Birdman lands top Directors Guild Award

Birdman has flown off with another top award in the run-up to the Oscars this month. After taking top honours from the acting and producing guilds, the film about a washed-up Hollywood actor best known for playing a superhero – played by the former Batman star Michael Keaton – won the top prize at the Directors Guild of America Awards on Saturday night. Its writer and director Alejandro González Iñárritu was honoured with the prize for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Feature Film. The guild dispenses awards to directors in TV and movie categories in what is customarily a final indication of the film likely to win the Best Director trophy and possibly Best Picture at the Oscars. Other winners included Jill Soloway for the new TV comedy Transparent and Laura Poitras for the documentary Citizenfour, about the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. – AP

Stars shine at Grammy parties

Kanye West showed off his new kicks to admirers. Rihanna braved the rain sans umbrella. Willow Smith danced to the music, and Beyoncé hugged and took pictures with fans. These were some of the starry sights at Jay Z's annual Roc Nation pre-Grammy brunch at a mansion in Beverly Hills on Saturday. Other guests included Nicki Minaj, Diplo, Childish Gambino, Kim Kardashian, Michael Bolton, Demi Lovato, Janelle Monae, Kelly Rowland, Miguel, J Cole, Nick Jonas and Keke Palmer. Universal Music Group's pre-Grammy brunch, meanwhile, featured performances by its top-selling stars, Sam Smith and Iggy Azalea, and a sneak peek at a forthcoming documentary about the late Amy Winehouse. Azalea, who was nominated for four Grammys, kicked off the artists showcase with a performance of Fancy, and Smith followed with Nirvana and Stay With Me. Smith was the top nominee with six nominations, along with Beyoncé and Pharrell. The Weeknd performed his new single Earned It, and Maroon 5 closed the event, held at The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. – AP

Bieber shoes raise $62,000 for charity

A pair of Justin Bieber’s basketball shoes fetched more than US$62,000 (Dh228,000) in an eBay auction to benefit a food bank in the pop star’s hometown of Stratford, Ontario. His grandparents, Diane and Bruce Dale, had donated some of his personal items to raise money for the Stratford House of Blessing food bank. A Toronto Maple Leafs quilt sold for more than $6,000, his pillow case went for more than $3,000 and his ceiling light raised almost $2,000. The charity said on its website that Bieber and his mother donated the items “because they were helped by us in their time of need”. The singer autographed the items. – AP

Killer inpodcast case allowed to appeal

A man convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1999, whose case was investigated by a recent smash-hit podcast, will be given a chance to appeal his sentence, a Maryland court has decided. Adnan Syed, 34, was jailed for life in 2000 for the murder of his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee. The story become a global sensation after it was featured in the weekly podcast Serial last year. Syed has until March 16 to appeal, which would revolve around whether he had adequate representation at trial. The court is due to hear arguments in June. Serial – a mix of investigative journalism, first-person narrative and dramatic storytelling – focused solely on Syed’s story during its 12 episodes. It raised doubts about his guilt and whether he was defended properly at trial. He was convicted of strangling Lee in a car park because he was jealous that she was seeing another man after the break-up. Serial was downloaded more than 5 million times from the iTunes store and is available at www.serialpodcast.org. It was also broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Radio. – AFP

Kardashian stepdad in fatal car crash

Bruce Jenner, the former Olympic gold medallist and Kardashian family patriarch, was in one of four cars involved in a crash in Malibu, Los Angeles, that killed a woman on Saturday. There was no indication he was being chased by paparazzi who were nearby at the time. He wasn't hurt but five others were taken to the hospital after the crash. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sergeant Philip Brooks said Jenner, 65, passed a field sobriety test and had voluntarily submitted a blood sample. "He did not appear intoxicated or under the influence of anything at the time," Brooks added. Jenner's car rear-ended a Lexus that had hit the back of a black Toyota Prius, Brooks said. The Lexus veered into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with another vehicle. The driver of the Lexus – a woman in her 70s – was pronounced dead at the scene. Jenner won gold in the men's decathlon at the 1976 Olympics, but he is best known to a younger generation as Kim Kardashian's stepfather. He and Kris Jenner frequently appeared on the reality series Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The two finalised their divorce last year, ending 23 years of marriage. – AP

NBC newsman takes leave over Iraq row

Brian Williams is temporarily stepping away from NBC Nightly News amid questions about his war coverage in Iraq, saying that it was "painfully apparent" that he had become a distracting news story. In a memo on Saturday to NBC News staff, he said that as managing editor he was taking himself off the broadcast for several days. NBC News refused to comment on whether or when Williams would return and who would decide his future. Williams said he would be back. "In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions," Williams said in his memo. "Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us." NBC News' president, Deborah Turness, said on Friday that an internal investigation had been launched into Williams's false on-air statements that he was in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade while in Iraq in 2003. Williams apologised for those statements last week. Williams has anchored NBC Nightly News since 2004. – AP

Dylan has a pop at music critics

Bob Dylan turned the tables on music critics at a gala tribute to him. The 73-year-old also offered his opinion of other musicians during an unexpected speech at a charity event ahead of last night's Grammys. He was honoured on Friday night in Los Angeles by MusiCares, which raises money for musicians in need, with a star-studded concert and an introduction by the former US president Jimmy Carter. "There is no doubt that his words on peace and human rights are much more incisive, much more powerful and much more permanent than those of any president of the United States," Carter said. A who's who of music greats covered Dylan's work at the event, including Beck, Tom Jones, Jack White and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Bruce Springsteen joined Tom Morello for a version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door, while Neil Young closed the event with Blowin' in the Wind. Dylan did not perform but gave a half-hour speech. He ribbed music critics, saying that throughout his career they have said of him: "I can't sing, croak, sound like a frog. Why don't critics say that about Tom Waits?" he said of the singer with a growling voice. "Critics say my voice is shot, that I have no voice. Why don't they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment?" Dylan thanked Peter, Paul and Mary for turning Blowin' in the Wind into a hit in 1963, and a number of other artists who have covered his songs, including Nina Simone, Jimi Hendrix and Joan Baez, whom he described as a woman of "devastating honesty". – AFP

Author Andre Brink dies at 79

Celebrated South African writer and outspoken apartheid critic Andre Brink, author of the novel A Dry White Season, has died, his university said Saturday. He was 79.

