- Hollywood Cannibals Get 'Ravenous'
- Wu-Tang Clan Rapper Arrested
- Get an Inside Peek at the Future of Gaming
- 'Life' is Too Beautiful?
- 'Menace' trailer premieres on the Net
- Jewish Stories from the Old World
- Violinist Yehudi Menuhin
- McCartney's '60s
- Film Reel Running Out of Time
- Ex-Mouseketeer Sentenced to 2 Years
- Study: Scary Films Stay With You
- Featured PBS sonic artist Tony Schwartz
- Ron Howard Talks About New Film
- GameSpot's 1998 Reader's Choice Awards
- Filmmaker Kubrick Dies
- Chicago critics award Spielberg
- Mummy, skeleton found in Egypt tomb
- Singer Dusty Springfield dies
- Remembering Dusty Springfield
- Remembering Film Critic Gene Siskel

(Real Audio Enabled)

Do your interests run toward the macabre? If so, the new film Ravenous might be for you. The movie, directed by Antonia Bird, is set in a remote military outpost where the soldiers indulge their rather gruesome appetite -- for human flesh. But these men don't eat people out of necessity, like previous Hollywood cannibals. Instead, these characters consume flesh in the hope of capturing another's soul. Hear more about Ravenous as Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon speaks with entertainment critic Elvis Mitchell, who calls the film smart and subtle.

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NEW YORK (AP), Trouble-prone rapper ODB was arrested Monday after police allegedly found three small containers of crack cocaine on him during a traffic stop in Brooklyn. The Wu-Tang Clan rapper, whose real name is Russell Jones, was stopped by officers who saw a 1996 Range Rover without license plates, double-parked. The driver did not have a license or registration, police said. When Jones, 30, gave his name, a record check revealed he had a suspended license and was wanted for failure to pay child support, leading to a search that turned up the drugs, Lt. Dennis Cirillo said.  Jones was in custody awaiting arraignment on misdemeanor drug charges. His attorney, Peter Frankell, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Last month, a Brooklyn grand jury decided Jones would not face attempted murder charges stemming from an encounter with officers who stopped Jones' car for allegedly not having its lights on. The officers said that when they approached the driver's window two shots were fired, and they shot back. No gun was found in the car. Jones was convicted of second-degree assault in New York in 1993. He was arrested last month in Los Angeles when he parked in a no-parking zone and police found he was wearing a bulletproof vest. He has pleaded innocent to violating a law banning felons from wearing body armor. In addition to facing shoplifting charges in Virginia, he is accused in Los Angeles of threatening to kill the mother of his 1-year-old child and making death threats to guards at a nightclub.

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Gaming in the next millennium is being decided even as we speak. Two major industry game shows -- the Game Developers’ Conference and the Tokyo Game Show -- are underway this week. Their outcomes will play a critical role in determining which gaming systems and hardware will succeed or fail. Here’s what’s at stake:

PlayStation 2: The Japanese industry was stunned by Sony’s first revelations about its upcoming replacement for the PlayStation, which is almost unthinkably powerful and versatile. Now the company will take center stage at the Game Developers’ Conference, showing the new hardware to an American audience for the first time. If the response is favorable, developers will flock to PlayStation2, and Sony will have the software support it needs to maintain its dominance of the interactive entertainment market -- and perhaps eventually pose a threat to the Wintel monopoly.

Dreamcast: But don’t count the Dreamcast out just yet. This new system, which utilizes powerful technology from Sega, Microsoft and NEC, is doing very well in Japan. But its outlook in the U.S. remains uncertain. Sega is working hard to sway developers to support the system and secure quality software for the Dreamcast’s U.S. launch (scheduled for later this year) and early life cycle. If the company succeeds, and if plans to include a built-in modem aren’t scrapped, Dreamcast could be a serious threat to Sony. But if developers decide to pass on Dreamcast in favor of PlayStation2, Sega may be forced to retreat to its home turf, the arcade market.

Voodoo3: The newest accelerator from 3Dfx has one of its first public appearances this week, and initial response has been positive. However, 3Dfx no longer has the most feature rich hardware in the market, and rivals nVidia, ATI, S3, Matrox and Permedia are all showing their new boards as well. As a result, the game-oriented 3D accelerator market, which has enjoyed relative stability in recent years (with 3Dfx dominating), could quickly become fragmented. In this scenario, Microsoft would be the real winner, as Direct3D would emerge at the only graphics API with a significant installed base, leaving OpenGL and Glide in the dust.

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Controversy is swirling around the Italian film Life is Beautiful, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards. The film, set partly in a Nazi concentration camp, tells a story of love and survival during the Holocaust. It has gained critical acclaim and higher box office revenues than any other foreign film in U.S. history. While some see the movie as a touching fable, others say Life is Beautiful trivializes the atrocities of the Holocaust. Hear more about the controversy as David D'Arcy reports for Morning Edition. (Hey, it's only a movie!)

