A source close to the family tells PEOPLE the two spent Christmas together with their children at their home in Brentwood, California, and they “had a really nice time” over the holiday.

According to the source, they also attended the Los Angeles Lakers’ season opener game at the Staples Center in the afternoon.

Spending time together, however, isn’t unprecedented for the two.

Since their split, Shriver, 56, was by her ex’s side on his 64th birthday in July.

“Children and family come first,” a source close to the estranged couple told PEOPLE earlier this year, with an additional insider adding, “Arnold and Maria will always come together when it comes to supporting and loving their children.”

The family Christmas celebration comes amid online reports that Shriver is having second thoughts about ending her marriage.

The former couple, married 25 years before announcing their separation in May, have four children together: Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher.

How often have you been looking for an apartment or a house, hoping to find that really cool, gothic deconsecrated church, cliff house with a widow’s walk, Robin Hood-worthy treehouse or energy self-sufficient Hobbit hole? Whatever your dream fantasy home is, it never shows up on Craigslist, does it?

Well, for Benjamin Mee and his two young children, the opportunity to make a fresh start shows up in the form of a slightly run-down farmhouse on 18 acres. It just happens to come with a rather down-on-its-luck zoo, complete with a depressed grizzly bear, an aging Bengal tiger, an African lion, porcupines, flamingos and even a binturong, a Southeast Asian mammal whose musk apparently smells like hot, buttered popcorn. Seriously.

As for the humans, Matt Damon does a great job as the grieving widower Benjamin, whose wife dies before the film begins. Benjamin and Katherine (Stephanie Szostak) had one of those storybook romances that we all wish we had (theirs is told completely in still photos and mostly dialogue-free scenes pulled from Benjamin’s memory), and the pain is etched clearly on his face. His kids are all he has left, but much like George Clooney’s Matt King in “The Descendants,” Benjamin’s parenting skills leave little to be desired.

You see, Benjamin was an adventure writer for a newspaper, the kind of a guy who voluntarily takes assignments that land him in a hurricane hunter airplane. Kids, on the other hand, can be way worse. Benjamin’s son Dylan (ably played by Colin Ford) is less than happy about, well, everything. He’s recently been expelled from school and his behavior (which includes drawing very disturbing pictures) is one big reason why Benjamin thinks they all need a fresh start. Dylan and Benjamin are constantly at each other’s throats, and those scenes occasionally err on the side of strident.

Dylan’s petulance and generally obnoxious behavior are really the film’s only misstep. He’s clearly a talented and smart kid, and his inevitable acceptance of his surroundings and new life come about 20 minutes too late. But it’s a minor issue as far as the overall film is concerned.

Benjamin’s 7-year-old daughter, Rosie, on the other hand, is an absolute joy to watch. Played by Maggie Elizabeth Jones, Rosie lights up the screen every time she appears, and manages to overcome the potential “too cute, too precocious” pitfalls that so many adorable cinema tykes fall prey. Her sheer joy at the idea that the family has just bought a zoo is infectious. I dare you not to find her at least as adorable as the red fox or peacock chicks.

When Benjamin buys it, the zoo is on its last legs. Kept together by a small but devoted staff, including head zookeeper Kelly Foster (a winning Scarlett Johansson), zookeeper Robin Jones (Patrick Fugit), who is rarely seen without a capuchin monkey on his shoulder, or Kelly’s young cousin Lily (Elle Fanning), who takes an immediate shine to Dylan, and zoo architect Peter MacCready (played with fantastic drunken brio by Scottish actor Angus Macfadyen of “Braveheart”).

Thomas Haden Church does a spirited turn as Benjamin’s levelheaded older brother, Duncan. Duncan is the voice of reason, pleading with Benjamin to do the sensible thing and cut bait when things get tough at the zoo.

Lily’s fascination with Dylan and the evolution of that relationship is yet another winning ingredient in the film (written by Aline Brosh McKenna and Crowe). When Benjamin and Dylan finally get around to working out their differences, the talk they have about romance is one many of us could take to heart.

