Soderbergh, 2929 See Same-Day Film/DVD Release

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Steven Soderbergh and 2929 Entertainment, a media company owned by entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, on Friday unveiled a unique pact to make digital movies for simultaneous release in theaters, on television and on DVD.

The same-day distribution challenges long-held practices for Hollywood studios that first place films in theaters, hoping for solid box office revenues, then sell them months later on DVD or videocassette and offer them to TV broadcasters.

Studios and theater owners are concerned that altering the practice would cannibalize theater box office sales, but Wagner told Reuters it is time to explore new ways to get movies to audiences when and where they want them.

"Consumers should have the choice of how they want to consume movies," he said.

Under the deal between 2929 and Oscar winner Soderbergh -- whose work ranges from low-budget features to blockbusters like "Ocean's Eleven" -- the director would make six movies using high-definition digital technology. The first, a murder mystery titled "Bubble," is currently in production.

2929 would release the movies in its Landmark Theaters cinema chain, which operates 58 houses nationwide geared toward art, foreign-language and independently-made films.

The films also would be available on 2929's high-definition cable TV channel, HDNet Movies. The Dallas-based company said it is still in talks for home video and DVD distribution.

EMBRACING CHANGE

While HDNet reaches roughly half of all U.S. homes, it has yet to gain strong viewership, and Wagner said much of the reasoning behind the pact is to test simultaneous releasing.

"If you embrace (the tests), you can find new revenue models, but you aren't going to think of them if you aren't willing to experiment," he said.

For instance, he said it may be possible that filmmakers could share video and TV revenues with theater owners if the theater owners do not protest simultaneous releases.

The DVD market has been so strong in recent years that some filmmakers want to tap it faster to recoup the cost of making and marketing films. The studios have narrowed gaps between releases, too, but have not done a simultaneous distribution.

Last year, Atlanta-based Convex Group Inc. released a holiday film, "NOEL," in 10 cities and on the same day in a disposable DVD via online retailer Amazon.com Inc. .

One week ago, 2929 released a documentary it backed, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," simultaneously in theaters and on HDNet Movies.

Wagner said it was too soon to know exactly how the strategy panned out for "Smartests Guys," but he added that the movie's per screen average was a hefty $25,000.

"That tells me it hasn't cannibalized any audience yet," he said.

'Lou Grant' Actor Dies at 86

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) Mason Adams, whose distinct voice became familiar to millions before he gained fame for the "Mary Tyler Moore" spin-off "Lou Grant," died Tuesday, April 26 at the age of 86.

The Emmy-nominated actor, who also voiced numerous radio roles and commercials, died of natural causes in his Manhattan home, report news sources.

Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 26, 1919. He received a master's degree in Theater Arts and Speech from the University of Wisconsin and later taught at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse.

Although he had what one colleague described as a "non-actor's face," Adams used his gravelly, friendly voice to advantage. He began working in radio in the 1940s, playing the title role in the soap opera "Pepper Young's Family." He was also heard on the "Batman" serials, "Golden Age," on the "CBS Mystery Theater" series and as the nefarious Atom Man on the "Superman" serials.
He finally gained recognition as Charlie Hume on CBS' "Lou Grant" sitcom, earning three consecutive Emmy nominations beginning in 1979.

Adams continued to do voice work and can still be heard as the pitchman in Cadbury Eggs and Smuckers commercials, the latter which always concluded with the tagline: "With a name like Smuckers, it's got to be good."

His film work includes parts in "F/X," "Son in Law" and "Houseguest." During his later years, he continued to act on stage, with one of his final roles in Arthur Miller's "The Man Who Had All the Luck" in 2002.

U2 shoots new video in Vancouver

U2 announced today that they are shooting their latest video at GM Place in Vancouver.

In a last-minute email from U2.com, the band invited fans to come down to the arena on Wednesday (Apr. 27) to take part in the live video for their upcoming single, "City of Blinding Lights."

The first 4,000 fans (as of 3 p.m. Pacific Time) were to be issued a ticket to a reserved seat surrounding the stage.

The video is being helmed by French directors Alex and Martin, the pair behind U2's Grammy-winning video "Vertigo." Their resume also includes The White Stripes, Kylie Minogue, Air, Jane's Addiction and Noir Desir.

U2 play two sold-out shows at GM Place tomorrow and Friday.

The new Bond is the old Bond, says co-star

LONDON - The new James Bond is the old James Bond, says an actress who has appeared in the last four films about the British spy.

According to Dame Judi Dench, Pierce Brosnan will reprise the role in the upcoming remake of Casino Royale, which is expected to be released next year.

"Despite the fact that everyone on the face of the Earth has been tested as his possible replacement, he'll be doing it again and it will be announced come summer," Dench told Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper.

Depending on which reports you believe, Brosnan was either dropped by the producers of the long-running film franchise or decided to quit the role while he was on top.

He last appeared as Agent 007 in 2002's Die Another Day. Since then, a long list of actors have been rumoured to be contenders for the job, from Daniel Craig to Dougray Scott to Clive Owen to Colin Salmon to Jude Law.

The latest speculation, however, had Brosnan having his licence to kill renewed. That said, the producers of the films have so far refused to back up Dench's comments.

"No cast members, locations or release dates can be confirmed," a spokesperson said.

Dench has played M, Bond's boss, since Brosnan took over the role. Her remarks came while talking to a gossip columnist in New York.

The new Casino Royale will be the 21st Bond film. When a new actor takes over the lead role in the series, it's often considered a risky move.

When George Lazenby replaced Sean Connery, for example, the result was 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is considered a low point in Bond's screen history. Timothy Dalton, who replaced Roger Moore, lasted only two movies in the role.

Bond first appeared in the 1953 Ian Fleming novel Casino Royale, which was made into a spoof by a rival producer in 1967.

A good season, with reason

The great news is that the soon-to-conclude 2004-05 TV season truly does count as a "good thing," unlike most of its recent predecessors. After years of dedicating all their creative energy to cloning their own hits or stealing someone else's, the networks finally came up with a few new, popular ideas. Desperate Housewives alone might be enough to make the season a success — and that's not even counting the equally admirable Lost and House.

Nor was all the good news confined to new shows. Alias, 24 and Gilmore Girls bounced back from weak seasons to reclaim spots among TV's elite, while NYPD Blue showed how a classic can go out with class.

Obviously, no TV season is perfect, certainly not one that featured such reality abominations as Who's Your Daddy and The Will. The most we can ask is that the good outweigh the bad. This season, it did.

So with May on the way and the season on the way out, we pause to look at the best and worst the TV year had to offer — our picks for the High Five and the Low Five of '05.

The good

5. The revival of scripted TV

Desperate Housewives and Lost didn't just revive ABC's fortunes, they also reminded viewers and networks alike of the pleasures and profits to be found in scripted television. Certainly, after years in which it seemed the only thing people wanted to talk about was who was kissing Joe Millionaire in the woods or kissing up to Donald Trump in the boardroom, it has been a joy to see the conversation turn to the sexual antics on Wisteria Lane and the hidden secrets of that mysterious island.

Like a rising tide, the success of these two breakout hits seemed to spark interest in other scripted hours. Certainly, there's no happier surprise this season than the success of House, a whip-smart drama many people (well, OK: me) feared was too adult to fit into Fox's kid-friendly lineup. As for those kids, a small but savvy group of them discovered UPN's Veronica Mars — a cult hit now, but a show that could someday attract a wider audience.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg in a broadcast season that boasts such dramatic worthies as 24, Alias, Gilmore Girls, Without a Trace, CSI, CSI: Miami, Grey's Anatomy, Eyes and Jack & Bobby. Each offers a good reason to set aside reality and bask in the age-old glow of strongly etched characters and well-told stories.

4. Basic-cable dramas

In general, if you're looking for original dramas, you still need to look to the broadcast networks, Showtime or HBO. But over the past few years, a few basic-cable networks have carved out their own niche, producing shows that blend the unregulated creative freedom of premium cable with the popular appeal of broadcast hits.

The upshot this season were two of TV's best new series, FX's Rescue Me and Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica (the best space adventure since Sci Fi's own Farscape).

Granted, these series bright spots are few and far between in a cable landscape still dominated by wrestling and reruns. Still, any business that can give us Rescue Me, Battlestar and FX's Nip/Tuck is a business worth encouraging.

3. Uninterrupted runs

How do you stretch 20-some episodes over a 36-week season? Sometimes, you don't.

The normal broadcast pattern is to premiere series in September and end them in May, which means networks either have to repeat episodes or replace the shows entirely for a spell. But now and then they offer us a third choice: uninterrupted, full-length runs.

The greatest beneficiaries of the twist were ABC's Alias and Fox's 24. Heavily serialized and amusingly complex, these series have stories that are best told straight through. Interruptions cause viewers to lose interest and patience and give them too much time to ponder the logic of the plot.

Economic realities mean such runs will always be the exception, not the rule. But for Alias and 24, that exception has paid creative and ratings dividends — and that's a good reason to break a rule.

2. Reality in retreat

Failure could be the best thing that ever happened to reality-based TV.

Last year, after all, it looked as if we all might drown in the reality tide. But that was before this season's rash of failures, a catalog of fast flops that included The Benefactor, Branson's Quest for the Best, The Next Great Champ, Wickedly Perfect and Who's Your Daddy - one of the most loathsome ideas in the genre's short, sorry history.

With any luck, this purge has taught the networks that the only way to preserve the genre for the long run is to cut back in the short run. The best shows will and should survive: TV would be a much more boring place without American Idol, Survivor, The Amazing Race and America's Next Top Model. But there's a limit to how many times you can recycle the exact same idea, a limit surpassed by The Starlet, BMOC, and The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott.

The worst reality ideas haven't disappeared, unfortunately. They've simply migrated down to the basic-cable nether regions occupied by A&E and E! Though come to think of it, that is sort of like disappearing.

1. Freshened faces

Yes, TV creates new stars. But it also can give new life to old stars, and that can be an even greater gift.

The most obvious example is Desperate Housewives, which took four fabulous women — Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross and Eva Longoria — and turned them into cover girls. Or consider Lost, which turned teen-favorite Matthew Fox into an adult leading man; or Numb3rs, which gave sitcom-killer David Krumholtz his first appealing role; or Eyes, which has provided a showcase for previously underappreciated Tim Daly.

Still, when it comes to well-earned stardom, the season's prize goes to House's brilliant star, Hugh Laurie. Even those of us who adored Laurie's work in such British comic wonders as Jeeves and Wooster and the Black Adder series never knew he had House in him. Thank goodness the producers did.

The bad

5. The sitcom drought

Oh, Joey, what have you done?

Granted, the pilot for NBC's Friends spinoff Joey was no great breakthrough. But it was funny and self-assured and competent — something the show hasn't achieved since. And as Joey goes, so has the genre this season, stumbling from one horrid mess to the next. You know a genre is in trouble when the best current example of the form, Fox's Arrested Development, has a surer shot at an Emmy than at renewal.

That doesn't mean the sitcom is dead: There's no reason to think that the millions of people who made Friends the top-rated show on TV just a few years ago have suddenly deserted the genre en masse. If they're not watching sitcoms, it's because so few of them are worth watching.

How can the form be fixed? For a start, the networks might consider the success of Desperate Housewives, an hour-long comedy built around women. You remember women, don't you? They're the people who used to star in such shows as I Love Lucy, Designing Women and Roseanne, before the networks decided to consign most of them to playing smart, second-banana wives with dumb, unattractive husbands. Turns out women found that less than amusing.

Go figure.

4. Shows that will not die

Far too many shows these days are forgotten but not gone.

The problem is that the networks have grown so enamored of long-running hits and so afraid of development failures that they want to eke every possible season out of every TV success. Surely fear is the only reason NBC is bringing back Will & Grace, as nothing in the show this season could lead anyone to believe the writers have anything new to say or anyplace new to take these characters.

The sad truth is that most shows today outlive their welcome — tying up time, talent and money that would be better spent elsewhere. Most stories can't be stretched over a decade, and most series can't survive time-induced cast changes — a trick that works far better for a plot-driven show such as Law & Order than a character-driven show such as West Wing.

