Oscar shines on 'Spotlight'

 "Spotlight" is basking in the golden glow of Oscar.

"Mad Max: Fury Road" may have won more honors at the 88th Academy Awards, leading all films with six. "The Revenant" won some major prizes, including the first Oscar for actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

But when the last award of the evening was read, it was the little film about Boston Globe investigative reporters digging into a sex abuse scandal involving Catholic priests that was left standing.


"This film gave a voice to survivors," producer Michael Sugar said. "And this film amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican."

It was one of just two awards "Spotlight" took home. The film also won for Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer's original screenplay.

But until that moment, it looked like "Revenant," about a vengeful trapper in the 1820s, was going to go all the way. 

Anomalisa: Inside the studio behind this year's unlikeliest Oscar contender

Filming a sex scene is usually a nervy affair on set. Most of the crew will be shut out, the heating turned up, and bath robes are always close to hand.

The stars of "Anomalisa" received no such treatment -- and theirs lasted a grueling four months.

Eleven inches high and made from silicon, Michael Stone and Lisa Hesselman are the center of what might just be this year's unlikeliest contender for Academy Awards glory. Nominated for Best Animated Feature, "Anomalisa" enters the fray as winner of The Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival -- remarkable considering it was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign.

Or perhaps not, considering the wattage behind the stop-motion film's cast and crew. Written by Charlie Kaufman ("Synecdoche, New York", "Being John Malkovich") and co-directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson ("Frankenhole"), it enlisted David Thewlis and the Oscar-nominated Jennifer Jason Leigh on voice acting duties.

However, arguably the real heroes of this surprise hit are its animators: the tinkerers, the teasers, the artists who after a ten-hour day would walk away with two and a half seconds of useable footage. An animated feature with a distinctly adult tilt, they had to negotiate boobs, bums and detachable penises, whilst remaining true to Kaufman's tender and touching vision.

CNN Style sat down with animation supervisor Dan Driscoll to discover how they created this year's most heartfelt film.

Zayn Malik puckers up with Gigi Hadid in this adorable polaroid pic

Zayn Malik is sharing more and more about his romance with model-of-the-moment Gigi Hadid.

After initially being coy about their relationship, he posted this PDA-filled picture-in-picture of him getting cosy with his GF on Instagram.

In the black and white pic the former One Direction band member smooches a smiling Gigi.

It’s not the first time that Zayn has shared PDA with Gigi.

The model is the star of Pillowtalk, Zayn’s first solo music video, and the pair shared plenty of seductive moments for the camera but the couple kept their relationship quiet until Zayn confirmed it in a radio interview a week later.

Gigi has already shared this adorable snap of her man cuddling this capi.

Obama noticeably absent from Antonin Scalia’s funeral

President Obama drew sharp criticism Sunday for failing to attend the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“The president’s absence at Justice Scalia’s funeral is a slight to the Italian-American community,” fumed Neil Mattera, president of the New York-based Columbus Alliance.

Bronx-born actor Chazz Palminteri agreed.

“Historic firsts are important,” he fumed. “Justice Scalia was the first Italian-American on the Supreme Court. It would have been nice if the President of the United States would have recognized its importance to the community.”

Obama stayed home Saturday as mourners paid their respects at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He dispatched Vice President Biden instead to honor Scalia, who served on the court for 30 years until his sudden death last weekend while on a hunting trip in Texas.

“Italian-Americans take paying respects at funerals very seriously,” said Philip Foglia, vice president of the Italian-American Museum. “Justice Scalia was a milestone for the community. The president’s absence was disappointing and ill advised.”

Scalia was born in Trenton, NJ, and attended grade school in Queens and high school in Manhattan before becoming the leading conservative voice on the high court.

