Actor Andy Samberg, musician Joanna Newsom engaged

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comic actor Andy Samberg and musician Joanna Newsom are engaged to be married, a representative of Samberg said on Monday.

"I can confirm that Andy Samberg and Joanna Newsom are engaged," Samberg's publicist, Carrie Byalick, said in an email.

The former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and the harpist have kept a low public profile since they began dating five years ago.

Newsom, 31, was spotted on Saturday with a diamond ring on her left ring finger at the Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, California.

A wedding date has not been announced.

Samberg, 34, rose to prominence with his parody music videos for "SNL," including "I'm on a Boat" with rapper T-Pain and "Motherlover" with Justin Timberlake, that drew a strong Internet following.

Samberg left the NBC late-night sketch comedy show in 2012 after seven years.

He starred in comedies "That's My Boy" and "Celeste and Jesse Forever" last year and is currently on the British television comedy series "Cuckoo."

Newsom, acclaimed for her idiosyncratic and baroque folk music, has released three albums, most recently "Have One On Me" in 2010.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

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Bela Tarr swaps film making for running unique school

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Revered Hungarian director Bela Tarr's famously uncompromising approach to cinema will now be passed to future generations as he begins a new course for budding filmmakers in Sarajevo.

The 57-year-old retired from directing after the release in 2011 of "The Turin Horse", a bleak, black-and-white portrayal of a peasant and his daughter abandoned by man and God in their remote, windswept cottage.

Its long takes and sparse dialogue and narrative were trademarks of Tarr, who won over critics around the world and is perhaps most famous for his seven-hour epic "Satantango" based on a novel by compatriot Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

It will come as little surprise to hear Tarr speak not of commercial success in cinema, but artistic integrity at a time when independent filmmakers are struggling to raise money to make movies that have limited box office potential.

"Film is different - you cannot teach, you can do only one thing which is to develop young filmmakers -- give them freedom, tell them they can be brave, they can be themselves, do what they really want," Tarr said in an interview.

Last week classes began at his newly launched Film Factory at the Sarajevo University School for Science and Technology, offering a three-year programme which Tarr and his associates said would adopt a fresh approach to filmmaking.

"It started when I decided not to make any more movies," Tarr said of his idea to launch an international PhD-level film programme for mature directors.

"I had the feeling this was the next step in my life because I want to share what I know, and I want to protect young filmmakers, give them the protection to be free," he told Reuters in his offices in the Bosnian capital.

ART BACK INTO FILM

Accommodated in a building located in the old part of Sarajevo, his Film Factory is now home to 17 students who have come from as far as Japan and Mexico to explore the secrets of filmmaking.

"It's a unique attempt to really work artistically in film, and to bring film to the level of art again," said Fred Kelemen, a German cinematographer and director who runs a camera workshop at the school.

"I think it's very important because it's something that many film schools around the world do not do any more," he added before mentoring students in capturing light against a dark backdrop on camera.

Kelemen has worked with Tarr on several films, and has been branded by critics as the "maestro of black and white silence".

The programme includes a theoretical section based on analyzing films as well as practical workshops which will be run by independent cinema stars including Gus Van Sant, Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton.

Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, French director Thierry Garrel, Icelandic producer Fridrik Thor Fridriksson will also be among the lecturers, and possibly Aki Kaurismaki.

Students are expected to produce four films over the first two years and a feature in the final year.

"It looks like a menu," Tarr said of his programme. "In the end you have to cook your own food. The third part, when they are making their own movies, is where the real cooking is done, and that is my responsibility."

Most students said they applied for the school because of its unconventional approach to film and its roster of prominent figures from the film industry.

"After 110 years of cinema we are at the point where everything is undone," said Keja Ho Kramer from France, who has worked in the film business for the past 12 years.

"So to have an opportunity to rethink where the future is with all these amazing people is what interests me most."

Tarr is confident the course will achieve its goal of promoting freedom of art and expression, and produce some "good, strong movies.

"We are here, we have cameras, we have lights, we have fantasy, they have time, they are young, full of energy, full of hope - I do not see a problem. We just have to work, work, work, work."

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Paul Casciato)

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Pippa Middleton to write cookery column for UK supermarket

LONDON (Reuters) - Pippa Middleton, the sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, is to give cooking tips to the masses in a new column for British supermarket chain Waitrose.

