Free Republic

DALLAS — At least part of the movie version of "Dallas" will be filmed in its namesake city. Janis Burklund, director of the Dallas Film Commission, said Monday she received word from 20th Century Fox, the studio behind the production, that at least one-third of the movie would be filmed in Dallas. Work on the $70 million film is scheduled to begin in mid-October. Producers are expected to shoot in the Dallas area for the first four weeks before moving to Shreveport, La., for the remaining eight weeks. "I would have hoped for the whole thing," Burklund told Dallas-Fort Worth...

Plump hobbit actor Sean Astin has been interested in directing for some time, having tried his hand at a couple of short films and an episode of TV's Angel recently. Now he's ready to hit the big time, and has optioned a book that he plans to turn into a movie. And Sean's not starting small - he wants to tell the story of the worst natural disaster in American history (and no, we don't mean the TV show AfterM*A*S*H). "I optioned a book called 'Issac's Storm' by Erik Larson," he told MTV. "It's a story about the Galveston, Texas,...