Charlie Sheen's Manager: Death Report Is a Lie

Charlie Sheen's manager, who minutes ago left Charlie's home,  reports that Charlie could die this week are "reckless lies."

Mark Burg tells us ... after reports surfaced that Charlie was coked out of his mind, cavorting with hookers and in a fast death spiral ... he went to Charlie's house, entered a side door and saw Charlie sitting on the couch eating a turkey sandwich, saying, "Way to knock, dude." Burg says he asked Charlie about the report he was at death's door and "Charlie looked at me like I was nuts." Burg says Charlie plans on handing out lots of Halloween candy ... because his neighborhood gets besieged by trick-or-treaters.

Burg added, "He looked as normal as he's looked in a long time." Burg says Charlie not only said he'd be on the set Tuesday for "Two and a Half Men," he impatiently asked when he was going to get a copy of the script.

Tags: Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards, rehab, Celebrity Justice
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Jackass 3D Review

• Release Date: Oct 15, 2010
• Rated: For male nudity, extremely crude and dangerous stunts throughout and for language
• Genres: Comedy
   
• John Waters, back in his trash-underground days, used to say that if somebody in the audience for one of his films vomited, that was better than getting a standing ovation. In Jackass 3D, the equivalent mark of excellence comes when the cameraman vomits — in one case, right onto the viewfinder that he can no longer bear to hold upright. The occasion is a stunt called ''Sweatsuit Cocktail,'' in which Preston Lacy, the group's resident portly punching bag, walks on a treadmill while wearing plastic wrap as his sweat gets funneled into a cup. When enough of the nasty body juice has been gathered, Steve-O, arguably the gang's most joyful and reckless psycho-daredevil, takes the cup and drinks it down. Like a lot of what transpires in Jackass 3D, it's really a suspense sequence (Can he take it? What will happen?), and in this case — gulp! — the payoff doesn't disappoint. It's disgusting and hilarious (two great tastes that taste great together). And we in the audience think, Bravo!
  After all these years of sick-puppy gags and fearless self-mutilation, Johnny Knoxville, the leader of the Jackass gang, still looks like a Dogpatch version of Jim Carrey. He still acts like one, too; he may be the purest, most devoted slapstick anarchist in comedy today. It's inevitable, after two previous Jackass films and dozens of television episodes, that we're going to want to see Knoxville and the boys top themselves, which in Jackass 3D they ultimately do. Yet it's part of the scuzzy-spontaneous, arrested-child-with-a-camcorder spirit of Jackass that some ideas of bodily harm simply never get old. The boys are still addicted to taking slapdash Evil Knievel leaps on jet skis and mini-bikes, to getting hit in the face with oversize projectiles, and to finding bold new ways (a charging buffalo, anyone?) to get smashed in the nuts. At this point, much of this stuff is like comfort food — it's an almost reassuring ritual in their brotherhood of pain. And the fact that these men, most of them now in their late 30s, can still crack up like hyenas over each other's stunts is a big part of the movie's jokey sadomasochistic charm. It's a way of letting us know that their mutually abusive, winkingly homoerotic frat-house bonding is really a higher form of friendship.
  
  Having lost its novelty, a little of this stuff now goes a very long way; some of it is frankly wearying. And the 3D, I'm crushed to say, is the usual big nothing, a vacuous selling point that the movie never begins to take advantage of. There isn't a single bit that uses 3D to up the yuck factor, or to make us feel like we're the ones getting poked. That said, Jackass 3D has the moments you crave, the ones that go beyond standard pain-freak buffoonery to attain a kind of gloriously demented, jaw-dropping daftness. Like one in which the boys assume the role of prisoners escaping through an alleyway strung with 950,000-volt stun guns, or the gluing of one man's hands onto two others' abundant chest hair, or a game of pin the tail on the donkey with a real, live, kicking donkey. And I haven't even mentioned the ''Lamborghini Tooth Pull'' (don't think too hard — it's just what it sounds like), or Steve-O getting locked into a bungee-corded Porta Potty filled with dog excrement for the ''Poo Cocktail Supreme.'' 3D or no 3D, this one is literally in your face.
  