There's an art to knowing when the time has come to get off the stage. Unfortunately, at NBC these days it's a lost art.

3. Kiddie reality

It takes an electronic village to raze a child.

Once content to simply make bratty kids secondary targets in shows like The Osbournes, TV has now elevated them to stardom — the worst examples being those bottom-dwelling twins, Supernanny and Nanny 911. Never mind the drivel about "fixing" these families; these shows exist to mine entertainment out of out-of-control children. Which means parents who have failed to raise their children properly have now failed to protect those same children from public ridicule. And we all join in.

Though it pains me to say so, the same complaint goes for MTV's addictive teenage bratfest My Super Sweet 16, about overprivileged, undermannered kids bullying their submissive parents into throwing over-the-top birthday parties. The show makes a fairly compelling argument against inherited wealth; still, rich children are children. I don't know when we adults decided mocking children for fun and profit was suitable entertainment, but it's time we grew out of it.

2. TV franchisation

In September, we wondered how many Law & Orders and CSIs were too many. Now we know: for L&O, four; for CSI, three.

As it turns out, it takes more than a name to make a show. You also have to come up with a few compelling characters and some workable distinction that separates the copy from the original. CSI: NY failed the first task; L&O: Trial by Jury the second.

And while we're complaining about franchise creep, it would be nice if CBS would stop trying to turn The Amazing Race into Survivor on the Go. The nasty tricks and backbiting maneuvers that work on Survivor should stay on Survivor — and the people who play on Survivor, or any other reality show, should stay off TV afterward. You people aren't franchises. You get one outlet, and then get out.

1. Time games

All right, networks, repeat after me: Shows start and end on the hour or half-hour.

That means, ABC, that Desperate Housewives should end at 10, not 10:02; and Alias should start at 9, not 9:01. As for NBC's long-established habit of starting ER at 9:59 — stop it. You networks keep playing these games with viewers, and someone's going to get hurt. And trust me, it's going to be you.

Disney Wooing Pixar Again

The Walt Disney Co. "definitely" wants to renew its relationship with Pixar Animation Studios, Disney Studios chief Dick Cook has told the London Times. "This has been probably the most successful relationship in the history of Hollywood," Cook told the newspaper. "It's definitely our desire to further the relationship with Pixar for years to come, and develop it even more, and we're hopeful they feel the same way." It has been more than a year since Pixar Chairman Steve Jobs angrily broke off contract-renewal talks with CEO Michael Eisner. Although he has reportedly met with the heads of other studios, he reportedly has been taking a wait-and-see approach to determine whether the company's incoming CEO, Robert Iger, will be less intractable to his terms.

Tom Cruise, Actress Katie Holmes Dating

LOS ANGELES - Tom Cruise has a new girlfriend — actress Katie Holmes. Cruise, 42, and Holmes, 26, have been dating a few weeks, Cruise's publicist and sister, Lee Anne DeVette, said Wednesday.

The pair were photographed this week together in Rome, where Cruise on Friday will receive a lifetime achievement award at the Italian equivalent of the Academy Awards, the David di Donatello Awards.

Holmes' public relations firm — Baker Winokur Ryder — confirmed the two were dating.

Both actors have had high-profile relationships.

Cruise's first two marriages, to actresses Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman, ended in divorce. He was dating actress Penelope Cruz until the pair split last year.

Holmes and actor Chris Klein recently called off their engagement after dating five years.

Cruise in his nearly 25-year career has starred in such films as "Rain Man," "Jerry Maguire" and the upcoming Steven Spielberg remake of "War of the Worlds."

Holmes is best known for starring in the TV show "Dawson's Creek," and the movies "Wonder Boys" and "Pieces of April." She will co-star with Christian Bale in this summer's "Batman Begins."

Groening Ponders Future of 'The Simpsons'

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) It's a cliche for reporters to ask the creator of a long-running TV show about his favorite episodes, and the cliched response is for the creator to say that he loves them all and can't possibly single out one or two.

Yet upon meeting "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening Monday (April 26) at a party celebrating the show's 350th episode -- which airs Sunday, May 1 -- the temptation to ask the favorites question was too hard to resist. Happily, he didn't give the usual non-answer, rattling off a list of his top secondary characters -- Apu, the Squeaky-Voiced Teen, Ralph Wiggum and Milhouse's dad, Kirk, among them -- and episodes he loves.

"I don't have a single favorite. There's a bunch I really like," Groening says. "I love 'Bart Sells His Soul,' the old episode [from October 1995] where he sold his soul to Milhouse for five bucks. I love the one where we had Frank Grimes ['Homer's Enemy,' from May 1997]. And I like an episode we have coming up where Bart converts to Catholicism."

That episode, originally scheduled for earlier this month, was pulled following the death of Pope John Paul II and is now set to air Sunday, May 15. Groening says the decision was one the network made: "We think it's offensive whenever you run it."

It's remarkable enough that "The Simpsons" has even made it to 350 episodes, more than any other scripted show currently on TV. That it can still create a buzz after that long, despite the now-familiar chorus that the show isn't what it once was, is pretty much unheard of in this era.

"No matter how hard people try to run it into the ground by putting it on too many times a day, putting it on multiple DVDs and oversaturating the marketplace and all the rest, we still keep going," Groening says. "In fact, I have to say I'm very proud of this season and the coming season."

Groening thinks the show has lasted so long because "with animation, there are so many possibilities to surprise the audience. That's really what we try to do. We try to keep surprising the audience and keep surprising ourselves."

Groening was quoted in The New York Times Sunday as saying "the show has almost reached its halfway point." Monday, he said he "was not serious at all" about whether "The Simpsons" can last another 350 episodes, but he quickly added, "I'll do them if we can.

"That's a long time, but if we, you know -- unless we all get killed," he says with a shrug. "I think five of the main people could get killed and the show could still go on. But any more than five -- that's why we all ride in separate airplanes."

LOW-KEY BRUCE

Bruce Springsteen kicking off his new acoustic tour Monday night at the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit, playing 27 tunes, including 10 songs off his new solo album, Devils & Dust, in an intimate setting.

Gyllenhaal 9/11 Comments Spark Outcry

NEW YORK - Maggie Gyllenhaal has waded into sensitive political waters by raising questions about Sept. 11 and American foreign policy. The 27-year-old actress, who stars in a new film about the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, said in an interview last week that the United States "is responsible in some way" for the attacks.

A fan Web site devoted to Gyllenhaal was overwhelmed with criticism, forcing the site's editor to remove the ability to post messages "because it's gotten too outta hand."

In a statement issued Monday by her publicist, Gyllenhaal said Sept. 11 was "an occasion to be brave enough to ask some serious questions about America's role in the world. Because it is always useful as individuals or nations to ask how we may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this conflict.

"Not to have the courage to ask these questions of ourselves is to betray the victims of 9/11."

She also expressed her grief for "everyone who suffered and everyone who died in the catastrophe."

Gyllenhall stars in "The Great New Wonderful," which features stories about people living in New York in the aftermath of the terror attacks. The movie is being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, which was founded by Robert De Niro to help revitalize downtown Manhattan after Sept. 11.

Her screen credits also include "Secretary," "Mona Lisa Smile" and "Donnie Darko." She is the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal. She lives in Manhattan.

Joni Mitchell compiles CD for Sask.

TORONTO (CP) - Joni Mitchell hasn't made it a secret that she's fed up with the music business and would prefer to spend her time painting.

She's happily done just that for several years now.

But she recently came out of her painter's studio long enough to cherry pick 13 of her songs for a CD tribute to her childhood home, Saskatchewan, which is celebrating its centennial.

Songs of a Prairie Girl, out Tuesday, includes Let The Wind Carry Me, River and Raised on Robbery.

"I've retired basically," she said in an interview this week with Canada AM from Los Angeles, which she now calls home. "They wanted me to perform (for the centennial), but I don't do that anymore. I'm a painter now."

The compilation, she said, was her way to show respect for her homeland.

"You carry your childhood with you. Saskatchewan is in my veins," she said.

She jokingly admitted frigid temperatures play a big part in her memories.

"When I put this together I thought 'Oh dear, it's all about wanting to get out of the cold,"' she joked.

In fact, in the album's liner notes Mitchell urges listeners to "get yourself a hot beverage and stand by the heater as you listen to these musical tales of long, cold winters, with a hint of short but glorious summers."

Mitchell says she's disheartened by what she sees going on in the music industry where listener polls and demographic studies rather than artistry are used to formulate songs.

"The things that I've been told to kill in my work by my record company and management . . . had I done that it would have been a tragedy," she said in the CTV interview.

"The idea that our youth is being brainwashed by this sarcasm and bad potty training . . . this contrived money music. You hear young artists talking and they're talking demographics.

"There's no muse in this. There's a drive to be looked at. These are not creative people. These are created people."

Mitchell will take part in centennial festivities in mid-May at a gala dinner to be attended by the Queen and Prince Philip, among other dignitaries.

Pearl Jam announces big Cdn. tour

Pearl Jam may be hard at work on their next studio album, but that didn't stop the band from announcing details of their largest Canadian tour ever.

The 15-city trek, which spans from coast to coast, kicks off at GM Place in Vancouver on Sept. 2, and ends at Mile One Stadium in St. John's.

"It's the most extensive tour of Canada by an international band of Pearl Jam's stature that I know of, and it's incredibly exciting and welcome news for Canadian music fans," states concert promoter Paul Mercs, whose office is handling the promotion of the tour.

"Pearl Jam will play songs spanning their 15-year career on the tour, but Canadian fans will also be the first in the world to hear new songs from the band's highly anticipated next record," adds Mercs.

Guitarist Mike McCready recently told Billboard.com that the Seattle band are about "halfway there" with the new disc, the band's eighth and first album under their brand new label J Records/BMG.

Tickets for the Canadian tour are expected to go on sale to the general public at the end of May. On sale ticket information for each market will be announced on May 19. Tickets for Pearl Jam's Ten Club (fan club) members will go on sale today at www.pearljam.com.

Pearl Jam's 2005 Canadian tour dates are as follows:

Sept. 2 -- Vancouver, General Motors Place
Sept. 4 -- Calgary, Pengrowth Saddledome
Sept. 5 -- Edmonton, Rexall Place
Sept. 7 -- Saskatoon, Credit Union Centre
Sept. 8 -- Winnipeg, MTS Centre
Sept. 9 -- Thunder Bay, Fort William Gardens
Sept. 11 -- Kitchener, Kitchener Memorial Auditorium
Sept. 12 -- London, John Labatt Centre
Sept. 13 -- Hamilton, Copps Coliseum
Sept. 15 -- Montreal, Bell Centre
Sept. 16 -- Ottawa, Corel Centre
Sept. 19 -- Toronto, Air Canada Centre
Sept. 20 -- Quebec City, Colisee Pepsi
Sept. 22 -- Halifax, Metro Centre
Sept. 24 -- St. John's, NFLD, Mile One Stadium

George Lucas to Appear on 'The O.C.'

NEW YORK - The force is with "The O.C." George Lucas will guest star as himself on the May 12 episode, the Fox network announced Tuesday. The "Star Wars" creator will express interest in the graphic novel of the main character, Seth Cohen (Adam Brody).

Brody's character, an avid "Star Wars" fan, frequently has the good fortune of meeting his heroes. His favorite band, Death Cab for Cutie, recently played on the show.

Earlier this season, the trailer for "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" premiered during the program. The final installment of the "Star Wars" saga will open in theaters on May 19.

Fox recently announced that "The O.C." will return for a third season. It airs Thursdays (8 p.m. EST).

'The Simpsons' Hit 350th Episode Milestone

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - You know that a show has been around a long time when they start measuring milestones in episodic increments of 50. But it's understandable that "The Simpsons" should want to make a big deal out of hitting 350 episodes with this Sunday's installment.

