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Michael Jackson spent the last two years of his life plotting his musical comeback. Besides a spectacular, record-breaking concert series planned for London, he was also tapping the hottest producers and biggest names for an album he hoped would help restore the luster to his spectacular yet troubled career.

“He wanted to give the world a gift. He didn’t want the world to depend on ‘Thriller,’ or ‘Bad’ or ‘Off the Wall,’” said Theron “Neff-U” Feemster, one of the last producers to work with Jackson. “He wanted to give them something new and fresh, and something they could hold and remember forever.”

Jackson didn’t live to see his dream come to fruition, but with help from Feemster, the singer’s estate and several other collaborators, another Jackson album has been crafted for his fans.

“Michael,” to be released on Tuesday, contains 10 songs, most of which Jackson was working on when he died in June 2009 at age 50. The tracks were at different stages of completion, but producers like longtime Jackson collaborator Teddy Riley, Grammy-winner Tricky Stewart and rocker Lenny Kravitz worked over the last year to put the finishing touches on an album they believe Jackson would have been proud to call his own.

“I know he stood behind it, so I’m cool with what I did,” said Kravitz. “I was proud to put it out and knew that he’d be all over it, that he’d be really with it.”

Yet some are questioning whether “Michael” should be considered a true Jackson album since the King of Pop — a notoriously meticulous creator who labored over his creations until he thought they were as perfect as they could be — never put his stamp of approval on it.

Earlier this year, the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, who had done some work with Jackson before he died, harshly rebuked the planned posthumous release in an interview with The Associated Press, saying: “Now that he is not part of the process, what are they doing? Why would you put a record out like that? Because he was a friend of mine, I just think that’s disrespectful.”

That’s not the only criticism of the project. When the single “Breaking News” was previewed for fans on michaeljackson.com, his three nephews publicly assailed the song, a condemnation of the media, and said that the voice featured on the track was not Jackson’s. This led Riley, former manager Frank Dileo and others to come out and vouch for the track’s authenticity.

“I don’t think that it’s fair for anyone to say it without any proof. You have no proof,” said Riley in a recent interview, adding that the producers “took it to the next level” and hired three forensic musicologists in defense of the album.

Sony Records, which is releasing “Michael,” also got the backing of other Jackson collaborators to prove that it is Jackson.

John Branca, who was Jackson’s lawyer for years and is co-executor of his estate, would not specifically address the veracity of Jackson’s vocals, saying the facts speak for themselves.

But as far as whether Jackson would have approved of the release of the songs, Branca, while calling Jackson a “perfectionist,” compared the upcoming album to that of last year’s “This Is It.” That film was based on rehearsals for Jackson’s sold-out comeback shows at London’s O2 arena that were never to be. With careful editing, a dazzling — if unfinished — portrait of Jackson emerged.

“If you remember, there was criticism about the movie ‘This Is It’ because it contained rehearsal footage,” said Branca. “Some said Michael would not have wanted to release it. But people loved it and it expanded people’s love for him.”

“Michael,” a mixture of soulful pop ballads and uptempo, mechanical-sounding grooves that recall his “Dangerous” era, is a much more polished artistic project than “This Is It,” party due to the top names brought in by the estate to finish Jackson’s creative vision.

Stewart, who has worked with such top talent as Beyonce and Rihanna, never collaborated with Jackson but was asked to work on the ballad “Keep Your Head Up,” which Jackson co-wrote. Stewart said the process was a bit intimidating at first.

“It was a tremendous amount of pressure because Michael was one of the great record-makers in the history of music,” said Stewart. “Not only are you trying to make sure that you’re keeping the integrity of the record, but you’re also trying to love up the body of work.”

To that end, Stewart said he tread more lightly on Jackson’s song than he would have on his own material: “I moved a bit more delicately because I knew there was going to be an approval process … I felt like it was just a situation that I wanted to bring them back the product that they were anticipating.”

For Kravitz, finishing the song “I Can’t Make It Another Day,” which the two recorded in part while their children were milling about, was bittersweet without Jackson’s participation. But he’s confident in its quality: “I think it was him at a very strong point … he is singing his behind off.”

Feemster said he and Jackson would spend time listening to all the top hits on the radio before crafting their songs in the hopes of making something contemporary but innovative. He said Jackson’s motto was, “give them something familiar but also give him something that they never had before.”

Riley considers “Michael” a work that will stand favorably against classics like “Thriller” or “Off the Wall.”

“I would say that this is a masterpiece,” declared Riley. “It goes along with the piece of the puzzle.”

Yet Akon, who co-wrote the album’s first single, “Hold My Hand,” thinks the album should be considered more of an attempt to honor the memory of a legend than an example of his finest material.

“I wouldn’t compare this album to any of his albums. The albums that he made up ’till now were legendary … Mike at his peak, at the height of his creativity,” said Akon.

“This is not like a finished product that you can compare anything to,” he added. “It’s more of an album that you can hold onto to commemorate and appreciate his legacy.”

