Filmmakers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen have been hotly tipped to win the Best Director Oscar at next months' Academy Awards - after their movie No Country For Old Men scooped the same prize from the Directors Guild of America on Saturday. The winner selected by the Directors Guild frequently goes on to win the Best Director honor at the Academy Awards - as with Martin Scorsese, who as the winner of last year's prize presented the award to the Coens at the Los Angeles ceremony After the win, Joel Coen told reporters, "Oh, we get two of them (award statues). Ethan and I have a bookshelf in our office where we keep various plaques and such that we've gotten over the years that we call our ego corner." And when brother Ethan is feeling low, he uses silver polish and "spit shines his medals for an hour or two. It makes him feel better. This is a really big one, in every respect. It's going to keep him busy." But the fate of the glittering event is dependent on the ongoing Hollywood writers strike. Organizers are currently making plans as usual for the ceremony, which is due to take place on Sunday February 24 at the legendary Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. The Coen brothers-directed thriller is nominated for a stack of Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.

Christian Brando, the eldest son of late actor Marlon Brando, has died. He was 49 years old. Brando died on Saturday morning at a Los Angeles Hospital after suffering from pneumonia. Brando was born in 1958 as a result of his father's affair with actress Anna Kashfi. In 1990, he pled guilty to manslaughter for killing his half-sister Cheyenne's boyfriend Dag Drollet at the Brando family estate on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. In 2005, his again pled guilty to two counts of domestic violence after his ex-wife Deborah claimed he frequently beat her and threatened to kill her. He was placed on probation for three years. Brando was hospitalized at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center earlier this month and according to his attorney, Benjamin Brin, was expected to make a full recovery.

U.S. fans will pay tribute to late actor Heath Ledger next week at a public memorial service in Los Angeles. Australia's foreign minister Stephen Smith gave no details of the remembrance ceremony in California but confirmed a private service had been held in New York on Saturday, where members of Ledger's family joined the actor's ex-fiancee Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda to pay their respects. The casket then began its two-day journey to the actor's hometown of Perth, Australia, where Ledger will be laid to rest at a family funeral next week. The 28-year-old was found dead in his New York apartment on Tuesday. An autopsy carried out on Wednesday failed to reveal how the actor died, although police believe his death is drug-related as sleeping pills were found by his bed.

Daniel Craig has defended the title of the next James Bond film, insisting the phrase Quantum Of Solace in integral to the plot. Fans were left scratching their heads about the film's over-complicated title when it was announced earlier this week, but the actor insists the 22nd installment of the super-spy franchise has the perfect name. The 39-year-old Brit says, "We could have gone for a snappier title, but that sort of suggests we're insecure about what we're trying to say. The statement is an (Bond creator) Ian Fleming statement. It comes from the idea that in a relationship, if you don't have a quantum of solace left in your relationship, then give up. Where Bond is left at the end of the last movie (2006's Casino Royale), his heart's been broken and he doesn't have that quantum of solace, he doesn't have that ... closure on what happened in his life and he needs to find out. What is great about it is it also applies to something very important in the plot." Quantum Of Solace has been taken from a collection of short stories which were published by Fleming in 1960.

Actor Dennis Quaid finds it tough to watch the climax of his new movie Smart People because it reminds him of his newborn twins who nearly died after a drug overdose. At the end of the film the star, who plays an English professor struggling to get over the death of his wife, is seen cradling baby twins. And the star admits it is hard to watch the footage now after the near-death experience of his own children. He says, "It actually really gets me when I see this. I'm a little verklempt. Kimberly (Quaid's wife) and I weren't even pregnant when we shot (the movie). We'd been trying for three years. When I read the script a couple years ago, the end scene always got me emotionally. It made me well up. And of course having our own twins now, it really gets me verklempt. It's a wonderful thing. For me, it's just life imitating art." Quaid's twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace were left fighting for their lives when they were mistakenly given 1,000 times the normal 10-unit dose of blood-thinning drug Heparin by staff at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center shortly after they were born to a surrogate mother in November. The babies were eventually discharged after doctors gave them the all-clear.

