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Heath Ledger

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gossip roundup

Paris Hilton's Implant News Plant

  • Paris Hilton either added implants to "her A-cup" breasts or wants to spread gossip that she did so she can sell her stupid "push-up" bra. (Yes, you can click the thumb if you need a closer look. Yes, you will feel dirty. But don't you kinda feel that way already?) [P6]
  • Graydon Carter's wife Anna gave birth to a baby girl, Isabella Rose Carter, who can already get better reservations and invitations than you. [P6]
  • Oppressive Hollywood people will not let Danny Glover make a movie funded by beacon of tolerance Hugo Chavez. [P6]
  • Heath Ledger's daughter Matilda will receive money otherwise destined to the actors who completed Heath Ledger's turn in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell are all donating their proceeds from the movie. [Fox]
  • Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt plan to marry on live TV and also wrest the Hills from Lauren Conrad.

6:45 AM on Tue Aug 19 2008
By Ryan Tate
4,490 views, 39 comments

Latest by Wonderland: Danny Glover is calling racist on something that probably had way more to do with people not wanting their $ more »

this thing looks like that thing

James Franco: The Next Heath Ledger

The untimely death of Heath Ledger left a void in the acting community. In terms of his actual person, yes, but also in what he represented. A subdued, thoughtful actor who shied away from the press, who made a quiet regular guy life for himself when he wasn't emoting really well for lots and lots of money. So, for useless speculation's sake, who will fill that role now, where is our next, uh, sorta-dark knight? Ledger's Brokeback Mountain costar Jake Gyllenhaal is too splashy. Other broody types like Josh Hartnett haven't quite got that leading-man-with-gravitas movie star thing down. So we think it might be James Franco, who is, like Ledger before he died, just beginning the second act of his career. More »

2:14 PM on Tue Aug 12 2008
By Richard
9,670 views, 68 comments

Latest by N/A: @bctx: Nah, he's following the Will Smith path, bctx. more »

celebrity forensics

Mary-Kate Olsen Beats Coppers -- Again

Mary-Kate Olsen WINS. Twice law-enforcement authorities have tried pressuring the dopey lil' actress into telling what she knows about the death of close personal friend Heath Ledger, and twice now she has successfully beaten them back — the only person connected to Ledger to successfully do so. Federal sources told first the Daily News and now the Post that U.S. prosecutors have withdrawn their investigation into the death of actor Ledger, forcing the Drug Enforcement Administration to drop demands to interview Olsen. That's a fairly humiliating retreat for an agency that just two days ago implied it would use a Grand Jury subpoena to force Olsen to tell what she knows after word leaked of frustration in its offices over Olsen's demands for immunity. Especially because the feds really did have a subpoena. Reports the News: More »

9:13 PM on Wed Aug 6 2008
By Ryan Tate
3,550 views, 60 comments

Latest by it takes a lot to laugh: This is just like the plot of all of their tween straight-to-video movies. Maybe it's time to resurrect that genre. more »

gossip roundup

Olsen Book To Benefit From Clash With Feds?

  • If nothing else, all this new Heath Ledger investigation press may help generate interest, to the extent that's possible, in the Olsen Twins' coffee table book in which they interview their influences. [Scoop - third item]
  • That one time the America's Next Top Model contestant walloped the 4-foot-11 Hairspray star over some airport lounge seats? And the Hairspray star's dad beat the model's mom so bad she had to go to the hospital? Apparently there may be some lawsuits out of that situation. [R&M]
  • Lindsay Lohan's dad will probably not attend a lesbian wedding between the actress and girlfriend Samantha Ronson, should one ever occur. In case you were wondering. [Scoop]
  • Kelly Rutherford, the Gossip Girl "hot mom," named her son Hermés after the designer label. Classy! [P6]
  • Amy Winehouse's dad to try his hand at radio. [Mirror]
  • Sad Paris Hilton had to wait half an hour to get into Lily Pond. [Mirror]

9:03 AM on Tue Aug 5 2008
By Ryan Tate
1,313 views, 28 comments

Latest by N/A: Prune? more »

celebrity forensics

Deepening Mary-Kate Olsen Immunity Mystery

The Associated Press now has its own law-enforcement source stating that Mary-Kate Olsen is demanding immunity before she will talk with federal agents investigating the January death of actor Heath Ledger, as the Post reported this morning. The immunity request is now all but confirmed. Olsen's attorney didn't bother to deny it in a statement addressing a number of other questions raised by the Post story, such as whether Olsen helped Ledger procure OxyContin: More »

8:57 PM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Ryan Tate
11,712 views, 167 comments

