Prince

I don't play video games, so any pre-awareness of "Prince of Persia" comes from my addiction to pop-culture Web sites. That puts me dead center in the wider audience that the studio needs to make "Prince of Persia" a movie blockbuster. To ensure that, they hire an over-serious A-list actor like Jake Gyllenhaal to elevate multi-platform pablum (what used to be called a B-movie) into mass-market gold. It's worked before, but putting Tobey Maguire (a nerd) in a superhero movie about a nerd ("Spider-Man")

A share of Philadelphia blue blood was bought by European royalty yesterday. One-third of the venerable Philadelphia-based brokerage firm, Butcher & Singer, is now in the hands of Johannes Fuerst von Thurn und Taxis, one of the world's richest men and an honest-to-goodness prince whose family lineage and fortune can be traced back to medieval Europe. Nicknamed "Johnny TNT" since his youth, the 61-year-old West German Thurn und Taxis bought the interest in Butcher and Co., parent of Butcher & Singer, for $20 million.

He came and he conquered. Now, on the macabre cover of the new album by the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, you'll find the tombstone dates for Pre-Symbol Prince (1958-1993). Well, don't give away all your purple to Goodwill just yet, because Prince lives! On "Come" (Warner Bros., 1/2), which is the last studio album he recorded as Prince (although tons more tunes remain locked in vaults), he takes U back 2 a time when his music and his nomenclature were much simpler.

After pushing the elevator button, Prince, 12, begins on his favorite subject: the weather. He feels that he's lucky today because it's raining and, besides, he has the day off from school. We get to the sixth floor at the Adoption Center and walk to the window to survey our kingdom. Prince is delighted to see a tree growing out of a crack in a tar roof. I wonder aloud how it got there, and he says, reasonably, that spring's here and it's magic. We sit at a long table and draw with crayons and felt pens.

That Batman is incredible. In two-plus hours of lavish Hollywood fantasy, the Caped Crusader takes care of what ails Gotham City, blurs the distinction between good and evil, and gets the girl besides. Now Batman - or, more accurately, Batman, the film that has grossed more than $200 million - is credited for reviving Prince's career as well. Faster than you can say "comeback," Prince, the funk visionary whose popularity had waned in recent years - has been vindicated by the marketplace, his status as pop idol restored.

Is the sun setting on the Purple Empire of Prince? Or can the pandering popster rise again, like Phoenix from the ashes, with his most commercially attuned new album "Diamonds and Pearls"? The signs of a desperate man are impossible to miss. In recent weeks, the diminutive demigod of pop has been reduced to merciless pandering to the peons - baring his tush on MTV's Music Video Awards, performing for free with his surprising new group (The New Power Generation) at a bunch of radio industry conferences - just to grab attention for the album package.

"Under the Cherry Moon. " A comedy-drama with music starring and directed by Prince. Featuring Jerome Benton, Steven Berkoff, Alexandra Stewart, Francesca Annis. Introducing Kristin Scott-Thomas. Based on a screenplay by Becky Johnson. Photographed in black & white by Michael Ballhaus. Music by Prince and the Revolution. Running time: 98 minutes. Warner Bros. release. In area theaters. The difference between the superstar's first two films is that "Purple Rain" is a psychological/autobiographical glorified rock video starring Prince and the Revolution, while his new one, "Under the Cherry Moon," is a movie starring Prince, period.

Prince is no stranger to raised eyebrows - it's no accident that his publishing company and fourth album bear the name Controversy. And now a bit of a furor has arisen over the portrait that adorns the cover of his new album, Lovesexy. The photo is a coy sideways shot of Prince, reclining in the nude on huge white lilies, with his hand spread across his chest and his left leg poised at an angle that hides his penis. One of the flower's pistils, however, serves as a fairly blatant approximation.

Imagine if Prince got this much publicity for his actual music! Then he'd really be on to something. But today's story, like the last dozen Prince stories, is just the latest installment in the wee artiste's hectic domestic life. Prince's new bride, Mayte, will have his baby in November. The flack who made yesterday's announcement - and volunteered the helpful information that conception took place after the couple's Feb. 14 wedding - stressed this was not an April Fool's joke.

For Rock 'n' roll's premier chameleon, a double album means twice as many branches to leap onto and laugh merrily as the rest of us try to figure exactly where he went. Welcome back to the world of Prince, whose "Sign O' the Times" (due in stores this week) once more trips lightly from sex to sacred and serious to silly behind a beat that's as strong as it is lean. He plays almost everything himself this time, and often that's little more than drums and guitar. Largely because of this, much of "Sign" harks back to the pre-"Purple Rain" days.

