THE ARTSArts Partnership: The Los Angeles City...

THE ARTS

Arts Partnership: The Los Angeles City Council’s arts panel has recommended approval of a partnership in which local cultural groups would help run five municipal arts centers--including the Los Angeles Photography Center and North Hollywood’s Lankershim Arts Center--which have had their budgets slashed in recent years. Pending full council approval, each center will be run by a consortium of two or more arts groups. At Lankershim, the newly formed Community Arts Coalition--comprising the Road Theatre Company, Martin Dancers, Los Angeles Printmaking Society and Synthaxis Theatre Company--plans to organize classes, performances, workshops, exhibitions and festivals, while Urban Pride Inc. plans similar fare, but also in Spanish and Korean, at the Photo Center. Also covered in the plan is management of the Encino Photography Center (which will become the Encino Media and Animation Center), Arroyo Seco Art in the Park and Tujunga’s McGroarty Arts Center.

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Senate Approves NEA Cut: The Senate has approved a 5% cut in the 1995 National Endowment for the Arts budget, higher than the House’s recommended 2% cut, which means a House-Senate conference committee must now hammer out a compromise budget. The Senate version, which would drop the NEA’s budget to $161.6 million, targets the cuts to three specific programs--visual arts, theater and presenting programs--effectively slashing those programs’ budgets by 40%.

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‘Angels’ in Hollywood: “Angels in America,” Tony Kushner’s two-part Pulitzer- and Tony-winning epic drama on the age of AIDS, will return to Los Angeles for a run at the Doolittle Theater in Hollywood next summer, Aug. 8-Sept. 3, 1995. The play, in its last weeks in New York before a national tour, was seen in an earlier version at the Mark Taper Forum in 1992.

POP/ROCK

Top o’ the Chart: Disney’s “The Lion King” got a double dose of good news Wednesday, leading with the word that it roared past the $200-million mark at the nation’s box office Tuesday in 33 days, becoming the second-fastest movie (behind “Jurassic Park”) to reach that distinction. Meanwhile, on the nation’s pop chart, the film’s soundtrack remained in the No. 1 spot, selling 294,984 units. Another soundtrack, from Paramount’s “Forrest Gump,” moved into Billboard’s No. 3 spot with sales of 132,474. Rap also fared particularly well on the Billboard chart this week, taking three of the top 10 spots. MC Eiht’s “We Come Strapped” landed in fifth place, Coolio’s “It Takes a Thief” came in eighth and Warren G.’s “Regulate . . . G-Funk Era” placed ninth. Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones’ “Voodoo Lounge” dropped to No. 6 on the chart, with only 96,265 units sold.

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Drug Charges: Country singer-songwriter Steve Earle has been charged in Nashville with misdemeanor drug possession after police said they found crack cocaine, a glass pipe and 10 syringes in a 1993 Mercury coupe while he was behind the wheel at an apartment complex. Earle, who was also charged with criminal trespass, driving with a suspended license and possession of drug paraphernalia, was freed on $43,500 bail.

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Lewis, IRS Settle: Rocker Jerry Lee Lewis has ironed out his $4.1-million disagreement with the tax man. He has promised to pay the Internal Revenue Service $560,000, which he expects to earn through a new record, concert tour and biography. At various times since 1977, the IRS has seized and sold Lewis’ possessions to pay tax debts. Lewis was found not guilty of tax evasion in 1984.

PEOPLE WATCH

Furry Cat Fight: French actress and animal-rights activist Brigitte Bardot has sharply criticized Italian actress Sophia Loren for agreeing to a multimillion-dollar fur advertising campaign. “I have just learned with immense sadness and profound dismay that you have agreed to sell your name and your image in the most despicable form of advertising, the promotion of furs,” Bardot wrote Loren in a letter made public Wednesday. “It is degrading, repugnant, lamentable and unworthy to accept bloody money derived from animal hides.” Loren has also come under fire from the U.S.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

QUICK TAKES

Despite previous statements that he was finished portraying the thrill-seeking archeologist, actor Harrison Ford tells today’s “Entertainment Tonight” that he is indeed game for a fourth “Indiana Jones” film. . . . The estate of legendary cartoon voice Mel Blanc has filed a $1-million suit in Los Angeles against the makers of Universal Pictures’ “The Flintstones,” claiming that Blanc’s voice was used for the film’s Dino the Dinosaur character without the family’s permission, any screen credit or financial compensation. . . . Band leader Cab Calloway, 86, has been released from a White Plains, N.Y., hospital where he had been recuperating since suffering a massive stroke on June 12. . . . Comedy Central’s “Public Assistance: The Clinton Defense Fund,” a two-hour “live telethon,” raised “over $1,340.51” Tuesday night for President Clinton’s legal fees stemming from the Whitewater and Paula Jones cases.