Beckinsale Voted Most Beautiful Brit

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Kate Beckinsale's character in "Van Helsing" may have never seen the sea, but British audiences think her face is worthy of launching a thousand ships.

The 30-year-old brunette beauty was voted Britain's most beautiful actress in a UCI Cinemas poll, reports British news sources. Beckinsale won a significant 27 percent of the vote from movie fans canvassed in Cardiff, Manchester and Greenwich. The poll marked the UK release of the Greek epic "Troy" and asked moviegoers which actress was a 21st-century Helen.

Also faring well in the poll is the teenage "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" star Keira Knightley, who earned 21 percent of the vote.

Rounding out the Top 10 beautiful Brits are: Kate Winslet, Anna Friel, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Hurley, Helena Bonham Carter, Kristen Scott Thomas and Joely Richardson.

Beckinsale currently stars as a gypsy opposite Hugh Jackman in "Van Helsing" and will next appear in "The Aviator" opening in November. She is also known for her roles in "Pearl Harbor" and "Underworld."

Prince is about to get his due on DVD.

In addition to a 20th-anniversary two-disc special edition of Purple Rain, Warner Home Video on Aug. 24 is releasing Graffiti Bridge and Under the Cherry Moon on DVD for the first time.

Prince fans R gonna B excited 2 learn about the double-disc anniversary edition of Purple Rain.

The new version of Purple Rain ($26.99) has a widescreen digital transfer of the film and remixed Dolby Digital surround sound. New extras include featurettes on the Oscar-winning music and eight music videos.

"We wanted to bring (the treatment of the film on DVD) up to today's standards," says Warner's Mike Radiloff.

Prince's directorial debut, Under the Cherry Moon (1986), which co-starred Kristin Scott Thomas, and the sequel to Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge, will be one-disc releases ($19.97). Each will have widescreen video and Dolby Digital surround sound.

Canadian Idol returning, promises to galvanize voters - but not in politics

TORONTO (CP) - This month will help shape the future of two individuals in Canada: one will have power to formulate laws and tax policy; the other will earn the chance to forge a stronger sense of nationalism in a completely different forum.

But when all the votes are tallied, it could be the Canadian Idol - not the prime minister - who ends up causing more buzz across the country.

In only its second season, CTV's singing competition, which launches Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET, promises to become a regular summer pastime, alongside cottage retreats and ice-cream runs.

An estimated 6.5 million Canadians tuned in to see Ryan Malcolm beat Gary Beals in last September's finale - a bigger audience than for the Grammys - giving CTV the bragging rights for the most-watched homegrown English-language series.

Canadians also eagerly watched the latest American Idol battle. More than three million of them tuned in to see Fantasia Barrino beat out Diana DeGarmo last week.

Don't think that federal politicians, who are spending this month campaigning for votes, haven't noticed.

Executive producer John Brunton said several have called the show asking how they can get involved with the hit series.

"They have been wanting to use our show as a platform," he said.

But show officials have largely kept them off the glittery stage.

"We've done it rather effectively," said Brunton, who has been with the show since the beginning of the first season. "It's not their place to be in our television show. It's just not right. It would turn the Canadian public off if we turned it into a platform."

That hasn't stopped them from trying, and a few even got into the televised show, albeit via tiny pre-recorded clips. Last year, Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm hosted a homecoming party for finalist Gary Beals. Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer stood up in the House of Commons and praised the show the day of the finale.

"I urge all Canadians to tune into Canadian Idol tonight and support both Ryan and Gary. I know I will be watching," he said.

Liberal MP Geoff Regan told the House the same day: "Canadians from coast to coast will be intently fixated on their televisions as history unfolds before them . . . I have been (struck) by the breadth of talent this show has brought to Canadians."

Idol judge Farley Flex said he doesn't blame politicians for trying, given the fan loyalty generated by competitors.

"When people press those buttons to vote for an individual . . . it's a sense of empowerment, as opposed to the political system, where there's so much apathy in voting," he said. "People just don't think that what they write on that ballot is going to have an impact on their lives. When you vote one night and your vote is represented the next night (on Idol), it's a very unusual experience."

It's an experience Canadian producers aren't going to change much this season. It'll work using the same format that's worked all around the world. The theme music is back. The atrocious Ben Mulroney's coming back to host. And Flex, Jake Gold, Sass Jordan and Zack Werner will take their seats behind the judge's table again.

Tuesday's premier episode will showcase competitors - the good, the bad and the worst - from Ottawa and Toronto.

An estimated 9,000 aspiring singers auditioned for Idol this year. Of those, the judges chose 155 "gold-ticket" winners to send to Idol headquarters in Toronto. That group will be reduced to 32 before the public can begin giving its two cents about who they want to win a recording contract.

This season promises another fierce competition for the Idol crown. Flex said the talent was sweeter sounding this time around.

"They were ready," he said. "They watched the show and went out and took vocal lessons. They really tried to prepare themselves for the experience."

The judges' standards have also risen from last year, so the level of talent is higher, which should provide more intense debate at the water cooler and on bar patios, said Flex, who manages Beals and Toya Alexis, a top-10 finalist from last season.

"There was a heightened level of expectation," Flex said. "We were giving advice every show last year. People could have literally taken notes and had a road map as to what would be well-received and what wouldn't."

That's not to say the William Hungs of Canada didn't show up. Producers promise enough of those ghastly vocalists to boggle viewers' minds.

Besides the wannabe pop stars, producers say there are some new twists with the wild-card stage, a new set and new genre-theme nights.

As well, Brunton said some superstar names are being courted to appear on the show. He hinted at such stars as Stevie Wonder, Shania Twain and Lionel Ritchie, although nothing is confirmed.

"We've got some tricks up our sleeves," he said. "We've got some really big stars that are interested in the program."

'Shrek 2' Speeds Past $200 Million at Box Office

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Shrek 2" overpowered the new disaster picture "The Day After Tomorrow" to retain the crown at the North American box office during the first three days of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, the cartoon sequel sold about $73.1 million worth of tickets, while "The Day After Tomorrow" opened with $70 million.

Far off in the distance, "Troy" slipped one place to No. 3 with $11.5 million, while the Kate Hudson domestic comedy "Raising Helen" opened with a modest $11.2 million. The urban comedy "Soul Plane," starring Snoop Dogg, crashed on take-off, selling just $5.7 million worth of tickets in its first weekend.

After 12 days, DreamWorks' "Shrek 2" has grossed $237.8 million, having raced past the $200 million mark on Friday, its 10th day. Only "Spider-Man" did it faster, taking nine days in 2002. But DreamWorks said "Shrek 2" broke "Spider-Man's" old record for a second-weekend haul, which was $71.4 million.

The next record in the studio's sights is the one for a four-day Memorial Day holiday, which "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" set in 1997 with a tally of $90.2 million.

'TOMORROW' TOPS WORLDWIDE

The $70 million launch for Twentieth Century Fox's "The Day After Tomorrow," in which severe climate change turns New York into a frozen wasteland, exceeded the studio's expectations, said distribution president, Bruce Snyder.

The $125 million film stars Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. It was directed by Roland Emmerich, of "Independence Day" fame.

Additionally, it opened in 102 other countries, taking in $82.1 million, driving the worldwide total to $152.1 million. Snyder said it was the best worldwide opening for a non-sequel, smashing the old mark of $107 million set three weeks ago by the monster thriller "Van Helsing." Fox is a unit of News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group Inc .

After 17 days, the total for Warner Bros.' "Troy" rose to $106.1 million. The holiday did not appear to do much for the film, which lost a hefty 52 percent of its audience from last weekend.

It was the same for Universal's sixth-ranked "Van Helsing," which earned $4.9 million, a drop of 54 percent. Its 24-day total rose to $108.8 million. Even Universal's summer 2003 bomb, "The Hulk," had made more after four weekends.

Warner Bros. Pictures is a unit of Time Warner Inc . Universal Pictures is a unit of NBC Universal, which is controlled by General Electric Co .

"Raising Helen," in which Hudson's character ditches her career to raise her late sister's three kids in the suburbs, was released by Touchstone Pictures, a unit of Walt Disney Co . Directed by Garry Marshall, the film also stars John Corbett and Joan Cusack.

"Soul Plane," which also stars Tom Arnold, Kevin Hart and Method Man, was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc . It was directed by Jessy Terrero. It cost less than $20 million.

In the limited-release world, MGM's United Artists banner did better with the high school satire "Saved!" The film, starring Jena Malone, Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin, sold $328,000 worth of tickets from 20 theaters in five markets. It expands next month.

'Scooby-Doo 2'; 'Ladykillers'; new Fox cheapies

Ghost Chasers

The Mystery, Inc., gang is back for more mischief in the $85 million dollar hit Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. With a little CGI assistance, the much beloved pooch will hit DVD on September 14th in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen versions, courtesy of Warner Home Video. Each features 10 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary, the "True Ghoul Hollywood Story," "Dancing Dog" and "Triple Threat" featurettes, the "Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed Challenge" and "Behind the Mystery: The Mystery of the Missing Pants" games, two music videos and theatrical trailers.

The Con is On

Despite the presence of Tom Hanks, the latest loopy comedy from The Coen Brothers was another near-miss, a remake of the 60's caper The Ladykillers. Buena Vista Home Entertainment will give the flick another shot on DVD on September 14th, complete with a 1.85 anamorphic widescreen transfer, a Dolby 5.1 surround track, the "Danny Ferrington: The Man Behind the Band" featurette, "The Slap Reel" outtakes, "Gospel of The Ladykillers" deleted music scenes, theatrical trailers and a ROM-exclusive Script Scanner.

Killer Trucks

Rounding out today's news is the latest batch of cheapie announcements from Fox Home Entertainment, who will unleash a half dozen B-movie potboilers on September 7th. The goodies includeAlexander's Ragtime Band, Battle Creek Brawl, Bonanza: Under Attack, Bootmen, Iron Fisted Monk, Knockabout, Mr. Vampire, The Postman Fights Back and Working Trash. All are presented in their original aspect ratios and include no extras outside of trailers. Retail will be a cheapie $9.95 a pop.

The studio will also release three more well-known flicks on the 7th, including the early Tom Hanks vehicle The Man with One Red Shoe, the monster truck destruction of Maximum Overdrive and the silly sequel King Kong Lives. All are presented in anamorphic widescreen and Dolby 2.0 stereo, and include trailers. Retail will list for $14.95 apiece.

Sammy Hagar, Alex Van Halen discuss reunion tour, best-of set

May 27, 2004 06:57 PM - Reinstated Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar and drummer Alex Van Halen talked to reporters on Thursday (5/27) about Hagar's return to the group, the band's upcoming summer tour and a forthcoming hits compilation that includes three new cuts.

"The simple answer is: It just felt right," Alex Van Halen said of the decision to reunite after splitting on bad terms eight years ago. "Sammy and I got together [late last year] and it was like we hadn't missed a beat. We picked up right where we left off. The moment we hit the studio and started making music--which, for us, is ... where it [all] began--that kind of solidified it. That was it. Making music is the center of this band--that, and the friendship. So it was a no-brainer."

"We just felt like, 'Wow. The time is right,'" Hagar added. "If we'd have tried it maybe two years ago, it could've blown up, or maybe two years from now, it might be too late. Who knows? It just feels right."

In the months following Hagar's 1996 departure, both parties fired bitter parting shots at each other in the press, but all of that has been forgotten, according to Hagar.

"The whole point of being older is time going by, water going under the bridge, whatever it is, you kind of forget what happened, or why you were mad to begin with, or what you said," said Hagar. "All that stuff goes out the window. ... We decided that, rather than go to therapy like some of these other bands and dig through the dirt, we said, 'No, no, here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna pretend like it never happened. We're gonna, like, rise above it.' It's really what we did. I think we elevated, and it hasn't even come up."

Hagar recalled his return to Van Halen's recording studio, 5150, which is located on guitarist Eddie Van Halen's Southern California estate. The singer said the visit was planned as nothing more than a social encounter, but that a jam session quickly ensued.

"We jammed probably for five or six hours, 'til my voice was completely worn out," he said. "The chemistry between the four of us is very, very special. Even as long as we did it, you start taking it for granted--you forget about it--and then you come back and you walk in and you go, 'Oh, wow! This is exactly like it always was.' And that's a great, great thing to still have it sitting there waiting for you, and not have to look for it and not have to reinvent it."

Hagar, the Van Halen brothers and bassist Michael Anthony launch a summer tour in Greensboro, NC, on June 11, and will issue a two-disc hits compilation---originally billed as "The Very Best of Van Halen," but since renamed "The Best of Both Worlds"--on July 20. The new title--which is also that of a song housed on 1986's "5150," the group's first album with Hagar--is a reference to the compilation's inclusion of material that the band recorded during Hagar's tenure, as well as material from its days with original frontman David Lee Roth.

Ironically, it was Hagar's opposition to releasing a best-of set in 1996 that contributed to his departure from the group. The singer said that the circumstances are much different this time, however.

"I'm not down on doing a greatest-hits record at all this time," said Hagar. "Last time I was ... I didn't wanna do it at that time in my life, for whatever reasons. But, at this time in my life, it's the only way we could've gotten this tour out this year, and I think the fans need it, and we need it. We want it. It just has to happen."

The band recorded three new songs with Hagar for the best-of set, one of which--titled "It's About Time"--hit radio stations on Wednesday (5/26).

"Ed and Al probably had 10 other songs that we could have worked on, and if there'd have been time, we'd have loved to have done a whole record," Hagar said. "But the idea of, 'Do you wanna go out on tour this year or next year?' was like, 'Let's go now! Let's go now!'"

Hagar said the group had been working on a fourth song, but had to abandon the idea of including it on the hits package in order to focus on tour plans.

Alex Van Halen said that the band was not concerned about fans downloading the three new songs from the Internet rather than purchasing the complete hits compilation.

"No concern at all," he said. "The music is there, and if people figure out a way to get it, more power to 'em. I think the ultimate goal of music is that, once you've made it, as many people as possible hear it. That's basically our feeling about it."

On Trial

TV Guide says that former LAW & ORDER actress Carey Lowell may be headed to LAW & ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY, reprising her role of Assistant D.A. Jamie Ross.

CBC-TV unveils 2004-2005 prime time schedule of 'high impact' programming

TORONTO (CP) - A political thriller starring Paul Gross, TV movies about the lives of Shania Twain, Tommy Douglas and the real Winnie the Pooh, and of course the Olympic Games in Athens.

These are some of the highlights of CBC Television's 2004-2005 "must-watch" season unveiled at a fall preview event Thursday. Slawko Klymkiw, CBC's chief programmer, says a strategy he introduced in recent years of opting for high-impact Canadian-themed specials and miniseries is paying off in increased ratings.

"It's still an uphill battle," Klymkiw says. "Getting people to watch Canadian shows might be the toughest job in the world, but it's our job."

As for the trend away from full series drama - there are no new ones on the schedule although Da Vinci's Inquest and This is Wonderland return - network vice-president Harold Redekopp concedes difficulties.

"When you consider the kind of competition we're facing. And even Telefilm is saying 'Where are we going to put our dollars? We're going to put our dollars where it has the highest impact.' And they tend to be one-offs or short miniseries."

And while the public broadcaster continues to boast of its mostly Canadian schedule, the realities of domestic and international programming today are evident in many choices this season.

Redekopp and Klymkiw say international co-productions have become a necessary alternative in the wake of the shortcomings in Canadian funding sources.

"If I can find 70 or 80 per cent of the cash offshore and I can get five Canadian stars in there, and I can have a Canadian production company do it, this is not only good business, it's good public policy," says Klymkiw.

Redekopp adds that besides, Canadians have more of an international perspective.

"Canadians like to see their stories connected to world events."

As a result, viewers will see the co-produced likes of the miniseries Papa Alpha, about a Canadian relief mission worker in the Sudan (Canadian-Irish-South African) and A Bear Called Winnie, about the First World War army officer from Winnipeg and his adoption of a bear cub mascot for his regiment (Canadian-U.K.).

Also Chasing Freedom, about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, but filmed in Canada (Canada-U.S.) and The Hamburg Cell, a movie about the Sept. 11 terrorists (Canada-U.K.-Germany-France).

Other so-called high-impact programs on their way include H20, featuring Paul Gross in what he describes as a "kick-ass" roller-coaster ride of a thriller about a possible political assassination and a prime minister with a secret agenda to sell off Canadian water to the U.S.

Il Duce Canadese is a four-hour miniseries starring Tony Nardi and Marina Orsini in the story of the wartime internment of Italian-Canadians in Montreal who were presumed to be pro-Fascist. And Megan Follows stars in Open Heart, about a cash-strapped hospital where an increasing number of child patients are dying.

Other titles promised last year but delivered this time around include Ciao Bella, a new sitcom about life in Montreal's Little Italy, and Trudeau the Prequel, but without Colm Feore as the former prime minister.

"We made a decision there," says Klymkiw. "We could never work out - and we tried very hard - between his schedule and our schedule. And we inevitably said 'Let's just go for a brand new cast and a brand new Trudeau.' And that's what we did."

Other names seem to be noticeably absent from some programming promises, too. The T.C. Douglas movie was to star his grandson, Kiefer Sutherland, but his name is not mentioned in media materials. Apparently it remains a "work in progress".

And incidentally, the only reference to Don Cherry during the CBC's gala launch event was in the form of a clip from an Air Farce parody sketch. And no cast has yet been announced for the Shania Twain biopic.

And while there are fewer conditional announcements than last year - when a number of program projects were accompanied in the CBC press kit by asterisks that said "pending funding" - they haven't disappeared altogether. Still up in the air, apparently, is a hoped-for comedy pilot called Getting Along Famously, featuring Colin Mochrie as a 1960s TV variety show entertainer.

Meanwhile, another Klymkiw strategy is what he calls traction.

In order to build an early prime time audience during the week, the enduring Brit soap Coronation Street will air four nights a week this summer and fall. And while Klymkiw insists CBC's Canadian content remains the same, the network is promoting more offshore projects this year, from a new Forsyte Saga to more Miss Marple mysteries to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies.

- Some of the programming promised by CBC-TV during its 2004-2005 network season:

-H20. A genuine Canadian political thriller starring Paul Gross as the son of a possibly assassinated prime minister and who wins the leadership, but possibly with a secret agenda. Filmed in part in the Parliament Buildings, it airs as a two-part miniseries in late October.

-Sex Traffic. Shot in Halifax, London and Romania, this no-holds-barred Canada-U.K. two-part miniseries co-production stars Wendy Crewson in the story of the global business of trafficking in enforced prostitution.

-The Greatest Canadian. CBC's campaign to get the public to nominate candidates comes to a head this fall, with a five-week series that will select a winner. More than 100,000 nominations were sent in.

-Canadian Antiques Roadshow. Valerie Pringle hosts a domestic version of the Brit-originated concept that was such a hit on Newsworld. Pringle crosses the country in 13 episodes to air on Newsworld and the main network.

-Wayne & Shuster - The Legacy Collection. A showcase of the best of the legendary comedy duo.

-Canada's War in Colour: A three-part documentary from Yap Films that gathers from both public and private archives, rare, long-lost colour film footage taken during the Second World War.

-Athens 2004 - The Olympic Games on CBC Sports. The Summer Games return to Greece on Aug. 13 and CBC Sports will cover it for 17 days with Terry Leibel, Ron MacLean and Brian Williams.

-Making the Cut. CBC gets into the reality TV game with a 13-week series. Six lucky Canadians will win a search for the best unsigned hockey player who then gets a crack at the NHL.

-Shania. A two-hour movie chronicling the rise to fame of singer Shania Twain. No casting choices have been announced.

-The Tommy Douglas Project. A four-hour miniseries about the former Saskatchewan premier and federal NDP leader, considered the father of universal health care. Made with the approval of the Douglas family, there is no confirmation yet on earlier reports that Douglas's grandson, Kiefer Sutherland, would play the title role.

-Trudeau - The Prequel. Also announced last year but delayed. This follow-up to the earlier miniseries looks back on the former prime minister's early life in Quebec and his coming of age during the Duplessis era. But Colm Feore, who made such a splash as Pierre Trudeau in the original, will not be back in the role.

-Comedy Gold. A four-hour entertainment documentary celebrating the history of Canadian-born comedy from Mack Sennett to Mike Myers.

-A Beachcombers Christmas. Dave Thomas, Graham Greene and Jackson Davies return in the second spinoff of the legendary West Coast series. This one is about Dave's plans to hold an old-timers hockey game in Gibsons Landing.

-Distant Drumming: A North of 60 Mystery. The TV movies that have followed the original series seem to have been more popular. RCMP officer Michelle Kenidi investigates the case of an elderly tourist found beaten to death in Lynx River.

-Coronation Street. A hit during the CBC's British Week last year, the 40-year-old British soap will air four nights a week in prime time beginning in June. The series runs about six months behind telecasts in the U.K.

-Ciao Bella. Promised last season but delayed, this comedy is the story of a family of Italian-Canadians in Montreal.

-Back on the air for another year: Opening Night, ZeD, The Newsroom, The Red Green Show, Rick Mercer's Monday Report, Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Life and Times, The Nature of Things, The Fifth Estate, Marketplace and Venture. Gone: Disclosure.

Geffen Preps New Joni Mitchell Collection

Geffen has rounded up 16 of Joni Mitchell's more issue-minded tracks for the compilation "The Beginning of Survival," due July 27. The songs are drawn from the Mitchell album "Dog Eat Dog," "Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm," "Night Ride Home," Turbulent Indigo" and "Taming the Tiger." Among the guests sprinkled throughout are Don Henley, James Taylor, Willie Nelson and Michael McDonald.

The album's self-described "commentaries on the world in which we live" find Mitchell addressing such as topics as greed and corruption ("No Apologies," "Dog Eat Dog" and "Passion Play (The Story of Jesus and Zachius ... The Little Tax Collector)," featuring actor Rod Steiger), Western culture ("The Three Great Stimulants") and environmental responsibility ("Cool Water," "Lakota").

Also featured are "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" (adapted from a poem by W.B. Yeats), "The Beat of Black Wings," "The Reoccuring Dream," "Impossible Dreamer" and "The Windfall (Everything for Nothing)."

Mitchell co-produced the album and contributes an essay plus original artwork. The liner notes include a reproduction of an environmentally themed letter to the President of the United States, thought to have been penned by Susquamish Indian Chief Seattle in 1852.

"The Beginning of Survival" is Geffen's second recent archival Mitchell release, following last September's four-disc boxed set "The Complete Geffen Recordings." The artist has not issued a new studio album since 2002's Nonesuch set "Travelogue," which she has said will be her last.

'Family Guy' Crowd Heading to Montreal Yukfest

OTTAWA (Hollywood Reporter) - Wayne Brady, Caroline Rhea, Tim Allen, Tom Arnold, Jackie Mason and the voices behind the animated show "Family Guy" are among the comics slated to perform at the 22nd Just for Laughs Festival, running July 15-25 in Montreal, organizers said Tuesday.

Just for Laughs chief operating officer Bruce Hills said he is particularly excited about having Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green and Mila Kunis do a live script reading of "Family Guy." A question-and-answer session with cast and creator MacFarlane will follow the reading.

"The big thing this summer is 'Family Guy,"' Hills said. "That's a big one because they rarely do this, and that show is one of the biggest-selling DVDs out there."

Brady ("Whose Line Is It Anyway?"), Rhea ("The Caroline Rhea Show"), Allen ("Home Improvement") and Arnold ("The Best Damn Sports Show Period") are slated to headline six galas, with Brady and Allen handling gala duties twice.

The festival also is catering to children for the first time, with the North American premiere of James Campbell's stand-up comedy for kids ages 5 and older.

For more mature audiences, Mason, once a regular on "The Ed Sullivan Show," is performing his one-man show "Jackie Mason Freshly Squeezed." There also will be the world premiere of "Evil Dead 1 & 2: The Musical," a comedy based on the director Sam Raimi's campy horror classics.

Brady will be joined by his "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" co-stars Colin Mochrie, Greg Proops and Brad Sherwood as well as Sean Masterson ("The Drew Carey Show") for some improvisational comedy.

Also, British comic Dave Gorman will present his "Googlewhack Adventure," which premiered at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. New on this summer's roster is "Late Nite Down Under," a spotlight on the funniest acts from Australia and New Zealand, including performances by Colin Hay of the Grammy-winning band Men at Work.

Fantasia Barrino Crowned America's Idol

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Feisty soul singer Fantasia Barrino was voted the newest "American Idol" on Wednesday after a nationwide television search for the nation's next pop star.

Barrino, 19, edged out rival Diana DeGarmo at the end of the hit reality TV show that saw 70,000 wannabes audition in a bid to win a recording contract and instant stardom.

Victory was sweet for Barrino, a black single mom from North Carolina who had twice narrowly escaped being booted off by viewers earlier in the season in favor of cuter but weaker singers.

The close calls, along with the early exit of two other powerful black singers, prompted cries of racism. "This has been a very unpredictable season," record producer and "Idol" judge Randy Jackson said on Wednesday.

Producers said a total of 65 million votes were called in by telephone or text message on Tuesday after lines were kept open an extra two hours and extra numbers added to counter logjams and busy signals that have called voting procedures into question.

"Idol" host Ryan Seacrest told Access Hollywood that the two finalists were separated by a margin of just over 1 percent.

Barrino's style, which ranged from tender to earthy, moved the three-judge panel to tears and captivated audiences.

In an emotional final on Tuesday night watched by some 25 million viewers, acerbic British judge Simon Cowell declared her the best contestant ever in the "Idol" phenomenon which has swept more than 20 countries worldwide.

YOUNGEST FINAL CONTESTANT

DeGarmo, 16, was the youngest contestant to reach an "Idol" final. Her show-stopping voice and poise belied her youth while her bubbly friendly personality won fans alienated by Barrino's cheeky backchat. "My lips are big but my talent is bigger," Barrino quipped earlier in the season.

DeGarmo, a Georgia schoolgirl who started singing when she was 5 years old, suffered uncharacteristic pitch problems in the Tuesday night finale before a live audience at Hollywood's Kodak Theater.

DeGarmo is unlikely to go home empty-handed. Both last year's winner Ruben Studdard and runner-up Clay Aiken secured recording contracts. Tone-deaf contestant William Hung, who won the hearts and laughter of the nation in early auditions, has already released his own album.

"American Idol" has proved Fox TV's biggest hit and one of the hottest shows in the nation during the past three years, averaging some 25 million viewers.

But the show has been a victim of is own success, with jammed phone lines causing frustration among fans trying to cast their votes each week.

Hours before the winner was announced, Fox Broadcasting Entertainment President Gail Berman defended the integrity of the vote, which is independently audited.

"When you have a show this big, you are going to hear from some people who are not satisfied with whatever you do ... We are confident that we have the most sophisticated telephone voting system that you can put in place in this country," Berman told reporters.

Futurama concludes

The fourth and final season of the 31st century comedy Futurama is coming to DVD later this year from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

All sixteen episodes of the 2002-2003 season of the popular animated series are on the disc including the opera-laden final episode and a special episode featuring the cast of the original Star Trek. Audio commentaries are present on all the episodes. Additional features include international clips, animatics, a table read, a Star Trek panel and easter eggs.

The suggested retail price is $49.95. On August 24th the set will arrive.

Singer Courtney Love Pleads Guilty to Drug Offense

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Closing one chapter in a troubled period in her life, rock star Courtney Love pleaded guilty on Tuesday to being under the influence of cocaine and agreed to enter drug treatment.

Under the plea deal reached in Los Angeles Superior Court, the 39-year-old former lead singer for Hole will be spared any jail time and have the conviction removed from her record if she completes the treatment program, prosecutors said.

In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a charge of disorderly conduct stemming from her arrest last October.

If she fails to complete the program or violates the terms of her probation, the singer will be required to serve at least 90 days in jail, prosecutor Jerry Baik said.

The terms of her probation will be outlined at a July 16 sentencing hearing. The singer likely will be required to submit to random drug testing and to report regularly to drug counseling and to a county probation officer, Baik said.

"It's not an unbearable program. It's something that can do more benefit to her than hurt her," Baik said outside court.

Love, who came to court in a flowered dress and high-heeled shoes with her platinum blond hair tousled, had no comment about the case.

She spoke little during the 10-minute hearing, answering Judge Patricia Schnegg's questions in soft monosyllables. When asked for her plea, she replied: "Guilty."

