Danny Puff

PARIS (AP) French actor Gerard Depardieu will not show up at a Paris court Tuesday to face drunken driving charges because he has clashing professional commitments abroad, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Depardieu's lawyer Eric de Caumont said his client was not trying to dodge French justice, but is abroad "meeting the producers of a movie," whose filming in the United States will begin in January.

The 64-year-old star of films such as "Green Card" and "Cyrano de Bergerac" was picked up last November by police after he fell off his scooter in northwest Paris.

The drunken driving hearing will now be deferred to a criminal court, and he could lose his driving license and could face up to two years in jail, Caumont said.

Depardieu has caused controversy in recent weeks for other reasons. On Saturday he received a Russian passport from President Vladimir Putin, after threatening to return his French passport after Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called him "pathetic" for deciding to move to tax-friendly Belgium.

In a much publicized letter in December, Depardieu also made reference to his headline-grabbing lifestyle: "I won't cast a stone at (people) who have cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes or too much alcohol or those who fall asleep on their scooter: I am one of them, as you dear media outlets like so much to repeat."

Back in 1998, Depardieu also crashed his motorcycle when his blood-alcohol limit was five times over the legal limit, escaping with leg and face injuries.

_____

Follow Thomas Adamson at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP

Read More

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Sony Corp. is finally pressing its advantage as a conglomerate that owns both high-tech gadgets and the content that plays on them by being the only electronics maker to offer ultra-HD TVs and a way to get movies to the new super clear screens.

Ultra-high definition TVs, which quadruple the number of pixels of current high definition technology, have been the talk of the International CES gadget show so far. But only Sony has offered a content solution to go with them.

With 84-inch ultra-HD set it launched in November, Sony threw in a tablet and computer server that has 10 movies preloaded on the device for $25,000. The movies came from the library of Sony Pictures or its subsidiary Columbia Pictures, like "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Karate Kid."

On Monday, Sony unveiled 55-inch and 65-inch ultra-HD sets that will sell this spring for an undisclosed price believed to be below $10,000. The Japanese electronics maker said it would launch a download service this summer in the U.S. so buyers of the smaller sets would have access to movies in the clearer format.

For now, it will offer the same 10 movies from its library for download.

After unveiling the service, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai told reporters that the ultra-HD movies could be made available to other makers like Samsung or LG later. The company is eyeing coordination with other movie studios, but not immediately.

"That's a key differentiator from a Sony perspective that really speaks to the advantage of what we have in terms of both the electronics business and the content business," he said. "For the time being, that's something we bring exclusively to our customers."

Sony is betting big on ultra-HD, and is a leading supplier of a high-end cameras that shoot in the format, which renders moving images at a resolution of 3,840 pixels wide and 2,160 pixels tall. That is twice the length and width of high definition, resulting in four times as many pixels, or more than 8 million.

The company also makes projectors that show movies in so-called 4K, and Hirai said that anyone who has been to the movies lately has probably experienced it firsthand without realizing it.

Getting these higher resolution files to home televisions is no small matter. A Blu-ray disc format has not been created yet and broadcasters are years away from offering TV signals at the higher resolution.

Sony representatives said that buyers of its 55-inch and 65-inch TVs may be asked to buy an ultra-HD server separately, although a final decision hadn't been made. It is also unclear how much downloadable movies will cost.

The company said it would offer Blu-ray discs that are mastered in 4K but compressed to fit on a current Blu-ray disc. The TV's embedded technology presents the compressed movie at close to 4K resolution, but not quite as good as when they are played from the 4K media player.

But with all new technologies, there were glitches.

Hirai had an embarrassing moment Monday when he introduced the world's first ultra-HD TV using organic light-emitting diodes (OLED), only to see the screen go blank as the computer running it had an error.

"This revolutionary TV combines the world's largest OLED display with dazzling 4K resolution, including this beautiful ... interface screen," he said, then turned to see a blank screen as chuckles rippled through the crowd.

Later, Hirai looked back at the 56-inch display only to see the error continue.

