REEL DEALS Speaking of Gere, his new movie ''The Mothman Prophecies'' is sparking a small wave of tourism to Point Pleasant, W. Va., the town where the eerie events that inspired the film allegedly took place. ''Dozens of people have already been here,'' local music store owner Donnie Sergent tells Reuters, adding that sales of his book ''Mothman: The Facts Behind The Legend'' on Amazon and eBay have been ''ungodly.'' Local Chamber of Commerce director Hilda Austin, who discounts the sightings of the mothman creature as nothing more than a crane or other large bird, nonetheless is doing a brisk business in little gray mothman dolls with red eyes and wings, as well as mothman Christmas tree ornaments.
Rush Finley, a motel owner who would like to turn a neighboring empty storefront into a mothman museum, welcomes visitors, even if they're on the geeky or creepy side. ''Hell, it doesn't bother me,'' he says. ''We're redneck enough to handle any kind of people that come. We don't consider people kooky. We consider people people.'' And while they're in town, they can sample a mothman pizza (mushrooms and green peppers) and a mothman sandwich (turkey and ham on toasted rye with Thousand Island dressing, two cheeses, black olives and jalapeno peppers). Prophesying that Mothmania won't die out anytime soon, Iron Grille restaurant manager Linda Workman says of the sandwich, ''It's going to be on the menu from now on.''...
The Rev. Brian Jordan has not yet seen ''Collateral Damage,'' this weekend's new release in which Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a fireman who hunts down the Colombian terrorist whose bomb killed his family, but he already considers the movie a slur against both Colombians and firefighters. ''Colombians are not all drug dealers, terrorists and guerrillas, as depicted in this film. It's a negative stereotype and should be stopped,'' says Jordan, who ministers to workers at Ground Zero and handles the immigration program at Manhattan's Church of St. Francis of Assisi. ''It is discriminatory against Colombians,'' said Jordan at a press conference yesterday, surrounded by professionals and politicians of Colombian descent. He also said having as the main character a firefighter who becomes a vigilante is an insult to the firemen who served heroically on Sept. 11. Of course, the film was completed before that date and was due to be released Oct. 5, until the terrorist attacks made the Warner Bros. release the first movie postponed out of sensitivity to the feelings of post-attack moviegoers. Not long enough for some viewers, apparently....
LeVar Burton, who used to teach kids to read on ''Reading Rainbow,'' will teach reindeer to speak when he makes his directing debut with ''Blizzard,'' a project that will reunite him with his ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' costar Whoopi Goldberg. In this live-action/computer-animated Christmas story, the title character (voiced by Goldberg) is a talking member of Santa's sleigh team who befriends a little girl. Christopher Plummer and Kevin Pollak costar in the film, which begins shooting in Toronto on Feb. 18....
Wonder if he nailed 97 salary demands to the door of his trailer. Joseph Fiennes will play Martin Luther in ''Luther,'' a biopic of the founder of Protestantism. An American church group, Aid Association for Lutherans, is co-financing the $10 million production, which will be shot in Germany.
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