Heath Ledger was paying $22k for his loft in SoHo at the time of his death in January. Now, the apartment is back on the market, with a four thousand dollar boost in price. What's weird about this story of the post-postmortem rent increase is…..didn't the one of the Olsen twins own that apartment? (Yes, the listing price in that post is one grand less than the one that is quoted now.)
So did Mary-Kate jack the price of her Broome St. pad? If she's capable of such morbid decisions, you can't put it past her to purposely wait until the Dark Knight hit the theaters before putting the apartment back on the market to increase buzz.
That, or Little Olsen had nothing to do with the re-listing of the property, because she is too rich, too famous, and too thin to concern herself with such matters. That's what brokers are for. Brokers with incredibly bad taste or incredibly good timing.
It's not easy being mean. Sure, when you come across something that involves the words "Celebrity," "Rehab," and "VH1", your faith in humanity dies a little bit as you type out a snarky retort. But sometimes professional blogging (a real job, unlike Bigfoot hunters) can make you a little bit cynical. It's almost enough sometimes to make you want to get rid of your wireless connection. But then there are stories like this one: How the three actors who took over Heath Ledger's part in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus after the actor's death earlier this year will be donating the money they make from the film to Ledger's daughter, Matilda. Ledger never had a chance to update his will before his unexpected death, so there has been worries that Matilda would not be taken care of. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell are all commendable for making one sour old blogger believe that humanity is not all running to The Hills.
New York City’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater hosted a 72-hour improv comedy marathon over the weekend, so it’s not surprising that the jokes eventually turned to Heath Ledger, Estelle Getty and Bernie Mac’s recent deaths. But guest panelist Brooke Shields was evidently caught off guard:
Skating Through Life professional Mary-Kate Olsen scored hash mark on her Notches of Privilege bedpost, with DEA officials backing down off their request to question her about Heath Ledger's death. Recall that the feds wanted to quiz Olsen about the OxyContin that Ledger had in his system, but had no prescription for, but Olsen wanted immunity before she talked, indicating that she might, like, having something to hide. Rather than get Olsen — just finished with a promo tour for The Wackness — in an interrogation room, the feds are closing Ledger's case, thus not moving on a grand jury subpoena against Olsen. Of course, the NYPD also let Olsen off the hook immediately after Ledger's passing, when they decided not to interview her then, even though she was the first person notified about his unconscious body and had her own security detail head to the scene.
The only way to get Mary-Kate Olsen to go on record with authorities investigating Heath Ledger's Rx-fueled death is to grant her immunity. This is different from the immunity she always seeks from the fashion police — those guys know no limits. The immunity she's after is from the feds; DEA agents are trying to ask her about some of the drugs, like OxyContin, that were found in Ledger's system and blamed for his death. Per-snaps Ms. Olsen was the illegal provider, given her previous romantic linkage to Ledger and her rumored enjoyment of such substances? If Olsen did provide the late Batman star with the drugs, she might be found legally culpable for what transpired after Leger's taking them, which explains why she wants a promise not to be prosecuted before providing any As to the feds' Qs.
Update: Even without immunity, Olsen speaks! Um, through her attorney, who says she "had nothing whatsoever to do with the drugs found in Heath Ledger's home or his body, and she does not know where he obtained them."
LA Times writer Eric P. Lucas has had enough of the Heath Ledger hype and wrote a strongly-worded article to argue otherwise. Except instead of convincing everyone that the Oscar buzz is unnecessary, he makes the fatal mistake of insulting Heath and sending his diehard fans into an angry frenzy.
No surprise here: The Dark Knight raked in over $155 million this weekend and broke a bunch of box office records. The latest Batman movie also became my latest obsession (see also: Jason Castro), inspiring me to see it twice in under 48 hours.
For those of you who saw it, click through for my favorite moments from the film and then feel free to add your own.
ZOMG Batman: The Dark Knight is going to be the biggest movie in the history of movies that are big!! It'll play on 4,366 screens its opening weekend, the most any movie has ever registered. "By all accounts this should be Hollywood's best-ever 3-day overall North American weekend at the box office: the number to beat is last year's $151+ million," says Nikki Finke. Rejoice, Tinseltown: America does care about your well-being. And it only took the sacrifice of one of your children to get you there.
