Popstar Justin Bieber given month to collect pet monkey

BERLIN (Reuters) - Teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber has been given a month to provide German authorities with the papers they need to release his pet monkey "Mally".

Customs officials seized Bieber's capuchin monkey at Munich Airport last week when the 19-year-old failed to present the health and species protection certificates required to bring the pet into the country.

Bieber was visiting Munich to give a concert and has since continued on his tour.

"If he doesn't (present the papers), Mally will be taken to a good animal shelter that has experience rearing groups of young capuchin monkeys and can ensure disoriented Mally becomes a healthy little capuchin," the shelter currently caring for the monkey said.

The shelter said Mally, who is around 14 weeks old, had been taken away from its mother too early and was receiving veterinary care.

A spokesman for Munich's customs office said it would decide whether to keep the animal at the current shelter or move it elsewhere at the end of the four-week deadline.

He added that Bieber would likely have to pay a fine, but declined to give details of the amount.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Muppets matriarch Jane Nebel Henson dies at age 78

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jane Nebel Henson, the former wife of Muppets creator Jim Henson who was influential in the creation of the popular U.S. TV puppet program, died on Tuesday following a long bout with cancer, The Jim Henson Company said. She was 78 years old.

Henson, who died at her home in Connecticut, was an "integral creative and business partner" in the Muppets, the company, owned by the Hensons' five children, said in a statement.

Jane Henson, born in Queens, New York, in 1934, was an early puppeteer, as well as puppet designer for the Muppets, best known for characters Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, who starred in numerous television programs and films.

She first met Jim Henson in puppetry class at the University of Maryland in the mid-1950s and the two went on to create together the five-minute television program "Sam and Friends," a precursor to the Muppets.

The show served as a lead-in to "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" news show and "The Tonight Show Starring Steve Allen" on a Washington, D.C., NBC affiliate.

Although Henson stopped working as a puppeteer to raise her children in the early 1960s, she was still responsible for recruiting top talent and performing on occasion on the children's show "Sesame Street."

Henson legally separated from her husband in 1986 prior to his death. She later founded The Jim Henson Legacy to promote his work. She is survived by her five children.

Jim Henson died in 1990 of organ failure following a bacterial infection at age 53.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, Editing by Jill Serjeant and Todd Eastham)

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Jim Carrey fires back at his gun-control critics

By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jim Carrey, who raised the hackles of the right wing by calling Fox News - or, rather, "Fux News" - a "giant culture fart" and with his criticism of assault rifles, has fired off another round in the debate, calling some of his harsher critics "thugs" and "a minority."

He also says that he doesn't want to infringe on anyone's Second Amendment rights.

Bemoaning the lack of civility he says he's encountered, Carrey writes in a column published Tuesday on the Huffington Post, "It is shocking to see this concerted effort to brutally intimidate anyone who speaks of a compassionate compromise ... These thugs, though menacing, are a minority, but they will have their way if good people don't step forward now and make a difference."

Carrey also emphasized, "NO ONE IS ASKING ANYONE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS." Instead, he says, he hopes "we can limit" access to weapons that cause "massive devastation to good and innocent people."

"No one is allowed to own a bazooka. In a movie theater an assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine can cause just as much damage," Carrey writes.

The actor stirred up the gun-control debate last week with his Funny or Die music video "Cold Dead Hand," which criticizes gun-control opponents.

Carrey released a statement later in the week, claiming that he'd seen "Fux News" - presumably, a reference to Fox News Channel - "rant, rave, bare its fangs and viciously slander me because of my stand against large magazines and assault rifles.

"I would take them to task legally if I felt they were worth my time or that anyone with a brain in their head could actually fall for such irresponsible buffoonery. That would gain them far too much attention which is all they really care about," Carrey added while giving the network's commentary attention.

Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld subsequently took a shot at Carrey on "The Five," calling Carrey "washed-up."

"I guess Jimmy thought he couldn't lose a debate to a dead man," Gutfeld said, referring to deceased actor and former NRA president Charlton Heston. "That's what's really funny - he did and now Charlton Heston has a brighter future in films than Jim Carrey."