Yes, this film is a little schmaltzy and sentimental. Yes, it is, at times, a little precious. And no, it doesn’t break any ground. But it’s genuinely funny, sweet and kindhearted, and it’s going to make you feel good. Considering how stressful the holidays can be, what’s so bad about that? This film is like an antidote to cynicism.

“We Bought a Zoo” is exactly what it needs to be in this holiday season. I started smiling at the beginning, and kept a smile up until the end when, I’ll confess, I was also shedding a few tears. Don’t mistake this for frothy, insignificant throwaway entertainment. This one comes with real emotions that are thoughtfully and carefully presented. And, for better or worse, most of us can relate.

An extremely well-acted, well-written and entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, “We Bought a Zoo” is great counterprogramming to some of the heavier (but also excellent) end-of-year releases. However, I can’t be responsible if you take the kids and, instead of asking for a puppy or a pony, they up the ante and start asking for an entire zoo.

“I am here to see Chen Guangcheng,” the “Dark Knight” actor said and I translated, with correspondent Stan Grant and cameraman Brad Olson next to us.

“Go away!” the plainclothes guards barked, pushing us back.

Amid the scuffling and yelling, dozens more guards in olive-green, military-style overcoats — and two gray minivans — emerged from the other side of the checkpoint, all coming toward us.

“Why can I not visit this free man?” Bale asked repeatedly, only to receive punches from guards aiming for his small camera as they tried to drag him away from the rest of us.

As we retreated, I recognized the ringleader — the same burly man who had hurled rocks at the CNN team 10 months earlier to force us out of the same location.

A precarious scene ensued Thursday as one of the gray minivans chased our car at high speed on bumpy country roads for some 40 minutes.

When the dust settled, we counted a broken car, a damaged camera — and a Hollywood star disappointed at — but not shocked by — his failure to see a personal hero.

“What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is,” Bale said.

The man, 40-year-old Chen Guangcheng, has been confined to his home along with his wife, mother and daughter, and watched around the clock by dozens of guards since he was released from prison in September 2010. A local court had sentenced him to more than four years in prison for damaging property and disrupting traffic in a protest.

His supporters maintain authorities used trumped-up charges to silence Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer who rose to fame in the late 1990s thanks to his legal advocacy for what he called victims of abusive practices by China’s family-planning officials.

Bale first learned about Chen through news reports, including our coverage in February, when he was in China filming “The Flowers of War,” a wartime drama set in 1930s Nanjing in which he plays a mortician trying to save a group of schoolgirls from the clutches invading Japanese soldiers.

The injustice faced by the activist and his family stirred such strong emotions in Bale that, upon hearing his impending return to China to promote the movie, he decided to do something unusual to raise the international awareness of Chen and thereby to turn up the heat on the Chinese government.

“This doesn’t come naturally to me, this is not what I actually enjoy — it isn’t about me,” he explained during our eight-hour drive from Beijing to the eastern city of Linyi, where Chen’s village is located. “But this was just a situation that said I can’t look the other way.”

Known to be a media-shy celebrity, Bale reached out to CNN and invited us to join him on his journey to visit Chen.

In the car, he lamented the American public’s lack of knowledge on Chen’s case, despite senior U.S. officials’ increasingly vocal support for his freedom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gary Locke, the American ambassador to China, have both championed Chen’s cause.

Although China’s state media has largely ignored the story, Chen’s plight has spread online and outraged a growing number of Chinese “netizens.” Many have tried to visit Chen, and activists say nearly all would-be visitors have been turned back, often violently, by plainclothes police and local thugs.

“I’m not brave doing this,” Bale emphasized. “The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them.”

As our car sped toward Beijing in the dark, Bale wondered aloud if he would never be allowed back — a prospect he is prepared to accept — even as “The Flowers of War” became China’s official entry into next year’s Academy Awards.

So if Robert Downey Jr. hardly seems like the iconic Sherlock (he’s too short and muscular, and strains to suggest the intellectual arrogance that comes so easily to the English), he can take his place alongside such oddball castings as Buster Keaton, Charlton Heston and George C. Scott. And he’s ideally suited to director Guy Ritchie’s purpose, which is not to dust off your grandfather’s Conan Doyle, but to juice today’s kids with a quirky 19th century super sleuth.