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. - Luckily, Prince Harry did not ask for a bucket of Curley's Fries. "There's no power," confided Katie Burke, an employee of a still-not-quite-operational Casino Pier, the centerpiece of a town hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. Undaunted, Burke and the rest of the commoners of Seaside Heights and nearby Mantoloking welcomed the third in line to the British throne Tuesday in his quest to see firsthand towns damaged by Sandy. Gov. Christie, dressed in a striking lime-green button-down shirt that went nicely with the stylish redheaded royal heartthrob, dressed in a white shirt, served as the royal tour guide.

Update: Prince Harry has ended his short visit to the Shore with Gov. Christie and flown to New York for the next stop on his tour. During his visit, the prince walked on the Seaside Heights Boardwalk with the governor, who presented the royal guest with one of his trademark fleece jackets. SEASIDE HEIGHTS - Prince Harry, as it turns out, will be among the final tourists to take in the sobering sight of the Jet Star roller coaster in the Atlantic Ocean that has defined Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore.

TRAFFIC reporter Kacie McDonnell can add another title to her Fox 29 CV: Official Royal Stalker. When Prince Harry hits the Shore tomorrow, McDonnell will be ready to meet her Prince Charming, even taking etiquette lessons on "Good Day Philadelphia" just in case she comes into contact with Harry in segments they're calling "When Harry Meets Kacie. " Although Harry's brother, Prince William , is generally thought of as the heartthrob of the two, McDonnell goes against the grain.

Prince Harry on Friday injected his latest American visit with gravitas and style. The royal, who last year was caught on camera frolicking with babes in Vegas, met with wounded veterans at the U.S. military's Walter Reed medical center in Washington. Dressed in uniform, the British Army captain, who recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, also visited Arlington National Cemetery, wreath in hand. "To my comrades-in-arms of the United States of America, who have paid the ultimate price in the cause of freedom.

FOR ALMOST 25 years, the Prince Music Theater was celebrated nationally for its mission of exclusively staging musical-theater world premieres. But that business model proved unsustainable when the Great Recession came knocking, and, in 2008, the curtain rang down on the Prince's three performance spaces, the largest of which seats about 450. But thanks to a dedicated group of local movers and shakers who bought the property at 1412 Chestnut Street,...

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, N.J. - The mayor of a storm-wrecked Jersey Shore town said Monday that England's Prince Harry will visit next week before heading to a news conference nearby. Mantoloking Mayor George Nebel said Monday that Harry, an heir to the throne, will take a short walk along Barnegat Lane along the bay front during a brief visit Tuesday. The prince will accompany Gov. Christie to Seaside Heights afterward. During a council meeting, held in Point Pleasant Beach because Mantoloking's municipal building was wrecked by the storm, Nebel revealed part of the prince's itinerary for his visit to the East Coast.

As the next step in its post-bankruptcy evolution, the Prince Music Theater has named a new board of directors and an executive director. James E. Hines, 35, is the new chief staffer, joining the Prince after three years as artistic administrator of the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. The Prince, a former movie house on Chestnut Street, exited Chapter 11 on Oct. 15 after being won at bankruptcy auction by a group of business investors known collectively as 1412 Chestnut Street Corp.

AMBRIDGE, Pa. - Now this is the story all about how a high school student's life got turned upside down. But it was all just a bad rap. The student's voicemail greeting triggered a lockdown at his Western Pennsylvania school after a receptionist misheard his rendition of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. While trying to confirm an appointment with Travis Clawson, 19, the receptionist thought the message said "shooting people outside of the school. " The line is actually "shooting some b-ball outside of the school.

HENRY PRINCE Murphy was a man of many talents and accomplishments, with a major focus on serving his fellow human being. He was an auditor and accountant by trade, but you wouldn't have wanted to tell him he had condemned himself to a life without adventure, not when he was boarding a plane for Ethiopia to help the Rev. Leon Sullivan set up development projects for Third World countries. And not when he was teaching business courses at local schools, or painting portraits of family members, or working in various civic enterprises to help minority businesses, abused women or any number of other programs of benefit to the underserved.

C HARLES BARKLEY may be turning 50 Wednesday, but he doesn't foresee any midlife crisis. "I don't even know what that is. I've heard about it, technically," the Round Mound of Rebound told me. "My life, if you want to talk about fairy tales, mine's it. " Barkley's one plan: Be more reflective in the future. That goal starts tonight as Barkley looks back on his life in a Comcast Sportsnet special at 7 p.m., called "Barkley at 50. " Barkley will be joined by CSN's Neil Hartman and Jim Lynam , Barkley's former coach, who traded him out of Philly in '92. Barkley doesn't usually celebrate his b-day, but he did share one birthday buddy during his NBA heyday: Michael Jordan , who also recently turned 50. "He's three days older than me," Barkley said.