Fan Fare

Heidi Montag — trapped by her own body

Less than a year after having her breasts enlarged to X-rated proportions (along with a further 11 astounding cosmetic procedures at the same time), reality TV starlet Heidi Montag is finding out the downside of  a G-sized bust.

For one thing, she can’t hug her four dogs (it hurts too much), and then there are the clothing limitations (not much in the way of off-the-peg outfits that size).  Not to mention the fact that they get in the way of regular work-outs and that she feels “trapped in my own body”, according to Life & Style magazine.

Oh, and all those plastic surgeries also ruined her short-lived marriage to her “The Hills” co-star Spencer Pratt.

Heidi tells Life & Style magazine she is now looking for a plastic surgeon in South America (?) to remove the super-sized implants and bring her down to a smaller D cup. Or  a double D.

Alas for Heidi, the celebrity plastic surgeon who remodeled her body in November died in a car crash last week.

Let’s hope the implants are easier to get rid off than the pesky Pratt, her soon to be divorced, fame-hungry  husband, who has been kicking up a media frenzy  with claims that he has a sex tape of Heidi that he would like to sell for several millions of dollars.

Alas for the couple known as Speidi, the pair were spotted getting up close and personal in Costa Rica just about the same time as they were supposedly fighting over the alleged sex tape.

Love and Marriage … the box office equation?

The top three directors at the North American box office have walked down the aisle a total of 11 times, leading to the decidedly unscientific conclusion that romantic comedies may be better for your marriage than heavy dramas.

Garry Marshall (pictured at left), the man behind last weekend’s champion “Valentine’s Day” as well as “Pretty Woman” and the sitcom “Happy Days,” let the team down by being married just once, to the same woman since 1963 (per Wikipedia).

That leaves current chart-topper Martin Scorsese (“Shutter Island”) and all-time star James Cameron (“Avatar”) with five wives each on their scorecards and approximately zero romantic comedies between them. 

Scorsese did take a break from gunning down gangsters and crucifying Jesus to get romantic with the dramatic Edith Wharton adaptation “The Age of Innocence,” not that too many people noticed. 

Plenty of people did notice the romantic nature of “Titanic,” even if Cameron killed off about 1,500 people including the star. Things were evidently more romantic behind the camera as the married filmmaker hooked up with his co-star Suzy Amis, now his fifth wife.

The thesis might need more work, though, as the three husbands of romantic-comedy specialist Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) or the three wives and one very estranged former girlfriend of Woody Allen might attest.

UPDATE-Jon and Kate take a break

In the wake of their announcement on Monday night’s show on cable channel TLC that they will split up, television reality couple Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight children will take a break from the show centered on their life as a large family, the channel said on Tuesday.

“TLC continues to support the Gosselin family and will work closely with them to determine the best way to continue to tell their story as they navigate through this difficult time,” the channel said in a statement.

The show will air a retrospective next Monday, and then return on Aug. 3, TLC said.

“During this time, the family will take some time off to regroup and then a modified schedule will be in place to support the family’s transition,” the channel said.

The Gosselins have been married for 10 years and they are famous for having eight children (twins and sextuplets), as well as the TV show that documented their lives. The Gosselins started legal divorce proceedings in their home state of Pennsylvania on Monday, in advance of their show airing. 

The show so far has managed to keep much of the fighting between the Gosselins off-screen, but for a couple going through a divorce with cameras everywhere, the next few months must seem daunting. Of course, they agreed to be on the show, and all reports indicate that they are well-paid for their starring roles. With the money, the Gosselins are able to provide for their children in a way that would be hard to achieve with any regular job.

Here’s the update. The Monday night episode of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ attracted the highest ratings in the show’s history, with 10.6 million viewers tuned in, TLC said.

Amid marriage turmoil, Jon and Kate will have a “life-changing” announcement

U.S. media is becoming increasingly crowded with celebrities who are famous for being famous. Jon and Kate Gosselin are famous for having a crowded house, with a pair of twins and a group of sextuplets. But the abode of the two reality TV stars of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″  on cable channel TLC could get slightly less crowded. That’s because on Monday’s show  the couple going through marriage turmoil will make a big announcement, according to a promo that circulated on the Internet on Thursday.

All the Gosselins’ children are under 9 years-old. Sadly for the family, Jon and Kate have been spending a lot of time apart since he was photographed in April leaving a club late at night with another woman. Since news of the pending announcement, the New Jersey Star-Ledger and numerous other media outlets have speculated that the Gosselins could be headed for a divorce or a separation. 

The promo does not say what will happen, but it features Kate’s voice. “Recently we’ve made some life-changing decisions,” Kate says, as the words “Family in Turmoil” appear on the screen. “Decisions that will affect every member of our family. Ones that we hope will bring each of us some peace.”

It’s one thing to face a divorce in the tabloids, but another thing to have to do it in episodic television. If that is where the Gosselins are headed, it will surely raise plenty of questions for TLC about how to portray the break-up and its affect on the children in future episodes. 

Several media commentators have lambasted the Gosselins and TV viewers’ interest in the their personal lives for further trivializing American culture or, put another away, making real family issues the subject of heightened TV drama. But way back in the 1930s, the Dionne Quintuplets became just as much of a sensation. Born in Canada, they were turned into a tourist attraction by the Canadian government to please a public hard-bitten by the Great Depression. They lived at a hospital called “Quintland” and later complained of abuse.

By comparison, being a child whose life plays out on television may not be as bad, but the turmoil the family has acknowledged going through would surely be hard for anyone to handle. We await Monday’s announcement.

