Gossip Central

Reading Faces at the Oscars

Turning the spotlight on the nominees seated at the Kodak Theater, the Academy Awards was a display of reaction shots—to good effect but making me wonder, what’s with Jack Nicholson’s head?

In a season where almost all winners were predicted—even Best Film for The Departed and Best Director for Scorsese, -- it was certainly more fun to take our eyes off the stage to see Ellen Degeneres handing a script to Marty and mugging for a photo with Clint taken by Steven Spielberg, who perfectionist that he is, had to stand to get it just right.  Ellen said her role as host was to make everyone comfortable and she did, even me at home in my pajamas wishing I had gone to one of those parties where I had gambled on the winners. Of course one friend did call to say she had lost a $1000 bet on Eddie Murphy based on my forecast. Does etiquette demand that I pay her for her loss? The cameras fortunately did not dwell on Eddie’s losing to Alan Arkin. In a pre-show interview with Barbara Walters, he seemed much as Jennifer Hudson observed about him when asked how he was to work with: kind of quiet and shy, vulnerable, until performance time when . . . well, we are aware of his antic wide-grinning self. His Jimmy Early in Dreamgirls was stellar, outsized and, in my opinion, the more Oscar worthy.

As we know, Oscar has a logic all his own. Let’s take for example Guillermo del Toro and his magnificent, magical Pan’s Labyrinth. From the time that the film picked up awards for cinematography, art direction, and makeup, with each speech declaring the director’s genius, his genial face registered uneasy pleasure, as if he knew that these early wins might be indicators, consolation prizes in lieu of Best Foreign Language Film. In the past weeks the scales had tipped toward The Lives of Others and so this win was no surprise. In my interview with the young Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the German director, imagining the worst for his film, said he didn’t mind losing to Guillermo: he is so nice. He also pointed out that the last time a German film won, its cast was rudderless in Hollywood. When Nowhere in Africa took the prize in 2002, the director Caroline Link was home in Munich nursing a sick child. Talk about priorities! As Florian returned to his row of actors, a beaming Sebastian Koch among them, I wondered, would this heartthrob, a star of another film, the Dutch Holocaust era epic, Black Book, opening in April, make it back to New York today in time for a private screening tonight? Is he partying hearty as I write? And Al Gore, is he dancing on clean air? How good is it to see him grounded and confident? You could have staked your life on an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth. Best Documentary contenders are always high-minded principle-oriented films. Still, I keep griping: Shut Up and Sing should have been nominated in this category. The film, co-produced by Barbara Kopple, about the Dixie Chicks and the fire storm following an off the cuff swipe at Bush made by lead singer Natalie Maines, addressed first amendment issues and was simply an excellent non-fiction feature. Oh well, the Dixie Chicks were vindicated, reigning at the Grammys.

Speaking of rulers, the movie about the ill-fated queen, Marie Antionette, nevertheless was recognized for Best Costume Design. Milena Canonero thanked Francis Ford Coppola for introducing her to his daughter, director Sofia when she was just a little girl. Meantime Sofia Coppola was spotted in New York shopping for art at the Armory Show on the Pier pushing her new daughter in a stroller. Could it be that she like me was home watching in her pajamas?

 

And the regal Helen Mirren in Christian LaCroix, how gorgeous was that golden gown? Portraying the dowdy queen did not dampen Mirren’s natural fashion sense. At the New York Film Festival where The Queen premiered on opening night, Mirren wore the most spectacular Stella McCartney, and from there it’s been one frock more fabulous than the one before. Paraphrasing Mel Brooks, it’s good to be queen.

                                                                                                                  Regina Weinreich 

The Departed Trailer

A Farewell to Robert Altman

Lily Tomlin kissing Lauren Bacall kissing Marisa Berenson kissing Sally Kellerman, unforgettable as Hot Lips Houlihan in Robert Altman’s Mash. The memorial service for the iconoclastic director was best described by Tim Robbins, one of 21 speakers at the Majestic Theater on 44 Street on his would-be 82nd birthday, February 20, as a typical Altman movie set: Chaotic, epic-length, with characters coming and going, talking over one another. Somewhere, said Robbins wistfully describing a fantasy, he is directing the whole thing.

I was seated next to Jules Feiffer who provided a running commentary on the proceedings. Altman loved chaos, he said, then he could provide order, you see. The writer E. L. Doctorow onstage spoke about his collaboration with Altman on a movie of his novel Ragtime: He and his wife arrived at the set of Buffalo Bill in Vancouver where Altman promptly sent them to wardrobe and made them extras. In between takes, they planned the movie. Doctorow provided a 410-page script. He said Altman loved every word and intended to film the whole thing. Of course, Altman was removed from that job and Ragtime became a rather so-so movie directed by Milos Forman. In truth, whispered Feiffer in the most loving way referring to Altman, it was miserable to write for him. Scripts were accepted and abandoned, becoming springboards for improvisation.

