For tonight's festivities, big-named stars like Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian sported stunning lobs. Meanwhile, Jennifer Hudson and Jessie J made us go dig up our vampy lipstick shades. And even actress Anna Kendrick held her own with side-swept hair.
Check out our list of the best beauty looks at the 2015 Grammy Awards and tell us who gets your top vote.
Taylor Swift
Swift's blonde lob with heavy, side bangs gave way to her thick lashes, colorful eyeliner, earrings and pale pink lips.
Kim Kardashian
The reality star glowed like a goddess on the red carpet showing off her fresh new lob haircut, metallic gold eyeshadow and nude lipstick.
Jennifer Hudson
Clearly it's J.Hud's world and we're all just living in it! The songstress wore a jet black pixie in an edgy style and accentuated the look with thick cat-eye liner and a vibrant magenta lip color.
Jessie J
It's extremely hard to pull off super sleek hair and burgundy lipstick when you have fair skin. But Jessie J makes it look so effortless by warming up her complexion with a creamy foundation.
Anna Kendrick
Kendrick kept her menswear-inspired look simple, yet sexy with loose waves, black eyeliner and mascara and peachy-nude lip gloss.
If you're not having fun on the Grammys red carpet, you're not having fun on any red carpet. Thankfully this year, many stars found the perfect marriage between quirky and fashionable.
Celebs like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Jessie J wore black sparkles with stunning results, while Chrissy Teigen and Jennifer Hudson stunned in white hot looks.
Check out the few A-listers who made the best-dressed list at the 2015 Grammy Awards and let us know if you agree with our picks.
Meet the Rayburns, the newest Netflix family with dark, unnerving secrets. In the first full trailer for Netflix's original series "Bloodline," Kyle Chandler's John Rayburn says in a foreboding voiceover, "A voice in your head's telling you that something's going to go terribly wrong. There's nothing you can do to stop it." That pretty much sets up the tone of "Bloodline," which follows a Florida family whose life becomes disrupted when Danny (Ben Mendelsohn), the eldest son and black sheep, returns home threatening to expose their secrets. The series, which is from the creator of "Damages," also stars Linda Cardellini, Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek, Norbert Leo Butz, Jamie McShane ("Sons of Anarchy"), Jacinda Barrett ("Suits") and Enrique Murciano ("Without a Trace"). Check out the poster below.
Back in November, Diplo tweeted, "Someone should make a Kickstarter to get Taylor Swift a booty." And while Swift never got her own hands dirty in this feud, Lorde, Swift's BFF, took care of things for the New York ambassador. "@diplo should we do something about your tiny penis while we're at it hm," she wrote.
The insult was the 36-year-old's way of wedging himself into then-girlfriend Katy Perry's own beef with Swift, who allegedly wrote the song "Bad Blood" about Perry. While Swift never specially said who the song was about, Perry acknowledged the feud, tweeting, "Watch out for the Regina George in sheep's clothing..."
Then in January, Diplo told GQ, "Taylor Swift is very strategic with her friends and enemies. And I know lots of secrets. I can't divulge, but I know a lot of stuff about her. And she's definitely, there's definitely scary stuff going on. And I'm scared. I'm scared for my life."
So have the two made up? Well, maybe Diplo know it's better to be in The Plastics, hating life, than to not be in at all.
First-time mom Scarlett Johansson is learning that motherhood is full of surprises.
The actress has kept pretty quiet about her baby girl Rose, whom she welcomed with fiance Romain Dauriac back in September 2014. But Johansson got candid in W magazine's March issue about how shocking it was when her daughter actually arrived.
"When she came out of me I was so surprised," Johansson said. "I had a very strong picture in my mind of what my baby would look like, and, of course, she is completely different. Perfect, but not what I’d imagined.”
The "Lucy" star, who is an advocate of the No Kids Policy in Hollywood, has yet to share photos of her daughter -- so it looks like we'll be in for a surprise, too, when she makes the big reveal.
Check out some photos from Johansson's shoot in W:
For more with Scarlett Johansson, pick up the March issue of W, on newsstands later this week.
