The turbulent affair between Margot Fonteyn, still admired as Britain's greatest ballet dancer, and her most famous dance partner, Rudolf Nureyev, is to be turned into a film.
The team behind the Oscar-nominated Being Julia, last year's film adaptation of a Somerset Maugham story, will make the movie, based on last year's controversial biography of the prima ballerina, which heavily hinted that Fonteyn and Nureyev shared more than an emotionally-charged pas de deux.
Box office toppers
PHOTO: AP
The comedy Guess Who got the correct answer from the box office last weekend, raking in US$20.6 million in its North American debut.
The film, starring Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, is an updated version of the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner which featured Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier.
Sandra Bullock's comedy Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, a sequel to her 2000 hit, opened in second place with ticket receipts of US$14 million , box office trackers Exhibitor Relations Co Inc said.
PHOTO: AP
Last week's box office champion, the horror flick The Ring Two, dropped into third position, earning US$13.6 million. The film is a sequel to the hit 2002 movie The Ring, the US remake of a Japanese movie.
The animated children's film Robots took US$12.9 million and fourth spot in the ranking, down from second place a week earlier.
The 20th Century Fox movie, featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Robin Williams and funnyman Mel Brooks, tells the story of a determined young robot inventor, Rodney Copperbottom, who moves to the city to seek his fortune.
The Pacifier, a comedy starring Vin Diesel as a special forces operative turned babysitter, was fifth with US$8 million in ticket receipts.
Will Smith's dating comedy Hitch, which garnered ticket sales of US$4.2 million, was in sixth place, followed by Hostage, an action adventure starring Bruce Willis with US$4.1 million.
The figure skating teen comedy Ice Princess was eighth with US$3.7 million, followed by Be Cool, an action-comedy sequel to Get Shorty, starring John Travolta and Uma Thurman, with US$2.8 million.
Rounding off the weekly top 10 was Million Dollar Baby, this year's big Oscar-winner starring Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank, with a haul of US$2.5 million.
The film walked off with best picture, best director, best actress and best supporting actor statuettes at the Feb. 27 Academy Awards.
Whipped-cream bikinis
Bollywood tough guy Salman Khan has a date in India's Rajasthan state next week with Hollywood actress Ali Larter, who burst onto the movie scene wearing a whipped-cream bikini in the 1999 film Varsity Blues.
The two stars will be meeting up when Hollywood writer-director Willard Carroll finally begins rolling the cameras for his long-touted movie Marigold, Khan said.
"The shooting starts next week," said Khan, adding that parts of the movie would also be made on location in the resort state of Goa and in Mumbai, India's western economic hub and home to its prolific Hindi-language film industry known as Bollywood.
Macho actor Khan plays a choreographer in the film, in which Larter, who has gone on to make a name for herself in Legally Blonde, House on Haunted Hill and teen thriller Final Destination, plays an arrogant American actress stranded in India.
During her ordeal, the actress hires Khan -- who has played in dozens of Bollywood hits including Tere naam (In Your Name) and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (I Have Given My Heart Away My Love), as her Bollywood dance instructor, and the two fall in love.
Khan said the movie was full of drama, humor and emotion. It will be made only in English.
Party on dudes!
A California university, once ranked by Playboy magazine as the top US party school, is probing a fraternity which held a party where a hard-core sex film was made, a school spokesman said on Monday.
California State University Chico has suspended its 25-member chapter of Phi Kappa Tau, while it investigates the party at which professional porn actors were filmed having sex last October, said school spokesman Joe Wills.
Shane's World, a Southern California maker of adult films, including ones featuring partying college students, provided four female and two male actors for the film, a spokeswoman said.
A trailer of the toga-themed film, on sale on DVD for US$24.95, appears on the filmmaker's Web site. Three Chico State students had sex on film, said Shane's World spokeswoman Nicole Henderson.
"On Friday we suspended the fraternity," said Wills. "We're trying to gather information as fast as we can right now."
The fraternity chapter will not be able to participate in school events until the university concludes its investigation, which stemmed from a rumor circulating on campus, said Rick Rees, a student activities official.
The fraternity chapter could not be reached for comment on the film, the most recent scandal to hit Chico State.
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