Wang film opens Berlin film festival

Berlin film fest opens

The Berlin film festival opened Thursday with a premiere from Chinese director Wang Quan’an that follows the bittersweet reunion of a couple divided for decades across the Taiwan Strait.

“Apart Together” marked Wang’s return to Berlin after winning the festival’s top Golden Bear award with “Tuya’s Marriage” in 2007. It is the first of 20 movies competing for honors at the event’s 60th edition -- the first of the year’s major European film festivals.

Festival director Dieter Kosslick said Wang’s film had symbolic value for the Berlin event -- once a showcase of capitalist West Berlin -- in a year that sees the 20th anniversary of German reunification.

-- associated press Etta James fighting illness

R&B singer Etta James is making progress in fighting serious infections and has been moved to another hospital, her son said Thursday.

Donto James said that his 72-year-old mother is improving and doctors have controlled infections that hospitalized her in Riverside about two weeks ago. She was transferred Tuesday to a medical center in Hawaiian Gardens, he said.

Etta James, who is best known for the hit “At Last,” was hospitalized late last month with sepsis caused by a urinary tract infection. She entered a treatment program to shake a dependency on painkillers and was hospitalized when her condition worsened.

-- associated press Daily Beast writer quits

A Miami Beach-based author of several bestselling books has resigned from his job as chief investigative reporter for the Internet news site the Daily Beast after allegations of plagiarism.

Last week, a writer for Slate.com reported that there were several instances in which Gerald Posner took material from Miami Herald articles without attribution.

Posner announced the resignation on his own website this week, writing that he “inadvertently” copied the passages into master files and that he “lost sight” that the material belonged to a published source.

Posner is the author of “Case Closed,” a book about the John F. Kennedy assassination, and more recently, “Miami Babylon,” a history of Miami Beach.

-- associated press Baldwin briefly hospitalized

“30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin was briefly examined at a New York City hospital early Thursday after his daughter called 911 saying that she feared he was going to take pills after an argument they had on the phone, according to reports.

Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for the actor, told The Times that Baldwin was at the hospital for less than an hour and called the incident “a misunderstanding on one person’s part.”

“Alec was quickly released from the hospital, he’s completely fine and is at work today,” Hiltzik said. “If there was any real issue or concern, he wouldn’t have been released from the hospital so quickly.”

The Associated Press, citing a law enforcement official who declined to be identified, reported that Baldwin’s 14-year-old daughter with actress Kim Basinger called 911 early Thursday morning.

The actor has had a fractious relationship with Basinger since their divorce, a situation he has said created tension with his daughter, Ireland. Two years ago, an angry voice-mail in which he berated his daughter as a “rude, thoughtless little pig” was leaked to the media. He later apologized.

Baldwin is co-hosting the Academy Awards ceremony March 7 with Steve Martin.

-- Matea Gold Polaroid prints up for auction

As Polaroid, that once mighty photo giant, withers away in bankruptcy court, a chunk of its remarkable photography collection will be dispersed at a sale set for June 21-22 at Sotheby’s in New York.

More than 1,200 works from Polaroid’s corporate collection, chronicling decades of artistic experimentation by Andy Warhol, Chuck Close and others who pushed the aesthetic boundaries of the instant-film process, will be hammered away by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Minnesota.

The sale is projected to tally $7.5 million to $11.5 million, with the funds going to creditors.

The Polaroid sale includes Close’s “9-Part Self Portrait,” estimated to sell for as much as $60,000, and Warhol’s portrait of a sultry Farrah Fawcett, valued at as much as $7,000. Other artists include William Wegman, Robert Frank, David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe.

-- bloomberg news