Quick Takes: Bob Dylan to perform in Vietnam

Bob Dylan, famous for his antiwar songs during the Vietnam War, will perform in the Communist country for the first time next month, his promoter said Tuesday.

Dylan will appear at an 8,250-seat stadium in Ho Chi Minh City on April 10, said Rod Quinton, general manager of Saigon Sound System.

Dylan is popular in Vietnam because of his antiwar songs. His 1960s songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” were inspirations for the American civil rights and antiwar movements.

General admission tickets are priced at 900,000 dong ($43), slightly higher than Vietnam’s monthly minimum wage.

—Associated Press

Liz Taylor still hospitalized

Elizabeth Taylor has entered her second month at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she is being treated for symptoms of congestive heart failure.

Publicist Sally Morrison said Tuesday that the 79-year-old actress is in stable condition. Taylor is continuing to receive treatment and be monitored at the L.A. hospital, where she was admitted in early February, Morrison said.

Taylor announced her congestive heart failure diagnosis in 2004.

The Oscar-winning actress has received friends in her hospital room, where she also watched the Academy Awards to celebrate her birthday last month.

—Associated Press

Sundance sets London offshoot

Tired of Sundance snow? Get ready for some fog instead.

Starting next year, the Sundance Institute, the Robert Redford-led group behind the Sundance Film Festival, is launching a four-day London version of its annual showcase of independent film.

Sundance London will be held April 26-29, 2012, and will include movies, live music, panels and other cultural programming, the institute said Tuesday. As with the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, the focus in London will be on American filmmakers and artists, and the event in Britain will include films shown at January 2012’s Utah festival.

“It is our mutual goal to bring to the U.K. the very best in current American independent cinema, to introduce the artists responsible for it, and in essence help build a picture of our country that is broadly reflective of the diversity of voices not always seen in our cultural exports,” Redford said.

—John Horn

‘Hereafter’ DVD will aid Japanese

A day after Warner Bros. pulled “Hereafter” — and its scenes of tsunami disaster — from theaters in Japan, the studio announced Tuesday that the film’s March 15 release on DVD and Blu-ray will raise funds for relief efforts in the island nation.

While Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group did not specify what percentage of the home-video proceeds would go to the Japanese Red Cross Society, sources said the donation would be in the $1-million range.

“Hereafter,” directed by Clint Eastwood, is a film primarily about death, grief and the afterlife but it opens with an intense sequence showing a tsunami ravaging a coastal city and leaving its streets filled with corpses and wreckage. Upon pulling the film, Warner Bros.’ Satoru Otani told the BBC that “Hereafter’s” scenes of calamity scenes were “not appropriate” at this time.

—Geoff Boucher

Finally

Band hit: TV on the Radio bassist Gerard Smith has been diagnosed with lung cancer and won’t be joining the band on its tour, which begins Thursday.