“Only President Obama could turn a funeral into a partisan event,” said Adele Malpass, Manhattan’s GOP chairwoman. “He has once again missed an opportunity to bridge a partisan divide and chooses to divide people instead of bringing people together even when it comes to the funeral of a statesman.”
Pallbearers carry the casket of late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia down the steps of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.Photo: Getty Images

Manhattan resident Betty Ann Hogan added: “He was a Supreme Court justice. I’m sure if the situation were reversed and Obama died and Justice Scalia were alive that he would have gone to his funeral. It’s just the right thing to do.”

Obama and the First Lady paid their respects Friday at the Supreme Court, where Scalia’s body lied in repose.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Biden went because the vice president has a longstanding relationship with Scalia’s family and his “security footprint is a little lighter.”

Kanye West Begs Mark Zuckerberg For Help After Revealing $53 Million Debt

Oh Yeezy! Kanye West jumped on Twitter in the late hours of Sunday, February 14, to beg Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbeg to bail him out of his $53 million debt.


As Us Weekly reported previously, "The Life of Pablo" hitmaker had revealed the extent of his personal debut during a Twitter rant the day before, asking fans to pray that he can overcome his financial crisis.

By Sunday, the controversial rapper, who's been making headlines this past week thanks to his NSFW Taylor Swift lyrics, was back online, but this time he'd figured out a solution to his debt issues -- and Zuckerberg, it, seemed, was the answer.

“Mark Zuckerberg I know it’s your bday but can you please call me by 2mrw..." the 38-year-old dad-of-two tweeted. “You love hip hop, you love my art... I am your favorite artist but you watch me barely breathe and still play my album in your house...”

Sharapova named in Russian Fed Cup team, stays on road to Rio

Moscow  - Maria Sharapova remained on course for the Rio Olympics as the five-time Grand Slam champion was on Friday named in Russia's doubles team for their Fed Cup first-round tie against the Netherlands in Moscow this weekend.

World number 31 Ekaterina Makarova will take on 106th-ranked Kiki Bertens in the opening singles of the World Group clash on the hardcourt of Moscow's Olympic indoor arena from 1100 GMT on Saturday.

Russia's two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, 17th in the world, will then face 141st-ranked Richel Hogenkamp.

In Sunday's reverse singles, Kuznetsova will face off against Bertens and Makarova will then take on Hogenkamp.

Russian team skipper Anastasia Myskina then announced the country's top-ranked player Sharapova, the world number six, will play in the tie's concluding doubles rubber alongside 18-year-old Darya Kasatkina.

They will face Dutch pair Arantxa Rus and Cindy Burger.

Myskina, the 2004 French Open champion, said that she expected a tough match against the Dutch.

"We've prepared well for this match but I expect a very tough opposition this weekend," Myskina told reporters following the draw.

"Netherlands were victorious in their last Fed Cup matches. They're in good form and brave mood. It's unlikely to be easy. But I hope we will do enough."

Sharapova, who is struggling with a forearm injury suffered at last month's Australian Open, said she wasn't about to call time on her Fed Cup career.

"Our team is strong and any of our girls are capable of winning their rubbers," she said.

"I don't know how long I will be able to play tennis but I will definitely continue to play for my country."

The world's richest sportswoman will remain on course for this summer's Olympic Games even if she doesn't step out on court against the Netherlands.

Under qualification rules, a player must be nominated three times in an Olympic cycle in order to be eligible for the Games in Rio in August.

So far, the 28-year-old star has featured in just two ties since 2012, the year when she won the silver medal at the London Olympics.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF), which oversees the Fed Cup, said that Sharapova did not necessarily need to play the tie in order to fulfil her Olympic criteria.

"The Olympic tennis event qualification regulations require a player to be in the nominated Fed Cup team at the time of the draw on three occasions," a spokesman told AFP on the eve of the draw for the tie.

"A player does not need to play a match."

Sharapova won all four Fed Cup rubbers she played in 2015 including the two singles matches in the final which Russia lost 3-2 to the Czech Republic.

