SHOOTING STARS: Reality shows continue Vegas invasion

  What happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas. Especially with a variety of reality TV shows, foreign and domestic, crowding this week’s production calendar.
  On Saturday, for example, the sixth season of Fox’s dance competition “So You Think You Can Dance” checks into Planet Hollywood’s Theatre for the Performing Arts for a five-day stay.
  About 200 hopefuls from the show’s six regional auditions will dance for the show’s judges (including Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy), enduring cuts — and, they hope, callbacks — until about 20 are chosen for the final dance-offs on the show’s first fall season, which premieres Sept. 16.
  Tune in to next week’s Shooting Stars for more “Dance” notes ...
  Wedding bell news: Las Vegas’ own Chapel of the Flowers, located in the shadow of the Stratosphere, is ground zero for the new TLC reality series “Happily Ever Faster,” which continues production for about six weeks.
  Each 30-minute episode focuses on two couples tying the knot at the family-run chapel that marries about 5,000 couples annually.
  “Las Vegas is the wedding capital of the world, so it’s a natural fit for a wedding show!” observes Courtney Napurano of Leftfield Pictures, the series’ production company (Leftfield also has another Vegas-based reality series in production: History’s “Pawn Stars.”)
  The new series “scouted a bunch of chapels in Vegas” before choosing Chapel of the Flowers “as they have five different chapels, a huge staff of planners, personable owners and are the masters at performing a lot of weddings tastefully,” Napurano notes in an e-mail.
  “Happily Ever Faster’s” far from the only wedding show in production, either; another wedding-themed show, shooting at a variety of local chapels, also is in production all month — and, perhaps, beyond.
  Poppin’ ‘Popstars’: Germany’s popular “Popstars” attracts millions of viewers every week as it presents aspiring music stars facing a variety of showbiz challenges.
   For the show’s seventh go-round, however, some of those challenges will take place in Las Vegas; the Tresor Productions series, which airs on Germany’s Pro7 network, plans to shoot Monday at Fremont Street Experience as part of the show’s extended visit.
  Casting about: Rumors keep flying (and getting shot down) about a Las Vegas edition of Bravo’s popular “Real Housewives” reality franchise.
  But the concept is alive and well in a series, now casting, titled “The Good Life,” which is looking for women, over 21, “with big personalities, flashy jewelry, designer clothes, etc.” who “live a luxurious lifestyle.”
  Las Vegas is one of nine areas casting officials are checking out; the others range from Los Angeles and Orange County (but of course) to Dallas, Scottsdale, Ariz., Atlanta and Savannah, Ga., and Palm Beach, Fla. Casting officials tentatively plan to visit midmonth to interview potential good-life goddesses.
  Candidates “don’t necessarily have to be trust-fun babies,” e-mails casting assistant Priscilla Walker, “but they need to put out the image of that lifestyle and own it — think Paris Hilton style with a ‘don’t screw with me’ attitude!”
  If that’s you, or someone you know, fill out an application — which you can find at www.thegoodlifecasting.com. For more information, e-mail casting@thegoodlifecasting.com or call (818) 325-6918.
  That's a wrap: From “Astro-Zombies” to “Corpse-Grinders,” Las Vegas-based filmmaker Ted Mikels has created a host of cult favorites.
  Mikels is about halfway through his latest opus, “Astro-Zombie M3: Cloned.” But he won’t be completing production at his TVM Studios, which he (reluctantly) closed over the weekend — after 18 years.
  Mikels has “given away 23 truckloads of stuff” connected with 35 mm filmmaking — including post-production equipment actor and filmmaker Fred “The Hammer” Williamson was driving in from Los Angeles to collect.
  Like many other filmmakers, Mikels “is going totally digital,” he says. “I’ve got what I need: digital cameras, mikes, lights.”
  Finding a place for all the memorabilia Mikels has amassed in six decades of moviemaking, however, is a challenge. But there’s always “my patio and garage,” he reasons.
  “We won’t stop making movies,” Mikels vows. “We just won’t be in that little studio.” As a result, “it’s the end of an era,” he says, a bit mournfully. “The end of a romantic era.”