The plea agreement resolves one of two criminal cases filed against Love in connection with her Oct. 2 arrest outside a boyfriend's Los Angeles home, where police found her breaking windows in the middle of the night.

Hours later, Love was treated at a local hospital for what police described as a "medical emergency" -- an incident that led to separate charges of illegal possession of the prescription painkiller OxyContin.

She also faces criminal charges in New York, where she was arrested in March after throwing a microphone stand into a nightclub audience and hitting a man in the head.

Love is the widow of late Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1997 for her role in "The People Vs. Larry Flynt."

The Couch Potato Report - May 25th, 2004

This week in The Couch Potato Report there's a classic book that's become a classic film and two comedies that just aren't funny.

Back in February an epic journey of a raggedy gang of humans, hobbits, wizards, dwarves and elves hoisted the fantasy genre to Oscar glory.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING won a record-tying 11 Oscars, sweeping every category in which it was nominated, including best picture.

Now, the third chapter in J.R.R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy is set to dominate DVD and video sales and rental charts the same way it did the Oscars.

And deservedly so as director Peter Jackson has once again created an awe-inspiring adaptation of the Tolkien classic.

I won't go into specific plot points as I suspect by now you are either very familiar with THE LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy, or you couldn't care less.

I will say this, THE RETURN OF THE KING is a majestic film on an epic scale which preserves the integrity of the trilogy to its conclusion.

The only disappointment I have regarding this initial DVD and video release of RETURN OF THE KING is that it is only the three hour and twenty minute theatrical version of the film.

With the other two LORD OF THE RINGS films the studio had to wait until a few months after the release of the theatrical edition before releasing the extended directors cuts.

The extended cuts served as a way to promote the impending release of the next chapter in the series.

Now that there is no impending release, they are making people wait until Christmas anyway in order to not cut into the sales of this theatrical version.

Personally, I am willing to wait until then, as Peter Jackson has said that almost an hour's worth of extra footage will make its way onto the extended DVD version.

Yes, I will voluntarily wait, but I'm disappointed that I have to.

There is nothing disappointing about the movie THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, but the way it is being delivered to us fans is very disappointing.

Very disappointing are also the words I would use to describe Ray Romano's film WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT.

On TV everybody loves Raymond, myself included, as he is a hilarious performer.

I suspect few will like this movie about a plumber who runs for mayor against an ex-President. Gene Hackman plays the ex-president.

I went to see WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT in theatres when it came out expecting to laugh.

Unfortunately I didn't laugh at all.

A few weeks ago it was the film on the plane on my way back from vacation and I watched it again to see if I had missed a laugh or two.

Again, I didn't laugh once and I eventually fell asleep.

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT is just a bland, uninteresting film.

You could, perhaps, get a kick out of it if you have no expectations and everything else has been rented, but even then I recommend that you skip WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT and just look for an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on TV.

Trust me, you'll be better off.

The final new release this week is CLUB DREAD.

In this latest film from the comedy troop BROKEN LIZARD, who also gave us the hilarious SUPER TROOPERS, an inept staff at island resort must battle a killer.

This film doesn't know if it's a comedy, or a horror, a spoof of horror movies or what.

What's worse is that it is bad at trying to be any of them.

Here's my theory: A movie needs to be funny to qualify as a comedy, and this film is not funny. Not at all! It is extremely boring, and will be painful to watch for everyone who saw and enjoyed SUPER TROOPERS.

Am I sorry I saw it? No, I'm never sorry I see any movie I'm interested in seeing, especially any movie with Brittany Daniel in it.

Will you be sorry, well why don't you erase that as a possibility by either checking out SUPER TROOPERS or just look for an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on TV.

But now I'm repeating myself.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT and CLUB DREAD are available now at your favourite local video store.

COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT

Oscar Winner Charlize Theron stars in MONSTER. This based-on-a-true-story movie is about Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who becomes a killer and falls in love. Sadly, the movie isn't as good as Theron, or even the A&E Biography on Wuornos.

In EUROTRIP a group of friends travel Europe for raunchy good fun. For the record, that might be the only time the word "good" will never be associated with this movie.

In the late seventies and early eighties hey were just the good ole boys, never meaning no harm and now you can watch THE DUKES OF HAZARD anytime you'd like as the COMPLETE FIRST SEASON is coming out on DVD.

And finally;

The third series in the hilarious BBC show COUPLING will now be available for us North Americans to laugh at.

And laugh we shall.

I'll have more about those new releases in seven days.

In fourteen days I'll talk about SCTV on DVD!

Enjoy the movies you choose and I'll see you back here on The Couch!

New Tunage!

Here are the new CD releases for Tuesday, May 25, 2004:

* AVRIL LAVIGNE Under My Skin (Arista)
* BONE CRUSHER Fight Music (Arista)
* DANNY COHEN Dannyland (Anti/Epitaph)
* LONESTAR Let's Be Us Again (Arista Country)
* REFUSED The Shape Of Punk To Come (Burning Heart)
* REFUSED Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent (Burning Heart)
* REFUSED The E.P. Compilation (Burning Heart)
* SARAH MCLACHLAN Acoustic EP (Nettwerk)
* SCATTER THE ASHES Devout/The Modern Hymn (Epitaph)
* TANGIERS Never Bring You Pleasure (Sonic Unyon)

Stars Ensnared On 'Spider-Man 2' Soundtrack

The full track list has been unveiled for "Music From and Inspired by Spider-Man 2," due June 22 via Columbia. As previously reported, Train's "Ordinary" and Dashboard Confessional's "Vindicated" are serving as simultaneous singles from the album, which will also feature a collaboration between Ours' Jimmy Gnecco and Queen's Brian May on "Someone To Die For" plus the new Maroon 5 track "Woman."

Other artists that have contributed previously unreleased songs to the album include the Ataris, Jet, Hoobastank and Yellowcard. Tracks by Smile Empty Soul, Midtown, Lostprophets and Taking Back Sunday will also be found on the soundtrack, alongside two score pieces by composer Danny Elfman.

The original "Spider-Man" soundtrack boasted the rock radio smash "Hero" by Nickelback's Chad Kroeger featuring Saliva's Josey Scott, which hit No. 1 on Billboard's Modern and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts.

"Spider-Man 2," starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, arrives June 30 at U.S. theaters.

Here is the track list for "Spider-Man 2":

"Vindicated," Dashboard Confessional
"Ordinary," Train
"Did You," Hoobastank
"Hold On," Jet
"Gifts and Curses," Yellowcard
"Woman," Maroon 5
"This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)," Taking Back Sunday
"Give It Up," Midtown
"Lucky You," Lostprophets
"Who I Am Album," Smile Empty Soul
"The Night That the Lights Went Out in NYC," the Ataris
"We Are," Ana Johnsson
"Someone To Die For," Jimmy Gnecco featuring Brian May
"Spidey Suite," Danny Elfman
"Doc Ock Suite," Danny Elfman

Shrek 2 earns $129 million in 5 days, setting industry record

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Shrek 2 turned out to be even greener than expected.

The sequel about a verdant ogre and his chatty sidekick Donkey collected $108 million US at the weekend box office, almost $4 million more than its studio, DreamWorks SKG, predicted Sunday, according to final figures released Monday afternoon.

The computer-animated movie earned about $129 million Wednesday through Sunday for the highest five-day opening in Hollywood history, besting December's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which had $124.1 million.

Shrek 2 had the second biggest three-day weekend debut, behind only 2002's Spider-Man with $114.8 million.

It beat Spider-Man for the highest single-day gross. On Saturday, Shrek 2 earned $44.8 million, compared to the $43.6 million earned by Spider-Man on its first Saturday.

The top 20 movies at North American theatres Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theatre locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. and Nielsen EDI Inc.:

1. Shrek 2, DreamWorks, $108,037,878, 4,163 locations, $25,952 average, $128,983,060, one week.

2. Troy, Warner Bros., $23,925,330, 3,411 locations, $7,014 average, $85,960,779, two weeks.

3. Van Helsing, Universal, $10,561,655, 3,418 locations, $3,090 average, $100,526,335, three weeks.

4. Mean Girls, Paramount, $6,907,627, 3,054 locations, $2,262 average, $64,706,896, four weeks.

5. Man On Fire, Fox, $3,680,522, 2,104 locations, $1,749 average, $69,461,524, five weeks.

6. Breakin' All the Rules, Screen Gems, $2,845,368, 1,318 locations, $2,159 average, $9,053,501, two weeks.

7. 13 Going On 30, Sony, $2,512,234, 2,028 locations, $1,239 average, $52,080,216, five weeks.

8. New York Minute, Warner Bros., $1,302,152, 2,360 locations, $552 average, $12,622,044, three weeks.

9. Kill Bill Vol. 2, Miramax, $1,078,811, 854 locations, $1,263 average, $62,711,658, six weeks.

10. Super Size Me, Roadside, $973,644, 148 locations, $6,579 average, $2,941,708, three weeks.

11. Laws of Attraction, New Line, $924,734, 1,010 locations, $916 average, $16,849,742, four weeks.
 
12. Envy, DreamWorks, $604,606, 521 locations, $1,160 average, $12,181,484, four weeks.

13. A Day Without a Mexican, Telvisa Cine, $554,434, 103 locations, $5,383 average, $1,400,441, one week.

14. Walking Tall, MGM, $459,111, 689 locations, $666 average, $45,138,529, eight weeks.

15. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Focus Features, $342,428, 231 locations, $1,482 average, $32,944,436, 10 weeks.

16. Nascar: The Imax Experience, Warner Bros., $338,406, 72 locations, $4,700 average, $11,602,237, 11 weeks.

17. Godsend, Lions Gate, $316,135, 419 locations, $754 average, $13,994,861, four weeks.

18. Johnson Family Vacation, Fox Searchlight, $303,175, 394 locations, $769 average, $30,056,567, seven weeks.

19. The Passion of the Christ, Newmarket, $271,424, 715 locations, $380 average, $369,336,919, 13 weeks.

20. 50 First Dates, Sony, $231,731, 237 locations, $978 average, $119,861,977, 15 weeks.

Avril Lavigne seeks to showcase artistry after 'angry' debut

NEW YORK (AP) - Avril Lavigne knows her image: a moody, teen rock star with an acidic tongue, steely stare and tough-girl attitude.

"I have been labelled like I'm this angry girl - I'm like, this rebel, I'm like, punk, and I am SO not any of them. It's so funny, and I'm actually really shy," the petite, Canadian-born Lavigne says in typical teenspeak, sitting on a hotel bed wearing a black hooded sweat shirt, greyish pants, boxy shoes and socks bearing the message "boys are dumb."

Lavigne the one-dimensional angry rocker chick is just one misconception she hopes to dispel as she releases her second album, Under This Skin, on Tuesday. It's the follow-up to her hugely successful debut, 2002's Let Go.

Though she's only 19, Lavigne has had a profound effect on the pop world in her short career. In 2002, most teen female singing stars were little more than sexy nymphets singing prepackaged pop that was neither distinctive nor written by the stars themselves.

Along came Lavigne - a brash teen who didn't dye her hair blond, wear tight outfits or bounce to a bubble-gum beat. She played instruments (piano and guitar) and actually was credited with co-writing her own songs.

Girls looking for an alternative to Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera flocked to Lavigne. Her album sold more than five million copies and received a slew of Grammy nominations thanks to hits like Sk8er Boi, I'm With You, and Complicated.

Though she's not fond of the term, Lavigne became the anti-Britney - and flourished because of it.

"I get fan letters like all the time  . . . and pretty much every letter just talks about, 'Thank you for not being Britney Spears. I love how you're yourself and you stand up and you're strong,' " she says in a little girl's voice. "I came out and I was myself, dressing, like, my own way."

It wasn't just Lavigne's look - today her hair is light brown with black streaks - that got people's attention. She was billed as a true artist. Many adult performers don't write their own material, so a 17-year-old doing so made Lavigne seem even more authentic.

On her biggest hits, she was paired with the then-unknown production trio known as The Matrix, who were also listed as co-writers. But after The Matrix started becoming ubiquitous as pop writers and producers - working with everyone from Liz Phair to even Britney Spears and Hilary Duff - some people started wondering how much Lavigne had actually contributed to her hits. It didn't help that the trio, who declined to be interviewed for this article, later seemed to be diminishing Lavigne's contributions.

The issue still gets Lavigne steamed.

"I've been writing since I was a little girl. I've been playing guitar since I was a little girl. I've been writing full-on songs since I was 14; like, full-structured songs," she says defiantly. "I am a writer, and I won't accept people trying to take that away from me, and anyone who does is ignorant and doesn't know what they're talking about - and don't you dare!"

Not surprisingly, The Matrix is absent from Under My Skin. Lavigne instead co-wrote most of the songs with fellow Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk - whom she calls her new best friend. She also worked with Ben Moody, formerly of the Grammy-winning duo Evanescence.

Kreviazuk says Lavigne was in complete control of the album and its artistic flow. "She's just so motivated, so driven, when she sat down to write a song, she was just a pistol," she says. "I think that it's quite hilarious that people are saying the opposite, because she's so much a part of the songwriting process."

Though the record definitely has elements of her previous hits - great pop melodies with a rock feel - they also delve into more adult topics, like broken relationships, the loss of a loved one and complex emotions.

"This record definitely proves that I'm a writer and people can't (expletive) knock that, because each song comes from a personal experience of mine, and there are so much emotions in those songs," she says.

Lavigne acknowledges pressure to repeat the massive success of her debut, and admits it may not happen.
 
"You can go as quickly as you came. I believe that I have longevity. I myself will always be pleased. I'm always going to be doing music no matter how big I am, so I'd be satisfied, but you don't know what's going to happen," she says.

But Kreviazuk says that instead of worrying about her past success, Lavigne is more interested in being a well-rounded artist. And she's learned to shrug off the barbs she's received, let down her guard and let people see there's something more to her than an angry stare.

"I slowly watched this metamorphosis. I think one of the things she may have learned is that you can be cool and you can be happy. She has so much to celebrate, and she's aware she's got so much to celebrate," says Kreviazuk. "She doesn't need to be tough about it."

Man, Nature Mix Things Up in 'Day After Tomorrow'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - To hear director Roland Emmerich tell it, there may be no May 29 or, for that matter, May 30. And this Monday's Memorial Day holiday in the United States -- kiss that one goodbye, too.

Emmerich, maker of 1996 hit "Independence Day" about aliens invading Earth, debuts his new doomsday film, "The Day After Tomorrow," on Friday. The new film offers a look at what could occur if man's messing with Mother Nature freezes us in a new Ice Age.

London, Tokyo, Moscow get blanketed by snow. New York is flooded and frozen like an ice cube tray. The southern U.S. emigrates to Mexico -- all in about seven days.

Make no mistake, "The Day After Tomorrow" is pure Hollywood fantasy. But well before its debut, the film has sparked talk of what really could occur if we fail to halt global warming.

Volunteers from environmental groups Global Exchange and Rainforest Action Network plan to leaflet theaters in 80 cities, and Moveon.org is holding a "Town Hall" on the issue in New York. It follows a similar London meeting two weeks ago.

The groups have no big complaints with the film, except to say that dramatic changes in weather would take decades and would be regional not global. In fact, most are glad Emmerich has shed light on the issue, and the director is happy to cop a plea of using dramatic license.

"Yes, it is over the top, but it has to be," he told Reuters. "Otherwise, it wouldn't be a Hollywood movie."

Emmerich does not consider himself an environmentalist, although he said he is concerned about the environment. But the idea that global warming, caused by burning fossil fuels, could lead to an Ice Age was intriguing. It had just the kind of ironic twist that makes a Hollywood plot, well, Hollywood.

GLOBAL SCALE, HUMAN DIMENSION

In "The Day After Tomorrow," Dennis Quaid portrays climatologist Jack Hall, who theorizes that Earth's warming atmosphere will lead to changing ocean currents -- a fact established by scientists. This in turn, would melt polar ice, raise sea levels and push cold arctic air southward.

Hall claims such a catastrophe is 100, maybe 1000, years away. Little does he know, it is already happening, and only days after he publishes his theory, Earth's climate shifts. That is where Hollywood comes in.

Tornadoes wreck Los Angeles. Tokyo is pelted with hail the size of melons, and the British Isles become a sheet of Ice.

In Manhattan, Hall's son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is trapped with several friends when the sea rises to flood city streets and kill millions. Arctic researcher Hall sets out from Washington, D.C. to save Sam, turning the story from a global disaster into a human tale of survival against odds.

Emmerich said one key to making disaster movies work for audiences is to bring a personal dimension to them.

"People who live through disasters are normal, regular people. You identify with those people and ask yourself, 'what would I do?"' he said.

Emmerich, who wrote the story, said he shelved the first draft of "The Day After Tomorrow" following the Sept. 11 attacks, and slowly returned to it after six months or so.

The story had "an important theme," he said. "Sept. 11 was not only about destruction, but also about bravery and coming together. The film also shows the resiliency of New Yorkers."
 
On that point, scientists agree. The human race can revise its course and reverse global warming.

"To me, this is not a doomsday scenario," said Peter Frumhoff, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit Cambridge, Massachusetts, group. "It is a very pragmatic scenario ... we're in a position where we can make choices about what kind of future we want to make."

So, sigh with relief. There will be May 29 and, for that matter, May 30. And the upcoming holiday will be there too, but -- and here's the really good news in the United States -- you still don't have to go to work.

'Shrek 2' Success to Spawn More Sequels

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Record-breaking "Shrek 2" cast a bigger box-office spell than first imagined, convincing distributor DreamWorks SKG that even grumpy green ogres can live happily after -- at least for two more sequels.

Opening in a record 4,163 theaters last Wednesday, the computer-animated storybook satire posted $129 million in ticket sales during its first five days across North America, the most ever for a mid-week release.

The previous five-day record for a Wednesday opening was set in December by "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," which grossed $124.1 million through its first Sunday.

For the three days beginning Friday, the traditional start of the weekend box office, "Shrek 2" generated $108 million, making it the second-biggest opening ever behind the $114.8 million release of "Spider-Man" in May of 2002.

"That's better than anyone could have anticipated, even in our wildest dreams," Jim Tharp, DreamWorks president of domestic theatrical distribution, told Reuters as final weekend figures were issued on Monday showing higher receipts than were initially reported.

The head of DreamWorks animation, Ann Daly, said that with the success of "Shrek 2," the studio would move ahead, one at a time, with plans for a third and fourth installment.

"It wasn't really advisable to start working on three and four until we knew that we actually had something in two, and certainly this weekend confirmed that we do," she said.

Daly said DreamWorks was in final talks with the principal voice actors to return, including Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz as the newlywed green ogres with horn-shaped ears, Eddie Murphy as the talking Donkey, and Antonio Banderas as the swashbuckling Puss in Boots.

"Shrek 2" also set a new benchmark as the biggest animated debut of all time, topping the $70 million bow of last year's undersea adventure "Finding Nemo," and marks the strongest 2004 opening so far, surpassing the $89.3 million posted by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" in February.

"Shrek 2" clearly benefited from the wild popularity of DreamWorks' original fairy tale farce, which opened with more than $42 million in May 2001 and went on to gross $267.7 million in domestic theaters alone.

Paul Dergarabedian, head of box office tracking service Exhibitor Relations, said the Wednesday opening of "Shrek 2" also worked to the film's advantage, giving it two days of free press and positive word of mouth heading into the weekend. The movie's broad demographic appeal was an additional factor.

"This was really the first family movie of the summer, and there was definitely a pent-up demand. You can see that reflected in these grosses," Dergarabedian said. "It's not just a kids' movie: it's a movie for everyone."

Dergarabedian predicted that "Shrek 2" would hold up well next weekend as it competes for Memorial Day weekend business against the global warming disaster epic "The Day After Tomorrow," hip-hop comedy "Soul Plane" and the female-driven comedy romance "Raising Helen."

The success of the CGI-animated "Shrek 2" follows the box office disappointments of two recent hand-drawn cartoons released by DreamWorks -- last year's "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" and 2002's "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron."

Daly said DreamWorks' animation division is currently focused on two upcoming projects, "Shark Tale," due for an October release, and the new TV series, "Father of the Pride," about lions who perform in Siegfried and Roy's famed Las Vegas act, which debuts this fall on NBC.

THIS WEEK'S CDS

Avril Lavigne - "Under My Skin"

One reason Avril Lavigne's debut disc, "Let Go" sold over 15 million copies worldwide was that it was simple. The album was plain old rock 'n' roll by a 16-year old girl.

Lavigne's second disc is similar in that respect. Listen to the frantic Blondie referenced on

"He Wasn't" and you hear an uncomplicated melody. Where the disc breaks away is with emotional, adult lyrics.

In a way, this is a very risky disc for Lavigne, since most of her audience still isn't old enough to have experienced love or heartache. This kind of content may head-surf right over the kids at the mall, but it also has the potential to expand her fans. And who knows? The catchy melodies may hold the kids' attention long enough for them to grow into these songs.

Everlast - "White Trash Beautiful"

Even though Everlast doesn't break out the banjos and yodel on his latest album, "White Trash Beautiful," the disc heads the rapper further into the hills of hick-hop. On his third solo record, the one-time frontman for Boston's House of Pain raps and rolls his distinctive bass-bottom vocals through melodies that range from straight-ahead rap ("The Warning") to blues and country. With 15 tracks, the disc covers a lot of stylistic ground, but its theme stays focused on living life without love. The best of these dumpster love tracks is "This Kind of Lonely," which opens with the sound of rain, acoustic guitar chords supporting Everlast's guttural gravel, and ultimately bows to Saint Hank in a chorus of "I'm so lonesome I could die."

Felix da Housecat- "Devlin Dazzle and the Neon Fever"

Amid cheesy keyboard swirls, beat-box thumps and his sexy club-girl vocalists (who lapse into French), Chicago's Felix da Housecat has made dance music cool again. Felix has a way with party music that he says makes men want to dance and women want to strip. That formula was the essence of his work on Britney's "Toxic" and it riddles this disc, from "Short Shirts" to "Everyone Is Someone in L.A." The sound is '80s new-wave retro with loads of guitars and layered vocals, yet the music of "Devlin Dazzle" isn't intended for live performance. This is an intricate record that will be best appreciated through quality headphones that will give the listener total stereo separation.

Wilson Phillips - "California"

What better synchronicity to celebrate classic California rock than having Brian Wilson's daughters, Carnie and Wendy, and the late Papa John Phillips' girl Chynna perform them. On this album of cover songs - which includes Joni Mitchell's "California," of course, as well as "Dr. My Eyes," "Monday, Monday" and "Get Together" - the trio, collectively know as Wilson Phillips, is on the comeback. This album reminds you that these three women have a gift for harmony. Their voices, especially on Brian Wilson's "In My Room" and Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way," make it clear that they sound better together than when they appear as solo artists. Some songs have lite-FM arrangements, but most never veer far from the original charts.

Skinny Puppy - "The Greater Wrong of the Right"

Artistically paralyzed since the overdose death of bandmate Dwayne Goettel eight years ago, industrial/alternative act Skinny Puppy picks up where its 1996 "The Process" left off. The electronic music projects a familiar sense of foreboding, even on musically up-tempo tracks such as "I'mmortal" and "DaddyuWarbash." This is a dark, propulsive album with politically aware lyrics. Listen for Tool's Danny Carey's drumming and vocals by Static-X frontman Wayne Static on "Use Less," the disc's top track. The music here is aggressive, with vocals that talk their way through the melodies. They aren't perfect, but they're never bland. Listen to it loudly for a full appreciation of Skinny Puppy's biting storm-to-calm dynamic.

'Shrek 2' Rakes in $104.3M at Box Office

LOS ANGELES - It's a humongous "happily ever after" for "Shrek 2." The computer-animated fairy tale satire collected an estimated $104.3 million at the weekend box office, the second-biggest three-day tally in movie history behind 2002's "Spider-Man," which took in $114.8 million.

"Shrek 2" also scored the biggest opening ever for an animated film, easily topping "Finding Nemo's" $70.2 million. "Shrek," which opened in 2001, earned $42.3 million in its first weekend — but went on to collect $267.6 million and win the first Oscar for an animated feature film.

For the sequel, the grumpy green ogre collected $28.4 million on Friday, and then jumped a remarkable 58 percent Saturday to earn $44.8 million, according to Jim Tharp, head of distribution for DreamWorks.

Saturday's earnings broke Hollywood's overall record for highest one-day earnings, also held by "Spider-Man" with $43.6 million.

DreamWorks estimated the movie would earn an additional $31 million on Sunday — but even rival studios suggested the take would be higher than that. Final figures will be released Monday.

Last week's No. 1 film, the Brad Pitt epic "Troy," fell to second place in its second weekend, earning $23.8 million for a total of $85.8 million. The movie cost a reported $200 million to make.

Meanwhile, third-place "Van Helsing" crossed the $100 million mark with weekend earnings of $10.1 million, and "Mean Girls" ranked fourth with $6.9 million.

"'Shrek 2' was cutting into everybody else's audience," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co.

In the sequel, the title ogre (voiced by Mike Myers), his bride, Fiona (Cameron Diaz), and their pal Donkey (Eddie Murphy) visit Fiona's royal parents in the kingdom of Far, Far Away.

Critics loved the movie, which appealed to young kids with colorful characters, teenagers with comedy, couples with romance, and older audiences with a subplot about parents accepting the decisions of their grown-up children.

"Shrek 2," which opened Wednesday, screened in the largest number of opening theaters ever — 4,163 locations. It also brought in $125.3 million over its first five days, breaking the record set by "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," which grossed $124.1 million.

The sequel is a great victory for DreamWorks, which has occasionally struggled to find its footing in the animated movie market. The first "Shrek" was a success and the studio had a modest hit with 1998's computer-animated "Antz," but traditionally animated fare like "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," "The Road to El Dorado" and "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" were all money-losers.

"For us, this is really more about proving that we have a creative rhythm as a company," said Ann Daly, head of animation for DreamWorks. "We found our tone and style."

About 60 percent of the audience was comprised of parents and their children, Tharp said. Studio exit polling found that 70 percent of respondents wanted to see the movie again, which bodes well for the movie's future in the competitive summer blockbuster season.

The weekend's total box-office earnings were up about 2 percent from last year, when "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Daddy Day Care" topped the list.

Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Shrek 2," $104.3 million.
2. "Troy," $23.8 million.
3. "Van Helsing," $10.1 million.
4. "Mean Girls," $6.9 million.
5. "Man on Fire," $3.5 million.
6. "Breakin' All the Rules," $2.8 million.
7. "13 Going on 30," $2.5 million.
8. "New York Minute," $1.1 million.
9. "Kill Bill — Vol. 2," $1 million.
10. "Super Size Me," $953,455.

Cat Stevens Releases First DVD

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, hopes that the performance captured on his first DVD brings back the "energy, passion and beautiful messages" of the 1970s.

"Cat Stevens: Majikat: Earth Tour 1976" from Eagle Rock Entertainment features the artist's last concert, which took place in February 1976 in Williamsburg, Va. Among the DVD's 21 songs are "Peace Train" and "Where Do the Children Play?"

Islam says his last performance was also his first to be filmed. "I wasn't used to having cameras onstage," he recalls. "Once I got over that, it created an intensity which can be seen in the performance."

In a three-part interview featured on the DVD, the artist discusses his childhood, his rise to stardom and his life after converting to Islam and leaving the music industry.

"These interviews will help explain a lot of things about my life to people," he says.

In addition to launching the DVD, Islam this month announced the expansion of his U.K.-based charity Small Kindness. The organization, which will open a Los Angeles office, helps families in countries affected by war. Small Kindness currently runs a job-training center for Iraqi girls.

Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Has Hollywood Buzzing

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The White House calls the film "outrageously false," but Hollywood is hot for "Fahrenheit 9/11," documentary filmmaker Michael Moore's caustic broadside at President Bush.

A day after the film won the top Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France, industry observers on Sunday predicted the controversial movie would be a box office hit, even if some early reviews have hardly been favorable.

"I think it will be hugely successful," said D.A. Pennebaker, veteran documentary director whose films include the Oscar-nominated 1992 election campaign saga "The War Room." "It's going to get a lot of publicity."

In "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore takes aim at Bush's handling of Iraq and the war on terror and traces links between the Bush family and prominent Saudis including the family of Osama bin Laden. It was greeted with a rapturous standing ovation at its Cannes world premiere, but not everyone was impressed.

Dan Barlett, the White House communications director, was quoted by the New York Times last week as saying of the film "it is so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment."

