ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

MOVIES

Kazan Protest Plans Updated: Foes of awarding an honorary Oscar to director Elia Kazan held a press conference Thursday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where they reaffirmed plans to protest before the Oscar ceremony on Sunday. Facing a throng of TV news cameras and reporters, about a dozen blacklisted writers and their relatives attacked the academy’s decision to honor Kazan, who provided names four decades ago to a House committee investigating Communist Party membership in Hollywood. The protest group, calling itself the Committee Against Silence, said it will run anti-Kazan ads in today’s Hollywood trade papers and will stage a peaceful demonstration beginning at 3 p.m. outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “The academy always had a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil policy,” said Becca Wilson, daughter of blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson. Actor John Randolph, who was blacklisted during the 1950s, called the controversy “not a question of forgiveness, but a question of remembrance. If Kazan did the noble thing, he would dedicate his award to the people whose careers were destroyed during this terrible time.” Others taking part in the conference Thursday included blacklisted writers Bernard Gordon and Abraham Polonsky, and Chris Trumbo, son of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo.

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The Force Is Against Them: A group of unnamed manufacturers, advertisers and sellers of allegedly fake “Star Wars” products have agreed to pay nearly $1 million in damages to Lucasfilm Ltd., the company behind the film franchise, its lawyers said Thursday. The payment resulted from an emergency legal motion filed by Lucasfilm; a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered seizures of all counterfeit merchandise from the defendants’ warehouses. Lucasfilm’s president, Gordon Radley, said the move illustrated that the company “will go to great lengths to ensure that the ‘Star Wars’ merchandise [that fans] purchase is safe and not of the inferior quality found in unauthorized products.”

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No Hometown Heroine: Bad timing and unfamiliar mannerisms for the Chinese heroine apparently hampered the animated “Mulan’s” hometown debut. The Disney movie closed Tuesday in central China’s Hunan province after taking in just $30,000 at the box office, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. By comparison, “Titanic” brought in $967,000 in Hunan last year. “Mulan” also had less-than-expected draws in the province of Guangdong and in Shanghai, China’s largest city. Xinhua has described Disney’s “Mulan” as being “foreign-looking” and has quoted viewers as saying that the cartoon heroine’s “complexion, disposition and manner of behavior” were different from the Mulan of Chinese folk lore. However, one distributor blamed the movie’s poor showing on its release date--Feb. 23, after schools reopened after the Lunar New Year holiday.

TELEVISION

Cancellations: ABC has yanked its new midseason drama “Strange World” after just three low-rated airings, and NBC’s canceled the Al Franken comedy “Lateline,” which premiered last season but failed to garner viewers in three different time slots. Meanwhile, CBS’ “Magnificent Seven” has been taken off the schedule and is unlikely to return.

POP/ROCK

Remembering Linda: Elvis Costello, Sinead O’Connor, George Michael and Tom Jones are among those scheduled to perform at a London concert tribute to Linda McCartney on April 10. The Royal Albert Hall event, the proceeds of which will benefit animal-rights charities, was organized by Chrissie Hynde, whose group the Pretenders will be the evening’s house band. According to organizers, the concert has “the blessing” of Paul McCartney, but it’s not yet known whether he’ll attend.

QUICK TAKES

Randy Newman’s musical “Faust,” which met mixed reviews or worse in runs at La Jolla Playhouse in 1995 and Chicago a year later, is being revised by Newman and will be resurrected by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for a production in February-April 2000. . . . “Saving Private Ryan” beat out its main Oscar competition, “Shakespeare in Love,” to win the best picture prize in MovieFone’s fourth annual American Moviegoer Awards, voted by users of MovieFone’s telephone and online listing services. . . . Starting Monday, “CBS This Morning” correspondent Eleanor Mondale will host the “Blockbuster Video Entertainment Report,” a news segment that will air weekdays on KCBS-TV’s “CBS2 News at 5” and “CBS2 News This Morning” at 8 a.m. . . . Radio station KCSN-FM (88.5) will launch its new “Film Day Fridays” programming today with Oscar-related fare from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Regular “Film Day Fridays” programming will focus on film scores and interviews with film composers.