When Heath Ledger died, Warner Bros. marketing executives behind the new Batman movie Dark Knight, where Ledger stars as The Joker, immediately grew worried that the beloved actor's death would overshadow their summer blockbuster, and potentially get in the way of them turning a heavy investment into a worldwide hit amid cries of "tasteless!," especially given his dark role in the film.
And then, between Hollywood's outpouring of support and some brilliant PR, the mood changed: Dark Night would instead be a tribute to Ledger. The situation went from bad to good to amazing last week, when critics got their first look at the movie and began called for a posthumous Oscar for Ledger.
So how do you take a roller coaster ride from a Doomsday scenario to a sure-thing back down to the horror story level? By news reports of a 17-year-old fella, visiting Six Flags with his church group, getting decapitated while hunting for the hat he lost on the tracks of the Batman ride, where he got stuck and was decapitated.
In a new interview in Elle's July issue, Mary-Kate Olsen refuses to be interviewed about Heath Ledger. "I'm not going to comment on that. I won't give you a word about that in the nicest way possible. Let's move on." [People]
Was Heath Ledger set up by paparazzi agency Splash News when he was caught snorting coke after the 2006 SAG Awards? A just-filed lawsuit by a former People magazine reporter, identified only as "Jane Doe," claims her boyfriend at the time and his colleague — Darren Banks and Eric Munn, both Splash photogs — surreptitiously convinced her to to allow them into her Chateau Marmont hotel room. It was there that Banks and Munn allegedly set up a video camera to record the room from the balcony, and then laid out some coke on the coffee table, where all parties involved (except the plaintiff, supposedly) took part in the festivities. Eventually, Ledger found the camera, went ballistic, and was assured the tape would be destroyed.
As we all know, it wasn't; Entertainment Tonight bought it for $200,000 and promoted the hell out of it, but never aired the footage after half of Hollywood and their publicists threatened to boycott the show.
So why is the former People lass suing now? She claims the tape makes it appear as if she snorted coke, which means she's after damages for fraud, intrusion, infliction of emotional distress, and privacy violations.
With the new Batman movie Dark Knight premiering July 25, the press onslaught from Warner Bros. will soon be in high gear. But until then, here's a creepy new still from the flick of Heath Ledger, part of a set of "amazing snaps show The Joker dressed as a deadly doctor and a creepy cop." Yeeeah, it's kinda difficult to dress this up as anything more pleasant. [Sun]
Britain's The Daily Mail, which is paying cash to Lisa Marie Presley for calling her fat, now suddenly has a conscious and won't name the woman suspected of birthing Heath Ledger's love child. But that doesn't mean they aren't hounding her with questions!
The woman, who was married at the time she had her Ledger dalliance, has since remarried, and her new husband is denying the allegations – as if he would know! – and is even willing to subject everyone to a DNA test to clear this whole matter up. But mom isn't on board with being pestered with questions and cheek swabs: "I think it's very, very rude that I'm being posed all of this. I really do. I can't talk about anything."
Denial? That's basically a confirmation! And as the Mail points out, Heath has always had a thing for older women (he dated 11-years-older Naomi Watts and 10-years-older Helena Christensen), so of course his baby juice got up inside her.
Australia's Daily Telegraph adds a question mark to its headline "Did Heath Ledger father a secret love child?" Unnecessary move: You can't libel the dead! In their claim, the paper reports a 17-year-old Ledger had a relationship with an older woman (who had a boyfriend at the time), which ended, and then the woman learned she was pregnant. The kid, who would be about 12 right now, could stand to inherit a vast portion of Ledger's estate if it could prove the biological tie. And it looks like Heath's uncle Hadyn is pulling for the love child: "There is a very real possibility that Heath was the father." There's also a very real possibility this entire story is a work of fiction!
Heath Ledger's uncles are trying to wrestle away control of the late actor's estate from his father Kim, who supposedly so mismanaged his own grandfather's wishes that he had to be removed as executor. Kim assured family members that Heath's daughter Matilda "will be taken care of," but that wasn't enough for the uncles, who insist their wish is not one of financial gain but to, uh, make sure Matilda will be taken care of.
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