Patrick Swayze to begin shooting new cable series

Dirty DancingcancerA&EThe BeastChicago

A&E ordered 13 episodes of the one-hour drama, which stars Swayze, 55, as an unorthodox FBI agent who trains — and hazes — his new partner (portrayed by Travis Fimmel). It is scheduled to premiere early next year.

"I have searched for quite a long time to find a character that is this multi-layered, unpredictable and downright entertaining, as well as a project this current and cutting-edged," Swayze said in a statement.

"There are constant twists and turns, because we never know what this `Charles Barker' is going to do next! Not only is the show driven by plot, but as important, it's character driven," Swayze said.

The actor shot "The Beast" pilot last December, months before his cancer diagnosis surfaced in news reports.

Swayze's representative, Annett Wolf, confirmed to The Associated Press in early March that he was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer; meanwhile, his physician Dr. George Fisher issued a hopeful statement, saying Swayze had "a very limited amount of disease" and appeared "to be responding well to treatment."

Wolf declined comment Tuesday. A&E spokesman Dan Silberman said the network wasn't commenting beyond its news release announcing the greenlit series and statement from executive Bob DeBitetto, who professed to be "thrilled to have Patrick on board."

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Swayze will likely continue his treatment during four months of filming in Chicago. In an interview, DeBitetto told the Times that Swayze had benefitted by care including chemotherapy and experimental drugs.

"Obviously we've had candid conversations with him and his doctors, and we have a fairly high degree of expectation that Patrick will be good to work a full production schedule," said DeBitetto, adding, "No one is using words like cured or remission or miracle."

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A&E is owned by A&E Television Networks, a joint venture of Hearst Corp., Walt Disney Co. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal.

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Australian film organization creates Ledger scholarship

2 hours, 34 minutes ago

Heath Ledger

"There's an entire tribe of Australians who have all benefited from his generosity," said Susie Dobson, president of Australians in Film, or AiF. "This (scholarship) captures Heath's spirit and serves our mission to help and celebrate Australian filmmakers."

Ledger — who died at 28 of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January — had served as an ambassador for the film organization and its board wanted to honor him after his death, Dobson said.

Director Gregor Jordan announced the establishment of the Heath Ledger Scholarship Fund last week at AiF's annual Breakthrough Awards, where he read a statement from Ledger's father, Kim Ledger.

"Although reluctant to lend his name to anything commercial, we know Heath would be proud of his attachment to this scholarship," Kim Ledger's statement said. "This scholarship in part does what Heath has done personally during the last 10 years and supported financially or in kind many friends, Australian actors, singers, directors or writers seeking to ply their talents in the USA."

Jordan also said that Michelle Williams, mother of Ledger's daughter, "would be very proud and happy to be the first benefactor" of the scholarship fund.

The first recipient will be announced next year, Dobson said.

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R. Kelly defense expert: Mark in video not a mole

By KAREN HAWKINS, Associated Press Writer

R. Kelly's child pornographysex tape

Video analysis expert Charles Palm testified for the defense that the black mark appears — and disappears — because the video has been duplicated so many times.

Jurors last week watched a 4-by-4-foot monitor where freeze frames of the man's back were shown. Just above his waistline was a mark that the prosecution's forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, said appeared to be a mole. He compared the frames with 2002 police photos of Kelly's back, concluding the spots were in the exact same position.

Palm disagreed Thursday.

"I see a black mark but it doesn't appear to be a mole," Palm said.

Kelly, 41, who won a Grammy Award in 1997 for the song "I Believe I Can Fly" and whose biggest hits are raunchy ballads like "Ignition," is charged with child pornography for allegedly videotaping himself having sex with a female who prosecutors say was as young as 13. He has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Both Kelly and the alleged victim, who is now 23, deny it's them in the video.

Palm disagreed with Fredericks and another prosecution witness who testified that digitally altering the nearly half-hour video — 100,000 frames on the entire footage — would be practically impossible, requiring that someone go through each frame to calibrate everything from shadows to blinks of an eye so that they all move in perfect sync.

Palm testified that a video like the one at the heart of the case could be mocked up in mere months. By way of example, he showed jurors footage of the sex tape that he manipulated. In it, images of the male and female fade in and out against the tape's distinctive log-cabin background.

"I created most of that over a couple of spare hours," he said.

On cross-examination Palm acknowledged that the tape shown by prosecutors during opening statements did not appear to be manipulated, but he said the picture quality was too degraded for him to be sure.

Earlier Thursday, a private investigator for Kelly testified that he believes the prosecution's star witness and her fiance were trying to get money out of the singer when they claimed a publisher had offered them a $300,000 deal for a book about Kelly.

Defense witness Jack Palladino said he took the claim by Lisa Van Allen and her fiance, Yul Brown, as an attempt to extort money in exchange for their silence. Van Allen testified earlier this week that she had multiple three-way sexual encounters with Kelly and the alleged victim in the case.

"I assume they were trying to solicit a bribe," Palladino said of a meeting with Allen and Brown in the Atlanta area earlier this year.

Under cross-examination, Palladino conceded that neither Van Allen nor Brown directly asked for a bribe, but he said their language "was a coded way to get money from my client (Kelly)."

Palladino added he was sure no book deal existed.

Prosecutor Robert Heilingoetter countered that a book deal was a plausible claim and that Palladino had no grounds to conclude the couple were trying to extort money.

Associated Press writer Michael Tarm contributed to this report.

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