Gossip Central

Sundance Envy: Kill Your Darlings to Shakespearean Villain: House of Cards

Back in 2007 when I first took on gossipcentral.com, I wrote about “Sundance Envy,” an oft misdiagnosed disease with one symptom: celluloid deprivation in January. Dr. Freud, are you listening? It is not that I yearn for icy ski conditions. This year Sundance seemed particularly alluring to me with two beat era films, movies of Kerouac’s Big Sur and of his 1945 collaboration with William S. Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks, published in 2008, that became Kill Your Darlings. The latter boasted a big star: Daniel Radcliffe, and some indie favorites: Ben Foster and Elizabeth Olsen, two television stars Michael C. Hall and Jack Huston, and one newcomer, Dane DeHaan. Touted as a little-known scandal, for me, the story of the murder of Dave Kammerer (Hall) by Lucien Carr (DeHaan), the young would be poet he was stalking ever since they met in the boy scouts, years before, was a story I knew quite well from Jack Kerouac’s books, The Town & the City, Vanity of Duluoz, and a ton of secondary literature.

The Americans at The Russian Tea Room

Brrrrr! On this chilly weekend, the new FX television series The Americans premiered at the DGA Theater: a young couple played by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell enter a Maryland motel room circa 1960’s. Russian spies, they are finding the U.S. summer brutal. Spying an air conditioner, they are relieved to bask in the frigid air. Talk about the Cold War!

Disaster is My Muse: Hannah Arendt and The Art of Spiegelman at the Jewish Film Festiva

Even in the age of terrorism, the terror of the last century’s The Holocaust, has not lost its hold on the artistic imagination. As the victims of The Shoah are remembered at the United Nations and in synagogues worldwide, films continue to shed light on that darkest hour of the twentieth century. The Jewish Film Festival, an annual collaboration between the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum just ended with the New York premiere of Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic of Hannah Arendt, the writer/philosopher/educator, an émigré who covered the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker magazine, famously coining the phrase, “the banality of evil.” 

The Motherf—ker in Charge: National Board of Review/ Academy Award Nominations

Who knew host Meredith Vieira could swear like a trucker, or imagine herself at 59 as a dead Pussy Galore? But as the television personality reminded a packed Cipriani’s on 42^nd street for the National Board of Review’s Awards Gala on Tuesday night, paraphrasing Jessica Chastain’s “Maya” in Zero Dark Thirty: “I’m the Motherf—ker in charge.” 

Excuse me, but there were children in the room: Quvenzhane Wallis, from Beasts of the Southern Wild and Tom Holland from The Impossible each received Breakthrough Performance Awards. And while John Krasinski defined “freedom of expression” as “taking a chance,” speaking about the award given to Promised Land, others took the phrase more liberally.

Hold the Free-Range Chicken and Creamed Kale: Tom Hooper Celebrated at Michael’s

Having dined royally on Les Miserables, a musical that has its characters literally singing idealistic and starving to death, well-wishers came together for lunch at Michael’s on Tuessday–four tables worth in the garden room-- to congratulate Tom Hooper on his stellar achievement directing this film. But, why now, the day of the National Board of Review awards where the Les Mis ensemble would be honored, and a few days before Oscar nominations would be announced?

Deploying the “F” Word at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards

Around midnight on Monday night, the area around Crimson had a pulse. Four women from Amsterdam stood outside the club looking for Chris Rock. A crowd rushed screaming “Daniel” on East 21st street. Was it Craig, sneaking a Bond-worthy getaway in a black tricked out SUV? Or was it Day Lewis, who was honored as Best Actor for his portrayal of Lincoln? Earlier, Rock had presented a Best Non-Fiction Film award to Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon for Central Park Five, but not before shouting out to Steven Spielberg, awed: Lincoln, man, he freed the slaves!

Anticipating a Big Week for Zero Dark Thirty

At a luncheon at “21” early last December, Jessica Chastain was relieved. Not because her new film Zero Dark Thirty was chosen as Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review, but because her secret could now be known. For a year after she was slated for the lead in this thriller based on the CIA’s mission to find and kill Osama bin Laden, she could tell no one about the film, as if CIA rules applied to her. While her mouth was zipped, many thought she would be playing one of the wives of a Navy SEAL. Yeah, you can be barefoot in the kitchen, she quipped about this attitude. Radiant in a light purple Elie Saab ensemble, Chastain worked the room in Ferragamo platforms, happy at last she could speak about her performance as “the girl,” as the real-life operative was known to CIA higher ups.