Director Peter Jackson and the cast of "The Hobbit" received a rock star reception at the Tolkien epic's world premiere in Wellington on Wednesday, cheered on by 100,000 screaming fans.

Crowds wearing crooked wizard hats and pointed elf ears packed the New Zealand capital's entertainment strip, jostling for position on balconies and rooftops for a glimpse of stars such as Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving.

A top Chinese daily on Wednesday condemned pop star Elton John for dedicating his Beijing show to dissident artist Ai Weiwei, saying it was disrespectful and could lead to bans on other Western performers.

The Sunday night dedication was reminiscent of Icelandic singer Bjork chanting "Tibet, Tibet" at a 2008 concert in Shanghai, which resulted in China's cultural minders refusing performance permits for some Western acts.

China's latest blockbuster film, to be released nationwide Thursday, focuses on the hypersensitive topic of famine -- but not the mass starvation that Mao Zedong presided over, which remains strictly taboo.

"Back to 1942" tells of a largely forgotten disaster that left three million dead, seven years before Mao's Communists took over and almost two decades before his Great Leap Forward led to the deaths of tens of millions.

A day before South Korean rap sensation PSY brings his "Gangnam Style" to Thailand, scores of inmates have danced to the hit behind barbed wire and bars in a Bangkok prison.

Seventy out of 4,500 prisoners at Bangkok Remand Prison put on a show Tuesday for the media and corrections department executives after competing in a "Gangnam Style" dance contest last week.

"The Hobbit" director Peter Jackson on Tuesday said the low point making his Tolkien epic was when the production almost moved from his native New Zealand to Britain because of a union dispute.

Jackson, who will host the world premiere of the first instalment of his trilogy in Wellington on Wednesday, said studio executives went as far as scouting locations in Scotland and England when the row erupted in late 2010.

An actor on "Two and a Half Men" has lashed out at his own hit US television show, urging viewers to stop "filling your head with filth," after apparently undergoing a religious revelation.

Nineteen-year-old Angus T. Jones, who reportedly earns $350,000 an episode playing the character Jake in the show starring Ashton Kutcher, made the comments in Christian testimony recorded in his production trailer.

An Islamic political party on Tuesday urged the government of predominantly Muslim Malaysia to ban a concert by Elton John, saying the openly gay British pop icon promotes "immoral" values.

John, who is popular in Malaysia, is scheduled to perform on Thursday at a resort outside the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Tokyo Disneyland has stopped selling helium balloons shaped like Mickey Mouse and other characters because of a worldwide shortage of the lighter-than-air gas, the park's operator said Tuesday.

The popular balloons were withdrawn from sale last week, a spokesman said, because the company was having difficulty securing a stable supply.

A Copenhagen play on the life of late British singer Amy Winehouse has been blocked by the singer's father, the Danish copyright collecting society said Monday.

The show, titled "Amy", was due to open at the Royal Danish Theater in January but was canceled because KODA, a society that administers music copyrights in Denmark, withdrew its permission to use Winehouse's songs in the play.

R&B singer Chris Brown has deleted his Twitter account after a vulgar online exchange with comedian Jenny Johnson.

Johnson says she's now receiving death threats on Twitter from Brown's supporters.