Middleton, 29, will write a column for the upmarket chain's monthly magazine, Waitrose Kitchen, called "Pippa's Friday Night Feasts".

Her foray into kitchen advice comes after she released a book called "Celebrate" last year, which was a guide to entertaining through the year and built on the experience she gained working for her family's party-planning business.

The book by the sister of Britain's future queen was both praised and pilloried in equal measure but did not sell well and was quickly discounted in book stores.

William Sitwell, editor of Waitrose Kitchen, said readers would enjoy Middleton's relaxed and easy entertaining ideas.

[Slideshow: The Duchess shows off the royal bump]

"Pippa will be an excellent contributor to the magazine, bringing with her a wealth of experience of entertaining, gained in part from working at her family's party business," he said in a statement.

Her first column will appear in the magazine's April issue and will feature casual dining ideas and recipes.

Middleton said her column would be an "exciting opportunity to share my own passion and enthusiasm for food and entertaining and I can't wait to get started".

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Janet Jackson says she has married Qatari billionaire

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer Janet Jackson said on Monday that she married her Qatari businessman boyfriend last year, quashing media reports of upcoming nuptials.

Jackson, 46, the younger sister of the late singer Michael Jackson, was engaged to billionaire Wissam Al Mana, 37, last year but kept the news under wraps.

"The rumors regarding an extravagant wedding are simply not true. Last year we were married in a quiet, private, and beautiful ceremony," Jackson and Al Mana said in a statement to Entertainment Tonight.

"Our wedding gifts to one another were contributions to our respective favorite children's charities."

The American singer is known for keeping her private life from the media, rarely speaking out about her ex-husbands.

She married soul singer James DeBarge in 1984, and the marriage was annulled a year later. Her 1991 marriage to music video director Rene Elizondo ended in divorce in 2000.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

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Christina Applegate weds musician Martyn LeNoble

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Emmy-winning actress Christina Applegate quietly married rock musician Martyn LeNoble at a wedding in Los Angeles, a representative of the "Anchorman" star said on Monday.

Applegate, 41, and LeNoble, 43, exchanged vows on Sunday while the entertainment world was trained on the Academy Awards, the film industry's biggest night.

The couple was "surrounded by family in a private ceremony at their home in Los Angeles," Applegate's spokeswoman said in a statement.

The couple, who have been together since 2008, engaged in 2010 and have a 2-year-old daughter, Sadie.

It is the second marriage for both.

Applegate was most recently on the television comedy "Up All Night." She announced she was leaving the NBC series in February over the show's creative direction.

Dutch LeNoble, a bassist, was a founding member of 1990s alternative rock group Porno for Pyros.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop dies at 96

(Reuters) - Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, whose anti-smoking campaign and outspoken, controversial positions on abortion, AIDS and drugs, elevated the obscure post to one of national influence, died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Monday. He was 96 years old.

Koop, a pediatric surgeon, served as the leading U.S. spokesman on public health matters and adviser to President Ronald Reagan from November 1981 until October 1989. His death was announced by Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, where he founded the C. Everett Koop Institute.

"Dr. Koop was not only a pioneering pediatric surgeon but also one of the most courageous and passionate public health advocates of the past century," said Dr. Wiley W. Souba, dean of the Geisel School.

The gray-bearded Koop, known for his bow ties and suspenders, became one of most recognizable figures in the Reagan administration.

He took stern and sometimes controversial stands on abortion, AIDS, fatty foods, drugs and cigarettes, and moved through the halls of power convinced that he knew what was best for the nation's health.

Koop enraged the powerful tobacco industry and lawmakers grateful for the industry's generous campaign funds with his insistence that smoking kills and should be banned.

Then, in the midst of a heated national debate about how best to halt the spread of AIDS, Koop blocked the Reagan administration's plans for extensive testing. To the applause of gay rights groups, Koop said the disclosure of the test results, intentional or otherwise, could ruin the careers of those tested.

He spearheaded the drive to make education about AIDS the primary means of preventing the disease, writing a brochure about AIDS that was distributed to millions of American households. Attired in the authoritative white military dress uniform of the Public Health Service and its 7,000-member medical corps he disclosed to the public the glum, often indelicate, details of the disease and how to avoid it.