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Matthew McConaughey confirms starring role in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic "Interstellar"

By Lucas Shaw

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Matthew McConaughey will star in Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic "Interstellar," the director's follow-up to "The Dark Knight Rises" and McConaughey's first big-budget film in years. The actor told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune he had accepted the role in the film, confirming reports from about a week ago.

The Texan has undergone a career renaissance over the past couple of years after close to a decade of making charming but redundant romantic comedies. After the "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," the last in his string of rom-coms, McConaughey took a couple of years off and then starred in "The Lincoln Lawyer" in 2011. 2012 was a year neither the actor nor cinephiles will readily forget.

McConaughey played an enterprising prosecutor in Richard Linklater's "Bernie," a murderous cop in "Killer Joe" and a stripper in "Magic Mike" - all in a span of a few months.

All three films were made on shoestring budgets, and all three paired McConaughey with iconic directors - Linklater, Billy Friedkin and Steven Soderbergh. His performance in "Magic Mike" also earned him an Independent Spirit Award.

McConaughey will next appear in "Dallas Buyers Club" as an AIDS patient and in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street."

Yet "Interstellar," which Nolan is directing from a script by his brother Jonathan, marks the latest step in McConaughey's career evolution. The story follows a physicist, Kip Throne, who proffered that time travel was possible.

Steven Spielberg was initially slated to direct, but now the Oscar winner will produce with fellow titan Nolan behind the camera.

Though the film, a collaboration between Paramount and Warner Bros., is set to open in the more awards-focused time of November 2014, sci-fi in Nolan's hands will always feel grandiose.

The diversity of roles McConaughey has taken on have landed him in films that are both awards contenders and box office draws. This film would seem to fall in both categories.

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John Travolta's lawyer slams "outrageous false" sex-assault payout story

By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - John Travolta's attorney is lashing out at Gawker over a report suggesting that the "Grease" star shelled out more than $84,000 to settle sexual assault claims, calling the story "outrageous" and "false."

Gawker published the storyTuesday, along with a document that the site claimed is an "internal report" of insurance claims indicating that the actor's insurer paid out a total of $84,500 to two parties after they issued attorney demand letters alleging sexual assault.

In a statement Wednesday, Singer said the amounts listed in the Gawker story are "consistent with legal fees being paid in connection with the defense of lawsuits that were filed.

"Gawker's outrageous false story claims that a purported insurance document supposedly shows that $84,500 was paid out in sexual assault settlements, but that alleged document does not show that a single penny was paid for settlements," Singer said. "The document (which has not been shown to be authentic) shows costs and expenses incurred, consistent with legal fees being paid in connection with the defense of lawsuits that were filed. Gawker's reckless publication of this absurd story has once again shown that the website is more concerned about page clicks than accuracy."

According to the Gawker story, Travolta's insurer paid out $3,850 to a former employee of Travolta's, identified as Mark Higgins, and $80,750 to an unidentified party. (Travolta was sued in 2012 by two plaintiffs identified as John Doe #1 and #2, who claimed that Travolta sexually assaulted them during massage sessions. Both suits were ultimately dropped.)

The site went on to insinuate that the dollar amounts smelled an awful lot like settlements over the sexual assault claims.

"All of which is to say that despite Marty Singer's public insistence that no settlement offer was made in the John Doe case, Travolta's insurance company tells a different story," article author Camille Dodero wrote.

Gawker, which did not offer specific comment to TheWrap on Singer's statement, has updated its post with a strike-through of the above sentence.

Travolta has been besieged by accusations of sexual misconduct, with multiple lawsuits filed against him.

Singer has denied the accusations leveled against Travolta.

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Jimmy Fallon to succeed Jay Leno as "Tonight Show" host

By Chris Michaud

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jimmy Fallon will take over from veteran Jay Leno next year as host of the NBC flagship talk program "The Tonight Show," NBC said on Wednesday, bringing a younger feel to the competitive late-night landscape on U.S. television.

Leno, 62, will wrap up what will be 22 years as host of "The Tonight Show" in the spring of 2014 - some seven months before his contract was officially due to end.

Fallon, 38, the current host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" will "transition into new hosting duties on 'The Tonight Show'" after Leno ends his run, NBC said in a statement.

