Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Mira Sorvino reports that entertainment and corporate forces are gathering on behalf of a large-scale concert to help Darfur. 

Sorvino, who has the Focus Features drama "Reservation Road" opening Oct. 19, tells us she is aiming to put on the event "within the next few months." The Oscar-winning actress and Amnesty International goodwill ambassador already produced a smaller-scale Darfur concert in Oregon last year, in which Incubus and Audioslave were among the performers. She notes that they've offered to return, and that Eddie Vedder and other "major, major talents in the recording industry want to be involved. I know there are also actors who want to be part of the day" to galvanize attention on the Sudanese region ravaged by genocide. With enough of a public outcry, she believes the U.S. government and international community will put enough pressure on Sudan to stop the atrocities.

Sorvino was at New York's Advertising Week conclave two weeks ago, making her Darfur pitch to marketing professionals and other corporate types. As a result of that, she says, "I have a few partners — in theory, at least. We're trying to get major corporate seed money." Larry Kopp of The TASC Group, who was one of the forces behind last month's all-star Radio City Music Hall "Dream Concert" that raised $4 million for the Martin Luther King Memorial, has now also come aboard the Darfur concert effort, she reveals. 

Mira is juggling her activism with her life as mom to 1-year-old son Johnny and daughter Mattea, nearly 3 — plus the launch of "Reservation Road." She plays the former wife of Mark Ruffalo's character in the drama, in which Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly play the parents of a boy killed in a hit-and-run accident — with Ruffalo as the attorney who fled the scene. 

"It was one of the most powerful scripts I'd read in years," says Mira. "When Joaquin and Mark have their confrontation, I think it's some of the best acting ever on film between two men in a single scene."

SCREEN TO STAGE: "Lion King the Musical" on the big-screen? Yes, Tony-winning director Julie Taymor says that could be coming down the pike.

"I've got to figure out how to do it," says Taymor. "I know how to go from animation to live theater, but to now go from live theater back to cinema … What do I do with all those maps? I haven't quite figured out what I want to do." And, she adds, "Lion King the Musical" is still going strong worldwide.

"We just opened in Paris, then we take the production to Johannesburg in Africa, then bring them to India and Southeast Asia. So we're not played out of theaters."

Taymor — who's being honored alongside Lauren Bacall, Scarlett Johansson, Diane Lane, Kate Bosworth and Jennifer Connelly at ELLE Magazine's 14th Annual Women in Hollywood Tribute at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills Hotel on Monday (Oct. 15) — is back to work on "Spider-Man the Musical," which she's doing with Bono and The Edge. She says casting is a ways down the line, but they "did a workshop, and guess who played the two leads? Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess."

They would be the same two leads who play the star-crossed lovers in Taymor's recently released "Across the Universe," the tour-de-force big-screen musical featuring The Beatles hits from the '60s. "It was awesome," she says of the "Spider-Man the Musical" workshop. "Just phenomenal. You know, if I love people, I want to use them again. But are we going to be able to convince — not Evan, but Jim Sturgess to want to do live theater six to eight times a week? Because he's just starting out in movies, so he's got to get a bit of that under his belt."

SEA SIGHTS: John Cleese will kick off the new year with a voyage aboard the Silversea's Silver Shadow, where the Monty Python funnyman will host a John Cleese film festival and give guests a grand — and likely rowdy — look at his life and works, including the Emmy-nominated BBC documentary "The Human Face" and the movie "A Fish Called Wanda." Cleese follows "Sideways" author Rex Pickett as guest speaker aboard the 382-person elite cruise ship in December, and they both follow a long list of notables — including Walter Cronkite, Lynn Scher of "20/20" and Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes"— as star speakers on Silversea voyages this year.

TORN BETWEEN 'EM: On the CW's "Gossip Girl," Chace Crawford plays Nate, who's torn between girlfriend Blair (Leighton Meester) and crush Serena (Blake Lively). Well, fans, in case you were wondering, the actor believes Nate "is truly in love with both of them. Sometimes Blair represents the cage, the family-ordained relationship, while Serena is in this world but not of it, and he has the desire not only to be with her but to possess the qualities she possesses, the freedom." Is it possible to truly love two girls at the same time? "I've done that," replies the handsome Crawford — who's single at the moment, by the way. "I haven't been in such a crazy situation as this one on the show, but yes." 

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read there past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.