More A-listers have signed on to support the third Stand Up to Cancer telethon.

Organizers say Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Justin Timberlake, Sofia Vergara, and Olympic gold medalists Gabrielle Douglas and Missy Franklin will participate in the hour-long TV special. It is set to air Friday on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and more than a dozen cable channels.

Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking, prolific character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in "The Green Mile" and such other box office hits as "Armageddon," ''Planet of the Apes" and "Kung Fu Panda," is dead at age 54.

Duncan died Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for a heart attack, said his fiancée, reality TV personality Rev. Omarosa Manigault, in a statement released by publicist Joy Fehily.

South Korean director Kim Ki-duk brought his brand of excruciating emotion and troubling imagery to the Venice film festival on Tuesday with his new grim condemnation of capitalism "Pieta".

The film revolves around the figure of a brutal loan shark played by Korean tough guy actor Lee Jung-jin who prowls the back alleys and workshops of a downtown district of Seoul that is quickly being replaced by skyscrapers.

The promoters of Michael Jackson's ill-fated 2009 comeback concert series in London feared he was unstable, with one describing him as a "mess", according to a spate of newly released emails.

The confidential emails from Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) obtained by The Los Angeles Times suggest that in the weeks before the King of Pop's sudden death in June 2009, he was drinking and feared himself he could not perform.

Designers love to push boundaries in the search for that sexy catwalk look, but Nzinga Knight, an American Muslim, takes an even more daring tack: covering her models up.

At New York Fashion Week, which starts Thursday, impossibly tall, slinky creatures will sashay down the runways at Lincoln Center in clothes that can leave little to the imagination.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe lost his way kayaking in the waters off New York's Long Island and was picked up by a U.S. Coast Guard boat and ferried to a harbor, officials said.

The 48-year-old actor was kayaking with a friend and launched from Cold Spring Harbor on Saturday afternoon on the Long Island Sound, according to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Swieciki. As it got dark, the two got lost and eventually headed for shore, beaching their kayaks in Huntington Bay, nearly 10 miles (16 kilometers) east from where they had set out.

Horror flick "The Possession" exorcised A-list action romp "The Expendables 2" from the top slot at the North American box office at the weekend, according to industry estimates released Sunday.

The newly-released supernatural thriller, which stars Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as divorcing parents trying to rid their daughter of an evil spirit, raked in $17.7 million, said movie tracker Exhibitor Relations.

Pop star Rihanna let rip in a series of foul-mouthed Twitter posts, saying she had to fight her way out of a Paris train station after a crowd of French fans gathered to greet her.

The singer from Barbados had earlier posted a photo showing herself at London's St Pancras station -- and the time of her train's departure for Paris marked on a station sign.

For all the glamorous seaside partying at the Venice film festival, there is a distinct air of austerity at this year's edition for an industry that is questioning its economic future.

The festival line-up has been slimmed and the star wattage toned down while even some of the movie plotlines reflect various forms of fallout from the financial crisis -- from family and relationships to faith and spiritual values.

A veiled anchorwoman read the news on Egypt's state television for the first time on Sunday, reflecting a shift in official media since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent rise of Islamists.

Fatma Nabil made her first appearance on the Channel 1 midday broadcast, wearing a black suit and a cream-colored scarf or hijab covering the hair and neck.