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Quick Takes: Supreme Court justice to judge Pritzker

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer will join the jury for the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s top honor, Pritzker officials said Wednesday.

Joining Breyer on the eight-person jury will be architect Zaha Hadid, who won the prize in 2004.

Breyer reportedly has an avid interest in contemporary architecture, and in courthouse design in particular; he wrote the forward for the 2006 book “Celebrating the Courthouse: A Guide for Architects, Their Clients, and the Public.”

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—Christopher Hawthorne

Brother set to help Jackson flee

Jermaine Jackson says in a new book that he arranged a plan to smuggle Michael Jackson out of the United States if the defense lawyer in his brother’s 2005 molestation trial indicated he was destined to be found guilty.

Michael Jackson, who was eventually acquitted of child molestation, did not know about the “Plan B,” which involved sneaking the pop icon out of his Neverland estate under a blanket and using a chartered plane to fly him to the Middle East, his brother writes in “You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through a Brother’s Eyes.”

—CNN

Court sides with ‘Bruno’ star

A lawsuit accusing Sacha Baron Cohen of causing injuries to a woman during the filming of “Bruno” should be dismissed because the comedian was exercising his right to free speech when the mishap occurred, an appeals court has ruled.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal said this week that the finding prevents Baron Cohen from being sued by the woman who tried to force him and his crew from an event being filmed.

Richelle Olson sued Baron Cohen in June 2009, claiming she fell and hit her head moments after struggling with the comedian and his crew as she ordered him to leave a charity bingo game.

—Associated Press

‘Simpsons’ to get own channel?

Ready for a channel devoted to nothing but “The Simpsons”?

Don’t laugh, it is one idea News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey threw out when speaking Tuesday at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills.

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Noting that “The Simpsons” shows no sign of slowing down as it prepares to start its 23rd season on News Corp.’s Fox network, Carey said the company is starting to have internal discussions about how to make more money from the animated hit beyond reruns on TV stations and DVD sales.

Carey said there have been a “number of meetings” to determine how to capitalize on its library of episodes of “The Simpsons” and he mentioned a digital channel featuring nothing but Homer and the gang as being a possibility. Carey said it is incumbent on the company to take advantage of a show that is “unique in television with a volume too that is unprecedented.”

—Joe Flint

‘Magno Rubio’ headed to Ford

A fresh bilingual approach to a kinetic and touching California immigrant tale, “The Romance of Magno Rubio,” will open the coming season of the [Inside] the Ford series at the John Anson Ford Theatre in Hollywood.

The play, whose 2002 premiere by New York’s Ma-Yi Theater Company won a special Obie award, is Lonnie Carter’s adaptation of a short story by Carlos Bulosan about the hard life and far-fetched romantic dreams of a Filipino immigrant farm laborer in 1930s California, told in English and Tagalog. It will run Nov. 4 to Dec. 11.

The Furious Theatre Company’s world premiere of “No Good Deed” (Jan. 21-Feb. 26), by its resident playwright Matt Pelfrey, aims to lend the feel of a graphic novel to the story of a teenage illustrator who becomes a superhero in his own right.

“Naked Before God” (March 24-April 28), staged by Circle X Theatre Co., is a new comedy by Leo Geter that imagines a collision (or collusion) between protagonists from the worlds of adult film and Christian talk radio.

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—Mike Boehm

Young viewers ignore Kennedy

Fifty years on, Camelot apparently has little fascination for young people.

The majority of the 8.4 million people who watched ABC’s two-hour special featuring a previously unheard recording of a Jacqueline Kennedy interview had personal memories of the Kennedy administration.

The Nielsen ratings company reported that just under 2 million of those viewers Tuesday night were ages 18 to 49.

More people in that youthful demographic watched reruns of “NCIS: Los Angeles” on CBS.

—Associated Press

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