Oprah packs for Precious, Bryan covers Twiggy, Kate goes Crawford, and Tommy sings a new Tune

THE BIG OH: Ya gotta love Conan O’Brien’s comment on Barrack Obama’s plan to have dinner with Oprah Winfrey during his visit to Martha’s Vineyard. “That’s right,” said Conan, “the most powerful person in the free world is going to have dinner with President Obama!”

WINFREY: packing for T.O.

TIFF-bound Oprah is set for a pretty sensational September so far. She’ll jet here to celebrate the Sunday Sept 13 world premiere of her new film, Precious, before launching another new season of Oprah! the next day with an hour-long exclusive heart-to-heart with tortured but gifted diva Whitney Houston.

Will Whitney ‘sing’ for Oprah?

Count on it.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: The only man ever to win nine Tony awards in four different categories, song & dance sensation Tommy Tune, has a brand-new road show titled Steps in Time, the same title as Fred Astaire’s autobiography.

TWIGGY: Bryan Adams cover girl

“That’s true!” says Tune, now 69 years young. “I borrowed the title from two of my idols, Sir Noel Coward and Fred Astaire. Coward gave that title to Astaire’s biography, so I have purloined it!”… and speaking of Tommy Tune, Renée Zellwegger’s new movie, My One And Only, is not, repeat, not the screen version of the great Broadway musical Tommy created for himself and Twiggy.  In this one Zellwegger plays a social beauty who is out to land a husband to take care of her and her two boys. Renée’s character is apparently based on Palm Beach matriarch Ann Devereaux Hamilton, whose sons include the ultra-tanned movie star George … and speaking of Twiggy, did you catch Bryan Adams’ fabulous photos of her inside (and on the cover, natch) of the fall issue of Zoomer magazine? Does anyone take better celebrity portraits than Adams? Not that I can see.

BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS … : Director Robert Rodrigues has signed Lindsay Lohan for a starring role in his new movie Machete, possibly opposite Robert DeNiro. Now that we’d like to see! … director Guy

WINSLET: mommie dearest

Ritchie is in London, working on post-production of Sherlock Holmes, which is still slated for a Christmas Day release with Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams … Julie & Julia filmmaker Nora Ephron’s next work, a collaboration with her talented sister Delia, is a play called Love, Loss and What I Wore, set to open October 1 at the West Side Theater in Manhattan … my Brit spies whisper that Madonna plans to direct a new movie musical about the Duke & Duchess Of Windsor and wants Cate Blanchett and David Tennant (TV’s Dr. Who) to play Wallis Simpson and the king who gave up his throne for her …  and director Todd Haynes has persuaded Oscar winner Kate Winslet to star as Mildred Pierce, the role that won Joan Crawford her Oscar, in a six-part mini-series remake of the James M. Cain novel. (The original was cleaned up considerably to get by Hollywood’s once-stringent production code.) Now all director Haynes has to do is find the right actress to tackle the role of Mildred’s vengeful daughter, so memorably played in the original by the usually saint-like Ann Blyth.

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS: CBC Television launched its nightly 90-minute supper hour newscasts this week. Which meant it had to move

DUMONT: 'V'-spot

Coronation Street to 6:30 pm. Which meant more grumbling from Corrie fanatics (and yes, you know who you are) … Microsoft launched its new msn.ca website with fairly modest fanfare …  Montreal-based TQS (Television Quatre Saisons) showed off its new name, “V”, its new direction (more fun, less doom ‘n’ gloom) and announced a new political affairs show hosted by Mario Dumont … Showcase showed off its new look and its new logo, just like brand new sneakers on the first day of school … and Canada’s struggling ‘E’ network bit the dust as new owner Channel Zero relaunched its ‘E’ stations with a new format. (Whew! Glad that’s over.)

HAPPY LONG WEEKEND

See you next week!

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Wonder Woman sings, Citytv goes cross-border shopping (sigh), and Dame Judi does it again!