As the legendary Fox series wraps up its 16th season, the denizens of Springfield are wading in some uncharted prime-time waters. When executive producer Al Jean boasts that "The Simpsons" "just enjoyed the best 16th season of any comedy ever," that's because no other comedy has ever made it this far.

How many episodes is 350? More than the combined total of "Seinfeld" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." "The Simpsons" will pass "Dallas" (357 episodes) on the all-time series list before 2005 is out. Then it takes aim at the only two comedies to have produced more segments: "My Three Sons" at 380 episodes and "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" at a somewhat astounding 435.

Can "The Simpsons" really make it to 435 -- a feat that would require the show see a (gasp) 20th season?

"You know, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's really not out of the question," Jean admits. "The cast is already signed through season 19. I think we'll get at least that far. It required such a long negotiation to get the cast under contract for four years that I think it's likely we'll do them."

The show is renewed through a 17th season. The only conventional entertainment show to run at least as many years was 20-year war horse "Gunsmoke," though it need also be noted, of course, that "Law & Order" is nipping at the "Simpsons' " heels as it looks to a 16th season come fall.

At an age when any other comedy would be sputtering on fumes, "The Simpsons" is still pulling in respectable ratings -- it's the only thing keeping the lights on for Fox on Sunday nights this season -- despite the fact that older episodes run at all hours of the day and night in syndication.

"My best hope in the beginning was that maybe we'd be some kind of cult thing like 'Fawlty Towers' that would go for five years," admits Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer and Grampa, among many others. "Now we're more than three times that far."

People often ask Castellaneta how all of this happened, how this "Tracey Ullman Show" spinoff could survive fickle tastes and prime-time comedy lulls and the dismissive industry tag of being a mere cartoon.

The usual explanations for its uncanny longevity surround the fact that the characters never age and the magic of animation allows the writers to go places where live-action could never tread.

"I have to say that it really does come down to the writing," he believes. "I've actually written a few scripts myself, and it's just amazing how much time and effort goes into it. There are rewrites, rewrites of the rewrites, tweaks. And there's no fear in the writers room. It's all about getting it as good as it can possibly be."

Of course, the conventional wisdom has it that "The Simpsons" has suffered a great nosedive in quality -- and that if it hasn't yet officially jumped the shark, it's clinging to the shark's fin. But Jean will have none of it.

"Have you ever known people to say that something is better now than it was in the past?" he asks. "Of course not. You have to take it all with a grain of salt. I remember during our fourth season, Entertainment Weekly wrote that we were going downhill. When the fourth season DVD was released, they said it was the 1927 Yankees of comedy.

"That isn't to say we don't do some bad shows now and didn't then. But I say that by and large, the shows we're doing now are just as good as any I've been involved with."

The Couch Potato Report - April 26th, 2005

This week The Couch Potato Report features a cinematic unfortunate series of events, a movie I am going to tell you very little about, and beaches.

My friends Chris and Debbie have two small children, Max and Ellie.

On my last visit to see them Debbie was kind enough to let Chris and I go out to a movie and bowling one afternoon while she watched the kids.

Due to their aforementioned children, Chris and Debbie don't get out to see movies much anymore. On the other hand, as I have no kids, I get to go all the time and I usually go and see films on the day that they open.

So, as Chris and I were trying to decide what film to go see we quickly realized that there was only one film that I hadn't seen.

As is his nature, he very graciously stated that we should go and see that one movie. Yes, there were films that I was willing to see again, but as he is a great guy, we went to see the one film I hadn't seen.

That film was LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, a movie based on the popular series of kid's books by Daniel Handler.

Kids books.

My friend Chris and I, both men in our mid to late thirties, went to see a film based on a series of kid's books.

And you know what, we both completely enjoyed the movie!

Yes, I really liked it!

I haven't read any of the books, and I have no plans to, but I am told the film LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is based on three of them.

After Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire's parents perish in a terrible fire, they are placed in the care of their uncle. Jim Carrey from DUMB & DUMBER and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND plays the Uncle, a mysterious actor named Count Olaf.

In reality, he may or may not be their Uncle, but -either way - he is plotting to kill them and seize their fortune.

Yes, it is a family film where one character is trying to kill the kids, but that is never the point. If he fails or succeeds is never the question. How entertaining is the film - that's the question.

And I have a one-word answer for you: Very.

It is very entertaining.

Billy Connolly, Jude Law, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep all play supporting roles, but this is Count Olaf's film. He keeps appearing in the strangest of places and each one is more entertaining then the last.

And true to the movie's title, there are a series of unfortunate events.

The movie is a cross between THE ADDAMS FAMILY, some Dr. Suess and Roald Dahl books, with a little bit of Charles Dickens and Tim Burton thrown in for good measure.

LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is a very entertaining family film that is even good for a pair of men in their mid to late thirties.

And I'll tell you one other thing; I will be buying a copy of this for Chris' kids. This way, the next time Chris and I see it, we can see it with its intended audience.

It is a great film, an was unexpected surprise.

Our second film this week was unexpected as well, because I didn't know anything about THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON before I started watching it, and I don't think you should either.

If I had known anything about it, then I would have known too much. By not knowing anything, the film had the chance to play out in front of me.

But, since my reason for speaking about THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON here on The Couch Potato Report is to tell you something about it, I will.

But I'm not saying much!

Sean Penn stars in this film as a man whose life - circa 1974 - has become unbearable. Since he is unable to take the blame for his own downward spiral, he chooses to blame the President.

And that is all I will say about the plot of the film.

No, THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON is not a perfect film, and I can't fully recommend it as at times it is really slow and almost boring.

However, Sean Penn continues to be one of the best actors of this generation and every scene he is in is worth watching.

Yet even though I can't fully recommend it, if you would like to see an interesting character study about a man determined to leave his mark on the world, then you should see THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON.

And for the record, U.S. President Richard Nixon wasn't assassinated. He died on April 22, 1994 after suffering a stroke.

Enough said.

Hey, by the way, did you ever know that you're my hero? You're everything I wish I could be. I could fly higher than an eagle, for you are the wind beneath my wings.

Okay, well if I never told you that, I am sure sometime in late 1988 or early 1989 you heard Bette Midler's song "Wind Beneath My Wings" on the radio. The song came from her movie BEACHES, director Garry Marshall's touching drama about a 30-year friendship between two women, one wealthy, and the other seeking her fortune in show business.

Over the years BEACHES has remained a favourite amongst many friends of mine and they still find the movie touching and "worth a good cry."

For those friends, and you, if you are interested, there is now a BEACHES - SPECIAL EDITION DVD. There are no extra scenes as the film is great just as it is, but Gary Marshall offers his thoughts in a commentary, there is a blooper reel and some other features. Plus, if you haven't heard it enough already, the disc also features the "Wind Beneath My Wings" music video

I can't say I ever loved the film, but I did enjoy watching the movie again, and the extra features on the BEACHES - SPECIAL EDITION DVD.

It isn't the wind beneath my cinematic wings, but it is still a good movie.

BEACHES, THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON and LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS are all available now on video and DVD.

COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT

Is the everything blows up real good film NATIONAL TREASURE, in which treasure seekers find a map written on the back of the American Declaration of Independence. Nicolas Cage, Sean Bean and Diane Kruger star in this really bad, but successful action film.

The POCAHONTAS - 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION is a look back on a film I wonder if anyone wants to look back on. In the animated Disney release a Powhatan maiden falls for English settler. Irene Bedard gives voice to the title character and Mel Gibson is the settler.

Finally next week is the film version of ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. For the record, Lloyd Webber's name is actually part of the title. If you are unfamiliar with the incredibly successful stage version of this story, a masked figure falls in love with a singer he is tutoring. Gerard Butler is the cinematic Phantom and Emmy Rossum from MYSTIC RIVER is his student.

I'm Dan Reynish and I will have more on ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, The POCAHONTAS -10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, NATIONAL TREASURE, and some other 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!

New 'Batman Begins' Trailer Shows Superhero's Human Side

Summer's approaching, and you know what that means: leisurely picnics, lazy air-conditioned nights — and at least one incredibly dark, psychologically challenging and explosion-filled summer blockbuster.

"Batman Begins" is the fifth (or the sixth, if we count last year's execrable "Catwoman") installment in the big-screen franchise, and all indications are that this entry will be as much a journey into Bruce Wayne/Batman's psyche and his tortured past as it will be a high-budget, blow-'em-up thriller. In fact, the most recent trailer suggests that the film will explore Bruce Wayne's tragedy-filled past (the murder of his parents) and will also delve into his more amorous inclinations, particularly those having to do with old flame Rachel Dodson (Katie Holmes).

Most significantly, though, the film will chronicle how Wayne became Batman in the first place, traveling the globe in search of the means to fight evildoers and protect the weak and innocent.

With a cast that includes Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine and a host of other heavy hitters, chances are fair that the weighty subject matter will be handled with aplomb. But don't despair: Judging by the look of the new Hummerified Batmobile, for instance, there will be plenty of high-octane mayhem to keep the thespians and the audience on their collective toes.

Lucas: 'Star Wars' to Live on TV

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) The "Star Wars" movie saga is drawing to a close next month, but George Lucas says the universe he created may continue to expand on television.

Speaking at the biggest "Star Wars" convention ever held over the weekend, Lucas said he's approved the creation of two TV series to continue the franchise in the future.

"We're doing a pilot television series now called 'Clone Wars,'" Lucas told the audience at Celebration III, a huge "Star Wars" convention in Indianapolis. "Well, we're going to take that and turn it into a 3-D animated version full series."

The animated series will presumably pick up and expand the story of Cartoon Network's 2-D "Clone Wars" shorts, executive produced by Lucas and directed by "Samurai Jack" creator Genndy Tartakovsky.

The second project, Lucas says, will be a live-action series in the vein of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," which had a one-season run on ABC in the early 1990s. According to StarWars.com, Lucas says the show would take place in the time between the events of the forthcoming "Episode III" and the first "Star Wars" film, which follows "III" in the story's chronology.

"There's none of the main characters from I, II, and III ...," Lucas says, before pausing to correct himself. "Well, actually, that's not exactly true now that I think about it. We haven't really started the TV show, so it's hard to answer. There's a lot of issues that are connected, but you won't necessarily see a lot of the people that are connected."

Lucas expects work on the live-action series to begin in about a year. He says he'll be involved with getting the show off the ground before ceding day-to-day control to a showrunner.

"Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" opens in theaters on Thursday, May 19.

DualDisc breaks sound barrier

Springsteen's Devils & Dust arrives in stores today exclusively in the new DualDisc format — a single disc with CD on one side, DVD on the other. Devils' CD side is a traditional CD with 12 tracks, and the DVD has video of Springsteen talking about the music and performing five of the songs.

The booming DVD market is dominated by movies. But as CD sales have slipped in recent years, record labels have sought a way to make the visual medium work for musicians.

"There's nothing more powerful than the moving image," says Thomas Hesse, president of digital business for Sony BMG, which is releasing the Springsteen album. "You get more background flavor for what that artist stands for."

The two-sided hybrid — it can be played on either a DVD or CD player — is the latest effort to steer listeners away from free Internet downloads and back into stores. Springsteen is the biggest artist to release an album exclusively on DualDisc.

The format of offering audio on one side of a disc and video on the other side is less than a year old. The first DualDisc was Simple Plan's Still Not Getting Any from last October. Jennifer Lopez's Rebirth and Omarion's O were released as both CDs and DualDiscs this year, and about one-third of the sales were DualDiscs, according to Sony BMG, which also is releasing Springsteen's Devils & Dust.

"It's a huge vote of confidence from one of our biggest artists," says Pete Howard, editor and publisher of Ice Magazine, which covers music CD trends.

Just like movie DVDs, DualDiscs allow performers to record commentary that can play over the songs, discussing the writing, recording and ideas behind the lyrics.

"It gives the artists an ability to get a lot closer to the fans," says John Trickett, chairman and CEO of the 5.1 Entertainment Group, which has put out about 90 DualDiscs since October, many of them rereleases such as Lynyrd Skynyrd's Then and Now, Blues Traveler's Truth Be Told and Bob Marley & The Wailers' Soul Rebels.

