Side show

YEAH, AND MARIAH JUST SPENT A FEW DAYS AT A SPA: Britney Spears' publicist is sounding the denial horn last honked by Mariah Carey's rep a year ago, when Carey was having her breakdown.

Spears is taking a break from work, Lisa Kasteler says, but not because she's depressed, devastated, brokenhearted, bitter, at wits' end, at loose ends, exhausted, eccentric, having a beginning-of-life crisis or "running home to mom." She is taking six months off because she "has been working for four years straight," Kasteler tells Reuters.

The announcement comes on the heels of her world tour's controversial end -- Spears made an obscene gesture at photographers in Mexico and cut short her last concert, blaming thunder and lightning but not convincing fans -- and it caps several drama-saturated months for the 20-year-old.

Spears' first movie was critically slammed. She broke up with 'N Sync's Justin Timberlake. She opened a New York restaurant that soon encountered problems. She was booed by fans in Australia and England when they thought she snubbed them at appearances. A paparazzi picture purportedly of her with a cigarette sparked widespread dissections of her self-promoted "I don't drink, smoke or have sex" image. And the tour itself produced better stories than The Young and the Restless: At various times she was described as being overweight, out of control, bored and too depressed about Timberlake even to bother lip-synching to her recorded vocals.

But Kasteler insists Spears is fine. "She's happy. (The break) has nothing to do with the things that have been reported. . . . There is no drama here."

THAT'S A LOT OF EGG ROLLS: Cris Judd is telling friends Jennifer Lopez gave him $15-million to get out of her life quickly and quietly, the New York Post says. And those friends are speculating that Judd has passed along some of the money to his parents, because they've closed their Eggrolls Are US restaurant in the tiny Florida Panhandle town of Niceville.

BUTTS OUT: Americans aren't the touchiest people around when it comes to smoking.

One Australian TV network recently was censured for rerunning a 60 Minutes interview that showed Russell Crowe smoking. The Australian Broadcasting Authority said it breached the country's law against tobacco advertising.

Now Australia's Environment Protection Authority is sending a warning letter to Mel Gibson for throwing a butt into a gutter during a recent visit to Sydney.

Gibson was seen in widespread TV footage throwing the butt. Angry viewers called the EPA to report his "blatant mistreatment of the environment," Sydney's Daily Telegraph says.

If an EPA or other official had witnessed the butt throwing, Gibson could have been fined up to $375.

NO "CADDYSHACK"? The votegetters included Bride of Frankenstein, Dazed and Confused, Dawn of the Dead, Deep Throat, Dune, Grease, two versions of Lolita, Mary Poppins and Superman. But Citizen Kane is No. 1 in separate polls of movie critics and directors around the world to determine the best movie of all time.

The lists, organized and conducted by the British Film Institute's magazine, Sight and Sound, have been published every 10 years since 1952. The critics have made Citizen Kane No. 1 each time except the first (The Bicycle Thief was on top in '52).

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