Latest by N/A: Isn't the real mystery behind Mary Kate's head accessory? What IS that - and how did she manage to more »

superstition

The Curse of The Dark Knight

Remember Poltergeist, that 1982 horror film that was rumored to be plagued by a curse? What with the untimely deaths of two of its young stars, and reports of various odd occurrences on set. Can a movie be cursed? The Exorcist saw its fair share of mishaps, including injuries and the deaths of several crew members, as did Peter Berg's recent flop The Kingdom. And then there's Valkyrie. Well, it looks as though The Dark Knight, that Batman blockbuster mega-machine that's roiling in movie theatres currently, may be joining those ranks. Death and violence has surrounded three of its stars since the movie wrapped, Morgan Freeman's car accident last night being the most recent. More »

1:08 PM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Richard
37,846 views, 95 comments

Latest by N/A: Yes it's cursed. Now if you'll excuse me I have to check my horoscope and later I have a palm more »

Crime

Dodgy Olsen Demands Immunity In Ledger Doping

In the heated days of confusion and mourning immediately following the January death of Heath Ledger, many of the actor's admirers loudly proclaimed it absurd to raise questions about the role played by the actor's friend Mary-Kate Olsen in his death and aftermath. New York police concluded their investigation into Ledger's death without even interviewing the elfish young actress, even though, as the Post repeatedly pointed out, she was told of Ledger's death before emergency responders and even though her bodyguards may have arrived at his apartment just before paramedics, who Olsen did not bother to call. Having stayed on the story, the Post today reports that federal drug agents are pressing Olsen hard to cooperate in their investigation into how Ledger obtained the powerful painkiller OxyContin without a prescription — and into what happened to the bottle: More »

6:53 AM on Mon Aug 4 2008
By Ryan Tate
13,706 views, 62 comments

Latest by waltzngmatlda: @arguablythemostfamous: ...you are correct and i did say that- at the end of it all, he made the choice. more »

gossip roundup

Tila Tequila Steals Lesbian Billion-Heiress

  • Courtenay Semel, lesbian daughter of Yahoo's CEO was dating heiress Casey Johnson until a drunken hookup with Tila Tequila at some party. Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson totally giggled. [P6]
  • The Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie twin pictures supposedly just sold for around $15 million, and not to People or OK! but to Hello!. [Mail]
  • Heath Ledger's ex-wife Michelle Williams has taken up with director Spike Jonze. [Mail]
  • Chace Crawford's close friend/roomate Ed Westwick is into girls! He holds their hands and everything. [R&M]
  • Paris Hilton is not about to watch that ad where John McCain tries to use video of her to bludgeon Barack Obama because, really, that would mean getting up to speed on so, so many different things. Reading=ughs. [E!]
  • Katie Holmes is into firefighters, and/or free press, and/or potential Scientology recruits. [E!]
  • Whether she was in a swimming pool with him in Mexico or not, Britney Spears is not officially dating that former Israeli soldier guy, her manager would like everyone to know. And the guy is not a bodyguard, he's a "staff photographer." Yes, point out that he's a photographer, why don't you, since we know Britney is totally not into those. [Showbiz Spy]
  • Spears' dad, meanwhile, retains control over her money and "personal affairs" until December 31. "Miss Spears was reluctant to agree to the extension of her conservatorship." [ET]

8:18 AM on Fri Aug 1 2008
By Ryan Tate
4,358 views, 33 comments

Latest by N/A: The problem i've always had with the Tila Tequila reality show, was that I couldn't suspend my belief that Tela more »

gossip roundup

Heath Ledger Bar Moves Forward

  • Heath Ledger's father proceeded with funding a nautically-themed bar in Greenpoint, in which Ledger had been a silent partner. The guy who designed Beatrice is involved. [Down By The Hipster, P6]
  • Oh, hey, the Post has some John ; gossip! He wants to make a movie about poverty! Oh. Really? That's your John Edwards gossip? At least go for the obvious joke about how there will almost certainly be scenes in the film focused on the problem of unwed mothers, and Edwards sure knows a LOT ABOUT THAT, har har. [P6]
  • Eliot Spitzer goes to Barton Gym on Upper East Side, people snicker, sad Spitzer leaves. [P6]
  • After losing an initial court ruling, the crazy YouTube divorcée, Tricia Walsh-Smith, implied that her ex-husband Philip Smith and others at the Shubert Organization are behind a bunch of death threats. She's really inhabiting this role! [Post]
  • The new backstory behind the Christian Bale assault allegations: His mother and sister wanted him to loan $200,000 to his sister, supposedly for her kids. He didn't want to give the money, and there was a fight, and the mom may have said some unkind things about Bale's wife. Then, the women say, Bale pushed and shoved them. The headline? Batman and sobbin'.
  • Brad Pitt said the paparazzi BETTER stop taking pictures of his kids using their fancy "telephoto lenses." Situations involving the baby twins are private time, and will stay private time until he auctions them off to the highest bidder for celebrity magazine purposes. [LA Rag Mag]

