A lovely ingénue strolled about the Milk Gallery in a black Dior with train, a replica of a dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in an iconic photograph by Bert Stern. The exhibition, Picturing Marilyn, a joint effort by Staley Wise and The Weinstein Company was an attempt to stage a surreal visitation in tandem with the release of the film, My Week with Marilyn. The young actress was in fact Dree Hemingway, great granddaughter of Ernest and daughter of Mariel who might have been her age when she starred in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Also present at Wednesday's opening were hosts Harvey Weinstein, Dominic Cooper, Celeste Holm, and many well-wishers: Andrea Riseborough, Christie Brinkley, Harry Benson, Vogue's Grace Coddington, among them.
recent posts
- Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson Debut on Broadway in The Fear of Thirteen
- 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!
-
-
In its 5th year, The Bob Woodruff Foundation and The New York Comedy Festival's night of Stand Up for Heroes, featured a number of comedy's best voices, Ricky Gervais, Jim Gaffigan, Seth Myers, and Jon Stewart among them, but this annual laugh fest to benefit something very serious also had a few personalities less known for making people laugh. Bill Clinton thought it odd he'd open at a comedy night and had a great moment reminding the packed Beacon Theater that through genome research he's learned that he, Hillary and Chelsea are all descended from Neanderthals. Even Bruce Springsteen got into the comedy: showing off New Jersey moxie and menschlechkeit, he graces this stage every year, rocking out and auctioning off a guitar or two.
-
Begowned in gold Versace at Monday night's Glamour's Women of the Year Awards, Jennifer Lopez said little about the ups and downs in her life and career, but said the women in her life-mom, sisters, friends– encircled her and got her through. “T,” a survivor of the child sex trade wore a sparkly Tory Burch, telling her horror story of being forced to the streets at age 10. Jennifer Aniston, a consummate comic herself introduced Chelsea Handler, while Marc Jacobs honored his friend Cindy Sherman. An iconic Sherman just went for the highest price ever for a photograph by any artist. Condoleeza Rice introduced Laura Bush and the Bush girls who quipped that they'd learned a lot from reading Glamour. The biggest laugh: suggesting Laura could drive her man wild. -
Werner Herzog is all over DOC NYC. In this, its second year, his film Into the Abyss was screened opening night on Wednesday. The famed German director quipped that all of his films could have this title. Indeed, last year his Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3D undersea archeological expedition kicked off the inaugural DOC NYC. The high grossing documentary might qualify-caves, massive bodies of water, get it?– but for entirely different reasons. -
What were Laurel & Hardy doing at the annual jazz loft party? One of many great pleasures of this night of superb sound to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America's efforts to help musicians in need was Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra performing some wildly original accompaniment to the comic duo's silent movies, “Double Whoopie” and “Wrong Again.” But that's the kind of night it was on Saturday: while the northeast was challenged with a pre-Halloween ice storm, jazz devotees showed up and made their way around Chelsea's Hudson Studios drink in hand following their ears to hear a who's who of jazz royalty. -
At 15, Abigail Breslin wears makeup. Clad in day-glo chartreuse for the premiere of her new movie, Janie Jones, she's now a young starlet. Based on director David M. Rosenthal's real-life discovery of his preteen daughter who he never knew existed, this evocative father-daughter indie film also stars Alessandro Nivola as an infantile alcoholic rocker on tour. Saddled with Janie when her drug addict mom (Elisabeth Shue) drops her off and splits, Nivola's character Ethan Brand does some growing up himself taking on the role of dad. -
The fans outlying MoMA for the New York premiere of The Rum Diary were quadruple deep, awaiting the arrival of the star, Johnny Depp. Too bad the Titus I screening room was three quarters filled. Apparently the star did not want a full house. Why? Let's call it the vagaries of stardom. I had met Depp before, before his turn as Jack Sparrow turned him quirky. At the premiere of an earlier film we talked about his double roles in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls (brilliant), and his passion for beat literature. With Hunter S. Thompson, it's guilt by association. -
Dee Dee Ricks is shameless in a very good way. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, this single mother, a success on Wall Street with lots of money to burn, as she puts it, realized that her boys, then 5 and 3, would not remember her if the disease progressed to a worst case scenario. And so she filmed every moment of her cancer battle: doctor visits, chemo, double mastectomy, hair loss, wig creation, reconstructive surgery and without a blink, her breasts before and after. Her film, The Education of Dee Dee Ricks, directed by Perri Peltz, will air on October 27 on HBO. Throughout, she appears remarkably up beat and fearless even while expressing her darkest moments. -
With the writing talents of Ethan Coen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen, featuring performances by an ensemble that includes Marlo Thomas, Steve Guttenberg, and Julie Kavner, under the direction of John Turturro, the 3 one-acters that comprise Relatively Speaking at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre are exactly as you would expect, very funny. On Wednesday, my husband and I, fans of all three writers, enjoyed a fine night of theater, as good as can be. A delicious debate ensued. Which was best?
