Boomtime for celebrity cellblock

Is jail the new rehab for Hollywood folk? Die Hard director John McTiernan is appealing the four-month sentence he was given for lying to the FBI about hiring a private eye to wiretap a producer.

And Michelle Rodriguez will be heading for the cells as soon as she finishes her scenes in James Cameron's Avatar, now shooting in New Zealand. Rodriguez, from TV series Lost and Stuart Townsend's new movie Battle in Seattle, begins a six-month sentence on Christmas Eve for violating her probation for driving under the influence.

Kiefer Sutherland, star of 24, may be spending Christmas in prison on the same charge as Rodriguez. He is due for sentencing on December 21st and is expected to be serve 48 days.

And Lane Garrison, who played Tweener, the youngest of the escaped convicts in Prison Break, may be going behind bars for real. Following a fatal car crash last December, he has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence.

Mustang Mirren

Helen Mirren and her husband, director Taylor Hackford, are teaming up for their first film together since they met on White Nights (1985). Hackford will direct Love Ranch, the factually based story of Sally and Joe Conforte, played by Mirren and Joe Pesci, who opened Nevada's first legalised brothel, the Mustang Ranch.

Pesci disappeared from movies after Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) until he played a minor role last year in The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro, with whom Pesci had acted in five films.

"Joe didn't have any desire to work," Hackford said. "But he was the first person I had in mind to play the husband, this former cab driver who dreamed of making prostitution legal, and it convinced Joe to jump back into the fire."

Hackford added that he "had to beg" Mirren to take the role. "She's a very busy girl. We'd wanted to work together for some time, but she wouldn't agree unless it was a great role, and this is a great role."

Perry's hat-trick of No 1 movies

Tyler Perry's new movie, Why Did I Get Married?, topped the US box-office last weekend, comfortably eclipsing rival new releases starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg (We Own the Night) and George Clooney (Michael Clayton), which had to settle for third and fourth places. This is Perry's third movie to open at No 1 in the US, after Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, but none has been released here.

Janet Jackson plays a psychologist in the new film, but Perry, who wrote and directed it, is the star, having attracted a predominantly black religious audience in the US with a TV show in which he dons drag to play Madea, an advice-spouting matriarch.

"I know my audience," Perry says, and they're not people that the studios know anything about."

The Kingdom bans The Kingdom

Now on release here, The Kingdom has been banned in Bahrain. The film follows four FBI agents in Saudi Arabia tracking down the perpetrators of a terrorist attack on a Riyadh housing compound for US oil workers. Bahrain's information ministry director confirmed the banning but would not comment further.

"It was important to me that this film not lead with its politics," director Peter Berg said when The Kingdom opened in the US. "If I want to be politically educated, there are other ways I would do that than go to a Hollywood film. So to me, the film had to work as an exciting and dynamic procedural. At its core, it is about FBI agents trying to investigate homicides in a complicated environment. That's it."

Sly back in character

Fans of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movies - apparently there are some, even though the last one came out in 1988 - responded with derision to the title of the fourth film in the franchise, Rambo: To Hell and Back. Stallone took note and reverted to the original title, John Rambo.

Stallone, 61, doubles as director and star on the new movie (which was also briefly called Rambo IV: Holy War), in which Rambo leads mercenaries to save imperilled Christian aid workers on the Thai-Burmese border. It's set for US release in January.