  There is, as always, a quality of innocence to Jackass, a what will happen if we do this? fascination that the participants all share with the audience. More than ever, Johnny Knoxville and his boys belong to a very elite club of idiocy. They martyr themselves for our diversion, driven at every moment to ask: Are you not entertained?

The Social Network Review

• Release Date: Oct 01, 2010
• Rated: Language, drug and alcohol use and sexual content
• Runtime: 2 hr. 1 min.
• Genres: Drama
• Director: David Fincher
• Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield,

Director David Fincher (Fight Club}, Seven) teams with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin
(The West Wing) to explore the meaning of success in the early 21st Century from
the perspectives of the technological innovators who revolutionized the way we all
communicate. The year was 2003. As prohibitively expensive technology became
affordable to the masses and the internet made it easy to stay in touch with people
who were halfway across the world, Harvard undergrad and computer programming
wizard Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) launched a website with the potential to
alter the very fabric of our society. At the time, Zuckerberg was just six years away
from making his first million. But his hearty payday would come at a high price,
because despite all of Zuckerberg's wealth and success, his personal life began
to suffer as he became marred in legal disputes, and discovered that many of the
500 million people he had friended during his rise to the top were eager to see
him fall. Chief among that growing list of detractors was Zuckerberg's former
college friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), whose generous financial
contributions to Facebook served as the seed that helped the company to sprout.
And some might argue that Zuckerberg's bold venture wouldn't have evolved into
the cultural juggernaut that it ultimately became had Napster founder Sean Parker
(Justin Timberlake) not spread the word about Facebook to the venture capitalists
from Silicon Valley. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins (Arnie Hammer and Josh Pence)
engage Zuckerberg in a fierce courtroom battle for ownership of Facebook that
left many suspecting the young entrepreneur may have let his greed eclipse his
better judgment. Based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich.
~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Box Office Top 10 Week of October 31,2010

1	Paranormal Activity 2	$40.6M
2	Jackass 3D	$21.3M
3	Red	$15.0M
4	Hereafter (2010)	$12.0M
5	The Social Network	$7.2M
6	Secretariat	$7.0M
7	Life As We Know It	$6.1M
8	Legend of the Guardians: The...	$3.2M
9	The Town	$2.7M
10	Easy A	$1.7M

Charlie Sheen's Missing Watch -- Very RARE

The watch that Charlie Sheen claims he lost during the night of his hotel meltdown ain't no ordinary Timex ... dude was wearing one of the most sought after watches on the planet ... valued at $150,000.


Sources familiar with the situation tell us Sheen was rockin' a Patek Philippe 5970 ... a watch that one expert tells us is always in "crazy high demand" with collectors.

An obtained a photo of Sheen wearing the watch at his dinner party with Capri Anderson just hours before he lost the timepiece.

We're told, "So few people have them ... and so few people trade in them .. that the watch will return at some point."

Kinda explains why Sheen was willing to tear his room apart to try and find it.

Ashton in the Middle of Iowa Recruiting Controversy

Ashton Kutcher is the king of Twitter -- but a picture tweeted by a high school recruit may have gotten his favorite school in a little bit of trouble with the NCAA.


According to a report in the Des Moines Register, the University of Iowa has admitted recruiting violations tied to recruits meeting with Ashton and wife Demi Moore during an Iowa football game last month. The alleged infractions also involve the players meeting with former Iowa basketball players.

The paper says NCAA rules prohibit potential high school recruits from interacting with "individuals considered to represent a university's athletic interests." Kutcher attended the University of Iowa briefly and frequently attends games.

The report doesn't mention the players by name -- but two recruits, Marcus Paige and Josh Oglesby were quoted in published reports as having met Kutcher and Moore. Paige (above, bottom left) tweeted the above photo.

Mark Abbott, a senior associate athletic director, told the paper the school is awaiting the NCAA's response to their internal investigation.

What Oksana and Mel Are Really Fighting Over

The real fight between Oksana Grigorieva and Mel Gibson may not be about child custody at all ... we've learned the various lawyers who have been repping Oksana have been focused on a legal document created long before Lucia was born.