Fitting then, the jazz ensemble from his movie Kansas City performed. In fact, Altman took his structural cues from jazz. His films are like riffs, with melodies weaving in and out. Music defines them. Think of 3 Women, Brewster McCloud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller (I hear Leonard Cohen in my brain), Popeye, Pret-a-Porter, Cookie’s Fortune, Short Cuts, Kansas City, Nashville, the recent Prairie Home Companion. Annie Ross sang a jazzy rendition of “One Meatball” which always made Altman laugh. (“You get no bread with one meatball.”) Lauren Flanigan sang from the opera of A Wedding. Julianne Moore recounted the story about Altman, declaring definitively that she was a redhead after her nude scene in Short Cuts. The final speaker, Harry Belafonte one-upped Tim Robbins. His fantasy was that Altman was making a movie in Heaven, completing his own unfinished movie about minstrels with everyone up there in black face.

A true artist sees his medium as a frontier. Break the rules. Go as far as you can. Altman was an artist. His movies have a signature look. While they are not for everyone, his worst mistakes are better, more interesting, desirable, and thrilling to me than most other’s triumphs. And that was the mood at the Majestic.

Some tidbits: Noah Baumbach’s upcoming movie (as yet untitled) will star Nicole Kidman and will feature Halley Feiffer, Jules’ daughter, who gave a stand-out performance in The Squid and the Whale. Lily Tomlin and Lauren Bacall co-star in a new movie by Paul Shrader.

See Roger Friedman’s Fox 411 column for additional coverage of this event

                                                                                Regina Weinreich

Aline Crumb Wears Vivienne Tam

             

Before this odd couple took their seats at the New York Public Library on Valentine’s Day in front of a packed house for a public tete a tete, Robert Crumb explained his wife’s delayed entrance: she was applying lipstick. The conceit had its punch line: Clad in a lovely hot pink and white empire dress by Tam, Aline Crumb asked her husband, how do I look? Famously insecure, the Long Island girl then turned so that Robert could climb aboard her back demonstrating one of the keys to their marital success: he likes to ride piggy back.

               

          Aside from the romance of the evening, celebrating love after all (even with Aline’s live-in lover, a second husband so to speak, in attendance), the occasion marked a show of her art at the uptown Adam Baumgold Gallery and the publication of Aline Crumb’s new book, Need More Love (MQ Publications), a graphic tell-all memoir in text and cartoons documenting her life and career over three decades. Featuring tales of her dad’s shady deals and early death, her mother affectionately dubbed Blabette’s many travels, her artistic growth and development, daughter Sophie in the womb, life in their village in the south of France, this ample volume should put to rest forever what some detractors have said about Aline’s drawing and story technique, that she is not equal to her more famous husband. Need More Love? Crumb is already contemplating the sequel to be called, Enough Already.

A loving couple, the Crumbs remain uniquely collaborative in life and work. And having modeled for Robert’s drawings in the New York Times, Aline Crumb offers fashion tips in the book’s final chapter, mainly juxtaposing designer ensembles with yard sale finds. A photo of Crumb in a Narcisco Rodriguez suit has her commenting, I look obnoxious. Indeed that auspicious night, the Vivienne Tam dress was accessorized with hot pink tights and clunky lace up motorcycle boots giving the frock’s femininity a comic, decidedly downtown turn. You know she wasn’t going to take it straight, in sheer stockings and pumps. One thing is clear: with his knees dug into her torso as he is draped on her rear, Robert Crumb is Aline’s best accessory

                                                                                                     Regina Weinreich

French Farce

One of the pleasures of last year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema was the charming Orchestra Seats. Now with a tweaking of title to Avenue Montaigne, the film was France’s choice for the Oscars, and will open on February 16. An interweaving of stories (in the manner of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts) involving characters: actors, chanteuses, concert pianists, art dealers, café workers intersect on this one Parisian street to seriocomic effect. Interviewed recently the director Daniele Thompson said her inspiration came from Woody Allen as well as others. In this good year for the foreign language Academy Awards, despite disappointment over the non-nomination of Volver, the film made the semi-final nine, only to be cut for the final five. Needless to say Thompson was disappointed.

