A 33.19-carat diamond ring once owned by the late Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor sold for 10.1 billion won ($8,818,500) to Korean conglomerate E-Land Group at a Christie’s auction in New York on Tuesday. The ring was given to the late actress by her fifth husband, actor Richard Burton in 1968. He had purchased the ring through an auction for $ 300,000 at the time. The ring was estimated to sel...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) ― “The Help,” a film about the lives of black housekeepers in the U.S. south before the civil rights era, and hit silent movie “The Artist” topped nominations at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards on Wednesday. “The Help” scored four nods for the SAGs including best actress for Viola Davis, while “The Artist,” a black-and-white tribute to the silent movie era, was shortlisted...

DUBAI (AFP) ― A tale of forbidden love in the Gaza Strip won the top prize at the eighth Dubai Film Festival on Wednesday, where a new generation of Arab women directors stole the spotlight. “Habibi” (My Love in Arabic), directed by Susan Youssef, won Best Arab feature film, and the film’s star, Maisa Abdel Hadi, won best actress. The film, which also won the best editor award, tells the story ...

An actor who played a detective and a monk on Chinese television has been arrested after 13 years on the run from charges of attacking a police officer, state media said on Thursday. Ji Siguang, who performed under an alias, was accused of involvement in the assault on a police officer in 1998 in the northeastern city of Qiqihar, the China Daily said. He was arrested after an anonymous tip-off ...

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Eddie Murphy is to star in a television film under development by HBO about Washington’s colorful and controversial former mayor Marion Barry, the U.S. cable channel said Tuesday. In an email to AFP, it confirmed a report in The Washington Post that Spike Lee will direct Murphy ― seen most recently in the comedy caper “Tower Heist” ― in the still-untitled project. Barry was w...

SAN DIEGO (AP) ― Steven Spielberg hopes he’s the typical American when it comes to Tintin. The filmmaker had never heard of the guy, but once he got acquainted, they became friends for life. Peter Jackson knows he’s the typical non-American when it comes to Tintin. He’s known him since before he could read, and the character’s globe-trotting adventures are part of his own storytelling DNA. Toge...

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Steven Spielberg announced in New York a sequel to his 3-D movie version of the comic book hero Tintin. He told a press conference Sunday that “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson would direct the new film and that he had already chosen the book by the Belgian author Herge that would serve as the basis for the script. Spielberg was promoting the U.S. premiere on Dec. 21 o...

LOS ANGELES ― Although Hollywood movies are making more money than ever overseas, it’s still a struggle for foreign films to sell tickets in the United States. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ― Part 2” collected nearly a billion dollars abroad this year, the most of any American studio production. About $120 million of that sum came from one country ― Japan. Other U.S. films that hit big o...

BEIJING (AFP) ― Oscar winning actor Christian Bale defended Sunday the upcoming Nanjing Massacre film “The Flowers of War,” by China’s most famous director, Zhang Yimou, as more than an anti-Japanese propaganda film. In the film, Bale plays an American drifter who becomes the unwitting protector of a group of Chinese schoolgirls and prostitutes trying to escape the Japanese army’s brutal sacking...