Sideshow:

So which is more startling: that country singer and actor

Reba McEntire

claims she had a past life, or that she is e-mail buddies with

George H.W. Bush

?

"I believe in reincarnation," Reba tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "I believe . . . that I have been here before as a man."

Reba, who has sold more than 55 million records, says: "I will get flak from Christians who will say I can't be a Christian if I believe this. That's true, and I'm sorry. . . . Who knows? Maybe I'm part Buddhist."

Let's hope Reba doesn't get the sort of grief heaped on Shirley MacLaine in 2000 when she claimed that she had been a Moorish girl servant under Charlemagne in a previous life.

As for the former prez, Reba says, "We e-mail each other on our Treos all the time - nothing political, just passing jokes back and forth." Reba, who says

George W.

's father is "really into e-mail," says she and hubby

Narvel Blackstock

became good friends with Bush "on a private cruise to the Greek islands about four years ago."

France's rich and famous turned up Friday at a cemetery in a Paris suburb for the funeral of actor

Guillaume Depardieu

, who died of pneumonia last week at 37. French first lady

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

and film directors

Luc Besson

,

Bertrand Blier

and

Claude Berri

paid their respects as Guillaume's dad, film star

Gerard Depardieu

, read from

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

's

Le Petit Prince

.

Guillaume, who had a troubled relationship with his dad, had his right leg amputated in 2003 because of complications from a '95 motorcycle crash.

In a serendipitous bit of casting, comic

Will Ferrell

, whose impersonation of

President Bush

on

Saturday Night Live

won him accolades, has been given a chance to continue being Bush.

Variety says Ferrell will make his Broadway debut in January with a one-man show, You're Welcome, America. A Final Night With George W. Bush.

Will

Troy

alum

Brad Pitt

be packing a sword and sporting sandals (and that short leather pant-skirt thingy) again for a silver-screen adaptation of

The Odyssey

, by that other, less famous

Homer

? (

Troy

, mind you, was adapted from Homer's

Iliad

.)

No, says Variety: This version, starring Pitt, will be set in the future in outer space. (In that vast space between the TV Homer's ears?)

Pitt, Variety also says, is in talks to star in the baseball flick

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

, about the woefully underfunded Oakland A's general manager

Billy Beane

, who uses sophisticated computer analysis to draft players.

Lauren Conrad

, star of MTV's reality show

The Hills

, tells celeb news show

Entertainment Tonight

that her spring 2009 fashion line was inspired by the dialectical relationship between girliehood and springy-ness: "I wanted to go girlie. I wanted it to be springy, so we did big floral headpieces, ruffles and constructed volume." Last week, she showed off her girlie-springy-floral stuff at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in L.A.

Angelina Jolie

, who is stumping for her flick

Changeling

, told

Matt Lauer

Thursday that she and

Brad

may adopt another baby, which would bring their brood to seven. Pressed by Lauer for details, Jolie, whose twins are 3 months old, said, "You can't even start the process until any new children are 6 months old."

Michelle Williams

and

Spike Jonze

, who reportedly started going steady in the summer, are taking their romance public, says People mag. Michelle and Spike, who was married to film auteur

Sofia Coppola

from 1999 to 2003, were seen holding hands at a film event in Manhattan on Wednesday.

Michelle, 28, has a 3-year-old daughter, Matilda, by the late Australian star Heath Ledger.