         

           She shouldn’t be, really. Oscars usually go to films with a certain je ne sais pas quality of monumentalism: A political context as in The Lives of Others and Pan’s Labyrinth, as I’ve already told you; or, the epic specter of war as in Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood’s movie contending for Best Picture), or Days of Glory, the Algerian film opening on February 16 that tells the story of North Africans fighting in World War II alongside the French to free France of the Nazis. This fine film is hugely resonant in terms of the racism that feuled the riots in Arab immigrant neighborhoods of  Paris last year. Even the sturm und drang of the Danish film After the Wedding with a stunning performance by Mads Mikkelsen, (the worthy, sexy villain to Daniel Craig’s Bond in Casino Royale), has a largeness to it.

            

          On the feel good level, Avenue Montaigne is sure to do well. French in the best sense, Americans will identify with contemporary themes: romances happy and gone awry, performance angst and bravado, family ties Freudian and other. One of the funniest scenes is the actress Valerie LeMercier, playing a diva-ish angst-ridden star of soaps and Feydeau farces attempting to convince the American director played by a real American director Sydney Pollack to cast her in her first drama, in the role of Simone de Beauvoir. Fuck Sartre, he says offering her the part. Meantime Le Mercier is a really big deal in France, I’d say unknown here. When she visited  New York for last year’s Rendez-Vous, publicizing this film and the festival’s opening film Palais Royale, (she starred with Catherine Deneuve and also directed), I told her she reminded me of Lucille Ball. She had never heard of Lucille Ball and so had no idea of the high praise I was giving. So I asked, who of American comics did she like: Vince Vaughn. And her favorite film: Wedding Crashers.

          

           What’s French for DUH?                                             Regina Weinreich

Ageless and Baring Tit

You think colorful to the point of madness, cute to total distraction, flouncy, bare, inappropriate at the suggestion of Betsey Johnson’s clothes. Adolescent fare, nothing more. Think again.

Yesterday’s show of her Fall line had more panache and wearability than much I’ve seen all week from far more conservative designers.

My table mate, the fabulous London Times reporter, Sarah Nir, (we won’t go into the age gap) and I were gasping with desire for the baby doll dresses; at knee length, they can be a grown up look after all, can’t they? Opening with two models in maid outfits reminiscent of Jennifer Aniston’s kinky bedroom getup in the film Friends with Money, the collection was represented by 59 looks paraded through crisp white curtains.

I for one was most pleased to see the return of navy blue, in satin evening looks as well as wool knit dresses and skirts—with wide brim hats, starched blouses and white anklets. Lacy dresses were tiered like wedding cakes. I guess I should have realized the theme for afternoon tea would be formal, lady-like, and oh so British when white gloves accompanied the invite. Seated ringside, New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham garnered a kiss from baby Layla who accompanied Johnson ageless--in blond hair extensions--grandmother down the runway, before she handed her over to mom and took her traditional cartwheel. Joan Jett was there in her signature punk leathers. Was she as entranced as we were?

Is baring tit decadent or defiant? When the first model at Douglas Hannant’s elegant and otherwise uneventful show at Gotham Hall emerged with her top exposed on one side, I thought it was a mistake, then the next model had the same mishap suggesting that playing peek-a-boo was part of the plan. Then it happened again at Jackie Rogers’s show at Scores West, “A Gentleman’s Club,” where you might expect such acts of audacity.

Think twice before you take on this trend. The trick is, you’ve got to be flat-chested and cheeky.

Regina Weinreich

Betsey Johnson, Fashion, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Fall 2007 Collections, Mao Mag, Fashion Designers

How German Is It?

Truth be told, I am bedazzled/repelled by all things German. The oxymoronic title, The Good German, had me twitching. I was not alone. At a private screening in December the response among the attending moviemakers and stars was mixed. Director Steven Soderburgh, himself ambivalent, introduced his latest as an “experiment.” When asked, what were you doing in this film, George Clooney said simply, “I was the girl.” The “girl” of course was Cate Blanchett and the Holocaust era movie with its Casablanca spin received no awards. Nevertheless, I was enraptured.

