They're destined to score zero Academy Awards, but they won our attention throughout a year (and awards season) like no other. Ahead of the 95th Oscars ceremony on March 12, EW is breaking down the year's best movies, performances, and directorial achievements that were nominated for nothing. The film: In this tasty, and twisty, treat of a horror-comedy, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) embark on a remote-island dinner date at the restaurant of a celebrity chef (Ralph Finnes), whose menu has all the ingredients for a night of mayhem.

Farewell: Norah Jones pays tribute to Nina Simone When I was growing up, my mom had this beat-up Nina Simone tape with coffee stains on it. It didn’t even have a cover. I would play ”I Loves You Porgy” over and over, because I was into jazz and that was one song I knew. The way she did it broke my heart. I was so struck by her voice, which was deep and commanding even when she sang something tender.

We've seen Norman Reedus both on land and at sea in various teaser promos for The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, but it was never actually clear just what the heck he was doing over in France. Now, thanks to a just-released trailer first screened during the Walking Dead Universe Fan Watch Party in Hall H of San Diego Comic-Con, we have some clues as to what his actual mission is on the show.

In the freedom-fighting movie culture of the 1970s, populist muckrakers like Norma Rae, The China Syndrome, and All the President’s Men drew us into the everyday urgency of injustice. They ignited passions because they connected to the zeitgeist, and audiences felt the relevance of those films in their guts, hearts, and bones. I’m not sure if they’ll feel that same kick of relevance during North Country, a grimly earnest sexual harassment rabble-rouser that begins in 1989, even though the landmark case it’s based on is rooted in events that started in the mid-’70s.

Christina Ricci (Young Roberta) Getty Images A 15-year-old Christina Ricci earned one of her first feature film credits for 1995's Now and Then. After making her debut in 1990's Mermaids and rising to fame in The Addams Family (1991), she played a young Roberta Martin in this coming-of-age movie. The counterpart to Rosie O'Donnell's adult character, young Roberta is a leader among her friend group. Raised in a family of boys after the death of her mother, she starts the film less than eager to be going through puberty.

The last time we saw a trailer for Jack the Giant Slayer, it was Dec. 2011, and director Bryan Singer’s re-imagining of the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale was called Jack the Giant Killer. In the interim, the movie was pushed from June 2012 to March 1, 2013; many more visual effects shots of the fearsome, cloud-dwelling giants have been completed; and, from the sound of things, Singer’s regular muse Sir Ian McKellan was brought on board to lend his commanding cadences to some ominous fe fi fo fumming.

Fans took on the fight, so Beastie Boys could have to right…to be immortalized with a street corner. The New York intersection featured on the cover of the Beastie Boys' 1989 album Paul's Boutique has been named after the rap trio. The site, which consists of the intersection of Ludlow Street and Rivington Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, will now officially be known as Beastie Boys Square. The New York City Council officially approved the dedication after an impassioned nine-year push by fans.

Word broke earlier this week that O-Town — the One Direction of the aughts, except less cute and not nearly as famous — is plotting a reunion. (Okay, an almost-reunion; frontman Ashley Parker Angel, the group’s answer to Harry Styles/Clone Highguest star extraordinaire, is apparently out of the band. So much for “all or nothing at all.”) This is great news, primarily for one reason: It gives us all a chance to reexamine “Liquid Dreams,” which has to be the grossest thing to come out of the late ’90s/early ’00s boy band boom.

My earliest memory is when I was six-years-old, standing beside my nine-year-old sister in the kitchen of my grandparents’ farmhouse, both of us holding brooms and singing the Oak Ridge Boys’ hit “Elvira” into the handles. I know I’m not alone. Most of my friends now in their mid-to-late thirties have a similar memory of belting out Joe Bonsall’s boozy verses and imitating bass Richard Sterban’s infamous “Giddy up, oom papa oom papa mow mow” chorus.

Last night on The Late Late Show, crime writer Lawrence Block made one of his periodic visits from the East Coast to chat with his pal Craig Ferguson. He was promoting his new novel, A Drop of the Hard Stuff, a terrific new addition to Block’s series of mysteries featuring private detective Matt Scudder. The conversation between the two men was lovely — relaxed and funny. Block had spiffed up a bit for this visit, wearing a nice suit and a bright green tie.