Gossip Central

Mira Sorvino: Drama Queen in Union Square

In a bygone era, drug addled users could score in Union Square; now the health-minded can cop organic kale and cucumbers in a caravan of farm stands. Deftly bringing both the edgy past and cleaned up present together with humor and heart, Nancy Savoca’s new movie, Union Square, features a stunning performance by Mira Sorvino as Lucy, a ditsy but damaged woman who when first glimpsed is bargain shopping at Filene’s and cursing out her lover on a cellphone.

The Best Supporting Oscar winner for Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, Mira Sorvino here demonstrates she deserves a second. Lucy, in spirit, is not far from the sweet prostitute she played in Woody Allen’s comedy. You like Lucy, but, as with any pill popper, you don’t know what she’ll do next. Dressed like a tart, over the top and not just in her high heels, she barges into her sister Jenny’s off-Union Square loft apartment exclaiming, Erase the past and let’s start all over. Oh that family issues could so easily fade!

An Ardent Forest in Central Park: As You Like It

For fans of romantic comedy, a play that ends with three weddings is the ultimate fantasy. As You Like It, this summer’s first Shakespeare in the Park offering in its 50^th year, is a celebration from the first banjo strums to the dancing at end with Lily Rabe, (Rosalind/ Ganymede) so fine at company’s center. A natural crowd-pleaser, As You Like It as directed by Daniel Sullivan, rises to the traditional Shakespearean hilarity while grounded on John Lee Beatty’s sets in the magnificent park: a log fort, trees fit for tacking on love poems--this enchanting forest appears to go forever.

Love Italian Style: Hanging Out with Woody Allen

Everyone (some real life family and old flames famously excluded) loves Woody Allen.

At a press conference at the Regency for his new film To Rome with Love on Tuesday, reporters took that as a given, asking his actors how they get past their own adoration for the auteur. A love fest ensued. Penelope Cruz says she is happy not only to work with him; she gets to hang out. The Oscar winner for his Vicky Cristina Barcelona had, just the night before, heard him play at the Carlisle where, when he’s not shooting movies in Italy, or Spain, or France, he performs with his jazz band on Monday nights. Extending his riffing to filmmaking, he lets his talented cast “go” with the material. As a prostitute in To Rome, Cruz speaks Italian, a language the Spanish star perfected when she worked on Sergio Castellitto’s terrific Don’t Move as a homely peasant woman. Yes, homely! Allen has no problem with foreign tongues, knowing none. In Vicky Cristina, she adlibs “like crazy” with Javier Bardem. Alec Baldwin, seated to her right, quipped, all the adlibbing worked out: they ended up married.

Neil LaBute’s The Heart of the Matter to Benefit MCC Theater

Barricades lined the streets in the West Village. President Obama was in town, dining at Sarah Jessica Parker’s for a fundraiser in his honor. Aretha Franklin was there leaving in a flash for the Songwriters Hall of Fame, according to my pal Roger Friedman. But this was also the opening of a night of Neil LaBute’s 3 one-acters The Heart of the Matter, to benefit MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theater just a few blocks away. While I had not thought of it before, there is a slight connection: LaBute, a playwright known to skewer human relations, what used to be called the battle of the sexes, could have penned episodes for the Sex & the City women, but they would have been more arch, and much meaner. 

Sitting with Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present Premieres at MoMA

Because the 2010 exhibition of her work at MoMA was titled “The Artist is Present,” Marina Abramovic knew what to do. At a recent screening of a documentary based on this show appropriately at MoMA, she explained she could do nothing but be present, that is, occupy a chair facing a viewer for 12-hour sessions. Clad in a heavy gown, --one was red, another white, --the artist exuded a somber essence, not taking a break for a coffee or a pee. Viewers queued up for hours, camping outside of the museum, taking turns to sit there on a wooden armless chair opposite her, at times eliciting tears. Filmmakers recorded all this including a young devotee who removed her dress before sitting. Museum security whisked away the rule-breaking girl. The actor James Franco took a seat, and when he left, the next up asked, “Are you an actor? You have that actor thing.” That was perhaps the film’s most humorous moment.

The Tonys and Other Theater Awards

Everything in its time! The Tonys, the Oscars for Broadway theater, marks the end of an awards season as rigorous and varied as that for film, although one noteworthy difference is the absence of red carpet couture commentary; somebody should have been reporting on presenter Jessica Chastain’s glittery, lacy number. From the bleachers of my bedroom, she looked great as did Nina Arianda in strapless, Tony-winner for her performance in Venus in Fur, excitedly telling Christopher Plummer, “You were my first crush, sir.”

Jane Fonda: More Than the Sum of her Parts

When people say that at 74 a person is over the hill, Jane Fonda says she is looking at the next hill on the horizon. With an upcoming HBO series, her recent book Prime Time, several new movies including one in French and Bruce Beresford's  Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding opening this week, the hill looks more like a lush peak in the Catskills. In fact, her character lives upstate. As Grace, a pot-dealing relic of the hippie era living in Woodstock, she has a few lessons for her daughter, Diana (Catherine Keener), an uptight lawyer whose marriage is breaking up, and her grandkids, Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen) and Jake (Nat Wolff). At breakfast at the Regency on Monday, over a plate of watermelon, the movie icon talked to a select group of women about hair, husbands, health, films, family, friendships—with co-star Keener joining in--and the future.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy: Push Girls on the Sundance Channel

“I just celebrated twenty years of my accident,” announced Auti Angel at a luncheon at Robert for the reality show Push Girls. Premiering on the Sundance Channel, the show features four feisty and beautiful wheel chair bound stars, three friends--Tiphany Adams and Angela Rockwood as well as Auti-- who are car accident survivors, and Mia Schaikewitz, a champion swimmer who as a teen suffered a ruptured blood vessel in her spine, causing her paralysis. So, just what is making Auti, a dancer who cannot walk, so happy about a life change that many would consider tragic?