What’s fun about these movies is that the equation works both ways.

Yes, this Holmes is more likely to get physical than his predecessors, he’s even a bit of a boor, but he’s still a more cerebral action hero than we find in most blockbusters, and the period trappings (a seamless blend of CGI and location work) help this franchise stand out from the crowd of comic book adaptations.

Ritchie and husband-and-wife screenwriters Kieran and Michele Mulroney (“Paper Man”) map out a fast-moving — if ridiculously digressive — Victorian adventure that crisscrosses Europe by horseless carriage, train, boat, and, in Sherlock’s case, pony.

Just down the road from 221 Baker Street they’re digging a tunnel for what will become the London Underground. The Industrial Age is beginning to stretch its muscles, while a series of terrorist atrocities are gnawing at the fragile understanding between the great European powers. Holmes detects something other than social unrest behind the bombings: an evil master plan leading inexorably to his nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris).

There are big themes there, but the movie doesn’t take itself remotely seriously. This is a rambunctious romp, even brazenly camp when it’s poking fun at the always-intriguing Holmes-Watson relationship. Sometimes it seems like the real motivation behind Moriarty’s scheme is not to plunge Europe into war so much as to prevent the doctor from consummating his marriage and reunite him with his former roommate, which is where he rightfully belongs.

Nothing if not versatile, Downey dons myriad disguises through the course of the movie (he even impersonates a bookcase), and he does a long, very funny turn in drag. Jude Law is Hardy to his Laurel, always piqued, but somehow affectionate in his aggravation. And Ritchie has the good instincts to let their byplay run the show.

They make such a splendid comic double-act, there’s not much more than a look-in for the fairer sex. Sherlock’s main squeeze, Rachel McAdams’ Irene Adler, scarcely makes it to the opening titles. Watson’s intended, Kelly Reilly, fares a little better, but her most memorable scene comes when the great detective rudely shoves her out of a moving train.

As for Noomi Rapace, the original “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo,” at least she comes along for the ride as a gypsy soothsayer with anarchist tendencies, but the screenwriters’ appear to forget about her existence whenever things start to get exciting.

No matter. The movie has more than its share of good gags, and if Ritchie’s tic-y histrionics with the camera are starting to flag (I think we’ve seen the pre-rehearsed fisticuffs more than enough now, thanks), he’s a dab hand in the editing suite. Playful and polished, “Game of Shadows” is at least as much fun as its predecessor.

“Who taught you to dance?” asks Sherlock, as he waltzes the good doctor through another deadly scrape. “You did,” comes the inevitable reply.

They make a lovely couple.

Los Angeles County Judge Stephanie Sautner ordered Lohan to appear in court so she can determine whether the actress is keeping up with her probation provisions, including the requirement that she work at least 12 days a month at the county morgue.

“Lindsay was delayed in Hawaii due to a travel-related issue,” Lohan spokesman Steve Honig said on Tuesday. “She will be heading back this evening in time to appear in court tomorrow.”

The missed flight, however, forced the cancellation of Lohan’s interview with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, which was set to be taped Tuesday.

“Lindsay offered to tape ‘Ellen’ tomorrow, but the show was unable to shift things around, and tomorrow is their last day of taping for the season,” Honig said.
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The “Ellen” interview was to be Lohan’s only planned appearance to promote her just-published Playboy magazine photo spread.

There is no indication that Lohan, 25, will have any difficulty in court Wednesday, compared with many of her numerous appearances in the past two years.

Sautner sentenced Lohan to 30 days in jail last month after she admitted that she violated her probation on a necklace theft conviction, but the sheriff sent her home after a few hours because of jail overcrowding.

The judge also ordered the actress to work at least 12 days a month at the Los Angeles County morgue until she completes the 53 remaining days on her court-ordered community service. She must also attend 18 psychotherapy sessions.

If the actress stays on track, her probation would be eased March 29, Sautner said. If she doesn’t keep up with the requirements, she will serve the additional 270 days behind bars, the judge said.

“This is what we really call putting the keys to the jail in the defendant’s hands,” Sautner told Lohan.

