Ice-T And Coco Welcome Baby Girl, Chanel Nicole

Ice-T and his wife Coco officially have a baby girl on board.

The couple welcomed its bundle of joy on Saturday (Nov. 28). Arriving early at 37 weeks into Coco’s pregnancy, baby Chanel Nicole made her Instagram debut hours later. Sharing that her and Ice-T’s baby clocked in at 5.7 pounds, Coco posted a precious first photo of her daughter’s face.

“Surprise!!! Look who came early!! Welcome the new arrival of Chanel Nicole.. A beautiful healthy 5.7 pound and 18 inch baby girl .Ice and I are so proud! I cried while she was coming out I was so excited to meet her!” she wrote.

READ: Ice-T Is Not A Fan Of Kanye West’s ‘Yeezy Season 2’ Fashion Collection

On the day of her debut, Chanel Nicole was also given her very own Instagram and Twitter accounts where the couple will share photos. Coco noted that she successfully delivered their baby girl after just three pushes, and shared another photo of she and Chanel making skin-to-skin contact after she was born. Ice-T took to Twitter following his daughter’s birth to thank his followers for their well wishes.

“Thank you for ALL the LOVE all of you have given us today.. You are truly appreciated… And we are humbled,” he wrote.

And in just a matter of hours, Chanel Nicole rounded up tens of thousands of followers online. Peep more pictures below:

READ: The Smurfs, Care Bears & Dora The Explorer Will Never Be The Same, Thanks To Ice T

Adele's '25' sells 3.38M in first week

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a number.

Adele's blockbuster 25 has sold a record-shattering 3.38 million copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Music. It easily bests early projections of 2.5 million made more than a week ago.

As Billboard reports, that's the largest sales week since Nielsen started tracking album sales in 1991. It's the first album to ever sell more than 3 million copies in one week and only the second to pass 2 million (the first was NSYNC's No Strings Attached, with 2.416 million sold in 2000).

Already, 25 is the biggest selling album of the year so far (nearly doubling the 1.8 million copies Taylor Swift's 1989 has moved in 2015). It will debut atop the Billboard200 album chart this week, making it Adele's second No. 1 album after her similarly mammoth 21. For comparison, 21 started with 352,000 copies sold its first week in March 2011, going on to sell more than 11 million in the USA

Marvel’s First Abortion

Given the GOP’s anti-abortion rhetoric—as well as Friday’s shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado—the abortion storyline in Netflix’s ‘Jessica Jones’ seems all too timely.

Last Thursday, Scandal’s Planned Parenthood episode showed Olivia Pope receiving a vacuum aspiration abortion. But last Friday, Marvel’s new Netflix series Jessica Jones depicted something even rarer: a medical abortion, after a rape, behind bars.

A week later, any conversation around abortion is inevitably refracted through the lens of Friday’s tragic shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, which left three dead. Details of that shooting, including the suspect’s motive, are still emerging. But in the wake of a string of arsons at Planned Parenthood clinics and a renewed wave of extreme rhetoric following this summer’s doctored undercover videos, it is safe to say that honest media representation of abortion has rarely been more timely, or more poignant.

One abortion on ABC’s Scandal was already enough to send extreme pro-lifersinto a tizzy last weekend, especially because Olivia’s procedure was set to the soundtrack of “Silent Night.” But two abortions on television in the same week is practically unheard of. That’s not just a coincidence; it’s an unprecedented sign that female showrunners like Shonda Rhimes and Jessica Jones boss Melissa Rosenberg aren’t going to shy away from showing a common medical procedure for women—controversy, critics, and extremists be damned.

For those who didn’t bingeJessica Jones over the holiday, here’s a primer for context: Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is a superhero who gave up her cape to be a private investigator after a period of being mind-controlled and repeatedly raped by a villainous Brit named Kilgrave (David Tennant). At the start of the series, Jessica rescues another of Kilgrave’s victims, Hope (Erin Moriarty), who then goes to jail for the murder of her parents, which she committed while still under Kilgrave’s control. It’s there that Hope realizes that she is pregnant, and decides she wants an abortion—a first in Marvel history.

“I can feel it growing like a tumor,” she tells Jessica, who suggests notifying the on-call doctor.

But Hope is already one step ahead of her: “Two months. That’s the soonest the doctor can get to me.”

For her, that’s not soon enough. In the previous episode, she was so determined to terminate the pregnancy that she hired another inmate to beat her up with the intention of causing a miscarriage. When Jessica checks in on her after the beating, Hope explains her need to have an abortion in the context of rape-related PTSD. She clarifies that she does want to have a child in the future, just not like this.

