Jennifer Aniston, who appears topless in her latest project Wanderlust, says she was unfazed about baring her chest.

The 43-year-old says she really enjoyed filming in Clarkesville, Georgia, where no one batted an eyelid about nude actors getting make-up applied to their entire body, reports thesun.co.uk.

"You do get nervous when there’s a day where it’s oops, I’m naked. I wouldn’t go topless for a cause. But we’ve been among these people in this environment for almost two months. The topless scene was nothing compared to what happened in the two months prior," said Aniston.

Aniston says filming Wanderlust was as fun as shooting long-running US sitcom Friends.

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – The biggest party of the year is still days away, on February 21, but New Orleans is already immersed in the celebration of Mardi Gras, with massive parades rolling every night along several miles of oak-draped St. Charles Avenue.

Families and friends gather by the thousands along the route to take in the spectacular parades, which are staged by organizations known as “krewes.” The processions often feature celebrities among the costumed riders on dozens of elaborate floats that celebrate Greek mythology and are interspersed with marching bands, dancers and men carrying flaming torches.

Eleven-year-old Mackenzie Reagan and her mother stood amid the throngs who came out Thursday evening for a parade trifecta that included the all-female Krewe of Muses parade.

“I can’t wait for Muses,” the young girl shrieked. “I love seeing the ladies’ costumes, and I really hope I catch some shoes.”

Float riders in every parade toss colorful trinkets known as “throws” to the crowds, and miniature high-heeled shoes coated with colored glitter are the signature throw of the Krewe of Muses. Along with the plastic-bead necklaces tossed by every krewe, the shoes are among the most sought-after trinkets of Carnival.

“From the beginning we knew we wanted our throws to be girly things, like lipstick, compacts and shoes,” Krewe of Muses founder Staci Rosenberg said in an interview a few days before the parade.

Rosenberg started Muses to give women an opportunity to enjoy the thrill of riding in Carnival processions. The parades have been dominated by men since the 19-century founding of the city’s oldest Mardi Gras organizations such as the krewes of Rex and Proteus.

Mardi Gras, which is French for Fat Tuesday, comes the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent on the Catholic calendar. By tradition, it is a day that invites unbridled, some might say excessive, behavior in preparation for the somber season of sacrifice to follow.

The Carnival season that leads up to Mardi Gras actually begins in January, with a heavy schedule of parades and balls slated during the two weeks prior to Fat Tuesday.

Members of the Krewe of Muses, which has amassed 2,000 float riders and a waiting list of a thousand more since its first parade in 2001, make their mark on the celebration by donning satin tunics, brightly colored masks and feathered headdresses. Then they board 26 colorful floats for a parade that Rosenberg said has the flavor of “a girls night out, but with fun for kids.”

Muses this year invited Oscar-nominated actress and New Orleans native Patricia Clarkson (“The Green Mile,” “Shutter Island,” “Pieces of April”) to serve as its celebrity “royalty,” and Clarkson dazzled Thursday night as she tossed beads, shoes and other trinkets from her float – a 17-foot-tall, red platform pump encrusted with fiber-optic lights that continually changed color.

Clarkson is not the only celeb headlining this year’s parades. Actor Will Ferrell, rocker Bret Michaels, pop queen Cyndi Lauper, singer Adam Levine and Maroon 5, and newscaster Anderson Cooper are among the others sharing their stardom with parade goers.

Michaels and Lauper will not only ride but also perform for the post-parade ball of the Krewe of Orpheus, founded and headed each year by singer and New Orleans native Harry Connick Jr.

The color, scope and pure spectacle of Mardi Gras in New Orleans have prompted many observers to dub it “the greatest free party on Earth.” Writer and Mardi Gras historian Errol Laborde said the characterization is not far off the mark.

Few other festivals or events anywhere in the world cover a two-week period and encompass the number of events typical of Carnival in New Orleans, Laborde, who is editor of New Orleans Magazine, said.

New Orleans krewes adhere strictly to a rule that prohibits commercial sponsorship of their events. “The people riding in the parades pay all the costs to put on a show that the audience can enjoy for free,” he said.

Those costs are not small. A recent study of the economics of Mardi Gras, by Tulane University economics professor Toni Weiss, estimated that krewes spend more than $20 million annually to put on their events, and a big chunk of the spending goes toward throws.

It is money well spent, according to Laborde. He said the throws are like powerful magnets that draw both riders and viewers to Mardi Gras parades and turn the processions into unique events.

“If our parades didn’t have throws, they would be more like a Macy’s or a Rose Bowl parade,” he said. “There would be just a few people riding, and all they would do is wave – what’s the point?”

(Editing by Greg McCune)

Shakira was attempting to take a picture of a sea lion, when the animal thought her mobile phone was a fish and attacked her. The singer suffered minor scratches.