A sentimental video for Michael Jackson’s new single “Hold My Hand” was released on Thursday as music critics paid grudging respect to the first album of new Jackson material since his death 18 months ago.

Heart-tugging clips from the King of Pop’s performance archive, mixed with children singing and multicultural images of happiness, mark the four-minute music video for “Hold My Hand” — a duet recorded with R&B singer and producer Akon in 2007 that is the first official single on the album “Michael”.

It was released on Jackson’s official website, www.michaeljackson.com, ahead of the December 14 debut of “Michael” — a collection of 10 songs completed by various record producers after the singer’s sudden death in June 2009 due to an overdose of the anesthetic propofol and other drugs.

Despite media skepticism and some dissent within Jackson family ranks, early reviews largely found “Michael” better than expected, if below the perfectionist standards the “Thriller” singer might have wished for.

“He would not have released anything like this compilation, a grab bag of outtakes and outlines assembled by Jackson’s (Sony) record label,” said Rolling Stone. But the magazine acknowledged that the songs were recognizably Jackson songs, adding that “‘Michael’ can be compelling.”

USA Today said the collection of ballads, dance songs and R&B tracks, including collaborations with rapper 50 Cent and rocker Lenny Kravitz, “is a credible musical effort that can’t be dismissed” and contained a few treasures.

Entertainment Weekly awarded the album a “B”, calling it “certainly no great affront to his name”, while The New York Times said it was a “miscellany of familiar Jackson offerings: inspirational, loving, resentful and paranoid.”

Opinion in Britain — where Jackson had planned a series of 50 comeback concerts in the summer of 2009 — was generally more enthusiastic.

Music website NME.com said the track “Behind the Mask” was “an absolute revelation” on which “Jackson howls a solid-gold melody at his fearsome best.”

Telegraph newspaper critic Neil McCormick said Jackson “bursts with verve and confidence” and said the album “may well be Jackson’s best work since his Eighties glory days.”

“It is certainly a great deal better than anyone had the right to expect…Jackson is finally about to get the comeback he craved,” McCormick wrote.

“Michael” is the first album of new Jackson material since his disappointing “Invincible” in 2001, and the first in a $250 million deal between Sony and the executors of Jackson’s estate to release 10 albums of new material through 2017.

Jackson’s physician at the time of his death, Dr. Conrad Murray, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, and he has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Hong Kong singer-actress, Miriam Yeung, was shooting wedding photos in Paris with her husband, Real Ting. The lovebirds were found enjoying their marriage, which was registered last August. However, they didn’t have a wedding banquet until Yeung finished her world tour concerts recently.

The 36-year-old is known for her roles in many Hong Kong comedies, such as the “Love Undercover” series, and “2 Become 1″. Her latest work that has been screened in cinemas was Pang Ho-Cheung’s romantic drama “Love in a Puff”.

Yeung is also a popular Canto-pop singer. She just concluded her concert tour called “Ladies and Gentlemen”. Many of her fans are waiting in anxious anticipation of their real wedding just as they declared before.

The 18th New Silk Road model contest concluded on Sunday, Shi Tuo, 24, from Jiangsu Province and Li Weishan, 19, from Guangdong Province won the men’s and women’s champions respectively.

A tearful Oprah Winfrey has denied she is a lesbian, saying that constant rumors about her close relationship with a female friend were irritating “because it means that somebody must think I am lying.” The influential TV talk show host addressed her 20-year relationship with Gayle King, and her ongoing partnership with lover Stedman Graham, in an emotional interview with journalist Barbara Walters to be shown on ABC television on Thursday. “She is the mother I never had. She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person,” Winfrey said of King, fighting back tears. “It’s making me cry because I’m thinking about how much I probably have never told her that. Tissue please,” she added. King and Winfrey, 56, met while working at a local Baltimore TV station in the 1980s and have been inseparable professionally and personally, sparking much media speculation that they are gay. “I’m not a lesbian. I’m not even kind of a lesbian,” Winfrey told Walters, in an excerpt of the interview released on Wednesday. “And the reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying. That’s number one. Number two…why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.” Winfrey, whose daily TV chat show is watched by millions in the United States and 145 other countries, said that businessman Stedman Graham was still her lover and mate after more than 20 years together, despite the fact they are now rarely seen in public together. “I made a conscious effort around 2003, 2004 to pull back on my public appearances with Stedman,” she said. But denying speculation that the pair had split up, she told Walters he was “the love, the lover, the man, the partner, the mate” of her life.

Winfrey is launching a new cable TV network, OWN, in January in a joint venture with Discovery Communications. She will end her ABC TV talk show in May 2011 after 25 years.

A Dali watercolor of a reclining nude that hung in Hugh Hefner’s bedroom was among 125 artworks Playboy magazine offered at Christie’s on Wednesday.

It was one of 11 works chosen for “The Playmate as Fine Art” pictorial for the magazine’s January 1967 Playmate review issue that asked artists to create Playmate-inspired art. The nude sold for $266,500, above its presale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000, to an anonymous buyer.