Also critical was the review in the entertainment industry journal Daily Variety which called the film a "blatant cinematic 2004 campaign pamphlet" and said it "fails to provide any hard facts or make any incriminating connections that a reasonably informed person doesn't already know about."

That may not matter to the fans of the man behind "Roger & Me," and the anti-gun documentary "Bowling for Columbine." Moore, in fact, laid the groundwork for "Fahrenheit 9/11" a year ago when he accepted the Oscar for "Columbine," and launched into a tirade against Bush on worldwide television.

A few weeks ago he was back in the news again, complaining that Walt Disney Co. had prevented its Miramax Films unit from releasing "Fahrenheit 9/11." Disney said it did not want to be associated with a political hot potato in an election year, and noted that Moore had known this for a year.

Miramax co-chairmen Harvey and Bob Weinstein are in the process of buying the movie with their own money and lining up a distributor, which is not expected to be a big problem.

Thanks to Moore's knack for self-promotion, "everybody in America is going to know about this movie, if they don't know about it already," said Michael Silberman, president of distribution at IDP Distribution, which recently released "Super Size Me," a documentary about the perils of fast food.

"Bowling for Columbine" is the most successful documentary in North America with ticket sales of $21.5 million. His new one should at least match that, industry executives say.

"Whether you like Harvey or not, he's a die-hard Democrat and he's going to see to it this film gets exposed. It's going to make a lot of money," said T.C. Rice, president of distribution at New York-based independent studio Manhattan Pictures.

Moore has said he wants "Fahrenheit 9/11" to come out as soon as possible so that it will influence the November presidential election and send Bush back to Texas.

That could be a tall order, according to Kim Serafin, a politically moderate radio talk show host in Los Angeles.

"He'll have lots of applause from the people he's already preaching to, the people that already like him and believe in him and think he's a great filmmaker," she said. "And the people who don't ... they weren't going to see this movie anyway."

On the other hand, the Cannes win has given the film some legitimacy, and the film could bring out Moore-haters if only so that they can "know thy enemy," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

"When people are talking about a movie like this, they want to see what all the fuss is about. In an election year it's all the more appealing to people because everybody's in this political mode," he said.

Murray to star in Jarmusch film

After a lot of chasing, director Jim Jarmusch finally has the lead man for his new film.

Bill Murray will take on the lead role in his as-yet-untitled comedy, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Murray, whose popularity has shot up since his Oscar-nominated role in last year's "Lost In Translation," had agreed to star if the picture could be sped into production to fit his schedule.

The film is expected to begin shooting in New York this summer.

Murray appears in Jarmusch's "Coffee & Cigarettes," which hits theatres on Friday.

John Fogerty Sets Summer Tour And A New Album Is In The Works

Former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty, who rarely plays concerts and issues new recorded material even less often, will tour extensively this summer before releasing a new album.

Fogerty opens his trek in late June and will touch down in more than 30 cities over the next two months. It's been about four years since Fogerty's last major tour.

The outing will be followed this fall with the release of Fogerty's first new studio album since 1997's "Blue Moon Swamp."

"I have been in the studio putting the finishing touches on my new record, scheduled to be out in mid to late September," Fogerty wrote in a message on his website. "We will put the release date up as soon as we know it."

Fogerty's most recent album was 1998's "Premonition," which included 18 live tracks that he recorded during a performance the previous year. It was around that time that Fogerty began to play CCR hits in concert; for well over a decade, he refused to play the songs because of a long-running business dispute with CCR's label, Fantasy Records.

Tour Itinerary

June 2004

25 - Saratoga, CA - Montalvo Garden Theatre
26 - Lake Tahoe, NV - Harvey's Amphitheatre
28 - Medford, OR - Jackson County Fairgrounds
29 - Eugene, OR - Cuthbert Amphitheatre
30 - Redmond, WA - Marymoor Amphitheatre

July 2004

2 - Spokane, WA - Lilac Bowl
3 - McCall, ID - Brundage Mountain Amphitheatre
4 - Big Sky, MT - Big Sky Outdoor Pavilion (w/ Allman Brothers)
6 - Missoula, MT - Caras Park Pavilion
7 - Nampa, ID - Idaho Center Amphitheatre
9 - Park City, UT - Deer Valley
10 - Denver, CO - Universal Lending Pavilion
11 - Kearney, NE - Tri City Arena
13 - Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theatre
14 - Omaha, NE - Omaha Civic Music Hall
16 - Walker, MN - Moondance Jam Festival
17 - Mankato, MN - Midwest Wireless Civic Center
18 - Cadott, WI - Chippewa Valley Rock Fest
20 - South Bend, IN - Morris Auditorium
21 - Peoria, IL - Civic Center Theatre
23 - Arnold's Park, IA - Arnold's Park
24 - St. Paul, MN - Minnesota State Fairgrounds
27 - San Diego, CA - Summer Pops Bowl
28 - Costa Mesa, CA - Orange County Fair
29 - Paso Robles, CA - California Mid-State Fair
31 - Las Vegas, NV - The Joint

August 2004

1 - Phoenix, AZ - Dodge Theatre
4 - Albuquerque, NM - Sandia Casino
6 - Grand Prairie, TX - Nokia Live (NextStage)
7 - Austin, TX - The Backyard
8 - Houston TX - Verizon Wireless Theatre

Uninterrupted '24' Run Begins in January

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Regular viewers of FOX's "24" know that even if you catch every episode, figuring out where the plot is going is often a challenge. One week Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is in Mexico and the next week, Mexico doesn't matter anymore. One week Dennis Haysbert's President Palmer has a girlfriend whose husband is committing suicide and the next week she's gone, never to be mentioned again. Some weeks Jack's hooked on smack and a virus is about to take over the West Coast and then the next week, Jack's clean and sober and the virus is a secondary concern.

Throw in the programming interruptions that often preempt "24" for multiple weeks at a stretch and it's no wonder that the ratings for the award winning drama have been erratic this season.

FOX aims to bring stability back to "24" next year. The series won't return until January, when it moves into a new time period on Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET. The show will get a two-hour premiere and a two-hour finale. FOX Entertainment President Gail Berman also promises a two-hour special event episode in the middle of the season. The three instances of doubling down will allow "24" to reach its conclusion by the end of the May sweeps period.

The network's hope is that while the new time slot strips "24" of its protected post-"American Idol" hour, airing on Mondays will prevent the kind of schedule juggling that left the show on the shelf whenever "Idol" stretched to two hours. The plan is to air the entire season without a single repeat (long the "24" standard) and without a single week off (a miracle if it happens).

"'24' is appointment television and we believe that moving it to Monday, creating an event out of it with no breaks in the schedule, will enable the viewer to really get on the ride and have an event that takes you through to May with it," Berman says.

In its third season, "24" averaged 9.35 million viewers before the January premiere of "Idol." The boost from the popular talent show has only been moderate, lifting "24" to its season average of 10.18 million viewers, down by roughly a million from last season's numbers.

Except for random periods where the show has vanished from FOX's schedule for weeks at time, the network has been consistent in its support of the atypical series. In planning the new multi-tiered year-round schedule, though, executives determined that it was time to share the cushy "Idol" warmth.

"We need to make room on the schedule for new hits," Berman admits "We'd like 'American Idol' to be used as a launch pad for new opportunities for the network."

After it premieres in January 2005, "Idol" will provide a Tuesday lead-in for "House," a medical drama from "Quiz Show" screenwriter and "Homicide: Life on the Street" creator Paul Attanasio. The Wednesday results show, moved to 9 p.m., will reward veteran comedy "The Bernie Mac Show."

The move to Mondays isn't akin to being thrown to the Nielsen wolves for "24." FOX has placed the series behind one of its most anticipated new dramas of the season, "Athens." The new offering from Josh Schwartz ("The O.C.") takes a soapy look at a fictional New England college town and the unlikely friendship between a young English professor and an 18-year-old freshman (a relationship FOX is already likening to the bond between Seth and Ryan on "The O.C.").

'Family Guy' Returns Next Summer to FOX

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - In its three seasons on FOX, the animated comedy "Family Guy" danced around the network's schedules like a ballerina on methamphetamines. The show occupied three different Tuesday time slots, three periods on Thursday, two half-hours on Wednesday and one niche on Sundays. Either the show was incapable of finding an audience because it kept switching times, or it kept switching times because it couldn't find an audience. Either way, except for a dedicated, but miniscule following, nobody was watching "Family Guy."

After a popular DVD release and a successful late night run on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" block, FOX thinks "Family Guy" is ready for primetime again. Seth MacFarlane's dysfunctional animated family will return to FOX's schedules in the summer of 2005 with all new episodes.

"When I first joined the network my first order of business was ordering more episodes of 'Family Guy,'" says FOX Entertainment President Gail Berman. "I believe this show was way ahead of its time. It's now a huge DVD hit and we believe that 'Family Guy' has a ready-made fan base eager for its return."

"Family Guy" will return next summer with all of its vocal talent intact. MacFarlane will return as the voices of lumpy everyman Peter Griffin, homicidal baby Stewie and family dog Brian. Alex Bornstein returns as long-suffering wife Lois Griffin and Mila Kunis and Seth Green will be back as children Meg and Chris Griffin.

FOX's return to Quahog, Rhode Island is only part of the network's MacFarlane renaissance. His new animated series, "American Dad," launches as part of FOX's January 2005 schedule, following "Arrested Development" on Sunday nights at 9:30.

"American Dad" will get a high profile preview following a special episode of "The Simpsons," which will take the coveted post-Super Bowl slot on Sunday, Feb. 6.

MacFarlane lends his vocal talents to the new series as well, voicing Stan Smith, a CIA agent constantly on the lookout for terrorist activities. The Smith family also includes Roger (also MacFarlane) a space alien from Area 51 and Klaus (Dee Bradley Baker), a German speaking goldfish.

Giving Birth:

According to Dark Horizons, the new title of STAR WARS EPISODE III will be BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE and the film will climax with the battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin. "There's going to be a big announcement soon," said the scooper. "They've tried lots of titles but the most popular is BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE."

Meanwhile, if you haven't seen it, AICN has a picture from a supposedly recut version of RETURN OF THE JEDI that puts Hayden Christensen in the final scene. Just scroll down through the miles of purple text. Keep scrolling. It's called burying the lead, folks.

KUDOS!

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos will be honored as the Rising Female Star of the Year at the Video Software Dealers Association's Home Entertainment 2004 conference July 14 in Las Vegas.

"Shrek 2" Off to Fairy-Tale Start

A happy-ever-after beginning for Shrek 2.

The continued adventures of Mike Myers' Scottish-braying ogre picked up where the fractured fairy tale left off, cleaning up at the box office with an estimated $11.8 million from Wednesday's opening day.

DreamWorks hit the books, crunched the numbers and declared the bow a record--a "record for a mid-week opening by an animated film," topping the illustrious Pokémon: The First Movie, which coerced kiddies out of $10.1 million in 1999.

Brandon Gray of the ticket-tracking site BoxOfficeMojo.com, predicted a $60 million Friday-Sunday opening weekend for Shrek 2 and a five-day (Wednesday-Sunday) gross of about $84 million.

The original Shrek took in $42.3 million in its first three days of release in May 2001. It went on to score $267.7 million--its year's third-biggest moneymaker.

Gray said Shrek 2 should live up to its birthright, and avoid a Van Helsing (i.e., a precipitous fall at the box office following a big opening weekend) as the summer wears on.

"It has a shot at outgrossing the first movie," Gray said. "It will have longer legs than most sequels."

Still, it'll have a ways to go to become the top-grossing animated film of all-time, with Finding Nemo's $339.7 million being no easy catch.

The CGI-animated Shrek 2 reunites Myers with his costars from the first film: Cameron Diaz as the now-blushing bride, Princess Fiona, and, Eddie Murphy as plucky Donkey.

Julie Andrews and John Cleese, as Fiona's parents, are among the fresh voices in the sequel.

The first film was that rarest of beasts: The popular film that's popular with critics. Shrek 2 has shaped up the same way, with a rosy 88 percent positive-review average on RottenTomatoes.com. Exploiting a good thing while it's still well-liked, DreamWorks has already ordered up a third film.

About the only glitch in this fairy tale: A miffed screenwriter.

Ted Elliott, who with partner Terry Rossio cowrote the Oscar-nominated script for Shrek (two other writers also received credit and nominations), took to his and Rossio's Website, Wordplay (www.wordplayer.com), on Wednesday to vent about Andrew Adamson, the director of the original film and sequel.

In a post titled, "The only post I will make on the topic of Shrek 2," Elliott took issue with Adamson's story credit on the new film.

"More than half of the story elements in the movie were created by Terry and me," wrote Elliott, who is not credited on Shrek 2. "This the second time director Adamson has attempted to claim writing credit for the work of the other people. The first time, on Shrek, he failed; this time, he succeeded."

Elliott closed the brief post with even briefer advice to writers considering working with Adamson: "Do not," he wrote.

A message left with a DreamWorks seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday.

Two New Classic Films Are Coming (Back) To DVD

Just announced from Universal is a much-requested new reissue of Richard Linklater's Dazed & Confused: Flashback Edition, which will hit the streets on September 14th. Remastered in anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Digital 5.1, extras include a new audio commentary with Linklater, deleted scenes and trailers.

Universal will also release the seminal 80's teen classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High on the 14th, now available in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen editions. Each boasts the same extras as before.

Massive Stones concert transformed into two-disc DVD available June 29

TORONTO (CP) - Mick Jagger sent a videotaped message to Toronto on Thursday to launch a DVD of last summer's enormous outdoor concert to help the SARS-battered city.

The show, attended by 490,000 people, featured the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, the Guess Who and Justin Timberlake, among others. "It was definitely the biggest show we've ever done. It was one of the highlights of our career. It really remains in my memory," Jagger said. Producers of the two-disc DVD, in stores June 29, edited the 16-hour day into two-hours and 40 minutes of performances and behind-the-scenes footage, and included all the Canadian talent.

It will sell for between $32 and $39, depending on the retailer. To keep the DVD's length manageable, between one and three songs from each performer were chosen, except the Stones who got six.

Acts were sent a copy of their performance and were allowed to select their favourites.

Two highlights were also saved from the cutting room floor: AC/DC guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young on stage with the Stones for Rock Me Baby and popstar Justin Timberlake's Miss You duet with Jagger.

Bonus footage shows Jagger and Timberlake rehearsing for their duet, Burton Cummings introducing himself to Jagger and Rush's Neil Peart and the Stones' Charlie Watts discussing drums.

It's "one of the more historic gatherings of rock history," said concert promoter Michael Cohl of TGA Entertainment, who has organized the Stones' last few world tours.

Outside of Canada, the DVD will be cut down into a single disc. Most of the home grown acts will be cut.

It took producers 10 months to create the DVD because it involved negotiating rights and securing clearances with 45 songwriters, 15 artists, 10 record companies and 14 publishers, said Cohl, the executive producer.

The artists have all agreed to fork over any revenue from sales of the DVD to several charities, including ones for hospitality and health workers.

"We are giving our money that we get from royalties to the various charities and good works in Toronto," said Jagger. "Hopefully this concert and the awareness that it brought did something towards helping (Toronto tourism)."

Organizers have said the economic impact on a national level was $1-billion for the one-day event. Over $1 million was raised for charity, added Cohl, who got the ball rolling on the show by re-routing the Stones tour to make a stop in Toronto last July 30.

Cohl said the DVD is special because the show is the only one of its kind, being the largest ticketed single day event in history.

"It's the only show to draw 400,000-to-500,000 people ever where there was no one killed, where there was only double-digit arrests and barely over 100 people sent to hospital and most of them for minor things," he said. "It was a miraculous day."

Organizers are also offering a 60-minute highlight show free to any TV station around the world willing to air it.

So far, said Cohl, stations in over 50 countries have accepted the freebie. The special also includes a three-minute Toronto tourism pitch.

It will air close to the release of the DVD. In Canada, CBC and Citytv have grabbed the reel.

New trade terms see cost of EMI CDs rise $2 to $10 at HMV stores in Canada

TORONTO (CP) - A dispute between music label EMI and retailer HMV is hitting music fans and indie artists like Sum 41 and Oh Susanna in the pocketbook.

Experts say the price increases - between $2 and $10 - for CDs by artists such as Nickelback, Janet Jackson, Norah Jones, Radiohead and Sarah McLachlan, are just the latest manifestation of the industry's woes.

The increases, which took effect in early April, are due to a squabble over the wholesale price of EMI's CDs, and all the indie labels it distributes.

Both sides have been guarded about discussing the issue saying "trading terms" between the companies are confidential. However, each concedes that money is at the heart of the problem.

HMV wants EMI to maintain its volume discount on CDs so the chain can sell new releases at a cheaper price and get music lovers into its stores - rather than big-box competitors like WalMart and Costco.

"EMI chose to reduce the level of support that they had previously offered HMV," Humphrey Kadaner, president of HMV Canada, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

As a result, Kadaner said HMV can't give EMI distributed products the same level of "value-added" support it gives other labels.

That means EMI artists don't get priority placement near the front of stores, their songs don't get played inside the stores and they're not listed on HMV's chart wall - often the first place a consumer will look when entering a music shop.

Kadaner said under the new trade terms, EMI passed on a higher price to HMV. Subsequently, the chain had to pass the hike on to the consumer, he said.

"We passed it on proportionally. We've maintained the same margin as before. We have not tried to use this as a vehicle to drive any incremental profitability," said Kadaner.

For its part, EMI Canada says it can't afford to capitulate to the chain's demands because sales at the chain dropped about 25 per cent last year.

Further, label head Deane Cameron says the label did not raise its CD prices.

"It's not fair for us to have trading terms that reward HMV for their volume if their volume is not there," he said. "HMV is selling a lot more DVDs these days. That's why we're getting elbowed out."

He added: "We asked them to consider different trading terms. That wasn't received too well and we appear to be in the penalty box. It's disappointing for artists to be punished to this extent."

It's far from the first time HMV, which holds the leading market share of pre-recorded music in Canada, has fought to increase its bottom line. Two years ago a messy dispute with Warner over wholesale prices pushed HMV to pull all Warner CDs from its stores.

It's no secret the CD market has been troubled in recent years. The Canadian Recording Industry Association says that on a per-capita basis, the Canadian music industry has been one of the hardest hit of any country in the world by illegal file swapping. Retail sales have decreased by more than $425 million since 1999, says the organization.

To stay afloat, HMV started selling DVDs a few years back, which some say saved the chain from bankruptcy.
 
"When this whole downloading thing happened their music business tanked," said Maureen Atkinson, senior partner at J.C. Williams Group, a retail and marketing consulting firm. "They really struggled, as did the recording industry."

But this latest ripple has more victims than just EMI. The label consists of 70 music labels representing over 1,500 artists around the world. In Canada, EMI distributes CDs for smaller independent labels, including Nettwerk, Popular, Marquis and Aquarius.

It's these smaller Canadian indie labels - which support home grown talent like Sum 41 and Broken Social Scene - that find themselves the biggest victims of EMI and HMV's trade fallout.

They have the most to lose because their artists aren't sold in big box stores like Future Shop and WalMart - which mostly only carry Top 40 CDs with very little back catalogue - and rely on specialty stores to sell their stuff.

"It's just not fair. Do they care that by raising the Oh Susanna disc to $28 they make it impossible for people to buy her CD in their store," said Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk. "That hurts the artist. That artist is a person. They're not a corporate entity."

Customers have already said the price of CDs is too high, added McBride.

"It's extremely short-sighted because people are already buying less and less CDs. The reason why HMV and EMI are having this little tussle is because EMI margins have been shrunk, the marketplace is shrinking and every player in this business needs to come to terms with that and be part of the solution - not get into these stupid little trade wars. Nobody wins."

Kravitz Says Album Is New Chapter in Life

LOS ANGELES - Two years after dropping out of the music scene, Lenny Kravitz says he has begun a new chapter in his life — a new album titled, "Baptism."

"I feel like the last record closed a chapter, a big chapter in my life, and this is the beginning of another one," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I feel reborn, I feel great. I feel like it's my first record again."

Kravitz said he took a break from recording and touring for a more important job — taking care of his family.

"Being a dad comes first and that's the most important thing," he said. "It'd be a shame to be a great musician and whatever, but not to take care of your kid, that ain't happening."

Kravitz said he has been trying to keep a low profile, but it's been difficult with his relationship with Nicole Kidman making tabloid headlines.

"Sometimes it's in your face, but you know, people make up what they want, they write what they want, they lie," he said. "I just try to keep stepping."

Poll: 'Psycho' Is Best Movie Death Ever

LONDON - Janet Leigh's shower scene in "Psycho" is the "best movie death" of all time, according to a critics' poll published Thursday.

The 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller beat other iconic movies such as "The Godfather" and Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" (23rd) in the non-scientific poll by Total Film magazine.

Stanley Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" (1964) came in second, with its surreal ending in which Slim Pickens rides an atomic bomb.

Other highly rated movie deaths were the fatal plunge of the ape in 1933's "King Kong," which came in third place, and the demise of Bambi's mother in the 1942 Disney movie "Bambi," which came in sixth.

"Some of the deaths in the poll, like The Wicked Witch melting in 'The Wizard Of Oz' (13th), are iconic but laughable, but nearly 45 years on, 'Psycho's' shower scene is still distressing," said Total Film deputy editor Simon Crook.

"It's the sheer violence of the edit rather than any explicit gore — 70 different angles, over 90 cuts and those shrieking violins. It's a master class in montage and audience manipulation."

Crook added: "Knowing that the blood is Bosco's chocolate syrup and that a pulped casaba melon stood in for the stabbing noises does nothing to reduce the impact."

Van Halen's Latest Hits CD Boasts Three New Cuts

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Van Halen has recorded three new songs for inclusion on "The Very Best of Van Halen," expected to come out later this summer to coincide with the rock band's reunion tour.

The cuts "It's About Time," "Up for Breakfast" and "Learning To See" feature vocalist Sammy Hagar, who has rejoined the group eight years after an acrimonious departure.

The double-disc "Very Best" (Warner Music Group) picks up the Van Halen story with the iconic "Eruption" from the group's self-titled 1978 debut. Every major hit is present, from the David Lee Roth (news)-era smashes "Jump," "Panama," "I'll Wait" and "(Oh) Pretty Woman" to such Hagar-associated material as "When It's Love," "Why Can't This Be Love" and "Finish What Ya Started."

Also featured are live versions of "Ain't Talking 'Bout Love," "Jump" and "Panama" from the 1993 concert set "Right Here, Right Now." Notably excluded are any songs from Van Halen's last studio album, 1998's commercial dud "Van Halen III," the lone release to feature former Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone.

Van Halen's first tour since 1998 will kick off June 11 in Greensboro, N.C. The band's manager, Irving Azoff, recently told Billboard the trek will ultimately consist of four legs of 22 shows each.

According to a spokesperson, the album's running order has not yet been finalized, contrary to the track list posted on Van Halen's official Web site.

Van Halen previously released a single-disc hits package, "Best Of, Volume I," in 1996. It featured two new tracks recorded during a brief and ill-fated reunion with Roth.

'Shrek 2' Set to Reach Record Number of Theaters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Computer-animated "Shrek 2" will play in a record 4,163 theaters domestically this weekend, marking the first time a film has surpassed the 4,000-theater mark in its debut, studio DreamWorks said on Thursday.

The feature, in which the green ogre Shrek and his sidekick Donkey send up Hollywood and its obsession with body image, debuted on Wednesday this week to a one-day box office haul of $11.8 million, a record for an animated movie.

Given a theater count surpassing the previous domestic record held by last year's "X2: X-Men United," the sequel to 2001 smash hit "Shrek" looks to rake in cash at U.S. and Canadian box offices. "This is unprecedented ... I've never seen a movie open in that many theaters," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Los Angeles-based audience tracking service Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

DreamWorks' head of distribution Jim Tharp said the number of theaters showing the film had been raised from just over 3,700 on Wednesday as more theaters were able to open screens for the release.

Dergarabedian declined to predict just how big a success "Shrek 2" might be, but said $50 million in ticket sales for the three-day weekend "would not be out of the question."

If so, that would top last week's final $46.8 million for Trojan War epic "Troy," and be competitive with the $54 million first weekend haul for the previous week's vampire killer movie "Van Helsing." Those two films have been Hollywood's first major releases of the summer box office season.

The summer is the main movie-going period for the major film studios in the United States and the season, which begins in early May and lasts through the Labor Day holiday in early September, accounts for as much as 40 percent of the year's total ticket sales.

The first "Shrek" in 2001 took in $267 million at North American box offices and a total of around $455 million worldwide. Privately held DreamWorks has high hopes the sequel, which has earned solid reviews, can perform at least as well. The first day's ticket sales were a good indication it would.

"This was a spectacular opening and one that exceeded all of our expectations," DreamWorks' Tharp said in a statement.

The previous best one-day debut at midweek by an animated movie was "Pokemon The First Movie," a Warner Bros. title that opened in 1999 on a Wednesday to $10.1 million at domestic box offices, according to Exhibitor Relations.

SEINFELD WEB AD NABS SPOT IN NBC LINEUP

Jerry Seinfeld is back on NBC!

But it's only for one night and only for 10 minutes.

Seinfeld, the former Thursday king of NBC, is returning as part of an unusual primetime promotion for American Express.

The 10-minute promo is scheduled to run from 8:42 p.m. to 8:52 p.m., starting with the television premiere of the "Seinfeld & Superman" series that premiered in March on americanexpress.com.

The "web-i-sode" - titled "A Uniform Used to Mean Something" and running about four minutes - has Seinfeld and Superman (voiced by Patrick Warburton, "Seinfeld's" David Puddy) hanging out together in Manhattan.

But tonight's elaborate promo has also been designed to generate excitement for the second web-i-sode, "Hindsight is 20/20," which will have Jerry and his pal Supe on a road trip.

"Hindsight" premieres today at noon on the Amex Web site.

Neither Amex nor NBC would say whether the 10 minutes of primetime - some of the priciest real estate in all of television - was purchased outright by American Express.

The promo will be sandwiched between a "supersized" rerun of "Friends" and a re-airing of the 66-minute "Friends" series finale.

Those 10 minutes would be worth nearly $9.5 million based on reported rates for 30-second spots during regular episodes of "Friends" - $473,500, according to Advertising Age.

Eminem suit against Apple, MTV a go

DETROIT (AP) -- A federal judge says rapper Eminem's copyright infringement claims over use of his song "Lose Yourself" in a commercial for Apple Computer Inc. can go forward.

Apple featured a 10-year-old boy singing the Oscar-winning theme song to the rapper's movie "8 Mile" in an ad on MTV for the computer company's iPod music player and iTunes music service.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the suit brought by Eminem's publishing company can proceed against several companies, including MTV parent company Viacom and advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day.

Taylor threw out two state law-based claims of unfair competition and unjust enrichment.

The television ad appeared many times during three months beginning in July 2003 and on Apple's Web site, despite the fact that the computer company had unsuccessfully sought Eminem's permission for the campaign.

Herschel Fink, a Detroit lawyer for the defendants, said no viewer would think Eminem was endorsing the iTunes service.

Eminem's lawyers say he has never nationally endorsed any product.

PACKING IT IN

Detective Lennie Briscoe turns in his badge on tonight's "Law & Order" after 12 years - but both he and the only man who's played him, Jerry Orbach, will return for the new "L&O" spinoff kicking off next season.

"It was a mutual thing," Orbach told The New York Post about his decision to leave "L&O," the show on which he's been a constant through hundreds of episodes - and many cast changes.

"Dick Wolf had the spinoff coming and it looked like the perfect opportunity to do one or two days a week rather than all eight days of the [shooting] schedule," said Orbach, 68.

"It's sort of like a golden parachute - as far as the real cops go, they would've retired me years ago."

Orbach will appear regularly on the new show, "Law & Order: Trial By Jury," scheduled to kick off later next season.

"Briscoe is now retired and is working for the DAs office as an investigator. It's just another venue for Lennie," Orbach said. "This show will have DAs, defense lawyers and judges who will revolve, so that I and a partner will be regulars and they can get a big star, like Helen Mirren, to do an episode.

"It could be very interesting."

Orbach said it was "very emotional" filming tonight's episode, after walking the "L&O" beat as Briscoe since 1992.

"I've been doing this an awfully long time; it's been 12 years with that group of people. You see the cast and crew more than you see your own family," he said. "You live with those people. They've become like a real family. It's a real lovefest."

