Here are some photos from last night’s Critics Choice TV Awards, which… if I’m being honest, I totally didn’t know they were happening last night. When Game of Thrones is on, it’s like I have blinders on. But it really did feel like there wasn’t a lot of advanced promotion for this, right? In any case, the Critics Choice recognized many of the up-and-coming shows and actors, which makes it a lot more enjoyable than the Emmys. Some of the big winners last night? Silicon Valley, Amy Schumer, Olive Kitteridge and more – you can see the complete winners list here. We’ll just be covering some of the fashion, like this Alexander Wang dress on Taraji P. Henson. Taraji won Best Actress for Empire, so it would have been great to see her in an amazing dress. This Alexander Wang is not all that amazing. I mean, it’s fine. But it doesn’t feel special enough.

Here’s Maggie Gyllenhaal in Alexander McQueen. This was honestly one of my favorite looks. It’s really beautiful on her.

Angie Harmon in Christian Siriano. The cut is too low, right? The print is pretty though.

Jaimie Alexander in Halston. I like this, but it only really works on a tall, slender woman like Jaimie.

Anna Faris in pink (ID unknown). Pretty. I’ve been worried about her bangs for a while, but they don’t look too bad here.

Gina Rodriguez looked lovely in this.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Carolina Herrera. Ew. It’s like Herrera was trying to make a Herve Leger dress and just added some weird gold glitter on the bust.

Lorraine Toussaint – Lorraine won for her role on Orange Is the New Black. I suspect she’ll be winning a lot of awards for that role.

And finally, Josh Holloway. I like Josh a lot but he doesn’t look great here.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Hosted by their moms, Brandon Jenner and Leah Jenner celebrated their baby shower on Sunday in Malibu, Calif.

Brandon’s mother Linda Thompson Instagrammed images and video from the outdoor soirée.

“Imagine my joy & gratitude that @brandontjenner & @leah_jenner are blessing our family with a baby soon,” Linda captioned the clip. “Leah’s mom & I are throwing this delightful baby shower for them at their home. It reflects all the warmth & beauty their souls embody. #thankyouGod.”

She added: “@leah_jenner & @brandontjenner ‘s gorgeous homey home as the back drop for her baby shower. Games food fun!! ?”

Pink and blue balloons filled the backyard alongside matching baby onesies hanging from the trees. And guests noshed on a cake with “Welcome Baby Jenner” written on top.

Brandon, 33, is the son of Thompson and Bruce Jenner, and Leah, 32, is the daughter of Eagles guitarist Don Felder and his wife Susan.

The couple were wed in June 2012 and announced their pregnancy in March.

Imagine my joy & gratitude that @brandontjenner & @leah_jenner are blessing our family with a baby soon. Leah’s mom & I are throwing this delightful baby shower for them at their home. It reflects all the warmth & beauty their souls embody. #thankyouGod

A video posted by Linda Thompson (@ltlindathompson) on May 31, 2015 at 12:46pm PDT

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Jay-Z’s attempt to get into the music streaming business, Tidal, is total washout. It’s sort of funny to see the glee with which Tidal’s disaster’s has been assessed and found wanting. I personally don’t believe Jay-Z will suffer long-term – he’s still a rich, successful man and many rich, successful men have some bad ideas and bad investments in their portfolios. But it is funny because many of us believed that Jay was just trying to inflate Tidal and then quickly sell it for a big profit and now that’s sort of impossible. It’s also funny because Jay-Z and Beyonce have lived in the bubble too long – the bubble where everyone tells them that they’re brilliant and every one of their ideas is profitable, so it’s nice to see Jay have to face some hard truths about his bad business decision, even if he just shrugs it off as a media-driven “smear campaign.”

Why bring this up? Bloomberg Business ran a lengthy article about “Why Jay-Z’s Tidal is a Complete Disaster.” You can read the full piece here – Jay did not agree to an interview, which is fine, and the article doesn’t suffer for it. It’s written as a magazine-style analysis of just went wrong, why the music-streaming business is so tricky, and how Jay is going to have to likely eat a $56 million loss (that was how much he invested in Tidal). There’s also a discussion about why Jay took such a big risk, only to fail so hard, so publicly. The consensus opinion: Jay tried to this Tidal scheme hoping to line his pockets big time, because it’s his goal to be a billionaire. Jay’s apparently worth more than $500 million now, so he’s halfway there. But Tidal isn’t going to be where he doubles his money, you know? Anyway, the Bloomberg piece is a good read and it’s not even a slam-piece on Jay. The moral of the story is basically “finding a substantial revenue stream from streaming music is really difficult, but bless his heart for trying.”

