LONDON | Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:29pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Robbie Williams was the king of the British pop charts on Sunday after he secured both the UK single and album number ones, the Official Charts Company said, Williams's album "Take The Crown" beat a swathe of other new releases for the top spot, giving him his 10th number one album in 15 years as a ...

By Chris Michaud and Lisa Richwine Sun Nov 11, 2012 2:16pm EST (Reuters) - James Bond can don the tuxedo and break out the Dom Perignon after the super spy returned to theaters in record fashion at the weekend, blowing away box office rivals with $87.8 million in ticket sales for the U.S. and Canadian debut of new movie "Skyfall" for the biggest opening i...

By Michael Martina BEIJING | Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:09am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's films are taking a hit from a trade deal that allows for more U.S. movie imports, the country's broadcast regulator said on Sunday, with their share of the box office take sliding even as the industry's total revenues outpace those of last year. The movie pact, w...

By Michael Holden and Kate Holton LONDON | Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:42am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's BBC must undergo a radical overhaul in the wake of "shoddy" journalism which led to the resignation of its chief or its future will be in doubt, the head of the state-funded broadcaster's governing body said on Sunday. Chris Patten, chairman of the...

LOS ANGELES | Sat Nov 10, 2012 8:36pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Judy Garland's blue and white gingham dress from "The Wizard of Oz" sold for $480,0000 at a Beverly Hills auction on Saturday, while a slice of Prince William's wedding cake fetched $1,375. Julien's Auctions said the price for the pinafore dress and white puffy-sleeved blouse that Garland ...

By Michael Holden and Kate Holton LONDON | Sat Nov 10, 2012 8:30pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - BBC director general George Entwistle resigned just two months into the job, after the state-funded broadcaster put out a program denounced by its chairman as shoddy journalism. The BBC, reeling from revelations that a former star presenter was a paedophile,...

LOS ANGELES | Sat Nov 10, 2012 5:23pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pop star Justin Bieber and his girlfriend, Selena Gomez, a Disney actress and singer, have broken up, ending a relationship that made them one of Hollywood's most high-profile young couples, media reports said. Bieber, 18, and Gomez, 20, disclosed their relationship in February 2011 when t...

LOS ANGELES | Fri Nov 9, 2012 9:23pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Country-pop star Taylor Swift will ring in the New Year in the United States as the headline act on TV special "New Year's Rockin' Eve," which will feature a two-hour tribute to late host Dick Clark, organizers said on Friday. Swift, whose new album "Red" racked up more than 1 million copie...

SAN ANTONIO | Fri Nov 9, 2012 9:17pm EST SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) - The will of the late actor Sherman Hemsley was ruled valid on Friday in Texas, clearing the way for the star of "The Jeffersons" to be buried more than three months after his death, the lawyer who prepared the will said. Hemsley, 74, died of lung cancer in Texas in July. His body has been h...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 7:31pm EST (Reuters) - Love letters written by Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger to American singer Marsha Hunt, discussing poetry and his personal turmoil, will hit the auction block next month. Hunt, with whom Jagger had his first child, Karis, told Britain's Guardian newspaper she was selling the letters, written in July and August 1969, beca...

Fri Nov 9, 2012 6:15pm EST (Reuters) - Seminal American author Philip Roth, whose novels explored modern Jewish-American life, has told a French magazine that he will write no more books because he has lost his passion for it. The author of such novels as "American Pastoral", for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and "Portnoy's Complaint" slipped his retirement anno...

LOS ANGELES | Fri Nov 9, 2012 6:10pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "The Hunger Games" star Jennifer Lawrence will not be dieting for a role any time soon. Lawrence, 22, who plays the famished Katniss Everdeen in the life-or-death thriller series, told Elle magazine in an interview to be published on November 13 that dropping a few pounds will not be part o...