Orbach will be replaced on "Law & Order" by Dennis Farina, an ex-Chicago cop known for his tough-guy cop roles in "Crime Story" and "Buddy Faro."

Orbach said this will, most likely, be his last regular series work.

"I used to say when I was working in the theater that if I ever had five seasons of a hit TV show I'd never have to worry about money and wouldn't have to do anything I didn't want to do," he said.

"The 12 seasons on 'Law & Order' really made that possible. It was a wonderful break for me at that stage of my career."

And the legacy of Briscoe?

"What the New York cops say - 'Keep making us look good,' " Orbach said.

CD Prices on the Rise Again

Universal promised $12.98 CDs. So why is D12 almost $20?

Last fall, music giant Universal announced a sweeping plan to cut the price of new records by thirty percent -- with some CDs selling for just $12.98. But anyone checking out racks at a music store will see recent releases from Universal artists such as D12, Hoobastank and Kanye West still selling for $14.99 to $18.98.

In April, Universal officially raised its suggested retail prices by one dollar. The company thought its gamble of charging less would spark massive sales. It didn't. The price cuts only hurt profitability. "We didn't get the increased sales we needed," says Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distribution. But he points out that Universal still offers the lowest prices among the major labels.

Universal's effort has also been thwarted by some retailers. Physically repricing millions of records at many chains is a time-consuming process. And many indie retailers had refused to go along with the plan, since it eliminated some advertising dollars that Universal had offered in exchange for premium placement. Sources say roughly half of music stores have adopted the price cuts.

While the albums topping the charts aren't yet a bargain, the back catalog of CDs that have been out for longer than eighteen months have helped overall prices inch down. At this time last year, the average full-length CD sold for $13.79; today, it's $13.29, according to marketing-information firm NPD MusicWatch. In early May, Warner Music announced a new plan to market some old titles for $9.98 to $11.98, including artists such as Madonna, Missy Elliott and Prince. For music shoppers looking for deals, the oldies are the only place to go.

Despite the imperative of making CD prices compete with free music on the Net and other entertainment options such as DVDs and video games, many retailers and labels have resisted the chance to cut prices. Right now, retailers, who are benefiting from a nine percent climb in music sales so far this year, have little incentive to drop prices on the best sellers. "If you have a hot new release like Usher, people are going to pay $18.99," says Clark Benson, CEO of the market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail.

But big retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart continue to gain market share by selling records for less than $10. "We continue to hear from consumers that CDs are too expensive," says Gary Arnold, senior vice president of entertainment at Best Buy. "The music industry needs to think with consumer glasses on."

Rival labels are not only hesitant to cut prices but may even be raising them. News reports have suggested that some labels want to boost the price of singles from ninety-nine cents to $1.25 at Apple's iTunes Music Store, though Apple denies it. But prices for some albums have climbed at iTunes, going beyond the usual $9.99 price per CD -- N.E.R.D.'s Fly or Die and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon now sell for $13.99 and $14.99, respectively. Apple CEO Steve Jobs says labels could make more money selling full albums for $9.99 than one or two choice cuts for ninety-nine cents each. "We see prices of albums coming down and not going up," says Jobs.

Unreleased Cuts Bolster Simon Boxed Set

As first reported here last week, Warner Bros. will on June 29 release the nine-disc Paul Simon boxed set "The Studio Recordings 1972-2000." The set comprises the six albums the artist has recorded for Warner Bros. plus his first three post-Simon & Garfunkel solo releases, originally issued by Columbia. All nine albums have been digitally remastered and expanded with previously unreleased bonus cuts.

Simon's 1972 self-titled solo debut is bolstered with demos of "Duncan" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" recorded in February 1971 in San Francisco, plus a previously unreleased version of "Paranoia Blues." His 1973 sophomore set "There Goes Rhymin' Simon" will now include acoustic demos of "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" and "Loves Me Like a Rock," an unfinished run through "American Tune" and a work-in-progress rendition of "Let Me Live in Your City."

Simon hit an artistic peak on 1975's "Still Crazy After All These Years," which reached No. 1 on The Billboard 200 and won the Grammy for album of the year. Bonus tracks on its new edition are demos of the No. 5 pop hit "Slip Slidin' Away" and "Gone at Last" with the Jessy Dixon Singers and the track "Silent Eyes" from the film "Shampoo."

The artist then took a nearly five-year break and signed a new deal with Warner Bros. for the 1980 release of the soundtrack to his film "One Trick Pony." Four previously unreleased cuts enrich the new version: "Soft Parachutes," "All Because of You," "Stranded in a Limousine" and "Spiral Highway."

At No. 35, Simon's 1983 album "Hearts and Bones" notched the lowest album chart ranking of his solo career, but has endured as a fan favorite in the years since. Bonus cuts include acoustic demos of the John Lennon elegy "The Late Great Johnny Ace," "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" and "Train in the Distance," plus the previously unreleased work-in-progress track "Shelter of Your Arms."

Simon roared back into the mainstream with 1986's South African-inspired "Graceland," which has been certified for U.S. shipments of 5 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America. The set, which won Simon his second Grammy for album of the year, is bolstered by a demo of "Homeless," an unreleased version of "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" and an early take on "All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints."

Continuing Simon's world-music dabbling, 1990's "The Rhythm of the Saints" has been expanded to include the outtake "Thelma," an acoustic demo of "Born at the Right Time" and work-in-progress versions of "The Coast" and "Spirit Voices."

Another extended break from the studio followed before the 1997 release of "Songs From the Capeman," Simon's short-lived Broadway musical. The album will now feature a demo of "Born in Puerto Rico" featuring Jose Feliciano, the demo for "Can I Forgive Him" and the unreleased "Shoplifting Clothes."

The set is rounded out by Simon's latest solo release, 2000's "You're the One," which will include live renditions of "Old," opener "That's Where I Belong" and "Hurricane Eye."

As previously reported, Simon & Garfunkel's Old Friends trek will return to the road June 10 in Albany, N.Y.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT

Fox giving a surprise renewal to the critically lauded but woefully low-rated Jason Bateman sitcom Arrested Development, Variety reports. The network, which announces its full schedule on Thursday, also reupped the Eliza Dushku drama Tru Calling.

"Alias" Falls Off ABC Schedule

Two editions of the series Extreme Makeover seem especially appropriate for ABC's fall 2004-05 schedule, since the beleaguered network's lineup is undergoing quite an overhaul itself.

The most surprising move in new ABC Primetime Entertainment President Stephen McPherson's fall schedule, which was unveiled Monday at the New Amsterdam Theater in New York during the network's annual upfront presentation: no Alias. The butt-kickin' spy drama starring Jennifer Garner will instead stay off the air until January, when its fourth season will unspool, sans reruns.

In Alias' Sunday night time slot this fall: Desperate Housewives, a soapy drama about a suburban wife (Twin Peaks' Sheryl Lee) who kills herself, but continues to watch over the Knots Landing-ish shenanigans of her cul-de-sac neighbors. Melrose Place and General Hospital writer Charles Pratt Jr. produces the show, which also stars former Melrose baddie Marcia Cross, Lois & Clark's Teri Hatcher, Sports Night's Felicity Huffman and Eva Longoria (Dragnet and The Young and the Restless).

Housewives is part of the network's bigger strategy to depend on drama series to revive its place in the network wars. Overall, ABC will add seven new dramas to its schedule--three at midseason--plus two new comedies and two new reality series.

"Every night we ask tens of millions of Americans to invite us into their homes, and it's our responsibility to give them a reason to let us stay. I believe these programs, and this schedule, does just that," said the sound bite-ready McPherson.

Tens of millions of viewers may actually be a ratings dream for ABC, the fourth-place network that, in last week's ratings battle, for example, didn't have one show in the top 10 and finished the week averaging just 8.3 million viewers.

The network, which has yet to recover from the nose dive its ratings took in 2001 when viewers decided they'd seen one--or 12--too many installments of the overplayed Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in prime time, is not only leaning on dramas to boost its profile, but is also looking to TV veterans like Patrick Dempsey, Steven Bocho, Tim Daly and Kelly Osbourne--in a dramatic role--to lure viewers back to its lineups.

A rundown of ABC's other new series:

* The Benefactor (fall): Eccentric billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban looks to--forgive us--trump NBC's successful reality series The Apprentice with his own competition, in which 16 butt-kissers endure a series of challenges to try to prove to Cuban why each of them is worthy of the million-dollar prize he's offering.

* Rodney (fall): Comedian Rodney Carrington is the latest stand-up comic to get his own sitcom, this one--surprise--featuring him as an everyday guy trying to be a decent husband and father. Very Home Improvement-y.

* Lost (fall): Created by Alias' J.J. Abrams, the drama revolves around a group of plane-crash survivors who are trapped on a deserted island. Stars Lord of the Rings' Dominic Monaghan, Naveen Andrews (The English Patient) and Harold Perrineau (Oz).

* Wife Swap (fall): A reality series, based on a hit British show, about two moms who swap families for 10 days and must first follow the rules of the new house, and then implement their own lifestyle for the rest of the time.

* Life as We Know It (fall): Based on British author Melvin Burgess' young-adult novel Doing It, the coming-of-age drama stars Kelly Osbourne (yes, that Kelly Osbourne) and newcomer Sean Faris (Undressed) and follows a group of sex-crazed teen boys (is there any other kind?) and their girlfriends. The series is produced by Freaks and Geeks producers-writers Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah.

* Savages (fall): Keith Carradine (Deadwood) stars as a single dad who tries to wrangle a brood of five rowdy boys in a My Three Sons-ish sitcom produced by Mel Gibson and based on Gibson's own experiences as the father of five boys.

* The Practice: Fleet Street (fall): James Spader will continue to steal every scene he's in on this David E. Kelley-produced dramedy spinoff of The Practice that finds his Alan Shore character working with law cohorts William Shatner, Rhona Mitra and Lake Bell.

* Blind Justice (midseason): ER's Ron Eldard stars as a blind detective in this promising drama from Steven Bochco. The show will fill the timeslot left when Bochco's NYPD Blue wraps its 11-season run in January. Rena Sofer, from last year's failed NBC sitcom Coupling, also stars.

* Grey's Anatomy (midseason): A medical drama starring Patrick Dempsey (The Practice and Once and Again), Isaiah Washington (Out of Sight), Katherine Heigl (Roswell) and Ellen Pompeo (Old School).

* Eyes (midseason): Tim Daly, last seen as a drug-addicted gambler on The Sopranos earlier this season and best known for his role on NBC's Wings, stars as a rogue private eye. Melrose Place star Laura Leighton and The L Word's Eric Mabius also star.

Among the high-profile pilots that didn't make the cut for ABC's schedule: Hot Momma, a sitcom starring Nick Lachey; an untitled sitcom featuring Lachey's wife and reality costar, pop singer Jessica Simpson; a comedy starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a single mom; and a highly-touted John Stamos comedy that was thought by many to be a shoo-in for ABC's Friday night lineup.

Among the other changes at ABC next season, substitute news anchor Elizabeth Vargas will take over Barbara Walters' 20/20 cohosting duties; Chris Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, joins the round-up of anchors on Primetime Live; and British journalist Martin Bashir, best known for his infamous 2003 Michael Jackson interview, joins 20/20 as a correspondent.

And existing series missing from ABC's 2004-05 plans: 10-8, I'm with Her, It's All Relative, Karen Sisco, Kingdom Hospital, Life with Bonnie, Line of Fire and Threat Matrix.

The following is a night-by-night look at the Alphabet network's fall schedule:

MONDAY: (fall) The Benefactor, Monday Night Football; (January) ABC Monday Night Movie, Grey's Anatomy

TUESDAY: My Wife and Kids; George Lopez; According to Jim; Rodney; NYPD Blue/Blind Justice

WEDNESDAY: Lost; The Bachelor; Wife Swap

THURSDAY: Extreme Makeover; Life As We Know It; Primetimee Live

FRIDAY: 8 Simple Rules; Savages; Hope & Faith; Less Than Perfect; 20/20

SATURDAY: Wonderful World of Disney

SUNDAY: America's Funniest Home Videos; Extreme Makeover: Home Edition; Desperate Housewives/Alias (January); The Practice: Fleet Street.

TV DVDs!

Paramount has just officially announced a whole mess of new TV releases on DVD, both new and classic series! Let's run them down for you.

First up, Happy Days: The Complete First Season arrives on 8/17, featuring all 16 episodes of the show's first year on 3 discs.

Also on 8/17, look for Laverne & Shirley: The Complete First Season featuring 15 episodes on 3 discs.

That same day, you'll also get a more recent show - Al Franken's Lateline: The Complete Series, which will feature all 19 episodes of the series (including 4 that never aired) on 3 discs.

Oh, but that's not all. Paramount has announced a number of additional TV releases as well.

Touched by an Angel: Season 1, Survivor All Stars and I Love Lucy: Season 2 will all street on 8/31, with Keen Eddie: The Complete Series and Mork & Mindy: Season 1 following on 9/7. 7th Heaven: Season 1 and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Season 4 are expected on 9/14.

Frasier: The Final Season is due on 9/21. Finally, The Andy Griffith Show: Season 1, Taxi: Season 1, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment: Season 2, Hogan's Heroes: Season 1 and CSI: Miami - Season 2 are all expected to arrive on 10/12. Whew!

Actor Tony Randall Dies at 84

NEW YORK - Tony Randall, the comic actor best known for playing fastidious photographer Felix Unger on "The Odd Couple," has died. He was 84.

Randall died in his sleep Monday night at NYU Medical Center of complications from a long illness, according to his publicity firm, Springer Associates.

He is survived by his wife, Heather Harlan Randall, who made him a father for the first time at age 77, and their two children, 7-year-old Julia Laurette and 5-year-old Jefferson Salvini.

Randall won an Emmy for playing Unger on the sitcom based on Neil Simon's play and movie. The show ran from 1970-75, but Randall won after it had been canceled, prompting him to quip at the awards ceremony: "I'm so happy I won. Now if I only had a job."

The show's charm sprang from Randall's chemistry and conflict with Jack Klugman as sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison, with whom he's forced to share an apartment after both men get divorced.

Before that, Randall was best known as the fastidious "best friend" figure in several Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies, including 1959's "Pillow Talk" and 1961's "Lover Come Back."

The actor became a fixture on David Letterman's late-night talk shows, appearing a record 70 times on the "Late Show" alone. He made fun of his own prim image by taking part in Letterman's wacky antics, including allowing himself to be covered in mud.

And in 1993, when Conan O'Brien took over the time slot at NBC that Letterman had vacated for a new show at CBS, Randall was a guest on O'Brien's debut episode.

After "The Odd Couple," Randall had two short-lived sitcoms, one of which was "The Tony Randall Show," in which he played a stuffy Philadelphia judge, from 1976-78.

From 1981-83, he played the title role in the sitcom "Love, Sidney," as a single, middle-aged commercial artist helping a female friend care for her young daughter.

The show was based on a TV movie in which Sidney was gay; in the TV show, the character's sexual orientation was implied, but never specified. This occurred more than a decade before the much-hyped coming-out on "Ellen" in 1997, which made Ellen DeGeneres' character the first openly gay central figure on a network series.

For his television work, Randall got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998.

In an effort to bring classic theater back to Broadway, Randall founded and was artistic director of the non-profit National Actors Theatre in 1991, using $1 million of his own money and $2 million from corporations and foundations. The company's first production was a revival of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," starring Martin Sheen and Michael York, which hadn't been staged on Broadway in 40 years.

The next year, Randall's production of Ibsen's "The Master Builder" didn't exactly draw raves. AP Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara called it "deadly earnest — and dull."

Subsequent performances included "Night Must Fall," "The Gin Game" and "The Sunshine Boys," in which Randall reunited with Klugman, in 1998. Randall also starred in his company's Tony Award-winning staging of "M. Butterfly."

The actor also was socially active, lobbying against smoking in public places, marching in Washington against apartheid in the '80s, and helping raise money for AIDS research in the '90s.

Born Leonard Rosenberg on Feb. 26, 1920, Randall was drawn as a teenager to roadshows that came through his hometown of Tulsa, Okla.

"One night, the entire town turned out to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo perform Swan Lake and Sheherezade," he wrote. "I — and most of the audience — had never seen a ballet before. We stood and cheered, thinking it was a 'once in a lifetime' event."

Randall attended Northwestern University before heading to New York at 19, where he made his stage debut in 1941 in "The Circle of Chalk."

After Army service during World War II from 1942-46, he returned to New York, where he appeared on radio and early television. He got his start in movies in 1957.

He was married to his college sweetheart, Florence Randall, for 54 years until she died of cancer in 1992.

"I saw her in a bank — I never saw another girl in my life. She was gorgeous, the most beautiful girl I ever saw," Randall said in a TV interview in 1995.

Later that year, he married Harlan, who was 50 years his junior. Randall met her through his National Actors Theatre; former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani performed the ceremony.

Harlan gave birth to their first child, Julia Laurette Randall, in April 1997. Their second child, Jefferson Salvini Randall, was born in June 1998.

The Couch Potato Report - May 18th, 2004

In The Couch Potato Report this week there is an animated miracle, a film called
miracle, and some Disney magic.

Up first, MIRACLE. This is the based on the true story of 1980 U.S. Olympic Gold Medal winning hockey team.

Now let me stop here and tell you that the movie isn't as "Rah, rah, rah, USA is number one!!!" as you think it's going to be.

Instead it gets many of the details right in telling the improbable story of a group of unknowns who won the Olympic Gold when they weren’t even expected to be a factor.

The best part about MIRACLE is the fact that it looks and feels right in every detail. It captures the downbeat mood of post-Watergate America and shows how an obsessed hockey coach named Herb Brooks managed to assemble a once-in a-lifetime team and convince them they could beat their vastly superior Russian opponents.

The story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team is a great story and MIRACLE just lets the actual story unfold. It is a Hollywood movie, but the Hollywood factor is toned way down.

I especially liked how they used the majority of Al Michael’s actual calls of the games from 1980, and Kurt Russell is tremendous as coach Herb Brooks.

While this might not actually be "The Best Sporting Event In History," as it has been advertised, it is a great film.

As for what is "The Best Sporting Event In History,” well the easy answer is Canada’s win at the 1972 Summit Series, but I also enjoyed the Blue Jays 1992 and 1993 World Series victories.

But I digress.

If you watch MIRACLE and actually find it too "Rah, rah, rah, USA is number one!!!", then you should cleanse your palette with THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE.

You’ll get a kick out of it when it pokes fun at America.

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE is a unique film that isn’t easily surmised, but I would use the word great to describe it. I would also use spectacular, awesome, and superb.

Come to think of it, I would actually combine all of those words to describe THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE.

What’s it about, you ask? Well, when a bicyclist is kidnapped from the Tour de France by some mysterious gangsters his grandmother travels to the city of Belleville, where she tracks him down with the help of a musical trio.

In addition to the characters, music plays a central part in the film. There are only a few spoken sentences in the entire movie. Most of the soundtrack is a mix of squeaks, barks, and the jazzy music of Benoit Charest.

This is a film that is wonderful, whimsical, bizarre, surreal and very touching. It
is a movie that is not to be missed.

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE is a hand-drawn animated film that is unlike any of the classic animated films that we’ve loved for years from Walt Disney.

But that’s okay. Disney has given us enough superb animation to last a lifetime.

Some of that animation is now available to own on DVD as part of THE WALT DISNEY TREASURES COLLECTION.

MICKEY MOUSE - IN LIVING COLOUR: VOLUME 2 is an infectious 2-disc set includes that includes 26 original Mickey Mouse colour cartoons, a limited edition collectible lithograph, and many, many, many extras.

THE CHRONOLOGICAL DONALD - VOLUME 1 features all 36 of Donald's starring shorts, from "Donald and Pluto" in 1936 to "Chef Donald" in 1941, along with a wide array of insight into the character and the production of the cartoons.

ON THE FRONT LINES is another WALT DISNEY TREASURE release and it delivers Disney's war effort productions to DVD. ON THE FRONT LINES has 32 short subjects and exclusive declassified material. This 2 disc set contains some cartoons that truly have to be seen to be believed.

The final WALT DISNEY TREASURE release this week is TOMORROWLAND: DISNEY IN SPACE AND BEYOND. While watching it you'll go back in time to the beginning of the future and enjoy four episodes and a theatrical short that delve into the mysteries of the universe and space travel.

You'll also get a rare look at Walt Disney's last film, "EPCOT," in which he reveals his concepts and plans for the Disney World and EPCOT projects.

Every single moment in the releases from THE WALT DISNEY TREASURES COLLECTION are a true delight to enjoy and a great slice of history to own.

But I still can’t figure out what Goofy is. Mickey is a Mouse, Pluto a dog and
Donald is a duck. What is Goofy?!?

Other than fun and entertaining to watch, I just have no idea.

Oh well.

MIRACLE, THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE and the WALT DISNEY TREASURES - MICKEY MOUSE: IN LIVING COLOUR, VOLUME 2, THE CHRONOLOGICAL DONALD, ON THE FRONT LINES and TOMORROWLAND are available now at your favourite local video store.

COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT

The third chapter in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy: THE RETURN OF THE KING is set to dominate sales and rental charts the same way it did the Oscars.

This final film in the trilogy features the last battle between good and evil.

Oh I hope good wins!

There is little good to say about the Ray Romano’s film WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT. On TV Everybody Loves Raymond, but I suspect few of you will like this movie about a plumber who runs for mayor against an ex-President. Gene Hackman plays the ex-president, although I don’t know why.

Also next week, in CLUB DREAD an inept staff at island resort must battle killer.
This is the latest film from the comedy troop BROKEN LIZARD who also gave us the hilarious SUPER TROOPERS. I’m not sure if this film is supposed to be a comedy, but it is not a comedy. A movie needs to be funny to qualify as a comedy, and this film is not funny. Not at all! It is extremely boring, and will be painful to watch for everyone who saw and enjoyed SUPER TROOPERS.

I'll have more on those releases in seven days.

For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.

Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here next week on The Couch!

Here are the new CD Releases for Tuesday, May 18, 2004:

* ALANIS MORISSETTE So-Called Chaos (Maverick)
* ANDY GRIGGS TBA Andy Griggs (RCA Country)
* CHARLIE MARS TBA Charlie Mars (V2)
* CHARLOTTE MARTIN TBA Charlotte Martin (RCA)
* HANSON Underneath (True North)
* HEATHER HEADLEY TBA Heather Headley (RCA)
* JERMAINE DUPRI Greenlight (Arista)
* KELLIE COFFEE TBA Kellie Coffee (RCA Country)
* LENNY KRAVITZ Baptism (EMI)
* LONDONBEAT Back in the High Life (BMG Associated Labels)
* MORRISSEY You Are The Quarry (Sanctuary Records)
* MY MORNING JACKET Acoustic Citsuoca (BMG)
* MYSTIKAL TBA Mystikal (Zomba)
* OUT OF YOUR MOUTH Draghdad (BMG Canada/Vik)
* PINMONKEY TBA (Pinmonkey) (RCA Country)
* RACHEL YAMAGATA Happenstance (Arista)
* TORI AMOS Welcome To Sunny Florida (DVD Video) (Sony)

Norah Jones unveils lengthy U.S. tour itinerary

Norah Jones will support her recently released sophomore album, "Feels Like Home," with a three-month tour of U.S. arenas and amphitheaters.

Jones and her backing group--known as The Handsome Band--launch the run in mid-August, and dates are set through mid-November. Tickets for almost all shows will hit the box office on Friday (5/21); details appear below.

Before the tour begins, Jones will give a pair of July performances in California--one in Santa Barbara on July 9, the other in Universal City on July 10--as part of a tribute to country singer Gram Parsons, who died of a drug overdose more than 30 years ago. In addition to Jones, those shows will also feature Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle.

Released in February, "Feels Like Home" is the follow-up to 2002's "Come Away With Me." The new set, which features the single "Sunrise," sold more than 1 million copies during its first week in stores, and debuted atop The Billboard 200 album chart.

"Come Away With Me" producer Arif Mardin returned to work with Jones on the new album, as did bassist Lee Alexander and guitarists Adam Levy, Kevin Breit, Tony Scherr and Jesse Harris (who wrote and co-wrote a number of songs on "Come Away With Me"). Drummer Andrew Borger and background vocalist Daru Odam rounded out the studio ensemble.

Guests include Dolly Parton, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band, and jazz drummer Brian Blade.

"Come Away With Me" earned Jones five Grammy trophies last year: Album of the Year, Record of the Year (for "Don't Know Why"), Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for "Don't Know Why") and Best Pop Vocal Album.

Tour Itinerary

July 2004

9 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Bowl
10 - Universal City, CA - Universal Amphitheatre

August 2004

12 - Antioch, TN - Starwood Amphitheatre (on sale 5/21)
13 - Birmingham, AL - Verizon Wireless Music Center (on sale 5/21)
14 - Atlanta, GA - Chastain Park Amphitheatre (sold out)
16 - Raleigh, NC - Alltel Pavilion (on sale 5/21)
17 - Charlotte, NC - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)
19 - Virginia Beach, VA - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)
20 - Columbia, MD - Merriweather Post Pavilion (on sale 5/21)
21 - Atlantic City, NJ - Boardwalk Hall (on sale 5/21)
23 - Burgettstown, PA - Post Gazette Pavilion (on sale 5/21)
24 - Rochester, NY - Finger Lakes P.A.C. (on sale 5/21)
30 - Saratoga, NY - Saratoga P.A.C. (on sale 5/21)
31 - Mansfield, MA - Tweeter Center (on sale 5/21)

September 2004

1 - Hartford, CT - Meadows Music (on sale 5/21)
3 - Wantagh, NY - Jones Beach (on sale now)
4 - Philadelphia, PA - The Mann Center (on sale 5/21)
5 - Holmdel, NJ - P.N.C. Bank Arts Center (on sale now)
7 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH - Blossom Music Center (on sale 5/21)
8 - Clarkston, MI - DTE Energy Music Theatre (on sale 5/22)
10 - Milwaukee, WI - Marcus Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)
11 - Saint Paul, MN - Xcel Energy Center (on sale 5/21)
12 - Tinley Park, IL - Tweeter Center (on sale 5/21)
24 - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks (on sale 5/21)
25 - West Valley City, UT - USANA Amphitheater(on sale 5/21)
28 - Seattle, WA - Key Arena (on sale 5/21)
29 - Portland, OR - Theater of the Clouds (on sale 5/21)

October 2004

1, 2 - Berkeley, CA - Greek Theatre (on sale 5/21)
4, 5 - Las Vegas, NV - The Joint (on sale 5/21)
6 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Bowl (on sale 5/22)
9 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl (on sale 5/23)
10 - Chula Vista, CA - Coors Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)
11 - Phoenix, AZ - Cricket Pavilion (on sale 5/21)
14 - Austin, TX - The Backyard (on sale 5/21)
15 - Woodlands, TX - Cynthia Woods Pavilion (on sale 5/21)
16 - Selma, TX - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre (on sale 5/22)
18 - Dallas, TX - Smirnoff Music Center (on sale 5/21)
19 - North Little Rock, AR - Alltel Arena (on sale 5/21)
20 - Oklahoma City, OK - Ford Centre (on sale 5/21)
22 - Saint Louis, MO - Savvis Center (on sale 5/21)
23 - Kansas City, MO - Municipal Auditorium (on sale 5/21)

November 2004

3 - Indianapolis, IN - Conseco Fieldhouse (on sale 5/21)
4 - Columbus, OH - Nationwide Arena (on sale 5/21)
5 - Cincinnati, OH - U.S. Bank Arena (on sale 5/21)
6 - Lexington, KY - Rupp Arena (on sale 5/21)
8 - Knoxville, TN - Thompson Boiling Arena (on sale 5/21)
9 - Memphis, TN - FedEx Forum (on sale 5/21)
10 - New Orleans, LA - Lakefront Arena (on sale 5/21)
12 - Tampa Bay, FL - Ford Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)
13 - Orlando, FL - Silver Spurs (on sale 5/21)
14 - West Palm Beach, FL - Sound Advice Amphitheater (on sale 5/21)

Green Day Rears 'American Idiot'

Green Day's first studio album in four years will be titled "American Idiot," a spokesperson confirms to Billboard.com. The set is tentatively due Sept. 14 via Reprise. It's the follow-up to 2000's "Warning," which debuted at No. 4 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 998,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong will also donate two songs to the forthcoming "Live Freaky, Die Freaky" motion picture soundtrack, which will feature a duet between Kelly Osbourne and A.F.I.'s Davey Havock. Described by filmmaker John Roecker as "a sexy, gory puppet movie" on its official Web site, "Live Freaky" will be released by Hellcat Films and Epitaph.

