At lunch in the book-lined dining room of the Lotos Club this week, Saoirse Ronan joined director John Crowley and producer Finola Dwyer for a discussion of the film Brooklyn, based on Colm Toibin’s beloved novel. Ronan stars as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who comes to America from Ireland. Moderated by Doubt playwright John Patrick Shanley, the panel discussed the film’s themes while Shanley spiced the proceedings with groan-worthy quips about having had enough to drink—oh those Irish!—Ronan’s radiant Eilis is the performance to watch as awards near.
recent posts
- Lorne Premieres at Lincoln Center: Glimpsing Lorne Michaels Backstage at Saturday Night Live
- Alden Ehrenreich and Patrick Ball: The Men in Becky Shaw on Broadway
- 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
-
-
Bespectacled and mustachioed Bryan Cranston as famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, submerged in the bath, his work, smokes and whiskey laid out on a tray bestride the tub is a hilarious image of a writer at work. In Jay Roach’s new movie Trumbo, his heyday in Hollywood, testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the ‘50’s red scare, prison term, and post-prison career fronting scripts, play like a cartoon of a world gone mad. Surrounding him are a loving family, with wife Cleo (Diane Lane), daughter Niki (Elle Fanning), like-minded friends Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.), B-movie mogul Frank King (John Goodman) and enemies including gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) who considered him a traitor. But lest this entertainment seem frivolous, some real issues regarding democracy, freedom of speech, rise to the fore. -
New to Broadway at The Music Box, the Olivier Award winning King Charles III is simply the play to see this season. Conceived by playwright Mike Bartlett as a future history, the play’s conceit is what happens when the queen dies and Charles finally ascends to the throne. “My life has been a lingering for the throne,” Charles says, his language echoing Shakespeare, but what ensues is not quite a simple ascension. After all, these are modern times: Are the royals outdated? As in the best of the bard, King Charles III poses a question for all time: what makes for good leadership? And that crown: It’s much heavier than anyone thought. -
After Richard Holbrooke died on December 13, 2010, former president Bill Clinton remarked, why does he have to die? The world is falling apart, and “here’s a guy who can put things together.” That was a sentiment shared by many. Both Clintons knew Richard Holbrooke quite well, his son David did not know him so much. Watching HBO’s documentary, The Diplomat, offers a generous glimpse into Washington circles, and an important era in American history. -
On the third floor of the townhouse that is “21,” Tom Brokaw interviewed Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi, the star and filmmakers of the documentary Meru at a special lunch celebrating the film’s success. (Meru is the Number 2 non-fiction film at the box office, behind Amy.) Featuring climbers on the dangerous Shark’s Fin of Meru, a mountain in the Himalayas more treacherous than Everest, Meru depicts a breathtaking journey to the top, focusing on the friendship among the climbers. Brokaw joked, for him, the hike up the three flights to the nautical-themed wood-lined dining space is an astonishing achievement. -
The travel posters adorning the intimate tent, the signature locale of the Big Apple Circus at Lincoln Center, promise trips to Marseille, Lille, Paris, London, and the Orient. Evoking the Roaring ‘20’s, and the modern voyage from the dawn of airplane travel to such conveyances as train and camel, “The Grand Tour” featuring aerialists, acrobats, animals, jugglers, a ringmaster with a booming voice, and two very silly clowns as conductors, this circus is a trip. -
Michael Moore’s latest satiric film, Where to Invade Next, travels to Finland and Tunisia among other places with a central conceit: countries most Americans wouldn’t imagine to be so advanced are doing some things better than we are, so why not learn from them, and get our s—t together. In a time of presidential hopefuls, many spouting promises they can barely articulate, Michael Moore has a clear plan for correcting many of our ills, like not encumbering our young people with crippling debt as they graduate from college. Like feeding our children in elementary school with lunch plans that teach the etiquette of sitting at the dinner table, as well as what foods are truly healthy. Other countries practice these programs as a matter of course, and maybe we did too, before our highest ideals got hijacked. Case in point, people of my generation got an education for free. Remember those days? It is easy to ponder penciling Michael Moore in for president, but he wouldn’t want the job. He’s having too much fun making movies that make people laugh. -
