Quick Takes: USA International Ballet Competition begins Saturday

More than 100 young dancers will be in Mississippi for the next two weeks competing in the USA International Ballet Competition.

The dancers come from 31 countries in search of medals and contracts that could boost their careers. Many have spent months preparing for the Olympic-style event that’s held every four years in Jackson.

The USA IBC is the United States’ official international ballet competition. It starts Saturday and runs through June 27.

—Associated Press

The Judds plan 18-city tour

The Judds are hitting the road one last time.

Wynonna and Naomi Judd announced an 18-city reunion tour called “The Last Encore” on Thursday after opening the CMA Music Festival in Nashville with a morning performance.

It’s been 10 years since the Judds have toured together. The tour kicks off Nov. 28 in Green Bay, Wis., and will conclude Dec. 19 in Phoenix.

The mother-daughter duo has scored 14 No. 1 songs in a career that’s spanned nearly three decades. After rising to the top of country music, they called it quits in 1991 after doctors diagnosed Naomi Judd with hepatitis.

—Associated Press

Quintet of ‘Glee’ books due

The class of “Glee” will be hitting the books.

Little Brown Books for Young Readers says that five authorized books based on the hit Fox series will be coming out, starting in August with the prequel novel, “The Beginning.”

The “Glee” releases will be a collaboration between Little Brown and the creative team behind the dramatic comedy about a high school glee club.

—Associated Press

Hitler meets Bollywood

An Indian film about romance is hardly news. But when the subject is Hitler? That’s unusual, even by Bollywood standards.

“It will be a romance but not in the typical sense,” Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, the director of “Dear Friend Hitler,” told the Times of London. He said the film “aims to capture the personality of Adolf Hitler.”

The newspaper reported that the movie, to be released late this year, would star acclaimed actor Anupam Kher as Hitler and Neha Dhupia, a former Miss India, as his mistress, Eva Braun.

Also unusual for Bollywood: There are no plans for any musical routines in the film.

—From a Times staff writer

A papal gig for Susan Boyle?

The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland says singing sensation Susan Boyle will likely perform for Pope Benedict XVI on his tour of Britain later this year.

A spokesman said Thursday that negotiations were still taking place, but Boyle is expected to sing at an open-air papal Mass in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park on Sept. 16.

Benedict’s four-day trip will be the first papal visit to Britain since Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Forty-nine-year-old Boyle became an overnight sensation after her appearance last year on a TV talent show was viewed millions of times on the Internet. Her debut album became a global bestseller.

—Associated Press

Cusack snares China film role

John Cusack says “Shanghai” costar Gong Li was part of his cinematic introduction to China, so he jumped at the chance to work with the veteran Chinese actress.

The 44-year-old actor told a news conference in Beijing on Thursday that China was a “mysterious place” to him as a youth and that he learned about the country gradually through its movies, such as “To Live.” In Zhang Yimou’s 1994 film, Gong plays a suffering wife to a compulsive gambler.

“I was an admirer of Gong Li for so long.… A role like this, to work with such great actors is a rare honor,” Cusack said.

In “Shanghai,” Cusack plays an American intelligence official who investigates a friend’s death in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Besides Gong, the movie also features Chow Yun-fat and Ken Watanabe.

—Associated Press

Finally

Coming back: “The Cleveland Show,” the freshman animated “Family Guy” spinoff about an African American family, already had been picked up for a second season and now has won renewal for a third season too.

Book deal: Ace Frehley, former lead guitarist of

the heavy metal band KISS, is working on a memoir,

“No Regrets,” that Gallery Books plans to release in the summer of 2011.

More of Les: All those relentless Les Grossman promotions for the MTV Movie Awards finally make a little more sense now that Paramount has announced it is developing a movie with Tom Cruise based on the Grossman character, who first appeared two years ago in “Tropic Thunder” and returned at the awards show on Sunday.