“Every second it’s there, I get raped again and again,” she says.

Her choice to have an abortion in this situation is not uncommon. A 1996 studyfound that 50 percent of women who became pregnant as the result of rape chose abortion. When miscarriage and adoption were factored in, less than one in three women opted to keep the child.  

What is uncommon is for a predicament like hers to be shown on television. An honest look at the challenges incarcerated women face in accessing the procedure? That’s subject matter so criminally underexplored that it apparently took a superhero to get it on the small screen.

Eventually, Jessica agrees to help Hope end her pregnancy by smuggling in an abortion pill. Dangerous? Potentially. Illegal? Yes. Unrealistic? Not necessarily.

Incarcerated women can legally receive abortions, but barriers to access sometimes lead them to consider desperate measures. A 2009 survey of health professionals who provided care in correctional facilities painted a spotty picture of abortion access behind bars. Only 68 percent of respondents said that inmates in their facilities could receive elective abortions, and only 54 percent of those respondents reported that they help inmates arrange appointments.

Providers in red states also indicated more limited access than those in blue states—a reflection of the fact that standards for reproductive healthcare in prison are largely decided at the local level.

In New York, where Jessica Jones is set, a 2008 NCLU investigation found that less than half of the state’s counties had policies on abortion access for women in prison, and less than a quarter provided “unimpeded access” to the procedure. In this context, Hope’s conclusion that she has no choice but to seek outside help is, sadly, all too believable.

“Once you take this, there’s no do-overs,” she warns her, placing the bright yellow pill in the palm of her hand. “You’ll be sick as shit for about eight hours so I need you to be 1,000 percent sure.”

Without hesitation, Hope gulps it down and starts repeating, “Please work fast. Please work fast.”

“That’s… sure,” Jessica observes.

Most abortion storylines on television, as Kevin Fallon noted last week, present the procedure as a decision that requires “grand, emotional handwringing.” Not Scandal, and certainly not Jessica Jones. For some women, abortion is indeed a difficult decision. For others, like Olivia Pope and Hope, it is more straightforward. Television has focused so predominantly on examples of the former that any instances of the latter still seem shocking. But they shouldn’t be. A longitudinal study of 667 women who had received an abortion published in July found that 95 percent did not regret their procedure “at all time points over three years.” In fact, it’s common for women to feel relieved and happy after an abortion.

Hope chanting “please work fast” after taking the pill instead of, say, crying is not some sign that she’s so hardened by her circumstances that she doesn’t feel the emotional pain that abortion opponents insist must stem from the procedure. Many women, especially women with a rape-related pregnancy, actively want an abortion without second-guessing or regrets.

Television has just rarely acknowledged that truth. Nor has it gone anywhere near recognizing the overall frequency of abortion.

Nearly three out of ten 10 women in the United States will have an abortion by age 45. The ratio of female television characters under 45 who have had abortions probably has a denominator in the hundreds of thousands. The fact that television shows so rarely depict abortion—and that, when they do, it’s usually presented as an agonizing decision—isn’t just an error of omission; it’s a complete break from reality. As Shonda Rhimes told Vulture in 2011, the rarity of abortion storylines is “ridiculous.”

But with women like Rhimes and Jessica Jones creator Melissa Rosenberg in charge of high-profile shows, perhaps that’s about to change. In a 2011 interview, Rosenberg called herself “extremely pro-choice [and] very outspoken about it, very much a feminist.”

It shouldn’t take a pro-choice showrunner to acknowledge the existence of abortion and depict it fairly. But as the reaction to last week’s Scandal episode proved, portraying abortion on television is still a heroic effort. Jessica Jones’ days as a uniform-wearing superhero might be behind her but, fortunately, she’ll take that job.

Captain America: Civil War trailer teases hero's epic clash with Iron Man

It’s brother against brother.

And, like a lot of real brothers, these two never really got along. 

The new trailer for Captain America: Civil War has dropped, showing the first footage of the true-blue hero breaking from the powers that be, and turning against the man in the metal suit: Iron Man.

Their dispute is the age old question of security versus liberty.

The havoc of the past 12 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has left civilians anxious about all these powerful beings roaming the planet. And after the city-state of Sokovia was ripped from the Earth inAvengers: Age of Ultron, the governments of the world have forged accords that would require all would-be heroes to prove their goodwill by working under strict oversight.

Steve Rogers, who in Captain America: The Winter Soldier discovered S.H.I.E.L.D. was corrupt at the top, has no faith left in bureaucracy and government. Tony Stark, whose recklessness unleashed Ultron on the world, is ready to accept some boundaries – and he’s willing to war with Cap to make sure he goes along with it. Mainly, Rogers just wants to protect his old friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who is trying to come back from the brainwashing that turned him into the villain and assassin known as the Winter Soldier.

