NEWS: Smart TV, Tin Funnel, Dark Shadows, LONE STAR

Producer Richard Zanuck Talks Dark Shadows Delays
"It's unlikely, while everybody intends to make the picture, and we're still working on the script and all the rest, it's unlikely that we can start it earlier than the beginning of next year," he continued. "Johnny had committed and he has to do Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides first. He had a long-standing, firm, unchangeable contract to do that. That's a big project and he doesn't start that until later in the summer. So there you have it and we're waiting in line."

HOLLYOAKS plans 'brilliant' murder producer Paul Marquess teases
The Channel 4 soap's new boss - who has been dubbed the 'Axe Man' after cutting numerous characters from the program - is making numerous changes to the long-running show and is thrilled to be working on a "clever" new plot which will see the demise of another village resident. He said: "Next January, there's the most brilliant murder. It's just brilliant - it's so clever. It's not my idea, it was one of the writer's. We're not going to kill 15 characters in one go. There is going to be something later in the year. It's not what people expect."

Fox's Kevin Reilly calls LONE STAR a "modern-day DALLAS"
Reilly called it “a modern-day DALLAS” and it features a drawling Jon Voight as the head of “a multi-million-dollar corporation.” But the youth-demo draw will be James Wolk as a con-man who sets out to fleece Voight only to fall in love with his daughter (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS' Adrianne Palicki). Watch the trailer.

Pat Berry selling mansion for $5.23 million
Pat Barry, the ex-Davenport star of stage, screen and soap opera, is selling her mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills for $5.23 million. She told the Los Angeles Times that the place no longer meets her needs. “It’s a very big house with lots of stairs,” said Pat, Those stairs make a difference. Pat is 88, a 1940 graduate of the former Davenport High — now Central — who drove to school in a flashy Packard convertible bought for her by her daddy, Paul, a physician.

Google and Intel in web TV launch
A new report in the Financial Times suggests that Google and Intel, in partnership with Sony, will unveil their new "Smart TV" platform later this week at Google's Develop I/O conference in San Francisco. Google may be unveiling the "Smart TV" technology at its developer conference on May 19 and 20 in order to encourage the Android developer community to "create applications for TVs."

Paolo Seganti's "The Tin Funnel" available at Amazon.com
A great secret and a small wooden instrument case, secreted within the crumbling walls of a house and protected by a nature that has come to life, embark on a fantastic journey that begins in Italy, on a sunny Tuscan hilltop, where a young couple lives a simple life, filled with love and affection they lavish onto their only son Duccio and on the surrounding nature, with which Duccio strikes a pact of friendship and unending loyalty.A leap forward of more than a century unravels the mystery and the tale on American soil where one of the many sons of immigrants has made his life: he too is called Duccio.

He is an exceptional child possessed with the unusual gifts of hearing with his heart and seeing with his mind’s eye.Music is the thread that unites the severed stories through time, as they weave and intersect each other like dreams until they become one, united in a magic seesaw of events where suspension of disbelief becomes a constant, like an act of faith able to conceive of a world where the elements, the trees and the animals, are celebrated for their extraordinary communicative and participatory roles.