Manoel de Oliveira, Portuguese director, dead at 106

The celebrated movie director was believed to be the world's oldest filmmaker

The Associated Press Posted: Apr 02, 2015 9:37 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 02, 2015 9:37 AM ET

Authorities say Manoel de Oliveira, a celebrated Portuguese movie director believed to be the world's oldest filmmaker, has died. He was 106.

The city council of Porto, where Oliveira was born and lived, announced his death Thursday on its website. It did not provide further details.

Oliveira's career began with a silent documentary about Porto, Portugal's second-largest city, in 1931. He made his first feature-length movie in 1942 but his output was sporadic until he was 76, when he began directing roughly a film every year.

He made more than 30 feature films and dozens of short films and documentaries.

He was over 100 years old when his last feature, Gebo and The Shadow, came out in 2012.

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Texas trooper cited for Snoop Dogg photo, must attend counseling

Billy Spears was working security at SXSW when Snoop Dogg asked for a photo

The Associated Press Posted: Apr 02, 2015 8:54 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 02, 2015 8:54 AM ET

A Texas state trooper has been reprimanded for posing for a photo with Snoop Dogg at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, because the rapper has several convictions for drug possession.

Billy Spears was working security at the March event when Snoop Dogg asked to take a picture with him. The artist posted the image to Instagram with the comment, "Me n my deputy dogg."

Department of Public Safety and Transportation officials saw the posting and cited Spears for deficiencies that require counseling by a supervisor.

Spears' attorney says his client didn't know about the rapper's criminal record. Spears can't appeal the citation because it isn't a formal disciplinary action.

A department spokesman says the agency doesn't discuss or release specifics of personnel issues unless they result in disciplinary action.

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Joni Mitchell hospitalized: Emma Watson, Kevin Bacon among famous well-wishers

Joni Mitchell's famous fans are voicing their support and worry for the Canadian folk song icon while she is hospitalized in Los Angeles.

Harry Potter star Emma Watson said Wednesday on Twitter: "heard about Joni and haven't been able to concentrate all morning. So hope she's doing ok."

Kiss lead singer Paul Stanley tweeted a recent picture of himself and the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, telling his followers to send her love and prayers.

Kevin Bacon tweeted that he was "sending good wishes today to one of the finest singing, song-writing, guitar playing artists in history."

Boy George, Billy Idol and Tori Amos were also among the well-wishers.

No update on condition

Mitchell, 71, was found unconscious in her home Tuesday night and taken to a hospital by ambulance, according to a dedicated Twitter account and website. She was later in intensive care and undergoing tests.

A friend of the musician's later told CBC News that the singer was conscious when she was found, and had suffered a "minor medical emergency" Tuesday.

Her representatives did not immediately respond to phone and email messages and there was no further word on her condition Wednesday.

Mitchell told Billboard magazine last year that she has a rare skin condition, Morgellons disease, which prevents her from performing.

Mitchell has received eight Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2002. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

The native of Fort Macleod, Alta., is also a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

She has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto and a commemorative stamp, and is a companion of the Order of Canada.

Started as a street musician

Mitchell began her career as a street musician before moving to Southern California, where she became part of the flourishing folk scene in the late 1960s.

18th September 1968: Canadian folk singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell, strumming her guitar outside The Revolution club in London. (Central Press/Getty Images)

Her second album, Clouds, was a breakthrough with such songs as Both Sides Now and Chelsea Morning, winning Mitchell the Grammy for best folk performance. Her 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, featured the hit single Big Yellow Taxi and the era-defining Woodstock. The following year, she released Blue, which ranks 30th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time."

Mitchell has released 19 original albums, the most recent in 2007. The anthology released last year, Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced, features remastered versions of 53 of her songs.

Her musical style integrates folk and jazz elements, and she counts jazz giants Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny among her past collaborators.

As with music, Mitchell taught herself painting as a child and has produced hundreds of works in ink, watercolour and acrylic.

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British chocolatiers made a life-sized Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch fans can drool over a life-sized chocolate version of the Sherlock star created by British chocolatiers to celebrate the launch of U.K. television channel Drama.

It took a crew of eight people more than 250 hours to create the six foot tall sculpture out of 40 kilograms of chocolate.

