Quick Takes - June 8, 2011

Tyler’s Aerosmith duty

Now that Steven Tyler has finished his successful first season as a judge on “American Idol,” he is returning to his day job with Aerosmith.

The singer and his four bandmates plan to reunite next month with veteran producer Jack Douglas to kick-start work on their long-delayed album, guitarist Joe Perry said Tuesday.

“Whole band has plans to go into the studio with Jack Douglas second week of July to work on new Aero CD,” Perry said on Twitter.

Aerosmith has not released an album of new material since 2001’s “Just Push Play.”

—Reuters

Fewer viewers for MTV awards

Viewership for the MTV Movie Awards dropped for the second year as the show once again offered a raw mix of A-list celebrities and X-rated humor.

The two-hour telecast drew 4.5 million viewers Sunday evening, down from 4.6 million last year, MTV said. Viewership peaked at 7.1 million in 2002 and subsequently went as low as 3.0 million in 2008.

—Reuters

Thinner Hudson has story to tell

Jennifer Hudson is working on a memoir, mostly about food.

The Academy Award-winning actress and singer has a deal with Dutton for a memoir about her struggles with weight and how she dropped 80 pounds.

Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), said Tuesday that Hudson’s book will come out in January. It is currently untitled.

The 29-year-old Hudson won an Oscar for supporting actress in “Dreamgirls.” A former “American Idol” finalist, her latest album is “I Remember Me.”

—Associated Press

Curator’s archive going to Getty

Harald Szeemann, the famed Swiss art curator, left behind a trove of documents, books and correspondence when he died in 2005. His personal archive, which cut a scholarly swath through much of 20th century Western art, will have a new home at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, starting in September.

The Getty said Tuesday that it has acquired Szeemann’s extensive archive, which consists of more than 1,000 boxes of research and includes correspondence with many artists. During his career, he championed numerous artists, including Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly and Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

His personal library of about 28,000 volumes will also reside at the Getty.

Altogether, Szeemann’s archive and library will be the largest acquisition in the Getty Research Institute’s history. Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the institute, said that the acquisition is a purchase, not a donation. He declined to reveal how much the Getty paid.

The archive also includes about 36,000 photographs as well as drawings and other materials that Szeemann assembled over the course of organizing and researching more than 200 exhibitions.

—David Ng

Marvel to adapt Burroughs tales

John Carter — Edgar Rice Burroughs’ other famous pulp creation — is having his stories told anew thanks to an agreement between Marvel Entertainment and the author’s estate that will return the Earth-born adventurer’s Martian adventures to comic books.

Marvel said Tuesday that it will do new graphic novel adaptations of Burroughs’ Martian series, starting with “John Carter, Warlord of Mars,” as a five-issue miniseries in September.

Burroughs is best known for his creation of Tarzan.

—Associated Press

U.K. film panel’s flat disapproval

Last year’s “Human Centipede” had a difficult premise to sit through, but this year’s follow-up has a disturbing enough concept to get banned in the United Kingdom.

According to the Guardian, the British Board of Film Classification has deemed the film, titled “The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence),” as a “real risk” to moviegoers and denied the movie an 18 certificate as a result. That means that “The Human Centipede II” can’t legally be distributed in the U.K., even by DVD or download.

Director Tom Six kept the gruesome idea of kidnapped subjects being stitched together to create a “human centipede” but embellished it for the sequel with a character who becomes “erotically obsessed” with the first “Centipede” film, the Guardian said.

“There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalized, degraded and mutilated for the amusement

and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience,” the film classification board said.

No amount of editing, the board added, could make the movie eligible for certification.

—CNN

Durant histories become ebooks

One of the 20th century’s most popular historical series, Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Story of Civilization,” is coming back in digital form.

Simon & Schuster said Tuesday that all 11 volumes, long out of print, are now available as ebooks — separately and collectively.

The original books sold hundreds of thousands of copies even as critics sometimes questioned the Durants’ scholarship.

The husband-and-wife team worked on the series for decades and won a Pulitzer in 1968 for the 10th volume, “Rousseau and Revolution.” The Durants died in 1981.

—Associated Press

Conan Doyle novel due in fall

Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle’s debut novel is to be published for the first time in September, nearly 130 years after it was written.

“The Narrative of John Smith” was unfinished and differed radically from the Sherlock Holmes stories that made him famous, but experts said it offered a window into the mind of Conan Doyle as he started out as a young doctor and author.

To be published by the British Library, which owns an extensive Conan Doyle collection, the book was written in 1883 and 1884, a few years before the publication of “A Study in Scarlet,” the first story to feature the character of Holmes.

—Reuters