Happy Birthday, Penélope Cruz! Nine Star Turns 38

Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images MORE: Cute Alert! Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Take Baby Leo Out for Ice Cream GALLERY: Fashion Spotlight: Penélope Cruz

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Week in Pictures: Kourtney Kardashian, Halle
Berry, Katie Holmes and More Are Marvelous Moms

Prince William Kate Middleton: Their Greatest Newlywed Moments Time 100 Gala 2012 2012 Billboard Latin Music Awards Jessica Simpson’s Pregnant Fashions Article source:...

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The Wanted Have Only Bad Things To Say About
'Rude' Christina Aguilera

U.K. boyband The Wanted performed on "The Voice" last week and have slammed judge Christina Aguilera for being "rude" and a "total b**ch." The band reportedly got a cold reception from the pop sta...

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Obama To Attend Celeb-Filled Dinner Hosted By
Jimmy Kimmel

HuffPost spoke with celebrities and political figures attending Saturday morning's Garden Brunch ahead of the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Watch the video above.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will attend the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday night.

Jimmy Kimmel, who hosts ABC's late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will be the featured comedian at the association's 98th annual dinner at the Washington Hilton.

The White House Correspondents' Association dinner is traditionally attended by the president and first lady, along with various government officials and members of the press corps.

Proceeds from the event fund scholarships and awards to support and recognize excellence in journalism.

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Wedding Roundup: Sweet Proposal Stories, Outdoor
Décor, Homemade Favors, and More Inspiration For Your Big Day

Wedding season is in full swing, and we have everything you need when it comes to dresses, décor, bridal beauty, and more. Whether you're a bridesmaid in need of the best tips, seeking savvy spending advice, or in the mood to check out the most memorable TV and movie weddings, look no further. Click through now to see our ever-expanding 2012 wedding season coverage!

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Rick Santorum Taking On Late Night

LOS ANGELES -- Republican Rick Santorum lost his bid to become president this year, but he's earned a trip to Jay Leno's couch.

"The Tonight Show" announced Friday that the former Pennsylvania senator will appear on Leno's Burbank stage on May 8.

It will be his first appearance on the NBC late-night program.

Santorum pulled out of the GOP primary earlier this month, clearing the way for Mitt Romney to claim victory in the battle for the nomination to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama.

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WATCH: Bill Maher Decries The Power Of Political
Sex Scandals

Between the Secret Service sex scandal, the John Edwards trial and the never-ending GOP Presidential primary, it's hard to ignore how often sex scandals dominate the news media. On Friday night's "Real Time," Bill Maher asked, "Why do we punish sex so much more than everything else?"

After three minutes of "New Rules," Maher rips into network news programs for focusing on the Secret Service scandal so much this week, deeming the entire story an excuse to show that bikini girl's photo on TV and call it news.

"The only politics we understand is scandal, and the only scandal we understand is sex," Maher concluded before getting into the reporting on Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and John Edwards' sexual deviances. He pointed out that each politician had done equally if not more dishonorable things than commit adultery ("Newt Gingrich has committed every crime in Dante's Inferno except grave robbing!") so why is it primarily the sex scandals that seal their fate?

Watch the clip above and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Via Gotcha Media

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Laura Prudom: 'Supernatural' Recap: Felicia Day
Gets Her Geek On

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 7, Episode 20 of The CW's "Supernatural," entitled "The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo."

It's "Supernatural" custom to follow emotionally heavy episodes with lighter installments, but in the right hands, even an episode laden with humor can propel the mythology forward. Such was the case with the witty, quippy "Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo," confidently scripted by Robbie Thompson.

Thompson has fast distinguished himself as the MVP of Season 7's writing staff -- though he's a newcomer this year, he's already written two of the strongest episodes of the season: "Slash Fiction" and the phenomenal time-travel story "Time After Time." Ably assisted by first-time director John MacCarthy (who has served as First Assistant Director on 15 episodes of the show since Season 2), Thompson's script was full of energy, balancing humor and pathos in a believable fashion, and nailing the Winchester brothers' inimitable voices in a way that some of the more established writers still struggle with.

While I'm certain that MacCarthy's choice of non-linear narrative and "24"-esque split-screen effects probably didn't work for everyone, I found his directorial decisions to be engaging, and in-keeping with the tone of Thompson's script. There were plenty of amusing character beats that were well-served by the flexible direction -- Felicia Day's entrance (and subsequent elevator dance) to "Walking On Sunshine" springs immediately to mind.

I find it interesting that "Tattoo" worked so well for me this week after I was left cold by "Party On, Garth," which, at least superficially, shared some similarities with this week's episode. I think my dislike for "Garth" stemmed from the episode focusing more on a Monster Of The Week hunt than a mythology story, and because that episode felt tonally imbalanced when switching between horror and humor --something that Thompson apparently doesn't have a problem with. While certain scenes in "Garth" seemed unnecessarily long or convoluted, "Tattoo" seemed to have a sharper sense of pacing, which helped the hour fly by for me.

