A judge has ordered actress Estella Warren to serve four months in a residential rehab facility after she entered a no contest plea in a drunken-driving case on Friday.
Los Angeles city attorney’s spokesman Frank Mateljan says Warren was also sentenced to serve five years of informal probation.
The Planet of the Apes actress had been facing four misdemeanor charges after her arrest earlier this year for crashing into three parked cars and tussling with police.
Photo: Reuters
The 32-year-old was previously convicted of drunken driving in 2007.
Mateljan says a hearing will be held on Oct. 7 to determine if Warren must pay any restitution.
She starred opposite Mark Wahlberg in Tim Burton’s 2001 version of Planet of the Apes and has also worked as a fashion model.
Speaking of troubled blondes, Paris Hilton has opened a new handbag store in a Manila mall.
Hundreds of star-struck fans, local celebrities and journalists jostled to see her on Thursday, cameras ready. Wild cheers erupted when Hilton told the crowd “I love you” in Tagalog. She said she’ll miss Manila and plans to be back soon to open a resort-inspired residential project.
“I will be back very soon ’coz I love it here,” she said. “I’ve had the best time.”
She signed bags bought from the Paris Hilton Handbags and Accessories store at the SM Megamall, her fourth shop in the country. She also posed for pictures with fans before rushing to catch a flight to Los Angeles.
A male fan who brought a portrait he made of Hilton got a kiss, much to his thrill.
The heiress-turned-TV star reportedly lost two mobile devices on her flight to the Philippines.
In 2005, hackers gained access to Hilton’s Sidekick cellphone and famously splashed the private mobile numbers of her celebrity friends online.
Meanwhile, actor Richard Gere is going to lose more than 100 of his beloved American vintage guitars.
Christie’s auction house in New York says it will be selling 110 of the guitars on Oct. 11.
Gere says he’s parting with the instruments to support humanitarian causes around the world.
Christie’s says Gere studied trumpet and is a self-taught pianist and guitarist.
Gere said in a statement announcing the sale that he never planned to put together a guitar collection and bought only ones he liked and that sounded good to him.
Included in the sale are brands C.F. Martin, Gibson, Fender, Gretsch and Epiphone, and guitars once owned by blues guitarist Albert King and reggae musician Peter Tosh. A selection of amplifiers also is being sold. The sale is expected to bring US$1 million.
In much darker news, reality TV show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is being re-edited following the suicide of Russell Armstrong in a strong indication that the network plans to go ahead with the second season.
But Bravo president Frances Berwick told showbusiness paper Daily Variety that no decision has yet been made about whether the drama-filled program will premiere as planned on Sept. 5.
A source who knew of the network’s plans said the re-editing had already begun. Bravo and Berwick declined to say which parts of the show — filmed earlier in the summer — were being tweaked, but they are likely to involve appearances by Russell Armstrong, whose crumbling marriage to Housewives star Taylor Armstrong was expected to be a dominant theme of the upcoming season.
The 47 year-old venture capitalist committed suicide by hanging himself with an electrical cord last Monday, a month after his wife filed for divorce citing verbal and physical abuse.
Armstrong also was facing huge financial problems and his mother said this week that her son feared the new season was going to “crucify” him.
The original second season opener, which was given in advance to TV journalists, had Taylor Armstrong talking about being in marriage counseling and shopping for sexy underwear in a bid to improve their relationship.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills features the lives of six wealthy women and is one of the most popular of the drama-filled Real Housewives franchises.
Armstrong’s suicide stunned Hollywood, and claims by friends and family members that his suicide was prompted partly by the pressure of being on the show have only attracted more interest in the new season.
To end on a pleasant note, Golden Girls actress Betty White apparently has the Midas touch.
White, 89, is both the most popular and most trusted celebrity with Americans and the person most likely to drive up the business of a brand she might choose to endorse, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
But the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggested that companies should stay away from Paris Hilton and Charlie Sheen if they want to promote their products.
The socialite reality TV actress and the fired Two and A Half Men star topped the list of the most unpopular and least trusted personalities and were deemed most likely to damage any brands they choose to support.
White, the only surviving member of the key cast members of TV’s Golden Girls 1980s comedy, has enjoyed a career resurgence in the last few years as a saucy senior in films like The Proposal and the TV show Hot in Cleveland.
White scored an 86 percent favorable opinion in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, beating Oscar winners Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock and Clint Eastwood in the survey of the 100 most popular personalities.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located