Bradley Cooper has been prepping for the role of Adam Jones in the film Burnt from the time he shucked oysters in a New Jersey restaurant back in the day. A kitchen view of the fine food industry, Burnt was demanding of all its actors—Sienna Miller, Daniel Bruhl, Omar Sy, Sam Keeley—they all had to work the kitchen, intoning “Yes Chef” in obedience to the master, and learning the arts of fileting, braising, broiling, and plating to perfection. At a breakfast panel last week at the London Hotel moderated by one of the film’s producers, Mario Batali, the actors talked about finessing these roles, and keeping their weight down in the process, especially Bradley Cooper who was preparing for his Tony-nominated performance in the play The Elephant Man where he went bare chested and gaunt. -
This is a big week for celebrating “difference.” Sesame Street introduces a new character named Julia. She has autism, and it will be interesting to see how she interacts with Cookie Monster, Elmo, and the rest of the colorful crowd. On HBO, the documentary How to Dance in Ohio, directed by Alexandra Shiva, features a no less colorful group of young teens from Columbus with autism, in the care of clinical psychologist Dr. Emilio Amigo. The three in the forefront, Marideth, Caroline, and Jessica have few filters. They wonder, as perhaps we all do however well we mask our social discomfort: if you want to say hello to a boy, how do you do that? The answer is not so mysterious: you say hello. And by the end of the documentary, which features a dance and a contest for king and queen, you cheer for the winners, and for the simple triumphs of being fully alive. -
Exploding buildings and passions define the fight for women’s right to vote in Britain in the early 20th century. The new movie Suffragette tells that story in a thrilling, action-packed all women production, starring Carey Mulligan as Maude Watts, a laundry worker, mother and wife. Radicalized by the rhetoric of activists including pharmacist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), fellow worker Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), Maude Watts is compelled to violence in the streets, yes, but just watch her up close wielding a hot iron. While none of the actors showed up for a grand lunch at Locanda Verde in the movie’s honor, the director Sarah Gavron, producer Alison Owen, scriptwriter Abi Morgan, and Pankhurst’s great granddaughter Helen Pankhurst spoke on a panel moderated by Marie Brenner, about the filmmaking and why this film is relevant now. -
Wildly wacky and whimsical, Sister Follies: Between Two Worlds, rests on a singular, spectacular conceit. For the centennial of the Abrons Arts Center, a gem of a theater on the Lower East Side, Basil Twist, winner of a recent MacArthur Prize, imagined the ghosts of the Lewisohn sisters, performers and patrons of the arts from 1915. As the curtain opens, the sisters fly, circling one another, bickering competitively as only sisters can do. Their images also are also projected onto the proscenium where they continue their sibling rivalry and narrate. Joey Arias and Julie Atlas Muz inhabit these roles on the ground, performing “Jephthah’s Daughter” and other avantgarde performances from that time. Jonothon Lyons, an actor with amazing pecs, and a cast of puppets, Basil Twist's métier, complete the sensational scene, an assemblage from the Bible. -
For his Café Carlyle debut performance, vocalist Kurt Elling celebrates Frank Sinatra’s centennial with “Elling Swings Sinatra.” Backed by a wonderful band, maybe the largest I’ve ever seen work this room, featuring Clark Sommers on bass, arranger John McLean on guitar, Jared Schonig on drums, Wayne Tucker on trumpet, Troy Roberts on tenor sax, and Gary Versace on piano, Elling swings his way through such familiar hits as “Come Fly with Me,” “In the Still of the Night,” and “Nice & Easy,” sprinkling the lyrics with scat, the songs with useful information. “Frank Sinatra is the #5 top selling jazz vocalist of all time,” he informs the attentive crowd, quipping, “Do you know how depressing that is for me?” He performs a dozen great songs, but avoids one: “Who else can sing “My Way” but Frank Sinatra? -
The most terrifying movie of the season does not involve aliens, ghouls, or men in hooded masks. It is the movie Room, from Emma Donoghue’s screenplay based on her best-selling novel, showing moments of tender love between a mother and young son in a small cell-like shed with only a skylight to the outside: the claustrophobia is contagious. Played to perfection by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, under Lenny Abrahamson’s excellent direction, the mother and son, form a bond essential to their survival. The acting is formidable, and will be noted during award season. Last weekend, Room won the Hamptons International Film Festival Audience Award for Narrative Feature. -
