A critic once said you couldn't step onto a London bus without thinking of a Mike Leigh film, yet the British filmmaker told Agence France Presse he never set out to capture the city on celluloid.

"I'm called the cinematic poet of London," smiled the 68-year-old director in an interview Friday, in Paris as guest of honor of a festival celebrating London in film, starting with a Mike Leigh master class and retrospective.

Playboy is to release its January/February issue early after nude pictures of troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan leaked online, boss Hugh Hefner said Friday.

The actress, who was reportedly paid nearly $1 million for the magazine spread, appears on the cover seated on a bright red Playboy bunny chair, only just protecting her modesty.

Jay-Z didn't graduate from high school, but he's encouraging others to value their education.

The rapper announced Thursday that he will perform two shows at New York's Carnegie Hall in February to benefit the Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation and the United Way of New York City.

50 Cent has rapped about getting rich. Now he's focusing on getting fit.

The hip-hop star is putting out a fitness book that's set to be published in January 2013 by Avery Books. Titled "Formula 50: A 6-Week Total Body Transformation Plan," the book will tout metabolic resistance training as the key to getting in shape. It will also include a nutrition guide.

Adele dominated music this year, and iTunes was no exception.

The British songstress had iTunes' best-selling album and song, and she was named its top artist.

A Bangladeshi television channel said Thursday it was launching the country's first reality show for transgender people in an effort to break down widespread suspicion of the country's "hijra" community.

The ATN Bangla show, "Amra Tomadery" (We are for you), is now accepting applications to be one of around 40 contestants who will showcase their dancing and acting skills to win audience votes.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose party lost support in parliamentary elections, Thursday named a top Russian film director to head his campaign to return to the Kremlin in March presidential polls.

Stanislav Govorukhin, who directed the classic Soviet television series "The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed,” will mastermind Putin's bid to reclaim the presidency in the elections on March 4, 2012.

Beloved comic book boy reporter Tintin is leaping on to videogame consoles ahead of the U.S. release of a film by Hollywood powerhouse Steven Spielberg.

Ubisoft released "The Adventures of Tintin: The Game" in North America with versions tailored for play on all major videogame consoles as well as personal computers and handheld Nintendo 3DS devices.

Zany experiments testing scientific theories in real-world settings have earned the TV show "MythBusters" a devoted following, but a stunt gone awry met with an unhappy audience when an errant cannonball went shooting through a California family's bedroom.

Sheriff's deputies are still measuring how, exactly, the cannonball flew from a bomb range in the rolling hills flanking a suburban San Francisco Bay area neighborhood and rocketed into the front door of a home and through its master bedroom before landing in a neighbor's parked minivan.

Alec Baldwin issued an apology Wednesday to fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight that was delayed by his refusal to stop playing a cellphone game — but stopped short of apologizing to the airline or the flight attendant he later mocked on Twitter.

The "30 Rock" actor's note, posted to the Huffington Post (http://huff.to/sENHR2 ), instead lamented the state of modern air travel. Baldwin noted the financial struggles of airlines, saying the result is that air travel has devolved into an inelegant experience, akin to riding a Greyhound bus.