"Side Effects," Steven Soderbergh's final theatrical offering before retirement, is out in theaters this weekend, which is good news for people who like good movies. The film -- a twisty thriller about a depressed young woman (Rooney Mara) who commits a crime after being prescribed some mood-altering drugs by her psychiatrist (Jude Law) -- is easily the week's standout release and one of the first great films of 2013.

With "Side Effects" unspooling at theaters now, HuffPost Entertainment is happy to debut a behind-the-scenes look at the film, which details how society's growing reliance on prescription drugs helped build a foundation for the film.

"I really loved the idea that [screenwriter Scott Burns] took a social issue -- a very zeitgeist-y issue -- and used it as a Trojan Horse to hide a thriller inside it," Soderbergh said during a special screening of the film last month.

Watch the special new look at "Side Effects" above. The film is out in theaters now.

For more on "Side Effects," check out this HuffPost Entertainment interview with Burns.

Say what you will about The Pirate Bay: if nothing else, its founders are resilient, defiant, and clever. Two out of its three co-founders have yet to be brought to justice, having been convicted of aiding copyright infringement—none of them have paid a single cent of the multi-million dollar fine ordered by a Swedish court in 2009, and all seem quite resolute on maintaining that position. (Still, each of the three claim to no longer have any involvement in the site.)

There’s not much new information about the founders in Simon Klose’s new film TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, which debuted Friday at the Berlinale Film Festival in the German capital and is available freely online under a Creative Commons license. The non-narrated, largely Swedish-language film profiles the three co-founders during their prosecution by the Swedish government and doesn’t address—other than through filmed court testimony—the fourth co-defendant, businessman Carl Lundström. (Lundström did serve four months in Sweden under house arrest, but has since returned to living in Switzerland. He also declined to be profiled for the film.)

In February 2012, the Swedish Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case against the co-founders, leaving the three with few, if any, legal options left at their disposal. After being deported late last year on a Cambodian visa violation, Gottfrid “anakata” Svartholm Warg remains in Swedish custody. Meanwhile, Fredrik “tiamo” Neij is still living in Laos with his wife and son.

In the closing minutes of the film (shot in November 26, 2010, on the day the first appeals decision was to be announced), Neij looks straight in the camera while taking a leisurely family lunch aboard a boat in Laos with co-founder Peter Sunde at his side. Neij flatly says: “I can serve a prison sentence. But why do it if I don’t have to?”

Later that day, just moments after the two of them find out that they’ve lost their appeal, Neij adds: “The statute of limitations is five years. They can’t issue an international warrant of arrest. I can sit here and jerk off for five years. And I will.”

The film also reminds us that Neij is wanted by Interpol, although his name does not turn up in Interpol’s online database. Meanwhile, Sunde remains a digital nomad, traveling seemingly freely about Europe and the rest of the world. He’s even answering a Reddit AMA on Saturday.

In other words, these guys seem very comfortable with ignoring Swedish justice.

Late last year, Håkan Roswall, the chief prosecutor in the Pirate Bay trial, told Ars that he has “no doubt whatsoever that every one of those four will serve their sentence.”

New York Times reporter Michael Cieply pulls the lid off the In Memoriam segment of the Academy Awards telecast in a new article ("On Oscar night everyone is dying -- sometimes literally -- to win something," reads the first sentence), which explains how awards-season campaigning even extends to remembering the deceased.

According to Cieply, a group of Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science members get together to determine which stars make the cut on Oscar night. “Of all the committees, it’s the hardest one to do,” Tom Sherak, who was president of the AMPAS until last year, told the Times. As with everything else in the cloak-and-dagger world of Oscar voting, the group is never outed or discussed in public. “The committee’s names are never mentioned, ever,” said Sherak.

The In Memoriam segment, an obituary in montage form that honors members of the Hollywood filmmaking community lost over the last year, officially became a part of the broadcast in 1994. Since, many departed stars have been unceremoniously snubbed from the roll call -- from Farah Fawcett and Brad Renfro to Corey Haim and Harry Morgan. Those omissions are usually chalked up to time (the AMPAS said Renfro just didn't make the final cut) or big-screen influence (Fawcett and Morgan weren't necessarily best known for their film work). Per Ciepy, however, there could be another reason: a lack of champions on the In Memoriam committee.