This week the entire basketball world is mourning the recent passing of legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith, a man who taught the game to many of its most famous players.
Thousands of words have been shed about Smith’s on-court contributions. But to many, Smith was much more than a coach; he was an inspiration. A deeply passionate man, the Kansas native repeatedly stood up for the people and causes he believed in throughout his life.
As such, we decided to celebrate just a few of the stories that defined Smith throughout his lifetime. He will be missed by many people both inside and outside the basketball community.
Dean Smith was much more than just Michael Jordan’s college coach
Smith was the first UNC coach to recruit a black athlete on athletic scholarship. “Coach Smith never treated me like the first African-American to go to the University of North Carolina,” the athlete, Charlie Scott, has said. “It was all any person would want to be treated like -- like everybody else.”
Smith later blew up on a fan of an opposing team who called Scott “a big black baboon.” “Coach Smith got so upset about it that he had to be held back from going after the fan," Scott once said. "It's one of the very few times I ever saw Coach Smith become that angry and that volatile. It surprised me, but it also made me proud that he was my coach."
Scott was a high school valedictorian from New York
In an attempt to fight racial segregation, Smith went with a black student to a historically all-white restaurant shortly after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Smith’s pastor, who also attended the meal, later said:
Upon seeing that one of the three of us [who had come to eat] was Dean Smith, the door opened and we were served … That was the beginning of this restaurant being open to everybody.
In 1965, Smith helped a black graduate student buy a home in one of Chapel Hill’s all-white neighborhoods. The graduate student, Howard Lee, would later become the town’s mayor.
Smith told his assistant that if any of his players needed to talk to him, she should interrupt whatever he is doing, no matter how important it seemed. It was his "one firm rule," according to the Washington Post.
Smith was also adamant that his players “point to the passer” after a made basket. The act, a display of appreciation for those who helped you, is now common place at all levels of basketball.
Smith’s players graduated at an astonishing rate of 96 percent. Today, the university’s overall graduation rate is much less than that.
Smith brought his players to death row to meet and humanize with prisoners who would one day be killed by the government.
He also called at least some of the men he met there on their final night. From a 2003 piece by Rick Reilly:
He even phoned men on the eve of their executions, reminding them that they weren't forgotten, wishing them peace. One told him, "I'll be cheering for the Tar Heels."
Smith once even called out the governor of North Carolina himself for refusing to suspend the execution of a mentally ill man. “You're a murderer!” he said. “The death penalty makes us all murderers.”
But Smith never wanted to take up more of the spotlight than necessary. After his coaching career, Smith tried not to go to games at the Dean Smith Center if they were televised. He worried it would put undue pressure on the current coach.
And above all else, he believed you should live your life for reasons more meaningful than fame. A view perhaps symbolized by a quote Smith once gave to the Washington Post's John Feinstein: “You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.”
Following the success of his song "Loser," Beck appeared on "120 Minutes" and could not pretend to care. The interview is pretty much the most '90s thing ever. He even throws a shoe.
Television fans everywhere are ready to cry their eyes out when "Parks and Recreation" airs its final episode on Feb. 24, but it's already all over for the residents of Pawnee. The cast has wrapped production on the show, and HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri spoke to Retta, aka Donna Meagle, on Monday about how it all went down. She said the end of the series really hit her during the wrap party, but there were also plenty tears during the "super depressing" final day of shooting. Check out the video to find out which cast member Retta labeled "the crybaby of the group."
Sign up for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!
What does it take to get to the top -- without losing your center? Our “Making It Work” series profiles successful, dynamic women who are standouts in their fields, peeling back the "hows" of their work and their life, taking away lessons we can all apply to our own.
The 48-year-old broadcast journalist started her career in 1987 as an associate producer and news writer at WBZ-TV in Boston -- and she's come a long way since. She's co-anchored NBC's "Weekend Today" and CNN's "American Morning," and anchored CNN's "Starting Point." She's won awards for her coverage of events ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake to the 2012 elections. And in 2011, O'Brien and her husband Brad Raymond started the Starfish Foundation, which helps send young women to college.
