Entertainment

Everyone loves John Green, basically

Book sales are booming, according to statistics released this week by the Association of American Publishers, which showed that in the first three-quarters of 2014, overall book sales increased by 4.9%.

But the real page-turners that flew off the shelves were for children and young adults–those categories increased by a whopping 22.4% from Jan.-Sept. 2013 to the same period in 2014, Media Bistro reports. To put things into perspective, adult fiction and non-fiction sales were down 3.3%.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that adults stopped reading. They might just be expanding their palates to healthy servings of John Green and other YA heavy-hitters.

Adults reading YA wouldn’t be a new phenomenon. According to a 2012 survey by Bowker Market Research found that 55% of young adult novels are bought by adults — 28% of which are made up of the 33 to 44 demographic. That statistic drew some criticism aimed at YA-loving adults this summer–balanced by an overwhelming wave of pieces defending adults who love the genre.

While the AAP didn’t track who bought what books, it did note that children and young adult ebooks increased a total of 52.7% in the first nine months this year. And a December study by Nielsen found that even though teenagers are tech savvy, only $20 of them buy ebooks and express a strong preference for print.

Although no need to hide The Fault of Our Stars in that Kindle — it’s no 50 Shades of Grey, after all.

It's tough at the top

One year after the release of her self-titled album, Beyoncé’s music is being closely analyzed yet again — and not, this time, from her Beyhive.

The singer is one of many who’s been accused of sampling without permission throughout her career. Questions of authorship and of sampling are particularly pernicious and difficult to solve in the recording industry; just this month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Beyoncé’s husband Jay Z for his sampling of a single syllable from a funk song. A new lawsuit filed by Hungarian singer Mitsou alleges that Beyoncé, Jay Z, and producer Timbaland used her song “Bajba, Bajba Pelem” at the start of “Drunk in Love.”

While musicians of all stripes can get hit with lawsuits given the unclear standards around sampling and the ephemeral nature of authorship, Beyoncé’s been hit more frequently than many of her contemporaries. Being queen, it’d seem, has a headache-inducing cost — as several of her songs and videos have come in for criticism.

• “Baby Boy”: One of Beyoncé’s first solo singles was alleged by songwriter Jennifer Armour to bear substantial similarities to her “Got a Little Bit of Love for You,” which had been submitted as a demo to Beyoncé’s label. “Armour cannot prove Beyoncé had access to Armour’s demo tape before composing the allegedly infringing elements of her own song,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in a decision declining even to address the songs’ similarity.
• “If I Were a Boy”: The lead-off single for Beyoncé’s album I Am… Sasha Fierce was penned by songwriter BC Jean, whose own version of the song was rejected by her record label. After Beyoncé discovered the song and recorded it, a Fox News gossip columnist wrote that Jean had been “strong-armed by Beyoncé’s people.” That seems a bit overzealous: For her part, Jean told an interviewer that she’d been surprised her first-ever song had been recorded by another artist, but that the Beyoncé version had “opened so many doors, it’s amazing.”
• “Countdown”: Beyoncé took inspiration from contemporary ballet in her “Countdown” video, but one of her muses was far from flattered. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker claimed “plagiarism”; though it’s difficult to cite a source in a music video, Beyoncé took it upon herself to credit De Keersmaeker in a statement after the choreographer spoke out. “I’ve always been fascinated by the way contemporary art uses different elements and references to produce something unique,” Beyoncé said.
• “Run the World (Girls)”: The apocalyptic, disturbing clip for this 2011 single was specifically compared to the work of photographer Pieter Hugo, down to imagery of pet hyenas on chains. And her performance of the song at the 2011 Billboard Music Awards was compared to the similar work of choreographer Lorella Cuccarini. “Thank god for YouTube or I would have never been exposed to something so inspiring,” Beyoncé later said.

Eliana Dockterman is a living, culture and breaking news reporter for TIME in New York City.

Sorkin's writing celebrates the male mind while making women the objects of lust or scorn

Hollywood cheered on Cate Blanchett last year when she critiqued the gender gap in Hollywood and took to task those studio executives “who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are a niche experience.” But, apparently, Aaron Sorkin was not among those celebrating Blanchett’s feminist speech.

The latest piece of information unearthed in the Sony hack is an email sent by award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to New York Times writer Maureen Dowd. On March 4, Dowd wrote a column called “Frozen in a Niche?” which built upon Blanchett’s argument that successful female films—like Bridesmaids, Frozen, Gravity or The Hunger Games—are still seen as flukes in the industry. She cited compelling stats: Even though women comprise 52% of moviegoers, only 15% of protagonists and 30% of speaking characters in the top 100 grossing domestic films in 2013 were female.

Blanchett and Dowd are far from the first to notice this trend: Mega-stars like Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster have complained about the problem, as has Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal whom Dowd quotes saying the “whole system is geared for [female filmmakers] to fail.”

But Sorkin disagrees with all these ladies. He wrote to Dowd on March 6:

That was a great and very interesting column today. I’d only take issue with one thing and that’s the idea that something like Bridesmaids is seen as a fluke and that’s why we don’t see more movies like Bridesmaids. There’s an implication that studio heads have a stack of Bridesmaids-quality scripts on their desk that they’re not making and it’s just not true. The scripts aren’t there.

