Category Archives for Uncategorized
Trickle-Down Theory
Calvin Klein, Ben Stiller, Julian Schnabel, and Isabella Rossellini have already toured the booths at Art Basel Miami Beach, but the party scene is taking just a little longer than usual to heat up. It’s not so much the weather down in Florida as the wind and rain up in New York, which kept Eddie Borgo, for one, grounded, and made him late to the cocktail party he was co-hosting for The Last Magazine at The Webster last night. Editor Magnus Berger was presiding over a one-night exhibition of materials featured in the latest issue, from cover pieces by Graeme Armour and Altuzarra to a racing suit and helmet belonging to 12-year-old go-kart phenom Santino Ferrucci. “We wanted to bring the magazine to life, put it in a space where you can experience it and touch it,” Berger explained. Given all the flight delays, Cecilia Dean, Camilla Stærk, and co. were probably just happy to be there. As was Arden Wohl, who enthused that her recent graduation from the French Culinary Institute has put her on a new career path: “I’m a pastry chef!” Just not for the next few days.
Up Collins Avenue at the Raleigh, L.A.’s MOCA was throwing a backyard bash with help from Maybach and Grey Goose. The museum’s new director, Jeffrey Deitch, busied himself welcoming Lance Armstrong and Dasha Zhukova, while his door crew kept the eager crowds at bay. (Overheard at the gates: “This is a party for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, not Miami.”) LCD Soundsystem was the main attraction, and its hour-long set got both trustee types and younger fans bouncing. “I hope you got in, if you tried to get in,” is how the band’s front man, James Murphy, greeted the revelers. As for everybody else? Better luck tonight.
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Style Hunter: Python
—Brittany Adams Continue reading
Life Is Biutiful
Last night’s Cinema Society screening of the new Javier Bardem movie Biutiful attracted a crowd of pretty ladies all undoubtedly hoping for a real-life glimpse of the handsome actor. But Bardem is no Casanova in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film. On the contrary: He plays Uxbal, a man with terminal prostate cancer struggling with the prospect of death and trying to provide for his two children by talking to the dead.
“Beauty is not necessarily beautiful,” Iñárritu told a crowd at the Lighthouse Theater that included Bardem’s better half, Penélope Cruz, as well as Alicia Keys, Claire Danes, and the evening’s co-hosts, Miuccia Prada, Sandy Brant, and Ingrid Sischy. Bardem spent three months preparing for the intense role with his acting coach before shooting the movie in Barcelona for another five. “You are dealing with such heavy material that you have let yourself go, and you don’t always know if there is a net underneath,” he told Style.com.
After the screening, Prada threw an intimate dinner for the cast at the Carlyle hotel. Everyone else went home and Netflixed Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
—Kristin Studeman Continue reading
Attention, Little Monsters
—Marina Larroude Continue reading
Single White Ballerina
Black Swan might be the scariest ballerina movie ever made—one reviewer has called it “a Red Shoes on acid.” Natalie Portman plays a perfection-obsessed bunhead who starts losing her mind as her art forces her to get in touch with her dark side. In preparation for the role, the actress underwent a significant transformation of her own: six months of intensive training that gave her the ultra-sinewy look of a ballet dancer, not to mention credible turns.
“She probably lost a few toenails along the way,” Portman’s trainer, former New York City Ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers, surmised at last night’s premiere. Added director Darren Aronofsky: “We had a dislocated rib, and Natalie banged her head and had to have an MRI.” And that’s just the off-screen violence.
For Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, who designed the movie’s striking ballet costumes, the combination of brutality and beauty was irresistible. “If I had imagined a dream film—this is definitely the one to sign us up for,” Laura said. The same might have gone for choreographer Benjamin Millepied, whose work with Portman on set sparked a much publicized romance.
“The entire movie is about sexuality,” suggested Mila Kunis, who plays Portman’s hot-blooded rival. Undoubtedly, the film’s Freudian twists add a layer of interest to a category of professionals generally thought to be paragons of poise and discipline. But for Vincent Cassel, who plays the company’s director, the sex appeal of dancers isn’t all that complicated. Quipped the Frenchman: “They’re very flexible.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Beauty Bytes: The Best of Beauty Counter, November 2010
—Celia Ellenberg Continue reading
Slow Lane vs. Fast Lane
—Matthew Schneier Continue reading
Jail Buddies
Jim Carrey has always been something of a contortionist, but it seems fair to say he does more shape-shifting in his latest movie than ever before. Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, I Love You Phillip Morris is the tale of a gay con man (Carrey) who meets the love of his life (played by Ewan McGregor) in jail, then refuses in all sorts of crazy ways to let the law keep them separated. “I can’t believe this character—his nerve, his absolute balls, the ways that he slipped out of prison, just on the edge of logic—that takes a special person,” Carrey said at last night’s Cinema Society screening of the film. (Although it’s been viewable here and there in the two years since it premiered at Sundance, the movie officially opens in the U.S. on December 3.)
Unfortunately, Carrey’s co-star couldn’t be there—as co-director Glenn Ficarra reported before the lights dimmed, McGregor is currently in Thailand shooting a movie about the 2004 tsunami “and is ironically trapped there by a monsoon.” Still, a sizable pre-Thanksgiving crowd including John Mayer, Lauren Bush, and Gabourey Sidibe turned up for the screening and the after-party at Avenue, where Dorothea Barth Jorgensen gave her concise review. “I liked it. It was unpredictable,” she said. Albert Hammond, Jr., mentioned between sips of soda water that he’d seen it once already. “On a flight from Paris to San Francisco,” he recalled. “It was even funnier the second time.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Will You Say “Yes, Please” To Pleats?
—Brittany Adams Continue reading