Green Day's other members, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool, will appear in roles previously planned for drummer Josh Freese and guitarist Twiggy Ramirez, who backed out due to touring obligations with A Perfect Circle.

Along with No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Bad Religion and others, Green Day is expected to lend a track to "Rock Against Bush Vol. 2," the second in a series of politically minded compilations due this August.

Here are Green Day's tour dates:

Aug. 7: Tokyo (Summer Sonic Festival)
Aug. 8: Osaka, Japan (Summer Sonic Festival)
Aug. 27: Leeds, England (Leeds Festival)
Aug. 29: Reading, England (Reading Festival)

'Scrubs' Gets Two More Years in Surgery

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - NBC has given a two year renewal to erratically rated, but critically acclaimed comedy "Scrubs." The announcement came on Monday (May 17), shortly before the network announced its 2004-05 schedule to advertisers.

Next season, "Scrubs" will remain at 9:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday nights, following the highly anticipated new computer animated comedy "Father of the Pride" from DreamWorks TV. The new deal will position the comedy to run at least through the 2005-06 season.

"This show just keeps getting better each season and we're looking forward to even better things for at another two more years," says Jeff Zucker, president, NBC Universal Television Group. "'Scrubs' has done everything we've asked of it on every level and this renewal is well-deserved."

Bouncing between Thursday nights and Tuesdays after the arrival of "The Apprentice," "Scrubs" averaged nearly 10.3 million viewers per episode. The medical comedy, which stars Zach Braff, Donald Faison, John C. McGinley, Judy Reyes and Sarah Chalke was particularly successful in retaining the 18-49 audience delivered by its lead-in, "Frasier."

"I am thrilled that one of my first acts in my new capacity here at Touchstone Television has been to secure a two year renewal of this critically-acclaimed hit series," says Mark Pedowitz, president, Touchstone Television, which produces the show. "The talent in front of and behind the camera on 'Scrubs' is second to none and we couldn't be happier for [creator] Bill Lawrence and everyone involved with the show. Further, I am grateful to NBC for their continued support."

Chainsaw vs. Machete

Bruce Campbell told Sci Fi Wire that there is some validity to the rumors that he would appear as Ash in the sequel to FREDDY VS. JASON. "As I've been explaining to people, this wouldn't be a movie where you could just make a phone call and go, 'Let's do it,' and then it all happens," Campbell said. "You've got three franchises. [That] means you have 17 lawyers, each going, 'Yeah, look at my franchise. Yeah, look at my franchise.' So you have to get past that. Then you have to get past the question of 'how will the characters be treated?' What would you do with Ash? There's no way I'd be in it if I lost. No way. The good guy has to win, especially in that movie. You couldn't kill two whole franchises, but we could sure maim them."

Touchy, Much?

Dark Horizons says that Barb Streisand keeps walking off the set of MEET THE FOCKERS because Dustin Hoffman keeps calling her 'Barb.' "Dustin Hoffman knows that Barbara Streisand HATES being called "Barb" with a passion," said DH's scooper, "so apparently he purposely keeps calling her that as a joke. When the director tells Streisand what she is supposed to do next, Hoffman chimes in with "Did Barb understand that? Do you get that, Barb?" Craig reckons Dusty is doing it all good-naturedly, but Barbara has apparently walked off the set in a huff twice because of this".

STILL DEAD

Andy Kaufman a no-show at a special party at Hollywood's House of Blues Sunday night marking the 20th anniversary of his death. Kaufman once vowed to fake his demise and come back 20 years later to put on a show.

'Kill Bill Vol. 2'; 'Hellboy,' more Columbia; Warner Elvis box set

Quentin Tarantino's bloody, bravura ode to Asian chop socky films concludes in Kill Bill Vol. 2, which will make its DVD debut on August 10th. Although Tarantino is planning a mega-set of both films for release sometime in the future, for now Buena Vista Home Entertainment will give the flick a fairly slim edition, complete with anamorphic widescreen transfer, Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 tracks, "The Making of Kill Bill Vol. 2" featurette, premiere party footage, deleted scenes and trailers.

Hell Hath No Fury...

Just in from Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment is their latest batch of new announcements, all due to hit shelves on July 27th.

First up is a two-disc mega-set of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy, which will feature an anamorphic widescreen transfer, Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track, audio commentary with del Toro, a documentary and four featurettes, deleted and alternate scenes, outtakes, multiple still galleries with concept art, storyboards and production photos, and theatrical trailers.

Columbia will also use the release of Hellboy to promote a new special edition of del Toro's highly acclaimed horror thriller The Devil's Backbone. Presented in anamorphic widescreen transfer and its original Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, extras include commentary with del Toro, four deleted scenes with optional commentary, six featurettes, a storyboard comparison, a still gallery and theatrical trailers.

Making its DVD debut on July 27th is the classic Gary Cooper western They Came to Cordura. Featuring both 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and 4:3 pan & scan transfers and a Dolby Digital 1.0 mono track, there are no extras aside from bonus trailers. Retail will cost you $19.95 worth of greenbacks.

Rounding out Columbia's July 27th lineup is another TV on DVD debut, The Jeff Foxworthy Show: The Complete First Season. Presented in 4:3 full screen and Dolby 2.0 stereo, there are no extras aside from episode synopses. List price will list for$29.95, pardner.

King of Rock

Conspiracy theorists will have plenty of new evidence to sift through on August 3rd, when The King will return - at least in newly remastered, digital form. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll, Warner Home Video will release six of Elvis Aaron Presley's most popular movies: It Happened at the World's Fair, Double Trouble, Speedway, Spinout, Harum Scarum and The Trouble with Girls. Each is newly remastered in anamorphic widescreen and includes an Elvis Presley trailer gallery.

'Hee Haw' Picks, Grins Its Way to Video

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Saaa-lute! The straw hats and braying cartoon donkey of "Hee Haw" are back. Time-Life is releasing full "Hee Haw" shows for the first time on VHS and DVD on Tuesday, the 35th anniversary of the show's first season.
 
With its pickin', grinnin' and hayseed humor, "Hee Haw" was an American TV institution, on the air almost continuously from 1969 to 1997. The hourlong program started on CBS for two years, then went into syndication until 1993 and finally wound up on cable's old Nashville Network.

"'Hee Haw' won't go away," said Roy Clark, host or co-host of the show for its entire run. "It brings a smile to too many faces."

The format was folksy comic skits interspersed with performances by country music stars like Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson and Alan Jackson. There were no serious issues debated, no cliffhangers, no drama and no wardrobe malfunctions — just down-home silliness accompanied by grins and guitars.

"Everywhere I go, people talk about it," Clark said.

The show's most memorable prop was the cornfield where guests and the show's regulars told jokes.

Example:

Grandpa Jones to Junior Samples: "I saw you riding on a mule and your wife was walking behind you. Why was that?"

Samples: "My wife ain't GOT no mule."

There were 24 years' worth of original "Hee Haw" shows — 14 years more than "Friends" and 15 more than "Seinfeld." All the shows were taped in Nashville, home of country music and the Grand Ole Opry.

Critics mostly hated the show because of its Dogpatch look, simple humor and twangy country music. And sometimes the show still gets criticized for perpetuating stereotypes.

There was a bevy of curvy Southern belles such as Barbi Benton, Gunilla Hutton (who played Nurse Good Body) and Misty Rowe. The men were most often harmless rubes in straw hats and overalls.

But TV viewers embraced it, and even non-country stars such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Regis Philbin were among the celebrities eager to appear on the show.

"They just wanted to be part of the fun," Clark said.

Clark, who played the hapless clerk at the show's Empty Arms Hotel, was joined by singer Buck Owens as co-host for 17 seasons. There were about 600 original episodes.

The show even had an impact on the national lexicon. The phrase "pickin' and grinnin'" became popular after a segment with Clark and Owens playing guitar while smiling and telling jokes.

A video based on the show has been on the home market for 10 years, but it featured just parts of the program and no music. The new product, costing $14.95, has full "Hee Haw" shows including music performances. There will be at least four one-hour programs.
 
"The viewers were sort of part-owners of the show," Clark said. "They identified with these clowns, and we had good music.

Fallon Signs Off of 'Saturday Night Live'

NEW YORK - Say goodbye to Jimmy Fallon on "Saturday Night Live." Fallon announced that he was leaving the comedy show at the end of his "Weekend Update" segment with Tina Fey on Saturday, the show's last original episode of the season.

It was no surprise to NBC executives.

"He had made it clear that he wanted to move on and we wish him all the best," Jeff Zucker, president of the NBC Universal Television Group, said Monday.

"SNL" gave Fallon a fond send-off, with a long skit featuring one of his signature characters, a nasally voiced and obnoxious radio disc jockey.

Fallon, 29, joined "Saturday Night Live" in 1998.

Shrek Finds More Beauty in Being Ugly in 'Shrek 2'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Even a big green ogre, especially one named Shrek, can go through growing pains.

"Shrek 2," the computer-animated sequel to the 2001 hit "Shrek," debuts on Wednesday with its makers promising a thoughtful, twisting and turning tale complete with all the fairy-tale mockery that made the first movie a smash hit.

In "Shrek," the antennae-eared monster (voice of comedian Mike Myers) and his sidekick donkey (Eddie Murphy) saved the beautiful Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from a fire-breathing dragon. Along the way, it poked fun at just about every fairy tale written by the Brothers Grimm or dreamed up by Disney.

The irony, and genius, of "Shrek" was that its happily ever after ending was similar to those in the fairy tales it mocked. Fiona morphed from princess to ogress and married her hero Shrek. The movie's ribald humor and ultimately sweet message -- love comes in many different forms -- thrilled audiences.

"Shrek" won the first Oscar ever given for a full-length animated movie. It earned around $267 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices and a total $455 million worldwide.

If "Shrek 2" does become as big a hit as the first, it will be welcome news to DreamWorks, the studio formed 10 years ago by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg which has had a mixed success rate.

It has been widely reported that many industry experts think DreamWorks' Big Three may be contemplating an initial public offering of stock, and could use a strong box office performance to bolster its prospects.

Audiences turning out for "Shrek 2" find that in it the fairy-tale world of happy endings clashes with responsibility in the real world. "I wanted to make 'Shrek 2' a more complicated and intricate story," said director/screenwriter Andrew Adamson, "and ... I didn't want to disappoint the fans."

Early reviews and audience reactions are solid. And, in the end, Adamson should be able to live, well, happily ever after.

INNER BEAUTY, SOUR PUSS

"Shrek 2" opens with the couple on a romantic honeymoon. When they return to Shrek's cabin in the swamp, donkey is waiting for them. His love life with the tamed, fire-breathing dragon hasn't fared as well and Shrek's with Fiona.

Fiona's human parents soon summon the couple to her home in the land of Far Far Away. But her parents don't know she married an ogre, nor that she decided to live as an ogress.

Still, being the dutiful daughter she is, Fiona tells Shrek there is no way she will ignore their request. Shrek, being the good guy he is, agrees to meet the in-laws. So all head to Far Far Away, which looks a lot like Hollywood. A Far Far Away sign is fixed high atop the surrounding hills and a shopping district seems oddly akin to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Once there, audiences learn Fiona was to have married the suave Prince Charming (Rupert Everett). Fiona's father, King Harold (John Cleese) hires a swashbuckling swordsman, Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas), to send Shrek packing.

The king's plans go awry, however, after Shrek and donkey befriend Puss and find a secret potion makes Shrek a handsome human and restores Fiona's looks. The question for the couple, now, is whether being beautiful will make them truly happy.

"Shrek 2" zeros in on a cultural obsession with image, and there's no better place to do that than in Hollywood. But, rather than getting too serious, the film provides a lot of jokes along the way, especially from the Zorro-like Puss.

"These movies have such a wonderful edge to them, while still being appropriate for kids," said Julie Andrews, who supplies the voice for Fiona's mother, Queen Lillian.

Indeed, the hallmark of the most successful animated movies like "Shrek" has been their broad appeal to both kids and adults. Early reviews are solid, if not as strong as the first.

Show business newspaper "Daily Variety" said, "Lightning strikes twice, but not as brilliantly as before," and also calls the sequel "welcome." "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that while "Shrek 2" lacks some of the magic of the first, it "has a most definite kick" and predicts "it will be a major hit."

But "Charming" Everett disagrees. "I think it's way better than the first," he said. "These films, cartoons now, are the only ones that say anything interesting about us."

NBC Aims to Spin Out Success with New TV Lineup

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With mega-hit "Friends" in retirement, NBC on Monday unveiled a new lineup building on some of its biggest names, including a fourth "Law & Order" series, "Friends" spin-off "Joey," and the return of TV's latest star, Donald Trump.

NBC said it will launch a total of six fresh dramas and five new comedies, including the animated series "Father of the Pride" -- about lions in Siegfried & Roy's Las Vegas act -- for the 2004-05 season, as it seeks to maintain ratings dominance over its target audience of viewers aged 18 to 49.

Altering its programing schedule for every night but Saturday and Sunday, NBC's new prime-time slate, which will roll out in late August following the Summer Olympics, amounts to one of its biggest shake-ups in years.

But just five new shows -- three dramas and two sitcoms, including "Joey" -- will get a traditional September launch and six new scripted shows will debut later in the season under the network's new year-round programing strategy.

As part of that strategy, NBC, newly merged with Vivendi Universal Entertainment, is deciding in advance how its mid-season offerings will fit into the schedule so that it can get a jump on selling advertising time for those shows.

"We are now committed to 52 weeks a year of original programing ... and we are going to introduce what normally would have been some of the strongest components of a fall schedule all year long," said Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal Television Group.

NBC, owned by General Electric Co., is the first of the major networks to unveil its new lineup as broadcasters kick off their "upfront" sales of commercial time to advertisers. The upfront market typically accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of all ad sales by the networks, reaping roughly $9 billion for prime-time shows last year.

HEAVY DOSE OF REALITY

Reality shows figure prominently on NBC's schedule as well, with the launch of boxing spectacle "The Contender," the return of gross-out stunt show "Fear Factor" and new editions of hit tycoon contest "The Apprentice," starring real estate magnate Donald Trump. The network also will air a fourth edition of last summer's unscripted summer sensation "For Love or Money" and a new installment of "Average Joe."

The heavy dose of reality marks a turnaround of sorts at NBC, which had long seen comedy as its bread and butter and was viewed as a relative latecomer to the burgeoning genre of unscripted shows compared to rival networks CBS and Fox.

"Today, comedy is in a challenged state," Kevin Reilly, the new NBC entertainment president, said in a conference call with reporters, adding that launching a flurry of new sitcoms each fall has largely failed in recent years.

"Ironically, the best way to get comedy on the schedule right now is to keep it off in the short term," he said.

"Joey," starring Matt LeBlanc reprising his "Friends" role as the big-hearted aspiring actor, will get the plum time slot formerly occupied by its sitcom predecessor, leading off NBC's potent Thursday night lineup of "Must-See TV." "Friends" ended its 10-year run this month as television's top-rated comedy.

'JOEY' PILOT PLAYS WELL

An advance screening of the entire "Joey" pilot, rare for upfront presentations, seemed to play well among advertisers and media buyers in attendance, drawing plenty of laughs.

The second new comedy set for an August launch is "Father of the Pride," NBC's first animated show on prime time since the short-lived 2000 series "God, the Devil and Bob."

"Pride" will fill the Tuesday night slot held by "Frasier," which ended its 11-year run last week. NBC also has locked in its Tuesday night comedy "Scrubs" for more two more seasons.
 
Two freshman Tuesday comedies failed to be renewed -- the Whoopi Goldberg comedy "Whoopi" and "Happy Family."

NBC's mid-season offerings include the fourth installment in the long-running cop and courtroom franchise, "Law & Order: Trial by Jury," from producer Dick Wolf, who just renewed his NBC contract for the first three "Law & Order" series.

In one big change for the franchise, Jerry Orbach, who has played detective Lennie Briscoe for 12 years on the original series, is moving to the cast of "Trial by Jury."

On the drama front this fall, NBC plans to launch the airport ensemble series "LAX," starring Heather Locklear, the cop show "Hawaii" and "Medical Investigation." The new limited-run thriller "Revelations" will join "Law & Order: Trial by Jury" on the midseason schedule, along with "Medium," starring Patricia Arquette as a woman who sees dead people.

Summer's Hottest Flicks

From the moment the first frame of celluloid began rolling more than 100 years ago in Los Angeles, Hollywood became known as the illusion factory.

Five years ago Hollywood decided to work magic on the seasons, turning spring into summer.

Five years ago, Universal took a gamble when it decided to release its $120-million US special effects adventure The Mummy in the first week of May, a full month before the other potential summer blockbusters were scheduled to unspool.

The plan worked with The Mummy grossing a whopping $426 million worldwide.
The summer of 2004 began with the release of Universal's Van Helsing the $200-million special effects romp from Stephen Sommers, the man who exhumed the mummy.

This weekend, Brad Pitt and hordes of Greek and Trojan soldiers are poised to end Van Helsing's short reign as box-office king and begin a summer domino effect.

Each week a new potential blockbuster backed by a massive advertising campaign will most likely dethrone the ruling champ.

Troy will have to stave off that jolliest of green giants in Shrek 2 which, in turn, will do battle with Harry Potter and his wizard friends in their third adventure Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, a stranded Tom Hanks in Terminal, a leather-clad Halle Berry in Catwoman and Tom Cruise as a villain in the thriller Collateral.

MAY 19

* SHREK 2: If the hired assassin Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas) has his way, marriage won't be bliss for Shrek (Mike Myers) and Fiona (Cameron Diaz). Julie Andrews and John Cleese make cameo appearances as Fiona's parents and Rupert Everett is a scheming Prince Charming.

MAY 28

* THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal battle to save Earth from the effects of global warming when a tidal wave hits New York, tornados ravage Los Angeles and hail pummels Tokyo.

* SOUL PLANE: Rapper Snoop Dogg is in the pilot's seat.

* RAISING HELEN: Socialite Kate Hudson gets a rude awakening when her sister dies leaving her to raise three kids.

* SAVED!: Jenna Malone discovers that her classmates at a Christian high school are not about to forgive her when she becomes pregnant.

JUNE 4

* HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN: Gary Oldman as infamous murderer Sirius Black is the latest villain that aspiring wizards Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) must do battle with.

JUNE 11

* GARFIELD: Bill Murray gives voice to that sly, overweight, comic strip feline for his big-screen adventure.

* THE STEPFORD WIVES: Nicole Kidman discovers that her hubby Matthew Broderick is planning to have her programmed into a perfect subservient wife.

* THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: Thandie Newton and Judi Dench join Vin Diesel in this galactic battle between the Necromongers and the Elementals.

JUNE 16

* AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS: Jules Verne's intrepid duo inventor Phileas Fogg tries to circumnavigate the world in 80 days.

JUNE 18

* THE TERMINAL: Tom Hanks plays an immigrant who finds himself stranded in an airport when his country ceases to exist. Catherine Zeta-Jones is the stewardess who becomes the love of his life whenever she touches down.

* DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY: Vince Vaughn and his dodgeball team defend their turf when the evil Ben Stiller's gang tries to muscle in.

JUNE 23

* WHITE CHICKS: Shawn and Marlon Wayans are a pair of FBI agents who must disguise themselves as white women to protect a pair of hotel heiresses.

* THE DOOR IN THE FLOOR: Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger try to cope with the death of their teenage sons in a freak car accident.

JUNE 25

* TWO BROTHERS: A live-action adventure from Jean-Jacques Annaud who directed The Bear follows a pair of tiger cubs separated as infants who find each other a year later.

* THE NOTEBOOK: James Garner plays a retired salesman who visits a woman suffering from Alzheimer and reads to her from her diary bringing those memories to life for the audience.

* DE-LOVELY: Kevin Kline plays American composer Cole Porter and Ashley Judd is his wife in this musical.

JUNE 30

* SPIDER-MAN 2: The action picks up two years after Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) vanquished the Green Goblin and already he has to protect lady love Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) from the villainous Doc Ock (Alfred Molina).

JULY 2:

* THE CLEARING: A businessman (Robert Redford) is kidnapped by one of his disgruntled employees (Willem Dafoe) and must wait for his wife (Helen Mirren) to follow clues to rescue him.

JULY 7:

* KING ARTHUR: Clive Owen is King Arthur, Keira Knightly is Queen Guinevere and Ioan Gruffudd is Lancelot in Jerry Bruckheimer's re-telling of the famous Arthurian legend of a king who unites a kingdom but loses his lady love.

JULY 9:

* ANCHORMAN: Will Ferrell is a popular anchorman who will do anything to thwart the career of his arch-rival Christina Applegate.

* SLEEPOVER: Four teen girls challenge their school's most popular quartet to an all-night scavenger hunt.

JULY 16:

* I, ROBOT: Call this one Planet of the Machines as futuristic policeman Will Smith is out to prove robots are plotting to take over the world.

* A CINDERELLA STORY: Jennifer Coolidge is the evil stepmother who tries to prevent Hilary Duff from getting a date with a princely guy at her California high school.

JULY 23

* THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: Matt Damon returns as the spy whose bouts of amnesia make him prey to all his former enemies.

* CATWOMAN: By day Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) works as a graphic artist in a cosmetic factory. By night she's the leather-clad crime-fighter Catwoman.

JULY 30:

* THE VILLAGE: Joaquin Phoenix and Sigourney Weaver star in the thriller from M. Night Shyamalan about a village in 19th century Pennsylvania whose adjacent forest is home to a race of creatures.

* THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: Denzel Washington takes over the Frank Sinatra role about soldiers who unwittingly have become programmed assassins.

AUG. 6:

* COLLATERAL: In this Michael Mann thriller, Tom Cruise plays an assassin sent to New York to kill five witnesses of a major drug deal.

* THUNDERBIRDS: Bill Paxton and Ben Kingsley give life to the heroes and villains of the animated 1960s British TV series come to life.

* AT HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD: Colin Ferrell and Dallas Roberts are childhood friends who reunite in New York when they are both attracted to the free-spirited Robin Wright Penn.

AUG. 11:

* THE PRINCESS DIARIES 2: ROYAL ENGAGEMENT: In this sequel to the 2002 hit, Anne Hathaway, now a queen, has two prince charmings to choose from.

AUG. 13:

* ALIEN VS PREDATOR: Earth becomes the battleground for two galactic monsters who are long-time foes.

AUG. 20:

* WITHOUT A PADDLE: A comic spin on Deliverance as buddies Seth Green and Matthew Lliard meet mountain man Burt Reynolds as they all search for buried treasure.

* EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING: In this much-delayed, much-revamped sequel to the 1973 horror classic, Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgaard) unleashes Satan while doing missionary work in Africa.

AUG. 27:

* ANACONDA: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD RED ORCHID: A group of scientists in the jungles of Borneo encounter a very hungry giant snake.

Alanis' Chaos theory

There is one aspect of performing that has scared Alanis Morissette for years.

And when it comes to personal growth and challenging herself, two things the 29-year-old Ottawa-born singer clearly believes in, she mostly takes the "baby steps" approach.

But there are times, and lately she started to believe this particular problem was one of them, which require a "quantum leap."

And that is how, in a recent performance, she found herself shooting a quick glance at a concert-goer in the front row.

It was only a millisecond, she says, but it was still longer than she's ever spent meeting the eyes of such close-proximity fans while belting out her hits on stage.
"I'll look people in the eye if they're not in the front row," laughs Morissette, who admits she has long found the concept terrifying. "I'll stare at them for five minutes!"

It's an interesting admission from a singer/songwriter who has chronicled her journey from Canadian pop singer to angry young woman to self-possessed, well-rounded artist who seems, at last, to have found a comfortable peace.

She's no longer hiding behind that mess of hair that was so unique when she broke through with her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. It had grown tired nine years later, and she hacked most of it off herself on a whim this winter.

OPEN ABOUT RELATIONSHIP

She's open about her relationship with Vancouver-born actor Ryan Reynolds (last month, while Morissette prepared to perform and then introduce the Dalai Lama at the Ottawa Civic Centre in front of 9,000 fans, Reynolds trotted around backstage with their newly-adopted dog, a white chihuahua-terrier mix named Boogs) singing about their relationship in the eastern-influenced Bees of My Knees, one of 10 pretty happy songs on her fourth studio album, So-Called Chaos, due out on Tuesday.

And on the cusp of turning a landmark 30 next month, a birthday she swears she is looking forward to, and with it marriage and motherhood, Morissette seems unworried about where the music world is going to take her.

When she says, "I'll be making records when I'm 103," somehow, you believe her.

Almost a decade after Jagged Little Pill, the heat seems to be off Morissette, or at least the weight of expectation that she will never be able to measure up to its 30-million-selling-album success.

And though it's sort of obvious to an outsider what So-Called Chaos is all about -- joy! love! acceptance! -- when the songwriter herself is asked to explain it, she's at a bit of a loss. "I don't have objectivity on it until a few years later," says Morissette, during a recent phone interview with the Sun. "Similar to if you take a photo of yourself, in the moment you can appreciate it, but it's 10 years later when you look at it that you have a sense of where you were at that time."

The album, a lighthearted, soft-tongued snapshot of Morissette right now, is worlds away from the angst that made her so famous all those years ago. She's deeply in love, good, non-jagged love, a state which is palpable and more than a little inspiring in the simple, repetitive first single Everything.

"You see all my light/and you love my dark," goes the radio hit's oft-repeated refrain.

"It's such an epitomy of what true love is," says Morissette, stressing the song refers to both loving others and our fractured selves. "Ever since I was a very young girl I was always obsessed with, at one point, loving all parts of myself, the part that is greedy, and generous, and stupid, and smart. It's like a dream come true in that way."

And in loving yourself, perhaps, comes the realization that there are things about you that have to go. And Morissette does just that on This Grudge, a ballad about the deeply hurtful past relationship she's held on to for, as the opening lines indicate "fourteen years, thirty minutes, fifteen seconds."

"You've been villified/Used as fodder/You deserve a piece of every record," she sings. "But who's it hurting now?/Who's the one that stuck?!/Who's it torturing now?/With an empty knot in her stomach."

Morissette knows people love her for all that angry resentment which sparked her to use her past heartbreak as "fodder" for all these years. But she says, these days, she's realized it's really just a lot more fun to write about infatuation.

"As long as there is passion," says Morissette. "I can be passionately infatuated or passionately enraged or passionately bored ... as long as there's a passion I'll continue to write."

It's Time For Jerry Orbach's Last 'Law and Order'

AS Detective Lenny Briscoe, Jerry Orbach has anchored the entire "L&O" franchise since its premiere 12 years ago. And though the original installment has suffered from cast defections - Chris Noth and Benjamin Bratt are alumni, and who misses them? - fans have gone into near-apoplexy at the thought of an episode without the peerlessly droll Orbach, whose last episode airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. Not to worry: He's leaving to star in Dick Wolf's 38th addition to the franchise, "Law and Order: Trial by Jury."

Rush Returns To Roots On 'Feedback'

Canadian rock trio Rush's next release will feature covers of classics popularized by the Who, Cream, Buffalo Springfield and the Yardbirds, Billboard.com has learned. Due June 29 via Atlantic, the eight-track "Feedback" marks the first time the group has ever recorded material by other artists.

The album kicks off with a new take on Blue Cheer's cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues." The track list is rounded out by the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul" and "Shapes of Things," the Who's "The Seeker," Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and "Mr. Soul," Love's "Seven and Seven Is" and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," famously covered by Cream.

"[Bassist] Geddy [Lee], [guitarist] Alex [Lifeson] and I were channeling back to 1966 and 1967, when we were 13- and 14-year-old beginners," drummer Neil Peart writes in the album's liner notes. "We thought it would be a fitting symbol to commemorate our 30 years together if we returned to our roots and paid tribute to those we had learned from and were inspired by. We thought we might record some of the songs we used to listen to, the ones we painstakingly learned the chords, notes and drum parts for, and even played in our earliest bands."

As previously reported, Rush's 30th anniversary tour begins May 26 in Nashville and will wrap its North American portion with an Aug. 22 show in the group's Toronto home town. A European swing kicks off Sept. 8 in London.

"Feedback" is Rush's first studio release since 2002's "Vapor Trails," which debuted at No. 6 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 320,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Lee recently told Billboard the group may begin work on a new album next year.