8:15 AM on Thu Jul 24 2008
By Ryan Tate
2,556 views, 58 comments

Latest by Smirk: I personally chose not to believe the Christian Bale rumors because he is a super-hot piece of man meat. I more »

Times' Dark Knight Review "Mr. Ledger's death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive... He’s just a clown painted on black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece." [Times]

14 comments

Is Ledger's Joker Really That Great? Heath Ledger's performance as the creepy Joker in this week's latest outing for the Batman franchise is being treated with such manufactured reverence—the dead actor's even being touted as an Oscar nominee—that some sort of backlash is inevitable. So who'll start it? A blogger with an admirable absence of decency, John Carney.

54 comments

reviews

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight: 'Rave and Rage and Purge Acting'

So finally the next Batman film, The Dark Knight, lurches into theaters this Friday. Anticipation is intense, as Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's reboot of the franchise, was such a dark success. Of course, though, the real reason to see the film is Heath Ledger as uber villain The Joker. The buddingly talented actor died all too young in a SoHo apartment this past winter, leaving this as his last complete performance. So yeah, that's all we really care about when surveying the early reviews (we already know that Christian Bale will be gruff and brooding, Morgan Freeman sage and weary, Maggie Gyllenhaal unsurprisingly better than Katie Holmes, the film as a whole loud and jangly). So what do the critics say? Mostly, that he's fantastic. The increasingly-irrelevant Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone, calls the performance "mad-crazy-brilliant." The Davids Edelstein and Denby worry that Ledger stepped perhaps too far into the abyss to access the character. Basically, we're excited. Read a digest of the reviews after the jump. More »

12:38 PM on Mon Jul 14 2008
By Richard
9,012 views, 50 comments

Latest by bugupit: I think Bale's pretty great. Check out The Machinist. more »

the cinema

The Cinema: Posthumous Oscar Watch

Ropeofsilicon.com has an early review of Batman:The Dark Knight which does its best to add to the swelling consensus that Australian James Dean is pretty effing great in his last movie. Clips and freakishly early Oscar buzz after the jump. More »

10:13 PM on Sun Jun 29 2008
By mr.guyball
5,964 views, 26 comments

Latest by N/A: Batdance. I had the cassingle. more »

gossip roundup

Ex-Hooker Thanks You For Touching Her

  • Ashley Dupre, call girl to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, thanked her MySpace fans "for taking the time to send me a bit of strength and inspiration... your words have touched me." She thanked her detractors for making "me push myself and want it even more." [MySpace]
  • Corey Feldman fought with old buddy and fellow child star Corey Haim on a reality show, and it emerged both had been molested at kids. Feldman felt the need to clarify that pop singer Michael Jackson was not the molester.
  • A handwriting expert is suing Bryant Gumbel for allegedly smearing him on HBO's Real Sports. [Post]
  • British singer Boy George really wanted to put on a special show for the New York sanitation workers with whom he performed community service, but he was denied a visa to enter the country, on account of an upcoming trial for allegedly imprisoning a male escort. [Post]
  • British author Ian McEwan said he despises "Islamism" because it oppresses gays and women. [Times]
  • Michelle Williams, mother of deceased actor Heath Ledger's child, is worried Ledger's mother and father will blow through the money in his estate before the child is 18 and able to claim any. [P6]
  • Clearly trying to seed a sequel to his 1986 laugh riot The Money Pit, actor Tom Hanks keeps insisting his mansion in Sun Valley was poorly constructed. His latest appeal for legal intervention was rejected by a California court Friday. [P6]
  • The 13-year-old daughter of billionaire Revlon chief Ron Perelman asked for a protection order against her mom and Perelman's ex-wife Patricia Duff. [Post]
  • Singer Stevie Nicks said everyone should buy records and in turn save the music business and in turn "bring peace to our earth." [R&M]