Fair enough. A major part of the gender gap we see onscreen can be attributed to what’s going on behind the screen: Women made up only 6% of directors, 10% of writers, 15% of executive producers, 17% of editors and 3% of cinematographers in the top 250 films in 2013, according to the Center for the study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. With fewer women writing, directing and producing, we see fewer women’s stories on film.

But there are two very simple ways to solve that problem: Executives can seek out, hire and support more women behind the camera, and male writers who already have major influence in Hollywood (say, for instance, Aaron Sorkin) could write credible, interesting, robust roles for women. And yet Sorkin doesn’t.

It’s no secret that Aaron Sorkin often comes under fire for his thin, idiotic or harpy-esque female characters. Let’s take a quick tour of some of his worst hits.

On Sports Night, acting like a woman was a constant insult that Casey would fling at Dan. In one episode, when Dan asks Casey if he remembers that it is the anniversary of their first show together, Casey responds, “I remember not thinking at the time that you were a woman.” Meanwhile, the main female character, producer Dana, serves almost exclusively as a love interest: She runs in circles as her show crumbles around her (through no fault of her charming male stars). The few times she succeeds, it’s treated as a miracle.

In A Few Good Men, Demi Moore plays a character who might as well be male (save for the sexist jabs that Jack Nicholson shoots at her). Famed critic Roger Ebert even wrote in his review that he thought the character had originally been conceived as a man “and got changed into a woman for Broadway and Hollywood box office reasons, without ever quite being rewritten into a woman.” Sorkin also doesn’t have to worry about this “woman problem” in Moneyball, which takes place in an almost entirely male world.

In The Social Network—for which Sorkin won an Oscar—women are either lunatics (see: Eduardo Saverin’s girlfriend who sets his bed on fire) or flat symbols. Mark Zuckerberg’s ex-girlfriend is emblematic of everything Zuckerberg cannot have but isn’t fully developed as a character herself.

And then there’s The Newsroom. Most of the show’s main plots revolved around the smarter men man-splaining things to supposedly successful but totally hapless women. (Seriously, MacKenzie reported in war zones but can’t use email?) MacKenzie is obsessed with Will. Maggie is a pathetic waif. Sloan, despite being smart, is strangely socially incompetent. None of Sorkin’s male characters have such flaws. Even in the show’s penultimate episode, a male character man-splains to a female rape victim why he’s “obligated” to believe her “sketchy” alleged rapist instead of her. (One of Sorkin’s writers claimed she was kicked out of the writers’ room for protesting this storyline, which Sorkin essentially confirmed while lambasting her for exposing writers’ room conversations.)

In short, Sorkin celebrates the male mind while making women the objects of lust or scorn. The few women who do make it into Sorkin’s scripts are usually in need of rescue by the men in their lives. The one exception might be C.J. Craig from The West Wing, a character for which Allison Janney won four Emmys. C.J. got her own story lines and was allowed to succeed and fail as often as her male compatriots. Unlike the women on The Newsroom, she was there to accomplish her own goals, not simply prop up her male boss and be lectured by him when she screwed up. Why Sorkin hasn’t written a C.J. since is still a mystery.

This trend of misogyny since his C.J. days is doubly frustrating considering the rest of Sorkin’s email. “That’s why year in and year out, the guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins Best Actress,” he writes. Sorkin goes on to compare performances of various nominees. He asserts that Blanchett’s performance in Blue Jasmine was “nothing close to the degree of difficulty” of all five Best Actor nominees, and that Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook), Natalie Portman (Black Swan) and Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) did not measure up to Daniel Day-Lewis, (Lincoln), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) in the respective years that they won.

“Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women,” he concludes.

It’s nearly impossible to compare the “difficulty” of performances in an objective way: As The Daily Beast points out, was Colin Firth’s performance in The King’s Speech really harder than that of Natalie Portman in Black Swan? Does Blanchett not measure up to some of the other actors nominated last year like Bruce Dern (Nebraska), Christian Bale (American Hustle) or Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street)? The answer depends on who you ask.

And if the sexism problem is born from flimsy roles, then why does Sorkin say that only certain actresses, Mirren and Streep, can “play with the boys”? There’s something inherently sexist about Sorkin degrading the talent of other nominees by suggesting only those two women can compete with their male counterparts.

As much as Sorkin’s films can be frustrating, it’s hard to fault the screenwriter for sticking to what he knows. Films like A Few Good Men, Moneyball and The Social Network are lauded because they are interesting, complex depictions of male-dominated worlds. And in between his misogynist comments, Sorkin has indicated that he wants to support female performers and filmmakers. In 2011, Sorkin dedicated his Oscar speech for Best Screenplay (The Social Network) to actresses. “I want to thank all the female nominees tonight for helping demonstrate to my young daughter that elite is not a bad word; it’s an aspirational one,” he concluded. “Honey, look around. Smart girls have more fun, and you’re one of them.”

