Quick Takes - March 6, 2010

A guarantee it won’t rain

The president of the film academy and the producers of Sunday’s Oscar ceremony promise it won’t rain on the Academy Awards.

Producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic and president Tom Sherak gathered on the red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood for a brief news conference Friday about the big show.

Sherak said definitively it will not rain at Oscar time. Mechanic quipped it would “rain humor.” And Shankman said that when you produce the Oscars, there’s no one you can’t call, so “I just called God.”

-- associated press CNN announces ‘John King, USA’

CNN announced Friday that John King’s new 4 p.m. PST show will launch March 22 under the name “John King, USA,” a nod to the anchor’s intentions to broaden the focus beyond Washington.

King recently visited all 50 states in 50 weeks for “State of the Union,” the CNN Sunday show he anchored until last month, when the network tapped Candy Crowley as his successor. In his new time slot, King is taking the spot once occupied by Lou Dobbs, who abruptly left the network in November.

King, who gained prominence during the 2008 campaign as an adept user of CNN’s “Magic Wall,” is already working to incorporate new media into his show. He tweeted clues about the name of the program and plans to webcast the final rehearsal before the launch on CNN.com March 19.

-- Matea Gold Steichen photo exhibit in Florida

More than 200 of Edward Steichen’s celebrity and fashion photos from his years as chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines are on display in an exhibit that has come to the United States after starting out in Europe.

“Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937” at Florida’s Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale through April 11 includes photographs of celebrities such as Gary Cooper, Adele and Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo and Amelia Earhart. There are politicians, such as Winston Churchill, and even poets, such as William Butler Yeats, who posed with his hair askew.

“One of the great things about Steichen when you go through the show, it’s as if all the women in those images were all born in those clothes,” said one of the curators, William Ewing, director of the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. “Today nobody looks at a Kate Moss picture and believes she lives in those clothes. There is no credibility to the contemporary fashion photograph. Perhaps that’s the aim.”

-- associated press Freaknik always was animated

There was a time when Atlanta was a hot destination during spring break with its annual Freaknik festival, which in its heyday attracted hundreds of thousands of predominately black students from the surrounding colleges and universities.

It’s been more than 10 years since Atlanta has seen the festival, but on Sunday night, the Cartoon Network will premiere “Freaknik: The Musical,” a 60-minute animated feature produced by, and starring, rapper T-Pain.

“Back in the ‘90s, Freaknik was Atlanta’s version of the ultimate block party. It was Mardi Gras meets spring break, at your crazy cousin’s bachelor party, and anything could happen,” T-Pain said. “It was just the biggest party of all time. The black version of what people see on MTV.”

The cartoon, which had been in the works for a few years, features a slew of guest voices, including funnymen Andy Samberg, Bill Hader and Charlie Murphy, and a who’s who of hip-hop with Lil Wayne, Kelis, Cee-Lo, Rick Ross and Lil Jon, plus Bootsy Collins and George Clinton.

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy Paris Review names editor

The Paris Review will soon have a new editor: Lorin Stein, who has worked with such authors as Denis Johnson, Jonathan Franzen and Richard Price.

The 37-year-old Stein will take over in April from Philip Gourevitch, who announced last fall he would step down after five years. Stein is currently an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

The Paris Review was founded in 1953 and was run for decades by George Plimpton, who died in 2003. The magazine announced Stein’s appointment Friday.

-- associated press HBO takes vets to memorial

HBO is paying to send 250 veterans to Washington next week to visit the World War II memorial, coinciding with the network’s premiere of a miniseries about the war.

The 10-part series, “The Pacific,” starts on the network March 14. It’s a drama focusing on the lives of U.S. Marines fighting the Japanese in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

The network said Friday that it is working with the Honor Flight Network, an organization that pays to transport veterans to the nation’s capital. Courteney Monroe, HBO’s marketing chief, said that the group has more than 9,000 veterans on its waiting list.

-- associated press Finally

Indestructible: The CW has renewed “Smallville,” its series about a young Superman, for a 10th season, beginning in the fall.