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

TV & MOVIES

Zapruder Film Finds Dallas Home: The last original duplicate of Abraham Zapruder’s home movie capturing President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination now belongs to a Dallas museum overlooking the fatal motorcade route. Zapruder’s heirs donated the 26-second film and its copyright, along with hundreds of related items, to the Sixth Floor Museum, which chronicles Kennedy’s life and death. The 11-year-old museum occupies the sixth floor of the old Texas School Book Depository building, where Lee Harvey Oswald is believed to have positioned himself to shoot Kennedy. When Zapruder first processed the film, he ordered three so-called first-generation copies. The original film and two copies that he gave to the Secret Service are stored at the National Archives. Last year, the U.S. government paid Zapruder’s heirs $16 million plus interest for the original film.

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Firefighters Call for ‘Blue’ Boycott: New York City’s 9,100-member firefighters union has called for a boycott of ABC’s “NYPD Blue,” claiming Tuesday’s episode depicted city firefighters as grave robbers. Bill Clark, an executive producer for the Emmy-winning Steven Bochco series, said he apologized if the episode offended anyone but contended that the depiction of a firefighter who stole a Rolex watch and ring from a dead body was “based on true stories.” Clark added that “NYPD Blue” has depicted corrupt police officers several times, but this was the first negative portrayal of firefighters. Still, a union spokesman, who said more than 100 firefighters called the union office Wednesday morning to complain about the episode, accused the show of having “spit in the face of every New York City firefighter and our comrades nationally.” New York Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen shrugged off the controversy, calling the series “pure fiction.”

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Summer of ‘Godzilla’: Hoping to redeem the “Godzilla” franchise after its disappointing Hollywood-style big-screen outing in 1998, Sony Pictures has acquired “Godzilla 2000: Millennium,” from “Godzilla’s” original Japanese producers, Toho Co., for U.S. release this summer. The film earned good critical reviews at the Tokyo Film Festival last month and has set Japanese box-office records. In the film--Godzilla’s 23rd big-screen appearance--the giant lizard battles an alien form roused from a 6,000-year sleep. The U.S. release will be dubbed in English.

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Sundance Squabble: Actress-rocker Courtney Love, who disrupted the Sundance Film Festival two years ago by threatening to sue if a documentary about her life with the late Kurt Cobain was screened, is at it again. At a dinner in Park City, Utah, on Wednesday, Love, who was promoting the film “Beat,” nearly came to blows with Hollywood Reporter film critic Kirk Honeycutt after Honeycutt’s wife snapped a photo of Love. Though her publicist had reportedly authorized the shot, Love snatched the camera, Honeycutt grabbed for it, and in the ensuing tussle furniture was upended and the camera was broken. Honeycutt and Love later apologized to one another, sources said.

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Settlement Proposed: “Veronica’s Closet” co-star Wallace Langham, who is accused of a hate crime for allegedly beating an unnamed gay tabloid reporter in a September altercation at an L.A. supermarket, has agreed to a cash settlement with the man, Langham’s attorney said. However, the proposed settlement--which sources say is in the low six figures--would be subject to dismissal of the criminal charges. Prosecutors--who call a civil settlement “inappropriate” for a hate crime, noting the severity of the alleged victim’s beating--say they will oppose the deal in favor of a trial. A judge is expected to rule next week. Langham’s character on the NBC comedy, Josh, has an ambiguous sexual orientation.

ART

Getty Acquisition: The J. Paul Getty Museum’s latest major acquisition--purchased for $2.2 million at Christie’s New York on Thursday--is a small but choice painting by 18th century Italian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. “Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles”--which depicts a legendary love story and measures 16 1/2 by 21 1/4 inches--belonged to Gentili di Giuseppe, a Jewish resident of Paris who was forced to sell his art collection when he fled the Nazis. The painting has hung in the Louvre for 50 years, but it was recently returned to the collector’s heirs, who consigned it to auction at an estimated value of $1.5 million to $2 million. The Getty will put the Tiepolo on view after it receives conservation treatment, probably in late February.