The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Los Angeles

Marla Sokoloff and sitcom moms Marion Ross and Christina Pickles will star in 'Flower Girl,' a wedding-themed original movie that will air on the Hallmark Channel later this year.

Sokoloff ('The Practice') plays Laurel, who runs a floral shop with her meddling grandmother (Ross, of "Happy Days" fame), and is always planning weddings for everyone but herself. As all of Laurel's friends get married, she wonders if she will ever find Mr. Right. Unexpectedly, she meets two possible matches, forcing her to choose between her head and her heart. Pickles ('Friends') play a friend of Laurel's.

In Bangkok (Thailand), Tsui Hark will direct Andy Lau in the period martial arts suspense thriller "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame." The $13 million project will bring to life an imagined case solved by a real Tang Dynasty detective. When the mysterious deaths of a series of loyal subjects threaten to delay the 690 A.D. inauguration of Empress Wu, China's only female leader, she calls the infamous Detective Dee (Lau) back from an exile into which she cast him eight years earlier. Production will begin in May, with a theatrical release envisaged for summer 2010.