Oh, and here’s something funny, also from the Bloomberg story: Sony might pull all of Beyonce’s music from Tidal. HAHAHA. Tidal and Sony haven’t reached a deal yet and Sony is threatening to yank Bey’s music and all of the Sony-released music from Tidal. Awkward. For what it’s worth, the Sony Music CEO said that they weren’t going to pull Beyonce or any of their artists’ music from Tidal and they’re rooting for Tidal. We’ll see.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.

Game of Thrones season 5, episode 8 recap

Hands down this is Jon Snow’s best episode to date. The battle at Castle Black last year was good, but this episode features one of the best battle sequences in the entire series (so far). I’d put the White Walkers’ attack on Hardhome right next to th…      

Congratulations to Chad Michael Murray and Sarah Roemer.

The One Tree Hill alum, 33, and his Disturbia actress wife, 30, have welcomed their first child – a boy – the actor announced via Twitter Sunday.

The news came after fans were concerned that Murray missed Sunday’s 29th Annual Jim Kelly Celebrity Classic VIP Gala.

“Sry I’m missin @JimKellyInc charity this year in Buffalo. My fav event 2 attend, but we’ve been blessed with a son. Gods greatest gift,” he Tweeted. “Sarah & I couldn’t b happier & intend 2 spend many a day having family adventures & watching @buffalobills football! & also @Chargers now.”

The Chosen co-stars secretly wed in a recent intimate ceremony. The newlyweds began dating early in 2014 and have been inseparable ever since joining the Crackle series.

“Ooh, that’s tough,” Murray recently told E! News when asked what kind of dad he will be.

He added: “I’m a respect first kind of guy, so I think certain things that I want my son to have is just respect and just to be a kind human being. I’m a big sports guy, an outdoorsy guy, so I’ll be having him fishing at 5, 6…to take him kayaking and hiking. I just keep thinking in my head, just trying to create 6-foot-5 quarterback.”

This is technically Murray’s second marriage. He tied the knot with One Tree Hill co-star Sophia Bush in April 2005, but the union was annulled five months later in September 2005.

Congratulations to the Roemer-Murray family!

“To our resident superhero, Gail, on her birthday. And though you’ll probably immediately reject that description of yourself, imagine you’re hearing it applied to someone else. Someone who leaps into pools to save a child without hesitation. Someone who builds a business dedicated to making anim…      

View image | gettyimages.com

Trigger warning for this story

This ^^ is Bryan Fuller, the showrunner, writer and executive producer for Hannibal, the critically acclaimed (but not crazy-popular) NBC show based on the books of Thomas Harris (Harris created Hannibal Lector, Will Graham, etc). Fuller is said to be a good guy doing good work on a well-done network show (all of which are rarities these days). As it turns out, Fuller also has some pretty strong opinions about portrayals of rape and sexual assault in the medium of television. Fuller sat down with Entertainment Weekly to give a preview of Hannibal’s Season 3, and he ended up discussing why his show wouldn’t be portraying a certain fictional character’s most depraved acts (the rape of nearly dead or completely dead women). Fuller also ended up discussing the rape of Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones. You can read the full EW piece here, and here are the relevant comments (some SPOILERS for Game of Thrones).

Why he’s bothered by the portrayal of rape on other TV shows: “There are frequent examples of exploiting rape as low-hanging fruit to have a canvas of upset for the audience. The reason the rape well is so frequently used is because it’s a horrible thing that is real and that it happens. But because it’s so overexploited, it becomes callous. That’s something I can’t derive entertainment from as an audience member – and I’m the first person in the audience for Hannibal. My role, as a showrunner, is to want to watch the show we’re creating. And if something feels exploitative or unnecessary, I’ll try to avoid it.