In Toon with Shrek 2

Call it twice upon a time. Shrek 2 once more indulges in fairy-tale foolery as its lime-hued newlywed ogre grapples with a truly Grimm situation: a visit with his royally chagrined in-laws.

The hip-and-flip cultural zingers still flit by in the follow-up to DreamWorks' 2001 smash, which collected the first animated-movie Oscar plus $480 million in worldwide box office.

A sample taste of the second helping that arrives Wednesday: a poster of a certain "Sir Justin" hangs in the childhood bedroom of Shrek's bride, Fiona, voiced by Cameron Diaz — a reference to Diaz's beau, pop idol Justin Timberlake.

But as the candy-colored computerized action shifts to Far Far Away, with its glitzy boutiques (Joust instead of Polo) and enchanted estates, the comedy also wickedly mocks the skin-deep values of Beverly Hills.

Which means the Fairy Godmother isn't just some wing-flapping, wish-granting yenta. Like Mary Kay with a flight plan, the matronly meddler (voiced by Absolutely Fabulous funny lady Jennifer Saunders) delivers extreme makeovers with a whoosh of her wand and stocks enough potent beauty potions to put most Botox clinics to shame.

"With a flick of the wrist and just a flash, you'll land a prince with a ton of cash," she brags in a Bibbity-bobbity-boo-ish ditty.

Actually, the very studio that changed the face of animated features with Shrek, whose 3-D visual punch helped erase the popularity of traditionally drawn cartoons, is giving itself a makeover.

As far as landing a prince goes, tell the Fairy Godmother never mind. The 10-year-old DreamWorks already has a cartoon ruler — co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who previously oversaw Disney's animation revival, from 1989's The Little Mermaid to 1994's The Lion King. As Shrek 2 director Kelly Asbury puts it, "What Tom Landry was to the Dallas Cowboys, Jeffrey is to DreamWorks."

But the ton of cash? That would do nicely, especially since the studio hasn't had an animated success since the original Shrek. Heck, it hasn't even had a modest live-action hit since its aged frat-boy frolic Old School more than a year ago.

Also at issue: The company may offer shares in its animation unit to the public later this year.

A new day is about to dawn, and Shrek 2 signals a confident switch in style. Out is 2003's old-fashioned horse opera Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and last year's creaky shipwreck Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. In is Shrek-ian humor and a more contemporary sensibility.

"They are chapters in our past," Katzenberg says of Spirit and Sinbad. Since animated features take about four years to complete, "Those films were well into production when Shrek came out. We knew it would take a couple of years to achieve a new direction."

That time has arrived. "This is a defining moment for DreamWorks animation," he says. "Shrek really did answer the question of how we could find that place to be unique and popular with moviegoers."

The Shrek effect is very apparent in the studio's upcoming slate, including the undersea Mob comedy Shark Tale (Oct. 1), the zooey romp Madagascar (May 2005), the stop-motion Wallace & Gromit Movie (September 2005) from the team that did Chicken Run, and the suburbia spoof Over the Hedge (2006). All feature animals. All save Wallace & Gromit have major stars doing voice work, from Shark Tale's Will Smith to Hedge's Jim Carrey. And, most important, all are funny.

"Some are parodies, but all of them are a bit subversive and sophisticated," Katzenberg says. "They're told from an adult point of view but made to work for kids, rather than the other way around."

Cartoon lovers who have been sweating out Disney's severe cutbacks, its probable split with partner Pixar as well as the DreamWorks slump can at least breathe a qualified sigh of relief.

"They've figured out a formula that works for them," says animation expert Jerry Beck. "It's not so much a change at DreamWorks but a change in audience tastes and attitudes. The Disney style that Katzenberg honed so well and revitalized is not in fashion."

Many things went right for Shrek 2. That includes luring back its dream cast of voice actors — Mike Myers as Shrek, Eddie Murphy as sassy sidekick Donkey, as well as Diaz — with a $10 million payday each.

"There was no question I wouldn't come back," Diaz says. "I feel oddly possessive about Fiona. I never thought of myself as a person who would do a voice of an animated character, and to be able to do it and see how it has impacted people is a gift."

And it's one that keeps on giving. The animators have topped the hilarious motormouth banter of Murphy's Donkey with a rival for Shrek's, as well as the audience's, affections: Puss In Boots, a killer cat swashbuckler who speaks with the Spanish-accented bravado of Zorro himself, Antonio Banderas.

"I have cats, and his performance is so dead-on," says Diaz, a rabid Puss fan. "I literally laughed so hard I fell on the floor."

Never mind his sword. Puss disarms his foes when he puts on his sad little kitty act with dewy eyes the size of saucers.

Even Banderas was smitten with his feline alter ego. When he first visited the studio, "Jeffrey showed me walls filled with drawings of the cat," he says. "I stopped when I saw his eyes all watery and his ears down. It was love at first sight."

Shrek's kingdom of tie-ins and planned sequels keeps expanding, including a possible theatrical production. Says Katzenberg, "Sam Mendes (director of American Beauty) approached me a year or so ago and was very passionate about trying to adapt it for Broadway. It's really guided by his interest, and it's his idea to turn it into an out-and-out musical. It will probably be the story of the first film with parts of the second."

As for Shrek 3, "We started six months ago," he says.

A bouncing baby ogre is a likely addition. It seems to be the natural progression to director Andrew Adamson, who worked on the original and the sequel. "In the first Shrek, he learned to love. In the second, he learns to love himself. So thematically, and having just had one myself, a child would require him to say, 'I'm comfortable enough to be a mentor.' " And a Shrek 4 is in the offing, as well.

DreamWorks is not just focusing its identity on its storytelling. Shrek 2 marks the debut of a customized animation logo, which flashes onscreen before the film while strains of the big green guy's theme song are heard. While that kid in the moon is the studio's official symbol, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that the grouchy ogre is the studio's real mascot, representing its future aspirations in animation.

As Asbury says, "Shrek is the Mickey Mouse of DreamWorks."

Besides, in Hollywood, green goes with everything.

Who?

According to SkyNews, the BBC will launch the new DR. WHO series on Christmas Day, 2004.

APPLE OF HER EYE

Gwyneth Paltrow giving birth Friday to a baby girl named Apple Blythe Alison Martin. The 9-pound, 11-ounce infant is the first child for the Oscar winner and her husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who said the couple was "over the moon" with the arrival.

Murray Gets Jacksonville Festival Award

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Bill Murray, who won a Golden Globe earlier this year for his role in "Lost in Translation," received a lifetime achievement award at the Jacksonville Film Festival. Murray, 53, kissed the award — a glass-and-wood turtle — then made a face.

"It smells like the ocean," Murray said at the ceremony Saturday night. "It's the only award I have that does."

The Golden Globe was the first major acting prize for Murray, who gained fame in the 1970s as a goofball on TV's "Saturday Night Live" and continued that schtick in movies such as "Caddyshack" and "Meatballs."

"Lost in Translation," about two lonely Americans who find friendship in a Tokyo hotel, earned Murray an Oscar nomination.

He told a packed auditorium at the Florida Theatre that his latest honor proves "that I'm not in it just for the awards."

"It's just an accident I'm receiving this," Murray said. "I happen to know Patrick Swayze left unexpectedly, and I happened to be here."

Murray's latest film, "Coffee and Cigarettes," is a compilation of 11 vignettes featuring actors and musicians playing versions of themselves as they sit down for coffee, cigarettes and banter. The film opened Friday in select theaters.

'Troy' Slays Box Office Competition

LOS ANGELES - Muscle-bound Brad Pitt fought his way through scrawnier competition to help the Greek epic "Troy" claim the top spot at the box office with $45.6 million.

A handful of older movies aimed at teenagers continued to dominate the top 10.

Lindsay Lohan's high school comedy "Mean Girls" continued its strong run with $10.1 million for third place, dropping only 26 percent in its third week. "13 Going on 30" fell only 28 percent to earn $4.2 million for sixth place. Even the Olsen twins bomb "New York Minute" fell by a relatively small 37 percent to earn $3.7 million in seventh place.

Most movies this time of year see earnings drop 50 percent or more each week.

"These are very minimal drops, which shows that the most consistent audience right now is young girls," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. "There are teen guys in the theaters, too. But I'll bet you it's the female in the couple deciding which movie they go to see."

That may also have been a factor with "Troy," which boasted hunky stars Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana.

The film's audience was split equally between male and female viewers, according to Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released the movie. "Males liked it because of the action and epic adventure of the movie. The females liked it because of Brad, Orlando and Eric," he said.

Meanwhile, the Dracula, Wolf Man and Frankenstein action-adventure "Van Helsing" saw 61 percent of its audience turn to dust in its second week, falling to No. 2 with $20.1 million for a cumulative total of $84.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Despite the apparently strong earnings for "Troy" and "Van Helsing," their massive budgets and the intensity of the summer movie competition suggest they will have a hard time earning their money back in North American theaters.

"Troy" cost a reported $175 million to $200 million to produce, while "Van Helsing" was in the $160 million range. Add to each about $50 million in marketing costs, and they will likely rely on international ticket sales and home video releases to show a profit.

Warner Bros. expressed satisfaction with "Troy" earnings, saying its debut compared favorably with 2000's R-rated "Gladiator," which earned $34.8 million in its opening weekend and rode strong word-of-mouth praise to a $187.6 million total, even before winning the Oscar for best picture.

The only other new movie to open in wide release was Jamie Foxx's anti-romantic comedy "Breakin' All the Rules," in which he played the author of a manual on how to leave your lover. It ranked in fourth place with $5.3 million.

Many bombastic movies like "Troy" open with a handful of smaller films aimed at niche viewers. Studio heads think like this: Black audiences who may be bored with armies of ancient white guys hacking each other in "Troy" had the option of "Breakin' All the Rules." On Memorial Day weekend, sensitive women who don't want to see the world end in "The Day After Tomorrow" can see perky Kate Hudson in "Raising Helen" instead.

The weekend's total box-office earnings were down 35 percent from last year, coming in at $100.2 million. One movie made up most of the total $154.6 million from the same time in 2003: "The Matrix Reloaded," which was No. 1 with $97.1 million.

Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Troy," $45.6 million
2. "Van Helsing," $20.1 million.
3. "Mean Girls," $10.1 million.
4. "Breakin' All the Rules," $5.3 million.
5. "Man on Fire," $5.2 million.
6. "13 Going on 30," $4.2 million.
7. "New York Minute," $3.7 million.
8. "Laws of Attraction," $2 million.
9. "Kill Bill — Vol. 2," $1.6 million.
10. "Godsend," $1 million.

Quentin Tarantino Wants to Tackle James Bond

CANNES, France (Reuters) - After four years of filming and editing his "Kill Bill" revenge saga, American director Quentin Tarantino feels like he's climbed a cinematic mountain but instead of a much-desired rest he wants to tackle the Everest of film genres: James Bond.

Once Tarantino finishes worldwide promotion for his "Kill Bill - Volume 2" sequel, which stars Uma Thurman as a bride bent on finding the man who tried to kill her, he plans to approach the producers of the big-budget Bond series.

"I've always wanted to do it. I bumped into Pierce Brosnan and we talked about it. He liked the idea," he said.

Tarantino is a lifelong fan of the British spy saga, now starring the Irish actor Brosnan.

"I would like to do the original book 'Casino Royale' and do it more or less the way the Ian Fleming book is," Tarantino told Reuters in an interview in Cannes, where he is president of this year's film festival jury.

"Casino Royale" was made in 1967 as an ill-fated spoof starring David Niven as an aging 007.

"I don't know if they're going to go for it or not, but I'm letting them know I'm interested," he said.

Only weeks ago, an exhausted Tarantino said he felt like he had already climbed the world's highest peak and would probably pick a smaller-scale production for his next picture.

That was before he received some words of advice from Eleanor Coppola, wife of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola and mother of Sofia Coppola ("Lost in Translation"), who is rumored to be dating Tarantino.

Eleanor Coppola, who documented the disaster-ridden making of her husband's 1979 classic "Apocalypse Now," told Tarantino to tackle ambitious projects while he still had youth and energy on his side.

"It was actually quite profound advice that she gave. Not to say that you can't make a small movie in between, but now is not the time to do a left-handed project," Tarantino said. "Now is the time to climb Mount Everest."

The "Reservoir Dogs" director sounds like he has no intention of slowing down. He has completed a script for a World War II project and is also toying with plans for a horror film.

Though he is handing out the honors this year, Tarantino has every intention of returning to Cannes, where he won the Palme d'Or best film award in 1994 with "Pulp Fiction."

"I guess at the end of the day it would be nice if my crowning achievement was the fact that I won more Palme d'Ors than any filmmaker who ever lived. That would be great, that's something to aspire to," he said.

CBS Renews Sitcom 'Raymond' for Final Season

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The CBS television network announced on Sunday it has struck a deal with the producers of its top-rated comedy, "Everybody Loves Raymond," to bring the show back in the fall for a ninth and final season.

With NBC's megahit "Friends" having ended its 10-year run on prime time two weeks ago, the Emmy-winning "Raymond" will return to the airwaves in September as the No. 1 sitcom on U.S. television.

But following in the footsteps of "Friends," "Raymond" will conclude its network run with fewer than the usual 22 episodes that make up a complete sitcom season, airing just 16 fresh shows for its ninth and final year, CBS said.

The announcement comes days before CBS is due to unveil its fall schedule as the major networks kick off their "upfront" sales of commercial time to advertisers this week in New York.

The future of "Raymond" had been in doubt since series star Ray Romano indicated publicly last year that he was leaning toward calling it quits once the show's eighth season drew to a close in May, saying he wanted the show to end on a creative high note.

Romano is believed to be the highest-paid sitcom star on television, reportedly earning between $1.7 million and $2 million per episode this past season for his role as a sports writer and harried family man Ray Barone.

"The decision about coming back was always about maintaining the quality, and not feeling like we've overstayed our welcome," Romano said in a statement. "I look forward to being a hapless, sexless husband once again in year nine."

Series creator and executive producer Phil Rosenthal said he, Romano and the show's writers met a few months ago and decided they could come up with enough new material to keep the comedy on the air for one more season.

"Our decision had nothing to do with money for Ray or me," Rosenthal said. "Emotionally, we never want the show to end, but everything must."

The series won the Emmy Award last year as television's best comedy. It currently ranks 10th in viewership among all prime-time programs, averaging 17.4 million viewers each week.

SMOKE SCREENING

Audrey Hepburn did it. So did Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Nicole Kidman and, famously, Olivia Newton-John. But you'll never see another movie star smoke on screen if the anti-smoking lobby has its way.

Critics of the tobacco industry want Hollywood to treat on-screen smoking the same way it treats indecent language and nudity - with an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

It's a change that would effectively ban smoking from many movies, since an R rating hurts a movie at the box office, and producers regularly demand that directors deliver a crowd-friendly rating.

Congress is listening to the activists: On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee invited anti-smoking witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill.

"When are we going to treat smoking as seriously as we treat the word 'f - - - '?" Dr. Stan Glantz asked the panel. Glantz, a leading tobacco-industry opponent, is a professor of medicine at the University of California.

"If you use the F-word once in a sexual context, you get an R rating."

Glantz's salty language wasn't appreciated by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who reminded the professor of the Senate's standards of decorum.

But while Glantz apologized for using the word, he said he used it to make a point.

"I did it quite deliberately," he said. "The use of the word will get you an R rating. It doesn't kill you."

Glantz and other anti-smoking activists say that giving an R rating to movies that contain smoking would prevent 200,000 children a year from lighting up. They argue that 390,000 children develop a tobacco habit because of what they see on the big screen.

Though there is no legislation pending that would force the MPAA to modify its ratings system, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the movie industry has to step up or it might face such a law.

MPAA chairman Jack Valenti testified in defense of the current system.

"I am opposed to smoking on the screen and off," he told the Senate panel.

"But if the director feels it's essential to the time and place, or a quick way to identify a character's traits, it's his right to tell the story as he sees fit."

It's hard to imagine countless classic movies without those smoking scenes, say experts.

"Cigarettes can instantly convey what a character is like," says Martin Grove, on-line columnist for the Hollywood Reporter.

"Think of Lauren Bacall in a '40s movie like 'The Big Sleep.' When she lights up, it shows that she's a liberated woman, and you don't want to fool around with her."

Cigarettes can indicate elegance - like a tuxedoed Fred Astaire pulling a smoke from a shiny case in one of his '30s musicals - or desperation, like in "Casablanca," when Humphrey Bogart's ashtray fills with butts as he tries to drink away thoughts of Ingrid Bergman.

But according to the anti-smoking lobby, it's not art that Hollywood is after in these scenes, but cash.

At the Senate hearing, Glantz suggested that "product placement" money was changing hands somewhere, even though that would violate the national accord reached by the states and the tobacco industry on advertising.

"If they're getting paid, then they are corrupt," Glantz said. "If they're doing it for free, then they're stupid."

Valenti said that was ridiculous.

"I have been unable to unearth one jot of evidence of product placement with cigarettes," he said.

"The MPAA doesn't want to make smoking one of the triggers for a film rating or to add a T for tobacco designation because that would open the door for everyone's pet causes.

"Alcohol abuse, murder by gun, unsafe driving, smoking, obesity . . . To start talking about things that kill people, the rating system isn't capable of bearing that burden."

HBO Digs 'Six Feet' in June

HOLLYWOOD (Zap2it.com) - - Emmy winning drama "Six Feet Under" is set to return to HBO's schedule in the middle of June. The nation's favorite scripted funeral home family will help relieve "Sopranos" withdrawal starting on Sunday, June 13 at 9 p.m. ET.

The new season begins with an episode titled "Falling into Place," which finds Nate (Peter Krause) still dealing with Lisa's (Lili Taylor) death as David (Michael C. Hall) and Keith (Mathew St. Patrick) keep trying to start their relationship over.

As Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) feels things out with neighbor Joe (Justin Theroux), Ruth (Frances Conroy) is enjoying her new marriage to George (James Cromwell).

Regulars Lauren Ambrose and Freddy Rodriguez also return for the season. The deep roster of returning guest stars includes Kathy Bates, Joanna Cassidy, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Foster, Richard Jenkins, Peter Macdissi, Justina Machado and Rainn Wilson, while Mena Suvari ("American Beauty"), Ellen DeGeneres, Veronica Cartwright ("Just Married") and Michelle Trachtenberg ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") will also appear.

In 2003, "Six Feet Under" received 16 Emmy nominations, but only won a single award (fittingly for casting). In 2002, the show's 23 nominations yielded six wins, including a directing trophy for series creator Alan Ball and an acting win for Clarkson.

Diva?

According to IMDB, Halle Berry told X-MEN 3 producers that she wouldn't return as Storm unless she was given a much bigger role than X2. "I love working with her," said producer Lauren Schuller Donner. "We would only write a huge role for her, so she's right in that respect. We would make sure that would happen."

Fourth Blood?

Cinescape has heard a rumor that development on RAMBO IV may be cranking back up. "RAMBO IV is ready to be fast tracked with Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna back at the helm as producers," said their insider. "It seems Dimension Films and the C2 honchos are close to reaching an agreement that would give Dimension half of the worldwide box-office of the film as well as dvd/vhs sales.

The director that Kassar and Vajna are after is none other than action master John Woo. Also, spies say that Stallone is looking at his biggest payday with this film said to be as high as 30 million. The plot of I hear being thrown around has something to do with Rambo and nuclear weapons that were somehow lost."

Hindsight: 20/20 or just plain wrong?

An internal NBC research report created before the 1994 debut of Friends gave the sitcom a failing grade, describing the pilot as "not very entertaining, clever, or original."

Of course the Peacock show went on to become a Thursday night mainstay over the next decade, consistently ranking among Nielsen's top 10 and pulling in over 52 million viewers for its two-hour finale last week.

But test audiences in May 1994 found the program and its then unknown stars "not very favorable," according to the document published online at The Smoking Gun. The show got a "weak" review and was graded a measly 41 out of 100. By comparison, ER earned a 91, though it's only fair to point out that Seinfeld also scored a "weak" rating.

Most critical of the laffer was the over-35 set who described the characters as smug, superficial and self-absorbed. "They were not really like people they would want to know." The show did best among 18-34-year-olds (no big surprise) and men showed more interest than women in both the story and premise of the show (how things change).

Courteney Cox, best known as Alex Keaton's girlfriend on Family Ties at the time, was the test-audience fave, though her appeal was "well below desirable levels for a lead." Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry had "marginal appeal" while "Rachel, Ross and Joey scored even lower."

To be more specific: Men thought Monica was sexy, women enjoyed her sense of humor, and both found her the most stable and together of the group. Big bro Ross received a lukewarm response, slightly more favorable among women. But the "slacker" came across as "weak and insecure." Ouch.

Phoebe was kooky from the get-go, described by the test audience as an "airhead" and "'60s personality" who contributed a left-field perspective. "Snappy and funny" was Chandler's review, appealing to adult viewers as "more intelligent and more professional looking than the rest of the group."

As for Rachel, the 'do had yet to catch on. She was described as a "spoiled brat" and the "most sheltered" who had "the most growing up to do." Joey scored best with teens as a wise-cracking, macho character with a big ego (ah, but will they tune in to his spinoff?).

The report even provided some recommendations for improving the Friends format, which execs luckily ignored, including the addition of older characters, fewer sexual situations and using Chandler's dreams as a running bit on the show. Smarter suggestions included a larger role for Phoebe, more humor and a deeper emotional involvement among the characters.

And a potential test-audience victim saved from the screening scrap heap? The Central Perk, which confused viewers who found it too funky and too similar to the apartment setting.

Imagine, a world without Gunther...

'Mean Girls' Star to Host MTV Movie Awards

NEW YORK - Lindsay Lohan will be the queen bee of the MTV Movie Awards, serving as host of the ceremony airing June 10. The 17-year-old actress stars in "Mean Girls," a comedy about high school queen bees and wannabes.

"Lindsay is smart, funny, she has an amazing connection to the MTV audience, and she's a huge star," the network's president, Van Toffler, said Thursday. "That makes her the perfect choice to host this year's show."

Lohan's other movies include "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" and last year's remake of "Freaky Friday."

"Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" has the most MTV Movie Award nominations with six, including best movie and best on-screen team for co-stars Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.

D12, the Beastie Boys and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are among the bands scheduled to perform at the show, which will be taped June 5 at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif.

'Survivor' Gives Rupert $1M Consolation

NEW YORK - Rupert Boneham, the bushy-bearded giant from Indianapolis who was an audience favorite during the last two "Survivor" games, won a $1 million consolation prize during a special edition of the CBS game on Thursday

CBS said 38 million people cast votes for the second $1 million winner, a gimmick that brought an "American Idol" flavor to the long-running game. Host Jeff Probst even called it "America's Tribal Council."

The "Survivor All-Stars" finale on Sunday was seen by just under 25 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Three other men were the top vote-getters behind Boneham: Tom Buchanan, the jolly drawler from Virginia; Colby Donaldson, the hunk from Texas; and "Boston Rob" Mariano, the runner-up during "Survivor: All-Stars" to his fiancee, Amber Brkich.

For the investment of a $1 million prize, CBS got one more hour of "Survivor"-related programming during a ratings "sweeps" month, and is likely to earn more in advertising profits than it spent.

Mariano and Brkich, the final two contestants on Sunday who became engaged during the finale, said a network — they didn't reveal which one — had already talked to them about televising their wedding.

Would they be interested?

"If the price is right," Mariano said.

Viewers voted his fiancee the sexiest "Survivor." Donaldson was deemed the hottest male.

'Frasier' Ends Run With Laughter, Romance

LOS ANGELES - After 11 years of solving many of Seattle's problems and few of his own, radio shrink Frasier Crane — in the end — followed his heart out of town.

The multiple Emmy-winning NBC series, "Frasier," bowed out Thursday with an hour-long episode filled with slapstick comedy, warmly emotional moments and a subtle romantic twist at the end.

Frasier, played by series star Kelsey Grammer, saw his brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Niles' wife Daphne (Jane Leeves) greet the birth of their first child. Family patriarch Martin Crane (John Mahoney) got married to Ronee (Wendie Malick).

Frasier decided to leave Seattle and accept a new job in San Francisco.

"The reason I'm leaving is because I want what all of you have right now — a new chapter," Frasier told his television family.

Yet the final scene showed Frasier in a plane touching down with the pilot announcing, "Welcome to Chicago." That's the city where his potential soul mate Charlotte (Laura Linney) had just moved to.

The ending offered hope and mystery: was unlucky-in-love Frasier finally making the right move? The curtain closed, leaving it to the audience's imagination.

It could also set up a potential spinoff someday. Television viewers followed Grammer's character in Boston from its inception on "Cheers," to the 11-year run in Seattle on "Frasier." Grammer has said he'd be open to someday revisiting the character he'd played in prime-time for 20 straight years.

The hourlong episode, "Goodnight, Seattle," was preceded by a series retrospective.

Although "Frasier" didn't equal the just-ended "Friends" as a ratings leader or cultural phenomenon, it held a place as one of the most successful spinoffs ever.

Psychiatrist Frasier Crane, one of the barflies on "Cheers," made a smooth transition to top banana and the strong center of a smartly drawn supporting ensemble.

Witty repartee and giddy slapstick marked the comedy. Both were blissfully evident during the finale, featuring a dog swallowing a ring, a drunken 6-year-old ring bearer, and both a birth and wedding in a veterinarian's office.

"Most of America, frankly, is much smarter than television assumes they are," Grammer recently told The Associated Press.

"Frasier" matched the 11-year run of "Cheers" and won a record 31 Emmys, including five consecutive trophies as best comedy series and a trio of acting awards each for Grammer and Pierce.

The series was created by "Cheers" alumni Peter Casey, David Lee and David Angell (who died aboard one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center).

If its finale frenzy didn't approach that of "Friends," it wasn't for lack of effort on NBC's part. Both shows had their own "Dateline NBC" specials and ample promotion on "Today" and other NBC vehicles.

The ratings weren't expected to equal those of last week's "Friends," which drew 52.5 million viewers and ranked as the fourth most-watched series finale in TV history.
 
CBS' "M-A-S-H" (106 million) and NBC's "Cheers" (80.4 million) and "Seinfeld" (76.3 million) remain the finale leaders.

Viewership for "Friends" justified the $2 million advertisers ponied up for a 30-second spot. On "Frasier," the ad rate reportedly was closer to $800,000 per half-minute.

The end of the pair of long-running NBC series is part of a TV sea change. With HBO's "Sex and the City" also gone and CBS' "Everybody Loves Raymond" expected to end next year, there's a comedy vacuum to be filled.

'Troy' Poised to Hit a Homer at Box Office

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The forces of ancient Greece move to the forefront of the box office battles this weekend as Warner Bros. launches its epic "Troy" in a lot more than 1,000 theaters. As the gods would have it, "Troy" appears fated to claim the top slot in the weekend standings once all the dust clears.

Universal Pictures' "Van Helsing," from director Stephen Sommers, which kicked off the summer last weekend with a $51.7 million debut, is probably facing a 50% falloff typical of horror fare. Currently, the movie is performing somewhat more robustly than Sommers' 1999 creature feature, "The Mummy" but not up to the level of 2001's "The Mummy Returns."

That suggests that the vampire-slaying flick will achieve a second-weekend haul somewhere around the $25 million mark and open up plenty of room for Warners' Trojan horse.

"Troy," directed by Wolfgang Petersen, last represented by 2000's "A Perfect Storm," does have a few obstacles to overcome. Its R rating could put a cap on its weekend earnings, and its 163-minute running time will place a limit on the number of screenings that can be squeezed into the weekend, even though it is bowing in 3,411 theaters.

But the megamillion-dollar retelling of Homer's "The Iliad," penned by David Benioff ("25th Hour"), also has plenty of arrows in its quiver. Its lineup of buff leading men -- Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana -- has generated definite interest among under-25 females, while the massive battle sequences are a lure for under-25 men. In addition, Warners is betting that the classics-based saga also will generate interest among the two over-25 quadrants of the market.

In figuring out its potential box office clout, "Troy's" most immediate precedent is 2000's Oscar-winning "Gladiator," whose success gave rise to the current cycle of sword-and-sandals movies. Leading off the summer season four years ago, "Gladiator" enjoyed a first weekend of $34.8 million in 2,938 theaters. But the real key to predicting "Troy's" potential muscle might be found in such other recent nonsequel R-rated films as "8 Mile," which debuted to $51.2 million in November 2002, and "Scary Movie," which arrived to $42.3 million in July 2000. Those precursors suggest that "Troy" could hit the beach with a first-weekend tally just north of the $40 million mark.