But this email demonstrates that Sorkin clearly recognizes there’s a sexism problem in Hollywood. And ultimately it’s hard to forgive him for not at least trying to fix it when he is one of very few writers with the power to do so.

The singer finds "comfort" in relationships, despite the hardships her love life has repeatedly faced

In her words, Jennifer Lopez is a “love addict.”

The artist, who considers herself a dancer first and foremost, admits in Self‘s January cover story that she finds “comfort” in relationships, despite the hardships her love life has repeatedly faced.

Lopez, whose Benjamin Button-like condition continues to run rampant, looks fairly incredible in the magazine, her toned body on athletic and age-defying display. In one photo, she bares all – and mid pull-up, to boot – in a pair of white briefs and a white, long-sleeved crop top.

“I’ve been through divorce. I’ve been cheated on, just like every other girl in the world,” Lopez, 45, told the mag of the similarities between herself and her character in The Boy Next Door, an upcoming psychological thriller that features her as a separated woman who falls in love with the high school-aged boy next door.

“So you sympathize, you understand the emotions. And I’ve dated a younger guy once in my life,” she added, referencing her 2½ year relationship with choreographer and dancer Casper Smart, who is nearly 20 years her junior. The couple split in June, and Lopez is currently single.

“I could definitely understand that part, too – the attraction.”

“All the old clichés about women need to be undone. Enough already,” Lopez added. “We’re in the other position now. We are desirable older, we can date younger guys and it’s not this big taboo. Men have been doing this for years, and it’s no big deal.”

On her many high-profile relationships, breakups and makeups, Lopez revealed to Self: “When you have that much pain, you have to anesthetize yourself in some ways. People do different things. Some go out and party and sleep around, but that’s just not my way. I found the comfort in someone else.”

Lopez will appear at PEOPLE’s first ever PEOPLE Magazine Awards on Thursday, airing at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. The Boy Next Door hits theaters Jan. 23.

This article originally appeared on People.com

Working on a line of fitness and training clothes for women

Rihanna is already well-known for her audacious fashion statements. Now she’ll get to spread her influence even further as the new creative director of Puma. The pop star will oversee a women’s line of clothing for the apparel company, focusing on fitness and training clothes. She’ll also become a “brand ambassador” for the company alongside star athletes like sprinter Usain Bolt and soccer player Mario Balotelli.

RiRi celebrated her new appointment by flying off for her first creative session at the company’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany, on Monday. She’s also been spotted sporting a pair of Pumas on Instagram.

[Women’s Wear Daily]

"I'm not going to complain. I've got thighs and a midsection, so I'm happy"

Barbara Walters opened an age-old trap for actress Scarlett Johansson, during an interview for her annual special on the “Most Fascinating People of 2014.”

“Do you like your body?” Walters asked in the segment, which aired Sunday night.

“It’s an ok body, I guess,” Johansson said, attempting to answer a question with basically no right answer. “I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly remarkable, though.”

Continuing to pan for gold, Walters continued: “Any parts you don’t like?”

Johansson, who was named Esquire’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” twice, responded, “I don’t like, you know, my thighs, my midsection…”

Stars: they’re emo teens just like us.

Jessica Alba is “not as excited about” her legs. Victoria Beckham thinks her feet are “the most disgusting thing” about her. Regina George’s pores are huge! (But at least their nail beds don’t suck.)

“But,” Johansson continued, literally throwing her hands in the air, “Eh, well, who can complain? I’m not going to complain. I’ve got thighs and a midsection, so I’m happy.”

Now, who wants to go grab some fries?

The new location adds some intriguing setting possibilities

No more sweat-drenched survivors trudging through forests! The Walking Dead‘s companion project is taking the zombie apocalypse out of Georgia. Sources confirm TV Line‘s report that the as-yet-untitled pilot is set in Los Angeles.

The scenery shift to the West Coast adds some intriguing setting possibilities: Beaches and the ocean, Hollywood, iconic landmarks, walker celebrities (though the cable show could likely never top Bill Murray in Zombieland), a nearby desert, and a larger metropolis to play with than the original hit’s occasional dips into Atlanta.

Just because the setting is Los Angeles doesn’t guarantee it will be shot there. AMC, which had no comment, is still casting the pilot written by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson. So far Cliff Curtis (Sunshine), Frank Dillane (who played Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and Alycia Debnam Carey (Into the Storm) have signed on.

This article originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly

Evin Cosby says her dad "is the FATHER you thought you knew"

(NEW YORK) — A day after Camille Cosby released a statement in defense of her embattled husband, one of the comedian’s four daughters is defending her father.

Evin Cosby, 38, says Bill Cosby “is the FATHER you thought you knew” in a statement, obtained Tuesday by “Access Hollywood.” She also defended her father on Facebook where she wrote “Men and Women need to stand up and say something. There are plenty of them that have experienced being accused of a major crime that they NEVER committed.”

In recent weeks, a different picture of Cosby has emerged as at least 15 women accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting them. He has never been charged in connection with the accusations. His lawyers have denied many of the allegations.

Don't blink