When Sautner sentenced Lohan to 120 days in jail in May, she ended up serving 35 days of home confinement instead, because of jail overcrowding and state rules that give prisoners credit for good behavior.

Prosecutors said Lohan missed 12 of 20 scheduled workdays at a downtown Los Angeles women’s center, part of the court-ordered community service imposed in May when she pleaded guilty to stealing a necklace from a Venice, California, jewelry store.

Lohan was already on probation for two drunken driving convictions from 2007.

She also canceled 14 of 19 scheduled appointments for court-ordered psychotherapy, they said.

“From what I see of you, you need a structure,” Sautner told Lohan last month, instructing her to return to court each month, starting December 14, to show she is complying with the schedule.

Lindsay Lohan’s legal woes, which began four years ago with two drunken driving arrests, have been compounded by her failure to attend counseling classes, and alcohol and drug test failures.

Her probation is scheduled to end within a year unless Lohan breaks any laws before then. It has been extended several times because of violations, including the failed alcohol and drug tests. Rumor has it that she was partying with Sharla all night.

Mueller was arrested in Aspen, Colorado, on December 3 and charged with assault and cocaine possession, police said.

“Recognizing past attempts at treatment have not been successful, Brooke has decided to take a different approach to deal with her addiction,” spokesman Steve Honig said.

Mueller will take part in a rehab program during the day, but she will be “under expert supervision 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Honig said. “In addition, Brooke has requested to be tested on a daily basis for cocaine and other illegal substances so there is no doubt as to her commitment.”

The 2-year-old sons she shares with Sheen will stay in Mueller’s custody and will “be cared for by Brooke and their longtime nanny,” Honig said. “Charlie and Brooke’s family are all fully supportive of this decision and recognize the importance of maintaining the children’s normal routine.”

The incidents in Aspen began when a woman at the Belly Up — a bar and performance venue there — complained that Mueller had been “the aggressor” in an assault, Aspen police said.

Mueller was found and arrested after midnight at another bar, Escobar, police said. She was charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, which is a felony, and third-degree assault, which is a misdemeanor.

She was released after posting an $11,000 bond, Aspen police said. A court date is scheduled for December 19.

Mueller has appeared as an actress in several movies, including 2004′s “A Love Song for Bobby Long,” according to IMDb. But she is more widely known as the ex-wife of Sheen, with whom she has twin sons.

The boys and Mueller were part of Sheen’s volatile public fall-out with CBS earlier this year as he left his starring role on the network’s “Two and Half Men.”

She claimed in March that he’d threatened to kill her, saying, “I will cut your head off, put it in a box and send it to your mom,” according to a declaration made in a restraining order against Sheen. The revelations led to a court order removing the 2-year-old boys from Sheen’s home.

The actor called the allegation “colorful” and described the quote attributed to him as fabricated in an interview with NBC’s “Today Show.”

Mueller has sought help for substance abuse and stress-related issues in the past.

Last December, her attorney, Yale Galanter, said that she entered a sober living facility. Earlier, in April 2010, Mueller had checked into a treatment facility for help with stress management to prevent a “return to old problems,” her representative said.

She was in substance abuse rehab earlier in 2010 “to get her health in order,” Galanter said at the time.

The couple was involved in an alleged domestic dispute in Aspen on Christmas Day 2009 that resulted in felony charges against Sheen.

“Kim has been to rehab more than once before,” says the source, “but every time is a new time, and everyone just hopes this sticks and that she gets the help she needs. It’s serious.”

Richards has been “erratic. Everyone was really worried about her,” says the source, who adds that Richards is not living with Ken, the boyfriend who was introduced as her love interest this season.

During a recent episode of the Bravo show, Richards says she’s planning to move in with Ken, and cameras show her packing up her belongings.

“He’s not in the picture. No one really knows what the deal was with them, but Kim doesn’t live with Ken,” the source says. “She’s basically homeless, staying with various friends. She doesn’t have a home base. It’s not unusual for people to not hear from her for long stretches of time. It’s been that way for years.”

“Her family is relieved she’s getting help,” adds the source. “She has lots of issues. She needs help.”