He died Friday night on board a flight home from Belgium where he had received an honorary doctorate from the Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL).

“This news is deeply saddening, even as the circumstances of Andre’s death underscore the extraordinary life that he lived,” said professor Lesley Marx of the University of Cape Town.

Winner of several book awards and nominated three times for a Nobel Prize, Brink was an emeritus professor of literature at the University of Cape Town after formally retiring in 2005.

His works, which included plays and travelogues as well as novels, were translated into some 30 languages.

He was also an outspoken critic of censorship and oppression. Apartheid rulers banned several of his works.

“The only triumph the human being can boast about is to go against the questions to try to find answers,” Brink said as he accepted the honorary doctorate in Brussels on Monday.

“If we knew the answers in advance, there wouldn’t be adventures, there wouldn’t be true choices,” he said in French.

Among the most widely known of more than 40 works was his 1979 novel A Dry White Season, about the death in detention of a black activist. The book was made into a film starring Marlon Brando.

That and others set him apart as a “courageous and prolific author of ... political protest,” Marx said in a statement.

Brink’s protest did not end with the collapse of apartheid.

His autobiography A Fork in the Road, published in 2009, offered a bleak assessment of the first 15 post-apartheid years.

“Now that the (ruling party) ANC has moved into power, its regime sadly must be branded as the enemy of the people,” he wrote.

Three years ago Brink and the South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer led a campaign against proposals by the ANC government to push through an information bill that would have seen whistle-blowers and investigative journalists face prison for revealing government secrets.

President Jacob Zuma paid tribute to Brink, describing him as a “remarkable and highly regarded scholar and academic”.

Born Andre Philippus Brink on May 29, 1935, in Vrede town in the central Free State province to a magistrate father and a mother who taught English, he wrote in both English and Afrikaans. He translated around 70 works into Afrikaans.

Brink was a key member of the Die Sestigers literary movement of the 1960s that campaigned against the apartheid government using the Afrikaans language.

Among his international awards was the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour -- France’s top civilian award granted to him in 1982.

Brink studied and lectured at some of South Africa’s leading universities and he carried out his postgraduate research at Paris’s University of Sorbonne.

He was married and divorced several times. In 2010 he told Britain's Guardian newspaper that he had been married six times. – AFP

Actress Lizabeth Scott dies at 92

Lizabeth Scott, whose long tawny hair, alluring face and low seductive voice made her an ideal film noir star in the 1940s and 1950s, has died in Los Angeles. She was 92.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Scott died Jan. 31 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her longtime friend Mary Goodstein tells the newspaper the cause was congestive heart failure.

Film noir, with its hard-bitten Cold War cynicism, captured the imaginations of large numbers of movie fans in the United States, as well as in France where the name originated, in the years immediately following the Second World War.

Like Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake, both of whom she resembled, Scott proved a perfect fit for the genre, easily able to play the case-hardened siren who snared and sometimes betrayed the anti-hero male star.

Described by film historian Leonard Maltin as a smouldering blonde who “slithered onto movie screens,” Scott made nearly two dozen films between 1945 and 1957.

She appeared with Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in Dead Reckoning (1947), Burt Lancaster in Desert Fury (1947), Lancaster and Douglas in I Walk Alone (1948), Dick Powell in Pitfall (1948) and Charlton Heston in Dark City (1950).

She also appeared opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the 1953 comedy Scared Stiff and portrayed the shrewd publicist who turns small-town boy Elvis Presley into a star in one of the rocker's earliest films, 1957's Loving You.

Scott all but left the business after Loving You, save for a handful of TV appearances and one more movie, 1972's Pulp, an offbeat British film in which she starred opposite Mickey Rooney and Michael Caine.

She claimed not to miss the attention.

“I love not having the eyes of the world on me,” she said in 1987. “I never understood adulation from strangers when I was making movies. Basically I’m shy and always have been.”

The actress had played minor roles in New York plays and toured with a national production of Hellzapoppin before moving to Hollywood. Her big break on the stage came when she understudied Tallulah Bankhead in The Skin of Our Teeth and took on the role when Bankhead became ill.

She was also modelling, and a cover on Harper's Bazaar prompted Warner Bros to test her for movies. She was rejected, but Warner producer Hal B Wallis remembered her when he became an independent at Paramount. He signed her to a contract and cast her as the lead opposite Robert Cummings in her film debut, 1945's romantic You Came Along.

Scott, whose given name was Emma Matzo, changed it after landing the role in The Skin of Our Teeth. She said she borrowed her new name from Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, dropping the E from Elizabeth because she thought it "sounded more theatrical".

She was born on September 29, 1922, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to English-Russian parents.

The actress, who never married, became a companion to the Texas oilman William Dugger Jr in the 1960s, and when he died in 1969 he left half his fortune to her and the other half to his sister, who went to court and eventually won the full amount.

In her later years, Scott devoted herself to university studies and fundraising for museums and charities.

Biographical material in this story was written by The Associated Press’s late Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas. – AP