Some DualDiscs include documentaries that explain the origins of the recordings, such as the recent DualDisc rerelease of Miles Davis' classic Kind of Blue.

Ice Magazine's Howard says that will motivate some buyers who want to hear directly from the artists about their work.

But "it only works for some artists," Howard says. "Bob Dylan has never explained how he wrote practically a single song. It could subtract from the mystique in a listener's imagination."

Springsteen's DVD also has a non-visual music track of the album that allows the songs to be played in 5.1 surround sound through a DVD player, enveloping the listener with sound.

"The artists really like that," Tricket says.

Devils & Dust retails for $18.98, about $1 more than music-only CDs. Many downloaders already have decided that cover art and CD packaging are worth sacrificing for free music, but they might have a harder time passing on the video.

"That, we hope, will drive people back to the store and away from taking a friend's purchased disc and just ripping it or going to the Web and stealing it," says Sony BMG's Hesse.

Howard says DualDisc "will be successful. But will it be successful enough to save the music business?"

Other upcoming titles to be released on DualDisc include:

Nine Inch Nails' With Teeth on May 3

Dave Matthews Band's Stand Up on May 10.

For another great story on DualDiscs go HERE

April 26th, New Tunage: Bruuuuuuce, New Order, Jo Dee Messina

Bruce Springsteen Devils and Dust (Columbia)

Bruce Springsteen's thirteenth studio album is, in many ways, his most conventional singer-songwriter record since his 1973 debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. Devils and Dust is twelve songs of assorted vintage and narrative setting, rendered with a subdued, mostly acoustic flair that smells of wood smoke and sparkles in the right places like stars in a clear Plains sky. There is no connected, redemptive urgency to these stories; this is not The Rising. And there is no E Street Band to turn Springsteen's trademark compulsion to save and be saved into fireball baptism: You get Steve Jordan on drums, producer Brendan O'Brien on bass and Springsteen on almost everything else, with his wife, singer Patti Scialfa, and E Street violinist Soozie Tyrell making brush-stroke appearances.

Yet Devils and Dust is, in striking and affecting ways, also Springsteen's most audacious record since the home-demo American Gothic of 1982's Nebraska. It opens with mortal sin -- the title song, a sand-caked letter home from a war where both sides kill in God's name -- and ends in death: "Matamoros Banks," a prayer for remembrance by an illegal immigrant who doesn't make it across the Rio Grande. With its tender fingerpicking, singing-wire curls of dobro and soft, billowing orchestration, "Reno" floats like a night breeze through an open bedroom window. But the sex inside is adulterous and graphic, and it costs: "'Two hundred dollars straight in/Two-fifty up the ass,' she smiled and said."

In the next song, "Long Time Comin'," Springsteen uses the word "fuck" for the first time on record, in the sense of swearing never to screw up again. There is no apology, though, in "The Hitter": A fallen boxer frankly recalls the brutality of a life in which a man is paid to all but murder other men for entertainment. Springsteen first played the song in his 1995-1997 solo acoustic shows; he sings it here with a vivid, craggy exhaustion. The knockout punch actually comes in the first verse -- the palooka is confessing to his mother. After that, it's all blood, shards of bone and universal guilt: "Understand, in the end, Ma, every man plays the game/If you know one different, then speak out his name."

"The Hitter" is one of several songs on Devils and Dust that Springsteen wrote almost a decade ago, in a concentrated burst of inspiration as he toured behind the spectral-country song cycle, 1995's The Ghost of Tom Joad. He reprises the dust-bowl topography and marooned spirits of that album with moving results. In "Long Time Comin'," a rustic sprint lit with square-dance fiddle and pearly steel guitar, a father prays for his children as the family sleeps rough, under "the sword of Orion": "If I had one wish in this Godforsaken world, kids/It'd be that your mistakes would be your own."

But Devils and Dust is also as immediate and troubling as this morning's paper. These people are our neighbors, and these worries are Springsteen's, too. He wrote the title song in 2003, after the start of the Iraq War, and it shows. His cracked, vocal agony when he looks his God in the eye ("I've got my finger on the trigger/And tonight faith just ain't enough") is as old as Stephen Crane and as fresh as Fallujah. "All the Way Home," in contrast, is much older than it seems, predating Springsteen's plunge into party politics last fall with the Vote for Change Tour. But he steps into the first lines -- "I know what it's like to have failed, baby/With the whole world lookin' on" -- with the grizzled force of experience. The specific echoes of the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" -- the bees-army buzz of sitar and tamboura coating the rolling twang -- are no accident either.

There are times, like Springsteen's outbreak of whispered falsetto in the campfire rockabilly of "All I'm Thinkin' About," when you can't help waiting for the E Street payoff that never comes. But many of Springsteen's best songs, going back to "Born to Run," are about the salvation just out of reach, around the next curve and over the next hill -- and what it takes to get there. The rewards are often slender here, when they come at all. Still, the promise never fades. "These days I don't stand on pride/And I ain't afraid to take a fall," Springsteen sings with gravelly swagger in "All the Way Home" -- like a guy already back on his feet. (DAVID FRICKE)

New Order Waiting for the Sirens' Call (Reprise)

New Order have nothing to regret. If they'd broken up when Ian Curtis died, they'd still be remembered as Joy Division. If they'd broken up after the 1982 single "Temptation," they'd be remembered for the most achingly emotional seven-and-a-half-minute New Wave disco twelve-inch of all time. If they'd broken up after Low-life, in 1985, they'd be remembered for the most influential electro-vampire post-punk limp-wristed goth-twit album of the Eighties. But they didn't break up. They just keep making brilliant new records and inspiring brilliant new bands, such as the Killers, Bloc Party and Interpol. They took a break in the 1990s, cleansing their systems of toxic chemicals and even fuglier side projects. (Revenge? Electronic? Monaco? Jesus!) If their 2001 Get Ready was a toe-dip return, Waiting for the Sirens' Call is their best since Technique, taking the "Blue Monday" beat into new wacked-out realms.

Bernard Sumner still sings and strums with his boyish air of distractable pique, and he writes some of the most genius crap lyrics around ("The world is a beautiful place/With mountains, lakes and the human race"). His secret is his sincerity, the way he whoops and yelps through blood-curdling poetry that a more clever singer would shame himself trying to play straight. But he'd be nowhere without Peter Hook, the Keith Richards of the bass, and drummer/pinup boy Stephen Morris. They outdo themselves with the sleek pop uplift of "Krafty," the robot clank of "I Told You So," the moody shimmer of "Turn" and the towering title track. Every song is great, except the one called "Dracula's Castle." What more could a fan ask? (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Jo Dee Messina Delicious Surprise (Curb)

The challenge for many mainstream country artists? Coming across as a rebel shit-stirrer even as you play by a strict set of musical and career rules -- rules that constrain Nashville divas more tightly than anyone else. Bouncing back from a painful breakup -- as well as her record company's shelving of her fourth album in favor of a 2003 hits collection -- Jo Dee Messina delivers a can't-fail reconfiguration of that lost disc. Recalling Shania Twain at her feistiest, the lead single, "My Give a Damn's Busted," zaps guys in their most vulnerable place -- the one that requires that women care about guys' problems. The Massachusetts-born, Nashville-based singer proves she cares plenty after all on rockers and ballads that exude positive thinking and post-relationship remorse. Unfortunately, her studio-scrubbed packaging often undermines her exuberant sincerity, particularly on "I Believe It," which glibly recycles large chunks of "Sweet Home Alabama" for no apparent reason beyond ensuring another smash. With a few exceptions, Delicious Surprise tastes as predictable as lunch at Arby's. (BARRY WALTERS)

From ROLLING STONE magazine.

NEW CD RELEASES FOR APRIL 26, 2005

Acceptance Phantoms (Columbia/RED Ink)

Audio Caviar Transoceanic (Thump)

Cheryl Bentyne (Manhattan Transfer singer) Let Me Off Uptown (Telarc)

Debby Boone Reflections of Rosemary (Concord)

Brain Failure American Dreamer (guest members of Dropkick Murphys and the Unseen) (Thorp)

Tim Burgess (Charlatans vocalist) I Believe (U.S. release of 2003 UK album) (Koch)

Caesars Paper Tigers (w/new remix of "Jerk It Out") (Astralwerks)

Charivari A Trip to the Holiday Lounge (Rounder)

Jordan Chassan East of Bristol, West of Knoxville (Strong)

Chok Rock Big City Loser EP (Warp)

Coastline Sweet ‘n' Ripe (Landslide)

Steve Cole Spin (Narada)

Collective Soul From the Ground Up EP (all acoustic) (El Music Group)

The Complete Strategist We Care (Happy Home)

Mike Cruz Krash (Tommy Boy)

Jack DeJohnette Music in the Key of Om (Golden Beams/Kindred Rhythm)

Jack DeJohnette and Foday Musa Suso Music from the Hearts of the Masters (Golden Beams/Kindred Rhythm)

Discover America Psychology (Tooth & Nail)

DJ Spooky and Dave Lombardo (Slayer drummer) Drums of Death (guests Vernon Reid, Chuck D.; produced by Meat Beat Manifesto) (Thirsty Ear)

The Dresden Dolls The Dresden Dolls (re-release of 2004 debut) (Roadrunner)

Eau Claire Eau Claire EP (Clairecords)

eels Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (two CDs; guests Tom Waits, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian) (Vagrant)

Feist Let It Die (Interscope)

Ben Folds Songs for Silverman (Epic)

The Frontline Now U Know (Rykodisc)

Josh Gracin Brass Bed (Hollywood)

Tracy Grammer Flower of Avalon (guest Mary Chapin Carpenter) (Signature Sounds)

Brian Haas The Truth About Hollywood (Hyena)

Hater (Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron of Soundgarden) The 2nd (originally recorded in 1995 w/guest members of Ministry, Monster Magnet, Devilhead and more) (Burn Burn Burn)

Eric Heatherly The Lower East Side of Life (Koch)

Hiroshima Obon (Heads Up)

Hot Snakes Peel Sessions (recorded in 2004) (Swami)

Buddy Jewell Times Like These (Columbia)

Jim & Jennie & the Pinetops Rivers Roll on by (Bloodshot)

John Brown's Body Pressure Points (w/guests the Meditations on "Not Enough") (Easy Star)

Toby Keith Shock'n Y'all (DualDisc) (UMG Nashville)

Little Freddie King You Don't Know What I Know (Fat Possum)

Love as Laughter Laughter's Fifth (Sub Pop)

Luciano Jah Words (Sanctuary)

Lyrics Born Same !@#$ Different Day (CD/DVD combo; remixes of tracks from "Later That Day..." w/DJ Shadow, KRS-One, Morcheeba and more) (Quannum/Epitaph)

Mario Turning Point (DualDisc) (J Records)

Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree (Beggars Group)

Oliver Mtukudzi Nhava (Heads Up)

No Address Time Doesn't Notice (Atlantic)

Oz Noy Ha! (w/bonus live track and video) (Magnatude)

David Pack Travelin' Light (Concord)

The Perishers Let There Be Morning (Nettwerk)

Porcupine Tree Deadwing (guest Adrian Belew) (Atlantic)

John Prine Fair and Square (Oh Boy!)

Joel Rafael Band Woodyboye: Songs of Woody Guthrie (and Tales Worth Telling) Volume 2 (guests Jackson Browne, Arlo Guthrie, Van Dyke Parks and more) (Appleseed)

Red Stick Ramblers Right Key, Wrong Keyhole (Memphis International)

Jonathan Rice Trouble Is Real (Warner Bros.)

