by Antonios Mejías -Rentas
PRIME SPOT: The latest film from Brazilian director Fernando Mereilles will open this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
As expected, Blindness will screen on May 14 as an official entry. It is based on a novel by Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago and it stars Gael García Bernal, Day of the Immigrant Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover.
Meirelles is best known for his 2002 Portuguese-language fi lm Cidade de Deus, for which he received an Oscar nomination. He also directed the 2005 English-language thriller The Constant Gardener.
ON THE BLOCK: Several important works by Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo are part of this spring’s Latin American art auction at Sotherby’s in New York.Ahighlight of the auction is the 1949 Tamayo oil painting El comedor de sandías, which has not been available since 1980 and is expected to fetch up to $2 million. The sale, to be held May 29 and 30 at the auction house’s Manhattan gallery, will also feature works by such heavyweights as Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Fernando Botero and Jesús Rafael Soto.
THROWN OUT: A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit by a TV writer who claimed Jennifer López had a hand in stealing his idea for a show.
Jack Bunick claimed in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the short-lived UPN series South Beach, that debuted in 2006, was similar to a plot he described in 1999 for a pilot that would have been titled South Beach Miami. The lawsuit named López, UPN and CBS Television among defendants.
Judge Richard Berman said there was inadequate evidence to take the case to trial.
ONE LINERS: At an international Book Fair in Santo Domingo last week, Dominican Pulitzer prize winning author Junot Díaz announced his novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will have a Spanish-language translation this year. Toxicology tests showed that Tejano singer Emilio Navaira was intoxicated when the tour bus he was driving crashed into freeway barrels in suburban Houston in March; the 45-year-old singer is recovering in a Houston hospital singer Mariah Carey unexpectedly married actor Nick Cannon last week, according to uncomfirmed reports and actor Javier Bardem is reportedly dropping out of the film adaptation of the musical Nine, which was expected to go into production this year. Hispanic Link.
