Sideshow | Stevie Wonder to hit the road
Music industry titan Stevie Wonder will be packing his bags soon for his first major concert tour in more than two decades. Concert promoter Live Nation announced yesterday that the tour, called A Wonder Summer’s Night, will get under way in San Diego on Aug. 23 and wind up in Boston on Sept. 20. No word about a Philly stop.
Music industry titan
Stevie Wonder
will be packing his bags soon for his first major concert tour in more than two decades.
Concert promoter Live Nation announced yesterday that the tour, called A Wonder Summer's Night, will get under way in San Diego on Aug. 23 and wind up in Boston on Sept. 20. No word about a Philly stop.
Wonder, who is a sprightly 57, last mounted a full American tour in '86, reports the Web site Pollstar.com, which tracks the concert industry. The singer embarked on a smaller tour 12 years ago and has since played lots of single dates here and there, according to Pollstar.
Dolly to tour!
Dolly Records founder
Dolly Parton
will go on a major world tour right after she releases her first "mainstream country" album in 17 years in February, says the superstar's manager. In recent years Dolly had turned to gospel, bluegrass and patriotic standards. Dolly's rep says the singer also plans to perform on a "national TV show" in late September.
Baby for 'ER' nurse
Julianna Margulies
, 41, beloved for her
ER
role as the kind, passionate, self-doubting nurse Carol Hathaway, is pregnant with her first child, TV Guide reports. Julianna, whose new show, Fox's
Canterbury's Law
, debuts this fall, reportedly got engaged to her man,
Keith Lieberthal
, in June.
Baby for Batman sidekick
Chris O'Donnell
announced on NBC's
Today
that his wife,
Caroline Fentress
, is pregnant with the couple's
fifth
baby. "We're just starting to figure out how it works," he quipped.
Celeb Scientologists party hearty
According to a statement, the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood will have a 38th-anniversary party tomorrow that will feature a bucketful of the church's celeb members, including
John Travolta
,
Kelly Preston
,
Kirstie Alley
,
Jenna Elfman
,
Priscilla Presley
and
Giovanni Ribisi
. The release made no mention of the outspoken megastar
Tom Cruise
.
R. Kelly's next stop . . .
. . . will be a Cook County (Ill.) court on Sept. 17, when the crooner's child pornography trial is set to begin. Kelly, 40, who fronted the '90s R&B group
Public Announcement
, was busted in '02 for allegedly making a video of himself doing sex to a girl who was reportedly 13.
The singer caused a stir in '94 when he married the then-15-year-old ingenue Aaliyah, whose age was falsely listed as 18 on the marriage license. (Their union was annulled.)
Kelly, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Remembering Vince
The National Football League, once devoted to pro football, has been infected with Hollywood fever. Variety says the league, which has had its hand in a few TV projects, is producing its first feature, a biopic about football legend
Vince Lombardi
, who led the Green Bay Packers to five NFL championships in nine years.
"[Lombardi] is an icon of popular culture who's well known among older NFL fans, but the story's also a great way for us to educate the younger fans," said NFL exec Charles Coplin.
Tinker, tailor, soldier . . .
Variety reports that Universal Pictures has given bestselling author
Daniel Silva
a check with six zeroes to buy rights to a seven-book series of spy novels revolving around Mossad agent Gabriel Allon.
Pierre Morel
, who rocked out with the action flick
Banlieue 13
(think
Escape From New York
meets
Althusser
ian French neo-Marxist class critique), will direct the first flick, based on Silva's '06 book
The Messenger
.
E-deposit of film wisdom
Love the school of Film Criticism by Thumb?
Now you can see Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper and the late Gene Siskel review 5,000 flicks in a vast e-archive of clips from Siskel & Ebert and At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper at www.AtTheMoviesTV.com.
Trumped again
Rossano Rubicondi
, 35, is to become
Ivana Trump
's fourth hubby (
The Donald
was No. 2). An unnamed source tells the N.Y. Post the couple have "been together for five years. They have a great time together. They're very happy."
Rock rocks on his own rock-and-roll
Kid Rock
, whose new CD is due out in October, has not lost his supersize ego. The Detroit rap-rocker thus describes his ninth album to Billboard: It's "like going to church drunk on a Saturday night," he said. (So what is
that
like?)
"The album defines America," said Walt Whitman's spirituo-poetic heir.
Uma selects a new one
The New York Post says
Uma Thurman
is helping herself get over hotelier
Andre Balazs
with a new beau. True to form, the star of
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
has eschewed Tinseltown types and gone with a Eurosuave rich boy. The bf, Swiss banker
Arky Busson
, once belonged to
Elle Macpherson
and fathered her two kids.