Poison Penn

SOUND BITE Axl Rose has no patience for his former bandmates, as guitarist Slash found out when he tried to catch his former colleague's retooled Guns N' Roses at a pre-New Year's Eve show Sunday at Las Vegas' Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Rose had ordered all ex-GNR members barred from the show, threatening to walk if he saw any of them in the audience, so security turned the guitarist away from the door.

Only Rose and keyboardist Dizzy Reed remain from the band's ''Use Your Illusion'' heyday a decade ago; the current GNR also includes former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson and guitarists Robin Fink (Nine Inch Nails) and Buckethead (Primus). During the show, Rose blamed the old band's breakup on legal snafus and claimed that last summer's scrapped European tour was one he'd never actually committed to and in fact only learned about via the Internet. No word on when the new GNR's years-in-the-making ''Chinese Democracy'' CD will be released.

TROPHY TIME Don't expect the yearend citations by the Online Film Critics Society to clear up your Oscar voting pool. The group, made up of 96 Internet-based reviewers, picked a tie for best picture, between ''Mulholland Drive'' and ''Memento.'' They also picked a tie for best original screenplay, between ''Mulholland'' and ''The Others.'' The OFSC also gave ''Mulholland'' best actress (Naomi Watts), best director (David Lynch), and best score. ''Memento'''s Christopher Nolan picked up the best adapted screenplay and breakthrough filmmaker awards. ''The Man Who Wasn't There'' won best actor (Billy Bob Thornton) and best cinematography. Supporting acting awards went to Steve Buscemi (''Ghost World'') and Jennifer Connelly (''A Beautiful Mind''). Best animated feature was ''Shrek,'' best documentary was ''Startup.com,'' and best foreign film was ''Amélie.''

HITCHING POST Better late than never, that seems to be Eric Clapton's motto. The 56-year-old guitarist and Melia McEnery, his 25-year-old American-born girlfriend, had a daughter, Julie Rose, six months ago. On New Year's Day, they finally got around to getting married, at the 600-year-old Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Ripley, southwest of London. The baby was baptized, as was another Clapton daughter, 16-year-old Ruth Patricia. She was born of Clapton's affair with Yvonne Kellyn in 1983, but Clapton didn't meet her until 1991. Guests who attended the baptisms didn't realize they were going to witness a wedding, too; Clapton and McEnery sprung the ceremony on them as a surprise finale.

PASSING NOTES Julia Phillips, the first woman producer to win a best picture Oscar (for 1973's ''The Sting'') died Tuesday of cancer at her Hollywood home. Phillips, 57, coproduced ''The Sting,'' ''Taxi Driver,'' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' with then-husband Michael Phillips. In 1991, she published her notorious Hollywood tell-all, ''You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again,'' and indeed, given all the bridges that bestseller burned, she didn't.