The network also said it was moving "The Tonight Show" from its Burbank studio, outside Los Angeles, to New York, where it began in 1954.

No specific date was announced, but the change will take place in conjunction with NBC's broadcasts of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, next February.

Wednesday's announcement ended months of speculation and followed a skit on Fallon's show by him and Leno on Monday night in which they played down reports of rivalry and made fun of the rumor mill.

Leno, who was replaced by Conan O'Brien in 2009, only to return a few months later in a public relations debacle for the network, congratulated Fallon.

"I hope you're as lucky as me and hold on to the job until you're the old guy," he said in a statement.

Fallon, who started out on the long-running "Saturday Night Live" comedy show in 1998, said, "I'm really excited to host a show that starts today instead of tomorrow," referring to his current program's post-midnight start time.

"We are purposefully making this change when Jay is number-one, just as Jay replaced Johnny Carson when he was number-one," said Steve Burke, NBCUniversal's CEO.

RATINGS LEADER

"The Tonight Show" has maintained a hold on U.S. popular culture for decades, offering a forum for celebrities to promote their latest ventures and a springboard to fame for many standup comedians.

The program currently leads its three late-night rivals in overall audience, attracting about 3.5 million viewers, compared with about 3 million for CBS rival David Letterman.

But the average age of viewers for Leno and Letterman, 65, is in the mid-50s - higher than the 18-49 demographic preferred by advertisers.

ABC upped the stakes in January by moving Jimmy Kimmel, 45, to the late-night slot in a bid to grab a younger audience. Kimmel's ratings have challenged both Letterman and Leno in the 18-34 age group, while his overall audience is about 2.6 million, according to the most recent Nielsen data.

Kimmel proffered a winking posting via Twitter on Wednesday, saying, "congratulations to my dear, sweet @jimmyfallon - a formidable rival and an incredible lover."

NBC said "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" producer Lorne Michaels would serve as executive producer of the relocated show. It will be broadcast from NBC headquarters in New York's Rockefeller Center.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, welcomed the show's return to New York.

"We couldn't be happier that one of New York's own is bringing the show back to where it started - and where it belongs," Bloomberg said in a statement referring to Fallon's Brooklyn roots.

Carson, who hosted the program from 1962 to 1992, moved the show to Southern California in 1972.

NBC said that programming plans for the 12:35 a.m. time slot now filled by Fallon's show would be announced soon.

NBC is a unit of Comcast Corp, ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co and CBS is part of CBS Corp.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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Bon Jovi guitarist Sambora leaves tour due to "personal issues"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora has dropped out of the current leg of the rock band's tour because of "personal issues," but the guitarist, who has done stints in rehab for problems with alcohol, tweeted fans on Wednesday that he was "well."

"Thank you everyone for your concern," Sambora said on Twitter. "I'm well, but had to stay in LA to take care of a personal matter. Love you all and see you very soon."

Sambora, 53, who spent time in rehab in 2007 and 2011 for alcohol and prescription drug abuse, was not included at Bon Jovi's performance in Calgary, Alberta, on Tuesday and the band said he would miss a run of North America concerts.

"Due to personal issues, Richie Sambora will not be performing on this upcoming leg. All shows will go on as scheduled," said a statement on the band's website on Wednesday, offering no other details or when Sambora might resume performing.

Sambora also missed Bon Jovi's 2011 North American and European tours.

Celebrity website TMZ.com, citing unnamed sources connected to the band, said Sambora's absence was due to long-running tension between the guitarist and singer Jon Bon Jovi.

Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform this week in Edmonton, Alberta, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday.

The "Because We Can" tour's April dates include Los Angeles, Denver, Las Vegas and other cities before international appearances kick off on May 7 in Capetown, South Africa.

The band is set to play in Sweden, Germany, Britain, Spain, Poland and Italy before returning to the United States in July.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Peter Cooney)

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Award-winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala dies at age 85

(Reuters) - Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of "Heat and Dust" and many other books set in India, died on Wednesday at the age of 85, her Los Angeles agent said.

Jhabvala died at her home in New York City, a spokesman for Hollywood agency Paradigm told Reuters. The spokesman did not give the cause of her death but said she had been sick for some time.

