Tobey Maguire – recently confirmed to produce a new ‘gritty’ version of The Little Mermaid ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – is playing dumb at the moment after being accused of having an illegal gambling ring which also featured Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck.

Imagine the conversations they have around the table. It must be like putting your ear to a sea-shell and listening to a hermit crab fall asleep mid-wank.

Anyway, the man who ruined Spiderman for everyone was named in an illegal gambling suit in which he was sued for taking part in a game with jailed criminal Bradley Ruderman.

So. Ruderman (Ruderman, does whatever a Ruder can) is currently in the clink for running a ponzi scheme that swindled people out of approximately $25 million and he’s currently being sued by people over money which they claim was used by Ruderman in the poker games.

Maguire ‘fessed-up to having earned $187,000 in winnings from the gambling ring, but denies any intentional wrongdoing. Apart from his acting career which he knows damn well is criminal.

“[Maguire] unconditionally denies having engaged in any conduct whatsoever in violation of law and further categorically denies having knowingly or intentionally participated in any fraudulent scheme,” read the statement released by the star’s lawyer according to E Online.

Basically, Maguire believes that he was simply having a nice time playing an innocent game of poker. With any luck, he’ll end up in prison, just for a laugh.

Are you disappointed we didn’t make any puns on the word ‘ring’?

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Do you like fictional crimes being solved by actors portraying the kind of folks who like solving crimes? Well, you’re going to drench your gussets with excitement at this competition where you can win a copy of The Town and a Wire boxset!

And you don’t really have to do anything! Just answer some stupid question!

Of course, the world doesn’t normally work like this. You normally have to earn things with graft, but with this easy chance to land some free stuff, you can feel what it must be like to be Paris Hilton or something.

You’ll invariably know what The Wire is because almost every single human on Earth couldn’t stop talking about it for a period of time which, mercifully, has now passed.

But what about The Town?

Well, The Town is a surprisingly good film which stars Ben Affleck ( y’know? The one from Good Will Hunting). Affleck also directed in the film, as well as starring in it. That sounds dangerously close to hard work.

Well, The Town is now out on DVD and a Blu-Ray Triple Play (loaded with extended cut and extra features). If you fail miserably in your quest to land it for free, you can order yourself a copy here.

You can watch the trailer for The Town here.

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize just answer the following question…

Ben Affleck made his directorial debut with which film?

a. Good Will Hunting
b. Gone Baby Gone
c. Mystic River

You can give us the answer over at our Twitter account or join our Facebook group. Hell, you can even email us by clicking that green envelope icon in the header banner. Make sure you live in the UK and that you yell BEN AFFLECK HAS A SQUARE HEAD! or we’ll not know what you’re talking about. We’ll arbitrarily pick a winner and send you your goodies at some point next week, when we remember that we offered you free stuff.

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Keep this to yourself, but we’re starting to get a tiny bit worried about Ben Affleck – specifically his arseholeishness.

Ben Affleck’s arseholeishness has been proven in his film choices, his J-Lo relationship and his fondness for schoolboy deodorant commercials. But lately there’s been less arseholeishness – first he directed a film that wasn’t horrible, and now he’s given his new daughter a non-horrible name.

Ben Affleck’s new daughter is called Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck. An only slightly weird name followed by two normal alternatives? We pray that Jennifer Garner chose the name – a reality where Ben Affleck isn’t an arsehole is too horrible to consider.

As we all know, different celebrities have different ways of naming their children. Victoria Beckham chose the ‘geographical location’ technique, while Pete Wentz adapted it to invent the ‘geographical location plus Disney character‘ technique. Meanwhile, we think that Lisa Bonet placed a dictaphone next to a man in the throes of an epileptic fit, played the tape back in reverse and tried to phonetically transcribe his garbled squeals for help, because God knows that’s the only logical way anyone could come up with a name like Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa.

And faced with berserk competition like that, it’s no wonder that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner delayed the naming of their newborn second daughter. How could they possibly top a name as impenetrable as Bonet’s? An all-consonant name? A 500-word paragraph of arbitrarily-typed Wingdings? The name ^^?

No. Instead, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have done the unthinkable and given their new daughter a name that is actually, by celebrity standards, quite nice – Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck.

