CRIME > Boy George to pick up trash in August heat

NEW YORK - Boy George will perform his court-ordered community service by picking up trash on city streets in the August heat, a sanitation spokesman said.

The one-time Culture Club singer will be issued a shovel, broom, plastic bags and gloves when he reports for five days of work on Aug. 14, department spokesman Vito Turso said.

"This is the epitome of community service," Turso told the Daily News for Monday editions. "It's not like he's going to be working in an air-conditioned office."

Born George O'Dowd, the singer has struggled with drug problems for years. He was ordered to do community service after pleading guilty in March to false reporting of an incident. He called police with a bogus report of a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment in October, and the responding officers found cocaine inside.

Turso's statement was the first indication of what sort of work the singer would be given. He could be assigned to pick up streets in Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita or parts of the Lower East Side.

O'Dowd, 45, became an '80s icon with his androgynous appearance and vocals on hits like "Karma Chameleon" and "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" A Manhattan judge threatened the singer with jail time if he failed to complete his five days before Aug. 28.

ART > Home is where the art is

Forget austere galleries - the new place to show art is in the living-room.

Gallery owner Simon Gillespie gets up to close his office door against the noise from below. A van delivering artworks? No: "They're shampooing the living room carpet," he explains.

Caroline Wiseman: 'I'm trying to show how good modern art looks in a period home'

For many, the experience of viewing modern art is inseparable from the blank austerity of the "white cube" gallery. But several figures on the British art scene are moving contemporary art into the domestic sphere - complete with sound-effects - by opening up their own homes as exhibition spaces.

For dealers, displaying art in a domestic context can be good for business, strengthening their relationship with artists and clients.

Gillespie, an art restorer, consultant and artist manager, converted a room in his townhouse in Islington, north London, into his gallery, Rollo Contemporary Art, in 2003. He had been inspired by two years spent in Mexico City, where he was often invited to exhibitions held in living rooms.

"Artists enjoy coming to an unusual space and showing their art in a beautiful house like this," he says. "It's better for them to have someone who really knows their art showing visitors around - I can explain what the works are about, and who the artist is."

The gallery is open to the public, but most visitors feel more comfortable arranging an appointment. These visitors are mainly youngish, comfortably-off professionals who are reaching a time in their life when they want to invest in art, as an addition to their home and as an investment.

Viewing art in what feels like an oversized living room makes it easier for them to visualise where it might hang in their home. Gillespie is often asked for advice on framing and positioning artworks. Works at Rollo sell for anything between £250 and £15,000.

Caroline Wiseman, a fellow art dealer and former barrister, has a four-storey Georgian house in Stockwell, south London, whose walls are crammed with original works by Chagall, Hockney and Bridget Riley. "I get a lot of couples in their thirties and forties, looking to buy art for the first time," she says. "They want to know where it will look good."

Wiseman's exhibitions showcase established, big-draw artists rather than new names - she is currently displaying works by British abstract painter Howard Hodgkin, and previous collections have focused on Matisse and Picasso.

"I'm trying to show how good modern art looks in a period house," she says, pointing out a Picasso drawing hanging over the stairwell. "People can feel intimidated going into a gallery. They come here, they have a drink, and they feel at home."

Many of the paintings and sculptures - chosen with first-time investors in mind - go for around £1,500, while other works are worth up to £50,000.

At the other end of the scale, those looking for a space to display innovative contemporary art by less renowned artists - whose works are often in a less take-home medium than painting - are also finding the home gallery a financial boon.

Three years ago, Darren Flook and Christabel Stewart turned the front room of their house on Old Bethnal Green Road, east London, into an exhibition space. They invited artists from outside London to stay in a spare bedroom while exhibiting, and called the gallery Hotel.

"It gave the artists a real chance to see what the London art scene is like," Flook says. "And hotels here are so expensive."

Opening a space at home was also a means of exercising control over the art they could show. "It was a decision of economy," says Stewart. "We wanted to be able to show artists without being subject to commercial considerations."

They have used that control to show a huge variety of artworks in Hotel's front room, from A Pattern Language, an installation of a mocked-up living room by American artist Carol Bove, to Vacancies by Peter Saville, featuring a neon sign flashing inside a plastic box. Neither is likely to be snapped up by young professionals looking to decorate the spare room.

Nonetheless, Hotel has turned into a successful business. The gallery saw artist Michael Bauer's pieces sell out on the first day of last year's Frieze Art Fair, while all the works by the New York-based artist Carter, who showed earlier this year, went for about £2,500 a piece before the exhibition began.

On the back of this success, last year Flook and Stewart bought the empty shop below their house and moved Hotel downstairs. Holding private views at home remains a challenge, however.

