"A court schedule says Madonna and Guy Ritchie will be granted the first stage of their divorce in London Friday. London's High Court lists 'Ciccone M L v Ritchie G S' as one of 16 cases for 'matrimonial and civil partnership causes for pronouncement of decree.' A judge will grant the couple a preliminary divorce decree, or decree nisi. After six weeks and a day they likely will be granted a decree absolute and the divorce will become final. It is unusual for the couple to attend court in such cases." [AP]
Well, that's all very dry. Let's see if we can get a more sensationalist version of this story elsewhere.
Everyone has a theory about what led to the split between Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Also, everyone has a theory about who each of them slept first as they both realized their marriage was unsalvageable. Common wisdom says Madonna was slugging Yankee Alex Rodriguez, while the tabloid Us Weekly went with a less obvious choice for Guy Ritchie's paramour: a one Kelly Reilly, the redhead star or Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. Except, oops, they're totally backtracking now! CONTINUED »
Who here is surprised by the fact that Madonna and Guy Ritchie had a contract listing rules to abide by during their marriage? After visiting a counselor two years ago, Madge hung up the contract in the couple's New York home and, if her husband every broke the rules, she would say, "Contract, Guy, contract." Cause that's not annoying at all.
It's a wonder Guy survived this long, especially upon viewing the rules (after the jump).
You're the world's biggest pop star, in the middle of a global tour, and all you want to do is avoid the press so you can spoon with your new Major League Baseball playing boyfriend. Such is the thicket of Madonna's life. Except standing in the way of these grand plans is the obnoxious press, filled with their anonymously sourced items painting you as the self-absorbed persona you practically branded yourself from the beginning. So just who is leaking all your personal details to the media? CONTINUED »
God forbid Angelina and Brad ever split: if things end up looking the way they do for this Madonna/Guy Ritchie divorce, the only child worth having a custody battle over is the biological one.
Rumors say Guy was crying on the set of his Sherlock Holmes film after he saw a picture of his son Rocco wearing a New York Yankees shirt, an outfit no doubt picked by his mother and her new lover A-Rod to specifically hurt Guy during the beginnings of what looks like the messiest divorce since McCarthy/Mills:
CONTINUED »
Ooooh, they've gone and done it. After shafting them last week by releasing news of the divorce after the tabloids hit newsstands, Madonna and Guy Ritchie are being paid back by the celeb weeklies with less than favorable reports. Only People, long in bed with Madonna's camp via rep Liz Rosenebrg, attempts any sense of kid glove treatment with the coverline, but inside they detail the "battle" over David Banda and Rocco. Us Weekly and OK!, running with nearly identical photos as People, are notable for what they don't provide: Neither sides with Madonna nor Guy here, instead painting them both as loathsome characters.
But most interesting this week are the Bauer tabloids take: In Touch went with a Jennifer Aniston-Courteney Cox "Yes We Had Plastic Surgery" tale and Life & Style opted for Angelina Jolie "admitting" to a love affair. And that's half the job of a celeb weekly editor: Predicting what the other magazines are going to run with, and either trying to do it better, or move on another angle. Bless them, because a world without obsessing over Madonna's divorce is one we'd choose to live in.
Can you believe that Survivor has already been on for 16 seasons? Jeff Probst can't, especially since it's taken him nearly that long to win an Emmy for his work as host. But if the ratings year's award ceremonies featuring the reality-television stars are any indication, viewer interest in watching contestants eat bugs and create alliances is waning.
Though Survivor is still #1 in its time slot on CBS Thursdays, viewership has decreased over 50%, and with the economy being what it is, there is little chance that advertisers will be willing to invest the big money they used to.
"After eight years, you’ve got to wonder what’s left to come up with,” said David C. Joyce, a media equity analyst at Miller Tabak & Company who follows CBS."
Is the decline in Survivor interest a sign of the upcoming hard times ahead? Will the new Depression really be heralded in by the dearth of reality television as the ubiquitous canary in a coalmine?
The pop culture end of days is upon us! Repent, and check out three other recent examples of penny-pinching in pop, after the jump:
CONTINUED »
"I will not be commenting on the various reports regarding the divorce or of the settlement which has not been finalized." —Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg, who would probably lie in her statement anyhow.
Yohane Banda, the man who allowed Madonna to adopt his child and then used the situation repeatedly to bask in the media spotlight, is back at it after hearing news of the singer's divorce from Guy Ritchie.
Instead of offering up a respectable "no comment," the father has this to say:
Only a day after confirming the divorce rumors, Madonna has taken the high road to name-calling and onstage taunting towards soon-to-be-ex husband, Guy Ritchie. And while it's been news even before the divorce that their respective movies' release dates overlapped, leading to speculation of Ritchie's inferiority complex for his already pre-panned RocknRolla.
So will Madonna castrate Guy any further by soundly trouncing him with her box office receipts for Filth and Wisdom?
