If all goes as planned Saturday, the cremated remains of the actor who portrayed “Scotty” aboard Star Trek’s starship Enterprise will sail into suborbital space aboard a rocket launched from the southern New Mexico desert. Actor James Doohan‘s remains, along with those of Apollo 7 astronaut Gordon Cooper and about 200 others, are aboard the second private rocket scheduled to be launched at Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport being developed in Upham, N.M.

UP Aerospace Inc. of Farmington, Conn., launched the first rocket from the desert site in September. But that Spaceloft XL rocket crashed into the rugged desert after spiraling out of control about nine seconds after liftoff.

Company officials blamed the failure on a faulty fin design. A Spaceloft SL-2 rocket, with a fourth fin added for stability, will carry the cremains, which were loaded into the rocket last month.

Family members paid $495 to place a few grams of their relatives’ ashes on the rocket. Celestis, a Texas company, contracted with UP to send the cremated remains into space.

Charles Chafer, chief executive of Celestis, said last month that a CD with more than 11,000 condolences and fan notes was placed on the rocket with Doohan’s cremains.

Doohan died in July 2005, at age 85. The remains of Gene Roddenberry, who created “Star Trek,” were sent into space in 1997.

Saturday’s launch from the fledgling spaceport currently a 100-foot by 25-foot concrete slab in a patch of desert more than 50 miles north of Las Cruces continues to keep the New Mexico project ahead of its nearest competitor in the West Texas desert.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is said to be developing a spaceport north of Van Horn, Texas. Bezos’ Blue Origin is working to develop manned spaceflight for space tourists.

British billionaire Richard Branson also has announced plans to launch a space tourism company, which is expected to have its headquarters at the New Mexico spaceport.

From Reuters
In Hollywood, where hype so often seems to be the norm, pro wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin‘s frank assessment of his own performance in his debut movie is, if nothing else, refreshing.

“I didn’t stink the place up,” Austin told Reuters about his role in his new big-screen action adventure “The Condemned,” which opened on Friday. “I think I have a feel for it, and I think I have some ability.”

Austin, 42, has built a global fan base on the back of his brawling, obscenity-laced, bad-boy image in the ring. But about three years ago, he packed his bags and moved to Los Angeles from his home in Texas.

He followed the likes of Hulk Hogan and The Rock, two other big-name grapplers who parlayed their charismatic wrestling personas into movie acting. In “The Condemned,” Austin portrays a character who uses his fists to do his talking.

“It wasn’t a stretch because it’s closer to my regular persona,” he said. “As long as I’ve been in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), my fans have only seen me as Stone Cold Steve Austin.

“I’m glad people will get a chance to see I can be a lot more than someone who uses a lot of four-letter words, drinks a lot of beer, flips people off and beats people up,” he added.

His fans will be relieved to know he still kicks a lot of butt. But like many a good, tight-lipped action hero before him — Stone Cold Steve said that as a boy he admired the likes of John Wayne and Charles Bronson — his character, Jack Conrad, is really a good guy caught in a bad situation.

REALITY TV ‘RAMBO’

Plucked from a Latin American jail where he was wrongly imprisoned for murder, Conrad is dropped with nine other convicted murderers on a remote island where they must battle each other to the death.

An unscrupulous television executive has rigged the island with hundreds of cameras to videotape the killings, and he and his crew are streaming the battle royal on the Internet.

In Hollywood, where movie executives often hawk their ideas as a blend of previous movies or television shows, “The Condemned” could be seen as a combination of “Rambo” and reality TV’s “Survivor.”

Austin, who is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds (113 kg), played college football in Texas and afterward worked as a manual laborer. That changed when he started watching pro wrestlers and decided, “I can do that.”

So he began a roughly 15-year career that vaulted him to professional wrestling’s championship level. Now, looking for a less physically demanding way to make a living, he said becoming a movie action hero was another “natural step.”

Hollywood critics have often wondered whether gun-toting screen heroes encourage real-life violence in society, a question that seems even more relevant in the wake of the recent deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University.

Austin said “Condemned” was filmed well before the college massacre, and the movie’s R-rating bars anyone under age 17 from seeing it without an accompanying adult in the United States.

His fans want to see hard-core action, and he is going to work to please them, he said, adding that in the end the movie offers a message about the destructive nature of greed.

Austin said “Condemned” is the first film of a three-picture deal, and he expects more to come.

“I want to make 50 more movies,” the plain-spoken Texan said. “But I’ve got to have good results at the box office.”

A classic-car broker who swindled actor Nicolas Cage and other clients before he was caught in Spain was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison and $1.8 million in restitution.

Peter Brotman, 47, of Oaks, sold collectables such as a 1964 Rolls-Royce, a 1988 Aston Martin and a 1954 Jaguar on consignment, then kept the money or used it to pay off earlier debts.

