You can use http wrapper for file_get_contents (http://us1.php.net/manual/en/function.stream-context-create.php):
$options = array(
'http'=>array(
'method'=>"GET",
'timeout' => 60
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($options);
file_get_contents("http://google.com", false, $context);
print_r($http_response_header);