The problem with the Icon Trust -- created by Mel and Robyn to provide for their seven children. The trust defines "issue" (aka children) as kids born from Mel or Robyn. When it was drafted, no one thought Mel or Robyn would have a child outside the marriage. Enter Oksana.

Sources connected with Mel and Robyn say no one in their family wants to screw Lucia out of her inheritance, but if she becomes a beneficiary in Mel's trust it would create some complicated tax issues.

So when Oksana and Mel broke up and struck a settlement deal during the mediation in May, the very first term reads, "Oksana consents to amendment of Icon Trust to exclude Lucia."

In return for excluding Lucia, Mel agreed to provide a financial package for the baby worth more than $8 million.

Sounds like a sweet deal. So why did Oksana disavow the mediation she signed? We're told the lawyers Oksana hooked up with after the mediation believed Lucia got royally screwed by giving up an interest in the trust. They told Oksana that Lucia would stand to get around $50 million under the trust agreement ... which they believe represents 1/8 the value of a $400,000,000 trust.

Sources connected with Gibson tell us the money in the trust is not even in the universe of $400,000,000 ... not remotely close.

But here's the deal. If Oksana's lawyers persist and Mel settles out of court, the attorney would get a percentage of the settlement. So they've convinced Oksana there's something in it for her ... and there's something in it for them.

Capri Anderson -- I Will Sue Charlie Sheen

Capri Anderson is getting ready to drop a legal bomb on Charlie Sheen -- It has been learned the porn star is planning to sue Charlie for the events that went down during his hotel meltdown in NYC.


Sources close to Anderson say  ... she believes Charlie was acting so crazy in his hotel room at The Plaza Hotel on Tuesday morning -- that she felt her life was in danger ... and she also felt like she was being held in the room against her will.

As we previously reported, Charlie tore the room apart -- busting a chair and causing damage to several hotel items. Capri ended up locking herself in the bathroom and calling hotel security.

Capri claims Charlie also threatened her in the hotel room, although she made no mention of this to NYC cops when they interviewed her about the incident.

Paranormal Activity 2 Review

Paranormal Activity 2" is an efficient delivery system for Gotcha! Moments, of which it has about 19. Audiences who want to be Gotchaed will enjoy it. A Gotcha! Moment is a moment when something is sudden, loud and scary. This can be as basic as the old It's Only a Cat cliché, or as abrupt as a character being hit by a bus.

PA2 starts slyly with pre-Gotcha! teasers, such as a door or a child's toy moving on its own. Then there are obscure off-screen rumbles, like a uneasy stomach. Then loud bangs. Then loud bangs with visible causes. Then all the doors in a room banging open at once. And eventually…well, you can see for yourself, because all the activity is captured by 24-hour security cameras.

The cameras, which function perfectly but never capture the Presence on the screen. For the house is indeed haunted by a ghost-like supernatural presence, I guess. I say "I guess" because there is a scene of a victim being dragged downstairs, and the entity doing the dragging is invisible. On the other hand, the movie ends with a strong suggestion that the malefactor was in fact a living human being. So would that be cheating? Hell yes.

But who cares? People go to "Paranormal Activity 2" with fond memories of the original film, which was low-tech and clever in the way it teased our eyes and expectations. It scared them. They want to be scared again. They will be. When there's a loud unexpected bang it will scare you. The structural task of the Gotcha! Movie is to separate the bangs so they continue to be unexpected.

Any form of separation will do. The characters include the Sloats (Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston), who are back from the first movie. But this story takes place in the home of her sister Kristi (Sprague Grayden), her husband, Daniel (Brian Boland), teenage daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim), brand new baby Hunter, and his nanny, Martine (Vivis). Martine is ethnic, and we know what that means: She has an instinctive knowledge of ghosts, breaks out the magic incense at a moment's notice, and can't get anyone to listen to her.

There are six speaking roles, not counting the non-speaking baby and the dog. Good odds, you'd think, that at least one of them would have something interesting to say, but no. The movie isn't about them. They function primarily as Gotcha! separators, going through vacuous social motions between Gotchas! They are not real swift. The movie numbers the days as they tick away, and along about Day #12 I'm thinking, why are these people still here? The screening I attended was treated to a surprise appearance by three stars of that cable show about Chicago's Paranormal Detectives. These are real Chicago detectives. If the Sloats lived in Chicago, they'd have a SWAT team out there by Day #7.

