Jordan Catalano as Ringo Starr

Apparently Liam Gallagher is still grimly pressing on with his joyless Beatle film project and, oh, is he setting his sights high:

Gallagher is preparing to hold castings in Los Angeles in April (14), and Leto, as well as Before Midnight's Ethan Hawke, are on the shortlist to star in the movie, according to the U.K.'s The Sun newspaper.

An insider tells the publication, "He knows he's not going to manage to entice someone like Brad Pitt but he wants high-calibre people who are more on the indie scene of Hollywood. He thinks actors such as Jared and Ethan would be perfect."

Bless him. "I might not quite get Brad Pitt, but hey, Jared Leto is probably sitting around waiting for the chance to get a meaty role."

Shane Ritchie and the bloke who played Fred Elliott are holding slots in their diaries, Liam.

Death Cab attack cutie

You know that Jared Leto, right? Well, right, he's only playing at pop stars, say Death Cab For Cutie:

"He's a professional actor in music; so there's no way to feel any sincerity about his position as a musician... Because he makes a living playing characters — so why wouldn't he be able to take a step forward?" singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard chimed in during the interview. "Then you're also acting what you think a rock star should act like."

Harmer also said Leto only wears makeup because "Oh that's what rock stars do: they wear eyeliner."

Actually, while Gibbard might have a point about 30 Seconds To Mars, surely Leto wears eye make-up as part of a general being hotness? He had the rock star hair long before he had the pretend band, after all.

Leto: Don't look at my dirty pants

Poor Jared Leto. It's clear that his band have been hit with the lawsuit from Virgin as a reminder across all EMI artists that there are new rules in place, and Guy Hands is not Guy Handsoutmoneywillynilly.

Even so, that's no comfort for Jared, who must now battle the forces of Virgin and fight for truth. To the MySpace, Jared:

We had been signed to our record contract for 9 years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than 7 years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.

He has right on his side!

Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for 'quitting'. We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void.

We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won't go into here (we'd rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.

He's not going to air dirty laundry, but can he just stress that it's EMI being unfair and unreasonable? Not to go public with it, especially how UNFAIR and ROTTEN EMI are.

If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren't they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn't a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even? We think so.

Leto was 26 and had worked in Hollywood for a good few years when he signed the deal - sure, anyone can get screwed by a label; but if Leto can't get a decent deal, then what hope does a small band have?

That, and other issues, like the new regime at EMI firing most of the people we know and love, wanting to place advertisements on our website, EMI owning 100 percent of the masters of our record...forever, and basically having a revolving door of regimes at the company made it easy to not want to continue as is.

I may be being unfair to Leto here, but I'm not sure I heard a single murmur from him before about the new EMI regime until they started to sue him?

FYI Virgin/EMI was not required to make this lawsuit public or to list such an egregiously and stupendously large amount of mullah. In fact, they were not required to set any price even close to this. We did not want to take this public, but we felt it best to explain our point of view to you, our
friends and fans, in hope that you can better understand our point of view.

This laundry, which we won't wash in public, we didn't want to be here washing this stuff. Leto seems to be accepting here, in passing, that Virgin did have a right to list some sort of demand for cash. And how did Leto expect them to issue legal proceedings without it being public? In some magical Harry Potter style invisible courtroom?

We would always do our best to avoid a fight, but sometimes it's important to stand up for what you believe in. We hope that by doing what's right we can help to change things for the better, for ourselves and possibly others.

Cry God For Jared, Mars and the ones who aren't Jared Leto in the band! We must stand up for what's right, albeit in this case it's breaking a contract with a record label.

It's interesting to note, though, that despite EMI treating the band so badly, they're still advertising the albums for sale on their MySpace. That's awfully good-natured of them.

Still, it can't be long now before victory is theirs. They have appealed to their fans, through MySpace, and the complex niceties of Californian contract law, surely, won't be lost on them...

♥Britt-nee♥ [sm] [echelon] happy b-day joe!

oh my gosh! 30 million!!! dude, thats freakin crazy! and what the heck is a regime? you said it like 3 times and i was like what is that? haha. i know ur probably not even gonna read this but i just wanted to see if you would tell me what it is.
[...]
Rachel[Gates]

switch to warner bros. they are better.
[...]
Blue Hippo[wootoow]

that is most definitely a lot of money.....thats stupid......well at least you aren't quiting so that is awesome though......wootoow

It might not be much, but Guy Hands hasn't even got people wootoowing for him.

That's a million dollars a second

Virgin Records are suing 30 Seconds To Mars, claiming that Jared Leto's side-project has broken the terms of its contract.

The band allegedly signed a three album deal in 1999 and have conspicuously failed to deliver on it, complains the label. Leto, of course, could drop off another record and then Virgin really would have something to moan on about it.

The business hopes to get thirty million dollars in return for the breach of contract - presumably much more money than they've invested in the band, though. And if they have been stupid enough to piss that much away on them, they deserved to lose it.

Jared Leto confuses shiny prize with credibility

It's almost heart-breaking to hear that Jared Leto feels winning a Kerrang award confers some sort of artistic credibility on 30 Seconds To Mars:

"We've been working hard for a long time for people to accept the band. It's a wonderful feeling now they have."

If that's what you want to believe, Jared. If that's what you need to believe.

Mars attacked

We're still far from convinced that Jared Leto has yet to do anything with 30 Seconds To Mars that tops his song "I Call Her Red" from My So-Called Life. But he's not without his fans, though: he inspired so much devotion last night that he wound up with a broken nose. This in El Paso.

Apparently, tour manager Kevin Lyman was alarmed:

"In all my 25 years of producing shows this was one of the scariest moments I have seen. We all hope Jared has a speedy recovery."

He wasn't that badly hurt, though - he even managed to make it to the end of the set and everything.