"Excellent," he said.

A Sony staffer rolled the TV further away and Hirai carried on his presentation. He later appeared to be good-natured with journalists.

Hirai said the ultra-HD OLED set is a prototype and didn't announce price or availability.

In the Sony booth after the presentation, other ultra-HD OLED screens played without a problem.

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) "Mary Poppins" is closing up its big umbrella on Broadway.

An official close to the show's producers said Monday that the 6-year-old musical will end performances in March at the New Amsterdam Theatre and eventually be replaced by a musical adapted from the film "Aladdin."

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak before the official announcement. The New York Post first reported the news, citing an anonymous source. A Disney representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Mary Poppins," co-produced by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, is based both on the children's books by P.L. Travers and the 1964 movie starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It tells the story of the world's most practically perfect nanny in Edwardian London.

With a big cast, lavish sets and stunts that include Mary flying with her umbrella and Bert the chimney sweep tap dancing upside-down, the show was a hit after opening in 2006, two years after debuting in London.

The show is part of Disney Theatrical Productions' five big Broadway hits from seven attempts since 1994 a profitable list that includes "The Lion King" and the more recent "Newsies." That's way above the 3-in-10 average recoupment of most Broadway shows. "Mary Poppins" routinely grosses over $1 million every week despite the presence of touring versions.

When it closes, it will have been performed 2,619 times and have been seen by more than 4 million people. It recouped its initial Broadway investment within a year, and has gone on to be among the top 10 grossing shows for the past six years and top five for attendance. It will rank as the 22nd longest-running show in Broadway history.

Its soon-to-be vacant home at the New Amsterdam Theatre will be taken by the musical "Aladdin," which has melodies by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice the same team who created the animated film version that starred Robin Williams. The musical, with a book by Chad Beguelin, had its premiere in Seattle in summer 2011.

Read More

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star whose decision to quit his homeland to avoid a tax hike prompted accusations of national betrayal.

The "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Green Card" actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires planned by France's Socialist President Francois Hollande, but said he could also seek tax exile elsewhere.

Putin said last month that Depardieu would be welcome in Russia, which has a flat income tax rate of 13 percent, compared to the 75 percent on income over 1 million euros ($1.32 million) that Hollande wants to levy in France.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Depardieu's decision to seek Belgian residency "pathetic" and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

"I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned," the actor retorted in a letter published by a newspaper, saying he would hand in his passport and social security card.

Depardieu is well known in Russia, where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns. He worked in the country in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.

French media teased Depardieu, showing clips of the actor's Russian work that were unknown at home, including the Rasputin film and a commercial for ketchup.

Magazine L'Express put together a slideshow on its website of other countries that he could flee to, suggesting Italy where he has starred in commercials for Barilla pasta, or Japan, given that the actor owns a Japanese food shop in Paris.

Depardieu welcomed the move to grant him Russian citizenship, according to excerpts of a letter published by a Russian state TV website.

"I love your culture, your intelligence," the letter read. "My father was a communist of that era. He listened to Radio Moscow! That is my culture too."

Depardieu's publicist Francois Hassan Guerrar was not immediately available to comment on the letter.

Depardieu was one of several Western celebrities invited to celebrate the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader, in 2012.

Depardieu, 63, had told friends he was considering three options to escape France's new tax regime: settling in Belgium, relocating to Montenegro, where he has a business, or moving to Russia, French daily Le Monde reported in December.

Putin told a news conference last month: "If Gerard really wants to have either a residency permit in Russia or a Russian passport, we will assume that this matter is settled and settled positively.

"I know that he (Depardieu) considers himself a Frenchman. He loves his country very much, its history its culture - this is his life, and I'm sure he is going through a tough time now," Putin said.

The Kremlin's website said on Thursday that Putin had signed a decree granting Depardieu citizenship. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was not necessary for Depardieu to move to Russia - that would be the actor's decision.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Westerners still knew little of Russia's tax regime.

