Hazanavicius named best director

The Directors Guild of America Awards are the latest Hollywood film honors to go silent.

Hollywood's top filmmakers group presented its feature-film honor Saturday to Michel Hazanavicius for his silent film "The Artist," giving him the inside track for the best director prize at the Academy Awards.

The Directors Guild honors are one of the most accurate forecasts for who might go on to take home an Oscar.

Help seeked for Moore

A 911 recording revealed frantic efforts by friends of Demi Moore to get help for the actress who was convulsing as they gathered around her and tried to comfort her.

Moore was "semi-conscious, barely," according to a female caller on the recording released Friday by Los Angeles fire officials.

The woman tells emergency operators that Moore, 49, had smoked something before she was rushed to hospital last Monday night and that she had been "having issues lately."

SAG awards winner

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer were the maids of honor at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, where their Deep South drama "The Help" won them acting prizes and earned the trophy for overall cast performance.

Davis won as best actress and Spencer as supporting actress for "The Help," while Jean Dujardin was named best actor for the silent film "The Artist" and Christopher Plummer took the supporting-actor award for the father-son tale "Beginners."

Madonna's charity schools

Nearly six years after it was created, Madonna's Raising Malawi charity is set to break ground on the construction of schools in the impoverished country, but they will be run by the local community, not the superstar's organization.

According to organizers, work on the first school will start March 30 in the Kasungu area, about 128 kilometers from the capital of Lilongwe, and all of the schools should be built by June 2013. Raising Malawi is providing US$300,000 to the non-governmental organization buildOn to develop the schools. They'll serve about 1,000 boys and girls in the southern African nation.