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

TV & MOVIES

Let the Awards Begin: Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” an apparent front-runner for this year’s Oscars, has already been granted its first formal accolade, with the American Legion announcing that it will honor Spielberg at its national convention in New Orleans next month. The group--the nation’s largest veterans’ organization with 2.9 million members--will give Spielberg its inaugural Spirit of Normandy Award honoring the film’s role in educating the public about sacrifices made by war veterans.

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Life After ‘Roots’: ABC has announced plans for an eight-hour miniseries about the Civil Rights movement to air in early 2000. The network said “Parting the Waters,” based on Taylor Branch’s best-selling book series, will follow “in the tradition of a miniseries like ‘Roots.’ ” Branch and entertainer Harry Belafonte will be executive producers. . . . CBS, meanwhile, will air a four-hour miniseries in November based on Alex Haley’s novel “Mama Flora’s Family,” which is said to “take up where [Haley’s “Roots”] left off.” Cicely Tyson, Queen Latifah, Blair Underwood and Mario Van Peebles star.

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Marking His Grave: James Dean’s tombstone was reinstalled at his grave site in Fairmount, Ind., on Wednesday, nearly a month after it had been stolen and found dumped on a country road. The 400-pound marker--now affixed with two 24-inch metal rods and cement--was restored in time for the James Dean Festival held each September in Fairmount, a farming community where the actor grew up. Police have made no arrests in the theft.

STAGE

‘Sweeney Todd’s’ Reprise!: The Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Concert series, which presents quickly produced, minimally staged musicals at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, will celebrate its third anniversary by heading to downtown Los Angeles. Artistic director Marcia Seligson announced Thursday that Reprise! has been selected by Stephen Sondheim to present the 20th anniversary concert staging of “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” on March 12-14 at the Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre, to kick off the series’ third season. Next up for Reprise! at UCLA: “The Threepenny Opera,” Sept. 9-20, featuring Theodore Bikel.

POP/ROCK

Gun Claims: Fugees member Wyclef Jean apparently takes reviews very seriously. In the premiere issue of Blaze, a new hip-hop magazine, editor Jesse Washington claims that Wyclef threatened him at gunpoint over a negative review the magazine was about to run on Canibus’ “Can-I-Bus” album, which Wyclef executive-produced. Wyclef, who is in Los Angeles as part of the Smokin’ Grooves tour, has not responded publicly to Washington’s editorial, and his record label, Columbia, referred calls on the matter to a publicist who could not be reached for comment Thursday. Washington says Wyclef claimed that the album copy attained by the magazine was unfinished. “And at the end of our two-hour meeting,” Washington writes, “one of [Wyclef’s] associates--who had mentioned earlier that he had never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it--warned me not to breathe a word of what had just taken place.” Washington goes on to say that the magazine “ultimately decided to take Wyclef’s word that the album was incomplete . . . so we chose not to run the review.”

QUICK TAKES

The movie roles being mentioned as possible vehicles for heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio became one fewer Thursday with the announcement that DiCaprio’s “This Boy’s Life” co-star, Toby Maguire (“The Ice Storm”), will star in the film version of John Irving’s “Cider House Rules.” . . . Sarah Ferguson will get her own talk show on Europe’s Sky One satellite service starting Oct. 5. The series, tentatively called “Surviving Life,” will “be about people and the real problems that they face in society today,” the Duchess of York said, adding that her $80,000 salary will go to charity. . . . The Texas judge who presided over a recent hearing into whether Woody Harrelson’s father should get a new trial on a charge of murdering a federal judge in 1979 withdrew from the case Thursday because he played basketball with the actor. In his filing, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who had not issued his ruling, wrote that “even if neither side were to seek [my] reassignment, the controversy would continue.”