Another top draw was an iconic, sexually charged oil of a scarlet-lipstick mouth by pop artist Tom Wesselmann. “Mouth No. 8″ sold for $1,874,500 to an anonymous buyer. The 1966 work had been estimated to bring $2 million to $3 million.

Aaron Baker, curator of the Playboy Art Collection, called it a great example of Wesselmann’s work “from his best period.”

The sale included 80 photographs, more than a dozen contemporary works and 24 cartoons. Nearly all the items in the sale have appeared in the publication, a cultural icon that helped liberate American sexual mores.

In an interview last month from his Los Angeles mansion, founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner said the magazine that has entertained, titillated and informed with its commissioned art has blurred the lines between fine and popular art.

“Playboy helped to change the very direction of commercial art — breaking down the wall between fine art and commercial art,” the 84-year-old Hefner said. “Before Playboy and a few other places, commercial art was essentially Norman Rockwell, very realistic. And we introduced into commercial illustration the whole notion of everything from abstract to semiabstract to stuff that you found on a gallery wall.”

The sale represented only a fraction of Playboy’s historic art.

Baker said the Chicago-based Playboy houses an archive of 5,000 contemporary artworks and more than 20 million photographs in a storage building in the city.

Wednesday’s sale marked the second time Christie’s has sold items from Playboy. On its 50th anniversary in 2003, Christie’s offered memorabilia and ephemera from Playboy’s collection.

Not all the material focused on the erogenous.

A white plaster cast by George Segal of a pregnant woman seated in a folding chair that was part of the “Playmate of Fine Art” pictorial sold for $170,500.

Prices included the buyers premium.

The Oscar cursed Sandra Bullock and Kate Winslet got divorced in the first half of 2010; while the sweetness of newly-wedded couples disperses the haze. We are pleased to compile 10 celebrity couples who tied the knot since 2010. Best wishes for their happy marriage.

DreamWorks Animation’s blockbuster “How to Train Your Dragons” was nominated as the top contender for the best animated feature honors at the 38th Annie Awards, the animation industry’s highest honor, the organizer said on Monday.

In addition to the best animated feature, “How to Train Your Dragons” has got 14 other nods atop a list which also includes other animated hits such as “Despicable Me,” “Tangled,” “The Illusionist” and “Toy Story 3.”

“This has been an unprecedented year for animation, as the high quality of work represented by our nominees will attest,” Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (ASIFA)-Hollywood President Antran Manoogian said.

DreamWorks’ other animations including “Megamind” and “Shrek Forever After” also walked away with six and five nods respectively.

Due to disagreement with the organizer on how nominated films are selected and who are qualified to cast their votes, famed animation production companies like Pixar and Disney have chosen not to participate in the process.

“Toy Story 3,” from Pixar which is widely regarded as top Academy Award best animated feature contender, was awarded with three nods while “Tangled,” the latest Disney production which has been shown at North American theaters right now, got two.

“Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special,” a television special produced by the DreamWorks Animation and premiered on NBC on Nov. 24, was nominated for best TV production along with “Futurama,” “Scared Shrekless,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “The Simpsons.”

“SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Fanboy & Chum Chum,” “Adventure Time,” “Regular Show” and “Cloudbread” were nominated as major contenders vying for the honor of the best animated television production for children.

Nominated for best animated short subject are: “Coyote Falls,” “Day & Night,” “Enrique Wrecks the World,” “The Cow Who Wanted To Be A Hamburger” and “The Renter.”

Honoring excellence in the field of animation, Annie Awards will be presented in 26 categories including best animated feature, home entertainment, television production, television commercial, short subject, video game, as well as individual achievements.

The award ceremony will be held Feb. 5 at the UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles, California.

Johnny Depp, 47, tells Extra the reason he hasn’t wed gal pal of 12 years Vanessa Paradis is because “I’d be so scared of ruining her last name. She’s got such a good last name.”

The three-time Oscar nominee, whose thriller The Tourist with Angelina Jolie hits theaters next Friday, adds he already feels as if he’s wed to the French model/actress, 37.

“I never found myself needing that piece of paper,” he says. “Marriage is really from soul to soul, heart to heart. You don’t need somebody to say, okay you’re married.”

That being said, Depp admits he’d be willing to take the plunge, “if Vanessa wanted to get hitched.”

For now, the twosome are looking forward to spending the holidays relaxing with their kids Lily-Rose, 11, and Jack, 8.

On the agenda: “Sleeping, sleeping and playing with a lot of toys with my son,” says the actor. “Hanging out with the kiddies.”

Bristol Palin says her mother didn’t force her to go on “Dancing with the Stars.”

The 20-year-old daughter of 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used a Facebook post to react to a blog entry by a fellow contestant, comedian Margaret Cho. Cho wrote that the former Alaska governor blamed her daughter for the 2008 loss and told her she “owed” it to her to go on “Dancing with the Stars” to win back America’s love.

Bristol Palin — who was an unmarried teenager when she had her son, Tripp — says it saddens her that anyone would think her mother blamed her for anything that occurred in the election. She says her parents were her top supporters on the show.

Bristol Palin finished third in the contest.