Arriving early to The Westside Theater’s opening night of Joe DiPietro’s Clever Little Lies, Ali Wentworth and Peggy Siegal posed in front of the play’s poster, mimicking the star Marlo Thomas poised with shhh finger over her mouth. This is a play with secrets, and Hoda Kotb was giggling nearby, but the big laughs for Clever Little Lies would come shortly. With all the seats filled, we could hear Tony Danza laughing loudest. -
The Maidstone in East Hampton was party central for the Hamptons International Film Festival, both scheduled and spontaneous. Caterer Janet O’Brien, supplying the Guild Hall green room with goodies of cheeses and figs, spoke about partying late into the night at the Maidstone, sipping the Bedell win“es. On Sunday morning, the dining room was locus of a HIFF institution: brunch celebratingThe Variety 10 to Watch,” a program for young actors, mentored by Emily Blunt, herself a “rising star” from a previous version of the same program. Now of course, Blunt has risen: (see The Devil Wears Prada, and the recent action thriller Sicario). Bel Powley (noted for The Diary of a Teenage Girl and her latest A Royal Night Out) and Christopher Abbott (HBO’s Girls and James White) are among this year’s most looked at actors. In previous years, Dane DeHaan, Alicia Vikander, and Adam Driver occupied that spot, and look how they turned out. -
Introducing his movie of music legend Miles Davis for the closing night of the New York Film Festival, Don Cheadle reminded everyone that Miles was inducted posthumously into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame –for his innovations in jazz. Eight years in the making and now slated for an April 2016 release, the movie shifts between two time frames, an early romantic period as Miles Davis (Cheadle), well-kempt, an already noted jazz trumpeter met dancer Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi) who would become his first wife, and a later time, when a pushy Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan MacGregor), trying to get his story, ends up a sidekick to the jazzman in a fuzzy halo of hair, hunting down some stolen session tapes. -
When Patti Smith met Sam Shepard back in the day, she thought he was a drummer cowboy named Slim Shadow, until Jackie Curtis set her straight, “He’s the biggest playwright off-Broadway. He won five Obies!” Now his Fool for Love is on Broadway under Daniel Aukin’s expert direction at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, an MTC production from the highly charged Williamstown revival this past summer. A regular “Marlboro Man,” Eddie, in hat, boots, and swiveling hips signals the cowboy swagger. Sam Rockwell inhabits Eddie, wielding a rifle, a lariat, and tackling his lover May with balletic skill, until she knees his groin. With Nina Arianda in this role, May gives as good as she gets. For a tight 90 minutes, they go at each other in a spare, grim motel room in Nowheresville, the Mojave Desert’s edge. From Eddie’s first words: “I’m not leaving,” you are in the play’s intense grip, pondering: who are these people?
-
Truth, a riveting movie about the famous scandal at CBS 60 Minutes that cost Dan Rather his nightly news anchorship, is based on Mary Mapes’ account. A sassy, hard working producer, Mapes was fired in this incident calling into question George W. Bush’s military record. Rather and Mapes knew they were reporting a true story, but many thought it was a take down of the president just as he was seeking re-election. Rather is played with gravitas by Robert Redford, but Mapes– with Cate Blanchett in the role– takes center stage. Not only is this a must see movie for her stellar performance, but it is a reminder of a time when real investigating was the goal for television—and print—news. Mistakes were made and heads did roll, but not without some loss of journalistic ideals. -
The famously reclusive and curmudgeonly photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank smiles throughout the documentary Robert Frank Don’t Blink, as if he’s having a good time with Laura Israel, a longtime assistant who deigned to make a film about him. When she asked, the Swiss-born artist did not say no.In distinct stages marked by evocative music (Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, subjects of his 1972 Cocksucker Blues, and more), the film moves through his making of The Americans, the iconic photo-book of the 1950’s, its poetic, sainted “road” essence affirmed in Jack Kerouac’s introduction, the filming of Pull My Daisy, featuring Kerouac’s narration and starring Larry Rivers, David Amram, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, Delphine Seyrig, Alice Neel, Milo O’Shea, and his son Pablo, the little boy.