Viewers have watched Richards’ increasingly bizarre behavior and slurring of her words this season, which had been attributed at least in part to her taking anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications, along with an anti-seizure medication which can be used to treat alcoholism.

Richards is receiving well-wishes from some of her colleagues since seeking treatment. Castmate Taylor Armstrong threw her support to Richards this week, telling Andy Cohen Monday night on his Bravo talk show “Watch What Happens Live:” “I adore Kim and I stand behind her. And if there’s anything I can do to support her [I will]; but if she’s getting healthy what more could we ask.”

The Beastie Boys, who have been blending hip hop, punk and other genres since the 1980s, also made it onto the Hall of Fame’s final list for 2012, alongside Guns N’ Roses, the hard rock standard bearers of the late ’80s and early ’90s, and Laura Nyro, the innovative pop songstress.

Other artists inducted by the Hall under the performer category included the ’60s British group The Small Faces — best known for their psychedelic hit “Itchycoo Park” — and their subsequent incarnation, The Faces, who featured Rod Stewart.

The acts that made the final cut beat out competition from the likes of The Cure and Rufus with Chaka Khan, who had been among the initial nominees.

The Hall of Fame singled out the music producer and promoter Don Kirshner for the nonperformer award. Kirshner, whose live TV rock show helped wean 1970s audiences off lip-synched programming, died in January.

And it cited the guitarist Freddie King for his early influence on rock and roll.

The induction ceremony will take place on April 14 in Cleveland, Ohio.

It’s a strange thing to hear the late songstress promise: Sticking around was never really her thing. For her, anything not meant to last — the golden years of Motown, doomed romance — was always worth loving more fiercely.

So it’s bittersweet that this not-totally-essential set of covers and rarities refuses to let her leave us for good. True, as posthumous albums go, it’s leagues beyond hastily assembled fare like Michael Jackson’s “Immortal.”

That’s a credit to producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, who also helmed her 2006 classic “Back to Black.” Wisely sticking to early versions of girl-group gems (Ruby & the Romantics’ ”Our Day Will Come”), outtakes (2002′s ?uestlove-aided ”Halftime”), and alternate versions of singles, the album largely sidesteps the dozen or so post-”Black” recordings that Winehouse made while battling her addictions. (“Lioness” includes just two original tracks.)

Hearing the clear-eyed, full-voiced Winehouse of 2004′s ”Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” give way to the scorched rasp of 2008′s ”Between the Cheats” is heartbreaking. It’s only on Leon Russell’s ”A Song for You” that it’s clear she had anything left to give after “Black.”

Recorded at home in the spring of 2009, it reveals the singer at her most raw: ”When my life is over/Remember when we were together/And I was singing this song for you,” she cries, her voice growing quieter and quieter. Like smoke, she was fading away before she was gone.

“It would be a thrill of a lifetime to be a part owner, a partial owner, of a team I grew up rooting for as a child in Brooklyn,” the former host of CNN’s “Larry King Live” said Wednesday.”

“To go to a ballpark and have an owner’s box, to even have a say in a possible trade — are you out of your mind?” he asked rhetorically.

King says he’s part of group of investors interested in acquiring the franchise, despite its apparent financial troubles and unresolved contract issues with Fox Sports.

Major League Baseball, which took charge of the team in April, has been embroiled in legal battles over future media rights after baseball Commissioner Bud Selig rejected a $3 billion television deal with Fox.

The beleaguered club then filed for bankruptcy in June and has since drawn a number of high-profile buyers into the bidding process after team owner Frank McCourt agreed to sell.

A court hearing over the Dodgers’ future media rights is scheduled for December 7.

King’s investor group, meanwhile, is led by insurance agent Dennis Gilbert, who also works as a special assistant to Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.

“What bigger thrill?” asked King, a native of Brooklyn, New York, which the Dodgers once called home.

The team, formerly known as the Trolley Dodgers because of the maze of trolley cars that Brooklynites once dodged in the streets, eventually shortened its name, then and moved to California, kicking off its first L.A. season in 1958, to the dismay of many New Yorkers.

“The emotional part would be that they’d have to carry me out,” King said of his possible part-ownership stake in the team.