The only other studio opener daring to confront the combined power of "Troy" and "Van Helsing" is "Breakin' All the Rules," from Sony Pictures' Screen Gems genre unit. The PG-13 comedy directed by Daniel Taplitz ("Commandments") stars Jamie Foxx, who becomes a best-selling author by advising men on how to break up with their women. With a cast that includes Morris Chestnut, Gabrielle Union and Jennifer Esposito, the movie should pull in a core black audience. But the fact that it is venturing out on just 1,318 screens should hold its initial gross below the $10 million mark.

Meanwhile, continuing to position itself as a femme-skewing alternative to the big guns like "Troy" and "Van Helsing," Paramount Pictures' "Mean Girls," starring Lindsay Lohan, should hang in there. The movie took the top spot two weekends ago and ranked second last weekend with a $13.7 million purse. Having taken in more than $44 million to date, it should manage to hold onto the third spot this frame.

On the specialized film front, Sony Pictures Classics will debut Hector Babenco's "Oz"-like prison drama "Carandiru" in New York and Los Angeles, MGM's United Artists unit will present Jim Jarmusch's music-filled "Coffee and Cigarettes," and Lions Gate will raise the curtain on "A Slipping Down Life."

Petty Gets Busy On New Album, Live Set

Although they are not planning to tour this year, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers will instead be working on various projects, including a live album, a second "Greatest Hits" package and a new studio release. Due next year via Warner Bros., that set will be the follow-up to 2002's "The Last DJ," which debuted at No. 9 on The Billboard 200.

In an interview on the band's official Web site, Petty says he and touring sound engineer Robert Scovill are working on narrowing the live material to a double-disc release. "We did a live record in '84 ("Pack Up the Plantation: Live!") and I never thought it was the great live album that this band should put out," Petty said. "So that's kind of another project we have going, to get this live album recorded and out at some point. If it went really quick, maybe it would be out this year."

Petty is also planning to release "Greatest Hits, Part II," possibly augmented with new songs, in the months ahead. The group previously issued "Greatest Hits" in 1993 and "Anthology: Through the Years" in 2000.

As well, Petty has completed eight of 10 radio programs for a series titled "Tom Petty's Buried Treasures" for the XM satellite radio channel. "It's going to be hour-long shows of music put together by whoever," Petty said. "It's mostly old music with an eye to turn people onto stuff, especially younger people who might not have heard this stuff."

In hopes of making available even more material to his fans, Petty also is planning to create a members-only area on the Web site. "There are so many hundreds and hundreds of bootlegs," he said. "I would kind of like to make them authorized. Not all of my fans will want bootlegs, but for those who do, I want to have that musical outlet on the Web site."

Sophisticated 'Frasier' signs off

As smart and crisply written as Seinfeld, as warm and well-cast as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and as out-and-out funny as I Love Lucy, Frasier represents the American sitcom at its creative peak. No, it didn't remain at its peak for its entire 11-year run; neither did Cheers, the show that gave it birth. But the legacy of those first five or six blissful seasons is undiminished, and their shimmer has sustained the show through to tonight's unpreviewed two-hour NBC conclusion (8 ET/PT).

Indeed, on the list of desirable sitcom qualities, the only thing Frasier lacked was Friends' blockbuster level of popular appeal. But who should expect that from a show about an effete Seattle psychiatrist who shares his life with his even more effete brother and their elderly father? The wonder is that Frasier was as popular as it was.

Why did the show work? You can start with the superb cast led by Kelsey Grammer, whose Frasier Crane is not just TV's longest-lasting sitcom character, but one of its most indelible. So many sitcoms are constrained by the limited acting abilities of inexperienced or inadequate stars. The cast of Frasier — Peri Gilpin, Jane Leeves, John Mahoney (whose failure to share in Frasier's record-setting Emmy haul is deplorable) and the brilliant David Hyde Pierce — was talented enough to let the writers run free.

By and large, those writers rewarded the cast (and us) with scripts that assumed the audience was as smart as they were. The compliment extended beyond the references to opera, theater and literature. Those series-defining Frasierian farces rely on viewers who will wisely and patiently wait for the plots to fall into place, knowing the comic payoff will be well worth the investment.

Frasier could be witty, droll and sly, but the humor in this show about two snobs was never itself snobbish. Jokes about "the perils of refinement" and the proper vintage of wine could giddily collapse into a slapstick ironing accident that ignites a couch.

And yet for all its brains, Frasier never lost track of its heart. Under the comedy was a sensitive and sometimes painful exploration of the joys, disappointments and demands that flow among brothers, fathers and sons. In the end, love won out: A family that began the show estranged leaves united.

The younger members of that family were, of course, more sophisticated and persnickety than most, but Frasier and Niles read "gay" only if you assume the Survivor standard of beer-belching rubes is the only measure of manhood. Back when the standards were set by Fred Astaire and William Powell, Niles and Frasier wouldn't have been labeled as homosexuals or metrosexuals; they would have simply been called "men."

Sad to say, smart as Frasier was, it wasn't smart enough to know when the time had come to get off the stage. Stretched out past a decade, Frasier's string of bad dates became tiring. As the show matured, characters either went nowhere, or went in the wrong directions. (Try to expunge Frasier's bout with unemployment from your memory.) And while it's true that Niles couldn't go on pining for Daphne forever, bringing them together, while necessary, robbed the show of one of its funniest dynamics.

No doubt, had the show left after its seventh or eighth season — or found a way to avoid the drastic quality dip of the 10th — it would now be getting a more fervent farewell, instead of being treated as a Friends afterthought. Still, sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone. And my bet is that as time passes, Frasier will only look better.

Maybe even best.

Ock vs. Wolverine

Wolverine and Dr. Octopus are at it again...but it's not the same old comic book crossover. Hugh Jackman (X-MEN) and Alfred Molina (SPIDER-MAN 2) are both up for a Tony award.

Jackman is competing against Molina (SPIDER-MAN 2) for a Tony award against Hunter Foster in LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, Euan Morton in TABOO and John Tartaglia in AVENUE Q.

Industry pros have pegged Jackman as a shoe-in for the award, and in addition, Jackman will host the ceremony on June 6th at Radio City Music Hall.

Another Day, Another Name

TheForce.net has heard BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE is one of many possible names for STAR WARS EPISODE III. The site said the official name should be announced soon.

TRIBE IS SPEAKING

CBS reports that Survivor fans have cast over 35 million Internet votes on CBS.com, including more than 8 million votes for which Survivor should win a million dollars. Other categories include "Best Fight," "Greatest Villain," and "Top Moment." Results will be announced Thursday night.

Howdy, Pardner!

Grab your 10-gallon hat and head for southfork, where power, wealth, sex and J.R. Ewing await you in Dallas: The Complete First & Second Seasons.

At last making its DVD debut on August 24th from Warner Home Video, this five-disc set will included remastered 4:3 full screen transfers and Dolby 2.0 tracks, audio commentary on the series pilot and other select episodes by Larry Hagman, Charlene Tilton, and creator David Jacobs, and a new retrospective featurette "Soaptalk Dallas Reunion" featuring Hagman, Tilton, Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray.

La Toya London Voted Off 'American Idol'

NEW YORK - Another diva bit the dust on "American Idol" with the shocking ejection of La Toya London Wednesday night.

The two singers who received the lowest viewer-vote totals — London and Fantasia Barrino — were considered the favorites to go head-to-head in the finals. They, along with the recently booted Jennifer Hudson, had become known as "The Three Divas."

London kept smiling even as the crowd booed in reaction to her removal from the Fox TV singing competition.

"I just want to thank you so much, thank you for believing in me," the 25-year-old said before belting out one of her best songs from the series, "Don't Rain on My Parade" from "Funny Girl."

The show's judges were more candid in their reactions.

"I think America got this one wrong this week," Paula Abdul said.

"I think it's a travesty," echoed Randy Jackson.

The judges play an advisory role after helping winnow the field of 70,000 applicants to 32 semifinalists and then, with viewers, to 12 finalists. The audience takes charge from there until the winner is picked.

London's departure leaves three women in the competition: Besides Barrino, there's Diana DeGarmo and Jasmine Trias.

It looked as if Trias was a goner, and she seemed to suspect as much during Tuesday's episode. Tears replaced the Hawaiian songstress' perpetually sunny smile after judge Simon Cowell made some brutally honest remarks about her singing during the show's disco week.

"I think, Jasmine, you have a lot of thank-you letters to write to Hawaii," Cowell said Wednesday.

It was just as shocking that Barrino — considered one of the top singers all along — had the second-lowest vote total. The judges had criticized one of the songs she chose: Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" from the "Footloose" soundtrack — which, technically, isn't a disco song because it came out in 1984.

But Cowell also had some kind words this week. Having previously said he thought the 16-year-old DeGarmo was too young for the competition, he made a rare reversal: "I'm gonna take that back," he said.

"This was your week," Abdul told DeGarmo.

As for the always-polished London, Abdul had gushed Tuesday: "I'm looking at an American idol."

Among the filler to prolong the tension during Wednesday night's hour-and-six minute broadcast: observations from "psychic channeler" Kimberly Berg, who reassured the four finalists, "You're being supported not only by the fans but by the universe."

The women also sang a medley of Donna Summer tunes, including "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls." The disco diva, who served as a celebrity judge this week, took the stage to sing "Last Dance" and "MacArthur Park."
 
Wednesday night's episode also marked the triumphant return of Clay Aiken, the runner-up in last season's "Idol" competition who has enjoyed as much fame and success as the winner, Ruben Studdard. Aiken, famous for his geek-to-chic transformation, sang "Fantasy" by Earth, Wind & Fire.

Pam Anderson Sworn in as American Citizen in L.A.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - America: Land of the free, home of the Baywatch Babe.

Film and TV star Pamela Anderson, a native of Canada who broke into show business as a spokeswoman for Labatt beer, became an American citizen on Wednesday during a brief ceremony in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

"I felt it was important to become a U.S. citizen in order to vote in the United States," Anderson said in a written statement.

"U.S. Citizenship will allow me, in the future, to petition to bring my children's grandparents down to the United States to care for them once they become older. I have no intention of giving up my citizenship in Canada and am very proud to be a Canadian."

Anderson's lawyer, Barbara Federman, said the actress passed a brief immigration interview in downtown Los Angeles before the ceremony in a courtroom across the street.

Anderson, who shot to international superstardom as beautiful lifeguard C.J. Parker on the hit series "Baywatch," was approved for citizenship eight months after applying, Federman said.

"She was terrific and she was very excited to study the civics and passed with flying colors," Federman said. "She enjoyed every minute of it."

Anderson lends her voice to the Spike TV animated series "Stripperella" and had a small comic role in the 2003 film "Scary Movie 3."

She was discovered when she attended a British Columbia Lions football game in a Labatt beer T-shirt and was shown on the stadium's big screen, drawing a roar of approval from the crowd and the attention of Labatt, which signed her as a spokeswoman.

No clearance, no sale

Wondering why you don't see Miami Vice on DVD? How about WKRP in Cincinnati?

"Look at the music clearance rights," says Peter Staddon, the Fox Home Entertainment senior vice president who oversees DVD development. Fox video holds DVD rights to WKRP's radio station comedy, but "when that show was created (in 1978), they didn't think about the need to clear (song rights) for home video, because home video didn't exist, let alone DVD. It becomes very prohibitive in terms of putting that out."

How prohibitive? Maybe a million dollars prohibitive. Per season. So it isn't greedy stars or producers standing in the way of many TV classics coming to DVD. It's the cost of popular songs on the soundtrack. When series like Vice and KRP began using hit music 25 years ago to create cool atmosphere, they also created a hornet's nest of down-the-line issues -- now coming back to sting this nascent TV-DVD boom.

"The studios try to get the most recognizable songs they can for the initial airing," says Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield for FX cable, "and they take no care financially to preserve the ability to have those songs be with the shows in the future." Though Ryan uses as many as 15 music cues weekly in his gritty cop drama, both of Fox video's Shield season sets have included music as aired because Ryan is a DVD devotee. "We took the approach from the beginning to use cutting-edge music, unknown music, six-months-ahead-of-the-curve music," which was inexpensive or easy to acquire "in perpetuity." Not to mention fresh.

Classic hits are a different matter. And older shows are paying the price. Literally. When cult fave Freaks and Geeks came out on DVD recently -- all 18 episodes of NBC's quirky 1999 take on 1980 high school life -- it carried a list price of $70, or $10 higher than most season sets. But it includes all its original songs, about a half-dozen per episode, mostly period faves.

Freaks fans should count themselves lucky. Many studios won't go through the hassle of clearing a hundred songs. In fact, this show's production studio, DreamWorks, didn't. The eclectic independent label Shout Factory, launched two years ago by former-Rhino executives, approached DreamWorks for DVD rights to a show whose official Web site listed tens of thousands of fans who'd buy such a release.

"With the music and how it was used, it was inherent in the integrity of the product to make deals to license the music as it originally appeared," says Shout chief operating officer Bob Emmer, who waded through the licensing morass. To clear DVD music rights for just one episode, he says, "you may be dealing with 10 different approvals and 10 different negotiations for just the master side" of the original recordings. "Then, you switch over to the publishing side" for the songs' composers. It's not only time-consuming, but "on something very music-intensive, it could run close to, if not over, a million dollars."

Music clearance for Shout's June 8 first-season release of the SCTV sketch series took "close to a year," Emmer says. The nine-episode set will list at $100. "You can't just go pull out the music and substitute, because it was so embedded in the fabric of the sketch itself."

Substituting is, to fans' dismay, quite possible in other series. Originally aired songs were replaced by alternative choices in DVDs of Dawson's Creek, Felicity and Roswell, whose executive producer not only oversaw the changes but extolled them on a DVD insert. Profiler's first-season set omitted an episode because of clearance issues with The Police song Every Breath You Take.

So maybe it isn't true we'll never see some song-filled shows on DVD. "I love to hear 'never see it' because that's where we step in," says Emmer, whose Shout label bills itself as being "for the discerning pop culture geek." He admits, "WKRP or That '70s Show would be a monumental task. But that's what we excel in."

Here come 'The Jetsons,' 'Jonny Quest'

Forty-two years after The Jetsons jetted onto TV screens, the durable '60s animated series is now on DVD.

So is the Saturday-morning boomer favorite Jonny Quest. The Jetsons' Stone Age cousins, The Flintstones, TV's first prime-time animated series, came out in March.

Animation has always been popular on DVD, and just as the studios have mined their classic live-action TV archives for favorite series to package for hungry DVD collectors, now they are looking for animated shorts, TV series and other cartoon classics to sell.

Next week, four more in the Walt Disney Treasures series will be released, including Mickey Mouse In Living Color Vol. II, The Chronological Donald, Walt Disney on the Front Lines and Walt Disney's Tomorrowland ($32.99 each)

Last year, the number of cartoon DVD collections released rose to 34 from 21 in 2002, says Ralph Tribbey, editor of the DVD Release Report. And so far this year, with 14 already released, cartoon collections are ahead of last year's release rate.

With classic cartoons, "there are at least two generations of cartoon fans who can't find any of this on the air anymore," says movie historian Leonard Maltin, who serves as a host on the four new Disney releases. "And while (the studios) may have traditionally thought of these as kids' entertainment, there is now a big following among adults and young adults."

More classics on the way:

•DC Comics Classic Collection, arriving July 6, includes the four-disc Batman: The Animated Series — Volume One ($49.98) and Challenge of the Super Friends: The First Season ($29.98), featuring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and others from 1978.

•Spider-Man: The '67 Collection (Buena Vista Home Entertainment, June 29, $60), a six-disc collection of 52 episodes.

Look for more DVD titles from the Hanna-Barbera library, which includes Huckleberry Hound, Tom & Jerry, Josie and the Pussycats and Yogi Bear. "Parents grew up with these great evergreen properties, and the story lines still resonate today," says Warner's Mike Saksa. "They are introducing their children to them because it's such high-quality entertainment and not as edgy as much of what is on TV these days."

The success of newer animated series has paved the way for the return of the classics. The Simpsons' fourth-season collection is due on DVD June 15 ($49.98). And Comedy Central's South Park and Fox's Futurama and Family Guy have sold millions (but below The Simpsons' level). Sales of Family Guy even led Fox to decide to resurrect the series next year after canceling it two years ago.

"We know that TV on DVD is highly collectible, and there's no reason to believe that these cartoon TV releases won't find sweet spots, too," says Video Store magazine's Judith McCourt.

Even Disney underestimated the success of classic animation. The studio released only 150,000 copies of its first Treasures collections, which included Mickey Mouse In Living Color (cartoons from 1935-38), and all sold out. This time around, as many as 500,000 copies will be made of some of the collections.

"We knew we would get the collectors, but we didn't realize we would get as many families buying them," says the studio's Lori MacPherson. "The great thing about DVD is it has got people interested in owning programs they would not have considered before."

Here Are The All-Time Best Selling DVD and Videos

Animated Movies

Finding Nemo - 21.5
Monsters, Inc. - 12.0
Shrek - 11.5
Ice Age - 9.4
Lion King: Special Edition - 8.9
Lilo & Stitch - 7.5
The Lion King 1 1/2 - 5.7
Brother Bear - 5.4
Beauty and the Beast - 4.7
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - 3.5

Television

The Simpsons - 6.0
Family Guy - 2.7
South Park - 2.6

New Tunage!

Here are the new CD releases for Tuesday, May 11th, 2004.

Harmony - Gordon Lightfoot
Come Again - Thornley
Cupid? - Stabilo
Elk Lake Serenade - Hayden
Love is Hell - Ryan Adams
A.S. Magazine: Lessons Not Well Learnt - Armored Saint
The Palace at 4:00 AM (Part 1) - Ed, Jay and Birch Bennett
Legends of the South - Eightball & MJG
Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin - Junkie XL
Through the Ashes of Empires - Machine Head
Let it Grow - The Meligrove Band
Now this is Fighting - Parkas
Southside Double-Wide - Sevendust
Come Sail Away: The Styx Anthology - Styx
E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals - The Matches
Crevecoeur - Daniel Darc
Das Not Compute - Division of Laura Lee
Fourth Dimensional Rocketships Going Up - The Gift of Gab
In the Life - Open Road
Twenty Bucks and Two Black Eyes - U.S. Roughnecks
Twentysomething - Jamie Cullum
Shrek 2 Soundtrack - Various Artists
Troy Soundtrack - Various Artists

Friends gives NBC big goodbye ratings hug, drawing 52.5 million viewers

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Friends was a friend to the end for NBC, with the sitcom's final episode boosting the network to its best weekly showing in two years.

Thursday's Friends finale, which drew an average 52.5 million viewers, was the top-rated entertainment show on any network since the Seinfeld finale six years ago. Friends ranks as the fourth most-watched series finale in TV history, behind CBS' M-A-S-H (106 million), and NBC's Cheers (80.4 million) and Seinfeld (76.3 million).

NBC had more to crow about, according to Nielsen Media Research figures. Besides the top-rated sitcom, NBC aired the most-watched drama series (ER) and TV movie (part two of the earthquake drama 10.5).

That programming firepower gave NBC its best two-year showing among total viewers and matched its highest non-Olympic weekly rating in more than four years among viewers 18 to 49.

NBC's Nightly News, however, was edged out of the No. 1 spot, averaging 8.7 million viewers (6.2 rating, 14 share), to 8.9 million viewers for ABC World News Tonight (6.3 rating, 13 share). CBS Evening News was third with 6.7 million viewers (4.9 rating, 11 share). NBC's newscast has been No. 1 for 60 of the last 63 weeks.

CBS had bragging rights in the reality realm. CBS' Survivor All-Stars finale and reunion show each pulled in audiences of about 24 million to finish at No. 5 and 6 for the week.

NBC averaged 14.9 million viewers in prime time for the week (5.4 rating, 15 share), besting CBS' 13.2 million (4.8 rating, 13 share). NBC won handily among viewers aged 18-to-49, the demographic group it focuses on.

A ratings point represents 1,084,000 households, or one per cent of the country's estimated 108.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

For the week of May 3-9, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: Friends, NBC, 52.5 million; Friends Clipshow, NBC, 36.9 million; ER, NBC, 28.4 million; Survivor All-Stars Finale, CBS, 24.8 million; Survivor All-Stars Reunion, CBS, 23.9 million; American Idol (Tuesday), Fox, 22.8 million; American Idol (Wednesday) Fox, 21.2 million; CSI, CBS, 20.4 million viewers; NBC Movie of the Week: 10.5 (Monday) NBC, 19.9 million; Survivor: All-Stars, CBS, 19.2 million.

Pearl Jam Helps Bid Adieu to 'Friends'

NEW YORK (Billboard) - The music heard as Jennifer Aniston's character Rachel was about to board a plane to Paris in last week's final episode of "Friends" might have sounded familiar, but its usage was an unfamiliar situation for the artist in question.

In fact, the snippet of Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" used in the scene marked the first time the veteran Seattle rock act had ever licensed its songs for a television show.

According to a group spokesperson, it was simply a matter of the show's producers asking permission, which Pearl Jam granted. Although never included on an album until last year's rarities collection "Lost Dogs," "Yellow Ledbetter" has taken on a life of its own since its release as a B-side in 1992. The cut wound up appearing on seven Billboard charts in the mid-'90s, despite never being worked to radio.

Pearl Jam is preparing to end its break from the road and the studio, following an extensive 2003 tour in support of its latest studio album, "Riot Act." The group is discussing how it may get involved with voter registration efforts as the U.S. presidential election approaches, including possible live appearances.

'Frasier' to Bid Final 'Goodnight Seattle'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bringing down the curtain on yet another long-running sitcom favorite, Kelsey Grammer bids a final "Goodnight, Seattle" on Thursday as he concludes a record-tying 20-year TV role as the elitist but lovable "Frasier."

The Emmy-winning show, which debuted in 1993 as a spinoff of the veteran NBC hit "Cheers," will end its 11-year run with an hourlong episode that promises all the trappings of a big-event TV finale -- a birth, a wedding and, maybe, true love.

Still, the impending "Frasier" farewell has received considerably less promotion and media attention than the super-hyped send-off of NBC stablemate "Friends," which concluded its 10 seasons in prime time last Thursday as U.S. television's top-rated comedy.

That "Frasier" was overshadowed by "Friends" in its final hours is in keeping with the relative histories of the two shows. Although long a steady ratings performer and critical favorite, "Frasier" has never enjoyed quite as much mass popularity as "Friends."

Grammer acknowledged recently he was disappointed that NBC had not promoted the "Frasier" finale with more gusto, but he added: "I think we're being honored suitably in terms of how much audience we've brought to the show."

From the start, the show often played as a sophisticated comedy of manners with Grammer starring in the title role as the snobbish Dr. Frasier Crane, a neurotic Seattle psychiatrist who dispenses advice to radio listeners as host of his own call-in show.

He shared a luxurious high-rise apartment with his down-to-Earth father, Martin (John Mahoney), a retired police officer who was disabled in the line of duty.

David Hyde-Pierce co-starred as Frasier's fussy, younger brother, Niles, who for years pined after, and finally married their father's physical therapist, Daphne (played by British actress Jane Leeves). Rounding out the supporting cast was Frasier's workplace foil, Roz (Peri Gilpin).

CELEBRATED RUN

Few television spinoffs have enjoyed as much success as "Frasier." The show earned Emmy Awards as television's best comedy for five straight years -- the only series to accomplish such a feat -- and garnered a record 31 Emmys overall.

"Frasier" also matches the 11-year prime-time run of "Cheers," where Grammer's character was introduced in 1984.

As "Frasier" departs, Grammer will tie the record for the longest-running role portrayed by a single actor in prime time, set in 1975 when "Gunsmoke" ended its two decades on CBS with James Arness playing Marshal Matt Dillon.

While current viewership for "Frasier" pales in comparison to its ratings heyday, critics generally see the show as going out on a creative high note.

In the final, 264th episode, the Niles-Daphne romance is expected to come full circle with the birth of their first child, while a wedding is in the works for Martin and his new love, Ronee (Wendie Malick). Meanwhile, Roz celebrates a big promotion at work.

But the finale's big cliffhanger will be the outcome of what could be Frasier's chance to finally find true love with the latest woman in his life, Charlotte (Oscar nominee Laura Linney), whom he has fallen for as she is about to move back home to Chicago.

Keeping mum about the show's conclusion, Grammer has said only that the main characters will end the series on a "hopeful and optimistic" note.

Grammer is less upbeat about the future of good, old-fashioned sitcoms, saying, "I'm not sure sophisticated comedy has a real place on television anymore."

Asked what advice Dr. Crane would give to "Frasier" fans going through withdrawal, Grammer joked, "Well, we're on in syndication."

The Couch Potato Report May 11th, 2004

In The Couch Potato Report this week: Is Cruise cruise? Plus, some calendar girls, a few friends and a scary movie, that's funny.

Some actors have made great careers out of playing the same character in almost every movie they make.

May I submit as exhibit A: Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise always plays the same character. In every movie he's basically a variation of the same person who is good, but flawed in some way, and needing redemption.

I doubt anyone would argue that Cruise is talented and does good work, but since he has become an uber-star it is always "Tom Cruise as."

Tom Cruise as a vampire; Tom Cruise as a jet pilot; Tom Cruise as a Secret
Agent, A Police Detective, a sports agent, a doctor, a lawyer.

Similar bigger than superstar actors like Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt inhabit and
become the characters they play on screen, but Tom Cruise is always just playing one form of the Tom Cruise character or another..

In his latest movie Tom Cruise stars as Tom Cruise playing an American soldier who is sent to Japan in order to help the Imperial Japanese Army become more 'modern' and less 'traditional.'

The goal is to prepare the Army to fight the legendary Samurai.

The costumes, locations and battle scenes are all quite impressive, and the story is interesting at times, but it is all overshadowed by the "performance" of Tom Cruise.

THE LAST SAMURAI is not a great film but the main - if not only reason - to see it is so you can enjoy the amazing performance of the Oscar nominated Ken Watanabe.

Cruise becomes a captive of Watanabe, the deadly but extremely polite leader of the Japanese Samurai.

At this juncture the story shifts to why the Samurai are fighting to preserve their way of life against Western influences.

And that is interesting stuff, well acted by Ken Watanabe. Watanabe is an actor known primarily for his work in Japan and he is exceptional in the film.

Cruise is Cruise. He works hard and is very reliable in the part, but I could never see past the fact that it was Tom Cruise.

Had an actor like Crowe or Pitt played the part, it would have been an incredible film. With Cruise it is just another Tom Cruise movie.

Love him, or appreciate his work, and you'll love THE LAST SAMURAI.

If you don't have a Tom Cruise calendar on your wall you probably won't.

As Cruise moves toward his 42nd birthday no one would be surprised to see his face on a calendar.

However, one could be surprised at some of the faces featured within CALENDAR GIRLS might.

CALENDAR GIRLS is a based-on-a-true-story of a group of women, all over the age of 50, who pose provocatively for a calendar to raise money for Leukemia
research.

Think of it as a female version of THE FULL MONTY.

With a great cast that includes Helen Mirren from PRIME SUSPECT and Julie Walters of EDUCATING RITA and the HARRY POTTER films CALENDAR GIRLS doesn't specifically go for cheap laughs, but it has a few anyway.

Conversely, SCARY MOVIE 3 - the third installment of the movie spoof franchise - does aim for cheap laughs. Unfortunately there are only a few laughs to be had while watching the film, cheap or otherwise.

It's funny, much funnier that the second installment, but no where near as
funny as the first SCARY MOVIE.

This chapter in the franchise combines parodies and elements of Eminem, THE MATRIX, THE RING, SIGNS, THE OTHERS and provides a decent dose of laughs.

You will be thinking "this is stupid" on more than a few occasions, but you might also be laughing while doing it.

If you're in need of a laugh, check it out.

And you might need a laugh now that FRIENDS is finished.

Over 51 million people tuned in to watch the final episode of the show and now they, you and all of your friends can own FRIENDS - THE LIMITED EDITION SERIES FINALE.

And I don't necessarily mean to be mock the obvious marketing ploy of this release, which came a scant 5 days after the finale aired, but as Jerry Seinfeld used to say: “Yeah, it's limited to how many they can sell.”

My mocking aside, FRIENDS - THE LIMITED EDITION SERIES FINALE contains two versions of the final episode: the broadcast version and a slightly longer version with unseen footage.

