LITERACY DRIVE: Oprah Winfrey mentioned on her show last week that she would start an on-air reading group, beginning with the novel The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. The book shot to the top of this week's bestseller list...Separately, Winfrey said she'll star in and produce the film comedy Soul Sisters.
CAMPAIGN PROMISES: Bob Dole, who denounced Trainspotting as a movie that promotes heroin, appears in an ad by Capitol Records for the movie soundtrack album, wearing a button saying "Iggy Pop for President." "Listen and choose Trainspotting," says a slogan under Dole's picture, "(or you could just stay home and watch the Brooklyn Dodgers)." His press secretary said the gag showed a lack of "corporate responsibility" typical of the entertainment industry.
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NOT THAT THING: Tom Hanks made his singing debut on Oprah Winfrey's show today, with a tune from his latest flick That Thing You Do. We continue to believe that Tom is a great actor.
BE NICE: Capital Cities/ABC President Robert Iger told his publicity staff not to attack other networks when discussing ratings, the Los Angeles Times reports. After CBS nosed out ABC for second place in the ratings race last week, an ABC release knocked CBS for the "oldest-skewing schedule in 16 years."
CHARITY: Neil Young lined up Pearl Jam, David Bowie, Patti Smith, the Cowboy Junkies and Hayden for his tenth Bridge School acoustic benefit concert October 19 in Mountain View, California.
COURT REPORTER: A judge set a March 4 trial date for the breach-of-contract suit by Susan Anspach against former boyfriend Jack Nicholson. She claims he gave her $675,000 when they split, then demanded it back with interest...Jurors deadlocked on the question of punitive damages, and the judge declared a mistrial in a suit by an infomercial company against Loni Anderson in Los Angeles. The jury had already found against Anderson for $565,000 in compensatory damages...Snoop Doggy Dogg lost his bid to dismiss two felony gun possession charges in Los Angeles.
SPAT: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is preparing to retaliate in the courts against Time Warner's decision to carry the MSNBC news channel on its cable systems instead of the upcoming Fox news service. Feelings on the Time Warner side are running high, too: Ted Turner, who is about to merge his company with TW said "Talking to Murdoch is like confronting the late führer."
PARTS: Matthew McConaughey will reunite with Joel Schumacher, the director of his hit vehicle A Time To Kill, on a project tentatively titled South Beach...Woody Harrelson is in talks to star in Day of the Rope, a drama about an FBI agent who goes undercover in a white-supremacist group, says the Hollywood Reporter...James Cromwell, Farmer Hoggett in Babe joins the cast of The Education of Little Tree, based on the bestselling novel...Richard T. Jones, currently in The Trigger Effect, is set to star in the sci-fi thriller Event Horizon...John McTiernan, who directed Die Hard With a Vengeance, is negotiating to direct Master and Commander, a 19th-century seafaring drama based on historical novels by Patrick O'Brian.
CURTAIN UP: The New York Film Festival opens tonight with a heavy dose of French films, including Les Voleurs, starring Catherine Deneuve...The Last Emperor, a long movie at two hours and 40 minutes, will be reissued in theaters with an extra hour of footage next year, and director Bernardo Bertolucci also plans a TV miniseries version in four one-hour episodes.
NO RETIREMENT: ABC will broadcast Elizabeth Taylor's gala 65th birthday party in February. The event will be a benefit for AIDS organizations.
NATURALS: The BBC reportedly will announce next week a deal with Discovery Communications, the owner of the Discovery and Learning channels, to distribute BBC shows in the U.S. and develop new programming...Discovery debuts its first theatrical film today, The Leopard Son, in an unusually wide release for a nature documentary.
SWINGIN' SINGLES: The Smashing Pumpkins will release a boxed set of five CDs on November 19 with the singles from their Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album plus covers of The Cars' "You're All I've Got Tonight," Blondie's "Dreaming," The Cure's "A Night Like This" and Alice Cooper's "Clones (We're All)".
WHAT ARE THE ODDS?: We're just going to quote this press release verbatim: "It's only two weeks into the 1996 television season, and already Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert have made history: for the first time in 20 years of Siskel & Ebert, film criticism's dynamic duo--known for their feisty differences of opinion as well as their divergent tastes in movies--gave matching 'thumbs up' reviews of ten consecutive films!"