By Victoria Bryan and Maria Sheahan FRANKFURT | Fri Nov 9, 2012 9:12am EST FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The MTV Europe Music Awards will rock Frankfurt's Festhalle concert venue on Sunday, with Barbadian R&B singer Rihanna leading the nominations and all eyes on Korean dance sensation Psy. Psy's hit "Gangnam Style", which is up for the Best Video aw...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 8, 2012 5:16pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Dancing with the Stars" co-host Brooke Burke said on Thursday that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and will need surgery. The television presenter and model said in a three-minute video posted on the website Modernmom.com that she wil...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 8, 2012 3:29pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Dozens of excited "Twilight" fans set up tents in Los Angeles on Thursday ahead of next week's world premiere of the last film in the vampire romance franchise. Some 2,200 people from all over the world have registered to camp on a concrete plaza outside a downtown Los Angeles movie theater...

LOS ANGELES | Thu Nov 8, 2012 2:33pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Someone has a big crush on U.S. Vice President Joe Biden - and now she is getting to meet him. Biden will make his TV acting debut with a cameo on NBC's comedy "Parks and Recreation" as the celebrity crush of actress Amy Poehler's ditzy local councilwoman Leslie Knope, NBC said on Thursday....

By Elaine Lies TOKYO | Thu Nov 8, 2012 8:16am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - The suave and sensitive Edward Cullen of "Twilight" may be the norm for vampires these days, but fictional monsters such as Dracula originally sprang from the fear of inexplicable diseases and the mysteries of death in the natural world. So argues science journalist Matt Kaplan i...

By Alexandria Sage PARIS | Thu Nov 8, 2012 5:23am EST PARIS (Reuters) - The bold horizontal brushstrokes of Manet's 1876 female portrait, "The Parisian," convey the raw energy of a new painting style that turned heads well over a century ago with its focus on light, its sketch-like feel and contemporary subjects. But the star of the life-sized oi...

BERLIN | Thu Nov 8, 2012 4:37am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - A German-language folk group famed for their Alpine brass band sound and cheerful style have been faking the music on their albums for years and should give back their 13 German music awards, their former producer said on Wednesday. But the manager of the seven-man "Kastelruther Spatzen" said it was ...

JOHANNESBURG | Thu Nov 8, 2012 3:43am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A woman heading to a concert by U.S. rock band Linkin Park in Cape Town was crushed to death on Wednesday when a strong gust of wind blew over a promotional billboard, South African media said. Nineteen others were injured when the temporary scaffolding outside Cape Town's Green...

LOS ANGELES | Wed Nov 7, 2012 8:51pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The mother of "Modern Family" star Ariel Winter on Wednesday denied that she abused her daughter after a judge temporarily placed the 14-year-old actress in her sister's care. "It's all untrue, it's all untrue," Chris Workman, Winter's mother, told People magazine. "I have my doctor's lette...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Wed Nov 7, 2012 2:48pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Country-pop star Taylor Swift held onto the top spot on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday as her latest album "Red" kept rapper Meek Mill from the top spot. "Red," Swift's fourth studio album safely took the No. 1 position after selling 344,000 copies acco...

LONDON | Wed Nov 7, 2012 12:16pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War Two sitcom "Dad's Army", has died, his agent said on Wednesday. Dunn passed away on Tuesday, Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 9...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Wed Nov 7, 2012 8:54am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - As dusk sets on the "Twilight" saga with the final film, actor Taylor Lautner is looking at a new dawn for the next stage in his career. Lautner, 20, shot to fame after being cast as werewolf Jacob Black in the "Twilight" films, entangled in a torrid love triangle ...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Wed Nov 7, 2012 7:27am EST LONDON (Reuters) - The widening gap between the amount of data the world produces and our capacity to store it is giving a new lease of life to the humble cassette tape. Although consumers have abandoned the audio cassette in favor of the ubiquitous iPod, organizations with large amounts of dat...

LOS ANGELES | Tue Nov 6, 2012 2:23pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - R&B star Rihanna unveiled a duet entitled "Nobodies Business" with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown on Tuesday, three years after Brown was charged with assaulting her. The song was part of an official track list that Barbadian singer Rihanna tweeted to her followers for her upcoming album "Una...

