Teller baiting piranhas for Discovery

Now that the temperature has broken the triple-digit barrier, it's definitely time for a swim.

But not just any swim -- at least not for Teller, the shorter, silent half of Penn & Teller, who's reportedly sharing the water with a school of piranhas as part of the upcoming Discovery series "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie."

Production is scheduled to continue through Thursday on the six-episode series, which features the Rio headliners presenting a variety of stories -- all but one of which are true.

Viewers will have the chance to spot the lie when the show debuts in September.

Assuming Teller survives his close encounter with all those piranhas, that is.

Second shot: Las Vegas-based filmmaker Albert Pyun completed production on his latest feature, "Tales of an Ancient Empire," earlier this year. Or so he thought.

The director of such '80s-'90s workouts as "Nemesis," "Cyborg," "Brainsmasher" and "The Sword and the Sorcerer" completed post-production, from editing to color-correction, with local filmmakers. ("They are young and at the start of their careers, but extremely talented," Pyun says.)

As late as last weekend, however, local filmmaker Daniel Gutierrez was supervising a second-unit scene near Jean -- with the Southern Nevada desert doubling for the movie's mythical North African kingdom. A "Sword and the Sorcerer" follow-up, "Tales of an Ancient Empire" features the original's star, Lee Horsley, along with "Hercules' " Kevin Sorbo, Michael Pare ("Eddie and the Cruisers"), "Nemesis' " Olivier Gruner (a local resident) and Jessica Delgado, who performs in "Bite" at the Stratosphere.

"The marvel of this digital age is how I can keep shooting and improving the movie even though we're less than a week from screening," Pyun says. "It boggles my mind as someone who started in the 35 mm way of things."

And "Tales of an Ancient Empire" is hardly the conclusion of Pyun's local filmmaking; he plans to start production on a sequel, "Red Moon," in August.

"There's a wealth of talent in Las Vegas," according to Pyun. "I am really enjoying shooting and completing my films here."

Local motion: More local filmmakers go into action this week for the short comedy "Black Mamba," from Darkwater Productions, which follows three characters working for a repo firm -- and working hard to make something of their lives in some other line of work.

Production was scheduled to start Sunday at a Henderson residence and is expected to continue for three or four days, with writer-director Zachary Mami calling the shots.

Write time: If it's summer, it must be time for the Nevada Film Office's annual screenwriting competition. And so it is.

Now in its 24th year -- making it one of the oldest script contests in the nation -- the contest is open to all unsold screenwriters whose scripts are at least 75 percent filmable in Nevada.

Of course, that doesn't mean the scripts must be set in Nevada; Martin Scorsese's 1995 epic "Casino," for example, managed to find Southern Nevada locations to stand in for Chicago and Kansas City -- along with the Indiana cornfield where mobster Nicky Santoro (the movie's version of real-life gangster Anthony Spilotro) met his deadly fate.

All qualifying script entries will receive comments and scoring from judges on such elements as structure, writing quality, story, dialogue and marketability.

For submission details and complete rules, check out www.nevadafilm.com.

Quick takes: Projects joining Spike's "The Ultimate Fighter" on this week's location calendar include a music video from House of DON expected to film downtown and a public service announcement for Social Security.

Carol Cling's Shooting Stars column appears Mondays. Contact her at (702) 383-0272 or ccling@reviewjournal. com.