Throws some shade on crime procedurals: “A character gets raped” is a very easy story to pitch for a drama. And it comes with a stable of tropes that are infrequently elevated dramatically, or emotionally. I find that it’s not necessarily thought through in the more common crime procedurals. You’re reduced to using shorthand, and I don’t think there can be a shorthand for that violation— it’s an incredibly personal and intimate betrayal of something that should be so positive and healthy. And it’s frequently so thinly explored because you don’t have the real estate in 42 minutes to dig deep into what it is to be a victim of rape. It appears over and over again in crime procedurals without upping the ante and without exploring everything that happens. All of the structural elements of how we tell stories on crime procedurals narrow the bandwidth for the efficacy of exploring what it is to go through that experience. And I’m saying this as somebody who can derive immense entertainment from cannibalism – there’s an irony to cannibalism that I find horrific and amusing. I can totally get behind cannibalism and have fun with it. But rape? Not so much.

The rape of Sansa Stark: “I thought it was handled tastefully, all things considered. You could have done that scene on broadcast. With Thrones, you’re telling a story based on a time where those sort of violations were common. And women did not have the stance in that world to effectively resist. And with Sansa Stark, and that particular attack, we know Ramsay Bolton as someone who is a horrible violator of all things human—what he did to Theon Greyjoy is part and parcel of his cruelty. So it felt organic to the world—not only what happened to Sansa, but Gilly. It feels like we’re in the Wild Wild West, and that’s part of how they’re choosing to explore the story. I see why they’ve made the choices they have in the stories they’ve told, so I can’t criticize them for using that tool.

Will Sansa overcome something? “In the case of Sansa Stark, it feels like they are building toward something for this woman to overcome, and some horrible lessons that she has to learn about the patriarchy that surrounds her—such as Littlefinger knowing what could happen to her and knowing it might force her into taking more drastic vengeance [against the Boltons] that could benefit him. If I was the showrunner of Game of Thrones would I make those choices? I have no idea. But in terms of me coming into a crime procedural story on Hannibal and seeing the things I don’t like about other crime procedurals, it’s easier for me to say I don’t want that aspect in the one I’m doing.

[From EW]

The points he makes about crime procedurals exploiting rape storylines are very interesting – I felt something similar when I decided to stop watching Law & Order: SVU. I watched that show for years and I genuinely enjoyed the stories for a while, but after a time, I started to go numb as a viewer. There was too little focus on telling the victim’s stories and yes, many of the “ripped from the headlines” stories felt extra exploitative. (Plus, I tapped out when they brought in Sharon Stone as The Drunk ADA for a character arc. She was AWFUL.)

As for Game of Thrones… as I’ve said, I have a wait-and-see approach with Sansa’s storyline. What’s happened to her thus far feels authentic within the GoT world, although CB reminded me that Jamie Lannister raping Cersei by the body of their dead son just felt… wrong. Inauthentic to the story, wrong for those two characters and unnecessarily exploitative generally speaking.

Photos courtesy of Getty, NBC/Hannibal, HBO/Game of Thrones and WENN.

Dear Gossips,

Winter is here… with Child White Walkers. OMG, Game Of Thrones, I thought #9 was when the crazy sh-t usually goes down…?! So how did you sleep last night? Because I went to bed reminiscing about how Joffrey seems so mild now compared to the juvenile delinquent members of the Dea…      

View image | gettyimages.com

Here is a photo of Prince William attending the FA Cup match in England over the weekend. He’s the president of the British Football Association, so attending the game actually counts as work for William. Will has actually stepped out several times following the birth of his second child – after being largely MIA for the first three months of the year, William seems to be trying to get his public-appearance numbers up, finally. Which brings up an interesting question, raised by one of the Daily Mail’s columnists: why didn’t William attend the State Opening of Parliament?

Few watching the Queen perform her duty at the State Opening of Parliament could fail to have been impressed by her dignity and stoicism. There she was in her 90th year, weighed down by the heavy Imperial State Crown and the burden of duty which she has carried without complaint her entire adult life. Prince Charles and Camilla were there to support the Queen, but one absence was noted: that of Prince William.

The Queen reportedly hoped her grandson would attend, not least because she considers the State Opening of Parliament to be the high point of her constitutional duties. Wouldn’t it, therefore, have been a wonderful tribute to his grandmother for William to have supported her on such an important day? What an emphatic symbol of the permanence of our monarchy, and the security of succession, it would have been to see the Queen backed up by both Charles and William.