On one occasion more than 200 people were jammed into the narrow house. "It was packed out," Flook says. "One guy was setting off fireworks on the balcony."

MASH-UP > Fellini's "8-1/2" meets Eminem's "8 Mile"

The folks at The AV Club have cleverly created a trailer for Fellini's 8-1/2 in the style of Eminem's 8 Mile, calling it 8-1/2 Mile. As they say, "If Fellini's 8-1/2 came out in 2006, this is what the trailer would have looked like." Now we know.

MOVIES > Woody Allen returns to London with minor comedy

What is it about England that makes Woody Allen think of murder? His past two films, shot in England, revolve around murder. Well, murder and Scarlett Johansson, to be accurate. Unlike his crime drama "Match Point," he returns to comedy in "Scoop", a light-hearted if ghostly murder mystery that for all the contemporary English locations feels like a 1930s studio film including a plot that bears little scrutiny. Along with the delectable Johansson, the film offers fun roles for Allen, Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane.

Audiences certainly appreciated the change in scenery and approach Allen took in "Match Point" ($23 million domestic boxoffice). Focus Features should expect more of the same with this amusing if minor work that delivers many of the hallmark Woody Allen pleasures.

Not that one doesn't miss the sharp asides from his best comedies. ("We can walk to the curb from here" or "I have to go now, Duane, because I'm due back on the planet Earth" from "Annie Hall," for instance). There are a few here. One of the best has Allen declare he was born to the Jewish persuasion but later converted to Narcissism. Otherwise, the dialogue is more prattle than zingers.

Allen, long fascinated with encounters with death, imagines that a crack Fleet Street journalist, Joe Strombel (McShane), gets a hot tip from a fellow passenger on a boat ride to the Afterlife. Slipping away from death, he is determined to work the story from beyond the grave.

At this same moment, a third-rate (to be generous) magician named Splendini, who actually is Sid Waterman from Brooklyn (that would be Allen, of course), is performing his act in London. A young American journalism student, Sondra Pransky (Johansson), is plucked from the audience to be placed inside the "De-Materializer." To her astonishment, when the door shuts, Joe's spirit appears to her and quickly fills her in on his big scoop.

This metaphysical event sends Sondra and Sid into the streets of London and surrounding countryside in pursuit of the "Tarot Card Killer." Joe's tip is that the serial killer might be British aristocrat Peter Lyman (Jackman).

Allen plays his stereotypes to the hilt. Sondra is a clever but ditzy American blonde, who immediately falls for the suave charm of her prey. Sid is an old wind-bag, who talks in trite phrases -- "from the bottom of my heart" and "with all due respect" -- and treats everyone he meets as an audience. Peter oozes upper-class allure and glamour with small hints that darkness may lurk beneath this too-smooth exterior.

Meanwhile, the detective team of Waterman and Pransky is unimaginably bad. Their idea of looking for clues is to shuffle through Peter's briefcase. Sure, serial killers always leave major clues in briefcases. Naturally, the two actually do find clues in odd, casual places.

Also their roles switch. At first, Sid is certain they have the wrong man. Peter doesn't act or look like a serial killer. "I'd be very surprised if he killed one person," he declares. (Come to think of it, that's not a bad aside.) Then Sondra, besotted with love, wants to exonerate Peter and it's Sid, egged on by the diaphanous Joe, apparently no longer needing the De-Materializer, who is certain Peter is a killer.

"Scoop" flies by in a snappy, well-paced 96 minutes, but you can't help noticing that Allen is recycling his old movies. Along with the fascination with things metaphysical ("Alice," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion") and the dregs of show business ("Broadway Danny Rose") and Bob Hope-style murder mysteries ("Manhattan Murder Mystery"), there even is the use of a coincidence in which a woman spies her man, supposedly out of town, across a crowded street ("Husbands and Wives"). Nothing wrong with that but these things were often sharper and funnier the first time.

With the aid of accomplished cinematographer Remi Adefarasin and designer Maria Djurkovic, Allen romanticizes London and environs just as he did so many for Manhattan. This is an ideal England with pleasing interiors and gracious exteriors, often gardens or parks, where everyone moves to the sounds of classical music.

AVIATION > Lawsuits Fly Over Google Founders' Big Private Plane

Even billionaires have disputes with their contractors.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the low-key co-founders of Google Inc., set tongues wagging last year when they bought1 a used Boeing 767 widebody as an unusually large private jet. The 767-200 typically carries 180 passengers and is three times as heavy as a conventional executive plane. Mr. Page said last year that he and Mr. Brin would use it for personal travel, including taking "large numbers of people to places such as Africa." He said it would hold about 50 passengers when refurbished, but declined to comment on other details of the plane, which has been kept ultra secret.

