Following in the cosmetic company's grand tradition of young actress love, dating from Cybill Shepherd to Eva Longoria, Scarlett Johansson recently signed a $4 million contract with L'Oreal. Though there's probably not another young starlet on the planet more worthy of purring "I'm worth it", the deal could very well require the actress, who is currently floating on her first serious cloud of award buzz for her work in Woody Allen's Match Point (which opened today), to put her trademark blond locks at L'Oreal's dye job whims. The deal is said to be leading up to a "major multimedia campaign", so if a scarlet Scarlett is in the cards, we'll know soon enough.

There was a great article in the NY Times Business section this Sunday, about a Nike campaign that ran afoul of punk-rock mainstays Minor Threat and Dischord Records. Anyone of a certain age who put in time on the right side of the adolescent rage divide remembers the image on the cover of Minor Threat's Complete Discography: a man bent in half, head in arms, screenprinted in black on a pink-red backdrop. So its no surprise that when Nike used a similar image - this time, black-on-blue, with the words "Minor Threat" replaced with the slogan "Major Threat" - to advertise their sponsored skateboard tour, a bundle of fans wise to the uncanny similarities got a little angry.

Nike eventually pulled the ad (which they had run without consulting the band or frontman Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records) after numerous complaints, but Dischord is still weighing their legal options. "We got inundated with e-mails saying 'Sue Nike,' " says Dischord employee Alec Bourgeois. "We're flattered by the outrage. I don't think Nike understood that people care so much about this ethos."

Remember that iPod ad, with the little kid singing along to Eminem's "Lose Yourself"? Neither do I, but it's at the center of lawsuit that was settled today.  The commercial debuted in July 2003 and aired on MTV for about three months. It didn't make news until February 2004, when the Detroit-based rapper/actor filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against MTV and Apple. Eminem's complaint alleged that he had never endorsed any product on a national level, and in the suit he stated that any company desiring his endorsement would have to ante "a significant amount of money, possibly in excess of $10 million." Zero details on the settlement have been released, but Howard Hertz, a lawyer representing Eminem's Eight Mile Style Entertainment, told the AP that the various parties "were able to reach an amicable resolution."