The movie is presented as a documentary with no set-up, unless the first movie was the set up. It begins with little Hunter being brought home, and then we get titles like "Day #3." Of what? One peculiar title says "Nine days before the death of Micah Sloat." I probably have the number of days wrong, but you get the idea. What are we supposed to do with this information? I guess we should think, "Sloat, you poor bastard, you only have nine days to go." This knowledge is about as useful as the farmer who tells you to make a left turn five miles before you get to the barn. There are also titles saying things like "1:41:15 a.m.," as if we care.

The character who suffers the most is poor little Hunter. Something is always bothering him in the middle of the night. When a security camera is on the staircase, we hear his plaintive little wail. When it's focused on his bedroom, he's standing up in his wee crib and bawling. The dog is always there barking at something, because dogs, like ethnic nannies, Know About These Things. Hunter screams and screams in the movie. If you were Hunter's parents and your house was haunted, wouldn't you move the poor kid's crib into the bedroom?

My audience jumped a lot and screamed a lot, and then laughed at themselves, even after one event that wasn't really funny. Then they explained things to one another, and I could overhear useful lines like, "She got the $#!+ scared outta her!" I understand they attended in hopes of seeing Gotchas! and explaining them to one another. I don't have a problem with "Paranormal Activity 2." It delivers what it promises, and occupies its audiences. Win-win.

Due Date Review

A Warner Bros. release presented in association with Legendary Pictures of a Green Hat Films production. Produced by Todd Phillips, Dan Goldberg. Executive producers, Thomas Tull, Susan Downey, Scott Budnick. Co-producers, David Witz, Jeffrey Wetzel. Directed by Todd Phillips. Screenplay, Alan R. Cohen, Alan Freedland, Adam Sztykiel, Phillips; story, Cohen, Freedland.

Peter Highman - Robert Downey Jr.
Ethan Tremblay - Zach Galifianakis
Sarah Highman - Michelle Monaghan
Darryl - Jamie Foxx
Heidi - Juliette Lewis
Lonnie - Danny McBride
Airport Screener - RZA
TSA Agent - Matt Walsh
 