One of my picks for Best Foreign Film, however, is from Germany: The Lives of Others (opening February 9). While the Holocaust has provided a fair number of excellent features (look out for the coming Black Book), the period after remains to be mined. Riveting throughout, the film’s story involves artists, a playwright-actress couple in East Berlin, when writers especially but all creative people were watched scrupulously by the notorious Stasi, the official security arm of the Communist government. It is shocking how far a regime can think itself entitled to invade the privacy of individuals, developing a system of spying only the curious brew of Soviet and post Nazi paranoia could produce. You need to see the documentary at Film Forum (7-13 February), The Decomposition of the Soul, written and directed by Nina Toussaint and Massimo Iannetta, to get the real picture of what that Kafkaesque life was like for ordinary citizens. The fictive The Lives of Others gets it right: Years of extensive research went into every period detail: the gloomy colorlessness, the stark furnishings, the joyless sensibility. Oscar-winning Gabriel Yared composed the bittersweet score for this love story set in this repressive historic moment, as forces begin to encroach on the lovers (Martina Gedeck and Sebastian Koch) in the form of a Stasi operative, Ulrich Muhe in a chilling, outstanding portrayal that begs the question: what does it mean to be human?

In a recent interview the director, writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck talked about his inspiration and the numerous awards, including his country’s Lolas, the film has so far garnered. What impressed him as a child was seeing fear in grown-ups as his family crossed the divide between West and East Germany to visit relatives. Once as he waited in the car at a checkpoint, his mother was held for hours, strip searched and humiliated. Deftly, the film recreates this terror of personal violation.

I asked about Sebastian Koch, starring in his film and also in Black Book (he plays a “good” German) is he as much a heartthrob in Europe as he is among women here in the know. [Okay, I have a crush.] “He is best known as a television actor in Germany. What people don’t realize is, as he is handsome, he is even better as an actor. He can play anything.”

When asked about the Oscars, Florian said, “Of course I want to beat Guillermo [del Toro, the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, the favorite to win]. But then I met him. If I have to lose to him I won’t mind. He is such a great guy.”

I am sure Guillermo is saying the same about Florian.

A note: The period is limned in a new biography of Leni Riefenstahl from Germany that wants to redeem her legacy: Leni Riefenstahl: A Life by Jurgen Trimborn (Faber & Faber). And, the latest novel by Martin Amis, House of Meetings (Alfred A. Knopf), looks back at that post-war period in an astonishingly powerful evocation of life under a totalitarian regime. Two brothers in love with the same woman are imprisoned in a slave labor camp in the gulag of Soviet Russia. Well, it doesn’t have to be German . . . .

Regina Weinreich

The Good German , Steven Soderburgh, The Lives of Others , Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Black Book , Sebastian Koch

Stilettos and Spandex

More was more at last night’s launch of Mao’s Mag celebrating those who march to a different drummer fashion-wise: The large glossy semi-annual, its cover a signature psychedelic dreamscape by Peter Max gorgeously printed, begs the question: where have all the Originals gone? Brothers Roger and Mauricio Padilha noted a paradox: while we live in an era where individuality is encouraged, everyone looks pretty much the same. Bored of being bombarded by images of gaunt movie stars donning the same designer gowns picked out by stylists, they want to bring attention to those who have created their own style by being brave enough to be themselves. And so their spotlight shined on counter-culture celebrities in the “History of Cool:” Deborah Harry, Brigid Berlin, Michael Musto, Marisa Berenson, Jane Forth, Ann Magnuson, Norma Kamali, Kenneth Jay Lane, Kenny Scharf, Julie Newmar (“who will forever remain the original and best Catwoman to us”), and others, in photo spreads and interviews.

The Broad Street Ballroom was abuzz: dancing in between its early 20th century mosaic columns were a chandelier headed man in baroque, women in outsized wigs in bubble gum pink and tutti frutti, Jayne Mansfield blonds, the usual dandies in tweed waistcoats over leopard ballet flats and small brimmed befeathered fedoras, someone tall in a suit elegantly coiffed with bull horns—these looks suggest that massive amounts of mascara and sequins do not alone make the man. A hybrid gender now marks the official start of fashion week, neither fish nor fowl, even though some were distinctly wearing stuffed birds. Hard to say how “Original” this remix really is, in its borrowing from a vaguely defined past of camp meets colossal, sort of John Waters dressing Divine. Or an evocation of the Metropolitan Museum’s “Glitter and Gloom” exhibit of German portraits of the 1920’s redubbed “Glitter and Glee.” A dapper gent asked me the question of the night, are you Old School? I countered, are you? Oh yes, I’m ‘80’s and ‘90’s, he said. Amazing what is nostalgia for NOW! Meantime projections of the original Originals flickered overhead. Onstage, defying the anorexic aesthetic of runway models, large women in scanty retro bustiers and gartered nylons draped their round rippled rears over a couch. Odalisque, anyone? Proudly they mugged for the crowd who mostly had eyes for one another, snapping shots during sets of naked painted performers in blues and grays with cat’s eyes in the image of Karen Black.

Regina Weinreich

Fashion, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Fall 2007 Collections, Mao Mag, Fashion Designers