LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country sensation Taylor Swift and actress/singer Selena Gomez caught major waves at the Teen Choice awards on Sunday, with Swift scooping up six surfboard trophies including one for Ultimate Teen Choice.

Swift, who soared to popularity in 2006 at age 16 with her self-titled debut album, was named the favorite female artist, country singer and red carpet fashion icon. She also scored with best country single for her song “Mean” and choice breakup song “Back to December.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Around 20 years ago, Andrew Dice Clay was a major star on Hollywood’s comedy radar with chart-topping CDs, large audiences on TV and sold-out venues as big as Madison Square Garden, but it all came crashing down.

The brash style of the “Diceman” with his raunchy, adult-oriented rhymes and sexually-charged jokes, made numerous audiences laugh but offended others. He was banned from MTV, and his stardom began to fade in the mid-1990s.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Forget song and dance at the Oscars. Get ready for action, adventure and special effects when the world’s top movie honors are given away in Hollywood next February.

Oscar organizers on Thursday picked Brett Ratner, the director of movies such as the “Rush Hour” cop series and comic book flick “X-Men: The Last Stand” to co-produce the upcoming Academy Awards alongside veteran Don Mischer.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 1 (Reuters) – NBC executives on Monday
defended the network’s controversial new drama “The Playboy
Club”, describing it as a “fun soap opera” and saying that its
sexual content would be mild.

Stars of the drama — set in the 1960s in the first Playboy
Club — also rejected criticism that the show will glamorize
the porn industry and depict the club’s Bunnie employees as
exploited women.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – It isn’t among the most-hyped movies in theaters and won’t win the battle of the weekend box office, but “Life in a Day” may just be the most unusual film playing in theaters this weekend.

One year ago, July 24, 2010, at the behest of Hollywood producer/director Ridley Scott and YouTube, thousands of people around the world videotaped their day, then sent the footage into a group of filmmakers who were tasked with editing that film into a feature-length movie.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Daphna Ziman is on a mission to help foster children, and she’s picked a novel way to do it — novel, being the key word.

Ziman, a Los Angeles-based philanthropist and activist for kids placed in foster care, has written a fictional novel, “The Gray Zone,” whose protagonist was orphaned as a child.

LOS ANGELES, July 23 (Reuters) – Soul singer Amy Winehouse,
who died unexpectedly at age 27, received numerous tributes on
Saturday from ordinary fans around the world and music
luminaries ranging from Tony Bennett to producer Mark Ronson.

The “Rehab” singer whose problems with substance abuse were
well-documented, died at her home in London, and while it
appears she has lost her battle with drink and drugs, an
official cause of death has yet to be determined.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Seven decades have passed since French police arrested thousands of Parisian Jews and sent them to death camps in an incident known as the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, but for some, the guilt still lingers.

French film “Sarah’s Key,” which opens in major U.S. cities on Friday after touching audiences in many European countries, looks at the notion of national remorse and its impact not only on the people who lived through it, but their families and offspring who, in many cases, never even knew it happened.

LOS ANGELES, July 14 (Reuters) – With 104 Emmy nominations
on Thursday, cable TV’s HBO again dominated rival networks for
the industry’s highest awards, but several nods from
lesser-known networks truly had Hollywood talking.

ReelzChannel, whose focus is showing feature films and
original programs about Hollywood movies, took on a big risk
when it aired controversial TV miniseries “The Kennedys” back
in April, but the move paid off in viewership and Emmy nods.

LOS ANGELES, July 14 (Reuters) – Even before its U.S.
debut, the new “Harry Potter” movie is conjuring a lot of magic
at box offices, taking in $43.6 million overseas on its opening
day and sending advance U.S. ticket sales to record levels.

Warner Bros., the film studio behind the new “Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2,” on Thursday said the movie’s
debut in 26 countries one day earlier was 87 percent higher
than its predecessor film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows – Part 1″ and 49 percent above 2009′s “Harry Potter and
the Half-Blood Prince.”