Hot off "The Hangover," director Todd Phillips and Zach Galifianakis reteam for more R-rated mayhem in "Due Date," delivering a "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"-style cross-country odd-couple comedy that's less raunchy than their last collaboration but every bit as outrageous. With a sequel to 2009's hit bachelor-party romp greenlit even before it opened, Phillips clearly saw "Due Date" as a necessary change of pace -- albeit one that circles back to his rowdy "Road Trip" roots. As such, Warners will be lucky to attract a fraction of the "Hangover" crowd to watch two grounded travelers driving each other crazy.Only an architect like Peter Highman, the tightly wound character Robert Downey Jr. portrays desperately trying to get home in time for his first child's birth, could appreciate a comic foil so perfectly constructed to annoy as Galifianakis' Ethan Tremblay. In fact, so infuriating is Ethan that "Due Date" very nearly loses us, too, at the outset, but over time, the bearded boor manages to win everyone over, audience included.
The two opposites collide outside the Atlanta airport, where Ethan's beat-up station wagon knocks the door off Peter's chauffeured town car. It's quite an entrance, capped by a slow-motion reveal of Ethan's character. Apart from the over-the-shoulder dog-carrying case, the rest of his ensemble suggests the sort of person who committed to his look sometime in the mid-'80s and hasn't done much to alter it since.
Early on, Phillips shows things mostly from the more fashion-conscious Peter's point of view, and it's easy to understand why the GQ-ready dad-to-be might not appreciate being seated next to someone so gauche on his long flight back to Los Angeles. Things only get worse when the two are booted off the plane together and added to the no-fly list. Skipping a few glaring logical steps, Peter agrees to carpool to California with his bad-luck companion. And so the torture begins.
It took Phillips five features to land on the style he established in "The Hangover," and "Due Date" looks and feels awfully similar, subbing a steely blue-gray tint for "The Hangover's" golden baked-Vegas glow (courtesy of returning d.p. Lawrence Sher). Phillips, a hands-on helmer who went uncredited for his rewrite contributions on the 2009 summer smash, shares screenplay billing here with "King of the Hill" vets Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, as well as Adam Sztykiel, and though his instinct for original, over-the-top setpieces comes through -- best evidenced by a haywire detour across the Mexican border -- the plot feels drearily linear and predictably episodic by comparison.
Since Peter's expectant wife (Michelle Monaghan) is planning to give birth by C-section, she has control over when the baby's going to come, which means there's only limited urgency to Peter and Ethan's road trip. So the film becomes an exercise in playing the two mismatched personalities against each other: Ethan prods Peter with constant questions, makes a dodgy detour to acquire "medical marijuana" and insists on pleasuring himself to sleep (an activity amusingly mirrored by his dog), while his anger-prone companion does his best to avoid murdering the overgrown man-child.
Surely an early draft of the script must have considered this a trial by fire for fatherhood, even though the final cut conspicuously lacks the "is this guy really ready to be a dad" introspection that invariably accompanies such scenarios. It's worth noting that Phillips has once again mixed dramatic and comedic performers: While picking Monaghan over a funnier actress marks a missed opportunity, Downey brings just the right combination of wry humor and brink-of-losing-it unpredictability.
Eventually, Peter comes to realize that while Ethan may be uncouth -- and downright dangerous -- he's not without sympathetic qualities. For example, Ethan is mourning the recent death of his own dad and looking for the right spot to spread his father's remains along the way. So there it is: birth and death, the whole darn circle of life evoked in service of a few hearty knee-slappers and a doozy of a spit-take, with the ashes-filled coffee tin supplying the most poignant and outrageous moments in the film.
As the pair make their way West, the only surprises not sampled in the trailer are the drug-related ones, which means auds know to expect cameos from Danny McBride and Jamie Foxx, but don't know which actress will turn up as Ethan's pot dealer -- another strategy learned on his last film, that familiar faces in small roles can go a long way. However different this pic, it'll have to do until Phillips delivers his "Hangover" sequel.

The Walking Dead

Filmed in Atlanta by Circle of Confusion, Valhalla Entertainment, Darkwood Prods. and AMC Studios. Executive producers, Frank Darabont, Gale Anne Hurd, Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Charles "Chic" Eglee; co-executive producer, Jack LoGuidice; producer, Denise Huth; line producer, Tom Luse; writer-director, Darabont; based on the comic by Kirkman;

Rick Grimes - Andrew Lincoln
Shane Walsh - Jon Bernthal
Lori Grimes - Sarah Wayne Callies
Andrea - Laurie Holden
Dale - Jeffrey DeMunn
Glenn - Steven Yeun
Amy - Emma Bell
Carl Grimes - Chandler Riggs
 

