Tupac’s Last Picture Show

It’s hard to know what to expect from Wednesday’s release of “Gang Related,” an Orion Pictures film that features the last screen performance of slain rapper Tupac Shakur. While many of the posthumous projects involving Shakur have been enormous successes--two chart-topping albums plus a straight-to-video biographical film that has sold a whopping 200,000 copies--the one glaring exception was his last film role. “Gridlock’d,” a dark comedy starring Shakur and Tim Roth as heroin addicts caught up in the system as they try to get straight, grossed only $5.5 million and quickly disappeared from theaters after its release last January--despite a soundtrack featuring Shakur that went straight to No. 1. “Tupac’s audience was unprepared to see him in a role that was so very different from his usual screen portrayals, or his music persona,” says Preston Holmes, the producer of “Gridlock’d.” “If he’d been around to promote the film, I think he could have smoothed the way.” In “Gang Related,” Shakur and James Belushi play crooked detectives in a dramatic tale of murder and police corruption. “It won’t hurt that it’s his last screen performance,” says Holmes. It also won’t hurt that four previously unreleased Shakur recordings are featured on the two-disc “Gang Related” soundtrack, which will be released Tuesday on Death Row Records.

Seven Years in Tibet, One Night in Hollywood When the new Brad Pitt movie “Seven Years in Tibet” has its U.S. premiere tonight in Century City, all the usual elements will be there: the big stars, the paparazzi, the screaming fans. But one person scheduled to attend already has mixed feelings about the film. “There is a level of frustration in the Tibetan community that this movie isn’t doing for Tibet what other movies have done for other causes like . . . ‘The Killing Fields’ [did for Cambodia] or ‘Schindler’s List’ [did for Jews],” said John Ackerly of the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, who added that his group is generally supportive of the movie and how it portrays the Chinese occupation of Tibet. . TriStar and Mandalay Entertainment have stressed that “Seven Years in Tibet” is not a political movie, but rather an epic adventure about Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, who in 1939 set out to climb a mountain in the Himalayas and found himself in the mysterious Tibetan city of Lhasa, where he was befriended by the young Dalai Lama. The film debuts Wednesday in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto and expands to about 1,200 screens on Friday.

Coming Up on ‘Keenen’: Keenen! Celebrities hit the talk show circuit when they want to plug their latest film, but what’s a talk show host to do when he wants to get the word out on his film project? He can interview himself on his own show, as Keenen Ivory Wayans will do this week when his syndicated late-night talk show becomes a major promotional launching pad for his new film, “Most Wanted.” In a comedy bit set for Wednesday, Wayans will go one-on-one with Wayans about the New Line action film, which opens nationwide Friday. In addition to starring, Wayans wrote and is executive producer of the movie, which marks his first big-screen appearance since leaping into the late-night arena in early August. His last film, 1996’s “The Glimmer Man” with Steven Seagal, flopped at the box office. Wayans and New Line are pulling out all the stops in promoting the movie. In addition to his “interview,” “Most Wanted” co-stars Jill Hennessy and Jon Voight will drop in on separate nights. Also, New Line has already bought ad time on the show and on Wayans’ late-night rival, “Vibe.” Industry watchers will be keeping tabs to see if “Most Wanted” provides a jump start to Wayans’ faltering TV show. Since its premiere week, his audience has dropped 31% as of the week of Sept. 19, according to Nielsen ratings. Ironically, Wayans and “Most Wanted” may get a boost from “Vibe,” whose producers say they have asked both Wayans and Voight to guest on the show this week.

Not Much of a Sibling Rivalry Anymore As if it weren’t strange enough that Jakob Dylan of the Wallflowers is outselling his rock legend father Bob, who would ever have guessed that the Jackson 5’s kid sister would one day make albums that were more eagerly anticipated than brother Michael’s? But that’s the case with Janet Jackson’s “The Velvet Rope,” which will be released Tuesday on Virgin Records. Her last album of all-new material, 1993’s “janet.,” has sold 6.4 million copies, nearly three times more than Michael’s 1995 two-disc disappointment, “HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I.” And interest in the new collection has been building for months, according to retailers, despite the less-than-stellar radio response to the first single, “Got ‘Til It’s Gone.” “Just like with any Janet album, we’re expecting big things,” says Violet Brown, urban music buyer for the Wherehouse chain. “There’s not a gigantic single up front, but customers have been coming in for quite some time asking for the new album. And with each album, she’s gotten bigger and bigger.” After releasing a pair of commercial flops in the early ‘80s, Jackson hit big with 1986’s “Control,” the first of her three consecutive chart-topping albums.

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers and Contributors