Now the Delaware holding company that technically owns the 767, Blue City Holdings LLC, is embroiled in multiple lawsuits with an aviation designer hired to plan and oversee the massive plane's interior renovation.

Blue City in early 2005 hired Leslie Jennings, a high-end aviation designer whose work includes planes for Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen and assorted royalty and heads of state, to transform the plane, which aviation records indicate previously flew for over a decade in Qantas Airways' fleet.

Under the plans Mr. Jennings worked up for the executives, and repeatedly modified according to their specifications, the widebody airliner was to include a lounge near the front primarily for Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt's use, with two adjoining staterooms for the co-founders farther aft, Mr. Jennings says. People familiar with the matter said last year that the plans also called for a large sitting-and-dining area and space near the rear for staff and passengers.

Leslie Jennings says the drawings, which were created and distributed to aviation executives, are near-exact copies of his plans for refurbishing the Blue City 767. The plans depict, from front to back, a lounge area, two adjoining bedrooms, a large sitting and dining area, a seating area and large galley.

Mr. Jennings says Messrs. Brin and Page "had some strange requests," including hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane. At one point he witnessed a dispute between them over whether Mr. Brin should have a "California king" size bed, he says. Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt stepped in to resolve that by saying, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom. Let's move on." Mr. Jennings says Mr. Schmidt at another point told him, "It's a party airplane."

But last October, Blue City terminated Mr. Jennings's contract, saying he wasn't doing his job properly. Mr. Jennings then filed a nearly $200,000 lien against the aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration for payment he hadn't received. He later filed a complaint related to the matter against Blue City and Gore Design Completions Ltd., the San Antonio executive-jet outfitting firm that worked on the plane, in District Court in Bexar County, Texas.

Months later, Blue City and Mr. Jennings continue to face off in acrimonious court battles with legal fees steadily mounting. In its complaint filed in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County, Blue City alleged that Mr. Jennings didn't properly perform the design work and failed to closely manage the plane's renovation in line with the contract for $340,000 he had signed, and various additional expenses that Mr. Jennings estimates at nearly $50,000. A court filing says the refurbishment was planned as a 10-month project, which Mr. Jennings says he understood was originally budgeted for about $10 million but eventually cost more.

Mr. Jennings, 67 years old, says the allegations are groundless. He says he was wrongly fired after trying to alert Mr. Schmidt that Blue City was going to be overcharged for some materials used in the interior of the plane. Mr. Jennings says allegations that he wasn't sufficiently involved in the project or accessible to the plane's owners are false, and has over 1,200 emails related to the project to disprove them.

David Schwarz, a lawyer for Blue City at Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, said in a statement that the company proceeded with the plane's refurbishment following Mr. Jennings's firing, but took legal action to enforce its agreement with Mr. Jennings and protect the confidentiality of the project. Mr. Jennings's request for a temporary restraining order, which a Texas judge denied in January, could have halted work on the project.

Mr. Jennings, who does business as Design Associates International of Mead, Okla., says Blue City is deliberately running up his legal costs, as the suit takes a toll on his health and his business. "They're intent on seeing whether they can break every bone in my body and drain every cent out of me," says Mr. Jennings.


Copies of views of the planned interior, the designer says.
Mr. Schwarz in the statement said Blue City declined to comment on any aspect of the aircraft and said Mr. Jennings's comments to The Wall Street Journal about the plane appeared to violate a confidentiality agreement and an April court order.

In response, Mr. Jennings says there's a lot of information about the plane's refurbishment publicly available already, including a copy of the floor plan and other drawings circulating among aviation-industry executives. Mr. Jennings says those plans and drawings circulating appear to be virtually exact copies of his designs that someone else created. "I don't see how there's anything confidential about the layout of that plane," he says.

"It does seem to be a tremendous fight over relatively few issues," says Bruce Cleeland, a lawyer for Mr. Jennings with Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP in Santa Ana, Calif.

Mr. Schwarz did not respond to a request to interview Messrs. Brin, Page or Schmidt, which a Google spokesman referred to him. A spokeswoman for Gore Design declined to comment. A Google spokesman and Mr. Page said last year that the plane has no formal connection with the company and that Google would not be reimbursing the co-founders for its costs.

None of the parties will say where the 767 is or whether it has been finished. According to an online flight-tracking database, Blue City has requested with the National Business Aviation Association trade group that data related to the 767's whereabouts not be made public.

MOVIES > Venice honor, premiere for David Lynch

ROME (Hollywood Reporter) - David Lynch, the writer-director best known for "Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man" and "Mulholland Drive," will receive a lifetime achievement award at the 63rd Venice Film Festival, organizers announced Friday.

It will be a double honor for Lynch, whose mystery film "Inland Empire" will have its world premiere -- out of competition -- at the festival.

