People in the news

Thinking pink?

New York – Are Ben and Jen expecting a girl?

When a pregnant Jennifer Garner appeared on NBC’s “Tonight Show” on Tuesday night, host Jay Leno asked, “So what do we have here? A boy or a girl? Do you know yet?”

“We have one or the other for sure,” replied Garner, who is married to her “Daredevil” co-star Ben Affleck. Later in the show, Garner seemed to refer to her baby bump as a “she.”

“You can just start to feel really pregnant. Like you are the hugest person on the face of the planet. … And then I felt just bigger and bigger like she …”

The 33-year-old actress stars as Sydney Bristow on ABC’s “Alias,” returning tonight for its fifth season.

Garner’s pregnancy was written into the show, even though her character is a globe-trotting spy.

Garner and Affleck were wed in June. Their baby is due around Christmas.

Fashion statement

London – Vivienne Westwood has launched a line of T-shirts to take a stand against proposed British anti-terror legislation.

“I am not a terrorist. Please don’t arrest me,” says one T-shirt, which Westwood designed to raise funds for Liberty, one of Britain’s largest civil rights organizations.

Another design says: “Liberty throw away the key.”

The campaign opposes the government’s proposal to allow terrorist suspects to be detained for up to three months without being charged, instead of the present 14 days.

“This T-shirt is really to ask the British people to use their imagination,” the fashion designer told reporters Wednesday. “How would they feel if someone near them who was innocent was arrested?”

Westwood, who created the punk look for the Sex Pistols and is a favorite designer of rocker Gwen Stefani, has said “there’s always a polemic in my clothes.”

The shirts, priced at $88 for adults and $35 for infants, will be available at Westwood’s London store and on her Web site, www.viviennewestwood.com.

Filmmaker honored

New York – John Singleton will be honored with the fourth annual DaimlerChrysler “Behind the Lens” award.

Singleton, 37, is being recognized for his work as a writer, director and producer of feature films that have provided a platform for change in the depiction of black stories on the screen.

The award will be presented Oct. 23 in Los Angeles. Previous winners are Gordon Parks, Melvin Van Peebles and Reuben Cannon. Recipients are chosen by an advisory panel of industry professionals.

Singleton’s screen credits as a director include “Four Brothers,” “Boyz N the Hood,” “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “Rosewood.”

DaimlerChrysler will present $25,000 to a charity chosen by Singleton.

Woodstock film fest opens

Woodstock, N.Y. – While countless regional film festivals have cropped up in recent years, the Woodstock Film Festival has managed to leverage its countercultural cachet and proximity to New York City to continued success.

The sixth annual festival, which opened Wednesday and runs through Sunday, includes “Winter Passing,” starring Zooey Deschanel, Will Ferrell and Ed Harris; Atom Egoyan’s “Where the Truth Lies,” starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth; “Lonesome Jim,” directed by Steve Buscemi and starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler; and “Fateless,” a historical drama about Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

Buscemi is this year’s recipient of the Maverick Award for creativity and independent vision.

Festival organizers plan 150 films, panels, concerts and special events in Woodstock (the town still benefits from its association with the 1969 Woodstock concert, which was held in Bethel) and nearby towns.

Tupac script to be filmed

A screenplay written by slain rapper Tupac Shakur is being produced as a feature film.

“Live 2 Tell,” a script Shakur wrote in 1995 about an inner-city black youth who becomes a drug kingpin and later goes straight, was acquired by Insomnia Media Group, which plans to begin production in March, the company says.

Insomnia acquired the rights from Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, who will be a producer on the film. The movie has not yet been cast.

Tupac, who appeared in such films as “Poetic Justice,” “Above the Rim” and “Gridlock’d,” had written “Live 2 Tell” as a star vehicle for himself.

The rapper was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip in 1996. His murder remains unsolved.

Baez tests TV’s limits

New York – Another musician has tested the tolerance level for bad language on prime-time television, but she’s no raucous rock star. Would you believe it’s Joan Baez?

The 64-year-old folkie was interviewed as part of “Bob Dylan: No Direction Home,” the two-part “American Masters” series directed by Martin Scorsese that aired this week on PBS. She talked about how frustrating Dylan could often be for fellow musicians, using the f-word.

PBS said both “clean” and unedited versions of the film were sent out to its 349 stations, leaving it up to the local station managers to decide their community’s tolerance for language.

To the best of her knowledge, only New York’s WNET-TV – the nation’s largest TV market and Scorsese’s hometown – aired the unedited version, PBS spokeswoman Lee Sloan said Wednesday.

The first night of the Dylan film averaged 3.6 million viewers Monday, a strong number for PBS.