Watching O'Brien at an AOL BUILD interview on Feb. 5, it was clear that she thrives in her different roles. While answering questions about social media and race relations, she talked about how her experiences as a journalist, a businesswoman, a mother and a woman of color inform the work she's doing -- and the work she hopes to do next.
O'Brien sat down with The Huffington Post to talk about advocating for herself, raising feminist girls and how people will surprise you when you ask for help.
How would you define success?
I think success changes as you change. Success before you have kids has a different definition than when you become a mom, than when you send your kids off to college. So for me, success is multifaceted. At one point it was about, “what’s my job title?” “How much money am I going to make this year?” Then you start thinking, “What’s the job I’m actually doing? What’s the quality of the work I’m turning in?” And then you think, “Well, what is my life like?” I think right now where I am -- with four kids who are all in the 10 to 14 range -- success for me is trying to figure out how to balance all the things that are important, and to balance them well. In a way where you’re not shorting yourself, or your work, which is something I’m very passionate about -- but you’re also not shorting your children, and your spouse. For me it’s about getting all these things to work in harmony.
Would you consider yourself successful?
Most days. I don’t think anyone is 100 percent successful. I think I am mostly successful, which is sort of what you aim for. You get up, you try to go to the gym, you try to eat well, you try to get your kids to school, help with homework and do good work and work on a project. And now I’m a CEO, so I'm growing a business. If you can make most of those things happen during any given day, then yeah, I think you’ve been pretty successful.
A photo posted by Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) on
Why do you do the work that you do?
I have always been driven by telling good stories. Part of what drives me is to just tell stories about people whose lives fly under the radar -- that no one seems to necessarily care about. I think those stories can be incredibly interesting.
I also have four kids, and I’m really driven to be as good a mom as I can be. I long ago gave up on pureeing baby food, I don’t really cook very well, we have comforters so we kind of make beds like -- swoosh, cover it up. So I feel like I have figured out the parenting thing at this moment in time, and it could change tomorrow. When my youngest son was diagnosed as deaf, we had two responses. One, we were very grateful to know what was going on, because he had been struggling a lot. And two, it gave us a real perspective on how bad things could be. Because he was happy, and he was healthy, and he is doing well in school, and he has lots of friends, and he’s a happy kid. And it is very easy to not have that. Covering stories as I have for NBC and CNN over the years, when you cover real disasters, it gives you the healthy sense of -- well, this is not a disaster. So I know that whatever little drama that’s happening is not a disaster, and we will get through it. Having that perspective on life is incredibly helpful.
If you weren’t a journalist, what would you be doing?
I used to tell people that I’d be doing hair... because for any girl who grows up with a lot of big hair, learning how to work a flat iron would be a really good thing. I don’t know, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I was pre-med in college, and I really thought I’d be a doctor. And then I left school and decided not to go to medical school, and I didn’t really know what to do, and I started working at a TV station and I was just good at it. It’s now been 28 years or something. I would love one day not to have 10 jobs -- kids and running a company and running a foundation and running around like a maniac -- but I love storytelling. So I really think I’d be involved in telling stories about people in some capacity.
A photo posted by Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) on
What advice would you give to young women starting to decide what they want to do in life? How do you encourage and guide your own daughters?
I think there’s so many times when girls and young women are told, “It’s just not gonna work out.” And if I could give anyone advice, it would be this idea that the doing it or not doing it is up to you. And you have to run around and exploit all the resources around you. Pick people’s brains, bring them lunch, buy them coffee -- and just get in there to see how people who are doing what you want to do are doing it. Learn by watching and osmosis. There’s so much of life that is being book smart, but there’s a big chunk that’s just understanding how stuff works.