"Lynch has a fascination for what is usually unseen -- for mysterious beauty, of the kind that appears in strange places and sometimes turns out to be horrific," Venice artistic director Marco Muller said in a statement.

"Inland Empire," set near Los Angeles, stars Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons and Harry Dean Stanton.

The Venice festival opens August 30 and runs through September 9.

DIGITAL > Ebay looks to cash in on blogs

Ebay wants to create software tools that will allow the online auction company to cash in on the rapid growth of blogging, a senior executive told the Financial Times.

The group’s plans reflect a wider push by many of the world’s largest companies to tap into the potential revenues from blogs. More than 75,000 blogs are created each day, adding to a current total of about 35m, according to Technorati, which tracks blogs. This rate of expansion has attracted interest from executives from a range of industries.


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But many are unsatisfied with their current options for engaging with the fragmented and independ­ent-minded community of bloggers.

Courtney Holtpeter, a strategist at Universal Music, said: “There are not enough touch points between the places that music fans, for example, are finding out about new things and the places they can buy those things.”

Ebay wants to build bridges by developing software which it can then put in the hands of bloggers, allowing them to create links between niche communities and relevant products.

“Our approach would be to develop new tools that we can turn over to bloggers, so they can define the natural shape of the marketplace on their own. That is how Ebay originally developed,” Doug McCallum, UK managing director of Ebay, said in an interview.

He said some of the ideas for this software were likely to come from Ebay’s open-source network.

While Ebay’s plans are still in very early stages, similar software is being launched this week by MeCommerce, a venture-backed company that will allow bloggers to insert product listings inside their blogs and keep 50 per cent of the profits.

The service reflects the kind of embedded approach companies have been groping for.

The idea behind the software is to allow bloggers to recommend music, books, DVDs and T-shirts to readers who can make impulse purchases without leaving the blog. MeCommerce provides the inventory and the distribution using the same partners as Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble, and uses payment systems such as Google Checkout.

The San Francisco start-up is unusual in that it was created to allow non-profit groups to raise money in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

But this week it is spinning the service out as a wider e-commerce platform for bloggers, and is in talks with partners such as Reebok and several major music labels. Yobie Benjamin, co-founder, said the 50/50 revenue split was part of its “ethical commitment to empowering people” to develop micro-businesses.

The entrepreneur does not expect the product-serving technology to turn the company into the next Google, but he thinks there is a gap in the market between what is available from Ebay and Amazon.

“We think we can fundamentally alter the way retailing is done. We want to take away all the barriers to becoming an online retailer,” he said.

“Ebay can’t do this because they don’t have the inventory. Google don’t have the distribution infrastructure. Amazon would have to change their entire financial structure,” Mr Benjamin argued.

The prototype has received rave reviews from bloggers.

Ryan Wall, a blogger, wrote: “Bloggers in the past had to use other major retailers that only offered them a 4 to 8.5 per cent return on their sales. The products were purchased under the supplier’s umbrella brand and the blogger didn’t retain customers for repeat purchases.”

“With MeCommerce, consumers buy directly from the advertisement by using a simple interface to complete the purchase. This has interesting ramifications on the consumer’s mindset and blogger branding. Since the consumer never leaves the blog during the purchase, the consumer perceives that he or she is directly supporting the blogger,” he said.

However, it will be the ability to convert this initial enthusiasm into transactions that will determine the level of investment by larger companies.

ARCHITECTURE > Frank Gehry to design Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - The Guggenheim Foundation announced Saturday it had commissioned American architect Frank Gehry to build a new branch of the Guggenheim modern and contemporary art museum in this Gulf Emirate.

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is planned at 323,000 square feet, larger than any of the existing Guggenheim museums.

Construction was expected to begin shortly on Saadiyat Island, which is being developed as the cultural district of the Emirates' capital city, officials here said.

The museum is expected to be finished in five years.

It will display its own major collection of contemporary art and exhibit works from the Guggenheim Foundation's global collections, according to a government statement.

Abu Dhabi, like the flashier neighboring emirate of Dubai, is in the midst of an energy-fueled economic boom that is quickly filling the Persian Gulf cities with luxury housing and resorts. Observers say the development of a world-class art museum like the Guggenheim may serve to defuse critics who have complained the cities lack the cultural amenities of the world's great cities.

The Abu Dhabi government signed a memorandum of understanding to build the museum with Guggenheim Foundation director Thomas Krens on Saturday, as royal family members and star architect Gehry looked on.

"Today's signing represents the determination of the Abu Dhabi government to create a world-class cultural destination for its residents and visitors," Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement.

Established by philanthropist millionaire Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1937, the foundation draws more than 2.5 million visitors per year to its flagship museum in New York and local branches in Bilbao, Spain; Berlin; Venice, Italy; and Las Vegas.