Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

DANCE

L.A. Ballet Loses Mervyn’s Grant: The Mervyn’s-Target department store chain has canceled its three-year $975,000 grant to Los Angeles Ballet because of the company’s inability to produce George Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” in 1995, according to Mervyns spokeswoman Sandra Salyer. The grant provided L.A. Ballet with $162,500 in April, but funding and loans from other sources fell through, and all of the company’s scheduled 1995 performances have been canceled.

MOVIES

Mapplethorpe Movie Planned: The story of the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe, whose controversial homoerotic photographs spawned a 1990 court case in which a Cincinnati museum director was found not guilty on obscenity charges for displaying the works, is headed toward the big screen. Fine Line Features is in final negotiations on the picture, which would be based on a recently published biography by Patricia Morrisroe. Alek Keshishian, who did Madonna’s “Truth or Dare” documentary, is to direct.

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Tributes to Pryor, Cook: The American Cinematheque will salute Richard Pryor with “Mojo Man,” a Nov. 10 to 12 film festival featuring a number of the comedian’s films and footage from Pryor’s personal archives, including unreleased tape of him in concert. American Cinematheque will also honor the late British comedian Peter Cook with a tribute on Nov. 16, which would have been his 58th birthday. Cook died in January; his longtime partner, Dudley Moore, will host the event, and his widow, Lin Cook, is scheduled to attend. Both events are open to the public and will take place at the Directors Guild in Hollywood.

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Festival Highlights: Oscar winner “Forrest Gump,” the Jodie Foster-narrated “It Was a Wonderful Life” and the Kim Fields-directed “The Silent Bomb” are among the offerings at this weekend’s “Best of the Fests” Saturday and Sunday at Universal Studios’ Alfred Hitchcock Theatre. The festival, presented by the World Film Institute, features two screens of award-winning films from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day. Additional offerings include “Me & the Gods,” starring Nick Cassavetes, Abe Vigoda and Richard Moll; “Legends of the Hollywood Blacklist,” narrated by Burt Lancaster; “The Accident,” starring John Savage and Sean Patrick Flanery and “Song of Songs,” directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring George Segal, Sally Kirkland and Brooke Adams.

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Catholic Stamp of Approval: Actor Gregory Peck will receive a lifetime achievement award at Sunday’s 1995 Catholics in Media Awards, presented by Cardinal Roger Mahony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Additional CIMA winners include Gregory Nava’s multi-generational movie, “Mi Familia” (My Family); the CBS TV series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and PBS’ long-running children’s program, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

TELEVISION

Bad Blood: “Murder, She Wrote” star Angela Lansbury has launched her strongest criticism yet of CBS’ move of her show from her successful Sunday night time slot to the NBC-dominated Thursdays, saying the network “has made it abundantly clear that they no longer want anything to do with my demographic.” Lansbury, quoted in the Nov. 4 TV Guide, also refers to a recent lunch with CBS Entertainment president Leslie Moonves, at which she expressed her displeasure, and says, “He never once said, ‘We want to keep you on our network,’ and that was extraordinarily hurtful.” Moonves responds: “Short of moving [the show] back to Sunday, there is nothing that I or CBS will not do for her.” But Lansbury says she’s already planning her first post-”Murder” project, a Jerry Herman-written TV musical called “Mrs. Santa Claus,” and “I don’t want [CBS] to have it.”

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‘Real World’ Cast Search: MTV is looking for business students, street-smart entrepreneurs, computer wizards, artists and sales people ages 18 through 25 for its upcoming season of “The Real World,” which will follow seven folks sharing a loft in Miami as they launch their own small business. The show’s casting director will screen applicants today from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at an MTV booth at the “Creativity in America ‘95” expo at Universal Studios. All applicants must be single. MTV has also set up a “Real World” casting hot line at (818) 505-7795.

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Fox Picks Up ‘Space’: Fox proclaimed its confidence Friday in its new Sunday night action/adventure series, “Space: Above and Beyond,” by ordering 10 more episodes, marking a full 22-show season order. The 7-8 p.m. series, about a squadron of first-year Marine Corps fighter pilots on the front line of an intergalactic war in the year 2063, ranks only 70th out of 116 prime-time network programs. It is, however, the Fox network’s eighth-highest-rated series.

ART

Santa Barbara Museum Head: Robert H. Frankel, 52, director of the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Va., has been named director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, effective Jan. 1. Frankel, an Ohio native whose earlier directorships included the Miami Center for the Fine Arts and the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, is a specialist in 16th- and 17th-Century European art. He fills a post that has been vacant for more than a year. Former director Paul Perrot retired in July, 1994.