It actually shows a lot of care and thought on the part of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Although Seraphina is a pretty and angelic name in itself – if a little tiny bit wanky – the baby can easily shorten it to Sera or just chose to call herself Rose or Elizabeth instead if she grows up to be embarrassed by it. We’ll be honest – it’s not a level of forethought we expected from a man who agreed to star in Gigli, Daredevil AND Pearl Harbour.

But why Seraphina? What meaning could it possibly have? Luckily, People has more:

While no explanation was offered for the name, or if she was named for anyone, one Web site specializing in the origin of names refers to Seraphina as “derived from the Biblical word ‘seraphim,’ which was Hebrew in origin and meant ‘fiery ones.’”

Oh thank God. Seraphina means ‘fiery ones’. We can’t tell you how relieved we are to hear that – it looks like Ben Affleck named his daughter after her penchant for relentless explosive diarrhoea. On reflection that is actually kind of arseholeish. Relax everyone, the panic’s over.

Now Ben, never scare us like that again, you hear?

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It’s been a week since Jennifer Garner went to hospital to give birth to Ben Affleck’s baby – so what was the hold up?

We’re pretty sure that it was one of the following two scenarios: 1) Jennifer Garner’s baby refused to come out until it was promised a helicopter and a suitcase of money, and an FBI negotiator had to talk it down to a scooter and a shiny penny, or 2) Jennifer Garner’s baby realised that Ben Affleck was its father and decided to stick it out in the womb.

Either way, Jennifer Garner had a baby girl yesterday. So there.

Technically Jennifer Garner has been in hospital waiting to give birth to her second child since last year, which seems like an inordinately long time for something that most women manage with nothing more than 45 minutes and a stick to bite down on.

We don’t know why Jennifer Garner spent so long in hospital. It certainly doesn’t seem like she was experiencing any complications, so we’ll just presume that the baby took its time and all the old midwife tricks – like trying to violently shake the baby out or tying an uncooked steak to Jennifer Garner’s thigh and waiting with a net – didn’t work.

But the whys and then hows don’t matter any more, because Jennifer Garner has finally given birth to a baby girl that’s completely healthy aside from however much of Ben Affleck’s DNA she decided to absorb on the way out. Reuters reports:

Actress Jennifer Garner gave birth to her second child in Los Angeles on Tuesday, People magazine reported. The baby girl, whose name was not disclosed, was healthy, People quoted a spokesperson as saying. No other details were provided.

This is the second child for Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck – their first daughter Violet was born in 2005, and is now educationally developed enough to tactfully change the subject every time one of her peers brings up Gigli.

However, even though it’s taken a full week of what we imagine to be relentless vein-popping straining, any joy that Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck feel towards the birth of their new daughter is bound to be tinged with bitter disappointment. After all, Rebecca Romijn also gave birth this week and, since she named her babies Dolly Rebecca Rose and Charlie Tamara Tulip, it means that Jennifer Garner’s baby isn’t even going to have the second-silliest celebrity baby name of the week.

That’s unless Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner can pool their resources and dig deep to think a name even more staggeringly dreadful than those of the Romijn twins. It’s a hard job, and we’re sure Affleck and Garner would appreciate your suggestions in the comment box below. We’ll get the ball rolling with Rhododendron Clusterminge.

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Jennifer Garner has more reason than most to celebrate 2009 – and not just because it’s a year potentially free of Gary Busey’s pervy spittle.

No, apparently Jennifer Garner is having a baby. Or she’s had a baby. Or she’s about to have a baby. Nobody really seems to know. Jennifer Garner checked into a hospital on New Year’s Eve with Ben Affleck, and she’s darned if she’s not coming out without a baby.

So congratulations to Jennifer Garner. And double congratulations if the baby ends up more like you than Ben Affleck. And triple congratulations if he’s not the father. Happy new year!

When it comes to heavy, almost overbearing symbolism, giving birth to a baby at the start of a new year is about as good as it gets. Both signify a fresh start, a blank canvas on which it seems that anything is possible. Both come with a mixture of excitement and trepidation for the future. And, a few months in, you’ll be chronically sleepless, covered in shit and wondering what the fuss was all about. They’re identical.