Peggy Seeger Love Call Me Home (Appleseed)

Settlefish The Plural of the Choir (Deep Elm)

Stars Are Falling/Skylines Split EP (Blood & Ink)

Susie Suh Susie Suh (produced by Glen Ballard) (Epic)

Jimmy Thackery Healin' Ground (Telarc)

Tiger Bear Wolf Tiger Bear Wolf (Hello Sir)

Tom & Joy Esquisse (Tommy Boy)

Emiliana Torrini Fisherman's Wife (Sanctuary)

TRU The Truth (Koch)

Us3 Questions (Us3.com/Megaforce/Rykodisc)

Bobby Valentino Disturbing tha Peace Presents (Island Def Jam)

Jim Verarros Rollercoaster (Koch)

The Virginia Sisters Last Pathetic Fool (Not Lame)

Weird War Illuminated by the Light (Drag City)

Z-Trip Shifting Gears (w/Chuck D., Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, Aceyalone, Lyrics Born and more) (Hollywood)

VA Africa Remix (Milan)

VA Broadway Today (Universal Classics)

VA Golden Slumbers II: A Father's Love (w/new songs from Solomon Burke, Phil Collins, Dave Matthews, Smokey Robinson and more) (Rendezvous)

VA Putumayo Presents: Mali (Putumayo)

OCR Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit! (Koch)

OST Family Guy - LIVE in Vegas (animated TV series) (Geffen)

OST Fever Pitch (Rykodisc)

OST Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film based on the Douglas Adams novel; starring John Malkovich and Mos Def) (Hollywood)

OST King's Ransom (Rykodisc)

OST L4yer Cake (w/Duran Duran, the Cult, Starsailor, Joe Cocker and more) (Virgin/EMI)

OST Sahara (Rykodisc)

DVD Black Beach Weekend (hip-hop documentary) (Fuel)

DVD Ultimate Critical Review: Argent, Nirvana and Rainbow (Classic Rock)

TOUR BUDDIES

John Mellencamp and John Fogerty hitting the road together for a summer tour kicking off June 24 in Cincinnati.

Star Wars gets uber-boxed

George Lucas announced over the weekend that not surprisingly, a box set of all six Star Wars films will be coming out next year. Although the supplements are far from complete, the films will be the versions currently available on DVD, and supplemental discs may contain deleted scenes from the original trilogy.
In related news, digitally projected versions of Episode III will contain more footage than traditionally projected versions.

Universal celebrates The Jerk

Currently available only as a fullscreen featureless release, The Jerk is finally getting respect with the upcoming The Jerk: 26th Anniversary Edition from Universal Home Entertainment.

The DVD releases will present the film in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Extras include a trailer, production notes, and two featurettes.

The DVD is coming out on July 26th with a suggested retail price of $19.98.

Comedian George Lopez Has Kidney Transplant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Lopez was recovering on Monday from a successful kidney transplant surgery using an organ donated by his wife, his publicist said.

Lopez, who stars in the ABC sitcom "George Lopez," needed the transplant because of a genetic condition that caused his kidneys to deteriorate, publicist Ann Gurrola said. She said the surgery was not urgent for Lopez, who turned 44 on Saturday.

"It came to a point where his kidneys weren't operating at the full capacity that they needed to," Gurrola said, adding that both Lopez and his wife, Ann, were doing well after the operations.

Both George and Ann Lopez testified at the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. The couple befriended Jackson's young accuser at a Hollywood comedy camp in 2000 and lent him support when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Huffman Denies Tension Among 'Housewives'

Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman has rubbished reports the TV show's leading ladies despise each other following a series of bitter rows. The actresses - Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria, Teri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan - have been plagued by claims their time on-set is being hindered by constant squabbling and walk-outs. But former Sports Night star Huffman - who plays Lynette Scavo on the show - has blasted the newspaper coverage, insisting they're all very close. She says, "We're all friends. We all get along. I love going to work."

Jennifer Connelly Thinks Big for 'Little Children'

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Connelly is in negotiations to join Kate Winslet in "Little Children" for New Line Cinema.

Todd Field, the filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated 2001 drama "In the Bedroom," is set to direct the adaptation of the Tom Perrotta novel. Field and Perrotta are co-writing the screenplay.

The novel revolves around a group of weird, suburban characters and their relationships with children. There's a bisexual feminist addicted to Internet porn (Winslet), a stay-at-home dad who resists his wife's ambitious plans for him, an uptight supermom who schedules sex with her husband and a pedophile fresh out of prison.

Connelly, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress for "A Beautiful Mind," most recently starred in "House of Sand and Fog" and "The Hulk." Her other credits include "Requiem for a Dream" and "Mulholland Falls." She next appears in Walter Salles' "Dark Water."

'Interpreter' Translates to Box-Office Win

LOS ANGELES - Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn's "The Interpreter" translated into solid box-office as the United Nations thriller debuted with $22.8 million to top the weekend for Hollywood.

The weekend's other main debut, Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet's romantic comedy "A Lot Like Love," had a so-so opening of $7.7 million, coming in at No. 4, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Expanding nationwide after two weeks in limited release, Stephen Chow's action comedy "Kung Fu Hustle" was No. 5 with $7.3 million, lifting its total domestic gross to just over $8 million.

Anthony Anderson's kidnapping comedy "King's Ransom," so bad it was not screened beforehand for critics, finished in 10th place with just $2.4 million.

In limited release, the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" opened strongly with $70,000 at three theaters. The film offers an inside portrait of the corporate scandal at the energy company.

Overall business was down for the ninth-straight week, with the top 12 movies taking in $83.4 million, off a fraction from the same weekend last year.

"The Interpreter," directed by Sydney Pollack, stars Kidman as a U.N. translator at the center of an assassination plot after she overhears a death threat against an African dictator. Penn co-stars as a federal agent.

Reviews generally were positive, with critics calling "The Interpreter" an unusually brainy thriller.

"I think audiences were anxious for any good, solid story," said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal, which released "The Interpreter."

"The Interpreter" was a rare triumph for older audiences, with the over-35 crowd making up 60 percent of the film's viewers. The under-25 audience that drives most of the box office was divided among several movies, including "The Amityville Horror" and "A Lot Like Love."

"You look at the demographic and go, how can 'The Interpreter' be No. 1? But if you put the right movie in the marketplace, the older audience will go," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

"A Lot Like Love," which received mixed reviews, fell short of distributor Disney's hopes that it would hit $10 million over opening weekend. Considering Kutcher's solid box-office history, including the current hit "Guess Who," the performance of "A Lot Like Love" was another sign of audience disinterest in what Hollywood has had to offer the last two months.

The slump has left the industry limping into its busy summer season, with such big titles as "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith," "Kingdom of Heaven" and "The Longest Yard" due out in May.

"There hasn't been that breakout picture the public's jumping to see yet, but it'll happen. It's just around the corner," said Chuck Viane, Disney head of distribution.

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. "The Interpreter," $22.8 million.
2. "The Amityville Horror," $14.2 million.
3. "Sahara," $9 million.
4. "A Lot Like Love," $7.7 million.
5. "Kung Fu Hustle," $7.3 million.
6. "Fever Pitch," $5.45 million.
7. "Sin City," $3.7 million.
8. "Guess Who," $3.5 million.
9. "Robots," $3.3 million.
10. "King's Ransom," $2.4 million.

Pixies, Weezer, Panic Set for Lollapalooza

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - The Pixies, Weezer, Widespread Panic, the Killers, the Arcade Fire, Liz Phair), the Black Keys and Death Cab For Cutie are among the acts that will play the reconfigured Lollapalooza festival, which will take place July 23-24 in Chicago's Grant Park.

Also on the bill are Cake, Dashboard Confessional, Dinosaur Jr., Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs, Louis XIV, Tegan & Sara, M83, Los Amigos Invisibles, Blue Merle, the Redwalls, the Changes, Dandy Warhols, Digable Planets, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Billy Idol), the Bravery and Blonde Redhead.

The lineup was announced Friday in Chicago. Lollapalooza 2005 will be produced by Capital Sports & Entertainment and Charles Attal Presents -- the brain trust behind the successful Austin City Limits (ACL) festival -- along with Lollapalooza owners the William Morris Agency and Perry Farrell.

"This lineup is a cross between ACL and Coachella," Attal told Billboard of the event, which will feature more than 70 acts on five stages. "It's the ACL model that we're bringing to Chicago."

That model, Attal says, is a lower-than-expected ticket price, local food vendors, accessible stage layout and set times, as well as an amenity-heavy backstage vibe. "You've got to send a message," Attal says. "You take care of the bands, you take care of the music consumer who's buying the ticket, and they'll come back for more."

Earlier this month, 2,000 Internet presale tickets sold out in 80 minutes, according to Capital Sports' Charlie Jones.

"Whether or not that was a true indicator of the strength of this brand or the result of press leaks with the bands, we'll never know," Jones said. "But people who took that bet with us will get a fancy souvenir ticket."

Loggins, Messina Reuniting for Summer Tour

NASHVILLE (Billboard) - Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina will embark on their first tour as a duo in nearly 30 years with the Loggins & Messina Sittin' in Again Reunion Tour.

The outing has about 40 dates on the books, beginning June 24 at the Idaho Center in Boise. The route includes arenas, amphitheaters, casinos and other venues.

In conjunction with the tour, Columbia/Legacy will on May 24 release "The Best: Loggins & Messina Sittin' in Again," featuring such hits as "Your Mama Don't Dance," "Danny's Song" and "Angry Eyes."

After eight successful albums together between 1972 and 1977, including two live sets, the duo went their separate ways, touring for the last time in 1976. Messina says he and Loggins had reservations about embarking on a full-blown tour, but found that old wounds had healed.

"One of the sore spots was, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Kenny and his incredible voice, and part of the problem was not thinking I could live up to that," Messina told Billboard. "And, not to speak for Kenny, but I found out he experienced the same thing with me and my instrumentation."

A benefit show last year at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara, Calif., was the catalyst for the tour.

"Things just sort of flowed together," recalled Loggins. "I'd been playing a lot of these songs, like 'Danny's Song' and 'House at Pooh Corner' alone for years, and when Jimmy came in, I remembered who we were. Something magic happens when the two of us sing together."

The artists will perform their hits together and solo, and a special "sittin' in" segment will feature special guests in some markets. "If we're in Nashville and Michael McDonald is free, or Rusty Young, or Clint Black, we hope they can get on stage and sit in," said Messina.

Nicks, Henley Lining Up Tour Plans

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Stevie Nicks and Don Henley have begun confirming dates for a summer tour.

Five shows are on tap so far, beginning June 3 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. The tour will feature Nicks and Henley performing in solo and collaborative settings.

VIP ticket packages are available for the first five shows via ILoveAllAccess.com (http://www.iloveallaccess.com). The top-level package sells for $385 per ticket, including a seat in the first 10 rows, exclusive merchandise and a variety of on-site perks. The $195 package offers a ticket in the first 20 rows plus the merchandise.

Before the Henley trek, Nicks will play a four-night stand at the Colosseum at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas beginning May 10, under the moniker "Dreams." Backstage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last month in New York, the artist said the show would consist of "favorite songs, which you don't always get to do. This is a chance for me to go back through all those many, many years and pick out a few songs I haven't always done."

As for Henley, he will rejoin the Eagles for a new round of touring after the Nicks run, beginning Aug. 11 in Lake Tahoe, Nev.

Here are Nicks/Henley's tour dates:

June 3: Philadelphia (Wachovia Center)
June 4: Holmdel, N.J. (PNC Bank Arts Center)
June 8: Mansfield, Mass. (Tweeter Center)
June 10: Wantagh, N.Y. (Jones Beach)
June 13: Hershey, Pa. (Giant Center)

Def Leppard Covers Up, Hits The Road

Veteran pop/metal outfit Def Leppard is showing no signs of slowing down, as evidenced by its jam-packed summer/fall schedule. First up is a double-disc career overview, "Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection," due May 17 via Island. A few months later, an all-covers album will follow, in addition to a U.S. tour of minor league baseball stadiums this summer with Bryan Adams.

While the group will stick to the hits on the Adams dates, Leppard will likely dig up a few forgotten gems for its headlining gigs.

"We're actually going to do some other gigs as well -- we'll probably throw a few rarities in," guitarist Phil Collen tells Billboard.com. "I've been listening to some of the old sh*t, so you never know. 'Mirror Mirror,' maybe, or even 'Ride into the Sun,' from the first EP -- it'll be nice to throw things in like that. But we have a huge list of stuff to do."

