AFP Celebrity News

The Louvre will shine the light of high culture on a depressed former mining town this week, as the Paris museum opens a gleaming new satellite among the slag heaps of northern Lens.President Francois Hollande will cut the ribbon Tuesday on the Japanese-designed new museum, set to host masterpieces by Delacroix and Raphael for its first year of existence.And Leonardo Da Vinci's newly restored "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" will leave its Paris home for the first time in two centuries...Read Full Story

Sudanese-born British film-maker Taghreed Elsanhouri, whose documentary about last year's partition of Sudan premiered in her homeland on Thursday night, is leaving footprints for history.The award-winning film-maker said she wanted Sudanese to have "ownership" of their history -- and by doing so to take responsibility for what happened."Our Beloved Sudan" weaves the personal story of one family with the history of the country shown through archival footage and interviews with key political...Read Full Story

"Ted," the drug-smoking, foul-mouthed teddy bear who was a blockbuster hit last year, is to appear at the Oscars next month, his onscreen sidekick Mark Wahlberg said Thursday.Comedian Seth MacFarlane, who is hosting the February 24 Academy Awards, has secured the invitation for his comic creation and Walhberg to appear on stage at Hollywood's biggest awards show."Because Seth is hosting the Oscars, Ted and I will be appearing at the Oscars," Wahlberg told talk show host Anderson Cooper, also...Read Full Story

Soviet film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky's personal archives sold at auction in London for £1.5 million ($2.4 million, 1.85 million) on Wednesday, returning to Russia at the end of a fierce bidding war.The 18-minute battle, which saw the sale price rise far above the £80,000 to £100,000 estimate, was won by the government of his native Ivanovo region, northeast of Moscow, Sotheby's auctioneers said.Tarkovsky, considered a great of world cinema, died of lung cancer aged 54 in Paris, in 1986.The...Read Full Story

One of Michael Jackson's iconic single gloves sold for nearly $200,000 this week in Los Angeles, an auction house said Thursday.At $199,069, the Swarovski-crystal-encrusted glove earned the record for the highest price fetched for memorabilia from the late King of Pop, the Nate D. Sanders auction house said.The autographs and memorabilia specialty seller said Jackson wore this black glove, a departure for the singer who had previously sported white ones, at the 1984 American Music Awards...Read Full Story

In a raspy whisper, Bill Clinton said words many Democrats never thought they would hear, telling a huge Barack Obama crowd: "I have given my voice in the service of my president."So Clinton has -- literally, with his exhaustive campaigning for a candidate he once disdained, and figuratively, by laying out a plain-spoken case for the current commander-in-chief, which Obama has sometimes struggled to match.The ex-president, his white mane picked out by spotlights, was the warm-up act for Obama...Read Full Story

Qatar-based company Alnoor Holding has said it will raise the budget for a planned movie series on the life of Prophet Mohammed to $1 billion dollars from the $1.5 million announced three years ago.The biopics will be produced as a series of "seven films -- instead of three films as per an earlier announcement -- with a total budget of $1 billion," Alnoor chairman Ahmed Al-Hashemi said in a statement received by AFP on Tuesday.The company said "the team of experts has finished writing the...Read Full Story

Hollywood and the entertainment industry on Wednesday hailed the re-election of President Barack Obama, who won widespread celebrity backing and funding help in the race for the White House.Stars took to Twitter en masse to welcome the Democratic incumbent's victory over Republican rival Mitt Romney in the early hours of Wednesday, after a bruising campaign battle."I'm proud of where I come from... but I'm even more proud of where we are going," said singer and producer will.i.am, one of...Read Full Story

Japan's widely-watched year-end TV show will feature only Japanese acts this year, with popular South Korean performers left out of the line-up amid territorial frictions with Seoul.Taxpayer-funded broadcaster NHK insisted politics had played no role in the selection of performers for the New Year's Eve broadcast watched by up to 40 percent of the nation's TV audience.Korean girl groups KARA and Girls' Generation and male group Tohoshinki (TVXQ) were among the headline acts last year on...Read Full Story

Prince Charles expressed shock on Friday at the devastation that still scars Christchurch, the New Zealand city rocked by an earthquake last year that claimed 185 lives.On the final day of a Pacific tour marking Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee, Charles and his wife Camilla visited the South Island city's "red zone", the downtown area that bore the brunt of the quake on February 22, 2011.Prime Minister John Key showed the royal couple around the ruins of his hometown, where shattered...Read Full Story