“I cannot image why it left my dad out of its tribute segment,” Harry Morgan's son, Charley, told The Times. “It would never have occurred to me to check with or otherwise lobby the Academy to be sure that he was mentioned.”

Lobbying, of course, is a major part of awards season -- and not just the In Memoriam segment. Just this week, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) spoke out against "Lincoln," Steven Spielberg's Best Picture nominee, because of apparent inaccuracies in the film's storyline. ("Lincoln" shows two Connecticut representatives voting against the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery; in real life, the men were for the new law.) With Oscar voting open now, that's the type of charge that could make "Lincoln" seem less viable as a Best Picture choice. Not that Courtney probably minds. As Salon notes, "Argo" director Ben Affleck -- who has watched as his film has lept above "Lincoln" to gain status as the Best Picture frontrunner in the last month -- worked to get Courtney elected in 2006.

As always with the Academy Awards, follow the friendships and ulterior motives -- even when it comes to the deceased.

As the first anniversary of Whitney Houston’s death rolls around on Monday, her mother, Cissy Houston, has been in the spotlight. However, the messages she’s been sending when it comes to honoring her daughter’s memory have been a bit … confusing.

On Thursday, the 79-year-old blasted her late daughter’s mentor and close friend, Clive Davis, for inviting her to his annual pre-Grammy party, which takes place at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on Saturday. It was while Whitney was readying herself for that party last year that she drowned in her hotel bathtub. Drugs were in her system when she died.

[Related: Whitney Houston's Life and Career (Photos)]

“I got an invitation to the party – which is the most obscene thing,” Cissy told “Access Hollywood.” “I don’t know why they would want me to come to the party in which she died, you know? Unheard of.”

What she didn’t mention was that her son Gary Houston and his wife/Whitney’s manager Pat had accepted invites to the gala and will be in attendance this weekend, according to Davis’ rep.

Cissy celebrating the unveiling of Whitney wax figures at Madame Tussauds on February 7 (Getty Images)Also unusual? Where Cissy was when she lashed out at Davis, who had been so close to the Houston family that spoke at Whitney’s funeral. The Houston matriarch was at an event held at tourist hot spot Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Manhattan’s Times Square, where she smiled, clapped, and posed happily alongside of eerie lifelike replicas of her famous daughter that were being unveiled to mark Whitney’s death.

And while Cissy found Davis’ party invite “obscene,” many people are questioning her own decision to write a book, Remembering Whitney, about her late daughter, which touched on Houston’s drug use, failed marriage to Bobby Brown, and bad feelings toward Robyn Crawford, the woman with whom Whitney may or may not have had a lesbian affair.

President François Hollande's 47-year old partner was slammed for eschewing her Left-wing principles in favour of unabashed champagne Socialism despite the threat of "thousands of job losses in the coming weeks" in companies ranging from Renault to Air France.

VSD, the weekly magazine, trained its ire on the 47-year-old divorcee's decision to attend the haute couture shows of Paris fashion week.

It described photos of the first lady beaming alongside France's richest man Bernard Arnault at the Dior catwalk show as a "political fault".

"While thousands of French are fighting to avoid redundancy … (she) attended the fashion shows," it wrote.
"Valérie Trierweiler, who often claims to be 'Socialist to her soul' … ultimately prefers supporting the one industry that has no particular need of her help – the luxury fashion world.
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"It sends out a very mixed message to the millions of voters who elected her partner to office hoping for a change in morals and mentality.

"Instead of choosing to support welders or other workers, she has chosen to offer her presence, her support to Dior, to Yves Saint Laurent and the entire luxury industry."

The virulent broadside comes after former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was regularly branded a frivolous figure painfully unaware of the plight of the average French person while her husband Nicolas Sarkozy was president.

The multi-millionaire former supermodel was particularly mocked for declaring "we're simple ordinary folk" in a desperate bid to convince the French her husband was a "man of the people" during his failed re-election bid.