SHARPS ‘N’ FLATS: It’s official — Evan Rachel Wood will play Mary Jane Watson and Tony Award winner Alan Cumming will play Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin) in the new musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, which will

CARTER: Billboard Belle

make its Broadway debut next February 25. Tony Award winner Julie Taymor will direct the show, which will feature music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge of U2. The musical, based on the Marvel Comics character, follows the story of teenager Peter Parker, whose life is turned upside-down — literally — when he’s bitten by a genetically altered spider … heiress Cinda Firestone, family inheritor of automobile tire millions, is writing the book and lyrics for the upcoming Broadway musical Family Fortune, to be

BONO: Broadway-bound

produced by her husband, Manny Fox, the guy behind the hit 1981 Duke Ellington musical Sophisticated Ladies … ex-TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, who started out as a singer, finally got around to making that romantic jazz album, and was thrilled to discover that her CD, appropriately called At Last, is now on the Billboard charts. Ear-pleasers include her vocalizing on such standards as George Gershwin’s Summertime, James Taylor’s The Secret of Life, and the Etta James title tune … count Canada A.M. host Seamus O’Regan among Melody Gardot‘s fervent fans. O’Regan, who regards Gardot as an “incredible jazz singer and a mind-blowing songwriter,” says her show here this week was “a concert we’ll talk of in years to come. She entranced the room” … and did you notice that the three top music-makers on the latest Forbes’ magazine’s annual earnings were all women? Madonna, Céline and Beyoncé took first, second and third place respectively; Bruce Springsteen finished a fairly distant fourth.

MY REAL SPACE = MY FLAT SCREEN TV: The consensus that teenagers are abandoning television for the internet is not true – or so says a new report

COX: on Citytv

from ratings counter A. E. Nielsen. According to the study television viewing rates among teens in the U.S. have actually gone up six per cent in the last five years, despite the growth of social media networks and video sites like My Space, Facebook and YouTube … veteran awards show producer Lynn Harvey will once again stage the Gemini Awards, but this time in Calgary, in November, for exec Joe Novak’s Joe Media … and Rogers Media is prepping new acquisition Citytv to compete with rivals CTV and Canwest Global. So beginning this fall Citytv, once the quintessential Toronto station, will simulcast 16 hours of U.S. programming in prime time, including new series with Jenna Elfman, Courteney Cox and Ed O’Neill, and Jay Leno’s new show, which will run nightly at 10 p.m. This summer City is running the U.K. version of Law & Order (do we really need another one???) This fall its Canadian content will include chef Marc Thuet’s new reality show Conviction Kitchen and the second season of the made-in-Winnipeg sitcom Less Than Kind. All of which sounds less than kind to me.

DENCH: quite the Dame

JUDI JUDI JUDI: Talk about yer star power! BBC Worldwide and WGBH are co-producing Cranford 2, a sequel to the award-winning mini-series Cranford for PBS’ Masterpiece Classic series, with Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Francesca Annis, Eileen Atkins, Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry and Tom Hiddleston. And some devoted Dench fans are just now discovering that Dame Judi is the same dame who sang and danced up a storm in big  musicals like Cabaret and A Little Night Music when those big Broadway musicals played London‘s West End theatre district? And yes, her interpretation of Send In The Clowns is spectacular. And, thanks to YouTube, you can watch her do it again, just by clicking here. Enjoy!

HOWARD: campaigning, Hollywood-style

SEE/HEAR: Amazing in this digital day and age what you can still miss. When when the world was watching the U.S. race for president, I was transfixed by Tina Fey’s send-up of Sarah Palin. And I knew of many celebrities who were actively stumping for Barrack Obama. But I had no idea that director Ron Howard would go to the lengths he did – even enlisting his former TV dad Andy Griffiths and his former Happy Days sidekick Henry Winkler – to make a video message just as clever and as classy as he is. Old news to you? Probably. But just in case you were washing your hair that day and missed it, like I did, you can still see it, just by clicking right here.

Now is that historic or what???

TOMORROW:

A Saturday Special

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