The team was commissioned to make the giant Cumberbatch confection after the Sherlock star was voted the "dishiest TV drama actor" in a British poll, the broadcaster said, beating out Broadchurch's David Tennant, and Homeland's Damien Lewis.

"The striking thing about Benedict is that he's got quite a thin face but he has got quite a large head," said chocolate sculptor Tim Simpson in a video on the making of the creation.

"So, trying to get that look right is quite tricky."

Unlike the real Cumberbatch, the "Chocobatch", as he is affectionately called by his sculptors, is hollow.

British fans will be able to get an up-close look at the candy man when he goes on display in Stratford, London on Friday.

It took a crew of eight people more than 250 hours to create the six foot tall sculpture of actor Benedict Cumberbatch out of 40 kilograms of chocolate. (Matt Alexander/PA Wire)

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Avril Lavigne, Canadian pop star, reveals tough battle with Lyme disease

Avril Lavigne says she thought she was dying after contracting a severe case of Lyme disease, the Canadian pop star revealed in an exclusive interview published Wednesday by People magazine.

"I had no idea a bug bite could do this," said the Sk8er Boi singer, who suspects she was bitten by a tick in spring 2014.

"I felt like I couldn't breathe, I couldn't talk and I couldn't move," said Lavigne who is recuperating from the bacterial infection at home in Ontario. "I thought I was dying."

"There were definitely times I couldn't shower for a full week because I could barely stand," said the 30-year-old Napanee native. "It felt like having all your life sucked out of you." 

Cared for by family

She has been cared for by her mother and husband, Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger, while the illness left her bedridden for 5 months, the singer said.

Chad Kroeger of Nickelback and Avril Lavigne, both Canadian singers, married in 2013. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

Fans have been sending their well wishes to the pop rocker after she told a fan she was suffering from health problems in December.

"I'm not feeling well," wrote the typically private star in a direct message to a Lavigne Twitter fan account. "I'm having some health issues. So please keep me in your prayers."

The request triggered an outpouring of support after the fan shared the exchange publicly.

"The get-well messages and videos they sent touched me so deeply," Lavigne told People, revealing that she's now feeling "80 percent better."

The full interview will be available when the April 13th edition of the magazine hits newsstands.

Making new music

Despite her health problems, Lavigne revealed that she'd written a new single called Fly earlier this year.

The song, benefiting the upcoming 2015 Special Olympics, is due out later this month.

The Canadian singer enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in 2002 with her breakout hit Complicated, but her most recent album release, Hello Kitty, was widely panned by critics.

Billboard called the single's Japanese-themed video an "embarrassment in any language." 

While the People article paints Lavigne as a star ready to reclaim the spotlight, her official website hasn't been updated since April 2014, and there are no upcoming events planned.

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Lisbeth Salander is back as The Girl in the Spider's Web

The fourth instalment of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series is one step closer to our collective devouring.

The Girl in the Spider's Web will continue with Lisbeth Salander's complex and dark persona and is slated to be published in Canada Sept. 1 by Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

Millions of readers found Stieg Larsson's dark but intelligent thrillers totally addictive. The heroes, journalist Mikael Blomqvist and hacker Lisbeth Salander, tackle a long-standing murder mystery within a secretive Swedish family, sex-trafficking scandals and some downright pure personal revenge.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest have collectively sold over 2.5 million copies in Canada since their launch here in 2008 and 80 million copies have been sold around the globe.

The latest edition, shrouded in secrecy, was reportedly typed on a PC with no internet connection and hand delivered to the publisher.

Noomi Rapace, left, and Michael Nyqvist starred in the hit Swedish films based on the internationally bestselling The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. ((Alliance Films))

Sweden's Dragon Tattoo publisher hired author David Lagercrantz to write a sequel to the wildly popular series because Larsson himself couldn't do it. He died unexpectedly in 2004, before the books were even published.

The head of publishing at Norstedts, Eva Gedin, has said previously the book will be an original work that includes nothing from the fourth book in the series that Larsson began writing but hadn't finished when he died at age 50.

"Obviously it will build on the previous books," she said in 2013 after the book's initial announcement. "Blomqvist and Salander will be included and many of the other characters."

Gedin said the decision to continue the series had been taken after careful considerations and long discussions with Larsson's father and brother, Erland and Joakim Larsson, who own the rights to his work.

