Leg injury upsets his 'Game Plan'

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson says it wasn't the damage he knew he had done to his Achilles ' tendon while doing football drills that bothered him most. It was the cancellation of the Boston-area filming of the Disney flick "The Game Plan." "It snapped and . . . I immediately knew what happened. I was there on that field in Malden, on June 19 at 5:30 p.m., standing there with my hands on my hips, and I knew I had to get my Achilles reattached. And then I thought, there go a lot of jobs," said Johnson, in town promoting his other football movie, "Gridiron Gang," which opens Sept. 15 and is based on a documentary by the same name. Calling his injury the ``biggest blessing in disguise," Johnson said it forced him to take some time off and spend the summer at home in Florida, something he hasn't done ``since I got out of college in 1995." It also allowed Johnson more time to promote ``Gridiron Gang," in which he plays probation officer Sean Porter, who starts a high school football team in the California youth prison where he works. "First, I wanted to do right by the story and do right by Sean and what they accomplished," Johnson said. The former college football star and former pro wrestler's quick trip back to Boston included a screening last night of "Gridiron Gang," with Boston Celtic Ryan Gomes and 150 young people from programs around the city, including the Bird Street Community Center, the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club in Charlestown, DARE Family Services, and Roxbury Youth Works. Still, he's looking forward to getting his cast off in three days and returning to Boston in September to begin shooting on ``The Game Plan." ``I'll be ready," he said.

Fogg acquisitions may be by the Ripper

Harvard's Fogg Museum will receive 82 works by Walter Sickert, the artist whom best-selling crime writer Patricia Cornwell identified as being Jack the Ripper in her book ``Portrait of a Killer." The 82 pieces -- 36 prints, 24 paintings, and 22 drawings -- were collected by Cornwell while she was doing the research. Although other writers have speculated about Sickert's connection to the murders of prostitutes in London's East End in the 1880s, it was Cornwell's 2002 book that famously fingered him as the serial killer. Cornwell is director of the National Forensics Academy at the University of Tennessee; she was assisted in her Sickert research by staff from Harvard's Straus Center for Conservation . The paintings were on temporary loan to the Fogg and now have been designated as gifts, museum spokesman Daron Manoogian said yesterday. Yet it's not the notoriety of the artist but the breadth of the collection that holds the most interest for Harvard, Manoogian noted. ``This is very valuable because there's not a lot of Sickert's works in US collections. [Sickert] studied and knew Whistler and Degas, who are represented in our collection," he said. As for the Jack the Ripper connection, Manoogian said: ``It's the one thing everybody wants to talk about, which is fine. But the thing is, it's a theory."

If you've always wanted to own a restaurant -- well, a little bit of one -- John Kessen and his partners have a deal for you. In what they admit is a "marketing ploy" to help open the Village Table in Bay Village, Kessen, Rachel's Kitchen owners Rachel and Alon Munzer, and chef Barry Maiden put up a website (thevillagetableboston.com ) asking for donations. For $5 to $25 or more, donors will get their name on a wall of the place, formerly Dedo. They'll also get 25 percent off their first dinner and other benefits, such as gifts to favorite charities, says Kessen, who formerly was a manager at Sel de la Terre. His sister's ex-husband, friendly waiters, and neighborhood families have ponied up funds. But, Kessen acknowledges, conventional means of financing are also in the works. The appeal was really designed for fun -- and to ramp up interest for the mid-priced restaurant, which they hope to open in January. The spot, once a well-known gay bar, has seen several restaurant failures, and the partners figure some good will might get it started right this time.

Mariah Carey took a few moments before her concert at the TD Banknorth Garden on Monday night to meet with Lan Do, a 24-year-old medical student from Boston, who won the Venus ``Legs of a Goddess" contest. . . . Carey also handed over the keys to a new Miata to Melanie Anderson from Nashua, N.H., as part of a promotion with FM radio station Kiss 108.

Alison Arnett of the Globe staff contributed. Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253.