I think women are often talked out of things. I remember when I had just had my twins, I had four kids under four years old. And the tsunami happened in 2004. I got a call from someone at CNN, and they said “well, we’re supposed to try to send someone to Thailand, but I know you won’t want to go, because moms don’t want to travel.” And I said to her, "Well, I have four kids under four, so Thailand sounds amazing!" And they sent me to Thailand. But it reminded me that you constantly have to challenge people’s expectations. [The caller] wasn’t trying to be mean, she just had expectations about what a new mom would do and she was foisting those expectations on to me. I said "Listen, here’s what I want to do." You have to restate it, sometimes firmly, sometimes gently, sometimes with a smile, and just constantly write your path -- and try to figure out how to get there. Hitting people up for information, help, guidance, advice, but staying on that path of “here’s what I want to do.” We’re just constantly, as women, talked out of it. “You can’t do this and that” -- but you can. You really can. If it’s something you really want to do, you can. And I think that’s a message that a lot of young women need to hear. You have to set the parameters of the experience and the success that you want to have.
Women's roles and the topic of feminism have been huge conversations in the past couple of years -- especially when successful young women come forward saying they don't identify as feminists.
I think that those women don’t know what a feminist is. Feminism needs a really good PR agency. They say, "I’m not a feminist," and then go on to describe exactly ways in which they’re feminist. That’s a PR issue, not a factual challenge. Those are just women who don’t know what it is, and maybe women who don’t understand what feminism has done for them. My daughters who are 12 and 14 would describe themselves as feminists. I’m very aggressive about it -- I show them the opportunities that they have. They’re always stunned to hear about when people couldn’t do what they can do. They just don’t know. I’m not sure that all those young women [decrying feminism] have someone drilling into their heads, "You know, the reason you get to do this is because there are a lot of people who fought for those opportunities."
Yeah, there's still this common misperception that feminists are man-haters who look down on other women for making certain choices, for example the choice to be a stay-at-home mom.
Sometimes part of the conversation is how we love to posit women against each other. Working moms versus stay-at-home mom, and somehow everybody is better than the other person. We do have these fights that are sort of whipped up and not necessarily valid. In my kids' school, my daughters are able to do a lot of things because the moms who don’t travel as much as I do welcome them into their homes and allow my daughters to have great experiences. And sometimes I can take my daughters’ friends on cool experiences because of some of the work I do. And I think of it as a sharing thing. We are all rooting for our kids and other people’s kids to do well. I think that’s more the reality than the way it’s positioned sometimes.
A photo posted by Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) on
What do you think are the big issues women are facing? What’s holding us back from gender equality?
A couple things. I think that women have to really figure out how to advocate for themselves -- and I would add myself to that list. I was doing an interview he other day with Tamara Mellon, who used to run Jimmy Choo. And she said it really surprised her that when she started asking people for help in her business, no one said no. She got to the point where she was like, "I don’t know what to do, I’m stuck," and she turned to people and there was not a single person who said “I won’t help you. Leave me alone.”
As a new CEO, I have found that very true. I have never had a single person who I called up and said “listen, can I pick your brain about something that I’m working on,” never once has someone said “yeah, you know what, no.” And I think the same is true for the young women that I mentor, and the young women in our foundation. When they go up to someone and say, “I am stuck on a thing, can you help me figure this out?,” they always get support. They always get help. Not just from the people who are mentoring them, but from random people who are happy to take a moment to try to help them be successful. The world is really full of those people.
Women have to open themselves to saying, “I am not perfect. I am not flawless. I am going to get help, and I am going to get better.” That is a really good first step. And really trying to decide what kind of opportunities exist, and advocating for them. The whole argument about likeablilty. It matters, but at my age, you get to the point where you’re like “eh, screw it.” I’m too old. I don’t care anymore. You get to a point where you’re like, "I don’t care if you like me. You just need to think that I’m good." And that’s a very freeing thing. I just want to be good. I want to be clear, I want to be straightforward, I want to be respected, I want to have good quality work -- I don’t give a sh*t if anybody likes me. I don’t need to go and be their best friend. When I got to that point, it was really a great moment.
I’ve been working on a project for them that should be launching very soon. They sent us out to go and do documentaries -- find young, amazing women who are overcoming challenges. The greatest assignment ever. When you invest in women, you can change communities. Literally.
Singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins, 50, is pregnant with her second child. According to Us Weekly, Hawkins had 15 of her embryos frozen when she was 31. Twenty years later, she's decided that it's time to give her 6-year-old son, Dashiell, a sibling.
"Dashiell is increasingly independent of me, and yet he's still very engaged in his childhood," she said. "Dashiell and I have had the magical twosome for six adventurous years, that intense focus of an only child and single mother, and we're ready to invite a new and unknown dynamic into our lives."
Hawkins, who is expecting a girl, told People magazine that age is not a concern and that she's prepared to raise the baby alone.
“I went through waking up crying and saying, ‘Am I too old? Will I suddenly at 51 have my knees give out?'” she said. “Now I don’t have any of those fears because I feel healthy and strong. I’m also setting up a good net of support, and that’s the key to anybody having a child.”
Hawkins rose to fame in the 1990s with hits like "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover," "As I Lay Me Down" and "Right Beside You."
"I love my phrase ‘omnisexual,’” she said in 2008, speaking to Go Magazine about how she self-identifies. “The truth about omnisexuality is my sexuality is spiritual. It’s creative. I absolutely can fall in love with any gender if I love the person’s mind, heart and soul.”
Everyone has their favorite "Saturday Night Live" character, but what character was a favorite to play for the ladies of "SNL"? Glamour spoke with a few of the "SNL" actresses to find out.
Answers ranged from light-hearted to serious. Amy Poehler's was predictably funny: “I liked playing men because it was just more comfortable… the clothes were more comfortable." Molly Shannon said she loved her role as Mary Katherine Gallagher because the character helped her get over her nerves: "I get nervous performing in front of all those people, but you can really use your nervousness in the character. So if my heart was really pounding… I just poured it into the character."
Whether it's Kate McKinnon playing Justin Bieber or Jane Curtin playing Mrs. Loopner, these women always make us laugh. We tip our hats to you, funny ladies of "SNL."
There's a never a dull moment with Samuel L. Jackson and the award-winning actor proved that yet again during his appearance on Monday's episode of "Live! With Kelly and Michael" where things got really personal.
Jackson, who is promoting his latest film “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” took a few moments to reflect on some of his childhood memories and what life was like growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee during the 1950s.
In doing so, he talked about some of the strong influences he had in his life including his Aunt Etna, an elementary school teacher, who taught Jackson how to read at the early age of two.
“She forced me to do a lot of things that I didn’t want to do when I was a kid. But of the things she made me do was read. So I was reading by the time I was two,” he admitted. “She used to take me to school, which was an interesting kind of thing because it was the country. My grandmother worked, she was a domestic, she was like ‘The Help.’ And my grandfather worked at a hotel during the day. So she [Aunt Etna] took me to school with her.”
“So when I was two, I sat back in her room…so when a kid couldn’t answer a question in her class she would go, ‘Sam…’ and I would answer the question, and then I would have to fight all lunch time, because all the fourth graders would go, ‘oh, you think you’re smart.’…and I’d have to fight because she made me answer questions, made them look dumb. So I was a good fighter and a smart kid.”
Aside from his experiences in school, Jackson also weighed in on what life was like growing up in a city still saturated by segregation at the time -- and the lessons he learned that he'll never forget.
“I learned a lot of lessons that most people don’t have to learn today, or shouldn’t have to learn,” Jackson said. “But I learned how to conduct myself around the superior race in an interesting sort of way. You don’t look people in the eye, but I did because I didn’t know any better.”
Check out more of Samuel L. Jackson’s interview segment in the clip above.
At the 2015 Grammy Awards on Sunday night, Annie Lennox joined Hozier on stage to perform "I Put a Spell On You." Lennox's performance was certainly dramatic, though her bewitching gaze bore a strong resemblance to that of one Ramona Singer from "The Real Housewives of New York":
Ramona
Annie
Ramona
Annie
It's okay, Annie. We all get a little Ramotional sometimes.
