Photographer's body goes home for burial

Photographer's body goes home for burial
BERLIN -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder plans to attend this week's Berlin burial of acclaimed photographer Helmut Newton, who died in a Los Angeles car crash.
Newton, who fled Berlin in 1938 to escape persecution as a Jew, is being buried Wednesday in his native Schoeneberg district, near the grave of actress Marlene Dietrich.
Schroeder will attend the burial and a memorial event afterward at Berlin's City Hall with Newton's widow, June, and Mayor Klaus Wowereit, the Welt Am Sonntag newspaper reported.
Newton died Jan. 23 at age 83 after apparently losing control of his car and crashing into a wall. Wowereit offered to have him buried in Berlin.
The photographer, born Helmut Neustaedter, returned to Berlin last October to donate more than 1,000 of his photos to a new gallery in Berlin, saying he was proud to have his work displayed in his hometown.
Cronenberg says 'Rabid'served as film school
TORONTO -- Film director David Cronenberg is going down memory lane as he gears up for the DVD release of his 1977 feature film "Rabid." Perhaps better known for his other eerie pictures "The Fly," "Dead Ringers" and "Crash," Cronenberg said the experience of shooting "Rabid" was part of an intense process of learning his craft.
"I learned everything. Those films, "Shivers" and "Rabid," were my film school, because I never went to film school," Cronenberg said.
One "Rabid" filming lesson had a particularly dangerous learning curve when a careening motorcycle almost landed on the director during a stunt. In the film, Marilyn Chambers' character suffers a motorcycle crash and emerges from a medical clinic as a modern-day vampire after radical plastic surgery goes horribly wrong.
Infected crazies then lay siege to an entire city.
Julia Roberts pregnantwith twins, magazines say
LOS ANGELES -- Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts is pregnant with twins, according to magazine reports. People magazine reported Monday night that Roberts' spokeswoman, Marcy Engelman, said the "Pretty Woman" star was due to give birth to twins early next year.
US Weekly said Roberts, 36, has been pregnant for about nine weeks with twins. Star magazine, citing unidentified sources, said the twins were a boy and a girl.
Roberts, who won the best actress Oscar in 2001 for "Erin Brockovich," married cinematographer Daniel Moder, 35, in July 2002 at her home in New Mexico.
The twins would be the first children for Roberts, who starred in 1990's "Pretty Woman."
'Moby Dick'-based operato tour European festivals
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- A new English-language opera based on Herman Melville's classic "Moby Dick" premiered in Amsterdam for a one-night performance.
Named after the book's famous opening line, "Call Me Ishmael" drew a full house Sunday and standing ovation for composer Gary Goldschneider, who had worked on the piece for nearly 20 years.
Lyrics were drawn from the novel, and the music, performed by the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra, was equally influenced by American musical theater and classic opera.
Today's birthdays
Actor Richard Erdman is 79. Actor Andy Griffith is 78. Actor Edward Woodward is 74. Actor Pat Corley is 74. Singer Pat Boone is 70. Actor-writer-director Peter Masterson is 70. Actor Morgan Freeman is 67. Actor Rene Auberjonois is 64. Opera singer Frederica von Stade is 59. Actor Brian Cox is 58. Rock musician Ron Wood is 57. Actor Jonathan Pryce is 57. Actor Powers Boothe is 55. Actress Gemma Craven is 54. Singer Graham Russell (Air Supply) is 54. Country singer Ronnie Dunn (Brooks and Dunn) is 51. Actress Lisa Hartman Black is 48. Singer-musician Alan Wilder is 45. Rock musician Simon Gallup (The Cure) is 44. Country musician Richard Comeaux (River Road) is 43. Actor-singer Jason Donovan is 36. Model-actress Heidi Klum is 31. Singer Alanis Morissette is 30.