Gossip Central

Project Nim: The Dope on a Charismatic Chimp

Nim Chimsky, the star of a new movie, died too soon. A charming troublemaker, this chimp, the subject of an experiment in understanding language and communication begun at Columbia University in the '70's changed the lives of many people. That fact came to the fore at the premiere screening on Wednesday night of the new documentary, Project Nim, a bildungsroman if you will, limning his birth, maturation, and particularly his remarkable use of language.

Beauty and the Beast: Shen Yun at Lincoln Center /PEN on China / Horrible Bosses at Vault

Spirits soar over snow capped mountains, a sword wielding hero, Wu Song, slays a man-eating tiger, a dance corps in Barbie pink clusters like plum blossoms, another twirls handkerchiefs, nymphs frolic in the waves. Heaven opens its gates. In spectacular color and gorgeous costumes, Shen Yun, a New York based arts group enacts the rich cultural heritage of China at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. 

David Hyde Pierce Plays The Perfect Host

You'd be wise not to accept a glass of red wine from Warwick Wilson, the character played by David Hyde Pierce in his new movie, The Perfect Host. That epithet aside, let's just say his cooking skills may be impeccable, but his intentions are more than intoxicating. 

Spiderman: The Party

The crowd outside the Bowlmor on West 44th Street swelled into a non-menacing mini-mob. Harry Belafonte, Spike Lee, and Cindy Crawford snaked their families through, avoiding the plastic champagne flutes in the congested vestibule leading to two elevators carrying the party-ready up to the third and fourth floors. Nowhere to be seen: Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark's creators and their special guests, Bono, The Edge, Bill Clinton. Ousted director Julie Taymor graciously took a bow at the Foxwoods theater but never made it to the party, where celebrities disappeared behind heavily managed VIP curtains. But everyone else had ample comfort food (awesome mashed potatoes and meat loaf) and drink and a night of -what else-bowling! It was easy enough to swap shoes for the regulation lace up kind, but more often women slipped off their sling backs and took to the lanes in bare feet.  And what did people think of the famously beleaguered show? The consensus, at least among this well fed throng: they loved it!

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Page One Inside The New York Times a new documentary: The Medium as Message

Bitching and moaning about the immensity of the newspaper of record, the way its cornucopia of offerings chewed into his writerly workday, the essayist Seymour Krim (who died in 1989) used to say, The New York Times made me. 

How would he now navigate its terrain, both in gritty print and boundless cyberspace, had he lived to see our journalistic no man's land? How do many of us do it, fellow “near sighted cannoneers,” a term Krim took from cosmic Walt Whitman to describe the newspapers' and reporters' mid-century identity forged in that time's new media, taking aim, as it were, living up to a “majestic ideal” in truth-telling?