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

Hootie Members Defend Indigo Girls: Two members of the pop group Hootie & the Blowfish are speaking out against an Irmo, S.C., high school’s decision to cancel a free show by the Indigo Girls. Hootie drummer Jim Sonefeld and fellow band member Mark Bryan wrote letters in The State newspaper in nearby Columbia on Sunday denouncing Irmo High School’s cancellation of an Indigo Girls show because Emily Saliers and Amy Ray are lesbians. “As a resident of South Carolina,” Sonefeld wrote, “I always find it frustrating to come home and read headlines filled with racial injustice and prejudices of all forms.” He added that the incident was another reason why South Carolina “is viewed as socially medieval.” Gerald Witt, principal at the suburban high school, called off the Thursday concert after some parents complained.

TELEVISION

Heston Rips Streisand: Actor and National Rifle Assn. executive Charlton Heston called Barbra Streisand the “Hanoi Jane of the Second Amendment” on Monday in a round of rhetoric over a TV movie she produced. Streisand defended the accuracy of “The Long Island Incident,” and the film’s director denounced Heston’s remark as inflammatory. The movie, which aired Sunday on NBC, told the story of Carolyn McCarthy, who won a seat in Congress after a gunman killed her husband and five other people on a New York commuter train in 1993. McCarthy campaigned on the issue of gun control. Heston, an NRA vice president, said during a news conference in Beverly Hills that the movie misrepresented the NRA and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which deals with the right to bear arms.

Complaints Against Denver Stations Dismissed: Federal regulators renewed the licenses of four Denver TV stations, dismissing complaints that their local evening newscasts contained excessive and exploitative violence, among other things. The Federal Communications Commission said Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a nonprofit group that monitored the newscasts at different periods between 1994 and 1997, failed to make a case against the stations. The group alleged that the stations’ newscasts suffered from “toxic TV news syndrome,” which it defined as containing excessive and exploitative violence and deficient news coverage, being overly commercialized and trivial and promoting racial and gender stereotyping. All four stations denied the allegations.

MUSIC

Buffalo Philharmonic Taps Falletta: JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, has been appointed to the same post with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra beginning with the 1998-99 season. Falletta, 44, is one of only two women in the history of American music to assume such a major music directorship, joining Marin Alsop of the Colorado Symphony. Falletta has been music director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra since 1991 and of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra since 1989, when she became the first American woman to lead a regional orchestra.

ART

Louvre Security Questioned After Theft: Officials at the Louvre were examining security measures Monday after a thief stole a $1.3 million painting by Camille Corot from a room without TV surveillance. The theft--the second this year at the Paris landmark--caused officials to question security at one of the world’s most famous museums. “But there’s no magic wand,” spokesman Christophe Monin said, adding that a lack of funding prevented the Louvre from putting TV cameras in every room. “The Louvre is fragile, and that’s all,” Louvre Director Pierre Rosenberg told Europe 1 radio Monday. But former Culture Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said he was stunned by Rosenberg’s “fatalism.” “Must we wait for ‘Winged Victory’ to be stolen before getting a tough reaction from the [Louvre’s] head?” Douste-Blazy asked on French radio.

RADIO

Changing Hands: Talk station KIEV-AM (870) is scheduled to be sold for $33.4 million to Camarillo-based Salem Communications Corp. in August, pending FCC approval, it was announced Monday by broker Bruce Houston of Blackburn & Co. Edward G. Atsinger III, president and CEO of Salem, which owns and operates 43 stations with Christian programming across the country, including KKLA-FM (99.5) and KLTX-AM (1390) here, indicated that no change in format is anticipated. KIEV Chairman Fred Beaton, who runs the station with his brother Ron Beaton, the station’s president, said he expects the current hosts at KIEV, including conservative talkers George Putnam and Ray Briem, to continue broadcasting under the new ownership.

QUICK TAKES

Actors and prospective parents Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke were married Friday in New York. . . . Susan Egan, who won UCLA’s Carol Burnett Award before becoming the star of the staged “Beauty and the Beast,” will join Burnett and Bronson Pinchot in the cast of “Putting It Together” at the Mark Taper Forum Oct. 22-Nov. 29.