Cage, identified in the 14-count indictment as “N.C.,” lost $300,000 in April 2004 when Brotman didn’t send him the full proceeds from the sale of three Ferraris and a Cobra.

“The guy was extremely knowledgeable in the classic-car industry,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Floyd J. Miller said after the sentencing hearing. “It’s a very insular community of mostly wealthy people. They have these auctions at Pebble Beach, Monte Carlo, other places where the rich and famous meet.”

Brotman also defrauded Willow Grove Bank out of $950,000 they lent him to run his suburban Philadelphia business, Pennsylvania Motor Sports, prosecutors said.

He apologized in court Tuesday to his victims, saying he had made poor decisions, defense lawyer Noah Gorson said.

Gorson argued in court papers that Brotman went to Europe to pursue work so he could repay them. At one point, he pledged the proceeds of a $450 million art deal he hoped to broker, but questions arose about the authenticity of the 93 pieces.

Gorson, in the filings, blamed the financial scam on his client’s “cash-flow problems.”

Brotman, who has been detained, pleaded guilty in January to 14 mail-, wire- and bank-fraud counts.

Tuesday April 24 3:33 PM ET
Early reviews are good, advance ticket sales are strong and two weeks before its debut, “Spider-Man 3” is grabbing headlines around the world, but director Sam Raimi is so tired he can’t think of more Spidey movies.

“I’m just exhausted, and I need to get away from it for awhile,” Raimi told Reuters in a recent interview.

The big question for this third film about the superhero with spider-like powers is whether audiences will be tired, too, when “Spidey 3” makes its global debut on May 4.

Later sequels in a series tend to face a rough time at the box office because their makers, stars and audiences are weary of the story.

The first “Batman” raked in $411 million worldwide in 1989, but the fourth, 1997’s “Batman & Robin,” posted a $238 million global haul. One notable exception is the “Lord of the Rings” films, which gained critical success and box office muscle during all three of their outings.

To combat sequel fatigue, Raimi said he infused “Spider-Man 3” with a “brand new energy” to create tension between the three main characters, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) and his best friend and sometime adversary Harry Osborn (James Franco).

Spider-Man battles new villains in the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) and Venom (Topher Grace), and develops a new love interest, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), who comes between Watson and Spidey’s alter ego, the geeky Peter Parker.

GOOD SPIDEY GONE BAD

One factor that may be as important as any of these new characters is that all-around good guy Parker lets the fame of being Spider-Man go to his head, and he risks losing the love of Watson.

“We were not going to keep remaking the same story — even though there are similar elements to all the ‘Spider-Man’ films — we’re going to continue the growth of this guy as a human being,” said Raimi, who also directed the first two installments.

For now, Raimi’s formula is working. The movie, which cost more than $250 million to make, premiered in Tokyo on April 16, screened in Los Angeles late last week and played in London on Monday. Early reviews are mostly good.

“Arachnophiles everywhere finally have cause to celebrate,” said show business newspaper Hollywood Reporter. In London, The Times said the movie “amounts to a daft, highly polished couple of hours of fantasy fun” and gave it three stars out of five.

Comic book films such as “Spider-Man” have mostly young fans who rarely heed reviews, and the third film seems to be enjoying a great deal of pent-up demand.

Earlier this week, online ticket sellers Movietickets.com and Fandango.com said advance sales were very brisk.

So Raimi should rest easy. All the hype, global premieres, early reviews and ticket sales add up to what looks like success for “Spider-Man 3” — if the movie pirates don’t strike first. Already, pirated DVDs can be bought in Beijing.

A fourth film is in development at Columbia Pictures, and while it may not be directed by Raimi — for now, he’s not saying whether he’ll return — he said he is willing to take a look.

“I think they have talked about that, and I’d love to read what they’re developing,” Raimi said.

Reuters/Nielsen

This story is from Reuters. Don’t you love it when people stand their ground. . .

Borrowing a line from “Gone With the Wind,” film critic Roger Ebert is telling the paparazzi to take all the pictures they want when he appears in public after surgery that has left him temporarily disfigured.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Ebert said in a column published on Tuesday in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Pulitzer Prize winner and co-host of the syndicated television show “Ebert & Roeper” had surgery last year for salivary gland cancer that spread to his lower jaw.

Part of his jawbone was removed, and two replacement operations have failed, he said. He is awaiting a third operation.

Ebert, 64, also had a tracheotomy that left him unable to speak. While he has written some movie reviews during recovery, his TV show has used guest critics.

This week Ebert kicks off his annual Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana, Illinois, south of Chicago. As he has for the last eight years, he will host the event.

He said people had urged him not to attend because the paparazzi would take unflattering photos and gossip columns would dish up mean-spirited comments about him.

“When I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes,” Ebert wrote.

“We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival,” he added.

Ebert said he now communicates “with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling.” If a planned surgery is successful, “my speech will be restored.”