CANNES/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As a tattooed wild child wearing her husband’s blood in a locket and luring Brad Pitt away from Hollywood rival Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie was dream fodder for the tabloid press.

But her transformation into a humanitarian campaigner and now poster girl for the fight against breast cancer with her revelation that, faced with a high cancer risk, she had undergone a double mastectomy has elevated her to heroine status in the media.

CANNES, France, May 15 (Reuters) – The Cannes film festival
gets underway on Wednesday with Australian director Baz
Luhrmann’s 3D extravaganza “The Great Gatsby”, a lavish
production eclipsing more modest launches in recent years that
reflected global economic gloom.

Already showing in theatres in Canada and the United States,
the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is a rare case
when Cannes, the year’s most important cinema gathering, has not
kicked off with a world premiere.

CANNES, France (Reuters) – The Cannes film festival may get some of its swagger back on Wednesday when it opens with Baz Luhrmann’s lavish 3D period drama “The Great Gatsby”, an opportunity to shed the caution of recent years overshadowed by broader economic gloom.

Leonardo DiCaprio and his British co-star Carey Mulligan will walk the red carpet on the French Riviera to promote the $105 million adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel which has already opened in North America.

LONDON, May 13 (Reuters) – The 2013 Cannes film festival
opens on Wednesday with Baz Luhrmann’s 3D version of “The Great
Gatsby”, a lavish throwback to the “Roaring Twenties” that
befits the glamour and excess of the world’s biggest cinema
showcase.

The Australian director’s adaptation of F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s novel starring Leonardo DiCaprio surprised some
Hollywood insiders, because Cannes traditionally launches on the
palm-lined French Riviera with a splashy world premiere.

LONDON, May 7 (Reuters) – Director J.J. Abrams is hoping to
persuade mainstream film audiences to boldly go where they have
never gone before and embrace the next instalment of “Star
Trek”, a franchise usually reserved for sci-fi geeks.

The man behind the cult TV series “Alias” and “Lost” told
Reuters he initially hesitated when Viacom’s Paramount
Pictures asked him to take on the film series, whose instalments
in 1998 and 2002 failed to draw crowds.

LONDON, May 2 (Reuters) – A musical based on the meteoric
rise of British pop band The Spice Girls that was mauled by the
critics is closing six months after its premiere in London, the
show’s producer said on Thursday.

The brainchild of “Mamma Mia!” creator Judy Craymer, “Viva
Forever” was loosely based on the story of The Spice Girls, with
a wannabe girl band making the finals of a TV singing contest
resembling “The X Factor”.

LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) – Erotic trilogy “Fifty Shades of
Grey” helped drive print and e-book sales in Britain to record
levels in 2012 with publishers hailing figures on Wednesday as
proof that digital books are not killing the traditional market
quite yet.

Print and e-book sales rose 4 percent to 3.3 billion pounds
($5 billion) after slipping 2 percent in 2011, top British trade
organisation The Publishers Association said, although printed
book sales fell 1 percent and had dropped 5 percent in 2011.

LONDON (Reuters) – More women are going under the knife to achieve the kind of toned upper arms earned by the stars’ vigorous gym workouts but plastic surgeons warn the operation comes at a cost – scarring.

Statistics released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) this week showed that arm lift surgery on women has soared more than 4,400 percent in the past decade, fuelled by sleeveless fashions and a focus on well-shaped celebrities.

LONDON, April 28 (Reuters) – Helen Mirren was crowned best
actress at Britain’s top theatre awards on Sunday for reprising
her Oscar-winning portrayal of Queen Elizabeth, while a play
about a boy with autism was the night’s top winner, taking home
seven Olivier prizes.

Mirren, 67, has won stellar reviews for starring in “The
Audience”, Peter Morgan’s play about the private weekly meetings
between the queen and the 12 British prime ministers during the
six decades of her reign.

LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) – From hell raisers to family
men, The Eagles have mellowed over the years and are grateful to
have survived the drugs that fuelled the sex and rock ‘n’ roll
of their early years.

In London for the British premiere of their documentary,
“History of the Eagles Part One”, the U.S. band said they looked
back now at the prolific use of drugs, particularly cocaine, in
the 1970s and see it as a snapshot of those times.