-
British children may have been promised oranges and sunshine as they were deported to Australia in the '60's and '70's in a scandalous child trafficking operation affecting some 130,000 kids, but that is hardly what they found there. The children, aged 3 to 13, often left in child care by unwed mothers, were lied to, told their families were dead. In Australia, most were enlisted in a labor pool, forced into hard construction and menial jobs, beaten into servility, and many raped. This piece of twentieth century horror might have been swept aside but a social worker in Nottingham, Margaret Humphreys, dedicated herself to helping the children, now grown, find their families. She is also asking for accountability from agencies in both governments. Her story is told in the film, Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach and starring Emily Watson, featured in this year's Hamptons International Film Festival. While it is not a documentary, Oranges and Sunshine faithfully portrays the shocking truth. -
Jean Dujardin, star of the much acclaimed movie, The Artist, conceived and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, is dubbed the French George Clooney. Silent, and black & white, The Artist is the perfect foreign film, playfully incarnating the era of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, a Gallic homage with no accents. Shot in Hollywood with a supporting cast of American actors, Penelope Ann Miller, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Beth Grant, among them, the film limns the career of a fictional actor, George Valentin, who after a near tragic prideful “fall” makes the transition from silent films to talkies, with the love of a young actress played with eye fluttering excellence by the director's wife Berenice Bejo and accompanied by Ludovic Bource's evocative original music. Helping Peppy Miller become a star, George shows her how to pencil in a beauty mark. Their tap duet is surely the most joyful finale in recent movies. A classic love story, The Artist is an exhilarating nod to old Hollywood as only the French could make. -
In Katori Hall's play The Mountaintop, taking place on the fateful night that Martin Luther King was assassinated, a maid named Camae, delivering room service says, “Let me take you to the mountaintop.” And every way you can imagine to take that statement, a play off the speech the iconic Dr. King gave that afternoon, works. -
Marilyn Monroe may have been the original superstar, from the era when such mega stardom was invented. Her public and private persona remains infinitely fascinating, even when she is portrayed, pouting, petulant, and persuasive by the actress Michelle Williams. On Sunday, the movie, My Week With Marilyn, directed by Simon Curtis premiered at the New York Film Festival, its centerpiece, and it is a gem. -
For documentary filmmakers, it doesn't get better than this: having your work bring about change.In 1993, a newspaper item about the murder of three 8-year olds in West Memphis and the three teenaged boys arrested for the crime piqued the interest of HBO's Sheila Nevins. She called the filmmaking team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, sending them south to document the case. The filmmakers thought they were going to tell a tale about guilty teens and Satanic rituals in the heartland. Finding the evidence overwhelming that the men were innocent, instead they made a movie that pointed toward a miscarriage of justice. Two earlier versions of the documentary, shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directions/ New Films festival and HBO galvanized support for the convicted young men. After 18 years in prison, the men were released this past August.
