ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

ENTERTAINMENT

MTV Wants You: MTV will hold open auditions at the Palace in Hollywood on April 6 for its “Wanna Be a VJ Search” to select a new on-air personality. Two semifinalists will be chosen from the 3 to 9 p.m. Los Angeles auditions and will be flown to New York to compete against other semifinalists from New York and Chicago. The winner will receive $25,000, a Kia car and will work as an MTV veejay this summer. For audition information, call (212) 398-9287.

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Fighting Over Ali’s Story: The longtime manager and an associate of former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali have sued Columbia Pictures over a planned film on the boxer’s life starring Will Smith. In the $50-million suit, former Ali manager Jabir Herbert Muhammad and Jason Marcus Hirschfield, the son of Ali’s former attorney, maintain that they control the rights to Ali’s life story through Muhammad Ali Productions, a partnership with Ali. Ali’s wife, Lonnie, in a statement issued by Columbia parent Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., called the lawsuit a “calculated attack on Muhammad personally.” Ali, who sold the rights to his story to Columbia, is not being sued.

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Blazing Out: Jesse Washington--the Blaze magazine editor who was attacked in his office last November in a case that led to assault charges against prominent rap producer Deric “D-Dot” Angellettie--was fired from the magazine Tuesday in what Washington said resulted from an editorial he’d written defending a man who was acquitted in the slaying of Jonathan Levin, the son of Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin. Levin founded the music magazine Vibe, which in turn spawned the hip-hop publication Blaze. The magazine’s spokeswoman, Audrey Addison, had no comment other than to confirm that Washington had been let go. The editorial in question was never published.

QUICK TAKES

CalArts has announced the honorees for its annual Alpert Award in the Arts, to be presented May 15 at Santa Monica’s Herb Alpert Foundation. Recipients of the $50,000 fellowships are Ralph Lemon (dance), Lourdes Portillo (film-video), George E. Lewis (music), Brian Freeman (theater) and Pepon Osorio (visual arts). . . . TLC’s “Fanmail” keeps piling up. The female trio’s album sold 203,000 copies last week to post its third consecutive week at No. 1 on the chart. Rapper C-Murder debuts at No. 2 this week, followed by teen popster Britney Spears. . . . Delroy Lindo (“Get Shorty”) has been cast as Clarence Thomas and Regina Taylor (“I’ll Fly Away”) will play Anita Hill in Showtime’s forthcoming TV movie about Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings, “Strange Justice.” Other cast members include Mandy Patinkin (as political lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein) and Louis Gossett Jr. (as Democratic advisor Vernon Jordan).