ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

POP/ROCK

New Napster Wrinkle: Singer Usher says that beleaguered online music swapping company Napster has forced him to scrap much of his new album. Though it has been a common practice for albums to be available on Napster in advance of their release, Usher said he decided to delay his new album--which was to have come out last month--until the summer so he could start over after the original material appeared on Napster in January. “All of the songs that were on Napster have been dropped. We’re cutting completely new tracks,” Usher told the Associated Press. “I couldn’t do that to the fans, release an album that they have already heard.” A judge recently ordered the controversial Napster to block the exchange of 135,000 copyrighted songs.

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Boy, Girl Band Moves: The Backstreet Boys will launch a summer tour in June featuring more than 50 North American arena concerts. The band will do at least one L.A.-area show, on Aug. 18, though which arena they will perform at has not yet been decided. Meanwhile, Eden’s Crush, the all-girl group formed on the WB’s staged, unscripted series “Popstars,” has been signed as the opening act of ‘N Sync’s summer North American concert tour. The manufactured WB group’s first single, “Get Over Yourself,” arrived in stores Tuesday. And “Making the Band,” ABC’s similarly themed series about the formation of a male pop band called O-Town, begins its second season on April 13.

PERFORMING ARTS

Lord of the Flames: In what is being billed as his final world tour, dance showman Michael Flatley (“Lord of the Dance”) will bring his latest production--”Feet of Flames”--to the United States for the first time in an 18-city summer tour, including stops July 17 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim and July 19 at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The production--featuring more than 50 dancers performing on three different levels of the stage--has played to sold-out houses in Europe. The tour will mark Flatley’s first U.S. appearances since 1997.

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‘Selena’ Set: “Selena, A Musical Celebration of Life” is scheduled to launch the Doolittle Theatre’s new era as a Latino-oriented performing arts center with an invitation-only preview on March 28, followed by an official opening in early April. The musical stars Veronica Vasquez as the late tejano singer Selena Quintanilla. The Doolittle is now owned by the Ricardo Montalban Nosotros Foundation.

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Schell Recuperating: Actor Maximilian Schell is recovering from an appendectomy that took him away from Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, where he is headlining previews of a new production of “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Schell, 70, was hospitalized Saturday, but is expected to resume performances Thursday. In the Broadway show, which officially opens March 26, he plays an aging justice minister on trial for sentences he handed down under Hitler. He won a best actor Oscar for the 1961 film version of “Judgment at Nuremberg,” playing a young German defense lawyer.

TV & MOVIES

Debating in English and Spanish: KCET’s “Life & Times Tonight” will air an hourlong special Thursday at 7 p.m. featuring highlights from today’s UCLA debate among the six main L.A. mayoral candidates. Meanwhile, KMEX will feature the same top candidates--Antonio Villaraigosa, James Hahn, Joel Wachs, Kathleen Connell, Steve Soboroff and Xavier Becerra--in a live Spanish-language town hall program airing April 1 from 9 to 10 a.m.

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Fest Slates: The 2001 Independent Feature Project/West Los Angeles Film Festival, scheduled for April 20-28, will feature 36 films, including 21 world premieres. Events will take place at the Directors Guild of America, Harmony Gold Theatres, Laemmle Sunset 5 and the Los Angeles Film School. . . . The 17th annual Israel Film Festival, featuring more than 35 new Israeli films, will be held March 27-April 5, with opening-night festivities at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, and additional events at Laemmle’s Music Hall Theatre and Laemmle’s Town Center 5 in Encino. . . . The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film festival will inaugurate new Outfest Screen Idol Awards this year, honoring film and TV movie performances in gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans-gendered roles. Nominees include Javier Bardem for “Before Night Falls,” Robert Downey Jr. for “Wonder Boys,” Vanessa Redgrave for “If These Walls Could Talk 2” and Julianna Margulies for “What’s Cooking?” Winners will be announced April 20.

QUICK TAKES

Warren Leight’s “Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine,” which closed at the Mark Taper Forum on March 4, will reopen May 22 at New York’s City Center Stage 1, again starring John Spencer (NBC’s “The West Wing”). . . . “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf will team with crime novelist James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential”) on a new Paramount Pictures crime movie, “77,” dealing with the 1974 shootout between Los Angeles police and the Symbionese Liberation Army. . . . The Pax TV network scored its best ratings ever Sunday when more than 3.1 million viewers tuned in for the premiere of “Doc,” featuring country singer Billy Ray Cyrus.