-How soon we forget: With all this Mighty Morphin Power Rangers hype, no one talks about the ones who started all this heroes-with-crazy-names business in the first place: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. New Line Cinema is planning a new movie featuring the heroes in a half-shell, as part of a series of Turtles flicks. Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michaelangelo are going to get a new look (it’s a secret what it will be) and a new attitude. They’ll also be moved up to their late teens (they were 16-year-olds in the last three Turtles movies).
-Oldies are goodies: Aerosmith is tops with eight nominations for the 11th annual MTV Music Awards, which airs Sept. 8. Others nominated were Bjork, R.E.M., the Beastie Boys and Nirvana. Hosting the show will be Roseanne (she’s a single-name person now, because she’s cool like that).
-“King” a clone? Disney had “hakuna matata” (“no worries”) with its hit “The Lion King.” But a Japanese company is charging the movie is a copycat of a comic it made 40 years ago. “Lion” is Disney’s first original story since 1970. But popping up now is “Jungle Emperor,” a comic book from the 1950s that was also a 1966 Japanese TV series in America called “Kimba (not Simba), the White Lion.” Both stories center on lions in Africa. Both have dads who are killed early. Both have evil lions (one named Scar, the other named Claw).Both have sons returning from exile and dealing with becoming king. Both good lions are helped by a wise old baboon. Both bad lions are helped by hyenas. Disney says it knew nothing of the other lion king.
-Quick words: Kevin Costner has started on “Waterworld,” an action-adventure set in a future Earth that has been covered by the wet stuff. …Whitney Houston suffered the miscarriage of her second child, just days after singing the news she was pregnant to hubby Bobby Brown on stage. …The record-selling “NBA Jam” will be out in both PC and CD-ROM versions this fall from Hi Tech Entertainment, which also does “Mortal Kombat” and “Super Street Fighter II” in those formats.
