Actress picked for Jessica Lynch role

Canadian actress Laura Regan is to play Iraq war prisoner Jessica Lynch in a forthcoming TV film.

Saving Jessica Lynch, which is being produced by NBC, will tell the story of the 20-year-old maintenance clerk private's capture by Iraqi forces and subsequent liberation by US troops in April.

It is being prepared for a November release.

Regan is best known for her role in the horror film They, which was released last year.

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Paltrow comedy goes straight to video

Gwyneth Paltrow film View from the Top will not receive a UK cinema release following disastrous reviews in the US.

The air hostess comedy, which co-stars Mike Myers and Candice Bergen, was due to be released in the UK on 29 August but will now go straight to video.

A New York Post critic, reviewing the film on its release in March called it "the movie equivalent of airline food".

The Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love star recently completed filming on the Sylvia Plath biopic, Sylvia.

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Phone vote for best of festival

Festivalgoers at this year's Edinburgh Festival will be able to vote for their favourite shows through their mobile phones.

Audiences will be able to vote for best show, best film, best act and best event of the festival, through the telecommunications company Orange and phone manufacturer Nokia.

Festivalgoers vote by texting 82888. The acts with the most votes in each category win a trophy and a £500 prize, and the overall winner wins £3,000.

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Nirvana man gives up music

Krist Novoselic, the one-time bass player of grunge superstars Nirvana, has said he is "quitting" the music industry and considering a career in politics.

"As far as the music industry goes, I quit. I can't deal," Novoselic said on the website for his band Eyes Adrift. "I can't read the magazines, listen to the radio or watch music television without feeling that I've just come in from outer space."

Novoselic said he wanted to run for political office, saying: "I'm relatively young and I want to follow my compulsions."

Novoselic said that while he had "quit" the industry, he still planned to play and write with Eyes Adrift.

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Seizure forces Skynyrd cancellation

Country-rock band Leonard Skynyrd have had to cancel a US tour after singer Gary Rossington suffered a mild seizure months after undergoing heart surgery.

Rossington, 51, was released from an Atlanta hospital and told to rest for several weeks after the incident on Monday.

The group were supposed to start a tour of the States on 23 August.

The band became stars in the early Seventies with their song Sweet Home Alabama. In 1977, three members of the band, including singer Ronnie Van Zant, were killed in a plane crash.

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Chechen war film in Swiss festival

A Chechen film about the war in the southern Russian republic is to be shown at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland.

Murad Mazayev's Marsho! (Freedom) is to be shown out of competition during the 11-day film festival, which started on Wednesday.

The 38-minute film is being touted as the first non-documentary made by an independent Chechen film-maker.

Marsho! was shot in Georgia and portrays the suffering of Chechen civilians in the poetic style of Georgian filmmaking," Russia's Kommersant newspaper said.

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Critic Ebert gets cancer treatment

Award-winning film critic Roger Ebert is to undergo radiation treatment for cancer next month.

The 61-year-old writer, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner, has a cancerous tumour in his salivary gland.

"I will, however, continue to see movies, write reviews and do the 'Ebert & Roeper' television show," Ebert wrote on Tuesday in an e-mail message to friends.

Ebert has been a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and won a Pulitzer in 1975.