful than she has in months, wearing a long chocolate brown dress and open-toed heels.

Spears senior was named co-conservator of Britney’s estate, along with attorney Andrew Wallet, at the beginning of the month, when Brit Brit was hospitalized for a second time this year.

Court documents released last week reveal that older brother Bryan Spears and a lawyer have been named co-trustees of the trust where the pop singer keeps most of her estimated $100 million fortune.

While Britney is being taken care off by her family, who have been careful to “prune” her entourage, for example firing a manager whom they accused of disrespecting court orders and seeking a restraining order against the dubious Sam Lutfi, other celebrities have expressed a desire to take care of Britney.

Take for example Julia Roberts, also a happy mother of three, who last November told Vanity Fair in an interview for its December issue that she yearns to take Britney in her house and take care of her.

“I see and hear what’s happening to Britney Spears and it’s all I can do not to move her into my guesthouse and say, ‘Okay, this is how it’s going to be!’ And just take care of her,” the actress said at the time.