From wire reports
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The variety show was once a TV staple, and Carrie Underwood thinks it might be time for a resurgence. The country music star hosts Monday’s “An All-Star Holiday Special” on Fox, and believes it’s just the tonic for the regular TV lineup.
“I think it’s really great they’re making a comeback because I think it’s really good family programming, and nowadays it seems like every show is about, like, murder or police and people shooting at each other,” Underwood said.
The 26-year-old Oklahoma native was too young to catch the golden age of the variety show. It once was as common as the reality show with stars like Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell sisters, Sonny and Cher, and even The Muppets mixing music and comedy. But Underwood did her research before shooting her show in Los Angeles earlier this fall.
“I remember a little bit of the Mandrell sisters and I have gone back and seen episodes of their show just to kind of, I don’t know, get some ideas and kind of see how it’s done from a master’s perspective,” she said.
She also had Dolly Parton on the set to lend advice. Underwood said she’d never met Parton until they did the show together, and the two hit it off right away — especially when they realized they lived close to each other.
“I told her and she was like, ‘You don’t live far from me, let’s get together. Do you like Southern cooking? You don’t look like you eat,’ ” Underwood said.
Brad Paisley, fellow “American Idol” winner David Cook, “Idol” host Ryan Seacrest and Neil Patrick Harris also appear in the special.
Joel and Brinkley’s daughter hospitalized
NEW YORK — A publicist for the singer Alexa Ray Joel, the daughter of pop star Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley, said she was hospitalized Saturday in Manhattan for an undisclosed condition.
The 23-year-old’s publicist, Claire Mercuri, said Saturday that Joel is in stable condition and receiving treatment.
She declined to say why she had been hospitalized.
“We are currently assessing her needs,” she said.
Joel, who was raised in Sag Harbor, a village on Long Island, attended New York University for a short time before dropping out to focus on her music career, according to her MySpace page.
She self-released a short album in 2006 and debuted a new song, “Invisible,” in 2009.
She now lives in Manhattan and had performances scheduled in the city next week, including at the New York Stock Exchange tree-lighting ceremony.
Fire Department records indicate that paramedics responded to the West Village building where Joel lives at 12:21 p.m. Saturday and transported one woman to St. Vincent’s Hospital. The fire department declined to identify the patient.
Art masterpieces seized in assets crackdown
ROME — Italian tax police said Saturday that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat.
Authorities estimated the 19 masterpieces stashed away in attics and basements were valued at some euro100 million ($150 million).
Parma Prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said that, based on wiretapped phone conversations, officials believed at least one of the paintings hidden by Calisto Tanzi was about to be sold.
“We got lucky. We learned that there were negotiations under way to sell one of the paintings” and raid three apartments in the area of Parma, near Parmalat’s headquarters, Laguardia said in an interview on Italy’s Sky TG24 TV. He didn’t identify the painting.
Bologna-based tax Police Col. Piero Iovino told The Associated Press by telephone that investigators believed the entire batch of paintings, watercolors and drawings were up to be sold. The prospective buyer was a Russian, possibly living in Italy, Iovino said.
No arrests were announced as part of the art seizure.
