A fashion insider once told me, the clothes displayed on runways are entertainment. They don’t exist. In the case of the Brooklyn Museum’s spectacular history of high heels, Killer Heels, many will thank heaven: the footwear in videos and traditional museum cases looks that thrillingly treacherous. A Christian Louboutin ballet flat hoisted vertical on a stiletto for example may be a fetish item, to be worn perhaps by a prima ballerina in perpetual en pointe. True, some historic pumps from Delman’s dated late 1930’s look chicly dowdy, some Asian influenced styles look like artful clogs, Ferragamo’s pumps for Marilyn Monroe are simply elegant, but Louboutin’s “Lipspike’s Bootie” or Koolhaas’s “Gaga Shoe” are pure weaponry.
recent posts
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- 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
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Stories about firefighters conjure images of 9/11, inevitably, as no one can forget the enormous sacrifice of those men climbing up the stairs as others rushed down. In the documentary, A Good Job, images of the site the day after haunt, well after the documentary, directed by Liz Garbus, finishes with its final big hugs: actor Steve Buscemi and each of the brave men and women he interviews. Having been a fireman in Engine 55 in the early ‘80’s after his father insisted he take the civil service exam, Buscemi was compelled to join that company, in full gear, going down to the disaster site on Sept. 12, to help recover what they could of the station’s five missing men. He took a video camera, and the scale of rubble even today so many years after the fact seems incredible. Now on the week of 9/11 commemoration, this documentary is Buscemi’s tribute to a job he left, and to the firefighters with whom he still feels bonded.
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No one missed the irony of a John Waters retrospective at The Walter Reade Theater across Lincoln Center’s plaza from Fashion Week. On opening night, Waters, in hot red pants and print jacket, introduced the Female Trouble screening noting that he had to explain to drag queens that cha-cha heels, coveted by his heroine Dawn Davenport for Christmas, did not refer to spiked but to the flatter more chunky kind. It’s that attention to detail, however gross, that makes a John Waters flick so distinct, and his characters performed by Divine, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, among those no longer with us, indelible, owing more to DeKooning’s grotesques than to anything on a fashion runway. -
What is grass? This is a question posed by Walt Whitman in his epic poem Leaves of Grass, offering an image of the most democratic of God’s greens, plentifully available to everyone from paupers to princes. The same question posed at Guild Hall’s August 23 panel, moderated by Edwina von Gal, made grass an image of golf courses, majestically manicured lawns, and the moneyed elite, often maintained with the use of toxins. The panel wanted to offer alternatives, to preserve our planet, and to save the populace from diseases such as cancer. Paul Tukey, spoke of the lessons learned from his grandma in Maine, about the “poop loop,” the benefits of dandelions, and compost tea.
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The Overnighters, Jesse Moss’ much lauded film at Sundance, screened last night at Guild Hall, a finale for the Hamptons International Film Festival Summerdocs series. Thinking he was following the story of the many men who descended on North Dakota looking for work in the fracking boom there, Jesse Moss found a compelling central character, Pastor Jay Reinke, who took many of these migrants into his Lutheran church, much to the horror of the community. With a surprising reveal, the documentary demonstrates the power of non-fiction filmmaking to touch un-scriptable hidden truths. With the industry’s large machinery cutting into the once spectacular landscape as backdrop, the film could have focused on the all too tragic toll of our country’s dependence on oil, but instead it homes in on grim lives that are far removed from the riches of East Hampton, where a lavish pre-screening party at Mary Jane and Charles Brock’s residence featured the magician Mark Mitton who made Hilaria Baldwin’s mega carat diamond ring morph into one larger. -
The war in Vietnam still conjures volatile emotions for those who lived during that heady time in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. That’s why Alec Baldwin insisted that the audience at Guild Hall Saturday night ask only questions related to the documentary, Last Days in Vietnam; host of the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs series, he anticipated that the politics surrounding America’s intervention might cloud the story Rory Kennedy’s new film had to tell: about the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, as the city fell to North Vietnam troops. Americans like Stuart Herrington, an intelligence officer stationed there after the Paris Accords cease fire, promised not to leave behind the hundreds of South Vietnamese who would surely be executed or sent to re-education camps. That was a promise that he and others would not be able to keep. -
