The Beatles are getting the big-screen biopic treatment in not just one film, but a Fab Four of movies that will give each band member their spotlight — all of which are to be directed by Sam Mendes.
For the first time, the Beatles, long among the stingiest rights granters, are giving full life and music rights to a movie project. Sony Pictures announced a deal that may dwarf all music biopics that have come before it, with the stories of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr spread out over a quartet of films. (AP)
Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth, and Zendaya will join Vogue’s Anna Wintour as co-chairs of this year’s Met Gala, the magazine, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art have revealed.
And the dress code? “The Garden of Time,” whatever that means in the imaginations of the star-studded crowd that ascends the museum’s grand steps each year on the first Monday in May at the splashy benefit. (AP)
The song “Hotel California” became one of rock’s most indelible singles. Nearly a half-century later, handwritten pages of lyrics-in-the-making have become the center of an unusual criminal trial. Rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski are charged with conspiring to own and try to sell manuscripts of “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits without the right to do so.
The three have pleaded not guilty, but the Manhattan district attorney’s office says the defendants connived to obscure the documents’ disputed ownership, despite knowing that Henley said the pages were stolen. (AP)
The death of Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda days after Chile’s 1973 military coup should be reinvestigated, an appeals court has ruled, saying new steps could help clarify what killed the poet.
Last December, a judge rejected a request by Neruda’s nephew to reopen the case to look for causes other than cancer, which was listed on his death certificate. The nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, said forensic experts from Canada, Denmark and Chile had found evidence pointing to Neruda being poisoned.
Reyes said forensic tests carried out in Danish and Canadian labs indicated Neruda’s body had “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life.” The toxin can cause nervous system paralysis and death.
The ruling was the latest turn in one of the great debates of post-coup Chile. The long-stated official position has been that Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer, but his driver argued for decades that he was poisoned. (AP)