Jhabvala also worked on several movie adaptations with filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, winning two Academy Awards for her screenplays for 1985 movie "A Room With a View" and "Howards End" in 1992.

Jhabvala was born in Germany but emigrated with her family to Britain during the Nazi regime. She later married an Indian architect and moved to India, where she began to write about her life there.

Her novel "Heat and Dust," a romance about a young woman living in India in the 1920s, won Britain's coveted Booker Prize in 1975, and was adapted for the big screen in 1983.

Jhabvala collaborated with Merchant and Ivory on more than 20 movies including "The Remains of the Day" and "Mr. And Mrs. Bridge."

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant and Eric Kelsey; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Conductor Salonen dashes from Frank Zappa to Stravinsky

By Michael Roddy

LONDON (Reuters) - Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen dislikes musical anniversaries but he is celebrating so many this year he failed to notice one - the 20th anniversary of the death of the anarchic American rock innovator Frank Zappa.

It isn't often that "Mothers of Invention" founder Zappa's rock-and-orchestral score for his film "200 Motels" is revived, but Salonen, 54, will conduct it in October with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Music Director from 1992 until 2009, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the orchestra's acoustically exquisite Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The fact that this year also is the 20th anniversary of the 1960s cult rock star's death was something Salonen hadn't realized until it was brought to his attention during a recent interview, but he said he was captivated by the idea of reviving Zappa's complex, multi-faceted piece the minute he saw it.

"I opened the score and the first line I saw was that this town (LA) is 'a sealed tuna sandwich'. I said, 'Okay, you can't say that's not a good match.' I realized this is the LA piece I want to conduct before I die."

From conducting "200 Motels" to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" might seem a stretch, but not so for Salonen, who will be leading Stravinsky's ground-breaking 1913 masterpiece in the same Paris concert hall only a few days after the evening a century ago that its premiere caused a near riot.

Salonen doesn't much like cultural anniversaries: "Very often these anniversaries, it seems like a duty, we play an awful lot and then after the year is over we've done that." But he's observing none with more relish than "The Rite of Spring".

"The miracle of that piece is the eternal youth of it. It's so fresh it still kicks ass and how many 100-year-old pieces do that? There's such powerful vitality in that music it's almost scary," he said over coffee in London.

"LANDED ON THIS PLANET"

"The thing about 'The Rite of Spring' is that it just landed on this planet, there are no predecessors, there are no models. Stravinsky didn't work off of any models. So it's like a perfect egg that drops."

Lack of models is not something that can be said for the works of another of Salonen's anniversary composers, the Pole Witold Lutoslawski whose birth centenary is this year.

Lutoslawski wrote in the 20th-century modernist idiom, with extreme craftsmanship and polish that sometimes makes his pieces seem a bit distant or, at other times, deeply gloomy.

But that's not at all that Salonen finds when he conducts Lutoslawki's symphonies, all four of which have been reissued in a two-CD set by Sony. He recently concluded a Lutoslawski cycle in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra and will make the case for the composer again in Madrid in May.

"I realized apart from a few pieces that seemed to have kept place in the repertoire many of his pieces have kind of disappeared, including some pieces that I found absolutely powerful and fascinating. So I thought I would use this anniversary in such a way that I could shed light on that repertoire to allow people to hear it again and then, of course, the rest is up to the people."

The importance of connecting with people is something that Salonen, both as a conductor and as a composer, which takes up an increasing amount of his time, says he learned in LA.

He became Music Director in Los Angeles at what he considers a ridiculously young age, running a multi-million-dollar cultural institution in his early 30s and having brought with him what he calls his "suitcase full of European superior knowledge of everything".

"In a European way of thinking...we always focus mostly on the intention of the composer...and very little attention is focused on the actual effects, the interface when the music hits the listener - what is that process, what does it do to me?

"And I realized that perhaps my focus had been soft, instead of being primarily interested in the methods I should be more interested in the actual effect.

"What I learned in LA is you cannot actually separate the mind from the body. It's impossible, and it would be meaningless."

He says that attitude has carried over into his music which at times sounds like it belongs to the "spectral" school of composition, with its intense focus on sound and timbre, but at other times turns lushly romantic and poignant, as in his Violin Concerto, which was recorded by American violinist Leila Josefowicz and won the prestigious University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2012.

