'Evil' resides at No. 1 for weekend
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- "Resident Evil: Afterlife," with Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter, took the No. 1 spot during the weekend with $27.7 million in U.S. box office receipts.
"Takers," with Hayden Christensen and Matt Dillon, was a distant No. 2 with $6.1 million.
"The American" was No. 3 with more than $5.89 million.
All gross studio box office receipts are via Box Office Mojo.
"Machete" was fourth with $4.2 million; "Going the Distance" fifth with more than $3.83 million; "The Other Guys" sixth with $3.6 million; "The Last Exorcism" seventh with $3.45 million; "The Expendables" eighth with $3.25 million and "Inception" was ninth with more than $3.01 million.
"Eat Pray Love" starring Julia Roberts rounded out the top 10 with $2.9 million.
Bowersox popular search in cop database
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Several public employees in Ohio were disciplined for snooping in state databases for information on "American Idol" singer Crystal Bowersox, officials said.
Two people actually lost their jobs for looking Bowersox up in a computer system reserved for law enforcement, the state attorney general's office said.
"There's actually law that makes it illegal to access OHLEG (Ohio Law Enforcement Gateway) for other purposes," spokesman Ted Hart told The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch.
OHEG includes data on driving records, rap sheets and vehicle ownership and can apparently be accessed by any one with rudimentary computer skills. The Dispatch said OHEG is searched an average of 10,000 times a day.
There was no indication Bowersox's records were looked up for any reason other than "idle" curiosity.
The Toledo-area singer was the runner-up in last season's "American Idol" talent competition on Fox TV.
Arsonist of Philly sound studio sentenced
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- An admitted arsonist says he doesn't remember setting fire to a landmark recording studio where pop music's famed Philadelphia sound was born.
Christopher Cimini, 28, a South Philly ironworker, apologized in court this week for the February blaze at Philadelphia International Records even though he had no recollection of setting the fire or any idea why he did it because he was heavily intoxicated at the time.
Cimini pleaded guilty in July to arson and other crimes connected to the blaze and was sentenced to between 1 ½ years and 10 years in prison.
Philadelphia International Records on Broad Street was the birthplace of the Philly sound created by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and turned into best-sellers by artists such as Teddy Pendergast and Patti LaBelle.
The Philadelphia Inquirer said Sunday that fire caused $3.5 million in damages, but the priceless master recordings were kept at a separate location.
Gamble and Huff have said they might turn the site into a music museum.
French filmmaker Claude Chabrol dies
PARIS, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- French filmmaker Claude Chabrol, a founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement, has died in Paris, its deputy mayor says. He was 80.
Chabrol turned out more than 80 films for television and movie theaters, and he was a "colossal" director, Deputy Mayor Christophe Girard said Sunday in The Guardian newspaper.
Chabrol "was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema," Girard said.
Chabrol's proteges included Francois Truffaut and Jen-Luc Godard; he rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of "Le Beau Serge." That film was widely considered to have launched a new wave in French filmmaking, the report said.
By the late 1960s he established himself as a master of psychologically explosive suspense movies such as "The Butcher" and "The Unfaithful Wife"; after 1978 his collaborations with actor Isabelle Huppert garnered him acclaim.
Those movies included "Violette Noziere," "Story of Women" and "Madame Bovary," his adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert novel, the newspaper said.
His final movie, a murder mystery, was shown in theaters last year. Modest about his achievements, Chabrol admitted some of his efforts failed.
"It is not necessary that each of my films is considered perfect," he once said. "But I would like my work as a whole to give a very specific idea of my own vision of things."