Singer Miley Cyrus was "upset" to learn a mother of a Hannah Montana fan faked a competition to win tickets to a sold-out show by pretending the girl's father had been killed in Iraq. The 15-year-old pop sensation was shocked to hear that Texan Priscilla Ceballos had submitted the fictional, contest-winning essay earlier this month . Competition organizers withdrew the prizes which were awarded to Ceballos' daughter Alexis, including a Hannah Montana make-over and an all-expenses paid trip to a concert in Albany, New York when the untruth came to light. The opening line of Alexis' essay read, "My daddy died this year in Iraq." But Priscilla confessed, "We did the essay and that's what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win." In an interview set to air on TV show Good Morning American on Monday, Cyrus says, "I was really kind of upset. I mean, that's just not a cool scenario. But it just shows what people will do for a ticket."

Young actress Ellen Page is overwhelmed by her Oscar nomination for her starring role in Juno - calling the experience "surprising" and "humbling". The 20-year-old, who plays a pregnant teenager in the movie, is shortlisted in the Best Actress category at next month's Academy Awards and admits the news came as a complete shock. She tells MTV.com, "We were coming from Paris on the train (Eurostar) and just getting to London when I heard. It was exciting. Winning awards was something I was trying to keep out of my mind (but) it's a surprise and very humbling. It just blew me away." Page insists the film's screen writer Diablo Cody was always confident that she would receive a nod for the part. She adds, "She (Cody) text me when the Oscar nominations came out saying: 'I told you so.'" Page will take on Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Marion Cotillard and Laura Linney for the award at the prestigious ceremony.

TV network ABC is facing a multi-million dollar fine after it aired an episode of NYPD Blue depicting female nudity. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reports a show broadcast in 2003 featured "multiple, close-up views" of a lady's rear before the American watershed. The FCC rules "sexual or excretory activities" shown in an "offensive" way prior to 11pm are indecent - however ABC insists the buttocks are not a sexual organ and plan to appeal the ruling. An ABC spokeswoman pointed out the program was broadcast with parental warnings and "the realistic nature of NYPD Blue's storylines was well-known to the viewing public." If found guilty of the indecency charge, the network will have to pay a $1.4 million fine - the second largest indecency fine imposed on a U.S. broadcaster.

Heroes star Hayden Panettiere has set up a new charity in a bid to help fund those trying to save threatened whales off the coast of Japan. The heroic actress joined protestors in the water late last year but couldn't stop fishermen bludgeoning sealife. Panettiere was caught on camera sobbing about the loss of life she desperately tried to save, while defending herself from angry fisherfolk's harpoons. And now the actress is using her fame and fashion sense to raise cash for the campaign to save the whales. She has launched website PanettiereCloset.com, where she'll sell off items from her wardrobe. All proceeds will go to the Save the Whales Again campaign.

Teen heart-throb Zac Efron insists he doesn't mind being called gay - because it isn't the worst label to be given. The 20-year-old actor rose to fame with his role as the singing and dancing basketball player Troy Bolton in Disney's hit franchise High School Musical - and is frequently accused by gossip bloggers of hiding his homosexuality. But the Hairspray star - who is dating his High School Musical co-star Vanessa Anne Hudgens - maintains the insinuations don't bother him. He says, "Honestly, if the worst these people can say about me is that I'm gay, then I think I'll be fine. I can handle it."

U2 frontman Bono has compared environmental campaigner Al Gore to an Irish priest to whom he can confess his ecological sins. The hitmaker shared the stage with the former U.S. vice president at a conference in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday - Bono was there to promote his campaign to alleviate world poverty, while Gore was continuing his plea for the reduction of global carbon emissions. And the singer insists he can't help feeling guilty about his lavish lifestyle when around Gore. He says, "It's like being with an Irish priest. You start to confess your sins. Father Al, I am not just a noise polluter, I am a noise-polluting, diesel-soaking, gulfstream-flying rock star. I'm going to kick the habit. I'm trying father Al, but oil has been very good for me - those convoys of articulated lorries, petrochemical products, hair gel." Gore was one of the key figures behind 2007's Live Earth concerts to raise awareness about climate change. He was the subject of the Oscar-winning environment-focused documentary An Inconvenient Truth and he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to green issues.