So with that in mind, we should all be jolly envious of Jennifer Garner, because if she hasn’t had her new baby already, then she’s going to have it any minute. According to reports, Garner and husband Ben Affleck have been holed up in a Los Angeles hospital waiting for the baby since New Year’s Eve. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Actress Jennifer Garner has sparked reports she’s planning to ring in the New Year with a new baby after checking into a California hospital. The star is nine months pregnant with her second child, and she and husband Ben Affleck were spotted entering Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Lucky old Jennifer Garner, we can totally relate to what she’s going through – although Ben Affleck has only ever caused us to scream and writhe around in agony for hours on end that time we thought we decided to try and watch Bounce all the way through in one go, not because he knocked us up with an actual baby.

Of course, this won’t be the first time that Jennifer Garner has given birth to one of Ben Affleck’s children – back in 2005 she gave birth to their first daughter Violet – but it is the first time that we’ve doubted Affleck’s paternity.

Sure, Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck might be in a loving, monogamous relationship – but wasn’t it just over nine months ago that Gary Busey drooled across Jennifer Garner’s neck on the Oscars red carpet? Doesn’t she realise that one atom of Busey dribble is more potent than an entire ocean of human sperm? If we were her we’d keep a hammer by the side of the bed, just in case the baby comes out with big buck teeth, weird googly eyes and a horrifying lack of self-awareness. You can’t be too careful.

So Jennifer Garner has either had a baby or she’s about to – that’s the good news. The bad news is there’s now another mouth to feed and Ben Affleck isn’t exactly going to be able to provide for everyone by directing surprisingly decent but barely-watched arthouse movies about abducted children all the time. So this time next year when Changing Lanes 2 is rush-released, remember that it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Ben Affleck’s randy loins, OK?

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State Of Play - the movie adaptation of a BBC mini-series that recently hit the headlines when Brad Pitt didn't want to be in it any more – has had another member-swap.

Now, thanks to Brad Pitt suddenly leaving State Of Play and Russell Crowe taking his place, production has been slightly delayed – and that delay has meant that Edward Norton has been forced to drop out as well. But, undeterred, the State Of Play team have laboured on and quickly signed up Ben Affleck to fill his shoes. And don't forget that State Of Play still hasn't started filming yet, so by the time it hits cinemas we can expect State Of Play's all-star line-up to include two Baldwin brothers, the girl from The Craft who wasn't Neve Campbell or the pretty one, a Chinese Highland Shrew and your Mum.

The now legitimately troubled movie adaptation of State Of Play seems to be working on some sort of confusing karmic points system at the moment. For example, first Brad Pitt left State Of Play in a fug of controversy, and he was eventually replaced with Russell Crowe, who is a much better actor, but a little bit funny-looking.

That left State Of Play – also slated to star Edward Norton and Helen Mirren – in a state of unbalance, since it was heavy on the funny-looking good actors but light on the wooden eye candy. However, Edward Norton has just stepped in to save the day because he's left State Of Play too, and been replaced with Ben Affleck. Thus, a wooden piece of eye candy has replaced the funny-looking good actor and, coupled with Crowe's funny-looking good actor replacing Pitt's wooden eye candy, State Of Play balance has been restored.

Let's just hope that Helen Mirren isn't about to leave State Of Play as well, because the way things are going she'll probably be replaced by Jessica Simpson, and that'll fuck everything up.

But back to Edward Norton. Why has he left State Of Play? Well, pleasingly it's for something a little more rational than not being allowed to make his character travel everywhere on a golden horse fully nude except for a giant Viking helmet – which is why we think Brad Pitt left. The Hollywood Reporter reports:

Russell Crowe was quickly recruited to replace Pitt in the film written by "Lions for Lambs" scribe Matthew Michael Carnahan. With Crowe on board, the film's production start date was moved from November to January. Because of the change in start date, Norton, who also is set to produce and star in the indie comedy "Leaves of Grass," found himself with a schedule conflict. So he asked Universal if he could be replaced so that he could fulfil his commitment to the Tim Blake Nelson-directed "Leaves."

That would normally heap trouble on an already-struggling State Of Play, but not this time. As we've said, Ben Affleck has quickly stepped in to fill Norton's role as a hard-ball politician caught up in a murder conspiracy. And since Ben Affleck's turn in last year's Hollywoodland won him awards, the State Of Play producers can at least be reassured that it's still in safe hands.

Plus the new State Of Play scene where the politician struts through his office counting how many women give him the glad-eye on his handheld clicker that he got free with some chavvy deodorant is going to just be wicked nang.

Read more:

'State' subs Affleck for Norton role – Hollywood Reporter