Following an outcry over the all-white roster of actors nominated for this year's Oscars, the president of the film academy said Monday she was heartbroken by the lack of diversity and working to implement change.

"This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big changes," Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.

Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee said Monday that he is boycotting the Oscars next month because for the second year in a row all the nominees in the actor categories are white.

Separately, black actress Jada Pinkett Smith said she too would not be attending the February 28 star-studded ceremony.

Karaoke, electro, harp and even musical saw versions of David Bowie's greatest hits rang out in London on Sunday as fans gathered for a tribute concert a week on from the pop icon's death.

"The world would be a very different place without David Bowie and many people feel a distinct need to say goodbye to him," said Stefan Simanowitz, one of the concert organisers.

Kate Winslet tipped her "Titanic" co-star Leonardo DiCaprio to win this year's best actor Oscar, though he lost out at the British film critics' awards on Sunday.

Winslet, 40, said she would be "surprised" if DiCaprio did not land an Oscar on his sixth nomination when the Academy Awards roll around in Hollywood on February 28.

David Bowie's final album on Sunday hit number one in the United States, his adopted home, with the British music legend achieving posthumously a feat he never managed in life.

"Blackstar," which was released two days before Bowie's death on January 10 from a secret battle with cancer, debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart for the week through Thursday.

Taiwan's presidential candidates waded in to a row with China and South Korea Saturday after a teenage Taiwanese K-pop star was forced to apologize for waving the island's flag.

A video apology from a tired and sombre Chou Tzu-yu, 16, went viral hours after it was posted, with more than two million hits by Saturday morning.

It is nothing short of a fashion earthquake.

The organizers of New York Fashion Week are considering doing away with a century of tradition and showing designers' catwalk collections only when they go on sale in the shops.

The funeral for Celine Dion's husband Rene Angelil will take place next Friday at the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal where the couple married, a family spokesman said.

Angelil, who discovered the Canadian pop diva and managed her career, died Thursday at age 73 after a struggle with cancer.

From an outrageously costumed parade to a bacchanalian party in heaps of glitter, memorial events to David Bowie are multiplying as fans find their own ways to mourn the rock legend.

Bowie -- a pioneer of glam rock at the start of a half-century career marked by constant reinvention -- apparently did not want a soppy public funeral.

American rapper Mos Def appeared in a South African court Friday after being arrested for allegedly using an illegal "world passport" as he tried to leave the country, officials said.

The 42-year-old hip hop artist, actor and activist, whose real name is Dante Terrel Smith, was taken into custody overnight for contravening immigration laws.