SHOOTING STARS: Comedy begins at home

  Imagine George Jefferson and Archie Bunker as in-laws.
  That’s exactly what writer-director Ronda Baldwin-Kennedy did. The result is “Blended,” a locally based independent feature that begins a 21-day shoot Tuesday at a southwest valley residence.
  The romantic comedy focuses on the fallout surrounding the marriage of an interracial couple — especially from the fathers of the bride and groom. One’s a former Black Panther who’s now a successful defense attorney. (He’s the George Jefferson character.) The other’s a former big-city police chief who was forced to resign under duress. (Think Archie Bunker.)
  “I come from a multicultural family myself,” Baldwin-Kennedy notes, “and I understand different cultures.” She wrote “Blended’s” script with her husband, Michael Kennedy, who recently ran for the Nevada Assembly; she’s directing it with executive producer Djeren Xuereb, whose business interests stretch from Boulder Highway to her base in Malta.
  “Blended” features Las Vegas performers and Las Vegas locations, Baldwin-Kennedy says, in part to encourage local production.
  “We want to shoot here in Vegas,” she says. “A lot of other states have incentives” to lure filmmakers, she notes, and “we need to do the same thing.”
  “Lucky” Collins: Las Vegas certainly has been “Lucky” for Jackie Collins; several of the writer’s best-sellers (featuring Mafia princess-turned-casino-mogul Lucky Santangelo) have a Sin City setting. (And so does the 1990 TV miniseries adaptation, “Lucky Chances.”)
  This week, however, Collins shifts from fiction to fact, visiting favorite Vegas haunts for Britain’s top-rated daytime TV program, “The Paul O’Grady Show.”
  Collins isn’t the only one visiting Vegas for O’Grady’s show, however; grown twins who won a competition on the show also will explore Glitter City, from the Strip to downtown, for brief, three- to five-minute segments set to air this fall.
  You say you want a “Revolution”: The Travel Channel certainly does, returning to one of its favorite locales for “Vegas Revolution.”
The six-part series, slated to premiere Nov. 13, will shoot around town, revealing “the insider secrets of America’s favorite fantasyland,” according to a Travel Channel that promises behind-the-scenes insight into “the inner workings of all the glitzy attractions, high-stakes gaming, spectacular shows and some of the most fabulous food on the international dining scene.”
As always, stay tuned to future editions of Shooting Stars for more details as Travel Channel cameras televise this “Revolution.”
  Flex time: The 2009 Ford Flex crossover SUV gets a town-and-country workout for a TV commercial scheduled to shoot downtown (with the Fremont Street Experience as one location) and the Eldorado Canyon town of Nelson.
  Paging all screenwriters: The deadline has come and gone for this year’s screenwriting competition sponsored by the Nevada Film Office, but aspiring scribes can get a jump on next year’s contest Saturday at a free seminar devoted to “The Science of Screenwriting.” Featuring “Anatomy of a Screenplay” author Dan Decker, the seminar takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road; call the Nevada Film Office at 486-2711 for additional information.