"When they find out, we can expect a mass migration of rich Europeans to Russia," Rogozin, a nationalist politician and former envoy to NATO, said on Twitter.

WELCOME TO RUSSIA

Muscovites said they would welcome Depardieu. "He is a normal guy. He is fond of drinking too, I suppose, the Russian way, so let him come here," said one resident, Lev Nikolaevich.

Putin has in the past spoken of good relations with France, which he visited last June, but he is a frequent critic of the West. He had a tense summit with the European Union last month and wants the bloc to move faster toward visa-free travel.

Since the Cold War, Moscow has often expressed support for Westerners at odds with their governments - a way to counter what Putin says is hypocritical U.S. and European criticism of the Kremlin's treatment of its own citizens.

In 2010, a Kremlin official suggested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should be nominated for a Nobel Prize.

News of the decree granting Depardieu citizenship set off a frenzy of wry commentary on Russian social networking sites, some musing on why a Westerner would want a Russian passport.

One cartoon posted on the Internet depicted Putin and Depardieu as characters from the French comic books Asterix.

Another showed what appeared to be a nude photo of Depardieu on vacation, with a caption that referred to him as "our compatriot", playing on foreign criticism of how Russians behave on holiday.

Russia does not require people to hand in their foreign passports once they acquire a Russian one. Many Russians have citizenship of other countries and travel without problems.

Depardieu could also request Belgian nationality but has not yet made such a request, said Georges Dallemagne, head of Belgium's parliamentary committee that oversees naturalizations.

"As a Russian he could certainly remain in Belgium, he would possibly need the necessary visas but for a short period he could stay here," said Dallemagne.

France's Constitutional Council last month blocked the planned 75 percent tax rate due to the way it would be applied - but Hollande plans to propose redrafted legislation which will "still ask more of those who have the most".

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman, Nikolai Isayev and Alexander Fedorov in Moscow, Catherine Bremer in Paris and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Belgium; Writing by Megan Davies; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

Read More

MOSCOW (Reuters) - French film star Gerard Depardieu arrived in Russia on Saturday to meet President Vladimir Putin, who granted him citizenship after a public spat in France over his efforts to avoid a potential 75 percent income tax.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two would meet in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where Putin was spending part of the 10-day New Year and Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday.

He said it was possible Putin would hand Depardieu his Russian passport during the meeting.

"It is a private meeting, we will not be releasing any other details," Peskov said by phone.

Russian media quoted him as saying the meeting would take place on Saturday. Depardieu's spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

On Thursday, the Kremlin announced that Putin had signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Depardieu, who objected to Socialist president Francois Hollande's plan to impose a 75 percent tax rate on millionaires.

Depardieu is a popular figure in Russia, where he has appeared in many advertising campaigns, including for ketchup. He also worked there in 2011 on a film about the eccentric Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.

The star of the movies "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Green Card" was also among the Western celebrities invited in 2012 to celebrate the birthday of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed strongman leader of Russia's Chechnya province who is accused by rights groups of crushing dissent.

Some of Putin's critics called the passport move a stunt and pointed out that Putin last month announced a campaign to prevent rich Russians keeping their money offshore.

At a press conference on December 20 during which he offered Depardieu a passport, Putin said Russia had a close, special relationship with France and that he had developed warm ties with the actor, even though they had rarely met.

But Moscow suffered a blow in November when it was forced to suspend its bid to build an Orthodox church with five domes in the heart of Paris, whose mayor called the plan "ostentatious".

Russia has a flat-rate income tax of 13 percent compared to the 75 percent rate that French President Francois Hollande wants to introduce on income over 1 million euros ($1.32 million).

Depardieu has already bought a house in Belgium to establish Belgian residency in protest at Hollande's tax plans.

Hollande's original proposal was struck down by France's Constitutional Court in December, but he has pledged to press ahead with a redrafted tax on the wealthy.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Depardieu's decision to seek Belgian residency "pathetic" and unpatriotic, prompting an angry reply from the actor.

