Spaghetti Westerns were the talk of the town in Rome on Friday as U.S. director Quentin Tarantino arrived to receive a lifetime career prize at the premiere of his latest film "Django Unchained" -- a homage to Italian-made cowboy movies from the 1960s.

Tarantino said "Macaroni Westerns" by cult directors Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone were his favorites because they were so "surreal and extreme".

The 2013 Oscars show will include a tribute to the James Bond movie franchise, celebrating its 50th anniversary with the record-breaking blockbuster "Skyfall," organizers said Friday.

Over the decades a number of 007 films have been nominated for the coveted golden statuettes -- albeit generally in technical or minor categories -- and there has been talk that "Skyfall" could draw another nod or two.

A gigantic, bright yellow rubber duck floated into Sydney's Darling Harbor on Saturday as part of the Australian city's annual arts festival, a celebration where high-art meets popular entertainment.

Each January hundreds of thousands of people attend theatre, music, dance, film, talks and other events for three weeks, often braving sweltering summer temperatures and thunderstorms for their dose of culture.

Turns out Adele ruled 2012, too — and set a record while she was at it.

The British singer's "21" was the highest-selling album in the U.S. for the second consecutive year, according to 2012 sales figures released by Nielsen SoundScan on Thursday. That's a first in the SoundScan era.

British actress Helen Mirren, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth II in "The Queen", on Thursday received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The 67-year-old Mirren saw her star unveiled in front of the Pig 'N Whistle, one of Tinseltown's historic pubs, on Hollywood Boulevard. American playwright David Mamet and U.S. director Jon Turteltaub attended the event.

The first film based on the life of legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will be released in April, according to a distribution deal for "jOBS" announced on Thursday.

The "biopic" starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs, who died in 2011, will premier later this month on the closing night of the Sundance Film Festival, according to independent distributor Open Road Films.

Twenty years after his death, Rudolf Nureyev's legacy still lights up the world of ballet as brilliantly as the flamboyant performances which once illuminated the greatest stages.

"As long as they are putting on my ballets, I will live on," Brigitte Lefevre, dance director of the Paris Opera, recalls Nureyev saying in the years before the ravages of AIDS finally claimed him, aged 54, on January 6, 1993.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday granted fast-track citizenship to France's Gerard Depardieu after the movie star complained about his Socialist government's proposed 75 percent tax on the rich.

The decision appears to give Depardieu -- already a frequent guest of the Moscow celebrity circuit -- a chance to pay the flat 13 percent income tax levied in Russia on everyone from billionaires to the poor.

Written by Anthony Sargon

Ever since it was announced that Daniel Day-Lewis would be portraying Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's long delayed project, people got excited. Lewis is arguably one of the finest actors of our generation, and Spielberg one our top directors. The results of this collaboration are unsurprisingly brilliant, and this movie has the word Oscars pasted all over it.

U.S. singer Patti Page, famous for songs including "The Tennessee Waltz" and the novelty hit "How much is that Doggie in the Window?", has died, a spokesman said Wednesday. She was 85.

"Unfortunately she passed away last evening" in the southern California town of Encinitas, spokesman Michael Glynn told Agence France Presse, adding that she had been at the Seacrest Village retirement home there for a few months.