ROME - "Die Hard" star Bruce Willis will help pick Italy's most beautiful woman when he heads the jury of the "Miss Italia" pageant later this month.
"Each year we look for a big name that is attractive to the public and pleasant for the girls," Marcello Cambi, spokesman for the national beauty contest, said Wednesday.
Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon and Gerard Depardieu have headed previous juries for the pageant, which takes place each year in the northern spa town of Salsomaggiore Terme.
"Miss Italia" will be chosen Sept. 19 by a combination of votes from the jury and the public, which follows the contest on national television.
A young Loren took part in the contest in 1950 but was judged too tall to represent Italian beauty and was awarded the specifically created title of Miss Elegance.
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NEW YORK - Judy Davis will star in a 2006 movie on Lifetime Television based on true events of mother-and-son grifters Sante and Kenneth Kimes.
Trevor Walton, Lifetime's senior vice president, original movies, described the story as "a fascinating and tragic tale of greed and manipulation."
"Their recent Los Angeles murder trial, during which Kenny broke free of his mother's psychological grip and testified against her, brought stunning new revelations to light," Walton said in a statement Wednesday.
The drama, which has the working title "Dead End," is adapted from "Dead End - The Crime Story of the Decade: Murder, Incest and High-Tech Thievery" by Jeanne King.
Davis won an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award for her role in "Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows." She also won an Emmy for her performance in "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story."
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HOUSTON - Jamie Foxx, who is working with the NAACP on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, says celebrities should get giving when the going gets tough.
"The reason you have to do this is you have to let them know that you're real," Foxx said at an NAACP event after a recent visit to the Reliant Astrodome, where cots have been set up for victims of the hurricane.
"He was so fine. I was just wishing he could have took me home with him," said Venus Junius, who was forced from her New Orleans home and spent three days on top of a bridge until a bus brought her to Houston.
"When I saw him I just ran to where he was at," she said.
Junius said visits by celebrities such as Foxx, Oprah Winfrey and Jada Pinkett Smith have been nice "because right now we need everybody we can get."
Ruth Bibbs, a 72-year-old from New Orleans' Lower Garden District, said meeting Foxx helped take her mind off the devastation.
"You forget about it for a moment, at least," she said.
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CANTON, Mass. - Bobby Brown told a judge during a hearing Wednesday that he's up to date with his $5,000 monthly child support payments and contributions to his children's educational fund.
However, Norfolk Probate and Family Court Judge Paula Carey admonished the singer, calling his earlier excuses "unacceptable." Carey had issued a warrant for Brown's arrest in June after he failed to appear for a compliance hearing.
Brown said a stomach virus prevented him from attending that hearing.
Brown lives in Alpharetta, Ga., with his wife, Whitney Houston. He has two children with Kim Ward, who lives in Massachusetts. He's currently starring with Houston in a Bravo Television show called "Being Bobby Brown."
Brown, a Boston native, was sentenced to 90 days in prison in June 2004 for missing three months of child support payments. That sentence was immediately suspended after Brown made back payments totaling about $15,000.
Brown was also jailed for a day in March of that year after he failed to pay $63,000 he owed Ward. He was released after making the payment.
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