Larsson's longtime partner, Eva Gabrielsson, who has been in a legal dispute with Erland and Joakim over the rights to the trilogy, has called the decision "tasteless."

Lagercrantz is the author of I am Zlatan, a biography of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the captain of Sweden's soccer team.

He has said he was really skeptical about the idea of writing a fourth book in the series at first, but that changed when he reread Larsson's novels.

Rooney Mara starred as the titular hacker in the English-language remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

"I increasingly felt that these characters, Blomqvist and Salander, deserved a longer life," he said.

"In the times we live in, where we are monitored by American authorities like the NSA, a hacker like Lisbeth Salander is needed."

Gabrielsson and Larsson were a couple for more than 30 years, but they never married. Larsson didn't leave a will, so only his brother and father inherited the rights to his works.

His bestselling series inspired a hit Swedish film trilogy starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. A subsequent and acclaimed English-language movie adaptation of the first book starred Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

U.K. cover of the upcoming The Girl in the Spider's Web. (Christopher MacLehose)

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Legendary Canadian singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell in intensive care

Legendary Canadian singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell is in intensive care and undergoing tests at a Los Angeles hospital, according to a statement posted on her official website. 

"Joni was found unconscious in her home this afternoon. She regained consciousness on the ambulance ride to an L.A. area hospital," the statement said. 

The 71-year-old is awake and in "good spirits," according to the statement. "Light a candle and sing a song, let's all send good wishes her way."

Los Angeles fire officials earlier said paramedics answered an afternoon 911 call in Bel Air, where Mitchell lives, and took a patient to the hospital.

The singer-songwriter told Billboard magazine in December that she has a rare skin condition, Morgellons disease, which prevents her from performing. Still, she released a career-spanning four-disc box set last year and appeared at Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammy party in February.

Mitchell has received eight Grammy Awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2002. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

Mitchell, who was born in Fort Macleod, Alta., is also a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

She has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto and a commemorative stamp, and is a companion of the Order of Canada.

She started her career as a street musician in Canada before moving to southern California, where she became part of the flourishing folk scene in the late 1960s. Her second album, Clouds, was a breakthrough with such songs as Both Sides Now and Chelsea Morning, winning Mitchell the Grammy for best folk performance.

Mitchell strums a guitar outside The Revolution Club in London in September 1968. (Central Press/Getty Images)

Her 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, featured the hit single Big Yellow Taxi and the era-defining Woodstock. The following year, she released Blue, which ranks 30th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Mitchell has released 19 original albums, the most recent in 2007. The anthology released last year, Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced, features remastered versions of 53 of her songs.

Her musical style integrates folk and jazz elements, and she counts jazz giants Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny among her past collaborators.

As with music, Mitchell taught herself painting as a child and has produced hundreds of works in ink, watercolour and acrylic.

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Gaza man 'tricked' into selling Banksy painting for $222

A 33-year-old Gaza man says he has been duped into selling a valuable work by British graffiti artist Banksy for less than $200 to a local artist.

A metal door that depicted a Greek goddess, presumably painted by British street graffiti artist Banksy, was standing on the rubble of a destroyed building damaged in last summer's Israel-Hamas war, east of Jebaliya. A local painter has succeeded in purchasing the Banksy original for less than $200. (Adel Hana/AP Photo)

The popular street artist is believed to have sneaked into Gaza earlier this year, leaving behind four murals, including one drawn on a metal door that depicted the Greek goddess Niobe cowering against the rubble of a destroyed house. The painting, titled Bomb Damage, was drawn on a door, the last remaining part of a two-story house belonging to the Dardouna family in northern Gaza.

Unaware of the work's value, Rabie Dardouna said Tuesday he was tricked into selling the door to an eager local artist for just 700 shekels, or about $222. Banksy's works have been valued as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I did not know that it was this valuable. I heard it can be sold for millions," Dardouna said. "Now I want the door back."

Dardouna said he didn't even know who the British artist was and initially didn't pronounce Banksy's name correctly.

Buyer wants to 'preserve it from damage'

The Gaza artist who bought the door, Belal Khaled, said he did not mean to trick anyone. He said he just wanted to protect the painting and had no intention of profiting.

"I bought the painting to protect its artistic value and preserve it from damage," Khaled told The Associated Press. "Another reason is to display it in other places as well. I don't have any monetary interest in this."