-
Jan Donovan Amorosi had just seen Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies at a special screening the night before its New York Film Festival premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday night. “We had no idea what our father had gone through when we were growing up in Brooklyn,” she said, now preparing for a second viewing. “We wondered why no one did anything with his unusual story for forty years, after he died. We now know what he went through, that he was a hero.” Her father, Jim Donovan, an insurance attorney, comes to save two Americans—U-2 pilot Gary Powers and graduate student Frederic Powers— held in East Berlin in 1962, by ingeniously engineering a trade for a Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel. Donovan is played by the immensely appealing Tom Hanks in one of his best performances, and Abel is played by one of the most brilliant theater actors, Mark Rylance. -
In case you were wondering about his rocker roots, David Johansen can be seen in a photograph flashing amidst many images in the documentary Robert Frank—Don’t Blink. In fact, he was a star in Frank’s 1988 Candy Mountain back in the New York Dolls days, along with Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Dr. John, Joe Strummer, and Kazuko. Today performing at the Café Carlyle, in a pencil thin ‘stache worthy of John Waters and his signature pompadour, as Buster Poindexter, he’s no less of a star. In fact, he’s transitioned effortlessly onto the intimate uptown cabaret stage with a witty, smart show, sprinkling song with jokes, backed by a first rate band: Brian Koonin on guitar, Richard Hammond on upright bass, Ray Grappone on drums, and Brian Mitchell on piano and accordion. Poindexter adds to his own raspy voice with a cool harmonica. -
Labyrinth of Lies, a new Holocaust themed movie, the German entry for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, takes place in the era after World War II, when 22 “ordinary” German men who committed anti-human crimes at Auschwitz were brought to justice in Frankfurt. Filmmaker Giulio Ricciarelli, a Milan born German from Munich is proud to say that Germany is the only country to have sought legal action for the murder of Jews, as the citizens of his country increasingly became aware of what went on under the Nazi regime. Over cappuccinos at the Regency Hotel in mid-September, we talked about his film, based upon the true history of these trials.
-
Broadway luminaries attended the American Theater Wing gala on Monday night at the Plaza Hotel to honor James Earl Jones: Angela Lansbury, Tony Bennett, and Cecily Tyson, who is starring with Jones in The Gin Game. The annual event always features performances in the Plaza’s Grand Ballroom: among other performers, Norm Lewis blew everyone away with a medley from Les Miserables. American Theater Wing chair William Ivey Long took the stage to introduce the award presenters George Lucas and Samuel L. Jackson. “No,” said Long, “I never costumed James Earl Jones.” Jackson paid tribute saying he tried out for Ragtime because Jones, an actor of color, was out there. He didn’t get the job. George Lucas—Jones was the voice of Darth Vader, the unforgettable villain of Star Wars– proclaimed, “If you want to make a strong movie, you have to make a strong theater.” -
Defying categorization, Roger Waters The Wall premiered this week, not just a rock concert filmed, although it is that; even more, in a classic Oedipal journey, Roger Waters seeks his paternity, the father and grandfather he did not know. The casualties of the two world wars, these men become the objects of a quest in a 1961 Bentley Waters bought specifically for this odyssey. The elongated vehicle snakes comically on winding cliff-side roads as he travels from France to Italy, to the battlefield at Anzio where his father fell. Driving, he waxes philosophic with his passenger Willa Rawlinson, who proclaims in poetic heaviness, the two wars erased any memory of fathers, and, the smell of one’s grandson and the blessing of Zeus, the king of gods, are one and the same thing. -
When James Marsh’s Oscar winning documentary Man on Wire premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008, it seemed like a miracle, not only Philippe Petit’s stunning walk across wire 110 stories in the air, but the image of the World Trade Towers from August 7, 1974, as their destruction was fresh in everyone's mind. Now recreated in a fiction film, The Walk, in Real3D, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the role of Petit, the story goes from historic to mythic, with a huge WOW factor: the magic of Robert Zemeckis’ technical expertise puts viewers are up there with him. You know how this mad caper is going to end, and yet The Walk is the thriller of the season.
gossipcentral.com 