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Oil Star Turns-December 22,2009
December 22, 2009 Edition 1
NEW YORK: Radiohead plan to return to the studio next month to continue work on their next album.
"The vibe in the camp is fantastic," guitarist Ed O'Brien wrote at the weekend on Radiohead.com. "I am so genuinely excited about what we're doing."
Radiohead's most recent album, 2007's In Rainbows, was at first released as a name-your-own-price download through the band's website.
Frontman Thom Yorke is expected to return to the stage for more dates in 2010, but details have yet to be announced.
LOS ANGELES: Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men movies, is returning to Fox for another, five years after he angered the studio by abandoning the franchise to make Superman Returns.
The project is a prequel to the X-Men movies, looking at the teenage years of the super-powered mutant heroes. It will deal with the first meeting of Charles Xavier and Magneto and involve the creation of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, the school masquerading as the head-quarters of the X-Men. New characters will also be created.
NASHVILLE: Singer Carrie Underwood, 26, is engaged to National Hockey League player Mike Fisher, 29, of the Ottawa Senators, her publicist said.
The couple have been dating for about a year and "couldn't be happier", said publicist Jessie Schmidt.
Underwood has kept her relationship largely under wraps, but she gave Fisher a very public shout-out in the liner notes of her current album, Play On.
She wrote: "Thank you (No) 12 (referring to his jersey number). You are the most amazing addition to my life!
LOS ANGELES: The Coen Bros and Paramount have launched a search for the young female lead in their remake of the western True Grit.
No acting experience is necessary for girls who can play 14-year-old Mattie Ross, a role played in the 1969 original by Kim Darby, who was 21.
The "tough as nails" character tags along with two marshals - Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon - in the hunt for the man who killed her father, played by Josh Brolin.
"SALT LAKE CITY: The man who inspired the title character in the Oscar-winning movie Rain Man has died of a heart attack.
Kim Peek was a savant with a remarkable memory and inspired writer Barry Morrow to write Rain Man, the 1988 movie starring Dustin Hoffman that won four Oscars.
In his later years, Peek was classified as a "mega-savant" who was a genius in about 15 subjects. But he couldn't perform some simple tasks like dressing himself.
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