And no, that version wasn't made longer by giving Chandler and Monica an even further unbelievable third baby.

The disc also contains the original 1994 pilot episode of the show about 6 friends, their lives, their loves, their coffee and the fact that they'll be there for you (When the rain starts to pour).

They'll be there for you! (Like they've been there before).

They'll be there for you ('Cause you're there for them too).

THE LAST SAMURAI, CALENDAR GIRLS, SCARY MOVIE 3 and FRIENDS – THE LIMITED EDITION SERIES FINALE, are all available right now on video and DVD at your favourite local video store.

COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT

MIRACLE is the based on the true story of 1980 U.S. Olympic Gold Medal winning hockey team.

While it might not actually be "The Best Sporting Event In History", as indicated on the video and DVD sleeve, it is a great film.

Kurt Russell does a great job portraying Herb Brooks and the movie isn't as "Rah, rah, rah, USA is number one!!!" as you think it's going to be.

After a few weeks delay I will finally get the chance to tell you all about the rah, rah, rah, thoroughly enjoyable, Oscar nominated THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE.

There are only a few spoken sentences in the entire wonderful animated film, so I'll have to choose my words carefully to do it justice.

I'll start with these: Be prepared to be dazzled.

Also next week,

In PAYCHECK, the latest misstep from director John Woo, Ben Affleck plays
an engineer who discovers that his memory has been erased. The one and
only Uma Thurman co-stars along with Aaron Eckhart, but you won't need to care.

I'll have more on those releases in seven days.

For now, that's this week's COUCH POTATO REPORT.

Enjoy the movies and I'll see you back here on The Couch!

BEHIND JERRI'S WALKOUT

Former "Survivor" all- star Jerri Manthey is not handling rejection well.

The wanna-be actress and three-time reality show star spent part of yesterday explaining why she stormed off the set of Sunday's live "Survivor" reunion during a commercial break.

"I was pretty upset. I didn't get to finish making my point," Manthey - a veteran of two editions of "Survivor"- said on yesterday's "The Early Show."

She was booed by the nearly 5,000 people in the audience at Madison Square Garden during a "Survivor" wild-and-woolly telecast that crowned winner Amber Brkich, 25, and allowed runner-up "Boston Rob" Mariano, 28, to propose marriage to her.

"The point was that this show for entertainment comes at a price," she said of "Survivor." "Some of the costs for us [are] friendships and feelings."

With 25 million viewers, the ratings for the reunion were in fact slightly better than the two-hour finale, which drew more than 24 million viewers.

Manthey, who had a lot to say while on "Survivor," was uncharacteristically taciturn on "The Early Show."

She could not be reached for comment yesterday - even by CBS officials who said she was tired and had returned to her hotel room but was not answering the phone.

Manthey is expected to appear Thursday with all of the "all-star" castaways in a Manhattan studio for a live 8 p.m. telecast in which one will be awarded $1 million, based on viewers' votes.

He'll Be Back Again and Again?

A scooper at Dark Horizons talked to producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna who said that that they are working on TERMINATOR 4. "We are gearing up for some very huge projects! We are focusing all of our energies on Terminator 4! We have an amazing idea that will make sci-fi movie goers cheer. It stays true to the Terminator universe says Vajna. Arnold will be back for this one, but for how long he will be in the film is the question right now."

X-Factors

X2 producer Lauren Schuler Donner told Sci Fi Wire that X3 will film in June 2005 and be released in May 2006. Also, she added, "I tried to get Beast in the first one and the second one, but it was always too expensive. So, yeah, I'm really dying to get Beast in, and I'd love to get Gambit in, because he's such a cool guy. And there's some really good casting ideas for Gambit."

Kryptonite

A Warner Bros spy got a chance to look at the offices of the long-troubled SUPERMAN project; the spy didn't shed too favorable a light on the project. "It appears that they are going with the scripts JJ Abrams wrote," said the report. "I got a chance to read it a few months back and I know what a pile of crap that was. I heard that they were going to change a few things around in it but from what I saw it looks like they went with the original draft...." However, Wolfgang Petersen, at one time attached to BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN, says that the project has been shelved.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Wicked, the fantasy-filled musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz, scoring 10 Tony Award nominations Monday. Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins followed with seven. Both Kevin Kline and Christopher Plummer picked up nods for Best Actor in a Play, while Hugh Jackman is up for Best Actor in a Musical. The Tonys are set for June 6.

Goodfellas and other Scorsese films

One of the last holdouts from the early Warner flipper discs to get a reissue is Martin Scorsese’s AFI top 100 film Goodfellas.

An anamorphic non-flipper special edition is finally coming.

To add to the good news, four other Scorsese films will finally make their debut; After Hours, Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, Mean Streets, and Who's That Knocking At My Door?.

In addition to an anamorphic widescreen transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, the Goodfellas disc will feature two audio commentaries, the first with the cast and crew, and the second with Henry Hill and agent Edward McDonald.

Four featurettes are included as well; Getting Made, The Workaday Gangster, The Goodfellas Legacy and Paper is Cheaper that Film. A trailer is also included.

The other four titles will also all contain audio commentary, trailers and behind the scenes featurettes. After Hours will also include deleted scenes.

Each title will be available on August 17th. Goodfellas will be priced at $26.99 while the remaining titles will be priced at $19.97.

For a huge savings, a box set of all five films will be available for $59.92.

Charley Pride Recovering After Surgery

DALLAS - Country singer Charley Pride is expected to make a full recovery following brain surgery last week, his personal manager said Monday.

Pride, 66, was hospitalized Wednesday for a subdural hematoma, a blood clot that occurs when blood from a torn vessel collects between the brain and the skull.

He had sought treatment after experiencing severe headaches, his manager, John Daines, said. The surgery was performed Saturday at an undisclosed hospital.

Daines said Pride was alert and awake when he visited him Monday morning. He's expected to make a complete recovery and could be released from the hospital Tuesday, Daines said.

"He wants to go back to work," Daines told The Associated Press.

Pride's nine-show, 12-day tour of Canada scheduled to start this week has been rescheduled for August, said Daines. Pride will take four to six weeks off and recover at his Dallas home.

The singer's hits include "All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)" and "Kiss an Angel Good Morning."

Passion' Debuts on DVD in August

LOS ANGELES - Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" will be released on DVD on Aug. 31. The actor-director's company, Icon Productions, announced Monday that it has partnered with 20th Century Fox for the home-video distribution.

Gibson's company couldn't persuade any of the major Hollywood studios, including Fox, to distribute the movie, which was released in theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday on the Roman Catholic calendar.

It became the year's biggest blockbuster so far, earning a place among the top 10 highest-grossing movies of all time with more than $368 million at the North American box office.

Although Fox passed on the theatrical distribution of the film, the studio exercised its "first look deal" with Gibson's company that put it at the head of the line among those who wanted to distribute the DVD.

Asked if the movie's box-office success was a motivator for Fox's DVD interest, Steve Feldstein, spokesman for Fox Home Entertainment, would only say: "We enjoy a strong relationship with Mel Gibson and everybody at Icon."

Besides the film's violent content, some Jewish organizations objected to the movie, starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus, fearing it would spark a rise in anti-Semitism by blaming ancient Jewish people for killing Christ.

Filmed in Aramaic and Latin, the movie will be presented with English subtitles on VHS and English and Spanish subtitles on DVD.

Feldstein said there will not be any extra features.

"For the consumers and fans of the film, it's going to simply be the film," he said Monday.

As to whether another version would be released in the future with extra features such as behind-the-scenes footage and commentary audio tracks, Feldstein said: "I wouldn't rule it out."

Friends series finale on DVD

TV on DVD is exploding -- and the timing is perfect for devoted fans.

The shows involved include Friends, which went out with a whimper last Thursday after 10 years of phenomenal ratings, and Frasier, which signs off this Thursday after 11 successful seasons, a ratings fade setting in only recently.

In a precedent-setting move that could shake up the industry, Warner Home Video is rushing out a DVD of Friends: The Series Finale on Tuesday. Love it or hate it, it's here.

Here is a guide to what else is in stores already, and coming soon, for selected shows on DVD:

Friends (1994-2004): Besides the Finale disc, the four-disc box set Friends: The Complete Seventh Season arrived Apr. 6 with the 23 episodes from 2000-01 plus bonus materials such as new footage, a gag reel and three episode commentaries. Also available: A new mega-box set of all seven years to date, as well as the past releases, year-by-year. These are better for devotees than earlier Best Of Friends DVDs.

Frasier (1993-2004): The four-disc box set Frasier: The Complete Third season arrives May 25 with the 24 episodes from 1995-96 plus decent extras including a conversation with Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce. The release pattern for the complete season sets has been slow so far but, with the show going, going, gone, it could speed up.

Cheers (1982-1993): As well as being a sitcom legend itself, it's the show that launched Frasier. Cheers: The Complete Third Season arrives May 25 with the 25 episodes from 1984-85 plus bonuses, including the introduction of Frasier Crane.

The X-Files (1993-2002): It's a wrap with the seven-disc box set The X-Files: The Complete Ninth Season, out tomorrow. It has the 19 episodes from 2001-02 and the usual strong extras that distinguish the X-Files season sets, including three new documentaries on the search for the Truth.

This ninth was obviously the worst season for the cult show but you have to buy it to complete the set -- and it does have its moments, especially in the two-hour finale.

Survivor (2000-??): The five-disc box set Survivor: The Complete First Season is due on Tuesday and includes the earlier lame disc, The Greatest And Most Outrageous Moments from Season 1. Why anyone would want to see any of this again mystifies me but, based on e-mails and Web sites, true fans are eager to revisit every last minute of the reality show that launched a plague of locusts in this genre.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003): The six-disc box set Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Complete Sixth Season is out with the 22 sassy, moody and often sensationalistic episodes from this penultimate season. Buffy returned from heaven and the daring musical Once More With Feeling was staged. There is a strong lineup of extras, including a behind-the-scenes session on the making of the musical.

Have Gun -- Will Travel (1957-1963): A blast from the past, western style. The six-disc, box set Have Gun -- Will Travel: The Complete First Season is out Tuesday with the first 39 episodes. For boys who grew up in this era, Richard Boone as Paladin was our man of action on TV.

The elegant San Francisan would work as detective, bodyguard, bounty hunter, courier or gunslinger. Extras in the set are limited to production notes, bios and plot info.

The B&W episodes are decently restored for their visuals, but sound is sometimes muffled, which is not surprising for a vintage series.

Amber Wins 'Survivor,' and a Fiance

NEW YORK - Not a bad night for "Survivor" contestant Amber Brkich: an engagement ring and a $1 million prize.And all on national television. The conclusion to "Survivor All-Stars" felt more like "The Bachelor" when one of the two final contestants, "Boston Rob" Mariano, pulled out a ring and proposed to Brkich.

Since she wore a shirt proclaiming, "I (heart) Rob," the answer wasn't in much doubt.

Then she won bragging rights for the rest of their lives. When host Jeff Probst counted the votes before a live audience in Madison Square Garden, Brkich, of Beaver, Pa., beat Mariano by a 4-3 vote.

"We didn't even care who was going to win," Brkich said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We knew we both had each other for the rest of our lives."

She revealed the two had talked about marriage in the months between the end of the game an Sunday's live vote-counting.

"But I had no idea he was going to do it in front of millions of people," she said.

It was a wild ending to the nation's most popular reality TV game. "Survivor" has been a consistent Top Ten performer in the Nielsen Media Research ratings, and this spring's edition brought back some of the memorable characters from past games.

Two other contestants, Rupert Boneham, of Indianapolis and Jenna Lewis, of New Hampshire, were voted off during Sunday's two-hour season finale before Mariano and Brkich were left as the final two contestants.

Mariano, known for his swaggering demeanor and ever-present Boston Red Sox cap, largely controlled the game with his machinations. And he essentially won his fiancee the million dollars: in the second-to-last tribal council, he voted Lewis off and kept Brkich.

Would she have been wearing his ring if Mariano had voted the other way?

"Probably we would have had a long talk," she said.

Mariano's take-no-prisoners style during the game earned him his share of enemies. The final tribal council brought one contestant to tears as she described how he betrayed her, and led another to pull away his hand after offering a shake.

"You sold out your values, you sold out your character, you sold out your friends for a stack of greenbacks," one vanquished contestant, Lex van den Berghe, told Mariano. "I hope it was worth it."

Another former contestant, Jerri Manthey, was booed by the Madison Square Garden audience (and Dan at home) on Sunday when she criticized "Survivor" for playing games with people's emotional lives for the sake of entertainment.

Other former competitors said it was just a game.

Brkich said Mariano's style got him all the way to the finals, but may have eventually done him in.

"I knew he was going to take all the bullets," she said.

CBS also announced — in an "American Idol" twist — that it was calling on fans of the show to vote one of the losing 17 contestants of "Survivor All-Stars" a second million-dollar prize. That prize will be awarded on a live show Thursday.

Comedian, Actor Alan King Dies at 76

NEW YORK - For comedian Alan King, nobody was out of bounds when it came to humor. Not even a sitting queen. Once, after performing for Queen Elizabeth II in London, the comedian was introduced to Britain's monarch. "How do you do, Mr. King?" she asked him. "How do you do, Mrs. Queen?" he replied.

"She stared at me, and then Prince Philip laughed," King recalled. "Thank God Prince Philip laughed."

King, whose cutting wisecracks about suburbia, marriage and modern life struck a chord both with the blue bloods and those with blue collars, died Sunday. He was 76.

Comedian Jerry Stiller, who knew King for more than 50 years, said King was "in touch with what was happening with the world, which is what made him so funny."

"He always talked about the annoyances of life," Stiller said. "He was like a Jewish Will Rogers."

King, who also was host of the New York Friars Club's celebrity roasts, died at a Manhattan hospital, said a son, Robert King. He died of lung cancer, his assistant Miriam Rothstein said.

King appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" dozens of times and he played supporting roles in more than 20 films including "Bye Bye Braverman," "I, the Jury," "The Anderson Tapes," "Lovesick," "Bonfire of the Vanities," "Casino" and "Rush Hour 2."

He also produced several films, including "Memories of Me," "Wolfen" and "Cattle Annie and Little Britches," and the 1997 television series "The College of Comedy With Alan King."

He said he was working strip joints and seedy nightclubs in the early 1950s when he had a revelation while watching a performance by another young comedian, Danny Thomas.

"Danny actually talked to his audience," he recalled in a 1991 interview. "And I realized I never talked to my audience. I talked at 'em, around 'em and over 'em, but not to 'em. I felt the response they had for him. I said to myself, 'This guy is doing something, and I better start doing it.'"

King, who until then had been using worn out one-liners, found his new material at home, after his wife persuaded him to forsake his native Manhattan, believing the suburban atmosphere of the Forest Hills sections of Queens would provide a better environment for their children.

Soon he was joking of seeing people moving from the city to the suburbs "in covered wagons, with mink stoles hanging out the back."

His rantings about suburbia, just as America was embracing it, struck a chord with the public and soon he was appearing regularly on the Sullivan show, Garry Moore's variety show and "The Tonight Show."

Bookings poured in, and he toured with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, played New York's showcase Paramount theater and performed at top nightclubs around the country.

King appeared in a handful of films in the late 1950s, including "The Girl He Left Behind," "Miracle in the Rain" and "Hit the Deck," although he didn't care for his roles. "I was always the sergeant from Brooklyn named Kowalski," he once complained.

He also appeared on Broadway in "Guys and Dolls" and "The Impossible Years," and produced the Broadway plays "The Lion in Winter" and "Something Different."

He wrote the humor books "Anyone Who Owns His Own Home Deserves One" (1962) and "Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery" (1964).

Born Irwin Alan Kniberg, he grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side and in Brooklyn.

"Both of them were tough neighborhoods, but I was a pretty tough kid," he recalled in 1964. "I had an answer for everything. ... I fought back with humor."

He married Jeanette Sprung in 1947 — ""Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers," he once cracked — and they had three children, Robert, Andrew and Elaine Ray. When King was at the height of his career, he faced one son's drug addiction and said he realized he had neglected his family.

"It's not easy being a father," he said, "but I've been allowed a comeback."

He spent more time at home and his son conquered his addiction.

"Now everyone kisses," he said. "We show our affections."

'Van Helsing' Wins Box Office Over Olsens

LOS ANGELES - Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein stomped the Olsen twins in the first major box-office contest of the summer blockbuster season. The monster-hunting adventure "Van Helsing," starring Hugh Jackman as a creature slayer, opened at No. 1 with $54.2 million.

Mary-Kate and Ashley's comedy "New York Minute," a major test of the direct-to-video starlets' theatrical prowess as they near age 18, debuted in fourth place with $6.2 million — a weak showing compared to the popularity of other recent teen comedies like "13 Going on 30" and "Mean Girls."

"Mean Girls" fell to second place in its second week with $14 million, while Denzel Washington's "Man on Fire" continued its robust run with $7.9 million in its third week, raising its total to $56 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

"Van Helsing" also earned $53 million internationally after opening simultaneously in 41 countries, according to Universal Pictures, which released the movie.

The first-weekend ticket sales landed between director Stephen Sommers' two previous monster smashes — "The Mummy," which had $43.3 million in 1999, and "The Mummy Returns," which had $68.1 million in 2001.

The movie received a huge franchise push from Universal, accompanied by a "Van Helsing" video game, an animated DVD prequel "Van Helsing: The London Assignment" and a "Van Helsing"-themed haunted house attraction at Universal Studios theme park.

"It's celebration time," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.

"New York Minute" failed to build an older teen following on top of the Olsens' core fan base of very young children. About 80 percent of the tickets went to girls under the age of 11, said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released the comedy.

With more big-budget movies on the way, there's a tense road ahead for most studios as costs have risen dramatically over the previously alarming $100-million budgets of yore.

"Van Helsing" cost about $160 million to produce and is the first of many movies this summer that approach or cross that budget threshold, from "Spider-Man 2" and the ancient epic "Troy" to "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and the weather run-amok disaster film "The Day After Tomorrow."

The rising costs are risk for studios, since most summer films have only one shot at recouping a portion of their investment before fading away amid the competition. Most of the movies will have to wait until their home video releases to begin showing a profit.

"This is the opening salvo in the summer movie sweepstakes," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. "The summer season is the season of the opening weekend. You have to make your mark right then at the beginning, because the next weekend audiences are going to be looking for the next big thing."

Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Van Helsing," $54.2 million.
2. "Mean Girls," $14 million.
3. "Man on Fire," $7.9 million.
4. "New York Minute," $6.2 million.
5. "13 Going on 30," $5.5 million.
6. "Laws of Attraction," $3.5 million.
7. "Kill Bill — Vol. 2," $3 million.
8. "Godsend," $2.7 million.
9. "Envy," $2.6 million.
10. "The Punisher," $1.2 million.

Letterman to Tape Show at 4 A.m.

NEW YORK - David Letterman will be staying up very late — or getting up really early — to tape a show next week at 4 a.m.

"We thought it would be cool, just something different to try," said Rob Burnett, the "Late Show" executive producer. "We've been doing the show for so long that anytime you can come up with something new it makes it interesting for us."

The show that airs on Friday, May 14 will be taped early that morning. Typically, Letterman tapes his Friday show on Thursday evening.

The other days of the week, Letterman tapes his show about six hours before it is aired on CBS.

The show will probably set up remote cameras, perhaps in Times Square, and show other street scenes. "The city is always interesting, but particularly interesting at 4 a.m.," Burnett said.

The show hasn't announced what night-owl celebrity guests will join them.

Burnett joked that the staffer who thought of the 4 a.m. taping has since been fired.

Ross, Rachel Together as Sitcom 'Friends' Ends

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Friends," the smash hit U.S. sitcom about six winsome young pals who became like family to each other and millions of TV viewers, ended its 10-year NBC run on Thursday with an emotional farewell that finally left Ross in Rachel's arms for good.

The highly promoted hour-long finale, preceded by a 60-minute "Friends" retrospective, capped weeks of media hype surrounding what became the most anticipated U.S. television event since "Seinfeld" left the General Electric Co.-owned network in 1998.

At the show's end, Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston, decides at the 11th hour to stay in New York with Ross (David Schwimmer's character), rather than fly to Paris, binding the star-crossed lovers together at last as the curtain came down on American television's top-rated comedy.

Her change of heart comes after a comically frantic race to the airport, where Ross desperately begs her to stay, only for Rachel to rebuff him and board the plane. An anguished Ross goes home to find a confessional message on his answering machine from Rachel, who unexpectedly appears in his doorway to announce, "I got off the plane." The two kiss, embrace and pledge never to leave each other again.

The off-and-on romance between Rachel and Ross had remained one of the show's underpinnings since the start and rivaled some of the most storied love affairs in prime-time history, ranking with Sam and Diane from "Cheers" and George Clooney and Julianna Margulies on "ER."

Tying up another loose thread, the surrogate mother for the show's other central couple, Monica and Chandler (who wed at the start of season eight) surprised the expectant adopting parents by giving birth to twins -- a boy and a girl.

The finale concludes with moving men clearing out Monica's apartment as she and Chandler get ready to head for their new house in the suburbs. The six friends share another round of hugs, then each solemnly leaves his or her key on the kitchen counter, departing together for one last cup of coffee.

The final original episode, expected to draw some 40 million to 50 million viewers, commanded sold-out, Super Bowl-sized advertising rates averaging $2 million for each 30-second commercial, the most ever for a sitcom.

Debuting in 1994 as a breezy comedy about attractive 20-somethings living together in Manhattan, unfettered by mortgages or kids, the show quickly caught on.

While critics lauded the series for its consistently sharp writing, a key ingredient was the chemistry among the six principals, who became nearly as close off screen as on and bargained together for higher salaries as the series grew in popularity and commercial value.

"We were like six pieces of a puzzle that just fit together," Schwimmer said in an interview broadcast this week as part of a two-hour special edition of NBC's "Dateline Tuesday."

The coffee-gulping brood consisted of resident den mother Monica (Courteney Cox Arquette), wise-cracking husband Chandler (Matthew Perry), Monica's geeky kid brother Ross (Schwimmer), pampered former rich girl Rachel (Aniston), ditsy latter-day hippie chick Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and dopey but lovable actor Joey (Matt LeBlanc).

LeBlanc will be back in the fall as the star of his own NBC spinoff, "Joey."

BUFFY'S BACK...WELL, SORT OF

The back of her head? Why even bother?

The only bit of Buffy the vampire slayer anyone is going to get to see for a long time is the back of her head.

For months, speculation and hopes have been running high that the Buffy character, Sarah Michelle Gellar, would make a return for the series finale of "Angel," the supernatural series that was spun off from her harrowing show, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Now we know the answer, sort of.

On this week's episode of "Angel," Buffy makes a return that is so fleeting, we can't see her face. And with good reason. It's not Gellar.

The show's two main characters - Angel, the vampire with a soul who fell in love with Buffy, and Spike, a longtime Buffy rival turned lover - head to Rome to find their lost love, last seen during the series finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" last spring.

Buffy, it seems, has moved to Italy with her younger sister, Dawn, but both may be under the influence of an evil demon called, The Immortal.

But the closest they come to finding Buffy is by being two steps behind her in a dance club.

Why bother to write Buffy into the script if they couldn't get Gellar? Show officials declined to elaborate.

It certainly was possible to digitally insert Buffy, as "The Sopranos" did with Nancy Marchand - who played a key role as Tony Soprano's mother - when the actress died before the cable series' second season was finished filming.

But it appears producers want to give the show's rabid fans - who have been pining - one last reunion.

"Angel" has only two episodes to go, before the show wraps up its five-year run.

Producers had issued a standing invitation for Gellar to return for one of the final shows - just as David Boreanaz, the actor who plays the hapless Angel, turned up briefly on "Buffy" near the end of that series last year.

But Gellar, citing a scheduling conflict with a film she was working on in Japan, said she could only make it back to the U.S. in time to appear in the series finale of "Angel."

The show's creator, Joss Whedon, nixed Gellar's offer late last month.

But Buffy and crew might not be gone forever.

WB officials and Whedon are said to be mulling the possibility of a "Buffy" or "Angel" movie to air on the network in the future.

Here are the new CD Releases for Tuesday May 4, 2004:

311 TBA 311 (DVD) (Zomba)
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST TBA A TRIBE CALLED QUEST (Zomba)
ANDY STOCHANSKY TBA Andy Stochansky (Windham Hill)
BIG & RICH Horse of a Different name (Warner)
BOWLING FOR SOUP TBA Bowling for Soup (Zomba)
CAROLYN DAWN JOHNSON Dress Rehearsal (RCA Country)
ELAINE ELIAS TBA ELAINE ELIAS (Arista Associated Labels)
JASON MRAZ Tonight Not Again: Live at the Eagles Ballroom (CD + DVD) (Elektra)
JASON MRAZ Tonight Not Again: Live at the Eagles Ballroom (Elektra)
JIM BRICKMAN TBA Jim Brickman (Arista Associated Labels)
JUDAS PRIEST Metalogy (Box set) (Legacy/Sony)
K.D. LANG Hymns From the 49th Parallel (Warner)
KHAYREE TBA Khayree (Zomba)
R. KELLY Happy People (Zomba)
SIMON WILCOX Smart Function (SHErecords)
SLY BOOGIE TBA Sly Boogie (J Records)
THE BURNING BRIDGES TBA The Burning Bridges (V2)
THE ICARUS LINE Penance Soiree (V2)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Power of Soul (Image Entertainment)
VARIOUS ARTISTS American Idol Season 3 (RCA)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Dock Rock 3 (BMG Canada)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Groove Station 10 (BMG Canada)

Jodie Foster maps 'Flight Plan'

Jodie Foster has agreed to star in the high altitude thriller "Flight Plan," Variety.com reports.

The story involves a woman whose daughter mysteriously disappears while on a flight home to America.

German director Robert Schwentke will helm the movie.

"Flight Plan" is scheduled to begin filming at the end of the summer for release next year.

'The Simpsons' Cast Returns to Work with More D'oh

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The actors who provide the voices for Homer, Bart and the rest of the cartoon stars of Fox TV's "The Simpsons" will return to work this week with twice as much "D'oh" in their pockets, having won a new contract collectively valued at $33 million a year.

The agreement ended a month-long strike that had threatened to shorten the upcoming 16th season of America's longest-running television comedy.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Monday that the show's six principal cast members doubled their pay from $125,000 to $250,000 per episode.

That would boost the earnings of each actor to $5.5 million a year for a 22-episode season, a tidy sum for what amounts to a day's work per show but is far less than the $8 million originally sought by the cast. Collectively the deal was valued at $33 million a year.

Sources said the actors also gave up their key demand for a share in profits from the show, which reportedly has generated roughly $1.5 billion in revenues for producer 20th Century Fox Television since its 1989 debut.

"We couldn't be happier to have reached a multiyear deal with the enormously talented cast of 'The Simpsons,"' the studio said in a statement. "Fans will be pleased to know that despite our recent production delay, we are optimistic that they can look forward to a full season's episodes next year on Fox and hopefully many years to come."

Both the studio and the Fox network are units of Fox Entertainment Group Inc., which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd.

FINAL OFFER

The show centers on the antics of a bald, gluttonous family man and nuclear plant worker named Homer Simpson (known for his anguished exclamation "D'oh!"), his spiky-haired misfit son, Bart, and their friends and relatives in Springfield.

The producers and cast members -- Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (sister Lisa), Julie Kavner (family matriarch Marge), Hank Azaria (bartender Moe and Apu the convenience store clerk) and Harry Shearer (Homer's tyrannical boss, Mr. Burns, and his loyal assistant Smithers) -- closed their deal late Friday, a studio spokesman said.

According to entertainment trade paper Daily Variety, the final agreement was presented by the studio as a "take-it-or-leave-it" offer that expired at the end of the business day on Friday. One or two of the actors pressed their cohorts to drop their profit-participation demand and accept the deal, which they did, Variety said.

Production on "The Simpsons" had been stalled since late March, when the actors first refused to show up for script readings until a settlement was reached.

The show currently averages about 11.3 million viewers a week on Sunday nights, down from its peak ratings several years ago, but it remains a critical favorite and worldwide pop culture phenomenon seen in dozens of countries. It also is a cash cow for 20th Century Fox TV for the handsome revenues it generates in syndication.

This season, "The Simpsons" surpassed the real-life Nelson family on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" as the longest-running weekly comedy series on American TV.