By Joe Bavier and Ange Aboa ABIDJAN | Tue Nov 6, 2012 12:13pm EST ABIDJAN (Reuters) - As darkness falls over Ivory Coast's lagoon-side commercial capital a steady thumping cuts through the tropical night. But where once the thud of heavy weapons set the Abidjan's residents scrambling indoors for cover, tonight it is a reggae bass line that draws ...

LONDON | Tue Nov 6, 2012 9:57am EST LONDON (Reuters) - "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" are the first words yelled by Bella, the central character in "My Big Shouting Day", winner of the 2012 Roald Dahl Funny prize in the category aged six and under. The victory was announced at an award ceremony in London by British literary charity Booktrust on Tuesday.Bella's ma...

By Lisa Richwine LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 8:12pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Star Wars" was the force behind Walt Disney's $4 billion purchase of producer George Lucas's Lucasfilm entertainment holdings. Not so far, far away is Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, his award-winning special effects shop that will likely save Disney millions of...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 7:15pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Kristen Bell is expecting her first child with actor Dax Shepard, her spokeswoman said on Monday. "Veronica Mars" actress Bell, 32, is expecting the child in late spring with her fiancé, "Parenthood" actor Shepard, 37, the actress' representative Marcel Pariseau told Reuters.The cou...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:33pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish photographer Jordi Ruiz Cirera has won the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize in London for his picture of a young woman in Bolivia whose religious conservatism made her uncomfortable before the camera. Ruiz Cirera, 28, is based in the British capital and was one of four photographers...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:24pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Brad Pitt has turned his talents to creating furniture for a luxury design house with a high-end collection inspired by both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, according to Architectural Digest. Pitt, who collaborated on the collection with U.S. furniture designer Frank Pollaro, discussed his ...

By Scott Malone BOSTON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:13pm EST BOSTON (Reuters) - Thousands of music fans clogged a Boston street on Monday to hear Grammy award-winning rock band Aerosmith perform a free concert in front of the apartment building where the musicians began their career four decades ago. The band blared out hits including "Walk This Way" and ...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:08pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - John Lennon held out the promise he could bring out more musical greatness in legendary guitarist Eric Clapton in a letter that could fetch as much as $30,000 when it is sold at auction next month, the organizers of the sale said on Monday. The signed, hand-written...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 4:34pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A newly discovered work by American author Truman Capote detailing a Mediterranean cruise with the rich and famous is set to be published in Vanity Fair, the magazine said on Monday. The vignette "Yachts and Things," which will appear in the December issue available across the United States...

Mon Nov 5, 2012 3:44pm EST (Reuters) - Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Mary Blige and dozens of other musicians and celebrities helped raise some $23 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy on NBC television, while a Day of Giving on ABC TV networks raised more than $10 million. The American Red Cross said the one-hour NBC telethon on Friday, featuring performances...

By John Gaudiosi RALEIGH, North Carolina | Mon Nov 5, 2012 2:03pm EST RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Actor William Shatner is having a moment. A couple of years after CBS canceled his Twitter-inspired "$#*! My Dad Says" TV comedy, Shatner is at the top of the tech world. The former "Star Trek" captain, now 81, is featured in Blindlight Apps ...

Lady Gaga played the "biggest show" ever staged in Costa Rica. The 'You and I' singer brought her 'Born This Way Ball' to the Estadio Nacional de Costa Rica stadium in San Jose on Saturday night and was told it was the most attended concert in the history of the Central American country. She wrote on her twitter page: "In Costa Rica tonight for stadium show. Thank you so much to everyone for...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:20am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Pop band No Doubt was forced to remove a new Wild West-themed music video and issue an apology after getting complaints from the Native American community, saying its intention was "never to offend, hurt or trivialize" their culture or history. The Southern California band - made up of...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:14am EST LONDON (Reuters) - British celebrity Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after discovering she was carrying a gene that increased the risk of her developing breast cancer, she told Hello! magazine in an interview published on Monday. Osbourne, 60, told the publication that the decision was a "no-brainer" in th...