The 35-year-old singer was trying to take a photograph of the animal when it jumped out of the water and tried to bite her. Shakira’s brother pulled her away, but the brother-sister duo couldn’t manage without a few bruises, reports thesun.co.uk.

Shakira posted a blog and pictures of the incident, which happened last weekend during her holiday in Cape Town, South Africa.

"This afternoon I happened to see some sea lions and seals. I thought how cute they were so decided to get closer than all of the other tourists and went down to a rock. Suddenly, one jumped out of the water so fast that it got about one foot away from me, looked me in the eye, roared in fury and tried to bite me.

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February 16
Michael Roach
7pm-8pm

Michael Roach sings and plays guitar in an East Coast style of blues that dates back to the 1920s. After spending several years learning directly from such well-known figures as John Jackson, John Cephas and Jerry Ricks, Roach has developed his own style and is now an exceptional performer. He interacts with his audience and entertains as he plays.

Acoustic Alchemy
8.30pm-10pm

Formed in England in the early 1980s, Acoustic Alchemy have pushed the limits of the acoustic guitar’s potential by embracing a spectrum of musical styles ranging from straight jazz to folk to rock to world music and beyond. In the two and a half decades since their earliest recordings, the group has assembled and sustained a vast and loyal following that stretches well beyond their UK origins.

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Celebrities launching fashion lines don’t always transfer their fame to runway success, but a sprinkling of big names such as Victoria Beckham, Gwen Stefani and twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are becoming seasoned campaigners.

All four have collections showing during this week’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, and while none are as respected as top American designers, they have earned loyal followings by carving out niches, paying attention to tailoring and showing collections away from the glare of the key catwalks.

Celebrities who have tried their hands at fashion have often been criticised or quickly closed their collections ref. Jennifer Lopez and Lindsay Lohan both struggled, and Kanye West’s recent clothing line debut in Paris was lampooned by some.

In the often prickly and elitist world of fashion, stars of movies, music and TV looking to join the club are measured by sometimes harsher standards than up-and-coming or little-known designers, according to experts such as Tracy Taylor, US editor for online fashion retailer Net-A-Porter.

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A Finnish sci-fi comedy about Nazis invading Earth has become the most talked-about movie at this year's Berlin Film Festival.

Iron Sky is a B-movie spoof that has been screening at the festival's sidebar event, called Panorama.

The plot revolves around a group of Nazis who escape to the moon at the end of World War II to plan a new assault.

Interest in the film has raised eyebrows at the Berlin film gala, which is more used to heavyweight fare.

Last year A Separation – a compelling Iranian drama about the dissolution of a marriage – took home the festival's main prize, the Golden Bear.

The 2012 festival has seen the premiere of Angelina Jolie's directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, a film about the Bosnian war.

Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt are said to be among the stars who have caught Iron Sky during the screening.

Iron Sky's plot is set in motion in 2018, when a Nazi soldier comes face to face with a US astronaut.

Added to the farce is a US President with more than a passing resemblance to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and a navy cruiser called the USS George W Bush.

Its appeal has been hailed by some members of the international press as a sign that Germans are now at peace with their Nazi past.

Yet local journalists are more cautious. "Although I heard that audiences were laughing out loud, in my screening… it wasn't like that," said Kerstin Sopke of the Associated Press.

"It's still a delicate subject here, and you have to be really careful how it's done. I was a little bit wary, but actually I think they did the comedy well.

"The inclusion of so much US satire when there is a presidential election campaign was also holding up a mirror to our time."

Iron Sky's production team have appropriated the conspiracy theory that the Nazis had an advanced UFO project during World War II.

However, its director Timo Vuorensola – whose last work was a Star Trek pastiche called Star Wreck – still describes the film as a "stupid joke".

Most of the funding for the £7m project was obtained after an online appeal to fans.

After successfully using the public to generate funding, its producers aim to launch a series of comics and licensed merchandise.

The Independent's Kaleem Aftab has praised Iron Sky, saluting its "over-the-top storytelling at its riotous and enjoyable best".

Yet The Guardian's Andrew Pulver called it "a giant damp squib" that was "not nearly as funny or cruel as its killer premise suggests".

London's Time Out magazine agreed with that assessment, calling it "a crude slapstick romp wholly lacking in charm, wit or excitement".

There is no doubt, though, that the film has whipped up an online buzz echoing that generated by another gaudy B-movie – 2006's Snakes on a Plane.

The Berlin Film Festival runs until 19 February.

Whitney Houston, a willowy church singer with a towering voice who became a titan of the pop charts in the 1980s and 1990s but then saw much of her success crumble away amid the fumes of addiction and reckless ego, has died. She was 48.