Following in the footsteps of Gisele Bundchen and Miranda Kerr, Victoria's Secret Angel Doutzen Kroes shared a gorgeous breastfeeding photo last week.
The Dutch model, who lives in New York, appears on the March 2015 cover of Vogue Netherlands with her kids. Her adorable family was also included in a photo shoot featured in the magazine. Posing in a bed with her husband DJ Sunnery James and 4-year-old son Phyllon, Kroes breastfeeds her 5-month-old daughter Myllena in a particularly beautiful shot.
In Park City, freezing temperatures make for hot performances. You might know them as Charlie from Girls or Robin from How I Met Your Mother, but the following actors we know from the boxes in our living rooms prove that they command even more star power on the big screen, stretching their acting chops to heights we didn't know existed. Here were our favorites from this year's Sundance.
Alison Brie (Community, Mad Men) Film: Sleeping With Other People
Did Sundance save the Community star from a lifetime of being known for Annie's Boobs? We think so. Brie turned heads as a serial cheater who falls in love with Jason Sudeikis' womanizer in this Generation-Y romantic comedy from Bachelorette scribe Leslye Headland. We love that this role is a departure from the squeaky-clean Annie, and mainstream audiences will be charmed by Brie's sweetheart persona and sharp wit. Rounding out the cast of Sleeping is Adam Scott, Jason Mantzoukas (The League), and Togetherness's Amanda Peet.
Nick Offerman (Parks & Rec) Film: Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl
If there were ever a next Whiplash, this is it. Park City couldn't stop talking about this clever little movie--that you should never call the next Fault in Our Stars.
The film, which took home both the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, is more of a tribute to the art of cinema as the main protagonist, Greg, is a budding teenage filmmaker who befriends a classmate with cancer. You'll see vestiges of Offerman's Ron Swanson in his delivery as Greg's dad, but the end result is a little more tender and wiser than his TV counterpart. As Parks comes to an end, we're not too worried about what Offerman will do next.
Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother) Films: Results and Unexpected
Sure, Smulders already has an Avengers franchise, but the star best known for playing gun-loving, cigar-smoking Robin Scherbatsky really blew us away in quiet drama Unexpected. As an inner-city teacher dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, Smulders captures the fear and uncertainty of her ordeal and what it means for a woman to truly balance love, career, and motherhood. If you still need reasons to be impressed, Smulders was literally her working-mother character in real-life--she filmed Unexpected while expecting her second child.
Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother) Film: The End of the Tour
OK, this is kind of cheating because Jason Segel is already known for a lot of movies, but his performance as the late, reclusive novelist David Foster Wallace had to be mentioned. Segel utterly transforms by shedding his endearing funnyman to become an endearing, depressed writer. Segel's natural lighthearted demure adds a quiet fragility to someone whose demons we only knew of.
Christopher Abbott (Girls)
Film: James White
Abbott famously left Girls for allegedly disagreeing with his character Charlie evolving into (or staying as) Marnie's doormat. Even back in 2013 Abbott probably knew that bigger, better things awaited him--and they did. In James White he radiates the title character--a self-destructive hipster, forced to rethink his hazy, hedonist lifestyle when his mother becomes terminally ill. He is a selfish, numb junkie who wants to be the cleaned-up, tender son. We, the audience, cry along with him.
Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood)
Film: The Diary of a Teenage Girl
We've always appreciated Skarsgård's limitless acting skills. Take, for instance, Eric Northman's famous full-frontal-in-Siberia scene from True Blood's season six finale. In coming-of-age dramedy Diary, Skarsgård is an immature older man who helps 15-year-old Minnie blossom into a woman, in, um, more ways than one. (Hey, it's '70s free-loving San Francisco.) Oh, and he's also dating her mom (played by Kristen Wiig). Like True Blood, there's a lot of sex in this one, but it's more of the uncomfortable variety than the hot. And it takes exceptional talent for someone so likable to convincingly play someone as hateable as Monroe.
