Quick Takes: ‘Winter’s Bone’ wins Gotham prize

Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone,” a gritty drama about an Ozark teenager who must put herself in harm’s way in her search for her drug-dealing father, was named best film of 2010 at the 20th anniversary Gotham Film Awards on Monday evening in New York.

“Winter’s Bone,” the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance in January, also won for best ensemble performance for Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Lauren Sweetser, Garret Dillahunt and Devin Breznahan.

Best documentary honors went to Laura Poitras’ “The Oath.” Earlier in the day, “The Oath” received the International Documentary Assn.’s IDA Humanitas Award.

The Gothams represent the official kickoff of the film award season. They are presented by the Independent Filmmaker Project, the nation’s oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers. The group’s big winner last year, “The Hurt Locker,” went on to win the Oscar for best film, director and screenplay.

—Susan King

‘Dr. Laura’ show moving to Sirius

Laura Schlessinger, who announced in August that she would leave her radio program at the end of the year, said Monday she’s moving the personal advice show to satellite, where she won’t have the restrictions on language and the threat of advertiser pressure that prompted her decision to walk away from the nationally syndicated forum that has been her home for more than three decades.

Her last broadcast will be Dec. 31 on KFWB-AM (980) and scores of other radio stations around the country, and Schlessinger’s “Dr. Laura” program will return Jan. 3 on subscriber-supported Sirius XM Radio, airing weekdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time.

Schlessinger’s decision to leave her most recent situation came a few days after she stirred up controversy with racially insensitive comments. She apologized, but some advocacy groups weren’t satisfied, and several sponsors withdrew their advertising support. Schlessinger, 63, has the third largest audience in the talk radio field, trailing only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

KFWB has not said yet how it plans to replace her in its midday lineup.

—Lee Margulies

CBS extends ‘Young, Restless’

CBS has renewed “The Young and the Restless” for three more years.

TV’s top-rated daytime drama has now been picked up through the 2013-14 season. It premiered in 1973.

CBS’ announcement Monday comes on the heels of NBC’s recent renewal of its long-running soap, “Days of Our Lives,” for two more years. Both shows are produced by Sony Pictures Television.

The glad tidings strike a contrast to the usual downbeat news about daytime dramas, whose ratings overall have been falling for years. In September, TV’s oldest soap, “As the World Turns,” left the air after 54 years.

—Associated Press

Picasso trove: gift or theft?

Pablo Picasso almost never stopped creating, leaving thousands of drawings, paintings and sculptures that lure crowds to museums and mansions worldwide. Now a retired electrician says that 271 of the master’s creations have been sitting for decades in his garage.

Picasso’s heirs are claiming theft, the art world is savoring what appears to be an authentic find and the workman, who installed burglar alarms for Picasso, is defending what he calls a gift from the most renowned artist of the 20th century.

Picasso’s son and other heirs say they were approached by electrician Pierre Le Guennec in September to authenticate the undocumented art from Picasso’s Cubist period.

Instead, they filed a suit for illegal possession of the works — all but alleging theft by a man not known to be among the artist’s friends. Police raided the electrician’s French Riviera home last month, questioned him and his wife and confiscated the disputed artworks.

Le Guennec and his wife say Picasso’s second wife gave them a trunk full of art that they kept virtually untouched until they decided to put their affairs in order for their children.

All of the art is now held by the French agency charged with battling illegal traffic in cultural items.

—Associated Press

Sex and the single insect

Author Rowan Somerville won literature’s little-coveted Bad Sex in Fiction Prize on Monday for the use of unsettling insect imagery in his novel “The Shape of Her.”

Judges of the annual literary award said they were especially impressed by a passage comparing lovemaking to “a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect.”

The prize, founded in 1993 by London-based Literary Review magazine, aims to draw attention to “the crude, tasteless and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels.”

—Associated Press