SAG Awards: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to Present Carol Burnett With Life Achievement Award

 

The upcoming SAG Awards has added more comedy talent to its celebration of Carol Burnett.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have been tapped to present the life achievement award to the comedic trailblazer, actor, singer, dancer, producer and author. The frequent collaborators will present SAG-AFTRA's top prize to Burnett during the 22nd Annual SAG Awards, which will air live Saturday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on TNT and TBS.

Burnett is the 52nd recipient of SAG's life achievement award, joining past honorees Debbie Reynolds, Rita Moreno, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Ernest Borgnine, Betty White, James Earl Jones, Charles Durning, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple Black, James Garner, Karl Malden, Clint Eastwood, Edward Asner, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Lansbury, Robert Redford and George Burns.

SAG Awards: Idris Elba, Kristen Wiig Added as Presenters

Another round of presenters have been unveiled for Saturday's SAG Awards.

SAG Award nominee Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) will present along with the stars of films nominated for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture including Straight Outta Compton's Jason Mitchell, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Corey Hawkinsand Spotlight's Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams.

Presenters Kristen Wiig and Susan Sarandon are nominated for awards on the TV side. Game of Thrones, Homeland and House of Cards each scored a leading three nominations.

Anna Faris, Anthony Mackie and SAG-AFTRA president Ken Howard also join a growing roster of previously announced presenters including Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who are both set to bestow the Life Achievement Award on Carol Burnett.

The SAG Awards will be broadcast live on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on TNT and TBS.

SAG Awards: The Complete Winners List

The stars of “Spotlight,” Brie Larson and Leonardo DiCaprio were among the big winners of the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Early honorees included “Orange Is The New Black” for Best Ensemble Comedy Series, and Uzo Aduba for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Those wins on top of two trophies for Idris Elba ( for turns in”Beasts of No Nation” and “Luther”) and Viola Davis (“How to Get Away With Murder”) put diversity on joyous display during Saturday night’s ceremony, broadcast live from Los Angeles.

“Why do I have to be a hero? Why do you have to like me?” Davis said of her trouble-prone character Annalise Keating on the Shondaland series, praising her show writers for crafting a strong, flawed woman.

Also Read: #SAGNotSoWhite: SAG Awards Send a Message on Diversity

Larson, fresh off her Golden Globe win, took Best Actress in a Leading Role for “Room.” DiCaprio also picked up some Best Actor hardware for “The Revenant.”

After a quick hug and kiss from his “Titanic” co-star Kate Winslet, DiCaprio took the stage and thanked his fellow actors for inspiring him — and thanked his parents for indulging “a 13-year-old who wanted to go on auditions every day after school.”

The starry ensemble of “Spotlight” took Best Cast in a Motion Picture. Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton accepted the prize on stage beside Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber and Brian D’arcy James.

From SAG Awards to Sundance, diversity makes a comeback

In a flurry of wins at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Sundance Film Festival, diversity made a comeback.

Over just a few hours Saturday night, the SAG Awards and Sundance showered their honors on a parade of performers and films that presented a stark contrast to the crisis that has plagued the Oscars. Shortly after the screen actors handed out awards to Queen Latifah, Uzo Aduba, Viola Davis and Idris Elba (twice), Nate Parker's Sundance sensation "The Birth of a Nation," a drama about Nat Turner's slave rebellion, swept the festival's awards.

The two ceremonies, in Los Angeles and Park City, Utah, offered a night of reprieve from weeks of rancor over systemic inequality in the movie business and a second straight year of all-white Academy Award acting nominees.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to diverse TV," said Elba in his third trip on stage as a presenter at the SAG Awards. His first two were to accept awards for his supporting performance in the Netflix child soldier drama "Beasts of No Nation" and for his lead performance in the BBC miniseries "Luther."

Soon thereafter, at Sundance, Parker took the festival's grand jury prize and its audience award.

"Thank you, Sundance, for creating a platform for us to grow, in spite of what the rest of Hollywood is doing," said Parker, whose directorial debut sold for a record sum to Fox Searchlight Pictures.

