'Superman Returns' leaps to No. 1
LOS ANGELES, July 2 (UPI) -- "Superman Returns" flew high during the weekend, taking the No. 1 spot with more than $52.1 million in estimated gross U.S. ticket sales.
All figures are from Box Office Mojo.
"The Devil Wears Prada" was a very respectable No. 2 with $27 million; "Click," in its second week, fell to $19.4 million at No. 3.
Coming in at No. 4 was "Cars" with slightly more than $14 million; "Nacho Libre" sank to No. 5 with nearly $6.2 million; "The Lake House" was down to $4.5 million at No. 6.
Next was "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," which despite its title slowed to $4.4 million. "Waist Deep," in only its second weekend, was No. 8 with $3.3 million.
No. 9 and No. 10 were familiar titles beginning to fade with time: "The Break-Up" with $2.8 million and "The Da Vinci Code" with $2.3 million.
Six Flags offers deal to exit New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, July 2 (UPI) -- Six Flags Inc. has offered New Orleans $10 million and 66 acres if the city will let it out of its lease to run its flood-ravaged theme park in the city.
For the moment, New Orleans is saying no deal.
The company is also offering to pay the city 20 percent of its insurance proceeds above $75 million, the Times-Picayune reports. Six Flags New Orleans was devastated during Hurricane Katrina.
Six Flags originally said it hoped to reopen the property. It now says reopening the park doesn't make sense because the park wasn't successful even when the city had nearly a half-million residents, the newspaper said.
Six Flags spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg says the company thinks it presented a "win-win" offer to New Orleans, giving the city "land it could use for other purposes, as well as liquidity."
But New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says he plans to hold the company to the terms of its agreement.
"We have a pretty solid agreement with them (requiring Six Flags to operate the park for 75 years)," Nagin told the newspaper. "They're claiming they can exercise out of it, but they're going to have to pay us."
Lennie Weinrib, 'HR Pufnstuf' voice, dies
SANTIAGO, Chile, July 2 (UPI) -- Lennie Weinrib, who supplied the voice for the title character in the children's fantasy TV series "H.R. Pufnstuf," has died at age 71.
The voiceover artist and character actor died Wednesday at a hospital in Santiago, Chile, after suffering a stroke, his daughter Linda Weinrib said. He moved to Chile, the native country of his second wife, Sonia, after retiring from show business in the early 1990s.
One of the top 10 voiceover talents for 30 years, Weinrib provided voices for numerous TV cartoon series, including "The Flintstones," "The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show," "The New Tom & Jerry Show," "Garfield and Friends," and "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo," the Los Angeles Times reports.
He also did voiceover work for dozens of commercials, including Ford Motor Co., Avis Rent-a-Car, Pepsodent toothpaste, Hunt's tomato sauce and McDonald's restaurants. He was also "Mr. Pringle" for Pringle's potato chips.
As a character actor, Weinrib appeared on such TV series as "My Favorite Martian," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Twilight Zone," "The Munsters" and the "Dick Van Dyke Show."
Besides being the voice of the dragon mayor for "H.R. Pufnstuf," Weinrib was the live-action Saturday morning series' main writer.
NYC makes music where it can
NEW YORK, July 2 (UPI) -- The newest of New York City's big summer music spaces, the McCarren Park pool in Brooklyn, is also one of its oddest, The New York Times says.
The 50,000-square-foot space was closed in 1984. Now it will compete with more upscale locales, such as SummerStage in Central Park, Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park and River to River in lower Manhattan.
Unlike those venues, the pool also joins a growing list of unusual concert spaces, the Times said, including a pier on the Hudson River, the boardwalk of the South Street Seaport and the streets of Coney Island.
The pool was one of 11 built in the city in 1936 by the WPA and held up to 6,800 swimmers and featured an arched pavilion.
The city wanted to restore it, but the $40 million price tag stopped those plans. Then last year a choreographer asked to use the pool for a dance exhibition, and the city started looking for arts and community events, and some smaller donations made that possible.
A promoter has booked six nights at the pool beginning July 29 with the British band Bloc Party, the newspaper said.
