Quick Takes - Oct. 29, 2010

Final year of ‘Big Love’

Sister wives across America are going to be crushed: “Big Love” is coming to an end.

On Thursday, Michael Lombardo, president of HBO Programming, announced that the show’s fifth season, which premieres Jan. 16, will be its final one.

Series creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer said that the Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series — which follows the lives of Salt Lake City businessman Bill Henrickson, his three wives, Barb, Nicki and Margene, and their nine kids in three houses — had simply reached a natural conclusion.

HBO has given renewals to two other series: “Eastbound & Down” and “Bored to Death.”

—Melissa Maerz

Protesting on the red carpet

The marital drama “Last Night,” which deals with questions of temptation, betrayal and defining infidelity, opened the Rome Film Festival on Thursday, but a red carpet protest by hundreds of Italian movie-industry workers stole the show.

Hundreds of actors, directors, screenwriters and other workers of the Italian culture industry invaded the festival, forcing organizers to scrap the red carpet ceremony with Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes and other cast members from “Last Night.”

The high-profile stunt was part of an ongoing dispute, with the workers protesting funding cuts to the culture sector by the government.

—Associated Press

Actress wants Sheen in jail

A porn actress who was with actor Charlie Sheen in a New York hotel when, according to police, he became emotionally disturbed this week wants his probation on a Colorado assault conviction revoked because of the incident, her spokesman said Thursday.

Christina Walsh, 22, who has made adult films under the name Capri Anderson, will fly to Aspen, Colo., on Monday to speak with Pitkin County officials about the incident, which left her “pretty shaken up,” spokesman Kevin Blatt said.

Sheen, 45, spent several hours in a New York hospital Tuesday after police responded to an early morning call about “an emotionally disturbed person” at the Plaza Hotel, a law enforcement source said. Sheen’s representative blamed an “adverse allergic reaction” to a medication for the hospitalization.

Police did not file any criminal charges against Sheen.

—CNN

Garth Brooks plans benefit

Country superstar Garth Brooks will ride to the rescue of victims of the flooding that devastated middle Tennessee in May with a benefit concert on Dec. 17 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

“Around Christmas time is when people seem to need the most help, and when people feel the most giving, so the timing just seemed to make sense,” Brooks told The Times on Thursday after a news conference in Nashville. “This [flooding] happened in the first of May. You let the first wave of help come in and then you know there are going to be people who fall through the cracks. This is going to hopefully help them.”

Proceeds will go to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee for flood relief. Brooks said ticket demand will determine whether he adds more performances.

—Randy Lewis

Webber puts up for-sale sign

British composer and impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber said Thursday that he is selling four of his company’s seven London musical theaters to reduce debt.

Webber’s Really Useful Group will sell the Palace, Her Majesty’s, the Cambridge and the New London, with a combined capacity of 4,900 seats.

It will retain the larger Palladium, Theatre Royal Drury Lane and its 50% interest in the Adelphi, which together represent 6,100 seats.

The award-winning 62-year-old composer of “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera” had surgery for prostate cancer in 2009.

Post-operative complications contributed to the delay of the Broadway opening of Lloyd Webber’s new musical, “Love Never Dies,” until 2011.

—Reuters

Finally

Canceled: “Caprica,” the prequel spinoff of “Battlestar Galactica,” won’t be renewed for a second season, the Syfy network said, blaming low ratings for the decision.