Jolie jumps past Oprah to nab top spot on Forbes celebrity list

Media maven Oprah Winfrey earned 10 times more than Angelina Jolie last year, but the actress bumped the talk show host from the top spot on Forbes’ 2009 Celebrity 100 list just released by the business magazine. Jolie’s fame, evidenced by magazine covers and TV, radio, newspaper and Web stories, outweighed Winfrey’s, giving her the edge as “the most powerful celebrity in the world” based on Forbes’ formula, Forbes Senior Editor Matthew Miller said.

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Birthday release pledge for Nigeria hostage

A Nigerian militant group said it plans to release a British oil worker Monday as a birthday "gift" to Matthew John Maguire, who was abducted last year. Talking exclusively to CNN on his return to Hong Kong, where he had been forging a career in the movies, Chen reveals his side of the scandal that broke in early 2008. It centers on sexually explicit photos of him with other celebrities that appeared on the Internet, leaked by a former employee of a computer repair shop.

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Group wants R rating for any film with smoking

Smoking in youth-rated movies has not declined despite a pledge two years ago by Hollywood studios to encourage producers to show less "gratuitous smoking," according to an anti-smoking group. The American Medical Association Alliance, pointing to research that big-screen smoking leads teens to pick up the tobacco habit, called for an R rating for any movie with smoking scenes. The head of the group that gives U.S

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French national kidnapped in Pakistan

A French national was kidnapped early Saturday afternoon in southwestern Pakistan, police in Pakistan said. In “The Girl Cut in Two,” veteran French filmmaker Claude Chabrol tells the story of one young woman for whom just the opposite is true. It stars French starlet Ludivine Sagnier as a young woman who rejects the amorous advances of a flashy, wealthy man her age, in favor of a sleazy affair with a fickle, 60 year-old father figure

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Veteran new wave filmmaker seduces French starlet Sagnier

When a woman dates a much older man, bystanders often speculate that she has only the most superficial of motives. In “The Girl Cut in Two,” veteran French filmmaker Claude Chabrol tells the story of one young woman for whom just the opposite is true. It stars French starlet Ludivine Sagnier as a young woman who rejects the amorous advances of a flashy, wealthy man her age, in favor of a sleazy affair with a fickle, 60 year-old father figure

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Hollywood eyes $70 zombie movie wowing Cannes

A budding British director is enjoying success on a shoestring at Cannes with "Colin," a new zombie feature that cost a scarcely believable $70 to make. Japanese distributors are currently in negotiations for the rights to the film and buzz around the no-budget zombie chiller has attracted interest from some major American distributors — all of which is a very nice surprise for the team behind “Colin.” “We were almost fainting at the list of people who were coming [to the final market screening of the film],” said Helen Grace of Left Films who is helping the film’s director Marc Price publicize the film in Cannes

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‘Gandhi’ star returns to India with Bollywood movie

Editor’s note: Watch The Screening Room Cannes special on CNN at the following dates and times: Wednesday 27 May: 0730, 1730, Saturday 30 May: 0730, 1800, Sunday 31 May: 0430, 1730, Monday 31 May: 0300 (All times GMT) Bollywood-produced “Teen Patti” (“Card Game”) also marks Kingsley’s first return to Indian filmmaking since playing the title role in “Gandhi,” the critically-acclaimed biopic of the Indian leader that propelled him to fame in 1982. He is the first Oscar-winning Hollywood actor ever to star in a Bollywood movie, and Kingsley believes that the future of filmmaking could lie in combining the twin talents of the world’s biggest film industries

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In Defense of Bristol Palin, Abstinence Spokeswoman

Bristol Palin — Sarah Palin’s 19-year-old-daughter and unwed mother of 4-month-old Tripp — has been blog-blistered this week for her debut as an Abstinence Ambassador for the Candies Foundation. She made the rounds of the morning shows, appeared at a town hall meeting for National Teen Pregnancy Awareness Day and declared herself committed to discouraging behavior that would leave other girls in the same predicament she finds herself in. “Regardless of what I did personally,” she told Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America, “abstinence is the only …

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