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

ENTERTAINMENT

Snoop’s Got ‘Game’: Rapper Snoop Dogg’s “Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told” is the nation’s top-selling album for the second straight week after selling nearly 246,000 copies last week. Five new albums entered the chart among the Top 15, including the “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” soundtrack (No. 10) and collections by Funkmaster Flex (4), Vince Gill (11), E-40 (13) and Kelly Price (15). Meanwhile, Liz Phair’s “Whitechocolatespaceegg” sold about 39,000 copies to debut at No. 35.

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Donen Sending ABC ‘Love Letters’: Legendary film director Stanley Donen, who made a splash at this year’s Academy Awards with his unusual song-and-dance acceptance, will make his TV directing debut with a two-hour ABC movie version of A.R. Gurney’s play “Love Letters.” It’s expected to air in the first half of 1999; casting is not yet in place.

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‘Private Ryan’s’ Museum: “Saving Private Ryan’s” director, Steven Spielberg, and star, Tom Hanks, have opened their wallets to support a D-day museum scheduled to open in New Orleans on June 6, 2000--the 56th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. Although declining to give an exact figure, the museum’s founder, historian Stephen Ambrose, said that Hanks and Spielberg had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Ambrose, who wrote the bestseller “D-Day,” was a consultant on “Saving Private Ryan.”

QUICK TAKES

Comedian Robert Townsend has been named host of the new weekly syndicated series “Motown Live,” which premieres Oct. 2 on KCOP-TV Channel 13, airing at midnight. Musical performers confirmed so far for the Friday night series include Wyclef Jean, Monica, Mary J. Blige, K-Ci & JoJo, the O’Jays, the Temptations, Chaka Khan, Gerald Levert and Bryan Adams. . . . “Titanic Live,” the Discovery Channel’s televised expedition to the doomed ocean liner’s real wreckage site, drew more than 3 million viewing households Sunday night, the second-highest ratings in the network’s history (behind only 1997’s “Titanic: Anatomy of a Disaster”). “Titanic Live” will be rebroadcast on Monday at 8 p.m. and midnight. . . . One of Fox’s new series for this fall--the macabre drama “Hollyweird,” from producers Shaun Cassidy and Wes Craven--has apparently been scuttled before ever airing. Sources say the network will move “Guinness World Records: Primetime” (now on Tuesdays) into “Hollyweird’s” planned 9 p.m. Thursday slot. In addition, Fox is expected to delay the premiere of another new series, the Peter Horton vehicle “Brimstone,” until after the World Series in October.