He said he has been in touch with Banksy's representatives, hoping to get a clearance to showcase the mural in Gaza art exhibits.

The debate over the issue has heated up on Facebook, with Palestinian activists and journalists accusing the buyer of tricking the Dardounas while others have defended him for buying it legally. Khaled agreed to show reporters the mural on condition that its location not be revealed.

The Dardouna home was one of 18,000 destroyed in the 50-day war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers last summer. Banksy is a critic of Israel and he has created works in Gaza and the West Bank meant to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians.

Banksy's mysterious visit

A Palestinian woman works with her children near a mural of a playful-looking kitten, presumably painted by British street graffiti artist Banksy, is seen on a wall of destroyed which was destroyed in last summer's Israel-Hamas war, in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. (Adel Hana/Associated Press)

Other Banksy works spotted in Gaza after the mystery visit were a mural of a playful kitten and of children swinging from a military watchtower.

Banksy publicist Jo Brooks said at the time that the artist entered Gaza through a tunnel from Egypt, though such a route is extremely difficult and dangerous.

On a previous visit to the region he drew a painting of a girl pulled upward by balloons on Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

A mural of children using an Israeli army watch tower as a swing ride, presumably painted by British street graffiti artist Banksy, is seen on a wall at main wall at the main road in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip. (Adel Hana/Associated Press)

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Harvey Weinstein, U.S. film producer, questioned by police over groping allegations

Harvey Weinstein was reportedly questioned by police Saturday after a woman accused the ​American film producer of inappropriate touching during a meeting New York, law enforcement officials told the New York Times.

The unnamed 22-year-old told police that she met with Weinstein on Friday at the Tribeca Film Center, where the 63-year-old movie mogul has offices.

She told police that Weinstein asked her if her breasts were real before groping her, an official said.

No charges were laid against Weinstein, who voluntarily accompanied detectives to a Manhattan police precinct for questioning.

"We are co-operating fully with the authorities and are confident that we will be fully vindicated," said Weinstein's representative, Ken Sunshine, in a statement. "We will have no further comment."

According to the Times report, the pair met for the first time on Thursday night at an event at the Radio City Music Hall before they exchanged emails. 

"They did not know each other," an unnamed law enforcement officials told the Times. "She didn't know him and he didn't know her; there is no indication she knew who he was."

As the co-founder of the entertainment company Miramax and co-chair of The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein is one of the most powerful movie producers and film studio executives in Hollywood.

The married father of two has produced hundreds of well-known titles, including:

• Pulp Fiction.
• Shakespeare in Love.
• Django Unchained.

The Manhattan district attorney's office is still investigating the allegations, officials said.

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Rolling Stones new 'Zip Code' tour only has 1 Canadian date: Quebec City

Band's 15-city North American tour will wrap up at Festival d'été de Québec on July 15

The Associated Press Posted: Mar 31, 2015 9:16 AM ET Last Updated: Mar 31, 2015 9:16 AM ET

The Rolling Stones are zipping across North America again.

The legendary rock band announced a 15-city stadium tour Tuesday that will kick off May 24 at Petco Park in San Diego.

The tour will wrap with a summer concert on the Plains of Abraham on July 15, at Festival d'été de Québec in Quebec City.

Presale tickets for the Quebec City concert go on sale on April 9 and will cost $78 plus shipping. Regular price tickets are available for $88 plus shipping on April 11.

The "Zip Code" tour will reunite singer Mick Jagger, drummer Charlie Watts and guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.

"We love being out on the road, and it is great to come back to North America," said Keith Richards in a statement. "I can't wait to get back on the stage!"

Other cities on the "Zip Code" tour include Pittsburgh, Penn.; Milwaukee; Kansas City, Mo.; Raleigh, N.C.; Indianapolis; Detroit; and Buffalo, N.Y. Tickets for those dates will go on sale April 13.​

The last time the Rolling Stones played North American stadiums was during their "A Bigger Bang Tour" in 2006. They opted for arena venues for their "50 & Counting" anniversary tour in 2012 and 2013.

The band interrupted last year's "14 On Fire" and rescheduled all their Australia and New Zealand dates after fashion designer L'Wren Scott, Jagger's companion since 2001, took her own life.

With files from CBC News

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