Rooting for Denzel

New York Add Julia Roberts to the list of those who want to see Denzel Washington walk away with a best actor Academy Award next month.

“He should be on his third Oscar by now, and that might not be enough,” Roberts told Newsweek magazine in its Feb. 25 edition.

“I cannot absorb living in a world where I have an Oscar for best actress and Denzel doesn’t have one for best actor.”

Washington, who won an Academy Award in 1989 for best supporting actor in “Glory,” is nominated for his turn as a bad cop in “Training Day.”

In the 73 years since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out Oscars, five black actors and actresses have won for supporting roles and only one black actor has won for best actor: Sidney Poitier.

Fighting for respect

Radnor, Pa. The actor who plays forensic investigator Warrick Brown on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” says it wasn’t easy becoming television’s No. 2 drama and won’t be easy staying there.

“We’re not the press’ beauty queens,” Gary Dourdan tells TV Guide for its Feb. 23 issue.

“In our first season, (the show) didn’t have any money. The other shows on the network got all the bread. And we kind of came up fighting, like Mike Tyson, and just knocked everything out.”

“CSI” is now second only to “ER” among dramas; CBS is looking into a spinoff for next season, which might be set in Miami.

Court cool to Ice-T’s friend

Philadelphia A federal appeals court has reinstated the bribery conviction of a man rapper Ice-T helped free from prison by offering him a job.

The rapper had testified for the prosecution in Tony “Smiley” Jake’s murder trial but later helped secure his friend’s release on appeal by giving him the job in California.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday overturned a lower court’s ruling that granted Jake a new trial because jurors were not properly instructed regarding the statute of limitations for one of the charges.

G. Scott Gardner, Jake’s attorney, said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marsalis starts own label

Boston Saxophonist Branford Marsalis is making beautiful music on his own.

After having negotiated out of his recording contract last year with Columbia Records, his label of 20 years, Marsalis launched Marsalis Music.

“I hope to find jazz artists not quite ready for prime time,” Marsalis told the Boston Globe last week.

For now, Marsalis is the only artist on the roster. His “Footsteps of Our Fathers,” a tribute to John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet, is due out later this year.