Basketball players starring in commercial

Next month, they'll be in Beijing, charging toward an Olympic gold medal.

Today, however, five top members of the U.S. men's basketball team -- led by NBA MVP Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers -- take a different kind of shot at DreamVision Studios, where they'll appear in a VitaminWater commercial for domestic and international television markets.

Candid camera: ABC News' "Prime Time" limited series "What Would You Do?" -- which focuses on ethical dilemmas -- has completed a 10-day, hidden-camera shoot in Las Vegas for several upcoming shows set to air during the 2008-2009 season. We have one question: What took them so long to visit Vegas?

Vanishing act: The serial killer thriller "Magic Man" completes a monthlong Las Vegas shoot this week at a variety of locations, from a warehouse (scene of a cop shootout) to apartments in the Fremont Street/Maryland Parkway neighborhood.

Produced by and co-starring bodybuilder-turned-actor Alexander Nevsky (alias "the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Russia"), "Magic Man" ranks as the first U.S.-Russian co-production to film entirely in the United States, Nevsky notes.

The write stuff: The countdown clock's ticking for aspiring screenwriters to enter the Nevada Film Office's annual script competition by Aug. 1.

Unsold feature-length scripts in any genre are eligible for the 21st annual contest (the nation's longest-running state-sponsored script competition), as long as 75 percent of the locations are filmable in the Silver State.

Entry fees are $15 per script for Nevada residents and $30 for nonresidents; submission release forms and more details are available online at www.nevadafilm.com or by calling 486-2713.

That's a wrap: What a long, strange road it's been since Shooting Stars began covering the Las Vegas filmmaking scene in September 1994.

That debut column focused on two promising new productions: Martin Scorsese's twilight-of-the-mob saga "Casino," which wound up spending more than two months on location in Las Vegas; and "Leaving Las Vegas," about the doomed romance between an alcoholic screenwriter (Nicolas Cage, in an Oscar-winning performance) and a hooker with smarts and heart (Elisabeth Shue).

From there, Shooting Stars has been on the beat, reporting on movie and TV production in Neon Nirvana, from "Ocean's Eleven" to "The Real World" -- and everything in between.

With this column, however, Shooting Stars ends its weekly run in the pages of the Review-Journal. From now on, check the Vegas Voice blog on the Review-Journal's Web site (www.lvrj.com) for the latest in on-location news. And here's looking at you, kids.

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.