"It has to do with getting older, because I realized...somebody will always conduct concerts, there are a lot of good guys and women who can do it very well...but only I can write my music, nobody else can do it for me," Salonen said.

"If I don't write the music I want to write it's a dramatic loss to me."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Influential U.S. film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Roger Ebert, who was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize and became an unlikely TV star while hosting a movie review show with fellow critic Gene Siskel, died in Chicago on Thursday, two days after he disclosed his cancer had returned.

"It is with a heavy heart we report that legendary film critic Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) has passed away," the Chicago Sun-Times, the newspaper where Ebert, 70, worked for decades, said on Twitter.

"There is a hole that can't be filled. One of the greats has left us," the newspaper added.

Ebert, who was dubbed by Forbes magazine in 2007 as the most powerful pundit in America, was one of the mostly widely read U.S. movie critics, known for more than 40 years of insightful, sometimes sarcastic and often humorous reviews.

"For a generation of Americans - and especially Chicagoans - Roger was the movies," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "When he didn't like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive - capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical."

Ebert's reviews appeared in more than 200 newspapers and in 1975 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the first film critic to do so. But his most visible role was as one of the hosts of a popular television movie review show with Gene Siskel, a reviewer from the rival Chicago Tribune.

The program began airing in the 1970s on a Chicago public television station and eventually ran nationally under various names, including "Siskel & Ebert." The sometimes sparring pair later trademarked their "Two thumbs up!" seal of approval for movies.

After Siskel died in 1999 at age 53 due to complications from surgery for a brain tumor, Ebert teamed with critic Richard Roeper on another movie review show. He later left the program for health reasons.

Ebert lost his ability to speak and eat after surgeries for thyroid and salivary gland cancer in 2002 and 2003 and again in 2006.

But it did not stop him from working.

On Tuesday, Ebert had posted a blog entry saying he was taking a "leave of presence" and scaling back his work after doctors diagnosed his cancer had returned. He said it was discovered by doctors after he fractured his hip in December.

"The 'painful fracture' that made it difficult for me to walk has recently been revealed to be a cancer," Ebert said in the blog posting, giving no further details about the type of cancer or diagnosis.

"I am not going away," he added. "My intent is to continue to write selected reviews ... What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review."

News of Ebert's death provoked an outpouring of tributes on Twitter.

"A great man. I miss him already," tweeted Roeper, his fellow Sun-Times film critic and TV co-host.

Millions of thumbs up for you," wrote documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, referring to his catchphrase. Comedian Steve Martin tweeted: "Goodbye Roger Ebert, we had fun. The balcony is closed."

"Rest in Peace, Roger. You were simply the best," wrote "Jaws" actor Richard Dreyfuss on Twitter.

MOVIE BOOKS, SCREENPLAY, COOKBOOK

Born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois, south of Chicago, Ebert attended the University of Illinois and was editor of the school newspaper, the Daily Illini. From 1958 until 1966, he worked at the News Gazette in Champaign-Urbana, where he had snagged a job as a sportswriter at the age of 15, then moved to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967.

Along with film criticism, Ebert authored several books on movies and filmmakers, including 1980's "Werner Herzog: Images at the Horizon," about the famed director, as well as titles like "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," in 2000.

He even co-wrote the screenplay for the 1970 film "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

But it was reviewing movies that Ebert loved most and he was prolific at cranking out criticism. In print, his reviews were voluminous and omnivorous, reflecting an encyclopedic knowledge about and appetite for the genre.

He liked to say he would go out of his way to review foreign films, documentaries and little-known independent movies that other critics passed on, and he cranked out hundreds of reviews and essays annually.

Ebert's earlier bouts of cancer cost him his lower jaw. He communicated through notes and a mechanized voice as well as on the Internet, but he could not eat normally and received nutrition through a tube.

"I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell," he told a New York Times interviewer in 2010, when Ebert published a cookbook, "The Pot and How to Use It."

"The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss," he wrote of missing out on the talk at table.

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey, Bob Tourtellotte, Mike Conlon and Andrew Stern; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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