At Guild Hall, when Florence Fabricant asked CNN’s Anthony Bourdain at a recent Q&A, which country was most surprising, he quickly answered Iran. Most Americans have not been there, and I seized a moment of opportunity. Now, he said ruefully, would not be the time. This celebrity food maven sniffs out countries of smelly dysfunction over orderly functionality. And Iran surprised him with a people that had the attitude, Are you American? We don’t care what the government is doing; welcome, we want to know you. In a Teheran restaurant where they put flags on diners’ tables, they apologized, Sorry, all our American flags were burnt. Congo, he said was perhaps the most dangerous, run amok with warlords and militias. You don’t want to mess around. One minute you are fine, and the next everyone is glaring at you for being CIA. Known for his culinary adventures to these exotic locales, when he’s back in the states, Bourdain says he loves best a bite at the deli; the flipping of burgers in his Hamptons backyard fills him with bliss. -
Your first perception as you drive up to Fred Stelle’s serene North Haven waterfront acreage is Wow, fruit trees. Pears aplenty not yet ripe. Abundant apples showing a blush, anticipating autumn. And beyond, a vintage house, a former actors’ colony during the Depression, getting a bit of this architect’s signature touch with a bit of construction. All he ever wanted, Stelle said addressing a group of journalists on a pre-tour visit, was to plant fruit trees. Exemplifying the challenge of this year’s garden as art tour, how to accomplish gardening without the use of chemicals, he explained how he was able to live his dream against popular wisdom. Everyone told him, you cannot have fruit trees without spraying toxins. And he has spent seven years figuring out how to defy that advice. Yes, this year’s tour comes with a message: as many consumers are concerned with conserving our planet, and keeping our children healthy, it starts with the soil. Of the gardens open to visitors this year, an annual benefit to Guild Hall, all are the result of chemical free planting. It was a relief to see that in the three cases visited last week, values of beauty and utility were not compromised.
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When critics talk about the heyday of American filmmaking in the 1970’s, director Robert Altman was not only a part of that flourishing, he was at the forefront. With movies like McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), and Three Women (1977), my personal favorites—his films did not seem to operate by any predictable formula. A new documentary, Altman, will air on EPIX, directed by Ron Mann, featuring interviews with Kathryn Altman, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Julianne Moore, Sally Kellerman, Keith Carradine, Lyle Lovett, James Caan, and many other stars who worked in his films.One of the interviewees, Elliott Gould starred in The Long Goodbye (1973), as Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s famed fictional detective. In a recent phone conversation about this legendary director, Gould explained what made working with Altman so special.
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When we first see Kevin Costner in the indie movie Black and White, he’s got his head in his hands. His neck is large and wrinkled, befitting an older man in distress. His wife has died in an accident, causing a new stage in his already beleaguered life as it unfolds in Mike Binder’s latest film. The well-to-do couple was raising their granddaughter Eloise after their daughter died in childbirth. Her black crack-head father is MIA. Now Costner’s Elliot is on his own, and the father’s mother—an entrepreneur with attitude galore played by Octavia Spencer takes him to court. At a sneak preview in East Hampton this weekend, prior to a featured upcoming screening at this fall's Toronto International Film Festival, Binder introduced the movie and its star to the all-white audience, explaining that the story of raising a biracial child whose custory was challenged by a black paternal grandmother, was based on his own experience. -
A Mumbai family leaves political duress in the homeland, migrates in a van to rural France, and mingles ethnic spices with haute cuisine across an embattled country road. This could be the recipe for a hokey immigration fable, but in director Lasse Hallstrom’s able hands, and with a cast led by the formidable Helen Mirren and Om Puri, The Hundred Foot Journey is the summer’s tastiest movie. -
The documentary’s catchy title, Keep On Keepin’ On, comes from the legendary trumpeter Clark Terry, now 94, a line he uses to inspire young musicians: Justin Kauflin, a blind pianist composer he’s nurtured, could not attend the special Summerdocs screening at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Friday night. Now in Los Angeles recording an album with Quincy Jones, Kauflin’s one of Terry’s successful students in jazz, but so is the Australian drummer and surfer who made this debut documentary, winner of the Audience Award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival; the filmmaker Alan Hicks also took home the award for Best New Documentary Director. At a pre-screening cocktail party at The Maidstone, I had the opportunity to ask him how an Australian came to this landmark American music, and how he made his first film on a jazz legend’s story. -