Leppard followed the same mindset while assembling "The Definitive Collection," as several forgotten favorites, including "Die Hard the Hunter," "Paper Sun" and "Wasted" are spotlighted. "It's a double album," Collen explains. "It's like 'favorite tracks,' and that's how we went about doing that one. We asked our fans what they wanted to hear really, and they got a list together."

But fans seem most excited for the yet-to-be titled all-covers set. The song list has yet to be finalized, as the group decided to record more cuts than it originally planned. Collen admits that the idea for the project was first hatched years ago. "Joe [Elliott] has been wanting to do it for like 20 years," he says. "He's like, 'Oh, it'll be great, like [David Bowie's] "Pin-Ups"!' Someone mentioned it at the label and we just jumped on it. We kind of had a list for years anyway."

Collen confirms that the album will include "A bunch of stuff -- all '70s stuff. Most of it is songs that we grew up with in England. 'No Matter What' by Badfinger is going to be the leadoff single. We've done 'Waterloo Sunset' by the Kinks, T. Rex, Mott The Hoople, Roxy Music and Thin Lizzy. And a lot of it is obscure; it's not the standard stuff. It's not like Stones or Beatles songs."

As for the musical approach, Collen says, "They vary. Some of them are like we've kept almost karaoke versions, [while] other ones are completely different. It's not any one thing; it's however we felt for each song, really." A preview of what's to come can be sampled on the "Rock of Ages," which will feature "No Matter What."

Here are tracks that have been recorded for the all-covers album:

"10538 Overture" (ELO)
"20th Century Boy" (T. Rex)
"Don't Believe a Word" (Thin Lizzy)
"Drive in Saturday" (David Bowie)
"Hanging on the Telephone" (Blondie)
"Hellraiser" (Sweet)
"He's Gonna Step on You Again" (John Kongos)
"No Matter What" (Badfinger)
"Little Bit of Love" (Free)
"Rock On" (David Essex)
"Stay With Me" (The Faces)
"Street Life" (Roxy Music)
"The Golden Age of Rock & Roll" (Mott The Hoople)
"Waterloo Sunset" (The Kinks)
"American Girl" (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
"Heartbeat" (Jobriath)
"How Does It Feel" (Slade)
"Kick Out the Jams" (MC5)
"Roxanne" (The Police)
"Dear Friends" (Queen)
"When I'm Dead and Gone" (McGuinness Flint)
"Winter Song" (Lindisfarne)

Veteran comic Phyllis Diller injuries head, neck after falling out of bed

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Comedian Phyllis Diller injured her head and neck falling out of bed at her Brentwood, Calif., mansion, her manager said Thursday.

"She has a big bruise on her forehead," Milt Suchin said. "I think she blacked out...She just awoke and a housekeeper came in and found her on the floor." Diller, 87, was in hospital after the accident early Monday, Suchin said. She was having diagnostic tests, including tests on a pacemaker that was inserted in 1999.

Diller recently released a book about her life called Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse.

Weezer's Weird World

Rivers Cuomo hasn't had sex in two years, and boy, is he ready to rock

By VANESSA GRIGORIADIS

A couple of days ago, Rivers Cuomo was helping his parents out with an epic spring cleaning at their house in suburban Connecticut -- "I was the motivational coach," he says. "My role was to ask, 'Do you really need this third can of hair spray?' " -- when it was decided that it would be better not to do the European promotional tour for Weezer's new album, Make Believe, the band's first record in three years. That meant two weeks free before they started rehearsals for the Make Believe tour. That meant Cuomo could do some more vipassana, a strict style of meditation developed by the Buddha and passed down by Burmese monks.
"There was nothing else for me to do," explains Cuomo.

Nothing is exactly what one does on a vipassana retreat: ten days of twelve hours of silent meditation beginning at 4 a.m., with small breaks for food but none for conversing. Most people wouldn't enjoy this, but Cuomo, 34, is not most people. Life to him seems to be a gigantic behavorial experiment, a large part of why Weezer have put out only five albums in thirteen years, despite their Prince-like vault of hundreds of songs. Cuomo had been to ten retreats in less than two years -- following precepts like sleeping on the floor and fasting after noon -- and he was ready for another. In fact, he completed one in northern Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago. That one was twenty days long, and he spent it in a closet. "It was great!" he says.

So instead of asking the band to head to the East Coast for the Rolling Stone photo shoot and interview before leaving for Europe, Cuomo decided to fly to California for a retreat in Yosemite, and if it was possible to accommodate the magazine in Los Angeles, great, but if not, he wasn't missing his retreat. "How many people would love to be on the cover, and then you've got Rivers saying, 'I can only do it on this one day, and if you can't fit it in, it won't work'?" says Weezer guitarist Brian Bell, 36. "On one hand, I'm like, 'Jesus, how could you do that to us? We've worked hard for twelve years and we finally make the cover, and you screw it up with one sentence.' Then there's another part of me that's like, 'That guy has balls!' Even if it is really selfish."

These are the kinds of things that happen, though, when you're living the moment, which is Cuomo's new mantra -- untethered from miserable thoughts about the past and future and free at last from the greedy ego, Cuomo is currently in communion with his deep, true self. This self needs to be free, and, accordingly, Cuomo has been careful not to make any pacts about future Weezer recordings; he has also only agreed to support this album until the end of this year. "We were going to call this record Either Way I'm Fine," says drummer Pat Wilson, 36. " 'Cause Rivers kept saying that when we had to decide about things." Serenity is important to Cuomo. The shoot at the Playboy Mansion for the video for their first single, "Beverly Hills," posed a threat. "There were 150 fans around, and when we played we heard that sound, that deafening sound that you get onstage," says Wilson. "I could see Dude telling himself, 'Hold on, hold on, don't get too excited!' "

Dude, as in the chill stoner hero played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, is the band nickname for Cuomo, though Cuomo and the Dude could not be more different. Cuomo is not chill. He has budgeted one hour for our initial interview, and when we sit down at a cocktail table in the plum-colored foyer of a Hollywood recording studio, he pushes the alarm on his tan-and-black digital watch. It is eighty-five degrees out, and he is wearing a sweater and has set a black parka on the couch. "I don't really notice where I am," he says. "I don't differentiate all that much. I don't look around much." Talking to Cuomo is like talking to a newscaster. He's altogether pleasant but stiff as a board. No emotion registers on his face, at least not until he hears something that interests him, at which point he curls his lips into something resembling a smile, widens his brown eyes from saucers to soup bowls and exclaims, "Wow!" "Great!" or "Holy cow!" The most interesting topic, of course, is meditation.

"At first I was vehemently opposed," says Cuomo. Rick Rubin, who produced Make Believe in off-and-on sessions that lasted more than a year, suggested meditation. "I sent him a very anxious page, saying, 'Rick, no. I cannot get into meditation because it will rob me of the angst that's necessary to being an artist.' And he said, 'OK, don't worry about it, forget it.' I think because he put no pressure on me, I began to get intrigued. Then I did a Tibetan-Buddhist meditation retreat. That wasn't intense enough for me. I knew I wanted something extreme."

Says Rubin, "I'm often associated, or in some cases blamed, for Rivers' meditation practice. It's worked for him -- you might see him smile or laugh now, and before you would never see that. I never suggested the particular style of meditation he's doing. Whatever Rivers is interested in, he dives in a thousand percent. He takes thing to radical extremes."

Radical extremes are what Cuomo has made his life from, and in the context of his history, the Either Way I'm Fine era isn't all that outrageous. It even makes some sense given his childhood, which was spent on ashrams -- first at the Zen Center in upstate New York and, after his father left the family when he was five (he eventually settled in Germany for a while as a suffragan bishop in a Pentecostal church), at "Woodstock guru" Swami Satchidananda's Yogaville commune in Connecticut. Everyone was a vegetarian, and no one raised his voice or cursed. Cuomo didn't like it much. He declared himself a metalhead at eleven and started playing Kiss covers with the neighborhood kids. "I was only interested in Slayer and Metallica then," says Cuomo. "I still love that music, but now I have so much appreciation for what my parents' generation did for opening up our country to Eastern philosophy and raising me like that. I feel so lucky."

Some of Cuomo's phases make a little less sense, though. Like when he followed the blockbuster success of Weezer's first album, Weezer, also known as the Blue Album, which went platinum in 1995, by getting his right leg broken: The leg was forty-four millimeters shorter than his left, and in order to make them equal, a metal cage was affixed to his right thigh; every day he'd tighten some screws on it to pull the leg a little longer. Or when, shortly thereafter, he shelved rock stardom to pursue an undergraduate degree at Harvard, studying there from 1995 to 1997, when Weezer's second album, Pinkerton, was released (he resumed his studies last fall and now has one semester left). When that record proved less critically and commercially successful than the Blue Album, Cuomo went back into his shell. Living in a Culver City apartment building under a Los Angeles freeway, he put fiberglass insulation over the windows and hung black sheets over the insulation. Then he painted all the walls black, disconnected his phone and spent a lot of time with his pet gecko.

Punishing himself has always seemed like a good bet to Cuomo, and you only have to look at his perpetually hunched shoulders and balled-up palms to realize that the assignations he keeps with himself are brutal. He gets off on deprivation. Cuomo doesn't own a car, even though he lives mostly in L.A. ("I don't have a parking space," he says, by way of explanation). He rarely listens to music. But one song he cued up recently was Kiss' "Goin' Blind": "Little lady, can't you see/You're so young and so much different than I/I'm ninety-three, you're sixteen/ Can't you see I'm goin' blind?"

"I'm so moved by those lyrics," says Cuomo. "I can't believe they came up with that."

As far as his lyrics are concerned, Cuomo has long protested that Weezer's songs are not funny or ironic or anything other than a reflection of his own anguished state. Most of the songs on the current album are about things that happened to him. "Pardon Me" was written after he attended a meditation course in which the teacher told him to repeat over in his mind "I seek pardon from all those who have harmed me in action, speech or thought." "Freak Me Out" is about a spider, says Bell. "Beverly Hills" is about, well, how Cuomo feels about Beverly Hills. "I could live in Beverly Hills, sure," he says, meaning he could afford it easily. "But I couldn't belong there."

(Excerpted from RS 973, May 5, 2005)

Olin Returns from Dead on 'Alias'

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) Scarcely an episode of "Alias" has passed this season without Sydney (Jennifer Garner) or one of her colleagues remarking on the death of her mother, Irina Derevko.

Hey, even double-secret CIA agents can be wrong.

ABC confirmed Thursday (April 21) that Lena Olin, who played Irina during the show's second season and had since resisted creator J.J. Abrams' entreaties to return, will guest-star in the show's final two episodes this season. They're scheduled to air at 10 p.m. ET Wednesday, May 18 (the second of two episodes that night) and May 25 (following the two-hour "Lost" finale).

Reports of Olin's return have been bubbling for several weeks, but ABC is also offering a few details about how her character will be worked into the show's story. After finding out she's alive, Sydney, Jack (Victor Garber) and Nadia (Mia Maestro) will track Irina down and enlist her help in stopping a catastrophe brought on by followers of the mysterious Rambaldi.

Unanswered for now is the question of just how Irina is still alive. Viewers have repeatedly been told that Jack, her former husband, killed her to prevent a hit on their daughter Sydney's life; that would mean she either survived Jack's assassination attempt, or he's not telling all he knows.

'Superman Returns'

A first look at Superman Returns— due in theaters in June 2006 — shows that the skin-tight costume stretches over only the actor's muscles and frame, without the augmented armored pecs or abs of recent movie superheroes.

Director Bryan Singer famously changed the fluorescent spandex suits of the X-Men into dark, leather-like uniforms for those movies — both of them smashes that sold more than $364 million in tickets. But on Superman Returns, he says, he wanted "something classic."

