Names and faces

Saturday, January 11, 2014

The bong-tossing case against Amanda Bynes will be dismissed if the actress stays out of trouble for six months and goes to counseling twice a week, a judgeruled Friday. Bynes was charged in New York City last spring with reckless endangerment and marijuana possession after building managers called police because they said she was smoking pot in the lobby of her Manhattan apartment. When officers entered her 36th-floor apartment, they said, they saw her heave a bong out the window. The 27-year-old Hairspray star later appeared in court in a disheveled blond wig and said she didn’t do anything wrong. It was one episode in a string of erratic incidents involving Bynes last year. She was institutionalized in August after authorities said she set a small fire in the driveway of a home in Thousand Oaks, Calif.Her mother, Lynn Bynes, was granted a temporary conservatorship over the actress, but the case was dismissed because Amanda Bynes’ care was being overseen by a mental-health court. A Manhattan judge allowed the adjournment in contemplation of dismissal Friday, which means the actress does not have to admit guilt. She must attend counseling twice a week for six months and must not be rearrested or the deal is revoked. Bynes didn’t appear in court. An affidavit filed on her behalf by attorney Gerald Shargel said she understood the agreement.The actress left an inpatient mental-health facility in California in December and is currently with her parents. Her California attorney said she is considering returning to school to study fashion design.

Woody Allen’s coming film Magic in the Moonlight will be a 1920s romantic comedy set on the French Riviera. Little had been known about Allen’s next film before Thursday when Sony Pictures Classics announced it will distribute Magic in the Moonlight. It stars Colin Firth, Emma Stone and Marcia Gay Harden. Sony Pictures Classics said it’s about “an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle.” The film is set “against the backdrop of the Cote d’Azur, jazz joints and fashionable spots for the wealthy of the Jazz Age.” Allen shot the film last year in southern France. His 2011 hit Midnight in Paris also drew on the romance of ’20s France. No release date was announced for the new picture. It’s Allen’s seventh film for Sony Pictures Classics.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/11/2014