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The Force will be with Internet users, a whole day early. Lucasfilm gave wired Star Wars fans another bonus Thursday when it released the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars movie on the Net, a day before the trailer makes a general premiere in movie theaters.

The trailer is to be distinguished from the "teaser" Lucasfilm released last year. This week's trailer, the last that will appear before the movie's release May 19, reveals more details of the plot and includes most of the major characters.

'Blow away the fans'
"We wanted something that would both blow the fans away and sustain them during the last stretch before the movie opens," said Jim Ward, Lucasfilm's Director of Marketing, in a statement. The trailer, available on a site co-sponsored by Apple Computer Inc. and Lucasfilm, is available through apple.com and starwars.com, in Apple's QuickTime format.

Apple said its engineers worked at Lucasfilm to create a mix of the trailer especially for the Web, with sound engineered to work well online.  Thursday afternoon the official site was so jammed with traffic that many other sites posted their own copies of the digital file for quicker downloads.  At the same time, Lucasfilm released the poster design that will begin appearing in theaters Friday.

Merchandising maniacs
This is not the first time Lucasfilm has proffered goodies to its fans to whip up interest. The company practically invented modern merchandising with the action figures and other products surrounding the first Star Wars movie in the late 1970s.

More recently, the Star Wars site began offering a wide range of media and information on the new film, "Episode I: The Phantom Menace," months before the premiere. Online articles about the Star Wars universe include titles such as "Anatomy of a Dewback" and "The Sound Design of Episode I."

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Portraying Herzog's youth in Quebec, Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow brings to life a crucial period when poor Jewish immigrants raised a generation of scholars, intellectuals and artists.

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Sir Yehudi Menuhin, one of the world's most famous violinists, died Friday in Berlin of heart failure. He was 82. The U.S.-born virtuoso, who became a British citizen in 1985, was a child prodigy who fulfilled his promise to become one of the world's foremost violinists before extending his range to teaching and conducting. A member of the British House of Lords since 1993, he had a school in England and an academy in Switzerland for talented young musicians, whom he often conducted. Born in New York in 1916, he became a major figure in jazz as well as on the classical violin scene. French President Jacques Chirac - hailing Menuhin as one of the great violinists of the century -- said "With him, a light has gone out, the light of genius and also the light of the heart." Listen as NPR's Dean Olsher reports for All Things Considered.

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McCartney's '60s

Linda McCartney had a unique perspective on the world of '60s rock music. The U.S.-born photographer got her big break shooting the Rolling Stones in 1966 and, after marrying Beatle Paul McCartney in 1969, had unique access to a virtual Who's Who of rock stars including, of course, The Beatles. An exhibit of McCartney's work opens Saturday at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Listen as NPR's Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg reports.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - A former Mouseketeer was sentenced Thursday to two years in federal prison for using phony or bounced checks to buy investments and lying about it to the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Darlene Fraschilla, who changed her last name from Gillespie after her January marriage, showed no emotion as the sentence was read. In addition to prison, she must pay $6,144 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Lourdes G. Baird ordered her to report to prison by July 26. Mrs. Fraschilla, who was one of the nine original Mouseketeers on the Mickey Mouse Club television show from 1955-1959, had faced up to 90 years in prison. Mrs. Fraschilla said she plans to appeal. ``I believe with all my heart that ... I will truly be vindicated,'' she said. Jurors convicted her in December on a dozen counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and perjury.

Prosecutors said she helped her then-boyfriend, Jerry Fraschilla, in a scheme to buy more than 194,000 shares of stock valued at $827,000 in 1992 and 1993 by writing checks on closed and overdrawn accounts.  Fraschilla, 61, of Oxnard pleaded guilty to 21 counts of fraud last year and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and probation. He also was ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution.

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DETROIT (AP),  If ``Jaws'' scared you out of the water or ``Psycho'' changed your shower habits, a study suggests you probably aren't alone. A survey of 150 students at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin found that one in four had some lingering ``fright'' effect from a movie or TV show they saw as a child or a teen-ager. Some people who saw the thriller about a man-eating shark never went into the ocean again, said Kristen Harrison, a University of Michigan communications professor who co-wrote the study.

And ``Psycho?''  ``There are people who shower with the door open, even though they're quite sure there isn't a killer in the house,'' Harrison said Tuesday.

