ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

TV/ NETWORKS ADD & CANCEL MORE SHOWS AHEAD OF UPFRONTS: More series announcements were handed down Friday afternoon, ahead of next week's upfront presentations by the major networks. CBS announced that it has picked up new series "Person of Interest" and "Two Broke Girls". J.J.Abrams is involved with "Interest," and also with "Alcatraz," that was picked up by FOX earlier this week. NBC announced that it has canceled "The Event," "Law & Order: Los Angeles" and "Outsourced". And finally, HBO announced that it has renewed its New Orleans drama "Treme" for a 3rd season. The David Simon and Eric Overmeyer series, chronicling life in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has its 2nd season premiere on April 24

FILM/ "MOTHER'S CURSE" CASTS KEY ROLE: Yvonne Strahovski, who stars opposite Zachary Levi in NBCs "Chuck," is joining "My Mother’s Curse," Paramount’s road movie starring Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand. Anne Fletcher ("The Proposal") is directing the project with a script by Dan Fogelman ("Cars"), which he wrote based on his own experience traveling with his mother. The comedy drama  follows an inventor (Rogen) who invites his mother (Streisand) on a cross-country trip as he tries to sell his new product while also reuniting her with a lost love. Strahovski will play Rogen’s high school sweetheart whom he once proposed to. Strahovski will be back on "Chuck" for its just announced 5th and final season. On the big screen, she also co-stars with Robert De Niro, Clive Owen and Jason Statham in "Killer Elite," which was acquired earlier this week by Open Road Films.

THEATRE/ "PRISCILLA" EXTENDS THRU JANUARY 2012: A new block of tickets for "Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical," based on the Academy Award-winning film "The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert," will go on sale on Monday. Tickets will be available at least through January 29, 2012. It was also recently announced that the musical will launch a national tour in fall 2012. The 1st city and starting date will be announced shortly. The Broadway production, which opened at the Palace Theatre March 20, has been nominated for Best Musical Awards by the Drama League, the Outer Critics Circle and The Drama Desk. The musical is also the recipient of 2 2011 Tony nominations. Tony Sheldon (as Bernadette), Will Swenson (as Tick/Mitzi) and Nick Adams (as Adam/Felicia) star on Broadway as "the trio of friends on a heart-warming, uplifting adventure. They hop aboard a battered old bus searching for love and friendship in the middle of the Australian outback and end up finding more than they could ever have dreamed". "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" is written by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott and directed by Simon Phillips. The score features existing dance-floor favorites and the orginal Broadway cast recording was recently released.

MUSIC/ DYLAN DENIES CENSORSHIP IN CHINA CONCERTS: Singer Bob Dylan has hit back at suggestions that he gave in to censorship during a recent series of concerts in China. The folk-rock legend, 69, agreed to give authorities set lists before recent performances in Shanghai and Beijing. He was criticized in print and online for ignoring 1960s-era protest songs. Writing on his website, Dylan has now insisted he knew nothing of any censorship and says he and his band played all the songs they intended to. Dylan shot to fame in the 1960s as an icon of the anti-war movement in the era of the Vietnam War. Songs such as "The Times They Are a-Changin" and "Like a Rolling Stone" became synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s, and Dylan became a poster-boy for a disenchanted generation. Dylan's vast back catalogue spans 34 studio albums and hundreds of individual songs, many recorded since the 1960s and spanning a wide range of musical styles. Defending his choice of songs for the China leg of his current tour, Dylan wrote: "As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play". He had faced explicit criticism after the China shows. Many criticized Dylan for not mentioning artist Ai Wei Wei, who was detained by Chinese authorities in the days running up to his 1st show in China. "He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left," Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote in an opinion piece.