Today's entertainment news: Chris Martin denies regretting album title

Plus: Paul McCartney counts cost of fame; Supercalifragilistic composer dies; Garcia Marquez begins e-sales; Tribeca announces film slate and Bieber buys luxury mansion.

Coldplay's Chris Martin says his comments on a US morning talk show about regretting the group's album Mylo Xyloto's name were a joke.

The Coldplay lead vocalist Chris Martin told the US morning talk show Good Morning America on Saturday that he regrets titling the band's recent album Mylo Xyloto.

"It's just something that we thought looked really good, but everywhere we go around the world, people pronounce it in the most crazy ways and we're beginning to regret it now," Martin said.

On Tuesday, he took to Twitter to insist he still liked the album's name and that his comment was meant to be a joke.

"No regrets at all about Mylo Xyloto. We love it. Only regret attempting JOKE on early morning TV," he posted.

In the same interview, Martin downplayed Coldplay's success at the recent Brit Awards, claiming they won Best British Group because there were no other bands to choose from.

"To be honest, most British bands have split up. Blur have gone, Pulp have gone, Take That are on holiday," Martin said. "We're the only British band left on the pitch! But we'll take that."

Paul McCartney counts cost of fame

Paul McCartney says he is struggling to cope with fame in the digital age.

"It's never been as hard as it is nowadays to be famous. And I should know what I'm talking about, because I've got decades of experience in the subject. Today everybody's got a telephone with a built-in camera," McCartney told the Swiss newspaper Blick on Tuesday.

"For the public I am an exciting figure - and I have had time to get used to it. But even for me nowadays it sometimes gets too much."

The Beatles star added: "Sometimes I want to have a peaceful evening with my wife in a restaurant without every few seconds having to pose for a mobile phone photograph. That sometimes causes unpleasant scenes."

Supercalifragilistic composer dies

Robert B Sherman, the composer of the Mary Poppins song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other Disney classics, died in London on Monday. He was 86.

Sherman and his brother Richard worked as staff composers for Disney between 1960 and 1973, during which time they wrote more than 200 songs for 27 films.

These included Chim Chim Cher-ee, another hit from Mary Poppins, which won them an Oscar for best song.

They were also responsible for hits such as It's a Small World and I Wan'na Be Like You from The Jungle Book, and composed the scores for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Charlotte's Web.

* AFP

Garcia Marquez begins e-sales

The Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez celebrated his 85th birthday on Tuesday with a special gift: the start of sales of an electronic version of his acclaimed novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The book has been translated into 35 languages and has already sold 30 million copies worldwide, but is only now appearing in a digital edition.

Now weakened by cancer, Garcia Marquez has not resumed writing after his latest novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, in 2004.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary since Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Tribeca announces film slate

The Tribeca Film Festival announced on Tuesday the first half of its schedule for this year's event, featuring 46 feature films.

Standout titles include The Girl, starring Abbie Cornish as a single mother who loses her job. Desperate for income to keep custody of her son, she helps smuggle illegal immigrants over the US-Mexico border.

Another is a film by James Franco, made while he was guest starring on the daytime soap opera General Hospital. Titled Francophrenia (or: Don't Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is), it's described as an "experimental psychological thriller" about "a celebrity's escalating paranoia".

This programme is the first curated by Tribeca's revamped programming leadership: Frederic Boyer, a veteran of the Cannes Film Festival, has joined as the artistic director. Geoffrey Gilmore, who directed the Sundance Film Festival for years, is now overseeing the programme.

The festival will run from April 18-29. The opening film is The Five-Year Engagement, a comedy starring Jason Segel and produced by Judd Apatow.

* AP

Bieber buys luxury mansion

The teenage pop star Justin Bieber has purchased a US$10.8 million (Dh39.7m) mansion in Hollywood for his 18th birthday last week.

The house features a five-bedroom, 9,400-square-feet space, reported TMZ.

Bieber's manager Scooter Braun gave him a 2012 Fisker Karma electric car, priced at US$100,000.

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