Ninety percent said they were scared by a TV or movie from their childhood or adolescence; 26 percent said they still experience ``residual anxiety.'' The younger children were when they were frightened, the longer the reaction lasted. Ranny Levy, president of the Coalition for Quality Children's Media in Santa Fe, N.M., said her own 27-year-old son was frightened of taking a swim in the sea a few years ago and blames it on seeing ``Jaws'' as a boy. ``He had to force himself. He really identified it with watching `Jaws' when he was little,'' she said.

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Featured sonic artist Tony Schwartz is an eclectic assembler of music and everyday sounds who has recorded some of the most important and interesting social figures of his day. Listen to Mr. Schwartz as he talks about his experiences recording opera singer Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, former President of the Pan African Congress. As a special feature, we also offer the unedited speech by W.E.B. DuBois. Listen to the entire Tony Schwartz segment with RealAudio in 14.4 or 28.8. (Produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva)

TONY SCHWARTZ: (excerpt) 14.4 or 28.8 "I think Paul Robeson was one of the great singers of our time. In the McCarthy era, Robeson couldn't travel, because they called him a Communist, which is ridiculous. He wasn't a communist. He just believed in internationalism. He wanted to send tapes to various places around the world. One I did to send to England for a speech for him. It was about peace so I took and had his song behind it. I did it for many people that couldn't travel. For W.E.B. DuBois, I would record speeches that he wanted to give in South Africa..." W.E.B. DUBOIS: (speech) 14.4 or 28.8 "Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, of New York, writer and the President of the Pan African Congress to the peoples of Africa -- Greetings..."

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NEW YORK (AP),  Ron Howard believes television stars will bring added authenticity to his upcoming movie ``EdTV.''  ``So many of the TV people have been in the media glare recently and know what it's like to go from anonymity to full exposure in a short period of time,'' Howard told TV Guide for its March 13 edition.

In addition to Matthew McConaughey, who plays a man who suddenly becomes famous, the movie features Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, Martin Landau and Rob Reiner. ``Most people link celebrity with a kind of recognition that leads to happiness. And in some instances it can lead to some wonderfully happy moments,'' Howard said. ``But I don't believe that it's really the thing that can satisfy somebody.''

Howard is a television veteran himself, having starred in ``Happy Days'' and ``The Andy Griffith Show.''

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CHICAGO (AP) - Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" won best picture and Terrence Malick ("The Thin Red Line") won best director honors at the Chicago Film Critics Awards. Spielberg paid homage to movie critic Gene Siskel, who died last month. Siskel and TV partner Roger Ebert used the power of television for the better "and have done a remarkable thing for the motion pictures," Spielberg said in accepting his award Monday. Ebert toasted the Spielberg in return, noting that some filmmakers appeal to mass audiences while others strive for high art, but few achieve both in the same film. "Our winner tonight has done that," said Ebert.

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CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A top Egyptian archaeologist crawled through dusty passageways Wednesday, and during a two-hour search broadcast live to an American audience found a mummy believed to be up to 4,200 years old. Fox TV broadcast the look into unexplored rooms of two tombs and a small pyramid of Queen Khamerernebty II on the Giza Plateau, site of the Sphinx and the great pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo. Although the mummy found may be older than the famed 3,300-year-old King Tut discovery in 1922, Giza Plateau's chief archeologist noted after the broadcast that "it is a regular mummy" - lacking any sort of royal stature.

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LONDON (AP) - Singer Dusty Springfield, whose husky-voiced white soul could simultaneously "chill the spine and warm the heart," has died after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 59. Springfield, who recorded such 1960s hits as "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Wishin' and Hopin'," died Tuesday night at her home in Henley-on-Thames, west of London. Mike Gill, who worked with the singer for nearly 32 years and is compiling a four-CD tribute for release later this year, called hers "an intimate voice with wonderful pathos." The box set was put together "with Dusty's full knowledge and her blessing when she knew she was dying. She said, 'Tell Mike to get things organized. I want to go out with a bit of style,'" he said.

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Remembering Dusty Springfield

Singer Dusty Springfield, whose cool, husky voice powered such 1960s hits as "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Wishin' and Hopin'," died Tuesday night after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 59.  Springfield was to be inducted next week into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony in New York. A posthumous ceremony has been scheduled instead. Elton John says Springfield was the first performer he idolized. In December, Queen Elizabeth II included Springfield on her biannual honors list, making her an Officer of the Order of British Empire. Springfield was born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in north London on April 16, 1939. Hear more about her life and music from All Things Considered host Noah Adams.

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One of America's most influential film critics, Gene Siskel, died Saturday at the age of 53. His death came less than a year after surgery to remove a growth from his brain. Siskel began his career reviewing movies for The Chicago Tribune. But he was best known for being part of the television duo of Siskel and Ebert, whose "thumbs up, thumbs down" critiques made them famous. Roger Ebert, Siskel's partner and one-time nemesis, said the future of the show is uncertain.