Instead, Prince William was still enjoying his six-week paternity leave, helping wife Kate and bonding with their new daughter and young son. Which is all very well, but it’s not as if he can’t break away from Kate and the children for a few hours. After all, he’s off to watch his beloved Aston Villa play Arsenal in the FA Cup final at Wembley — where, as president of the Football Association, he will present the trophy to the winner. And he managed to find time this week to give a down-with-the-kids interview to Gary Lineker. Lineker asked William when he’d take Prince George to his first football match, and he replied: ‘I’ll have to pass that by the missus, see how I can get away with it.’ Oh dear, a new dad complete with estuary English.

The point is that William is a Prince and he should behave like one. He should stop modelling himself on David Beckham and start modelling himself on his grandmother. Above all, he should stop giving the impression that he is the most reluctant of royals, a prickly, pick-and-mix Prince who enjoys the trappings of royalty while shirking its duties.

Prince Charles first attended the State Opening when he was 20. William is nearly 33 and still hasn’t been. To see three generations of monarchs present and future at Westminster this week would have sent a powerful message to the nation — and, crucially, a loving one to his dear grandmother.

[From The Daily Mail]

Is this too harsh? I don’t think so, although I will allow for the idea that William didn’t attend because Prince Charles didn’t want him to, maybe. But if the Queen wanted William to attend, wouldn’t that supersede? One of the weirdest parts about covering William and Kate’s minimal public appearances is that they actually do get many of the fun assignments: they go to galas and premieres, they get to count football and tennis matches as royal events and their royal tours seem like half-vacations. They don’t seem “interested” in the boring stuff of royal work, the actual statesmanship and diplomacy and legacy-building for future generations. It would be great if William showed an interest. And yes, I do think William comes across as “the most reluctant of royals, a prickly, pick-and-mix Prince who enjoys the trappings of royalty while shirking its duties.” Word.

View image | gettyimages.com

View image | gettyimages.com

Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.

Late last week, Ian Somerhalder got into trouble with his fans. He and Nikki Reed were continuing their “steamy” honeymoon in Paris. Some fans gathered outside the hotel, and Ian decided he wouldn’t pose with them. Understandable. What’s funny is that Ian didn’t simply walk past the group. He stopped to lecture them, which took longer than if he simply posed for a few joint selfies. Ian said, “Hey guys, listen. Everybody stop. No no, listen. I love you guys, I’m not taking a single photo today. It’s MY day. Don’t follow us, please. I love you guys. You’re so good to us … Don’t follow us. It’s too much.” Then one of the fans started crying, perhaps because Ian’s awesomeness (or pretentiousness) affected her so much. Here’s the video from a Twitterer who labelled Ian as “Zac Efron” for some reason.

lol I just met @ZacEfron, he’s a d*ck. pic.twitter.com/OaYzeB1g6S

— ??zeusdaya (@VEGANSHADE20) May 28, 2015

Michael K. at DListed has offically declared May 28th to be International Ian Somerhalder Day. That’s amazing. I do see where Ian’s coming from. He simply wanted to be left alone, and no fan has a right to demand anything from a celebrity. The lecture did go overboard, especially since Ian and Nikki have both acted so thirsty since they got together. They publish romantic “human” wedding videos and share private moments on social media all the time. Now Ian’s behaving like he and Nikki must be the second coming of Brangelina, and their dual fame is so crippling.

Ian got the point and posted an apology to Instagram:

Looking at the world through my eyes and always trying to see it through yours. I see you. I see all of you and find great beauty in each set of eyes. Anyone who knows me understands that I spend a great deal of my life with our fans. Our audience. The people that make this show and ISF happen- all with hearts, minds bodies and souls. It blows my mind that a man who tried to love so much, a man asking for one day, just one day to have a quiet walk down the street is so upsetting to people. So much love to you all … Goodnight and thank you.

[From Ian Somerhalder on Instagram]

Well he tried to apologize and sounds sincere enough. The whole situation is still amusing. Ian still seems to believe he and Nikki are a power couple. The lecture was rude, but maybe next time Ian will leave out a back door if he truly craves privacy.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN