SHOOTING STARS: CNN joins Strip TV lineup on New Year’s Eve

  The more the merrier.
  Las Vegas will have even more of a New Year’s Eve TV presence than initially expected, as CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage features Lance Bass — from Planet Hollywood — to its Times Square tandem of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin.
  ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” already has taped its West Coast segments, hosted by Fergie, at CityCenter’s new Aria.
  And Fox’s “Billboard New Year’s Eve Live” goes live (at least for East Coast types) for a Mandalay Bay beach bash that includes CityCenter cutaways.
  The Fox broadcast marks a return to Mandalay Bay for executive producer Bob Bain — or at least a return to the same spot on the Strip.
  In 1997 (or, more precisely, Dec. 31, 2006), Bain “did Fox’s New Year’s Eve” show, titled “Sinbad’s Dynamite New Year’s Eve,” which featured the implosion of the 40-year-old Hacienda, located where Mandalay Bay now stands.
  “And this year, we’re at the site of that implosion,” Bain notes.
  Stay tuned to next week’s Shooting Stars for more — much more — on Las Vegas’ turn in the New Year’s Eve TV spotlight.
  It’s a wrap: As 2009 winds down, it’s a perfect time to ponder Las Vegas’ movie and TV production picture for the year just past.
  And who better to ponder that picture than Nevada Film Office director Charles Geocaris?
  In Geocaris’ view, two very different trends emerged in 2009.
  The first: television. “Reality TV, TV specials, TV shows — that’s the one type of production that’s still vibrant,” Geocaris notes, “because features have dropped off.”
  Which leads us to the second trend of 2009: how incentives have altered the way big-screen productions decide where to film.
  As many other states offer hefty incentives to lure features, Nevada has lost out on numerous shoots, Geocaris comments.
  “That’s really hurt us, especially in Northern Nevada,” he says, citing projects “that used to shoot in smaller towns that are now going to New Mexico.” One example: the fact-based “Love Ranch,” scheduled for release next year, which stars Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci as married proprietors of Nevada’s first legal brothel.
  Director Taylor Hackford (Mirren’s husband) told NFO officials the movie was “written for outside of Reno,” Geocaris recalls, “but it was all shot in New Mexico, except for three days” in Northern Nevada.
  “It’s no longer about locations,” Geocaris says. “It’s about ‘How much are you going to give us?’ ” And the feature slowdown means “so many talented local people ... could be working a lot more.”
  But a 2010 “Hangover” hangover could prove a boon to Southern Nevada production, Geocaris suggests.
  With other productions following in the hit comedy’s footsteps, “I think in the next year, ‘Hangover’s’ really going to help us,” he says. “It’s the copycat thing.”
  It’s also the Strip thing, he acknowledges, because Las Vegas Boulevard is “the one street nobody (else) has — and that has definitely helped us.”