Tinkering too much with a hero's suit can aggravate traditionalist comic fans, who grumbled that Jennifer Garner's Elektra wasn't wearing her midriff-baring red suit in Daredevil or that Batman's armor had nipples in Batman Forever. They aren't likely to have much to carp about with Superman Returns.

Instead of reinventing the character's appearance, Singer — via e-mail from Australia, where he's shooting the film — says he wanted to remain faithful to the previous incarnations of Superman, from the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1940s to the black-and-white George Reeves TV show to the Christopher Reeve movies of the 1970s and '80s.

Singer decided to keep the cape, the blue body suit, the red tights — even the V-cut opening of Superman's boots.

But Superman Returns makes a few subtle changes to the suit:

• The character's S insignia is slightly smaller and higher on his chest, and instead of being painted on, it's more of a three-dimensional plate.

• The insignia is added to Superman's belt buckle.

• Costume designer Louise Mingenbach preserved the blue, red and yellow motif, but the shades are slightly darker than the bright primary colors of the comics. Superman's yellow belt is more golden, and his cape is a deep scarlet.

The key to filling it out, however, depends entirely on the physique of Routh, 25, the Iowa native who was briefly on the soap opera One Life to Live in 2001. Singer says the Superman costume wasn't complete without Routh.

"I always had the general idea of the suit. However, when the conceptual art was evolving around the same time that I cast Brandon, I privately had paintings rendered with Brandon's face, which certainly brought it to life."

Superman's body is the key to his power, Singer says.

"With X-Men, although they had extraordinary powers, they also had physical weaknesses," he says. "The suits were for protection as well as costume. Superman is the Man of Steel. Bullets bounce off him, not his suit."

What does the movie's costume say about this Superman's personality?

"He's not afraid," Singer says.

Springsteen Bares Songwriting Soul on VH1

RED BANK, N.J. - Bruce Springsteen prefers to let his songs do the talking. When those songs include "Thunder Road," "Nebraska" and "The Rising," it's hard to disagree with his approach.

But for one night, before an intimate New Jersey audience, the Boss delved into his 30-year back catalog to offer a brief window into his songwriting. The oft-reticent Springsteen opened up during a taping for VH1's "Storytellers," detailing influences both obvious and obscure.

There's Roy Orbison's dark romanticism ... and actor Robert Mitchum's blood-chilling preacher in "The Night of the Hunter." Smokey Robinson's soulful voice ... and director John Ford's classic Western "The Searchers." The born in the U.S.A. rock of John Fogerty ... and the pulp fiction of Jim Thompson.

Who knew that a line from "Blinded By the Light," off Springsteen's 1973 debut album, referred to his Little League team? Or that he considers a lyric from the brilliant "Thunder Road" to be "probably the hokiest ... I ever wrote"?

Springsteen spills all this and more during "Storytellers," airing at 10 p.m. EDT on Saturday. The show was recorded at the tiny Two River Theater near Springsteen's Garden State home, an intimate venue with just nine rows of seats.

Springsteen brought along a loose-leaf binder filled with handwritten notes done at his kitchen table.

"I read 'em this morning, and I sounded kind of full of myself," Springsteen deadpanned. "I don't need notes for that."

Over the course of the evening, Springsteen was funny, glib, self-deprecating, chatty and occasionally revealing. His story of Spring-zophrenia — how the "holier-than-thou" Bruce, the blue-collar patron saint of the downtrodden, must co-exist with the guy who enjoys a few drinks in roadside strip joints — was worthy of an HBO comedy special.

The tale ended with Springsteen meeting a pair of horrified fans in the strip club parking lot. He quickly explained how the disparate Bruces co-exist, then informed the fans that they were addressing an apparition rather than the real Springsteen.

"Bruce does not even know I'm missing," he assured them. "He is at home right now, doing good deeds."

Springsteen also referenced his "Blinded By the Light" lyric about a "silicone sister with her manager's mister."

"Possibly the first mention of female breast enhancement in pop music," he said with mock pride. "So I was ahead of my time."

The stage patter gave way to some magnificent musical moments. Over the course of the show, the songs evolved and changed as Springsteen accompanied himself with just a guitar, a harmonica and a piano.

"The Rising," the Sept. 11-derived arena-rock anthem, becomes a gospel/folk song; Springsteen's impassioned version was done with his eyes closed tight as he leaned into the microphone during the chorus.

"Waiting on A Sunny Day," one of his more pop-oriented songs, took on a new patina in its stripped down presentation — exactly Springsteen's point in including it.

"I usually want to throw these right in the trash," he confessed of his pop efforts. But there was another confession to come: Springsteen sometimes imagines Smokey Robinson singing his more radio-friendly songs. And then he launched into an impression of Smokey singing "Waiting on a Sunny Day."

Springsteen clearly put much thought into the song selections, spanning the course of his career: "Nebraska" was included as an example of his narrative style, while "Brilliant Disguise" represented his songs about "issues of identity and love."

The solo Springsteen performance for television was a long time in coming. In 1992, he signed on for a taping of "MTV Unplugged," but did just a single song alone before bringing a band onstage for the rest of the show.

Before the taping began, Springsteen expressed reservations at delving into the secrets of songwriting.

"Talking about music is like talking about sex," he said. "Can you describe it? Are you supposed to?"

KATE BECKINSALE AND DAVID HASSELHOFF? HOW CAN YOU NOT GO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Kate Beckinsale and David Hasselhoff are in negotiations to star with Adam Sandler in "Click" for Columbia and Revolution Studios.

Production will begin in mid-June.

Beckinsale would play the female lead opposite Sandler. Hasselhoff would play Sandler's boss.

Frank Coraci ("The Waterboy") is directing the pic, about a workaholic architect who finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.

Script was written by Mark O'Keefe and Steven Wayne Koren ("Bruce Almighty"), with revisions by Tim Herlihy.

Adam Sandler's Happy Madison shingle is producing along with Neal Moritz's Original Film. Sandler, his Happy Madison partner Jack Giarraputo and Moritz are producing.

Todd Garner is overseeing the pic for Revolution. Doug Belgrad is shepherding for Col.

Beckinsale was last seen in "The Aviator" as Ava Gardner. She'll next topline Screen Gems' "Underworld: Evolution."

Hasselhoff was recently seen on the bigscreen in "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" and voiced himself in "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie."

Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner Said Engaged

NEW YORK - Call it Bennifer: Part Deux. Nine months after they started dating, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are engaged, People and Star magazines are reporting.

Citing a "close friend" of Affleck's, People says the "Pearl Harbor" actor has been privately spreading the news. A friend of Garner's told the magazine in February that she expected Affleck to propose.

Affleck's publicist, Ken Sunshine, would not comment on the reports. A call to Garner's rep was not returned.

As you may have heard, Affleck got engaged to Jennifer Lopez in 2002, but they called it off in January 2004. As opposed to the ridiculous amount of publicity Affleck got with J.Lo, he and Garner have stayed on the down low.

They met while shooting the action flick "Daredevil," but didn't begin dating until 2004. Their lone public appearance together has been a trip to the 2004 World Series in Boston.

The marriage would be Garner's second. The 33-year-old "Alias" star was divorced from actor Scott Foley in March 2004.

Jack Black Hits the Mat in Wrestling Pic

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Jack Black has signed on to star in a new film co-written with longtime collaborator Mike White and Jared Hess, the latter of whom wrote and directed the 2004 hit comedy "Napoleon Dynamite."

The as-yet-untitled movie will be co-produced by Black and White's Black & White Productions in tandem with Nickelodeon Movies, with distribution by Paramount Pictures.

Inspired by a true story, the film will star Black as a Mexican priest who lives a double life as a masked wrestler to raise funds for an orphanage in financial need. "I can't think of two people I'd rather party with than Mike White and Jared Hess," Black says. "I can't wait to get down to Mexico."

Black and White previously have teamed behind the scenes and on-camera for "School of Rock" and "Orange County." Black recently wrapped work on the Peter Jackson-directed remake of "King Kong," and is expected shortly to begin shooting the film "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny," the first feature for musical act Tenacious D, Black's spoof-metal project with Kyle Gass.

In related news, Black and White will co-produce a film with Warner Bros. Pictures based on the upcoming memoir "Yes Man," penned by British author Danny Wallace

Super Friends

Get ready for a superhero summit (of sorts) on Smallville's season finale. On the 90-minute May 18 episode, the young Superman (Tom Welling) will spare a few minutes for a visitor from Gotham City. That is, the episode will include an eight-minute sneak peek of Batman Begins, in which Christian Bale plays the Caped Crusader. For Batfans, it'll be the first extended glimpse of the long-awaited film, which opens June 17.

The Batvisit comes during a season finale that the WB says is already ''packed with murder, betrayal and an unforgettable graduation day for all.'' ''Superman and Batman have always been inextricably linked to each other, so it seems fitting that a show chronicling the Man of Steel's youth give you the first look at the birth of the Dark Knight,'' said Smallville executive producer Al Gough in a statement. David Janollari, the WB's president of entertainment, said, ''This is a great night for fans of the two most popular superheroes in the history of American Pop Culture.''

Gee, you'd think they were talking about convening a Middle East peace summit. Actually, getting Superman and Batman together has been tricky, even though both heroes spring from the pages of DC Comics (which, like the WB, Batman Begins distributor Warner Bros., and EW.com, is a Time Warner outlet). A few years ago, that corporate synergy was supposed to yield a Superman vs. Batman movie, but that plan was scrapped in favor of separate movies, with Bryan Singer currently directing newcomer Brandon Routh in the next Superman film. So this promotional event is about as close to sharing a screen as the two characters are likely to get.

Yoda Coda: 'Star Wars' Theme To Hit Charts

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com)- Apparently somebody at SonyBMG thinks that John Williams' theme for the new "Star Wars" movie has a good beat and you can dance to it. "Battle of the Heroes" will hit record stores through much of the world on Tuesday, May 23, selling as a single.

The theme refers to the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) that makes up one of the climaxes in the elaborately named "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," which will hit theaters on May 19. Because the "Sith" soundtrack will be in US record stores on May 3, it's unclear if "Heroes" will drop as a single in domestic record stores.

As was the case with the original "Star Wars" theme 28 years ago, "Battle of the Heroes" features John Williams conducting the London Symphony orchestra. The single will be released a limited edition numbered CD format.

No word on whether the possible success of "Heroes" might lead to a single release for Bill Murray's classic 1977 "Saturday Night Live" rendition of Williams' "Star Wars" theme, which featured the immortal lyrics "Awww Star Wars/ Nothing but Star Wars/ Give me those Star Wars/ Don't let them end."

New Springsteen album to test market for CD/DVD hybrid

NEW YORK (AFP) - Fan fever over the release of a new Bruce Springsteen album next week is matched by recording industry interest in how sales may be affected by its US launch in the new DualDisc format.

"Devils and Dust," the Boss's 19th album, will only be available in the United States in the fledgling CD/DVD hybrid, which represents the first major change in retail music packaging since the compact disc was introduced more than two decades ago.

The format pairs a standard CD on one side with a DVD on the flip side, which offers video and a surround-sound mix of the album for home theaters.

The video on "Devils and Dust" shows Springsteen performing his new songs and discussing the making of the album.

The release date is April 26, with Springsteen kicking off a US and 10-country European tour the night before with a concert in Detroit. The singer will tour as a solo acoustic act, without the backing of his E-Street Band.

The album is a pared-down collection of country- and folk-influenced rock songs, which Springsteen told Rolling Stone magazine was in some ways a sequel to 1995's "The Ghost of Tom Joad," which inspired his first solo tour.

"I wrote a lot of this music after those shows, when I'd go back to my hotel room," he told the music magazine. "I still had my voice, because I hadn't sung over a rock band all night. I'd go home and make up my stories."

The album's title track was written at the start of the Iraq War and gives a soldier's point of view on the conflict.

Springsteen was on the road last year as part of the Vote for Change Tour, which urged voters not to re-elect President George W. Bush.

Although the effort failed, Springsteen said he had no regrets about his first public foray into the world of partisan politics.

