John Travolta says his upcoming performance as an infamous New York mafia boss will offer audiences a movie they can't refuse.

The star, set to play late Gambino crime family boss John Gotti joined director Nick Cassavetes and the mobster's son John "Junior" Gotti to reveal details about the film "Gotti: Three Generations."

Former "Baywatch" star and animal activist Pamela Anderson has called on China to join other countries in banning imports of seal meat and oil from her native Canada, calling seal-hunting inhumane.

Anderson sent a letter to China's minister of land and resources, Xu Shaoshi, inviting him to accompany her to Canada to witness the "cruelty of the annual seal slaughter".

Two musicals about the life of Pope John Paul II, including one that covers his childhood under Nazi rule in Poland, will be staged for Roman Catholic Church youth festivities in Madrid this August, organizers said Tuesday.

The plays are among 295 cultural events during the August 16-21 World Youth Day gathering, which is to be attended by Pope Benedict XVI, the event's cultural programming chief, Carla Diez de Rivera, told a news conference.

Britain's satirical cartoonists are sharpening their pencils for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29, but are likely to keep their cruelest portrayals in check.

Partly reflecting the British obsession with class and status, the butt of most cartoonists' jokes are usually those occupying high office and the monarchy, so a royal wedding is fertile hunting ground for mischievous illustrators.

Film icon Elizabeth Taylor's collection of jewelry, artwork, clothing, and memorabilia will be sold at auction, according to Christie's auction house.

Taylor died last month at the age of 79 after suffering congestive heart failure.

Vanity Fair has stirred controversy with an article panning the Gulf city state of Dubai, which has pumped millions into cultivating an image of high glamor.

The iconic magazine's April edition is on sale in bookshops but with the three pages of the column headlined "Dubai on Empty" neatly removed, although a page of photos has escaped the guillotine.

Eric Clapton fulfilled his childhood fantasy as he took a turn on the jazz side, collaborating with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for a little bit of swing at the orchestra's annual gala benefit.

"I've never done anything like this in my life before," said Clapton during Thursday's concert, which saw the Rock and Hall of Famer use his guitar skills to play jazz classics like "Joe Turner's Blues," "Corrine, Corrina" and "Ice Cream."

A French rock star convicted of killing his girlfriend will not appear in Montreal and Ottawa theatrical productions after his casting provoked a public outcry, the Theatre du Nouveau Monde announced Friday.

Montreal's largest theatre company had invited Bertrand Cantat to appear in three plays by Sophocles directed by Wajdi Mouawad in its 2011-2012 season.

Legendary American musician Bob Dylan, whose songs became anthems of the 1960s anti-Vietnam War era, blows into Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday for his first-ever concert in the communist nation.

While the symbolism is stark for members of the West's aging "counter-culture" generation, many in youthful Vietnam have never heard of the man who wrote "Blowin' in the Wind" and other songs of protest and struggle.

In the cosmopolitan U.S. capital, singles are seeking everything from "Morocco" to "Ethiopia", "Kazakhstan" and "steppes", to "Ascot" and "Bourgogne."

In oil-town Houston, lonely hearts are looking for "rich" "entrepreneurs", while in remote Maine, they desire "unmanly" "vampiric" types.