QUICK TAKES - Oct. 15, 2002

MEDIA

British judges rule against model

Three British appeals judges ruled Monday that a London newspaper was justified in publishing a photo of Naomi Campbell leaving a drug addiction center, as the model had lied to the media about her drug problems.

Earlier this year, a high court judge ordered the Daily Mirror tabloid to pay Campbell $5,425 in damages and meet her court costs after he ruled the newspaper had breached her right to confidentiality by running the story in February 2001.

Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London on Monday upheld the newspaper’s appeal. Lord Phillips, England’s senior civil judge, said Campbell had gone out of her way to tell the news media that she, unlike other models, did not take stimulants or tranquilizers.

“This was untrue. She had, in fact, become addicted to drugs,” Phillips said. “Where a public figure chooses to make untrue pronouncements about his, or her, private life, the press will normally be entitled to put the record straight.”

Campbell, 32, was not in court Monday but said in a statement, “The idea that because you deny something about your private life automatically entitles the media to publish otherwise private information, seems to me to be very harsh indeed.”

Associated Press

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MOVIES

‘Pinocchio’ is big in Italy, no lie

Oscar winner Roberto Benigni’s new film “Pinocchio” has smashed Italian box office records for first-weekend receipts.

The live-action movie, based on the classic tale of the boy-puppet, made nearly $7 million over the weekend, ripping past the previous record of $5.7 million set by “Lord of the Rings,” cinema agency AGIS said.

Benigni, last seen in “Life Is Beautiful,” directed the film and plays Pinocchio. It opens in the U.S. at Christmas.

Reuters

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INTERNET

Wallace & Gromit shorts hit the Web

After a seven-year hiatus, clay-animated Oscar winners Wallace & Gromit are returning to the screen. But it’s a computer screen, not a theater screen.

Starting at noon today, visitors to the AtomFilms Web site (https://wallace.atomfilms.com) can see the first of 10 short films in a series called “Wallace & Gromit’s Cracking Contraptions.” They were produced by Nick Park, whose previous Wallace & Gromit shorts won Oscars in 1993 (“The Wrong Trousers”) and 1995 (“A Close Shave”).

--Lee Marguiles