REEL DEALS In addition to helping raise money by appearing on the telethon ''America: A Tribute to Heroes,'' Julia Roberts has donated $2 million of her own money, with half going to the American Red Cross and the other to the September 11th Telethon Fund....
Looks like the Oscars are moving back to Hollywood Boulevard after all. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has worked out its differences over security measures with the retail complex that houses the new Kodak Theatre, from which the Academy had threatened to pull the awards show last week. The Academy had wanted to conduct a bomb sweep on the day of the show. Still up for discussion is the Academy's request for tens of thousands of extra square feet of parking space.
It's ahead warp factor 1 for the first ''Star Trek'' movie in four years. Paramount has finally put into production ''Star Trek: Nemesis,'' which begins shooting November 28, with director Stuart Baird (''U.S. Marshals'') at the helm and a screenplay by John Logan (''Gladiator''). Speed is of the essence, since after he leads the ''Next Generation'' crew on this adventure, Patrick Stewart must return to Earth as Professor Xavier in the next ''X-Men'' movie.
SOUND BITES No stranger to benefit concerts, Paul McCartney wants to stage one next month in New York to raise money for the families of the hundreds of firefighters who were lost at the World Trade Center collapse. ''I also have a connection there, because my father was a fireman in Liverpool during World War II,'' he said in a statement on Friday. The show does not yet have a date and a venue.
Other musicians helping out include Radiohead, who are auctioning off tickets to their Japanese concerts in late September and early October, with the proceeds going to the Red Cross, and the Black Crowes, who are giving away the proceeds of their merchandise sales and a percentage of their ticket sales from their three nights at New York's Beacon Theater last weekend, with the money going to the city's rebuilding efforts.
PASSING NOTES Isaac Stern, one of the violin giants of the 20th century and a tireless advocate for classical music at home in New York and all over the world, died at 81 on Saturday of heart failure at New York's Weill Cornell Medical Center. In addition to a concert career that spanned 65 years and hundreds of recordings, he led the drive to save Carnegie Hall from demolition and served as its president, played on the scores of several films (notably, ''Fiddler on the Roof''), was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary, ''From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China,'' and mentored such performers as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Yo-Yo Ma.
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