MOVIESBest Dressed: “To Wong Foo, Thanks for...

MOVIES

Best Dressed: “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” cross-dressed its way to the No. 1 spot at the box office during the weekend. The comedy from Universal, featuring Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes, in drag took in $9.1 million, according to early industry estimates. The film was the first new release to take first place in a month. Hollywood Pictures’ “Dangerous Minds” was second with $4 million. New Line’s “Mortal Kombat” took third with $3.4 million. Miramax’s “The Prophecy” dropped to fourth from the top spot last weekend with $2.8 million, and Columbia’s “Desperado” took in $2.7 million for fifth.

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Bono and the Biz: Congressman Sony Bono’s newly formed entertainment task force met with about 20 Hollywood higher-ups at Beverly Hills City Hall on Saturday morning to establish a bond between Republican leadership and the traditionally Democratic show business community and to discuss ways of creating a more favorable business climate. “One of the main reasons we came here is to counteract the feeling that Republicans are the mean-spirited, closed-minded politicians people paint us to be,” said House majority whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex). NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield said that no one was on the attack. Members of the task force stressed they weren’t proponents of the V-chip, the device that can limit TV viewing. Though the summit was difficult to pull off, it represented a turning point, Bono said. “We went far beyond a schmooze session to getting a commitment from the industry to develop a coalition to work hand-in-hand with ours.” Participants, though encouraged by the proceedings, didn’t go that far. But Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) visualized an even brighter scenario: “Maybe this could be a sequel to ‘Distinguished Gentleman,’ in which Eddie Murphy becomes a Republican.”

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The Lion Roars: Tran Anh Hung, the 33-year-old Paris-based Vietnamese director, won the coveted Golden Lion at Saturday night’s awards ceremony at the Venice Film Festival for his movie “Cyclo. “ The film is about a young trishaw driver who gets sucked into a world of violence in Ho Chi Minh City. Top acting honors went to Goetz George of Germany for his role in Romuald Karmakar’s “Der Totmacher” (The Deathmaker), and French actors Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert in Claude Chabrol’s “La Ceremonie” (The Ceremony). The Special Jury Prize went to Portugal’s Joao Cesar Monteiro for “A Comedia De Deus” (God’s Comedy) and Oscar-winning Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore for “L’Uomo delle Stelle” (Starman). Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese picked up career achievement awards.

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‘Evita’ Wars: Argentina will make its own film of the life of Eva Peron to rival Hollywood’s movie version of the musical “Evita,” directed by Alan Parker and starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas. President Carlos Menem, self-proclaimed protege of Gen. Juan Peron, gave his backing to the film Friday by receiving Andrea del Boca, the local soap opera star likely to play Evita. Argentina’s ruling Peronist Party worries the Hollywood version, based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s award-winning musical, “will be a distorted version of the life of Evita,” Culture Secretary Mario O’Donnell said. Parker will film his movie outside Argentina.

POP/ROCK

From England, the Beatles. . . . : The long-awaited first authorized album of unreleased Beatles music, “The Beatles Anthology, Volume One,” will be released Nov. 20 by Capitol Records, coinciding with the three-night ABC telecast of the Beatles-authorized video documentary. The 40-plus-song set, which will be released in double-CD and cassette form and in a triple-LP package, features the “reunion” Beatles song, “Free as a Bird,” which Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr completed last year from an incomplete tape John Lennon made at home in 1977. Also included will be unreleased group recordings spanning 1956 to 1964, among them “In Spite of All Danger,” a 1956 McCartney-Harrison composition done at a “record your voice” booth in Liverpool, plus alternate studio versions of several early Beatles hits, samples of their failed Decca Records audition and “All My Loving” from the group’s first “Ed Sullivan Show” appearance. Two more “Anthology” volumes are scheduled for 1996.

TELEVISION

More Local News: KNBC-TV Channel 4 will add another newscast to its schedule today. “Mid Day Report” will air weekdays at 11 a.m., anchored by Kent Shocknek and Kathy Vara, who also front the station’s early-morning “Today in L.A.”

MUSIC

Paris-Bound: Los Angeles pianist Armen Guzelimian, formerly a member of the USC School of Music faculty, has accepted the post of principal coach and music adviser at the newly formed Paris Opera Center of Opera Bastille in France. Guzelimian will also continue to perform in Europe and the United States.