7:15 AM on Tue Jun 24 2008
By Ryan Tate
3,053 views, 58 comments

Latest by SeeingI: I totally would have molested Haim back in the day, but now I wouldn't even let him blow me for more »

shouting heads

Bill O'Reilly Will Not Kiss A Man Just For Mayonnaise

Heinz has a new commercial out in the UK starring a guy who works at a deli. He's so popular for his delicious mayonnaise, you see, that the man of the house gives him a kiss on the way out the door. But Bill O'Reilly sees this for what it really is: "It was obviously a gay thing!" O'Reilly's insight into the gay issue is almost as piercing as his colleague John Gibson's was when he cracked all those gay jokes about Heath Ledger right after the actor's death. "This whole gender-blending thing, it's confusing to me," says O'Reilly. "I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing." Sorry; you must have a man's tongue in your mouth before you get any mayonnaise, Bill. Watch the homosexual Heinz ad after the jump. More »

1:47 PM on Fri Jun 20 2008
By Hamilton Nolan
8,472 views, 46 comments

Latest by Helman: That ad was objectively awesome. Suck it, O'Reilly. more »

how we watch

The Scale of Celebrity Death

Tim Russert died. I'm not sure if you've heard. But, yes, the Meet the Press moderator and dedicated D.C. journalist passed away, at a too-young 58, last week and the media has been in a frenzy since. Jack Shafer at Slate (among many others, I'm sure) feels that the coverage is a bit overdone. Yes Russert was by all accounts a good guy and a good worker and just one of those decent people that feel in short supply, especially in Washington, especially in the media. But isn't it still a bit much? All the tributes and montages and teary testimonials. I mean, nearly every life deserves parades and fireworks and tears and montages when it ends. But, because this is on TV and people are being paid, somewhere, doesn't this seem all a bit circusy? Maybe that's cynical, but television has, to some extent, earned our cynicism. If this is indeed a "circus," then where does it rank among other notable, much-covered celebrity deaths? A writer for Psychology Today says it's the biggest death since John Lennon. We disagree. We'll put this all in some context after the jump. More »

4:10 PM on Tue Jun 17 2008
By Richard
10,745 views, 241 comments

Latest by N/A: @cog_in_wheel -- I think the idea is whose death had the greatest emotional impact among the most people. Of more »

gossip

Christian Bale: 'The Joker' Did Not Kill Heath Ledger

The stress of playing one of the most legendary characters ever in one of the most hotly anticipated sequels ever didn't contribute to Heath Ledger's death in January, says the Dark Knight star. "Christian Bale has called rumours that Heath Ledger's role as The Joker contributed to his death 'ridiculous.' Ledger, who died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in January, was urged to seek help by crew on The Dark Knight after he reportedly became too involved in his character." More »

3:57 PM on Sun Jun 15 2008
By ian spiegelman
11,533 views, 64 comments

Latest by jackvinyl: Late to the party and it's like this Olabia person never existed -- you are all talking to a ghost... more »

gossip roundup

Graydon Carter's Delicate Sensibilities Offended

  • Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter blasts back at Clinton: "The responses from the former president and his camp are very saddening in their own ways. Characteristic, but nevertheless shocking." [Observer]
  • Released from jail, Tatum O'Neal goes straight to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. PR experts say the actress' career should be fine, if she acknowledges her mistake, for example by going to an AA meeting. [Post]
  • The New York City Landmarks Commission tells Robert De Niro that it would be a shame if something were to happen to the top floor of his pretty little hotel, seeing as how it's disrespecting the zoning code and all. The actor would like his extra floor legalized, because he's a wiseguy over here. [Rush & Molloy]
  • Sharon Bush, ex-wife of presidential brother Neil Bush, only snagged $30,000 per year in alimony and child support, and only for four years. She is planning a tell-all book about her ex-husband's philandering, but only once W. is out of office. Apparently she didn't want to, you know, embarrass the president at this critical, lame-duck juncture in his administration. [P6]
  • The one time you trade your royalties for a $2,300 flat fee, the movie becomes a hit. Writers don't win. [P6]
  • Eva Mendes will launch a Calvin Klein perfume in the building where Heath Ledger died. It's called "Secret Obsession." Wow. [P6]
  • Jay Leno will get to see lots of "gayest looks" at a group gay and lesbian wedding in West Hollywood. [E!]
  • Ethan Hawke applied for a license to marry his pregnant former nanny, from when he was married to Uma Thurman. [P6]
  • Jennifer Aniston's ex, model Paul Sculfor, is now dating John Mayer's ex, Cameron Diaz. Aniston and Mayer are, of course, dating one another, and also frequently reassuring themselves they are the prettier of the two couples. [Sun]

7:57 AM on Wed Jun 4 2008
By Ryan Tate
927 views, 64 comments

Latest by scroll_lock: @BalknChain: Let me get my sliderule out. Check your profile in a minute. more »

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