He urged men to use condoms - if they were unable to abstain from sex - to prevent the spread of AIDS, which is transmitted through semen or blood.

At the time, conservative activist and Koop critic Phyllis Schlafly blasted Koop and his attempts at educating the public as "teaching of safe sodomy in public schools." She demanded, unsuccessfully, that Koop stop preaching about safe sex.

At his confirmation hearings before the Senate, he was blasted by one feminist leader as "a monster" for his deeply held position against abortion.

"He saved countless lives through his leadership in confronting the public health crisis that came to be known as AIDS and standing up to powerful special interests like the tobacco companies," U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said on Monday.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 14, 1916, Koop was badly injured as a child in a skiing accident and in playing football, which led him to an interest in medicine.

At 16, he entered Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and later graduated from Cornell Medical School.

Koop was preceded in death by his first wife, Elizabeth, and by their son David, according to Dartmouth.

He is survived by their children Allen Koop, the Rev. Norman Koop and Elizabeth Thompson, as well as by his wife, Cora, whom he married in 2010. He is also survived by eight grandchildren, according to Dartmouth.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch and Corrie MacLaggan; editing by Christopher Wilson and Jackie Frank)

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Bowie is back to best on new album, critics say

LONDON (Reuters) - David Bowie's first album of new music in a decade sees the influential musician back to his best, critics said in reviews rushed out on Tuesday, two weeks before its release.

"The Next Day", which hits stores in Britain on March 11 and a day later in the United States, could even be the "greatest comeback in rock'n'roll history", according to The Independent's Andy Gill.

As well as a series of glowing reviews, this week also saw the launch of the second single from the 14-track album called "The Stars (Are out Tonight)", accompanied by a surreal video starring the Starman himself and Tilda Swinton as his wife.

In it the middle-aged couple's daily routine is upset by the arrival of a group of mysterious, androgynous celebrities next door who enter their dreams and reawaken old desires and fears.

"They burn you with their radiant smiles/Trap you with their beautiful eyes" read the lyrics on Bowie's official website.

As befits an "event" album with so much hype surrounding it, several newspapers gave The Next Day a track-by-track analysis.

"David Bowie's The Next Day may be the greatest comeback album ever," said Gill in his five-star assessment.

"It's certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist's own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality," he added.

Neil McCormick of the Telegraph also gave the record top marks, calling it "an ... emotionally charged, musically jagged, electric bolt through his own mythos and the mixed-up, celebrity-obsessed, war-torn world of the 21st century."

BOWIE MANIA

Even in an age when veteran musical comebacks are a daily occurrence, the fascination with Bowie appears to be huge.

Music magazine NME is dedicating a six-page cover feature to the singer, while the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is staging a major exhibition looking at his music, art and groundbreaking fashion.

More than 26,000 tickets have already been sold to the show, which opens on March 23.

Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian, argued that, while containing references to Bowie's past work, it largely avoided becoming a sonic memoir of a stellar musical career.

And he said that the secrecy surrounding the making of the album, and genuine media surprise when it was announced on Bowie's 66th birthday last month, risked overshadowing the quality of the music itself.

"That doesn't seem a fair fate for an album that's thought-provoking, strange and filled with great songs," he said. "Listening to it makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace."

Songs singled out by critics included "Valentine's Day", couched, according to Gill, "in one of the album's most engaging pop arrangements", and "Dancing Out In Space", described by Will Hodgkinson of The Times as a "nightclub smash".

"You Feel So Lonely You Could Die", the penultimate track, provides the climax which McCormick calls "fantastic, a lush companion piece to Ziggy's Rock'n'roll Suicide that drips vitriol in place of compassion."

Now that the album is complete, the question on many fans' lips is whether Bowie will return to the stage to perform live.

The singer himself has dodged the limelight altogether since the comeback, but guitarist Gerry Leonard told Rolling Stone magazine that he thought it was "50-50" that Bowie would tour.

The glam-rock star, born David Jones in south London in 1947, shot to fame with "Space Oddity" in 1969, and later with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, before establishing himself as a chart-topping force in the early 1980s.

