Who's in
It does take two to tango
Chinese pop singer Pu Shu and former Olympic gym champion Liu Xuan won the Hunan TV show Just the Two of US contest late on Friday.
They beat many other couples in the two-month singing competition.
All the couples comprised one professional singer and the other an amateur but still from the world showbiz such as anchor, actor or model.
Liu, who retired after winning an Olympic championship in 2000, is now a rising entertainment star.
Pu, a showbiz recluse, won the audience over with his creative costumes and singing of foreign songs.
"It is just a game, but I still need to play it seriously," he said in an interview after the show.
Craig's win, Mirren's loss
Daniel Craig was honored but Helen Mirren was denied on Sunday at the 34th annual Evening Standard British Film Awards.
Craig was named best actor for Casino Royale, his debut outing as James Bond. Craig, who has won both critical praise and box office favor as the first blond Bond, is also up for the best-actor prize at next week's British Academy Film Awards.
Mirren, who is an Academy Awards favorite for her turn as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, lost the best actress prize to Judi Dench, awarded for her portrayal of a predatory schoolteacher in Notes on a Scandal.
The best-film prize went to United 93 Paul Greengrass' harrowing dramatization of the final flight of one of the planes hijacked in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The Evening Standard awards are sponsored by London's afternoon newspaper and selected by a jury of film critics.
An Oscar finally for Scorsese?
Martin Scorsese has cemented his status as favorite for the Oscars' best director award after winning a key award handed out by fellow filmmakers.
Scorsese received the top prize at the Directors Guild of America awards for The Departed, the bloody crime drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson.
The winner of the guild's award for outstanding achievement in a feature film has gone on to win the best director on 52 out of 58 occasions, including last year when Taiwan's Ang Lee scooped both for Brokeback Mountain.
Scorsese's victory leaves him the clear front-runner ahead of the February 25 Academy Awards.
Scorsese has never won an Oscar and until Saturday had never won the directors guild award either, despite being responsible for landmark movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
It's over: Minogue confirms split
Australian singer Kylie Minogue and her boyfriend of four years have announced their separation.
Minogue recently resumed performing after treatment for breast cancer diagnosed in 2005. In November, the 38-year-old singer told Elle magazine that her boyfriend, Olivier Martinez, had been an "incredible" support during her illness.
She and Martinez, a 41-year-old French actor who was in Before Night Falls and the recently released Blood and Chocolate, confirmed the split in a statement late on Friday.
Recently, the tabloid press has speculated that Martinez was seeing someone else.
In the statement, the couple said that "the media's false accusations of disloyalty have saddened them both."
Minogue recently completed her Showgirl Homecoming tour, although she was forced to cancel two concerts last month because of a respiratory tract infection.
Agencies-China Daily
(China Daily 02/06/2007 page18)