Then again, as with "Garth," perhaps your enjoyment was meted according to your appreciation of Felicia Day instead of DJ Qualls, since the episode did place the narrative focus on Charlie rather than Sam and Dean. While I wouldn't describe myself as a die-hard fan of Day (having only seen her in her Whedonverse projects), the character was sufficiently three-dimensional to make me care about her fate and want to hang out with her. Still, I can understand viewers who might've been eager to spend more time with Sam and Dean so close to the finale, especially since the last three episodes have all seen the boys taking something of a backseat to secondary characters. (I wonder if the writers were trying to script Sam and Dean light in deference to Jared Padalecki's impending fatherhood -- while I was scheduling my set visit, I was warned that he might have to dash off at a moment's notice in case his son made an early appearance.)

Geeky "Charlie Bradbury" was a wonderfully welcome addition to the roster of strong female characters on the show; made all the more distinctive not just because of her sexuality, but because she actually survived the episode. It's both realistic and sensible to add a canonical lesbian into the mix -- especially given how certain subsets of fandom seem to react to the inclusion of heterosexual women in Sam and Dean's lives -- and Dean's attempt to guide her through flirting with the security guard was an inspired moment.

The episode was a veritable cornucopia of nerdy references, homages and easter eggs -- so much so that it would be almost impossible to list them all. Some of my favorites included Charlie's Hermione Granger fixation (and Sam's equally geeky "Harry Potter" knowledge); her "Lord of the Rings" Arwen laptop background; her Han and Leia "I love you," "I know," exchange with her co-worker; Dean's "Veronica Mars" reference; "What the frak is a Leviathan?"; the "Star Wars" bobbleheads; "I was drunk, it was Comic-Con," "We've all been there," and Charlie's sassy Vulcan farewell, to name a few. Feel free to chime in with your stand-outs in the comments. I also enjoyed seeing the boys shake things up by revisiting their penchant for unusual disguises -- it was great to see them dressed as ground crew at the private airfield when they switched out Dick's package for a Borax bomb.

The episode was not without its minor niggles, however. Having Bobby pop back in to info-dump on the Winchesters only lends credence to the "deus ex machina"/exposition criticisms that have been leveled at the character for the past few seasons. Frank's handy automated email and the tracking device on his hard-drive also fall into that category, although the character is so canonically paranoid that at least it makes narrative sense.

On the other hand, I am interested in Bobby's ongoing struggle with the vengeful side of his new form. He certainly proved that he can still make himself useful as a ghost, but that those darker impulses are clearly too tempting to ignore. It seems fitting that, just as Sam and Dean have struggled with their own dark sides -- demon blood addiction and hell-inspired torture, respectively -- the past couple of seasons have allowed the show's two main supporting characters, Castiel and Bobby, to explore those facets of their personalities too. We didn't see too much of it with Castiel (although it was enough to be chilling), but it seems that Bobby's anger will be an ongoing concern in the lead-up to the finale. I wish we'd had another scene with Bobby to explore his feelings of remorse -- or lack thereof -- for breaking Charlie's arm, but perhaps we'll see that carry through to next week's episode.

We also got to see a lot more of Dick this week (get your minds out of the gutter). While Dick is lacking the gravitas and obvious menace of Azazel or Zachariah, I do appreciate that the writers are trying to switch things up and offer us a villain unlike anything we've seen before. The slick, charismatic one-percenter is a timely antagonist, although I'll admit, the "Soylent Green" endgame doesn't exactly fill me with dread the way the apocalypse or Dean being sent to hell did in earlier seasons. It's a far more insidious plot, in that it plays on modern fears of big brother surveillance and businesses or governments conspiring against the general population, but now that the show has been to hell and back, I think it's natural to expect that nothing else will quite measure up to the impact of Eric Kripke's original five-year plan. I'm hoping the season finale will surprise me on that front, of course, because I'm sure there are potential outcomes that I never could've predicted, but for now, I remain ambivalent about the grandeur of Dick Roman's nefarious scheme. I did enjoy the mock SucroCorp ad, even if it wasn't quite as hilarious as the variations we saw back in "Changing Channels."

Overall, "Tattoo" was an engaging and enjoyable hour, one that was buoyed by Felicia Day's spunky, geektastic performance -- I hope we'll have the opportunity to see her again next season.

What did you think of "The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo"? Did you enjoy Felicia Day's performance, or would you have preferred to see more Sam and Dean? Weigh in below!

"Supernatural" airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW.

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Laura Prudom: 'Nikita' Recap: Birkhoff Faces
Financial Trouble

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 2, Episode 20 of The CW's "Nikita," entitled "Shadow Walker."

I always feel a little sorry for "Nikita" episodes that follow explosive, character-driven hours like last week's "Wrath" or Season 1's game-changing "Covenants," since even the most dynamic story would pale in comparison to the evolution we saw from our heroine on April 20.