Russia does not require people to hand in their foreign passports once they acquire a Russian one. But it is rare for people from the European Union or the United States to seek Russian citizenship unless they have recent Russian roots.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Read More

BROOKFIELD, Mass. (AP) A man in Massachusetts says all he heard was a hiss before a bobcat pounced on him in his own garage, sinking its teeth into his face and its claws in his back.

Roger Mundell Jr. went into the garage in Brookfield on Sunday morning to fetch some tie-down straps for a friend when the animal attacked.

It then ran out of the garage and bit Mundell's 15-year-old nephew on the arms and back.

Mundell and his wife pinned the cat to the ground and shot it dead.

Mundell, his nephew and his wife, are being treated for rabies. His wife wasn't bitten, but got the animal's blood on her.

State Environmental Police took the bobcat to have it tested for rabies, which they think is likely given its unusual behavior.

Read More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As he famously droned on-screen in his signature "Terminator" movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back.

A year after leaving the California governor's office and becoming tabloid fodder for fathering a boy with his family's housekeeper and splitting with his wife, Maria Shriver, the 65-year old former bodybuilder will star in no less than three Hollywood movies over the next 12 months.

None are likely to win Schwarzenegger an Oscar. Indeed, the movies, and Schwarzenegger's own fee, are low-budget compared with his global blockbusters of yore. But studio executives are betting that overseas fans especially will once again respond to a personality whose 24 films generated worldwide ticket sales of $3.9 billion, according to boxoffice.com.

"He is still a worldwide star who resonates with action audiences around the world," said Rob Friedman, the co-chairman of the Lionsgate motion picture group, which is scheduled to release his next two films. "The Last Stand" will open on January 18, and "The Tomb" in September.

"Ten," the third film, is scheduled for release in January 2014 by Open Road Films, a joint venture of the AMC and Regal Theater chains.

"When you have left the movie business for seven years, it's kind of a scary thing to come back because you don't know if you're accepted or not," Schwarzenegger said at a Saturday press event for "The Last Stand."

"There could be a whole new generation of action stars that come up in the meantime."

The actor said he was "very pleasantly surprised" by what he called a "great reaction" to his cameo in the 2010 action film "The Expendables," which featured fellow action stars Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham. The film grossed $103.1 million in U.S. ticket sales and $274.5 million worldwide.

Since then, Schwarzenegger appeared in a second "Expendables" and says he will join a fifth installment of the "Terminator" if it is made.

Comcast's Universal Pictures wants to "do a bunch" of new films based on the 30-year-old "Conan The Barbarian" movie, said Schwarzenegger, in which he would reprise his role as a barbarian.

He added that Universal, after 10 years of prodding by Schwarzenegger, also wants to do a sequel to the 1988 comedy "Twins," in which he and Danny DeVito played mismatched twins, to be called "Triplets."

Schwarzenegger no longer commands the $25 million paychecks he cashed in his heyday and will get between $8 and $10 million for each of his next three films, according to two people with knowledge of his salary but who were not authorized to speak publicly about it. He also gets a percentage of the profits, according to one of the people.

The new Schwarzenegger calculus banks on his films doing outsized business overseas while operating within budgets that are a fraction of the $200 million cost of his last action film, the 2003 "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." The budget for "The Last Stand" is estimated at $50 million, according to movie resource site IMDB.com.

"He has significant value outside the United States and Canada, where he is still revered by people who have grown up with him throughout the years," said Jere Hausfater, chief operating officer of film production company Aldamisa International, which hopes to do a film with Schwarzenegger in the future.

What audiences will see is a aging star who isn't afraid of showing his drooping muscles and widening paunch, or of making fun of being past his prime. In the "The Last Stand," a less than rock hard Schwarzenegger plays a retired Los Angeles policeman who becomes the sheriff of a small border town and is then called on to stop a violent drug lord from crossing.

In "Ten" he plays an aging drug agent, and in "The Tomb" an older prison inmate.

"We all go through the same dramas, we look at the mirror and say, what happened? You once had muscles and slowly they are deteriorating," said Schwarzenegger at "The Last Stand" press event.

