NEWSMAKERS | Oliver Stone wins film-festival award

NEWSMAKERS

Oliver Stone wins film-festival award

BOULDER, Colo.

Director Oliver Stone has been awarded a “Master of Cinema” award by the Boulder International Film Festival.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that the award was presented Sunday, the last night of the festival.

Stone’s films have been nominated for 31 Academy Awards, and he has won three Oscars: best adapted screenplay for “Midnight Express” and best director for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.”

Austrian drops Derek as Opera Ball date

VIENNA

An Austrian news agency is quoting a quirky construction mogul as saying he won’t be taking actress Bo Derek to Vienna’s famous Opera Ball after all and that her replacement may be the teenager embroiled in a sex scandal surrounding Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Richard Lugner, a 78-year-old who loves the limelight, books a different celebrity for the fancy affair every year. Recent dates have included Paris Hilton and Dita Von Teese. Lugner announced last week that Derek, who starred in “Tarzan, the Ape Man,” would be next.

The Austria Press Agency on Sunday quoted Lugner as saying he would cancel his contract with the 54-year-old because she wanted $25,000 more than originally agreed to.

Lugner later also told APA his team has almost completed negotiations with Karima el-Mahroug, an 18-year-old nicknamed Ruby, who is at the center of a prostitution scandal that has sent Berlusconi to trial.