They’re not helping their case by ganging up on old Tony…

Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. joined forces to reveal the teaser trailer for the May 6, 2016 movie on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, one night after the late-night host brokered a truce between feuding Star Wars actors Harrison Ford and Chewbacca. For a comedian, he’s a good peace negotiator.

The movie, directed by The Winter Soldier filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo, was inspired by the seven-part storyline written by Mark Millar in 2006-07 which pitted heroes against heroes in a crossover event that had the entire world of characters choosing up sides behind either Captain America or Iron Man. That happens in this movie, too, with veteran characters Black Widow, Falcon, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Scarlet Witch, among others, taking up arms against each other. 

A new figure is in the mix, too. Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther – whose allegiance is far from set – makes his debut in the teaser trailer as well.

Check out the film’s new poster below, and come back later for a deep-dive into the new trailer.

Jennifer Lawrence looks back on ‘Hunger Games’ — the series that changed her life

By Amy Longsdorf
Digital First Media

When Jennifer Lawrence began working on “The Hunger Games” franchise six years ago, she was far from a household name. She had earned an Oscar nomination for the little-seen indie “Winter’s Bone” and was a fanboy fave thanks to her turn as Mystique in the “X-Men” movies.

But it was Katniss Everdeen which put Lawrence over the top.

Not long after completing the first of the four “Hunger Games” movies, Lawrence auditioned for “Silver Linings Playbook.” She nabbed the starring role and went on to earn a Best Actress Oscar for playing the no-nonsense Tiffany.

Lawrence credits her incredible run of success, which includes another Oscar nod for 2013’s “American Hustle,” to her never-say-die work ethic. Let others vacation; Lawrence keeps her nose to the grindstone.

“I really just think of myself as a working woman,” says the actress. “I just go from set to set and work … There have been a few times when I really would have loved time off but I was very aware of how overwhelming the [‘Hunger Games’] movies are and how [indelible] this character is.

“[Katniss] is remarkable. I think she’s the greatest female character ever. So I wanted to keep working so people could see me [play] other characters, and know the other things that I could do.”

During the final installment of the “Hunger Games” series, Katniss, recovering from an assassination attempt engineered by the brainwashed Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), is on a mission to take out the dastardly President Snow (Donald Sutherland). With a company of rebels led by Gale (Hemsworth), Katniss makes her way to the Capitol, side-stepping bobby-trapped “pods” capable of unleashing fire, bullets and waves of oil. But as UK’s Guardian newspaper noted, “Katniss still finds herself nagged by doubt: in the heat of war, the side she’s fighting for no longer seems that different from the tyranny she always hoped to overthrow.”

The series, which has racked up $2.3 billion at the box-office so far, began with Katniss being forced to hunt other teenagers for the enjoyment of Snow and winds up with a take-charge heroine so fearless she would give Joan of Arc a run for her money.

With “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part Two” in theaters, Lawrence is in a reflective mood, eager to look back on the series which has touched a chord with so many movie-goers.

“I have a feeling of accomplishment, which I think will [increase] when the film finally comes out,” says the actress. “I didn’t really feel [so sad saying goodbye to Katniss.] But I think it will be pretty bizarre when the movie’s finally out and finished and everything is officially done

“I think that’ll be a pretty weird feeling on a personal level because this movie’s been my life for so many years.”

“I hope I’ve grown up [ in the last six years],” says the actress, 25. “It’s much easier to be mature on sets without Josh and Liam. We’ve all helped each other get a handle on everything. Going off and not doing movies with them was like losing training wheels.”

Fans of “The Hunger Games” movies can expect a final installment that’s not only darker and more intense but heavier on battle sequences and boasting a bigger body count.

In addition to overcoming Snow’s booby traps, Katniss and company have to make their ways through endless, watery sewers.

Shooting the underground scenes in Paris and Berlin took three weeks and exhausted the cast as well as director Francis Lawrence.

“It was absolutely the most miserable three weeks,” says the filmmaker. “It felt like nine weeks. It’s kind of a fun sequence to … see [when] it comes together. But these tunnels, you had to duck and we all had to wear hard hats. The water was heated. So it made [the environment] humid and smoky. It was wet, it was miserable.”

Lawrence not only had to navigate walking through the tunnels, she also had to fight in them.

“When we got to the fight sequence, we were all complaining,” she says. “All of our gear and all of our costumes were completely waterlogged. It felt like [we were carrying around] an extra 2,000 pounds.”