His long absence from the music scene led to speculation he had retired, with British newspapers reporting as recently as October that he had disappeared from the limelight for good.

Bowie's last album of new material was "Reality", released a decade ago, and he underwent emergency heart surgery while on tour in 2004. His last stage performance was as a guest at a charity concert in New York in 2006.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Dennis Rodman gets his "Gangnam Style" mixed up in Pyongyang

SEOUL (Reuters) - Former NBA star Dennis Rodman appears to have mixed up his Koreas on a visit to Pyongyang, tweeting that he expected to run into South Korean rapper Psy on his trip to the North.

Rodman, famed for his tattoos, piercings and radical hair colours from his time on court, arrived in North Korea on Tuesday to shoot some hoops and a documentary to be aired on HBO in April.

"Maybe I'll run into the Gangnam Style dude while I'm here," the 51-year old tweeted (@dennisrodman) after his arrival.

Psy, a 35-year old roly-poly rapper, shot to global fame with his Gangnam Style song last year, garnering more than a billion YouTube hits for his portrayal of the ritzy and shallow Gangnam enclave in the southern part of the South Korean capital of Seoul.

While Pyongyang is by far the richest part of North Korea, Rodman is unlikely to see the kind of wealth and designer chic on display in Gangnam.

The North's economy is 1/40th the size of South Korea's, according to most independent estimates, and is smaller than it was 20 years ago according to the United Nations.

The only bling that Rodman may encounter in North Korea appears to come from third generation of the country's ruling family.

Jowly 30-year old dictator Kim Jong-un has a penchant for Disney shows and fun-fairs, while his young wife - rumoured to have given birth recently - has been seen sporting a Dior bag.

Many North Koreans struggle to put adequate amounts of food on the table each day and recent reports suggested there had been a famine in the country's food-basket area in 2012.

(Reporting by David Chance, editing by Elaine Lies)

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Patrick Fugit Joins ABC's "Reckless" Pilot; Luke Ganalon Signs on for John Leguizamo Pilot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Almost Famous" star Patrick Fugit has signed on for the ABC drama pilot "Reckless."

Fugit will play the lead role of David, whose wife is imprisoned during a political uprising overseas. When the U.S. government stymies his efforts to secure her release in the name of diplomacy, David pursues less-than-legal solutions, crafting an elaborate scheme to topple a brutal dictator.

The pilot, inspired by real events, is being written by Chris Black and executive-produced by Martin Campbell for ABC Studios.

In addition to the Fugit casting, child "Bless Me, Ultima" actor Luke Ganalon has been cast in ABC's untitled John Leguizamo comedy pilot.

Co-created by and starring Leguizamo, the pilot is based on the actor's life as a husband and father who feels like a fish out of water on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Balancing his life of privilege with friends from back home in the Bronx and relatives trying to keep Leguizamo grounded to his Latin roots, he also worries that his kids are becoming spoiled.

Ganalon will play Toby in the pilot, which is being executive produced by David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Jeff Goldenberg.

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Actress Carrie Fisher briefly hospitalized after bipolar episode

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, was briefly hospitalized due to her bipolar disorder, the actress' spokeswoman said on Tuesday after video emerged of Fisher giving an unusual stage performance.

The video came from a show Fisher gave aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean last week, according to celebrity website TMZ, which posted the clip.

The clip shows Fisher, 56, singing "Skylark" and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," at times appearing to struggle to remember the lyrics. Fisher also appears to use paper to clean up after a small dog that shares the stage with her, and then stuffing the paper into a couch behind her.

"There was a medical incident related to Carrie Fisher's bipolar disorder," Fisher's spokeswoman Carol Marshall said in a statement. "She went to the hospital briefly to adjust her medication and is feeling much better now."

The actress has previously discussed her struggle with bipolar disorder. And in her 2009 memoir "Wishful Drinking," she also described her alcoholism and drug abuse.

Fisher is the daughter of Hollywood stars Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and, aside from starring in the first three "Star Wars" films, wrote the bestselling novel "Postcards from the Edge" about an actress recovering from drug addiction. She wrote the screenplay for a 1990 movie adaptation.

She in recent years had a recurring role on the animated comedy "Family Guy" and has guest starred in a number of other television shows.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Todd Eastham)

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