"The great thing in the movie is that they we're not trying to play me as the 35-year-old action hero but the one who is about to retire, and all of a sudden there is this challenge where he really needs to get his act together."

The one-time muscle man compares his career metamorphosis to that of his friend Clint Eastwood, who transitioned from his Dirty Harry days to a wiser person who's not afraid to make fun of his slipping abilities in recent films like "Trouble with the Curve."

"That's called evolution," said Sylvester Stallone, who stars with Schwarzenegger as aging inmates in "The Tomb." "There are no more wooly mammoths. Things change, but the one thing you cannot replace is charisma. Certain people have it, and will have it until the day they die."

Schwarzenegger's infamy in fathering a son outside of his high-profile marriage to Shriver initially seemed to hurt his popular appeal. Within weeks of the disclosure, "The Governator," a comic book that would feature his likeness, was canceled.

Ultimately, though, moviegoers will be less interested in Schwarzenegger's political adventures and personal scandals than in what he puts on the screen, says Peter Sealey, founder of The Sausalito Group and a former Columbia Pictures president of marketing and distribution.

"The movie-going audience really don't care about things like infidelity, DUIs," added publicist Howard Bragman, vice-chairman of the firm called Reputation. "They overlook a lot. Ultimately, it remains, how are the movies? Is he credible? Is he going to be a joke?"

(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Cynthia Osterman)

Read More

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Headphone maker Monster's gadget show event was expectedly monstrously cheesy with a healthy dose of hype.

Head monster and founder Noel Lee skirted around a stage on a two-wheel Segway scooter at the International CES gadget show Monday, as celebrities, athletes and models touted the company's upcoming line of headphones to about a hundred journalists.

Taking the stage with him were New Orleans Saints' quarterback Drew Brees, rapper Nick Cannon, drummer Sheila E, model Tyson Beckford and boxer Sugar Ray Leonard.

Lee frequently urged the gathering to "give it up" for new products. Introduced at the show for the first time was a line called "Inspiration," which sported metal spikes on the headband.

"Oh, that's too kinky for me," Lee said. "Don't sit on your headphones."

Read More

PARIS (Reuters) - Film star Gerard Depardieu denied that he was leaving his homeland for tax reasons on Monday, saying that, although he now had a Russian passport, he was still very much French.

In an interview with sports channel L'Equipe 21 - his first since a row broke out in December over his decision to buy a house over the border in Belgium - Depardieu said that if he had wanted to leave to avoid tax hikes he would have gone earlier.

"I have a Russian passport, but I remain French and I will probably have dual Belgian nationality. But if I'd wanted to escape the taxman, as the French press say, I would have done it a long time ago," he said.

Depardieu was speaking in Zurich on the sidelines of a football awards ceremony after receiving a new Russian passport on Sunday from President Vladimir Putin.

The 63-year-old star of "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Green Card" has been accused by French government leaders of trying to dodge a proposed new tax rate for millionaires.

But in a letter last month to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who labeled the actor "pathetic", Depardieu said he was leaving because success was now being punished in France.

Hollande's original proposal to introduce a 75 percent rate on income over 1 million euros ($1.31 million) was struck down by France's Constitutional Court.

While he has said he will press ahead with a tax on the wealthy, it remains unclear whether the redrafted text will be as severe on top earners.

(Reporting By John Irish; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Read More

NEW YORK (AP) The musical based on the film "Diner" has postponed its Broadway opening.

Producers said late Sunday night that the Kathleen Marshall-directed show with songs by Sheryl Crow will make its debut on Broadway in the fall, instead of the spring.

Producer Scott Zeiger in a statement says a four-week workshop of the show in November got good feedback and that early fall dates work better for all involved.

Set in Baltimore on Christmas 1959, the story explores the lives of a circle of friends in their early 20s, all set to vintage rock 'n' roll and doo-wop.

Barry Levinson, who wrote and directed the 1982 film, adapted it into the new musical. The film starred Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Tim Daly, Daniel Stern and Ellen Barkin.

Read More