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

POP/ROCK

McCartney Embarking on Solo Tour in U.S.

Paul McCartney’s long and winding road as a concert performer will get a bit longer this year with a new solo tour, his first since 1993.

The Drivin’ USA tour will kick off in California in early April and close in New York by month’s end with a total of 15 shows--pushing the singer’s lifetime concerts well past the 1,700 mark, according to McCartney’s representatives. (For those keeping track, that’s approximately 1,400 with the Beatles, 147 with Wings and 195 as a solo artist.)

The tour was announced Monday, a day after McCartney performed at the Super Bowl, but no information on dates or cities was released.

Meanwhile, there’s a Liverpool tribute concert planned for fellow Beatle and Liverpool native George Harrison, who died on Nov. 29 at age 58. Money raised from the Feb. 24 show will be donated to cancer charities.

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TELEVISION

Super Bowl Delivers Tension--And Viewers

Sunday’s Super Bowl, in addition to being a rare nail-biter on the field, saw an increase in viewership over last year. With an average 86.8 million viewers tuning in at any given minute during the game, it was up more than 2 million viewers from 2001. An estimated 131.7 million people watched at least a portion of the game.

The anticipated halftime showdown between Fox’s coverage of a concert by U2 and NBC’s Playboy Playmate episode of “Fear Factor” failed to materialize, as nearly 83 million viewers stayed on Super Bowl coverage. The NBC show generated a meager 11.4 million viewers.

Because the game ran late, Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle” didn’t begin until nearly 11 p.m. on the East Coast, attracting just 21.5 million viewers. That was less than half the audience that watched “Survivor” after last year’s Super Bowl on CBS.

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HBO Shifts Air Date of ‘Laramie Project’

It’s either one-upmanship or chicken--depending on how you look at it. After learning that NBC had scheduled a similarly-themed TV movie for the same night, HBO has changed the date of its movie version of “The Laramie Project”--an adaptation of Moises Kaufman’s play about a town forced to reexamine itself in the wake of the 1998 murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard.

The HBO movie, starring Steve Buscemi, Janeane Garofalo, Laura Linney, Christina Ricci, Frances Sternhagen and Bill Irwin, is now due to be shown a week earlier--on March 9.

“As we became aware that two films related to the Matthew Shepard case were scheduled to air on the same date, we felt it important to move our film to broaden the audience for both projects,” Chris Albrecht, president of HBO original programming, said.

Last week, NBC announced that it had tentatively scheduled “The Matthew Shepard Story,” starring Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston, for March 16--long after the October date for which it was originally earmarked. When HBO protested, NBC executives said they had no knowledge of the cable channel’s plans and denied it was counter-programming.

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DGA Announces Its TV Movie Nominees

The Directors Guild of America unveiled nominees for outstanding directorial achievement in TV movies for 2001: Robert Allan Ackerman (“Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows,” ABC); Jon Avnet (“Uprising,” NBC); Billy Crystal (“61*,” HBO); Frank Pierson (“Conspiracy,” HBO) and Mark Rydell (“James Dean,” TNT).

The winner will be announced at the 54th annual DGA Awards dinner on March 9 at the Century Plaza Hotel.

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MOVIES

Black Films: Higher Grosses, Little Crossover

For all the talk about diversity, the number of African American-themed Hollywood films released annually hasn’t jumped much since 1990, according to the Black Talent News Black Film Report.

The total rose from nine in 1990 to 15 in 2001, the report says. But last year’s number was down from the high of 19 in 1997 and 1998. Total grosses showed a marked rise, jumping from $85 million in 1990 to $214 million last year. The high was $609 million in 2000.

“While black films continue to prove their financial viability at the box office, tapping into the crossover audience remains one of the biggest challenges for black films,” noted Tanya Kersey-Henley, the author of the report. “Movie-going audience patterns, much like television viewership, remains largely polarized along racial lines.”

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THEATER

English Actor to Replace Lane in ‘The Producers’

Henry Goodman, a protean English actor who is relatively unknown in the U.S., will take over as Max Bialystock in “The Producers” on Broadway when Nathan Lane leaves his Tony-winning role on March 17.

John Barlow, a spokesman for the show, confirmed Monday that Goodman would be the much-speculated-upon replacement in Mel Brooks’ smash hit, which won 12 Tony Awards last year. Goodman was last seen in New York in the second replacement cast of Yasmina Reza’s “Art.” There was no word on who will replace Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom.

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QUICK TAKES

The quirky romantic comedy “Amelie” collected a record 13 nominations on Monday at the Cesars, the French counterpart to the Academy Awards. Nominees for best foreign film: “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “The Son’s Room,” “Moulin Rouge,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Traffic”.... President Bush has requested a $117-million budget appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts in fiscal 2003, the federal arts agency announced Monday. The figure represents a $2-million increase over last year, with the new funds pegged to cover rising administrative costs.... Moog Synthesizer inventor Robert Moog and Apple Computer Inc. are getting technical Grammy Awards to honor their contributions to the recording industry.