recent posts
- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
- Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights: Monster Mash
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
Category: Events
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Now on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater after a stunning debut two years ago, Bruce Norris biting Pulitzer Prize winning drama Clybourne Park begins in 1959 with a couple leaving their Chicago home after many years. Under Pam MacKinnon’s expert direction, Russ (Frank Wood) sits in a lounger eating Neapolitan; his wife Bev (Christina Kirk)…
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Introducing a private screening of his new movie, We Have a Pope, this week, director Nanni Moretti stopped mid-sentence and walked up the aisle to kiss kiss his pal John Turturro. Of course he was speaking in Italian and the gesture seemed so European, the audience including Tony LoBianco, Gay Talese, John Ventimiglia, Michael Musto,…
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In Eugene O’Neill’s 1943 play, A Moon for the Misbegotten, faithfully revived at The Pearl Theatre, the mores of the time seem antiquated but the performances by Kim Martin-Cotten as farm woman Josie Hogan, and Andrew May as her well educated yet drunken landlord Jim Tyrone, Jr. are pitch perfect. She, ungainly and with a rough…
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Teenhood is not for sissies. Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen’s documentary Bully opens with the dead-eyed gaze of a man, a father, talking about the suicide of his son, a victim of bullying. As if ripped from the proverbial front pages, the movie resonates with public awareness of this mean-spirited practice akin to the Rutgers…
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My favorite Sara Driver story involves her 1981 film of Paul Bowles’s short story, “You Are Not I.” Long thought lost, a print of the 48-minute film was discovered in 2008 among Bowles’ possessions in Tangier, Morocco in his driver’s insecticide-laden basement. Now restored, the film was featured at several conferences and festivals celebrating the…
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Petite and utterly adorable, the French movie star Audrey Tautou will always be known as the “Amelie” girl for her delightful performance in the 2001 film. On closing night of this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, she was the guest of honor at a soiree at the upper East side Cultural Services of the French…
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Lasse Hallstrom’s new movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, is a romance with an improbable premise. A liberal minded sheik wants to bring salmon to his native Yemen, not the kind you eat, but those that need a waterway for jumping and swimming upstream to spawn. This feat involves more than irrigating the Negev. Being…
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For the same reasons that Sarah Palin is a riveting figure in American politics, the HBO movie Game Change is an astonishingly smart look at her and the world that put her in the position of John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Even when played by Julianne Moore, you cannot take your…
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If you want to ensure a successful awards dinner, have Marshall Brickman as your M.C. A creator of the musical Jersey Boys, he has a wealth of mob related anecdotes, and with the aplomb of a seasoned comic, he delivers. At Guild Hall’s annual gala, rooftop at the St. Regis on Monday night, he told…
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It’s a great year for Harvey Weinstein. The Weinstein Company co-chairman is the 2012 recipient of the Legion d’ Honneur awarded by France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy. The distinction was conferred last July but Weinstein wisely requested, according to a press release, “to keep the honor private to avoid a conflict of interest with Academy Award Best…
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A sublime vocalist, Dianne Reeves took the stage at the Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center, glamorous in blue and aware that this was Oscar weekend. Having performed her era evoking music for George Clooney’s 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck, his film about Edward R. Murrow, the only other black and white film to…
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On the 6th floor of the Museum of Modern Art, Cindy Sherman is just where you want her, everywhere. In a retrospective of her work opening Sunday, in every portrait, her image –made up, masked, reconfigured –shocks, satirizes, surprises with its smart take on contemporary looks, fashion, and ideas of what it means to be visible: portraits from…
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Vanderbilt Hall, a cavernous space at the entrance of historic Grand Central Station, was fitted with Oscar statuettes, for an exhibition to bring the yearly awards events to everyone, commuters and those, like me, who love to pass through this cherished landmark, en route to Broadway, Barney’s and Bergdorf’s. Just before ribbon cutting, I had…
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On the morning the Golden Globe nominations were announced, Woody Harrelson broke decorum, plugging his new film Rampart in which he plays an out of control cop. Not nominated, his testosterone-fueled performance nevertheless illustrates this Maui-based actor’s ferocity, playing a character very little like his green (he grows his own produce), peace loving, pot-smoking self.…
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They are not called Loving for nothing. Loving is simply their name. You could not find a true tale more tailor-made for Valentine’s Day than the story that ended laws against interracial marriage in America in the mid-‘60’s. A documentary featuring archival footage and period photography, The Loving Story airs on HBO on February 14.…
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“It’s harsh,” said Polish director Agnieszka Holland introducing her new movie, In Darkness at a special screening at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens last month. Literally dark, In Darkness, to open this week in New York, takes place under ground in the sewers of Lvov, Poland in Holocaust era Europe. Based on…
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On a balmy New York evening with snow a distant memory, the corners of the Crosby Hotel were fitted with white stuff, the waiters sported big ski lodge sweaters and snow boots, and the décor, usually warm, was even cozier. The occasion was a screening of an episode of Lilyhammer, the first of five original series…
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“Fame is fleeting,” said Harvey Weinstein introducing Coriolanus last week at the film’s Paris Theater premiere. Juxtaposing the all night Golden Globe parties with his turn on television with Uggie, the canine star of his movie The Artist, Weinstein noted, one minute I’m accepting awards (The Artist, My Week with Marilyn, The Iron Lady, were…
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The Pearl Theatre Company revival of George Bernard Shaw’s The Philanderer had many in the audience wondering why this delightful and deliciously scandalous play is not produced more often. Of course the sex implied and on view between corseted women and waist-coated men is nothing to raise a contemporary eyebrow, but in its day, 1893,…
