ATLANTA - PEARL Jam bassist Jeff Ament was mugged outside an Atlanta studio where the band is recording, police said.

Three masked men dressed mostly in black came out of the woods behind Southern Tracks recording studio and attacked Ament and employee Mark Anthony Smith as they arrived in a rented Jeep late last month, DeKalb County police said.

STOCKHOLM - Actor Stellan Skarsgard says he's no big fan of Dan Brown's writing and accepted a role in 'Angels & Demons' only after reading the script based on Brown's book.

CANNES - BADLY hit by the economic crisis, US indie movies are turning to French co-production companies such as Studio 37 to finance new movies, said its CEO Frederique Dumas on Thursday in Cannes.

'One consequence of the crisis is a growing demand for partnership especially from the US,' said the head of Studio 37, a subsidiary of French telecom company France Telecom.