Now VSD said her successor had fallen into the same trap.
"Mixing with the elite has always had the power to anaesthetise the conscience and dilute one's convictions, and Valerie Trierweiler clearly hasn't been able to hold out against this for long."
Miss Trierweiler met Mr Hollande, 57, at a political rally 15 years ago and have been a couple for five years.
In what appeared to be a damage limitation counter-strike, a picture of Miss Trierweiler walking arm in arm with Mr Hollande was splashed on the front cover of Thursday's Paris Match, the magazine she still works for.
France's first couple was shown strolling in the public Luxembourg gardens, and sitting at a café terrace, just like any other ordinary Parisian couple.

HSBC Holdings Plc’s $9.4 billion sale of its stake in Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. to Thai billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont was initiated by the insurer’s chairman, the official who was approached to buy the stake said.
The disclosure is the first confirmation of the Chinese insurer’s role in brokering the transaction and highlights Ping An Chairman Peter Ma’s determination to find his own partner as HSBC looked to exit a decade-long investment.

The logo of Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. is displayed during a news conference in Hong Kong, China. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg
Ma approached Tse Ping, vice chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group Co., about buying the stake, the Thai company executive said. Both are members of an advisory body to China’s legislature. Dhanin’s CP Group completed the deal, the largest sale of a Chinese company to a foreign buyer, on Feb. 6.

“Mr. Ma wanted a long-term investor so that Ping An’s share price doesn’t fluctuate too much,” Tse said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday. “Ping An is a good company -- we like its culture and business model. That’s why we are willing to pay a good price for it.”

Ma’s role illustrates the influence exerted by Chinese executives over their investors and the importance of personal connections in closing a transaction that allowed London-based HSBC to reap a $2.6 billion profit. The deal survived a last- minute withdrawal of funding by China Development Bank Corp. and scrutiny by regulators in Beijing.
HSBC’s Search

HSBC spent months searching for potential buyers until Ma approached CP Group, whose main business is agriculture, Tse said, declining to elaborate on the discussions with Ma. Among those approached was Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte, Tse said.
Tan Yong Meng, a spokesman for Temasek, declined to comment, as did officials at Ping An and HSBC.
The deal has already yielded a $1.3 billion paper profit for Dhanin, who is Thailand’s second richest man with an estimated net worth of $6.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. About 55 percent of his fortune is from overseas private companies.

Questions about funding fueled concerns about the deal’s survival at times. Ping An shares fell the most in more than five months on Jan. 8, when Chinese magazine Caixin reported CDB had pulled financing after learning of the involvement of Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese financier, in the deal.
In an earlier report, Caixin said Xiao channeled funds from three municipal commercial banks that he reportedly controls to help CP Group purchase the Ping An shares. Xiao denied any involvement in the transaction in a Dec. 23 statement via his lawyer, Caixin reported.

A 200-year-old law forbidding women to wear trousers in Paris has finally been revoked.

By Devorah Lauter, Paris3:32PM GMT 03 Feb 2013153 Comments
On January 31, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, made it officially impossible to arrest a woman for wearing trousers in the French capital.
The law required women to ask police for special permission to "dress as men" in Paris, or risk being taken into custody.
In 1892 and 1909 the rule was amended to allow women to wear trousers, "if the woman is holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse."

The law was kept in place until now, despite repeated attempts to repeal it, in part because officials said the unenforced rule was not a priority, and part of French "legal archaeology."

In July however, in a public request directed at Ms Vallaud-Belkacem, Alain Houpert, a senator and member of the conservative UMP party, said the "symbolic importance" of the law "could injure our modern sensibilities," and he asked the minister to repeal it.

Ms Vallaud-Belkacem agreed, and in a published statement on Jan. 31st wrote: "This ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men, which are listed in the Constitution, and in France's European commitments.
"From that incompatibility follows the implicit abrogation of the ordinance."
The restriction focused on Paris because French Revolutionary rebels in the capital said they wore trousers, as opposed to the knee-breeches, or the "culottes," of the bourgeoisie, in what was coined the "sans-culottes" movement. Women rebels in the movement demanded the right to wear trousers as well, but were forbidden to do so.