Spike Lee - Lee To Make Movie About Black Time Traveller

SPIKE LEE is making a movie about a scientific pioneer who is building a time machine.

Lee has bought the film rights to physicist Ronald Mallett's memoir, which tells the tale of his lifelong quest to create a workable means to travel through time.

Mallett, 63, became obsessed with the subject as a 10-year-old, following the death of his father.

Lee describes the project as a "fantastic story on many levels and also a father and son saga of loss and love".

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Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer

   
Artist: Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer

   Genre(s): 
Instrumental
   

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Discography:


   
 No More Tears (Single)

   Year: 1979   
Tracks: 2

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Mother's Finest

Britney's cousin to launch singing career?

Britney Spears' cousin is planning to follow in the footsteps of her famous relative and pursue a singing career.
Alli Sims, a former assistant to Spears, revealed her plans to enter the music business to German magazine Maxi.
And she said she intends to succeed without the help of her celebrity connections.
Sims told Maxi: "When I make it as a singer, I will have made it on my own. The people who help me with my career right now, I have met without Britney and that's good. I don't want her to help me, I wanna make it on my own."
She added: "I wanna be the next Norah Jones. I just wanna be on stage and sing blues. If I were a product, I would be Louis Vuitton. Classic, tasteful, timeless."

CD: Walter Becker's 'Circus Money'

Walter Becker

"Circus Money" (Mailboat)

***

"THEN YOU find you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand" goes a memorable line from Steely Dan's debut hit, "Do It Again." Thirty-six years later, Steely Dan co-auteur Walter Becker is still positioning characters in front of the slot machines.

In the first song of his second solo album (available Tuesday), a woman named Betsy Button sits with her cup of nickels, waiting for her break as Becker croons, "She needs three bars, three cherries, three lemons, three pigs. . . . "

Gambling, desperation and other basics of the human condition feed Becker's muse on "Circus Money." Even though he wrote the songs with the record's producer, Larry Klein, rather than Steely Dan partner Donald Fagen, they embrace concerns and settings -- bohemian haunts and showbiz retreats -- that Dan fans will find familiar.

"I don't think we felt necessarily compelled to break new ground in that way," says Becker, who will be reuniting with Fagen for a Steely Dan tour this summer. "A lot of the material for the lyrics had to do with various L.A. and Hollywood type of scenarios that we would talk about. Larry is one of the seven native Angelenos, so he has a very rich and jaundiced -- quite rightly in my view -- take on it.

"It occurs to me as I listen to it that there is a sort of a lyric shape to the album. It had a sort of romantic element and then . . . a certain nastiness or edginess came into it as it went."

That might describe the bittersweet "Downtown Canon," in which a youthful idyll goes wrong and leaves a persistent memory, and such vignettes of venality and manipulation as "Selfish Gene" and "Three Picture Deal." But there's another side. "Paging Audrey," for one, taps a surprisingly tender vein of loss and regret, as the singer reaches vainly into the past searching for a vanished lover.

"It's the idea of what happens to people that disappear in various ways," Becker says. "You still relate to them as if they were present in ways that they may not actually be. I think it's a way of realizing that some people who may not continue to exist as part of your life or otherwise may continue to exist in your mind."

For the music, Becker and Klein (producer of Herbie Hancock’s Grammy-winning “River: The Joni Letters”) groomed snug, swinging, small-combo grooves with such stellar musicians as drummer Keith Carlock, guitarist Jon Herington and keyboardists Ted Baker and Jim Beard crafting a less complex, more intimate version of Steely Dan's jazz-informed harmonics.

The wild card -- and probably an insurmountable stumbling block for some -- is Becker's voice.

Limited in range and uncertain in intonation, it's a shortcoming he wrestles into submission, eventually finding a balance that allows the focus to fall on the tales rather than the technique.

For Becker, it's a mixed blessing, with drawbacks and advantages. "The biggest drawback of course is the self-loathing that keeps me from doing things because I feel as though it places an unfortunate ceiling on how good it can ever sound to me.

"As far as the strengths go, the only real strength is that I can sing things that I would not be able to explain to other people how to sing. And I can manifest the intention of the lyrics in some way, without having to be taken aback or angered or disgusted as any normal human being would be with most of the lyrics that Larry and I have written."

richard.cromelin@latimes.com

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

Kelly Brook & Billy Zane Reunited In Cannes

For a couple who announced their split last month, Kelly Brook and Billy Zane looked very together as they hit the red carpet arm-in-arm in Cannes.
The wannabe actress has said that the pair - who ended their four-year relationship last month - couldn't bear life apart.
Speculation the pair had rekindled their romance grew after they were spotted together in London last week.
And now Brook has confirmed she has reunited with 42-year-old Zane.
She told the U.K.'s Daily Mirror, "We're so happy. It's just the best feeling being with him. I really missed Billy. We realised we're were at our happiest when (we) are together.
"We needed to get away just to have some quality time together away from England. And to have a laugh, that's important isn't it?"

However, things still aren’t quite back to the way they were – Brook was still without her £35,000 engagement ring at the Cannes premiere of Indiana Jones.

Missy Plans August Party

Missy Elliott's working the Party scene.

The multiplatinum-selling rap star has announced her latest studio album, Block Party, will drop in August, but a specific release date has...

Liberty X

   
Artist: Liberty X

   Genre(s): 
Rock: Pop-Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 Being Somebody

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 16


   
 X

   Year:    
Tracks: 14

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Leaders of No. 2 U.S. actors union OK TV contract

By Bob Tourtellotte


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Leaders of the second largest U.S.
actors union ratified a tentative prime-time TV contract with
Hollywood's major studios on Saturday and recommended member
approval, heightening tensions with the larger Screen Actors
Guild.


The National Board of Directors of the American Federation
of Television and Radio Artists, AFTRA, which represents 70,000
actors, also warned SAG, the No. 1 union, against any attempts
to interfere with AFTRA's membership vote.


Last month, AFTRA negotiators reached agreement with the
studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and
Television Producers. The board vote on Saturday represented
the last step before a full membership vote.


SAG remains embroiled in its own talks with the AMPTP over
a new contract for its roughly 120,000 members. Since many
actors are members of both organizations, lack of support for
the AFTRA contract could be viewed as strengthening SAG's hand
in its attempt to get a better deal than AFTRA's.


SAG, for the most part, represents film and TV actors in
Hollywood, while AFTRA's membership includes many daytime TV
actors and radio performers.


The AFTRA deal has been viewed as putting pressure on SAG
to accept a similar deal and avoid the threat of a possible
actors' strike when its contract expires on June 30.


Last November, the Writers Guild of America went on strike
against studios, partly over Web-related issues. The 100-day
work stoppage led to $2.5 billion in losses for the Los
Angeles-area economy, according to the Milken Institute think
tank, and Hollywood wants to avoid another strike.


The Hollywood actors' labor talks deal with many of the
same issues, including more pay when TV shows are sold in
ancillary markets such as on DVDs and how much pay they will
receive when their work is distributed on the Internet. 

Missy Elliott Will Always Work With Timbaland

Missy Elliott will never stop working with Timbaland claims the rapper, because the two gel so well together in the studio.

The pair have a long-standing history of working together and Timbaland appears on Elliott's upcoming album 'Block Party'.

Missy tells Billboard magazine, "People always ask if we're still working together, and the answer is we will always work together. He's always going to be involved, even if it is just on one record."

"That's my brother. I respect and honour what he says. It's deeper than this music industry thing for Timbaland and I. There's a chemistry between us that will never leave."

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