Kristen Foster, her publicist, announced that the singer had died and police sources later confirmed that she was found unresponsive in her room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel about 3.30pm on Saturday. Paramedics performed CPR on her, but she was pronounced dead at 4pm, Beverly Hills Police Lt Mark Rosen told KTLA News. An investigation into the cause of death is pending. On Thursday afternoon at the hotel, Houston drew the attention of reporters and security staff with her erratic behaviour, dripping sweat and dishevelled clothes. The singer was disruptive at that day’s rehearsals for music mogul Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy party.

The beginning

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, and powerful female voices and the sound of choirs were in her ears before she could walk or talk. Cissy Houston, her mother, was a gospel singer. Aretha Franklin was her godmother and Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick were her cousins. There was little doubt that young Whitney would follow their career paths.

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Story By: by Bob Mondello

Havana Heat: The title characters meet cute and swing hard in Chico and Rita, an animated love story with an infectious Latin groove.

Chico & Rita

Not rated

With: Limara Meneses, Eman Xor Ona, Mario Guerra

In Spanish with subtitles

In the 11 years since the Oscars introduced an award for Best Animated Feature, the category has been dominated by children’s movies, often with computer-animated pandas, penguins and ogres at their center. This year’s a little different. Two of the animated films are subtitled, and one is definitely aimed at adults: the Spanish film Chico and Rita, an animated love story steeped in jazz.

Think Havana, 1946, rendered in pen and ink, vintage cars roaring down tropical streets that are all horizontals and a riot of color. A young jazz pianist named Chico hasn’t got a gig tonight, so he’s out on the town hitting the clubs. That’s when he gets his first glimpse of Rita, sidling into a spotlight, closing her eyes and purring “Besame Mucho” into a mic.

Instantly smitten, Chico follows Rita to the Tropicana, where he gets to show off a bit himself when the band needs someone to sight-read Stravinsky. By evening’s end, Chico and Rita have both ditched their dates, and they end up at his place, where the next morning she awakes to find him noodling at the piano. Could he maybe take that down a key, she wonders? And then she joins in …

After a night of lovemaking, Chico will understandably be calling that new song “Rita.” Is theirs a match made in heaven? Sure. Two young musicians, tropical breezes, sweet, sweet harmonies. But all of what we’re seeing is part of an old man’s flashback — to Cuba before the revolution — and if it seems too easy, it is. There’s a knock at the door — an angry ex-girlfriend, the first of many interruptions in a romance that will take these two from Havana to New York and all over the world, sometimes together but more often apart.

Along the way they’ll be present at the creation of some genuinely extraordinary music: mambo, batanga and always jazz. Writer-director Fernando Trueba based the film’s story (very) loosely on the experiences of pianist and bandleader Bebo Valdes, who worked for years at Havana’s Tropicana Club, and both played for and orchestrated songs for the likes of Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie and the many other jazz greats whose stylings grace the movie’s soundtrack.

Now 93 years young, Valdez himself plays all of Chico’s piano solos — both the ones created specifically for this film, and the ones in big-band arrangements he recorded years ago. Rita, who’s sung by Idania Valdes, is a lovely creation, too — her animated DNA blending bits of the Cuban cabaret sensation Rita Montaner with more than a smidgen of Lena Horne.

Seen through Javier Mariscal’s pen-and-ink drawings, their on-again, off-again romance is so nostalgically persuasive it feels almost iconic. As do the cities the film conjures — not just Havana through the decades, but New York as a forest of thrusting verticals, Vegas an explosion of animated neon.

The picture’s real achievement though, is the warmth it brings to the music that animates the lives of these Afro-Cuban characters. Chico and Rita has enough adult subject matter — and even animated nudity — that it’s definitely not for the young. But it’s so passionate about the Latin and big-band music of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s that it’ll make anyone who grew up listening to those vibrant rhythms feel like a kid again.

Story By: Weekend Edition Saturday

What do you do when the conversation lags? Australian broadcaster Richard Glover knows. This week he and sports author Peter FitzSimons set a new Guinness world record for longest radio or TV interview. Host Scott Simon speaks with Glover about his 24-hour conversation.

Lindsay Lohan has moved out of the Venice pad she’s been living in for the last year, and it seems the neighbours couldn’t be more pleased.

"Lohan was like a hurricane, or some other natural disaster tearing through the neighbourhood," one former neighbour told Radar Online.

Ouch. But LiLo didn’t head out on the neighbours’ account. According to TMZ, she was freaked out and felt unsafe after a male stranger knocked on her door on New Year’s Day, and has been at the Chateau Marmont ever since that trespassing incident. The moving vans that showed up on Tuesday and Wednesday were moving her stuff into storage.

"Goodbye to her and all her drama," another former neighbour told Radar. "Since she moved here it’s been a complete circus with a revolving door of friends in and out of her house and paparazzi camped out permanently. Everyone was so sick of her."

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