Unlike a lot of dystopian science-fiction, “The Hunger Games” suggests that all is not lost, and individuals, if they band together, can make a difference.

Producer Nina Jacobson, who’s overseen the entire series, hopes audiences take away from Katniss a belief in “defiance in the face of injustice and kindness in the face of cruelty.”

Says the producer, “I think the popularity of dystopian fiction speaks to an anxiety that young people have about what awaits them. What I find so hopeful in these books and these movies is the fact that you can create change. You can refuse to play the game and see your world change as a result.”

In many ways, Katniss seems to have rubbed off on Lawrence who, in a recent magazine article, bravely shared her views on the income disparity between men and women in Hollywood.

In the piece, Lawrence wrote that during negotiations for “American Hustle,” she didn’t push for a higher salary because she was worried about what others might think of her. The end result was that her male co-stars Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale earned considerably more than she did for the same movie.

“[The article] wasn’t so much about complaining about not getting paid more because I’m a woman but about how my own mentality got in my way of fighting just as hard as the men did to get a better deal,” says Lawrence.

“I wanted to write about how my own fears about how I’m going to be portrayed or how I’m going to look [affected me] … Obviously the men in the movie didn’t think that way.”

Almost instantly, Lawrence received backlash for her opinions. “It’s been called ‘Jennifer Lawrence’s bratty display,’” says the actress. “Thank you for completely making my point that when a woman speaks up and is assertive and has a voice, she’s called a brat. I just don’t see men getting called brats.”

Now that “The Hunger Games” has wrapped up, Lawrence still has the “X-Men” franchise ongoing and says she wouldn’t rule out joining the Marvel Universe.

“I would love to play in the sandbox with [Marvel],” she says.

First up, Lawrence will pop up in at least three other films, which are in various stages of production. She plays a powerful businesswoman in “Joy,” which is due Christmas Day from David O. Russell, her “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle” director.

Also forthcoming is Steven Spielberg’s “It’s What I Do,” the story of wartime photographer Lynsey Addario, who was one of four journalists held captive by the Libyan Army in 2011; and “Passengers,” a sci-fi drama due in 2016

If there’s a downside to Lawrence’s recent string of success, it’s her loss of anonymity, which, she says, required a period of adjustment.

“There were a few years of just getting used to it,” says the actress. “Your entire world changes. Now it’s very easy for me because I’m isolated. I have a new normal now so I feel very stable and normal and happy.

“But it took a few years to get used to being looked at differently because it’s a very alienating feeling. You don’t feel different but everyone reacts to you differently.

“The pressure, you just can’t think about it. It’ll just keep you up [nights] … People can react to me, and do whatever they want. And that’s fine. But I have a job to do.”

And Lawrence plans on doing that job for years to come.

“I enjoy working,” she says. “There are certain things that I like to escape from in this business but for the most part I don’t really feel like going off into the country.

“If I went to some place quiet, I’d probably lose my mind. I’m sure one day I will want to retire and slow down but, as of right now, I love working. I love being busy.

Jon Hamm and Emma Stone auditioned for 'Star Wars' on 'SNL'

In honor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' impending release date, director JJ Abrams stopped by SNL Saturday night to share some "never-before-seen screen tests" of famous celebrities reading for various roles.

Actual cast members Daisy Ridley and John Boyega were there to provide support to the SNL cast's best celebrity impressions, with a few surprise appearances mixed in.

And the result was one of SNL's strongest sketches all season:

And Emma Stone parodied her own racial controversy:

Auditioning for Rey, Stone acknowledged the backlash that accompanied her playing a half-Asian character in Aloha earlier this year.

"Before we start, I know that the Star Wars universe is very diverse, and I don't know if you saw the movie Aloha, but I can play a very convincing part-Asian woman," she joked self-deprecatingly.

Adele Delivers Another Shiver-Inducing Performance on SNL

Adele delivered another knockout live performance of her new song "When We Were Young" when she appeared on Saturday Night Livethis weekend. 

The British singer – who released her comeback album, 25, on Friday – wore TK details TK. 

The SNL performance marked the 27-year-old's first live American TV performance as part of her 25 album push. Her last US television performance was singing "Skyfall" during the 2013 Oscars (where she also took home the award for Best Original Song). 
Adele has been in the middle of a whirlwind tour for her new album. Earlier this month, she performed "Hello" at France's NRJ Awardsand took part in Adele at the BBC, a special hour-long program dedicated to the singer and featured an interview with Graham Norton. 
Adele's slew of appearances and performance will likely help with her album's success – Billboard previously reported that CD and digital sales of 25 are expected to reach more than 3 million in the album's first week.