"It was an experience that I'm glad I put myself into," he told Rolling Stone. "There was a lot of idealism out there -- I took a lot of that with me."

"Devils and Dust" is not the first DualDisc to hit the market, but Springsteen's stature means its performance will be watched closely to see if the new technology has a viable future.

The four major record labels, EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner, announced in August last year the formation of a consortium to launch the new audio-video hybrid in the US market.

The first album to debut on DualDisc, "Still Not Getting Any" from the pop-punk band Simple Plan, has already gone platinum.

And since the beginning of this year, two major albums -- "O" from Omarion and "Rebirth" from Jennifer Lopez -- have been released in both CD and DualDisc formats.

Sony BMG, which produced both albums, said DualDisc purchases accounted for around 30 percent of total sales for both.

The Springsteen album, another Sony BMG offering, is different in being available exclusively in the new format, with no traditional CD pressings.

The DualDisc generally retails at one dollar more than a CD, and the music industry is hoping it will help recoup the slice of the retail market lost to piracy and illegal file-sharing.

"It's harder to file-share DVD content and it's virtually impossible for anyone to burn a DualDisc at home," said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG.

"We think all this will lure people back to the stores, because it's a product you can't really get in pirated fashion," Hesse said.

Critics, such as the California-based Independent Musicians Against Forced Music Industry Change, complain that the DualDisc is just another industry attempt to push consumers into repurchasing the albums they already have on CD.

"It is all about money," the non-profit group said in a statement.

Hesse, however, pointed out that unlike the introduction of the CD, which required consumers to replace their music hardware, the DualDisc could be played on existing CD and DVD players.

"It's really a new product, rather than a new format," Hesse said, adding that plans were afoot to roll out the DualDisc in European markets.

Music labels tell appeal court Kazaa users can't hide behind anonymity of Web

TORONTO (CP) - The fight to curb file-swapping by music fans moved to the Federal Court of Appeal on Wednesday with record labels arguing song pirates can't hide behind the veil of their Internet service providers.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association is seeking the identities of 29 Jane and John Does, who are currently only known by pseudonyms like Geekboy and Jordana.

The group wants the court to force Internet providers, including Shaw, Bell and Rogers, to hand over alleged infringers' real names based on an IP address that made hundreds of music files available on peer-to-peer networks Kazaa and IMesh.

A ruling in favour of the music industry could mean the beginning of U.S.-style downloading lawsuits in Canada.

The first of two days in front of a three-judge panel had lawyers for the music industry debating the fine points of privacy and disclosure law.

Harry Radomski, a lawyer for the association, said evidence presented during the original hearing showed someone at each of the 29 IP addresses moved a large number of songs into shared directories to "make them available to an unbelievable number of people."

At issue is whether the surfers are entitled to keep their anonymity using existing privacy laws. Internet companies must keep their customer files sealed unless ordered otherwise by a court.

Radomski also argued that when consumers sign up with an ISP they sign contracts "agreeing not to receive or transmit copyrighted material."

When contracts are broken, consumers no longer expect to be protected by privacy laws, he told the court.

Four Internet service providers are arguing against revealing the identities.

"Our participation in this appeal is to ensure that the rights of our customers are respected and that any order that's issued is granted on the basis of a solid case," said Jay Thomson, the lawyer representing Telus.

Quebec's Videotron has backed the record industry.

The case generated plenty of buzz last year after the lower court judge dismissed the motion to reveal the names, saying the record industry didn't have enough evidence proving they were doing anything illegal.

The ruling stated that placing a song in a shared directory wasn't a strong enough action to constitute copyright infringement.

That meant using peer-to-peer networks to nab music for free wasn't illegal in the eyes of the court, despite the music industry shouting otherwise.

A major spike in the amount of music piracy followed last year's ruling, admitted Graham Henderson, president of CRIA, outside court during a break Wednesday.

While he's risking another spike should CRIA lose this appeal, Henderson says establishing clarity in the law is more important.

"We have to try to get clear laws so that Canadians know what's right and what's wrong," he said, adding that an estimated 134 million songs are illegally acquired each month in Canada compared to one million paid ones via online stores like ITunes.

Last year's ruling prompted Prime Minister Paul Martin to take note of the issue and push forward copyright reform, added Henderson.

The bill - which would add a "making available" clause to the current rules - is working its way through government although a June election would kill it from the queue.

That makes winning this appeal all the more vital, says Henderson.

"We can't necessarily stand around and wait for that bill to become law because it's already taken us seven years to come this far," he said. "If the government calls a snap election it would set us back by several months."

The case is being watched closely by the film and television sectors who claim people are illegally accessing their products using newer and faster peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent.

Representatives from the film industry asked to speak at this appeal but were denied because the group hadn't been part of the original case.

A ruling is expected later in the summer.

Rob Thomas Goes It Alone

Carlos Santana didn't play a note on . . . Something to Be, the just-released solo debut from Matchbox Twenty singer Rob Thomas -- but the album wouldn't exist without him. Six years ago, Santana rescued Thomas from radio-rock facelessness, enlisting him to co-write and sing on the slinky pop smash "Smooth."

"Carlos kind of fortified my belief that 'Hey, I'm a songwriter, and this is what I'm supposed to do,'" says Thomas, who launched his first solo tour on April 15th. "And it just gave me the confidence to be able to say, 'OK, I can step off for the next couple years and just be on my own.'"

It looks like that self-assurance was justified: "Lonely No More," the album's first single -- which borrows the Latin flavor of "Smooth" -- has gone Top Ten on Billboard's pop chart. But Thomas still worries that the heavily produced "Lonely" is too slick. "I don't know, man, this could fucking be career suicide," he says. "I wanted it to be an ultra-pop song, but that is definitely as far to that side as I will go."

The other tracks on the album range from the funk pop of "Fallin' to Pieces" to the John Mellencamp-does-soul tune "Streetcorner Symphony" -- but little of it could be considered rock. For Thomas, though, that's not much of a change. "Matchbox Twenty stopped rocking a long time ago," Thomas says of his on-hiatus band. "I don't think we changed; mainstream rock got heavier, and we stayed kind of the same. I want my next record to be a stripped-down, folky kind of thing -- so why shouldn't this be my pop period?"

Ultimately, however, Thomas wanted to combine his guitar-centric roots with the deeper grooves of urban music. "The thing that gets me off is having tracks that have Tom Petty's guitar player and Dr. Dre's bass player on them," says Thomas, who also recruited John Mayer to play guitar. "I wanted a record that bass players would listen to and go, 'Man, that's funky.'" Adds the album's producer, Matt Serletic, "Rob's always been sort of a soulful singer. This was an opportunity to highlight that."

Thomas is enjoying the solo life -- "You don't have to wait for five guys to get things done" -- but he swears that he is still committed to Matchbox Twenty, who have released three platinum albums since 1996. "We've broken up so many times that I don't imagine it ever sticking," he says. "But we were uninspired. If we had made a record now, we would become every bad thing critics have said about us."

Hiatt Teams With Allstars For New Album

Singer/songwriter John Hiatt is backed by North Mississippi Allstars sibling duo Cody and Luther Dickinson on his upcoming album, "Master of Disaster." Due June 21 via New West, the project was produced family patriarch Jim Dickinson and also features longtime Muscle Shoals studio bassist David Hood.

"Master of Disaster" will be released as a Super Audio CD with a standard stereo mix as well as a high-resolution mix playable only on SACD-compatible devices. Raves Jim Dickinson of the latter mix, "It's like being in the room with first generation audio."

Hiatt's tour in support of the album will find him backed by the Allstars, who will also play their own opening set at some shows. The outing begins June 23 in Albany, N.Y.

"Master of Disaster" is the follow-up to 2003's "Beneath This Gruff Exterior," which debuted at No. 3 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums chart.

Here are John Hiatt's tour dates:

June 23: Albany, N.Y. (Hart Theatre)
June 24: Northampton, Mass. (Calvin Theatre)
June 25: New York (Webster Hall)
June 27: Hampton Beach, N.J. (Hampton Beach Casino)
June 28: Vienna, Va. (Wolf Trap)
June 29: Knoxville, Tenn. (Tennessee Theatre)
June 30: Columbus, Ohio (Promowest Pavilion)
July 2: Bloomington, Ind. (Axis)
July 3: Detroit (Comerica TasteFest)
July 4: Chicago (Taste of Chicago)
July 5: Milwaukee (Summerfest)
July 6: Apple Valley, Wis. (Music in the Zoo)
July 8: Boise, Idaho (Eagle Park Pavilion)
July 9: Portland, Ore. (Oregon Zoo Amphitheatre)
July 10: Seattle (South Lake Union Park)
July 11: Vancouver (Commodore Ballroom)
July 13: Medford, Ore. (Britt Festivals)
July 14: San Jose, Calif. (Plaza de Cesar Chavez)
July 16: Los Angeles (House of Blues)
July 17: Phoenix (Celebrity Theatre)
July 18: Tucson, Ariz. (Rialto Theatre)
July 20: Denver (Botantical Gardens)
July 21: Boulder, Col. (Chautauqua Auditorium)
July 23: Austin, Texas (Stubb's BBQ)
July 24: Dallas (Gypsy Ballroom)
July 27: Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Revolution)
July 28: Tampa, Fla. (Jannus Landing)
July 29: Asheville, N.C. (Bele Chere)
July 30: Nashville (Ryman Auditorium)
July 31: Atlanta (Botanical Garden)
Aug. 3: Glenside, Pa. (Keswick Theatre)
Aug. 4: Oyster Bay, N.Y. (FOTA Pavilion)

Coldplay Album Is High Stakes Gamble for EMI

LONDON (Reuters) - British group Coldplay, whose much delayed album is finally hitting the airwaves, could be the band that makes or breaks music giant EMI.

"This is the high stakes album of the year for EMI," said Numis Securities analyst Paul Richards of the world's third largest music group.

EMI Group shares fell 16 percent in February after it blamed delays in releasing key albums for lower than expected profits.

So a great deal is riding on the success of "X & Y," the follow-up to Coldplay's breakthrough second album "Rush of Blood to the Head" which sold more than 10 million copies.

"All eyes will be on the performance of this new album," Richards said. "They are certainly flavor of the month."

"Speed of Sound," the first single from the new album, was played on BBC Radio Monday, Coldplay are staging an MTV live invite-only gig in London Tuesday, and yet the album is still not being released until June 6.

Coldplay's perfectionist lead singer Chris Martin, who is married to Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow, admits the pressure of expectation is getting to him.

Fears of the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" -- critics cutting them down after acclaiming the last album -- abound.

"When you're playing new songs, you tread a fine line between arrogance and, well, fear. It's a line we tread quite badly," he confessed at a U.S. charity concert in Los Angeles last month.

Martin called the making of Coldplay's third album "one of the most difficult experiences of my life."

"Lighten Up" is the message from the music industry to Coldplay, which scrapped many of the songs for the new album last year and went back to the studio, much to the chagrin of record executives.

"Sometimes they put too much pressure on themselves to make the greatest album ever," said Gennaro Castaldo, spokesman for the 200 HMV retail stores across Britain and Ireland.

"All the elements are in place for a successful long-term career. They have real staying power and have not only got a big and loyal following in Britain but have also been able to connect in America and the rest of the world," he told Reuters.

He too highlighted how big the stakes were -- and not just for the group.

"With share prices so sensitive and responsive to individual acts, all analysts become music experts. It seems the prospects of a whole company are riding on this album," Castaldo said.

Coldplay may never match the popularity of the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but pop critics believe they are up there as one of the world's top rock groups.

"Coldplay follow a tradition of great British bands," said Julian Marshall, news editor of New Musical Express.

"I have heard the full record. It is easily as strong as their last album. I think they are now up there with U2."

Sting Teaches Star-Struck Music Students

CHICAGO (Reuters) - British singer Sting went back to the classroom this week, assuming the role of a musical mentor for a group of college students.

The one-time school teacher surprised students in a music composition class at the University of Illinois at Chicago, barging in with MTV cameras in tow to speak and jam with them on Monday.

The students, wh