Cynthia Nixon (Sex & the City)
Films: Stockholm, Pennsylvania and James White Stockholm, Pennsylvania is as far away from the City as anyone could get.
With a daughter afflicted with Stockholm syndrome, Cynthia Nixon is kind of a badass as a mom who does whatever it takes to get her daughter emotionally back to her: She starts out a sweet, affectionate mother who then becomes scary, aggressive and unhinged; her marriage falls apart, her daughter's psychiatrist grows suspicious, and Nixon becomes a recluse--all for the love of her daughter. The twist ending may have rubbed us the wrong way, but Nixon's performance makes Pennsylvania worth the trip.
We like to think Best Picture goes to the year's most celebrated film, but that's hardly the case. In fact, just three of the past 20 winners ("12 Years a Slave," "The Hurt Locker" and "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King") were the best-reviewed movies of that respective year on Metacritic.
The review aggregator compiled data regarding the correlation between critical reception and the Academy Awards' preferences. Of the past two decades, 10 of the best-reviewed titles (including "Ratatouille," "Pan's Labyrinth," "Spirited Away" and "Hoop Dreams") didn't even earn Best Picture nominations.
If "Boyhood" wins at Feb. 22's ceremony, as it was widely expected to before "Birdman" nabbed the final major guild award for which it was nominated this past weekend, it will mean another year in which the top film on Metacritc does indeed ride its wave all the way to Best Picture. "Birdman" is the third highest-reviewed film, with "Selma" -- which, infamously, has almost no likelihood of winning -- sandwiched between them.
Having just won his fourth Grammy, you wouldn't think "Weird Al" Yankovic would be rusty, but every artist needs practice to stay fresh and keep their chops up.
In this CollegeHumor offering, Weird Al has enlisted J.K. Simmons' character from the Oscar-nominated film "Whiplash" to help perfect his polka game in time for his upcoming "Mandatory Fun" tour.
A chair may or may not be smashed on Weird Al in the video.
NEW YORK (AP) — Gabrielle Union says she learned an important lesson after the death of Whitney Houston.
"It just kind of made everyone say, 'What do you want your legacy to be?'" Union said in a recent interview. "And I really doubled down on 'I only want to do things that I care about, that mean something.' "So, no, I don't want to play perfect characters that are wholesome role models ... and have all the right answers."
Union stars on BET's "Being Mary Jane," which airs on Tuesdays (10 p.m. EST). She plays broadcaster Mary Jane Paul, whose professional life is on fire, but her private life is not. She can't find Mr. Right and essentially supports members of her family because she's the one with money.
Union said she loves playing the character because she's so messy.
"Within one scene I could be, you know, showing a bunch of different colors, and I've never been challenged like this. I've never been this gratified with my work," she said. "Ever."
She recalls meeting with "Being Mary Jane" executive producer Salim Akil and his team on the day Houston died. Akil directed Houston's final film, "Sparkle."
"They had just done 'Sparkle' with her. ... and there were so many people in that room and we were having this great conversation about basically my career going this great direction with this great character. ... and you see this other light just literally go out and you see ... everyone's looking at their phones, you hear people gasp and run out of the room, and it was one of those really life-affirming and life-questioning times."
Union said she was moved when Akil asked to end the meeting early. "There's a lot of producers who would have kept going," she said.
Union said she appreciates her character's flaws.
"I don't want to play perfect characters that are wholesome role models and everything to everyone and have all the right answers and who can get out of a terrorist cell with their bra," she laughed, referring to a recent episode of ABC's "Scandal."
"It's OK to be a flawed person because we're all flawed human beings and we're just doing the best that we can."
Union is married to Miami Heat basketball player Dwyane Wade. She says the racier scenes on "Being Mary Jane" only get awkward when they're watching the show together.
The show, she says, is the best creative decision she's made.
"I felt like a lazy actress. ... You get complacent, and when the checks are coming in it's like, 'Eh, maybe I'll get to challenge myself next week.' The next thing you know years have gone by and you've not really done anything that feeds your soul.
"And then there's this."
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