Meh, probably not:
CONTINUED »
First we told you that Guy Ritchie stood to make $100 million plus from his divorce with Madonna. Then came word that, no, Ritchie wants "not one penny" of Madge's fortune. But if that's true, then why has Madonna acquired the services of Fiona Shackleton, Britain's shrewdest divorce attorney?
Today, new information about the still unfolding drama says that not only is Ritchie going after Madge's millions, under British law, he stands to see about 250 of them.
Were Ritchie to walk away from his marriage with a quarter of a billion dollars, it would be the most expensive celebrity divorce in recent history.
After the jump, more ungodly settlements.
CONTINUED »
It's been only one day since news of Madonna's split with Guy Ritchie was made official publicly, or publicly official, but since then Madgey hasn't wasted any time dissing her soon-to-be ex. Last night on her Sticky and Sweet tour, she dedicated a song about a couple growing apart to the "emotionally retarded." Way to keep it classy, girl, as always.
If she really wanted to keep things relevant though, she wouldn't have referred to Ritchie as retarded (so un-P.C.!) but autistic, which now is just a catch-all term for celebrities/politicians to describe any kind of mental illness, including laziness.
Now that Madonna and Guy Ritchie's marriage has gone the way of their Swept Away remake, let's look into how much rapidly devaluing cash and assets are going to change hands, shall we?
CONTINUED »
Not her husband Guy Ritchie, but the tabloids, which went to print yesterday and hit newsstands today. Oops.
Only Life & Style, serendipitously, has a Madonna item, and it's lackluster at best ("Guy's Fury: Madonna's Kids Meet A-Rod").
Which begs the question: How come Madonna's lying rep Liz Rosenberg, who's always been friendly with People, didn't hand deliver the story to the Time Inc. tabloid well ahead of their print schedule, with the understanding they've give her client some very friendly treatment? BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THINGS ARE DONE IN THIS TOWN.
Summer, the season of slow news, was revitalized this year with scandal of all scandals: Rumors of Madonna stepping out on Guy Ritchie to enjoy a secret affair with Yankees all-star Alex Rodriguez. The New York tabloids had a field day, bouncing between denials from Madonna's rep Liz Rosenberg and tips from Madonna's doormen about A-Rod sightings. Meanwhile, Ritchie flew from London to New York so the couple could be seen doing normal things, like dining for the paparazzi, flaunting their children for the paparazzi, and loving each other for the paparazzi. Most saw through the charade. Then gossips in London began leaking details of on-going spats between the famous married couple, and how they basically led separate lives already, sleeping in different beds and, often, separate cities. And then yesterday came the penultimate headline: Britain's The Sun claimed a divorce was imminent. And today? Confirmation. Except the timing is all wrong, or so we imagined. CONTINUED »
Months after the whole A-Rod incident, and right smack in the middle of Mag's Sticky and Sweet tour, Guy Ritchie and Madonna are finally calling it quits on their celebrity sham of a marriage. Maybe Guy could handle being cuckolded, but he certainly wasn't going to allow any wife of his open a movie right before the premiere of his RocknRolla:
CONTINUED »
Oh, look Guy Ritchie made another film! RocknRolla looks just like his other film, Snatch, which of course was a remake of his other other film, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Hey, at least the man knows his niche and won't try to make another Cast Away.
Meanwhile, Madonna is busy bumping uglies with A-Rod and coming out with her own directorial debut. So how does the man who brought semi-legitimacy to Mag's accent feel about all this?
CONTINUED »
Much like the rich, snotty girl on the top of the hill, Madonna's big Five-Oh bday was celebrated in the company not of her friends, but the hired help. Miffed at the lack of celebrity A-listers (David Blaine showed up, but was part of the entertainment, which is sad on about five different levels), Miss Madge used the party as a dance rehearsal for her upcoming Sticky & Sweet tour. She also gave a thirty minute thank you speech to all her adoring paid employee-fans. Def. not in attendance? Axel-Rod — seeing as how Guy Ritchie footed the 100,000 pound bill.
Chris Ciccone wrapped up his two-part interview today on Good Morning America with a smile on his face and a new batch of insults for his sister Madonna. For someone who claims to love his sibling, he sure has an interesting way of showing it. And as for hope that the two will reconcile, Chris says that depends on whether Guy Ritchie cleans up his act. Because this rift between Chris and Madonna has nothing to do with this stupid tell-all book that he admits is all about the money.
Among the claims in Christopher Ciccone's forthcoming Madonna tell-all: "Guy Ritchie is a homophobe whose heterosexuality 'swells noticeably' in the presence of gay men. In a dinner toast Ciccone made the week before Ritchie and Madonna's wedding, he cracked about the groom, 'I'd like to toast this happy moment . . . and if anybody wants to [bleep] Guy, he'll be in my room later.'" [P6]
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