Creepy from the first frame -- and inching along at a languid, ambling pace that's oddly effective -- "The Walking Dead" draws the audience in almost instantly with its cinematic 90-minute pilot, then incorporates tasty soap-like elements meant to animate the ensuing episodes. Although we've seen no shortage of zombies and post-apocalyptic stories, producer-writer-director Frank Darabont has deftly tackled the seemingly perilous task of adapting a comicbook about zombies into a viable episodic series. Arising in the wake of the brainy "Rubicon" and "Mad Men's" stellar fourth season, "Dead" demonstrates AMC's creative team has plenty of life in it.Given all the overdone genres on TV, horror remains that rare undercooked one, perhaps because of its inherent limitations. Moreover, so much presented under that mantle in theaters has devolved into little more than splatterfests that the idea of exploring something on an episodic basis sounds especially fruitless.
"The Walking Dead" overcomes those obstacles, largely, by avoiding the most cliched horror elements and -- like most good science fiction -- illustrating bigger issues through drama. For starters, it's hard not to come away from the first few episodes thinking about euthanasia, when simply moving around isn't much of a life. Race, too, becomes moot -- even in Georgia -- when people have become "white meat and dark meat," as one character notes.
Smartly cast from top to bottom, the series opens with sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), who awakens from a coma after being shot to find what amounts to hell on earth. Zombies have taken over, forcing surviving humans to scatter. Grimes learns the ropes, basically from a father (Lennie James) and son, adding an element of "The Road" to the pilot, along with bracing images of solitary figures in abandoned streets.
Grimes is also looking for his wife and son, leading him toward Atlanta, where there are rumored to be survivors. There, he will encounter the remnants of what passes for a community struggling to stay alive and maintain a semblance of humanity.
Of course, hordes of hungry zombies (fortunately, a shot to the head still works on this bunch) allow for visceral thrills as well, including a sequence involving Grimes and a smart-ass forager named Glenn (Steven Yeun) in the second hour that's truly gut-churning. The episode is appropriately subtitled "Guts"-- and merits kudos to makeup maven Greg Nicotero -- which will only cement the show's fanboy cred.
Still, the tone of "Walking Dead" is cleverly understated, and Darabont makes especially good use of silence and stillness to convey a sense of dread without overly relying on cheap scares.
Perhaps foremost, these opening installments contain enough intriguing personalities and topnotch guests (Michael Rooker appears in the second hour) to suggest there's genuinely a series here -- one that needn't hinge on characters becoming somebody's hot lunch each week.
Television has always specialized in assembling offbeat families, and this one threatens to be more dysfunctional than most. Yet what "The Walking Dead" has done most shrewdly is to take what could be a stale premise and enlivened it in a way that feels unexpectedly fresh.
All that could bode well for "Dead," especially by AMC's ratings standards. If so, don't be surprised to see the zombies at other networks begin shuffling similar concepts in its direction.

Saw 3D Review

A Lionsgate release of a Twisted Pictures presentation of a Burg/Koules/Hoffman production, in association with A Bigger Boat and Serendipity Prods. Produced by Gregg Hoffman, Oren Koules, Mark Burg. Executive producers, Daniel Jason Heffner, Peter Block, Jason Constantine, James Wan, Leigh Whannell, Stacey Testro. Co-producer, Troy Begnaud. Directed by Kevin Greutert. Screenplay, Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan.

Jigsaw/John - Tobin Bell
Hoffman - Costas Mandylor
Jill - Betsy Russell
Bobby - Sean Patrick Flanery
Doctor Gordon - Cary Elwes
Cale - Dean Armstrong
Gibson - Chad Donella
Joyce - Gina Holden
Evan - Chester Bennington
Suzanne - Rebecca Marshall
Nina - Naomi Snieckus
 

Less soap-operatic than the five previous sequels, "Saw 3D" gets down to gruesome business, torturing the viewer with disgusting setpieces that bring the pain as close to one's eyeballs as current technology will allow. At least for non-fans, the sole mercy shown by Lionsgate's latest "Saw" is that it's billed as the last and plays that way, wrapping things up without the threat of making another killing after this one. Grosses will be big, owing to the pic's gimmicky third dimension and to its fulfilled promise of taking torture porn -- blessedly -- to the end of the line.

 This time, most of the heinous traps set by sicko Det. Lt. Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) put the screws to those beloved by Bobby Dagen (Sean Patrick Flanery), whose book about having supposedly survived a near-death encounter with the notorious Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), Hoffman's former boss, is revealed to be bogus. But Hoffman is also after Jigsaw's wife, Jill (Betsy Russell), who nearly succeeded in beating the bad lieutenant at his own game near the end of "Saw VI."

Other victims here include a gang of alleged racists, one of whom, Evan (Chester Bennington), has had his bare back super-glued to the seat of a car, and must tear off his own flesh in order to free his friends. The movie opens, grotesquely, with three members of a love triangle stuck in a storefront display, each one of them attached to a buzzing power saw.

That "Saw 3D" is relentlessly repugnant will delight the franchise's fans and surprise almost no one. The best that can be said for the pic, gamely directed by longtime "Saw" cutter Kevin Greutert, is that it offers little in between the traps, which are more creatively vicious than they've ever been.

Apart from these limb-pulling setpieces, tech credits appear fairly shoddy, as do any 3D effects that don't include flying viscera. The editing relies on lazy flashbacks, while the dialogue remains as horrific as the killings. Cameo turns by Bell and the first "Saw's" Cary Elwes help bring the series full circle while marginally improving the low quality of thesping that has been a trademark of the franchise since 2005.