-
Uptown at the Walter Reade Theater on Thursday night, the vibe was decidedly downtown. The occasion: the New York Film Festival screening of director Sara Driver's film of a Paul Bowles short story, “You Are Not I.” -
If the world ends any time soon, as threatened for 2012, what will the last day on earth look like? That is the dominant conceit for two films in this year's New York Film Festival: Lars von Trier in his film Melancholia imagines a planet hurtling toward Earth disrupting the kind of human rituals this director is so good at skewing, and starring a fine ensemble: Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgard, and Charlotte Gainsburg who starred in von Trier's last festival offering, the controversial Manderlay, with Willem Dafoe. This last is worth mentioning as Dafoe stars in Abel Ferrara's film, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, less fanciful and more rooted in the realities of a downtown New York junkie's existence. -
Fans of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage will wonder what happened when that Tony winning stage play was adapted for the screen by the playwright for her friend, director Roman Polanski, and redubbed simply, Carnage. At Alice Tully Hall last night where the movie opened the New York Film Festival audiences cheered Polanski’s credit, knowing that this master Academy Award winning filmmaker would not attend. He was, as it were, a presence in absence. -
In the elevator moving 9 floors up the Museum of Art and Design to Robert Restaurant, C and Jeffrey Toobin hotly debated the news of the day: the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray. Would Michael Jackson's doctor be convicted of involuntary manslaughter? Chances are he'll get off. Then again, . . . . Doors opened to a throng of television news A-listers abuzz, celebrating Erin Burnett's upcoming show, Out Front, to premiere Monday. Cameras flashed. Anderson Cooper posed in front of the CNN scrim. -
Just a few blocks from the UN with police lining Lexington Avenue preparing for President Obama's visit, the Four Seasons Restaurant was the site of a power summit on world peace. A new WNET 5-part series focused on the critical role of women worldwide in war stricken regions is to air on 5 consecutive Tuesdays starting October 11 on PBS, and the mood was fierce to say, without women at the table, there will be no peace. -
If novelists John le Carre and Alan Furst were interested in true-life stories, they might have written books about William Colby. Instead his son Carl Colby, a documentary filmmaker who has made award-winning films on Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Frank Gehry, and Bob Marley, among others, has turned his ample investigative attention to the life of his father, a military man and CIA director whose career spanned ill-fated chapters of American history: the Kennedy presidency and the Vietnam War. George Bush Sr. followed him as CIA head.By everyone's admission, William Colby was a man with many secrets, a more than fertile subject even in the conventional Freudian paradigm. The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby features extensive interviews with Donald Rumsfeld, Brent Scowcroft, Bob Kerrey, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Schlesinger, Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh, Tim Weiner, a heady 85 in all; the film works best as a family story set against post WWII.
-
Forget the red carpet. The drum beats on Fifth Avenue and 125th Street drew a select audience into the National Black Theatre for the eagerly awaited world premiere of Radha Blank's SEED. The 5-character drama involving a social worker, a family, and a prison inmate, against a back screen of the New York City subways and Harlem environs is fresh, lively, and let's just say, features one of the funniest exchanges ever to take place at a DuaneReade. -
In Robert Creeley's poem, I Know A Man, an unnamed narrator urges his friend John, which is not his name, to buy a goddamn big car/ “drive, he sd for christ's sake, look out where yr going,” predating the spirit of a current slick and stylish movie, Drive, directed by Copenhagen-based Nicolas Winding Refn, who won Best Director in Cannes. On a recent afternoon over an iced cappuccino at Gemma in The Bowery Hotel, I talked to Refn about the making of Drive, his casting of Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, Albert Brooks, and his “vision.” -
The actress Jessica Chastain, lovely in a lace Carolina Herrera dress, plunked herself down on a cushion removing her beige platforms in relief after rounds of photos and interviews. A publicist was sheltering the petite redhead from the Post's Page Six editor. This was the after party for a new film, Take Shelter, at the Vault at Pfaff's, where the wait staff was dressed in Christian Siriano strapless chiffon cocktail dresses with bejeweled waistbands in celebration of that downtown boite's opening. Chastain's deglamorized look in Take Shelter as the loyal wife of a troubled construction worker, t-shirts and non-designer jeans with tousled mane, might be closer to the real Jessica. One of the great pleasures of this Sundance favorite is seeing Chastain's work with Michael Shannon. -
You could feel the weight of the occasion at the Milk Gallery in the Meatpacking on Thursday night, the site of a portrait exhibition and screening of a documentary marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Not that NYC was lacking in remembrance, but these photographs of key players in the event and after by Marco Grob for Time Magazine's tribute volume, Portraits of Resilience embody ennobling gravitas, the kind of historic moment captured in oils by the great masters. -
Film director Paul Morrissey, erstwhile manager of Andy Warhol's Factory, has been dogged, his career overshadowed by the Warhol legend. His iconic films Trash, Lonesome Cowboys, Heat, and Flesh were merely presented by Warhol and so deemed the artist's films, while it was Morrissey who actually made them. “Andy had Asperger's Syndrome; he didn't do anything,” groused Morrissey to interviewer James Toback at a special screening of his latest film News from Nowhere last Tuesday at the Walter Reade Theater. “What did Andy do?”Fans, many friends and neighbors like Bruce Weber, were able to revisit Morrissey's unique vision at the News from Nowhere screening. The new movie, the best ever filmed in Montauk, Long Island, is a testament to Morrissey's artistry. A handsome and mysterious stranger, an Argentine illegal worker (Demian Gabriel) arrives by fishing boat, and connects with an assortment of eccentrics, most notably an older woman (Warhol superstar Viva) who occupies a rundown and secluded oceanfront compound of old style, grand, shingled houses and bungalows. The site was the property Morrissey owned with Warhol since 1971. Before selling it two years ago, Morrissey decided to make a film there, a final homage.
gossipcentral.com 