Best dish of 2003: still cookin': as the year closes, we take a moment to check in with some of this year's brightest and buzziest.

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GINA GERSHON drove us wild in Prey for Rock and Roll The uberdykon will be snarling on the small screen in April when IFC airs the six-part documentary currently known as the Untitled Gina Gershon Series. Executive producer Debbie DeMontreux promises "a rare glimpse" as Gershon tours with her own band. Onstage, backstage, even on the bus, we're all whores for Gina, darlin'.

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JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL, the maven behind Hedwig and the Angry Inch, set Hollywood on its ear with his announcement that his second feature would contain buckets of explicit sex. Shortbus, a reference to the truncated transportation for "special children," is currently in development and set to shoot next summer. "I'd like to use sex the way that musicals use songs," explains Mitchell.

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Much ado was made over British pop superstar ROBBIE WILLIAMS's reported interest in portraying "cowboy" Randy Jones in a film Williams would produce about the Village People. Jones said, "If there's anyone who can fill my jeans, it's Robbie and his bodacious bum." Unfortunately, sources say the project hasn't gone beyond speculation.

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A cloud of curiosity and ambiguity continues to surround the young women of TATU. In April they promised to do a nude CD cover shoot with a bunch of teenage female fans. The shoot never materialized, with no excuse given. Since then the duo have been at the center of rumors about their uncertain future as a recording act as well as the possibility that group member Lena might be pregnant.

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BEN AFFLECK optioned the movie rights to Peter Lefcourt's baseball-players-in-love novel, The Dreyfus Affair, difficult to wrangle. And while the Gigli survivor is interested in producing and starring in a big-screen version of that other gay-themed baseball property, Richard Greenberg's Tony winner Take Me Out, those rights haven't been secured. But that doesn't mean Affleck isn't still on our team. The actor recently shot a photo with his gay cousin for the Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays "Stay Close" campaign and tells The Buzz, "The shots are great."

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LIZA MINNELLI was last Buzzed making an odd appearance on V Graham Norton with then-husband David Gest. The duo's subsequent multimillion-dollar lawsuits--"She beat me!" "He ripped me off!"--look like the prelude to a messy divorce. But Minnelli, always a trouper, hasn't given up on showbiz. At 57, she made her sitcom debut on Fox's Arrested Development, which is about--what else?--a hyper-dysfunctional family.