MONTREUX, Switzerland (Reuters) - Quincy Jones, the trailblazing Grammy Award-winning producer and composer, was feted for his music and humanity at a 75th birthday party which brought Herbie Hancock, Patti Austin, Mick Hucknall and more to Montreux’s fabled stage.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When Chris Nolan took on the job of directing “The Dark Knight,” the highly anticipated sequel to his 2005 box office smash “Batman Begins,” he knew what he was getting into. After all, he’d done it before.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A pop star, soap actress and cancer survivor, Delta Goodrem is already famous in Australia, Britain and Japan, but now her sights are set on America and who better to turn to for advice than Olivia Newton-John.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A musical based on 1980 film “Nine to Five” will open on Broadway in 2009 with music and lyrics by country star Dolly Parton, producers said on Tuesday.
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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - “Hancock” led the foreign box office for a second weekend, earning a huge $70.4 million from 67 markets, according to final data issued Monday.
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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Jose Padilha, whose movie “The Elite Squad” depicted Rio de Janeiro’s violent, corrupt cops, turns his camera toward another form of injustice in a new documentary about poverty in Brazil’s northeast.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Even the most hardened celebrity watchers were taken aback by reports of an $11 million deal for exclusive rights to the first photographs of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s newborn twins.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Victor Willis, the original lead singer of disco-era band the Village People, was released from a San Diego hospital on Monday after vocal cord surgery and said he could resume singing within months.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Popular U.S. comedians Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman have broken off their five-year romance, publicists for both said on Monday, ending a relationship that provided fertile ground for outrageous humor.
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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Every year, critics bemoan the fact that the best examples of quality television are trampled beneath the boots of shows watched by the masses.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey has accepted a year-long position as a theater professor at Oxford University, the institution said in a posting on its Web site on Friday.
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LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - What do you do after becoming the first African-American rap group to win an Academy Award for best song? If you’re Three 6 Mafia, you stay focused on what brought you to the game in the first place: music.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The on-again, off-again love affair between Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and his ex-wife, actress Pamela Anderson, is back on again, according to Lee.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - A new Cologne museum will show how Jewish life in the city goes back more than 1,700 years and, civic leaders hope, help revive it decades after the Holocaust.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A bigger, better “Incredible Hulk” crushed the North American weekend box office with a $54.5 million take, according to studio estimates.
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - A jury acquitted R&B star R. Kelly of child pornography charges on Friday, finding he did not make an explicit videotape showing him having sex with an underage girl who called him “godfather.”
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NEW YORK (Billboard) - British singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield has been chosen as the opening act for most of New Kids on the Block’s upcoming reunion tour.
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NEW YORK (Billboard) - In the spring of 2006, rock singer-songwriter Neil Young was just a year removed from a near-fatal aneurysm when he became so enraged with the war in Iraq that he quickly wrote, recorded and released the protest album “Living With War.” Not two months after its release, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young launched their Freedom of Speech tour, during which unwitting fans expecting the band’s sweeter side were greeted instead with its serrated edge.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson may relaunch his career as a Las Vegas act, thanks to the private equity group that recently bought the loan on his Neverland Ranch in California to help the pop star avert foreclosure.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tim Russert, who became a household name in American political discourse as host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday talk show, died on the job of a heart attack on Friday, the television network said. He was 58.
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Colombian pop singer Shakira is using her fame to help poor Latin American children, but she also has her heart set on a new role — mother to her own offspring.
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CANNES, France (Reuters) - The director of a powerful film about the final days of Bobby Sands said he had not made a hero of the IRA prisoner whose death in a 1981 hunger strike made him one of the most prominent symbols of opposition to British rule in Northern Ireland.
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HEILIGENKREUZ, Austria (Reuters) - Monks in Austria hailed a “miracle” on Friday as they released an album of Gregorian chants under the same record label as Amy Winehouse and Eminem.
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CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles’ career has been characterized by implausibilities.
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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Big is not necessarily better for the highly anticipated “Sex and the City” movie, which reaches theaters on May 30.
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CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Martial arts movies have always had a certain cartoonish element, so DreamWorks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda” makes perfect sense.
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LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - “The Bachelor” will be looking for love all over again on VH1.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Screen Actors Guild and major Hollywood studios agreed to return to the bargaining table by May 28 to resume contract talks that broke off more than a week ago, sources close to the talks said on Thursday.
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CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Do we have the right to caricature God? This and other questions involving religion and freedom of speech raised by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed are examined by “It’s Tough Being Loved by Jerks.”
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Canadian country star Shania Twain has separated from her husband of 14 years, reclusive record producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, People magazine reported on Thursday.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - From Manolo Blahnik high heels to designer dresses, the materialism of the characters in television’s “Sex and the City” has made the movie version a marketing dream that some companies are paying for dearly and at least one is getting for free.
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NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Sci-fi action dramas and hourlong reality shows populate Fox’s schedule for next season, which includes new shows from top producers J.J. Abrams (”Lost”) and Joss Whedon (”Buffy the Vampire Slayer”).
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CANNES (Reuters) - Who needs movie superheroes like Iron Man when audiences can rely on a panda named Po with a sick kung fu kick? Not Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black or any of the stars of “Kung Fu Panda.”
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When to slow down and retire? For most people in their 60s the decision is a no-brainer — the sooner the better. But in the rare air of movie stardom, where careers are fueled by a mix of talent, ego, vanity and, sometimes, cosmetic surgery, it seems to be a far harder decision.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Legendary Hollywood press agent Warren Cowan, who counted Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor among his clients and virtually wrote the book on how to represent a star, died at age 87 after a fight with cancer, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Anthony Pellicano, known as Hollywood’s private eye to the stars, was convicted on Thursday of running a vast criminal enterprise involving wiretapping and bribery to fix the problems of his wealthy clients.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rocker Pete Wentz on Monday denied that his fiancee, pop star Ashlee Simpson, is pregnant as reported in celebrity magazines days after they announced their engagement, according to a story on MTV.com.
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JAFFA, Israel (Reuters) - A Jewish couple raises an abandoned Palestinian child. Decades later the boy’s two mothers meet, and, after an agonizing and high-octane exchange, they tentatively embrace.
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LAS VEGAS (Hollywood Reporter) - Anthony Zuiker is on a mission to drive viewers back to television.
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NASHVILLE (Billboard) - She wasn’t in the house, but former “American Idol” finalist Kellie Pickler was the top winner at the CMT Music Awards, held Monday in Nashville.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - The curtain may be rising on the final act of an epic leadership battle at Germany’s Wagner Festival after family patriarch Wolfgang Wagner said he was ready to go if his two daughters took over jointly.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a nod to the ascendancy of video games, rock ‘n’ roll bad boys Motley Crue will become the first group to release a new single through Rock Band, the developer of the wildly popular game said on Monday.
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LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Comedian Bill Cosby’s hip-hop album, described as an “unflinching look at life in the 21st century, but without the profanity, misogyny, violence and braggadocio” is expected to reach stores within the next several weeks, a spokesman said.
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PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Actor Wesley Snipes should serve a maximum three-year prison term and pay a $5 million fine for failing to file his income taxes, U.S. prosecutors recommended in a tax-season court filing.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A judge on Monday ordered a 33 year-old woman to stand trial for stalking actor John Cusack, star of movies such as the recent family film “Martian Child” and supernatural thriller “1408.”
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