(PHOTO: The Gosselin family (courtesy Discovery Communications)

“Just friends” says A-Rod of Madonna

(Writing and reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis) If tabloid rumors are to be believed,  baseball star Alex Rodriguez and pop diva Madonna have been spending a lot of time together, flying around the  country, planning to buy an apartment together and generally getting very up close and personal since their recent twin divorces.

But Rodriguez, 33, is not playing ball with all that talk.  After weeks of  silence about their  relationship,  the sports star  is trying to dispel talk of romance with Madonna, 50.

“We’re friends — that’s it,” Rodriguez told People magazine.      Rodriguez’s wife, Cynthia, filed for divorce in July, citing the slugger’s alleged infidelities following news reports that suggested Rodriguez and Madonna were romantically involved.      At the time, Madonna was still married to British film director Guy Ritchie.  Since then, the couple went through a lightning-fast divorce that was completed last month.

 “I can tell you this,” Rodriguez told People,  “I have never been on a plane with her.”

 ”I’ve been to two [of her] concerts, yet I’ve read that I went to 20. I’ve also read that we were buying an apartment together. That is absolutely ridiculous and not true.”

 When pressed on how much time they have spent together, and whether he had ever stayed the night at Madonna’s home, Rodriguez laughed: “If I answered every rumor, we’d be here for three weeks.”

Christie Brinkley says won’t marry again

Model Christie Brinkley walked away from a brutal divorce trial agreeing to pay $2.1 million to her ex-husband, Peter Cook, whose dirty laundry was aired in court in testimony describing his affair with a teenage assistant and how he ponied up $300,000 to keep her from tellling anyone.      And so it may come as little surprise that Brinkley, 54, a 1980s magazine glamour queen who has been married four times, has no plans to head back to the altar.      “I’m not going to marry again,” Brinkley told the New York Post in a story published online on Friday.      “I know too much about the marriage laws and divorce laws,” she said. “Getting married again would not be a very intelligent thing to do.”      Cook will probably be remembered as Brinkley’s most notorious husband, after five days of testimony that revealed his $3,000-a-month porn habit and the lengths he went to keep his affair with then 18-year-old Diana Bianchi a secret.       The New York Post reported that Brinkley’s estate is worth an estimated $60 million, and that she gets to keep her 18 houses in the divorce settlement.      Brinkley, who was photographed in stylish clothes as she came and left the courtroom, said there was one good reason to settle the case.      “I was down to my last outfit!” she joked. “It had to end.”          (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

Christie Brinkley’s tough two days in court

It’s been a tough two days in divorce court for model Christie Brinkley, an icon of 1980s glamour, and her estranged husband, Peter Cook. The two were married in 1996, and their divorce proceeding is in a Long Island, New York court to resolve child custody issues.

Brinkley has accused husband Cook of cheating on her with a teenager and being hooked on porn in a New York trial that has elicited tearful testimony from each and an appearance from Brinkley’s daughter, Alexa, from her former marriage to singer Billy Joel.

Brinkley, 54, said on the witness stand on Thursday that her architect husband’s infidelity left her feeling raw. “I think a certain amount of anger is perfectly normal,” Brinkley said, in testimony cited by the New York Daily News.

“After all, I supported this man for almost 10 years. He never paid for a single thing. He lived a wonderful life. And all the while he was carrying on like this behind my back.”

Brinkley and Cook (that’s them at left) have battled over custody of their children since it was revealed in 2006 that Cook, 49, had cheated on Brinkley with his then 18-year-old assistant, Diana Bianchi. Brinkley said on the stand on Thursday that she first learned of the affair from Bianchi’s father, when he told Brinkley about the affair at a high school commencement ceremony in Southhampton, Long Island, in 2006.

“My world was completely shattered,” she said on the stand, according to the New York Post.

On the first day of the divorce trial on Wednesday, Cook admitted to the affair in his testimony and to having been hooked on Internet pornography. It was revealed that Cook paid Bianchi $20,000 to type magazine articles onto his company’s Web site, and he once deposited cash for the teenager under a rock outside Brinkley’s mansion. In all, Cook gave Bianchi $300,000 to keep the affair quiet.

Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe finalize divorce

It’s all over between actors Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, who finalized their divorce this week with court documents filed in Los Angeles.

People magazine reported online that documents filed on Thursday show the couple, who separated back in 2006, had reached an agreement on finances and custody of their two children, after seven years of marriage.

The Louisianna-born Witherspoon, 32, starred in the movies “Legally Blond” and “Rendition.” Witherspoon took tea in Tokyo this week at an event for breast cancer survivors, as she wore a kimono and chatted with her Japanese hosts.

Witherspoon is dabbling in producing and has reportedly been dating actor Jake Gyllenhaal, while Phillippe is with Australian actress Abbie Cornish. He recently starred in the war film “Stop-Loss.”

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis) 

Watch stopped? Time to break up

Decisions, decisions. In a bizarre admission, British socialite Jemima Khan has revealed how she decided once and for all to dump a boyfriend only when the watch he bought her stopped. In a recent article in Vogue magazine, the 34-year-old described her indecision as a “chronic affliction” that had got steadily worse over the last decade.

While no names were mentioned, the British press wasted little time in naming the jilted lover in this case as actor Hugh Grant, who the Daily Mail reported bought then-girlfriend Khan a 3,000-pound watch to match his own in 2004. The couple split in 2007.

“I’ve even found myself waiting for ‘a sign’,” Khan said in the article. “The watch given to me by a boyfriend when we first met packed up at the point at which the relationship had clearly run its course. I took it as the clear signal I needed that our time was finally up, though of course I’d known that for months.”

Would Khan and Grant still be an item had the time piece in question kept ticking?