Stone Temple Pilots’ Singer Tests Solo Waters

Scott Weiland, the high-profile lead singer in the multiplatinum rock group Stone Temple Pilots, faces one of pop music’s toughest challenges this week when Atlantic Records releases his first solo album. For every Sting or Don Henley--who maintained strong industry presences after leaving the Police and the Eagles bands, respectively--scores of artists have been humbled by seeing their solo projects struggle commercially. The encouraging thing for Weiland, who has battled heroin addiction in recent years, is that the early reviews on the album, “12 Bar Blues,” have been positive--something rarely achieved by any of the Pilots’ collections. An added plus is that Weiland also has in his corner Daniel Lanois, one of the industry’s most respected artist-producers. Lanois, who has worked on Grammy-winning albums by U2 and Bob Dylan, remixed five tracks on Weiland’s album, which will be released Tuesday, and he’ll play guitar on Weiland’s upcoming tour. To help promote the album, Weiland performs Friday on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.”

Classic Films to Please Even Film Buffs So, your name is Barry Reardon and, as head of distribution at Warner Bros., you’re trying to think of a way to commemorate the studio’s 75th anniversary. So, you decide to celebrate the occasion by selecting the classic films that the studio has released over the past seven decades, get brand-new prints and then run them in theaters. Simple task, right? Not quite. Not when there are 4,000 titles in the studio archives to sift through. And not when you know every film buff from Tarzana to Tashkent will have an opinion about what constitutes a classic film. But the list of 33 movies Reardon and his staff have assembled is impressive, nonetheless. It includes “The Jazz Singer” (1927), “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), “Casablanca” (1942), “The Searchers” (1956), “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989) and “GoodFellas” (1990), just to name a few. Since there were limits on how many movies could be shown, some good ones were left off the list. “Sergeant York” (1941), featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Gary Cooper, didn’t make the cut, while the Academy Award-winning film “Chariots of Fire” (1981) and the Stanley Kubrick thriller “The Shining” (1980) were only optional choices. “Unfortunately, we had to leave a lot out,” Reardon said. But those that made the cut will be available for public viewing beginning Friday and continuing for a week at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, the Sony Lincoln Square Theater in New York City and at San Francisco’s Castro Theater. On April 10, the Warner Bros. Festival of Classics will spread to dozens of other cities. Tickets can be purchased either for individual screenings, $15 for all-day passes or $60 for the entire week. The screenings will be grouped by decades, with Friday’s films covering the 1970s, Saturday’s the 1980s and Sunday’s the 1990s. Then next Monday, films from the 1930s will be shown, with the remaining decades shown on following days. As an added bonus, Reardon said, director William Friedkin will discuss his film “The Exorcist” (1973) before it screens on Friday night at the Chinese Theater, while on Sunday, Clint Eastwood (“Unforgiven”) and Oliver Stone (“JFK”) will discuss their movies.

Morning Report will continue Tuesday through Saturday.