The SAG Awards top honor, best ensemble in a film, went to the newspaper drama "Spotlight," which came into Saturday badly in need of some momentum. The ensemble award had seemingly come down to "Spotlight" or Adam McKay's high finance tale "The Big Short," which last week took the Producers Guild's top award. The win assures a competitive and unpredictable Oscars finale, with "The Martian," ''The Revenant" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" also in the mix.

"No way," said Mark Ruffalo, one of the stars of "Spotlight."

He praised the writer-director Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer for their purposeful accuracy in penning the journalistic procedural about the Boston Globe's reporting on sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The two, he said, "took every single opportunity to tell the truth. They didn't take any cheap way. It was always the truth."

Elba made no direct reference to the uproar that has swept through Hollywood in the last two weeks, which might have been less severe had he been nominated by the Academy Awards, as many expected. But it was on the minds and tongues of seemingly everyone in Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium.

SAG Awards 2016: The Complete Winners List

The 22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards have crowned this year's winners!

The SAG Awards are the only ceremony where actors vote for the year's best performances in movies and television. Idris Elba and Helen Mirren lead the pack with three nominations apiece, while Oscar nominees Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Winslet were all on hand to celebrate the momentous night.

The SAG Awards, broadcast live on TNT and TBS, took place Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

SAG Awards: Scott Feinberg's Predictions

The 22nd annual SAG Awards will get underway at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Saturday night. How much should Oscar-watchers pay attention to the results? Here's my take.

SAG-AFTRA is the largest union of actors, representing some 160,000 who work across the media. SAG Awards nominees are determined by nominating committees comprised of small percentages of the whole membership. A heavily-courted group of 2,250 actors chose the film nominees and 2,250 actors chose the TV nominees during a voting period that spanned Nov. 18 through Dec. 7, while winners were chosen by the entire membership during a voting period that spanned Dec. 16 through just yesterday, Jan. 29.


The Oscars, meanwhile, are determined by some 7,000 members of the Academy, the largest branch of which is comprised of actors. While not all SAG-AFTRA members belong to the Academy, most members of the actors branch of the Academy belong to SAG-AFTRA, so the SAG Awards offer us a bit of insight into their thinking.

Some SAG Awards, on the film side, have proven to be more predictive than others. The individual acting awards tend to be very prescient. Each of the last three years, all four SAG Award winners went on to win at the Oscars as well. And in the 21 previous years in which those awards have been presented, the Academy differed on best actor only four times; best actress only six times; best supporting actor only eight times; and best supporting actress only seven times.

The best ensemble SAG Award, however, which is regarded as the top SAG honor, has a less stellar track record. It was first presented at the second SAG Awards, and only half of its 20 winners have gone on to win the best picture Oscar. This may be because SAG-AFTRA members approach it differently: some see it as a prize for the best overall cast, others see it as a prize for the best large cast and still others treat it as a best picture award, since there isn't one at the SAG Awards.

Read More: SAG Awards: Hollywood Reporter's Live Blog

Sometimes the best ensemble SAG Award has been the only one to anticipate surprise best picture Oscar winners, such as 1998's Shakespeare in Love and 2005's Crash; other times, as in the cases of 2006's Little Miss Sunshine, 2009's Inglourious Basterds and 2011's The Help, it offered -positives. Regardless, only one film in two decades has won the best picture Oscar without being at least nominated for the prize, and that was 1995's Braveheart, the first-ever recipient.

It has been deemed almost essential to send hard-copy screeners of a film to all of SAG-AFTRA in order to have a real shot at winning any major SAG Awards prize — especially since doing so propelled Crash to its big win a decade ago. This year, hard-copy screeners were sent to all the members by the distributors of Beasts of No Nation, The Big Short, Room, Spotlight and Straight Outta Compton; meanwhile, the same cannot be said for the distributors of The Revenant and Trumbo, which apparently concluded that doing so was not worth the immense cost and/or would not markedly change their expected results.