UPI NewsTrack Entertainment News

Published: July 9, 2008 at 2:00 PM

AFTRA ratifies contract

LOS ANGELES, July 9 (UPI) -- A group of Hollywood film and TV producers said it was pleased the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has voted to ratify its new contract.

The Screen Actors Guild, the other major U.S. actors union, has said it will respond Thursday to an offer proposed by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

"We appreciate today's vote of confidence by actors in the agreement we reached with AFTRA, and hope that it demonstrates to SAG's Hollywood leadership that there is support for the new economic relationships we have built with writers, directors and actors -- and not much support for a strike, whether de facto or real," AMPTP said in a statement Tuesday.

"We hope that SAG's Hollywood leadership will allow SAG members to vote on AMPTP's final offer -- which would give SAG members more than $250 million in additional compensation and important new media rights."


Dead model's mom wants case reopened

NEW YORK, July 9 (UPI) -- The mother of dead model Ruslana Korshunova is calling for the New York Police Department to reopen its investigation into Korshunova's apparent suicide.

Korshunova, 20, was found dead June 28 following a fall from a Manhattan building.

Her friends and mother, Valentina Kutenkova, told the New York Daily News they think police failed to properly investigate her death and were too quick to call it a suicide.

The Kazakh model's friends and mother also said they were told the building next door wasn't investigated, even though police said they thought it was possible Korshunova jumped from there and not her own balcony.

"Maybe there was someone else there ... I want to know what really happened," Kutenkova told the Daily News. "She didn't have a single reason to do this and 1,001 reasons to live."

But the NYPD told the Daily News both buildings were looked at.

"We can appreciate how painful this must be for any family member but a mother in particular," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told the newspaper. "Detectives ... followed all the best investigative leads to their proper conclusion."


Goya drawings go for $8M at auction

LONDON, July 9 (UPI) -- Three drawings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, which haven't been seen in public since 1877, have sold for $8 million at a London auction.

"Bajar rinendo (Down they come)," a work that shows four women fighting, sold for $4.4 million, twice its estimated price, and set a world record auction price for a Goya work on paper, the BBC said Wednesday.

The other two Goya sketches sold at the Christie's auction show a constable stitched inside a dead horse and a man praying in front of a cross.

The early 19th century drawings came from the artist's notebooks and were discovered in a private Swiss collection, the BBC said.


'Red Dawn' set for remake

LOS ANGELES, July 9 (UPI) -- A remake of the 1984 U.S. action drama "Red Dawn" -- which starred Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen -- reportedly is in the works.

The Hollywood Reporter said screenwriter Carl Ellsworth has been hired to write an updated version of the Cold War tale about a group of U.S. teenagers trying to survive a homeland invasion by the Soviets and Cubans.

Ellsworth, who wrote "Red Eye" and co-wrote "Disturbia," will be working from a "Red Dawn" story written by Jeremy Passmore.

The remake is to be directed by Dan Bradley, a second-unit director and stunt coordinator on "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Spider-Man 3" and "Quantum of Solace," the entertainment industry trade paper said.

"The tone is going to be very intense, very much keeping in mind the post-9/11 world that we're in," Ellsworth told The Hollywood Reporter. "As 'Red Dawn' scared the heck out of people in 1984, we feel that the world is kind of already filled with a lot of paranoia and unease, so why not scare the hell out of people again?"

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