Britney Spears --- Again???

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That's correct--the pop star has put her Beverly Hills -area home back on the market, this time at $6,499,000. The last time she listed it, she was asking $7.9 million for it, but that was way back in September. She soon reduced that figure to $7,195,000, but she let the listing expire in March.

Now she's baaaaack, and in more ways than a couple. Spears, 27, must have taken a hard look at her successful recording and stage careers and decided they were worth saving. They might be even better now that she has weathered some dips in life's road.


So in March, Spears launched her come-back "Circus" tour in New Orleans, naming it after her sixth studio album, which debuted last year in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200. The tour is in London through the middle of this month. Then it will move to other places in the United Kingdom and Europe.

In the meantime, Spears appears to be ready to sell her house, in the Beverly Hills Post Office area. The home, built in 2001, is in a gated community and has 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in about 7,500 square feet. Designed with the Italian Renaissance in mind, the house has mosaic tile floors, a fireplace in the master bedroom suite, a pool and a motor court.

Tomer Fridman of Ewing & Associates, Sotheby's International Realty, Calabasas, has the listing.

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Joe Pytka, a filmmaker and commercial director, spent 15 years restoring Madonna's former home--"Castillo del Lago"--in the heart of Hollywood.

Now that he has nearly finished the work, Pyka has put the 7,783-square-foot home, with nine bedrooms and six bedrooms, on the market at $14.95 million. Pytka plans to move to Taggart House, a 1922 Lloyd Wright-designed home, which Pytka plans to continue restoring. That house already has undergone five years in refurbishing.

"Castillo del Lago" has 25-foot high beamed and coffered ceilings; a wine cellar, an elevator, a pool, rose gardens and a tower. There are views of the L.A. Basin, the mid-Wilshire area and the ocean. The house is on three hillside acres above Lake Hollywood.


John DeLario designed the home, built in 1926 for an oilman who invested $250,000 in the project.  Mobster Bugsy Siegel leased it as a speak-easy, which caught on fire and was sold for back taxes.

Pytka calls "Castillo del Lago" "a magical house, almost like a fairytale place." Madonna sold it to Pytka in the mid-1990s for "roughly $5 million," Pytka said.

Pytka gave it a red-and-yellow exterior, which Madonna maintained. The house is colonial revival in style.

Barry Peele of Sotheby's International Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.

Sharona Alperin of Sotheby's International Realty, Sunset Boulevard, has the listing. She is the same Sharona mentioned in the popular recording "My Sharona."

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James Schamus, CEO of Focus Features and an Oscar nominee for his work as a producer of "Brokeback Mountain," is trying to get help from Hollywood to buy and preserve the 84-acre estate of the late Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

Schamus says he is seeking "high net-worth film types" and estimates that the property, on the Baltic island of Faro, will cost at least $2.5 million.

Bergman first visited Faro in 1960, when he was looking for a location to shoot "Through a Glass Darkly." He went on to direct some of his most revered films, including "Persona," "The Shame" and "The Passion of Anna,"

Bergman's estate includes a 3,200-square-foot main house, built in 1967; a two-room writers' lodge; a 19th century farmhouse and a second three-bedroom house with a guest wing.

Bergman died in 2007 and is best known for such films as "The Seventh Seal." Bergman lived on the island for four decades and filmed several movies there. The nonprofit Faro Bergman Center Foundation has voiced an interest in establishing a film center on the estate.


Bergman's estate is accepting bids for the property through Aug. 20. Joachim Wrang Widen of Christie's Great Estates in London is handling the sale.

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