Entertainment News Roundup: Singapore lures Taylor Swift with grant for sold-out March concerts; 'Oppenheimer' triumphs at BAFTA Film Awards with most win and more

The song is featured in the final scene of the Oscar best-picture nominee “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a drama directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Indigenous actor Lily Gladstone and Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio. Berlinale honoree Scorsese ponders switch from gangsters to Jesus Martin Scorsese, in Berlin to receive a lifetime achievement award from the city's film festival weeks before his latest movie, "Killers of the Flower Moon," will be competing at the Oscars with 10 nominations, is already planning his next project.

Following is a summary of current entertainment news briefs.

Singapore lures Taylor Swift with grant for sold-out March concerts

Singapore has awarded Taylor Swift a grant to perform in the city-state, government authorities said on Tuesday, acknowledging efforts to persuade the pop superstar to perform on the island - her only stop in Southeast Asia - and the potential boon to the economy from her concerts. Swift is set to perform six sold-out shows in Singapore early in March.

French star Huppert finds meaning in unstructured nature of 'Traveler's Needs'

French star Isabelle Huppert said she was drawn to working with South Korean director Hong Sangsoo for a third time in "A Traveler's Needs," which premiered in Berlin on Monday, because of the uniquely unstructured nature of his work. "I did two other films with Hong Sangsoo, and his way of making films is unique," Huppert told journalists ahead of the film's screening at the Berlin Film Festival, explaining how Hong gives actors their lines just before shooting.

'Oppenheimer' triumphs at BAFTA Film Awards with most win

"Oppenheimer", a three-hour epic about the making of the atomic bomb in World War Two, was the big winner at the BAFTA Film Awards on Sunday, winning the top honours for best film and best director as well as five other awards. One of the highest-grossing movies of 2023, it also won awards for leading actor Cillian Murphy, who portrays the American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, supporting actor Robert Downey Jr, editing, cinematography and original score.

Berlinale film 'Pepe' presents a hippo's experience of colonialism

The story of Pepe, a hippopotamus from Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's private zoo, inspired Dominican director Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias to make a film reflecting on the impact of colonialism, he said. The hippo, one of many wild animals kept on Escobar's private estate, escaped into the surrounding countryside and lived there for many years after the drug lord's death in 1993.

Flying palaces and dueling aliens star in a Berlinale space trip

In a sleepy fishing village in northern France two groups of extraterrastials descend from space in human form to wage war over the future of humanity in French director Bruno Dumont's new sci-fi film "The Empire". The film, which premieres on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival, is one of 20 movies competing for the festival's Golden Bear prize.

Berlinale film spotlights the liquid rock that builds our world

Our concrete urban landscape is at the heart of "Architecton", Russian director Victor Kossakovsky's exquisite but contradictory documentary that examines how humans build and destroy their world. The film sets black-and-white drone footage of quarries, temples and cities destroyed by earthquakes or missile strikes to sumptuous brass music from composer Evgueni Galperine, interspersed with scenes of Italian architect Michele De Lucchi erecting a stone circle in his garden.

'Flower Moon' film song is an ode to endangered Osage language

Songwriter Scott George is looking forward to the performance of the Osage Nation song "Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)" at the 96th Oscars ceremony on March 10. The song is featured in the final scene of the Oscar best-picture nominee “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a drama directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Indigenous actor Lily Gladstone and Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio.

Berlinale honoree Scorsese ponders switch from gangsters to Jesus

Martin Scorsese, in Berlin to receive a lifetime achievement award from the city's film festival weeks before his latest movie, "Killers of the Flower Moon," will be competing at the Oscars with 10 nominations, is already planning his next project. The director, who as a young man considered a priestly vocation before becoming cinema's most famous maker of gangster movies, said that after some meetings with Pope Francis he was mulling ways of making a film on Jesus, although the project's contours were not yet clear.

(With inputs from agencies.)