Still, while episodes dealing with finances or computer hacking generally make my eyes glaze over, what "Shadow Walker" excelled at was emphasizing the family dynamic between Nikita, Michael, Birkhoff and Alex. In underpinning the money-driven hour with realistic character beats, writer Kristen Reidel kept the narrative engaging, shifting the normal pairings of Nikita/Michael, Nikita/Alex and Alex/Birkhoff around so that Alex could share a storyline with Michael, and Nikita and Birkhoff could have some long-overdue time together to process what happened when the hacker shot Carla and made his first kill.

Birkhoff's argument with Nikita had clearly been building for a while; when they started working together at the beginning of the season, she and Michael immediately fell into old Division habits and started ordering their recalcitrant nerd around, sometimes inadvertently treating him as their sidekick instead of their equal. For a guy who has spent years under Percy's thumb, it makes sense that encountering another power imbalance after he'd escaped Division would begin to rankle our erstwhile Shadow Walker. His guilt and trauma over accidentally killing Carla was probably a contributory factor, too -- as Nikita admitted, "the first time you kill someone stays with you for a long, long time," and judging by the way Birkhoff froze as soon as he got his hands on a gun in Ian Damascus' home, he was probably suffering with a little PTSD from the experience.

Their quiet scene in the car and later discussion back at the beach house were wonderful moments, played with warmth and depth by Maggie Q and Aaron Stanford. Similar to the last phenomenal Birkhoff-centric episode, "Fair Trade," Stanford did an outstanding job of finding the nuance in a character who, in less capable hands, could otherwise be written off as comic relief. His arrogance belies a deep-rooted insecurity, which Stanford effortlessly portrayed with nothing more than a look as he observed a group of friends laughing together in the coffee shop, emphasizing his own isolation and loneliness. It's to Stanford's credit that he can alternate between scathing banter and vulnerable introspection so convincingly in the space of one episode, and I was glad to see him once again let down his walls and admit -- even without words -- just how much he cares about his little makeshift family, and how much he desperately needs them to care about him. Having Alex offer him a check was such a simple moment, but it speaks volumes about the bonds these characters share.

If the series could end with a scene like the one that closed out this episode, I would be perfectly content -- it was a beautiful moment, especially with Nikita watching over her ragtag bunch of misfit toys with that look of contentment that's been missing for so many weeks.

As I mentioned above, it was also great to see Alex and Michael interacting for a prolonged period again, since they had a believable rapport back in Season 1, and Michael has always alternated between big brother and surrogate father figure for her. I especially appreciated Nikita needling Michael into prying for her, with Michael reluctantly trying to dig for dirt on Alex's relationship with Sean. I love that Nikita and Michael are now back in such a solid place, and that Michael was totally sincere when telling Alex that their tumultuous relationship is entirely worth all the effort and hardship they've endured.

It's a simple thing, but it's also surprisingly touching (and amusing) to see Alex behaving more like a kid when our core four are together. She lost out on so much of her childhood thanks to her father's death and subsequent prostitution and drug addiction, but in recent weeks, we've seen more of Alex's playfulness come to the surface -- whether she's drawing stick figures of Nikita and Ari, gloating over her mad hacking skills or offering Michael strategies based on movies she's seen, that gleeful, youthful edge is a beautiful thing to see from someone who's lost so much.

The only thing that didn't work for me this week was Percy's scene with the mystery man at an art gallery. I know all will be revealed in time, but vague, portentous dialogue is irritating on any show, and I don't think "Nikita" really needs to rely on those kinds of tactics to keep us engaged. I would've preferred to lose that scene in favor of more time with our loveable rogue family, and expand on Percy and his burgeoning new alliance properly next week. Still, it's a minor quibble in an episode that gave us a lot of excellent character moments, so I won't complain too loudly.

What did you think of "Shadow Walker"? Did you enjoy the character dynamics as much as I did? How do you think Percy will bankroll his evil schemes now? Weigh in below!

"Nikita" airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.

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Louis Virtel: WATCH: Louis Virtel's 'Weeklings'
Recaps The Week In Pop Culture

Welcome to Weeklings, AfterElton.com's weekly video recap of pop culture, brought to you by me, Twitter pox Louis Virtel.

I've got a lot on its mind this week: Lindsay Lohan is playing Elizabeth Taylor? Crazy! Betsey Johnson is bankrupt? Absurd! Snooki and JWoww still matter? I die. Why can't the world concentrate on more important things than Jersey Shore, like the hotness of Harry Shum, Jr.?

I discuss all this and more in the latest Weeklings. Look out for a very special cameo by Tim Gunn, too. He and Betsey Johnson have an interesting past, apparently.

Also: Weeklings joins The Huffington Post's Gay Voices tally this week. I hope the HuffPost readership is into Cat on a Hot Tin Roof puns and limp-wristed insanity. That's what I'm serving. Probably forever.

WATCH:

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