Ellen DeGeneres' goal of setting a retweet record with her star-studded selfie was achieved before the Oscars telecast was even over.

During a comic bit, the Oscars host prevailed upon actor Bradley Cooper to take a picture with her and several other stars crowding around, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Spacey, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Hollywood named the brutal, unshrinking historical drama "12 Years a Slave" best picture at the 86th annual Academy Awards.

Steve McQueen's slavery odyssey, based on Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir, has been hailed as a landmark corrective to the movie industry's long omission of slavery stories, following years of whiter tales like 1940 best-picture winner "Gone With the Wind."

Think Ashley will be maid-of-honor? Mary-Kate Olsen is engaged to marry her boyfriend of nearly two years, French banker Olivier Sarkozy, sources confirm exclusively to Us Weekly.

Olsen, 27, and Sarkozy, 44 -- half-brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy -- first stepped out together in 2012. Since then, they've been a frequent presence at basketball games in New York City, where they live together in a $6.25 million townhouse.

Hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday in Algeciras in southern Spain to bid farewell to renowned flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia, who was laid to rest in his native Andalusian village.

A crowd of fans of the musician, who died in Mexico on Tuesday aged 66, stood in the rain outside the Notre Dame de la Palma church where the funeral mass was held.

The Oscars could be Mexico's big night, with three Mexicans nominated for directing, cinematography and acting.

Except that some in Mexico aren't looking at it that way.

A Canada casino says a performance by U.S. comic George Lopez will go on as scheduled Friday after he was arrested for alleged public intoxication.

Ceasars Windsor spokeswoman Jhoan Baluyot says the show is continuing as planned.

A California judge has ordered Chris Brown to remain in an anger-management rehab program and told the pop singer to return to court in two months.

The judge on Friday scheduled Brown's next hearing for April 23. That would come after what's expected to be a brief assault trial in Washington earlier that month.

More than 150,000 spectators are expected to throng the streets for Sydney's annual Mardi Gras parade on Saturday with organizers promising a bigger and sparklier event than ever before.

Some 10,000 revelers on 144 individual floats will make the journey down Oxford Street, hub of Sydney's gay and lesbian nightlife, in a vibrant show featuring drag queens, political parodies and plenty of glitter.

From winners sobbing uncontrollably to shocking political outbursts, bizarre snubs and streakers, the Oscars have seen it all -- and Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony could provide fresh drama.

Organizers of Hollywood's biggest night are white-knuckled as they brace for more unscripted moments that could anger television viewers or throw the finely calibrated global telecast off schedule.

There are four main centers where Academy members are concentrated: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and London. The Academy hosts screenings around these four centers. It has several hundred members in Britain.

Awards screenings for Academy members tend to start in November, and from then until the Oscars: they’re almost every day. The distributors organize them all for us and the Academy collates them into convenient daily screenings. We’re pretty spoiled. We’re spoon-fed, really. But it is key for us to see as many films as we can before casting our votes, and if we don’t there’s no excuse.