Introducing Simon Pegg at the East Hampton Cinema last night, at a special screening of his new movie, Hector and the Search for Happiness, Gwyneth Paltrow announced of Pegg, the godfather of one of her children: “he’s the movie star in the family.” A pregnant pause followed these words, as the self-styled nerdy British comic hardly has the recognition of say, her mom, Blythe Danner, not to mention Paltrow herself. Was there irony in that praise? -
The theme may have been “One Thousand Nights and One Night: Sleepless Night of Sheherazade” at this year’s Watermill Center Benefit, but as we well know, Lady Gaga’s visual and conceptual incarnations can fire off a thousand and one narratives in anyone’s imagination. That conceit informs the slow moving videos of the “Born This Way” singer/ performance artist created by Robert Wilson, perhaps following Andy Warhol’s classic experimental work in that genre. Having made a live appearance last year, this weekend Lady Gaga was represented in images of impending demise, such as David’s “Death of Marat,” and Ingres’ “Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere.” Only Cindy Sherman has more poses. -
Scandals about pedophile priests bring many to tears. In John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary, a victim of abuse gets his day. No spoiler here. Make sure you are not late when you see this powerful, taut movie, which begins in a confessional. The camera is on Father James’ concerned yet calm face as the voice on the other side of the wall tells of the horrific acts done to him as a youth. Our priest is innocent, but the voice tells him to get his affairs in order, to meet him on Sunday at the beach, where he will kill him. -
The logical comparison to this Shakespeare-in-the-Park is not the Public’s more established revival of the bard’s genius at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. The Classical Theater of Harlem’s stunning Romeo & Juliet most resembles in theme the play Holler If Ya Hear Me, inspired by the demise of Tupac Shakur. Each has a clear message about the horrors of gang violence, and with the work of very talented artists, illustrates the havoc done by such violence, on human values, identity, and life’s pleasures, like love. -
Marlo Thomas worked the homey sitting room at East Hampton’s Baker House on Saturday night: her husband Phil Donahue, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, Bob Balaban and Lynn Grossman, Jordan Roth, his mom Daryl Roth, Blythe Danner and others ate sandwiches served on a silver tray by party planner Peggy Siegal. This was opening night of Joe Pietro’s play Clever Little Lies at Guild Hall, under David Saint’s fine direction. When we meet her in the living room of a suburban home, Thomas’ character Alice grouses about adorning the windows of her bookstore with copies of the sexually charged 50 Shades of Gray. By contrast, Alice’s family, including husband Bill (Greg Mullavey), son Billy (Jim Stanek), and daughter-in-law Jane (Kate Wetherhead) have other volatile issues. Nobody deploys the word, but “adultery” resonates, and compared with the sex in the best-selling book, the extra-marital sort seems genteel indeed. Son Billy has delusions of love– with a gym trainer—and plans to take off with her to Hawaii. Mom saves the day by coming clean about her own past, and dad well, Bill Sr. notes ruefully, “Someone always gets hurt.”
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Woody Allen is up to his old tricks. Real ones, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. In previous films he’s played the magician role himself, but in Magic in the Moonlight, a romantic comedy set in the luscious Provence landscape, he allows the dreamy Colin Firth to handle the willing suspension of disbelief, making elephants disappear, sawing women in two, misdirection, bedecked in chinoiserie. Even as an insufferable pompous egomaniac, Firth is so suave it is easy to fall in love with him. -
It is a truth widely held, that ladies who lunch are wont to shop. The options for lavish spending were in sumptuous display at Jill Zarin’s Southampton waterfront home last weekend. While Valentino’s slinky gowns were not present, a sleek red smart phone case by the company Mophie sat enticingly under glass. Valentino and Mophie teamed up for the design. And for guilt free spending, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation benefits from a portion of the sales. Dr. Waxman, a part time resident of East Hampton, was pleased with the Zarins’ support, helping the foundation grow in its efforts to fund researchers worldwide. -
Diane Keaton’s presence was felt on Long Island’s east end the day before her new movie And So It Goes premiered at Guild Hall last Sunday: she had a book signing at Bookhampton in East Hampton for her memoir, Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty, and Main Street was mobbed. At the screening, Keaton was a hot target too, and in her neurotic Annie Hall voice, she worried she was blocking the aisles. She was, but no one minded shimmying past her. -
The ecstasy around Richard Linklater’s Boyhood reached climax at the premiere at MoMA this week. A two and three quarter hour epic in which a boy goes from first grade to high school graduation, this landmark movie was filmed in yearly stages for over 12 years, meaning the actors portray themselves as they age. We see Patricia Arquette in several haircuts, Ethan Hawke with and without facial hair, and most dramatically, the kids, Ellar Coltrane and Lorelei Linklater, the director’s real life daughter, go from children to young adults, passing through their awkward teens. While this filming strategy pays off in stellar performances, in the big picture, the 12-year gestation is mere conceit. People love this movie for its glimpse into a family, broken marriage and divorce, change of schools, jobs, friends, in short, the quotidian we avoid by going to the movies. Engagement comes in the unfolding of these richly drawn lives, and the nostalgic reviewing of our own. It all seems so real, and yet, Boyhood is scripted in its major moments, with improvisation from the actors. -
The tensions between Ukraine and Russia make the news daily, but in Belarus, a regime has been in place for 20 years, imprisoning opposition, or eliminating it altogether. Andrei Sannikov, now in exile in Warsaw, Poland, attempted to run against President Alexander Lukashenko. After participating in a protest, he was imprisoned and tortured. On June 24, in Warsaw’s Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, I had the opportunity to talk to Andrei Sannikov about his exile in Poland and the documentary film about the suppression of free speech in his home country, Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus, directed by Madeleine Sackler, to air on HBO.
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Leafing through his well-worn script after a recent performance, Richard Kind enumerated the challenges of his role as Henry Carr in Travesties, a play replete with double entendres in every language you can imagine and then some. As fireworks rat-a-tatted in the background on the July 4th weekend, punctuating Kind’s grand kvetch about jokes that had to be explained even to him– like a colloquialism for German that might defy the recognition of any “echt” Berliner– he could not get over Czech playwright Tom Stoppard’s brilliance, and Bay Street Theater’s daring to stage this paean to verbal gymnastics and erudition during high beach season. Hello Dolly, it’s not, said Richard Kind after the standing ovation from the surviving audience. (Many left at intermission complaining of mental fatigue.) That fact begs an annoying question: To enjoy this play, do you, in fact, have to have read James Joyce’s Ulysses, need to know who Tristan Tzara was? Or, what Dada was compared to Surrealism? Or, how T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons? Or, care about the exact correlation of the political, the truly revolutionary, to ART? -
Wisdom has it, summer is for action thrillers, rom-coms, and other popcorn movies, but this season is particularly rich. Last week’s opening night for the BAM CinemaFest set the tone of excellence with Richard Linklater’s epic masterpiece Boyhood. With stellar performances by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as divorced parents, the film, shot in a dozen years, follows the growth and maturation of their two kids, played by Ellar Coltrane and the director’s daughter Lorelei Linklater. But this is “boyhood,” and therefore Ellar Coltrane’s film. A family saga unfolding in 2 hours and 45 minutes, the film is so deeply satisfying, the way a great novel takes you into a fully realized world. Perhaps it is a bit early to predict the award season picks, but this film has the vision, scope, Oscar dimension. At the BAM after party, directors Julie Taymor, who just completed filming her extraordinary Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bennett Miller, just back from the success of Foxcatcher in Cannes, and Oren Moverman, now editing his new film in which Richard Gere plays a homeless man, all agreed about Linklater’s achievement. -
Most theater does not translate well into film. The film genre invites expansion and theater can feel claustrophobic. Unless claustrophobic is what you want as in the case of Roman Polanski’s adaptation of David Ives’ stage play inspired by Sacher-Masoch’s novel, Venus in Fur, a kinky two hander involving a theater director at the end of a brutal day of auditions, and an actress who barges in at the last minute demanding attention. In the recent Broadway production Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy faced off in these roles, but now on film, Roman Polanski cast his wife, the voluptuous Emmanuelle Seigner in a tour de force performance with Mathieu Amalric, whose Thomas could double for the director Polanski. The casting is adventurous in another way as Seigner brings a mature sexuality to Vanda: she is goddess, earth mother, a sex kitten to rival Bardot, a muse, tease or threat. Turning on a dime, her character sizzles. In an interview last month at the Soho Grand Hotel, Seigner spoke about her performance in this movie, working with her husband, and why this was such a good role for her.
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