Gossip Central

Helen Mirren in Woman in Gold: How German was It?

“How’s my German?,” asked British actor Allan Corduner who plays Gustav Bloch-Bauer in the film Woman in Gold. He’s Maria Altmann’s father, in flashback to pre-war and Nazi occupied Vienna, when she was a young woman who managed to escape. Helen Mirren plays Maria’s older version, and they had only one scene together, when Maria, in a time close to the present, walks through the magnificent apartment she was forced to leave, seeing the ghosts of her murdered family in their glory. As stories evoking the terrible history of the Holocaust go, this one, based on true events, has a fairy tale happy ending, as Maria Altmann with her lawyer, E.Randol Schoenberg, grandson of the famed composer Arnold Schoenberg, take on the Austrian government to claim paintings by Gustav Klimt, stolen, like much property owned by Jews.

Paul Rand: The Father of Graphic Design at the Museum of the City of New York

Perhaps the most recognizable poster created by Paul Rand is the one he made for IBM, with its clean iconic triad, the eye, the bee, with the alphabet letter M, striped to match the body of the bee, to complete the rhebus. The graphic designer Paul Rand (1914-1996) is acknowledged as the artist who lifted graphic design to a new level of Art. Known not only for his corporate work, identity programs, packaging design, brochures, Paul Rand, born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn, was a teacher, in the lecture halls at Yale, and as a writer of numerous volumes including Thoughts on Design and Design, Form, and Chaos. Writing constantly, he wrote not only to educate, but to clarify his thoughts and assertions. At the Museum of the City of New York, the breadth and scope of his career is in full display. A bit too crowded to give each work its full measure of weight, the exhibition, ads hung chockablock on the walls and laid out in vitrines in a first floor gallery, is a testament to his legacy.

Elisabeth Moss as Feminist Heidi Holland in Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles

Remember the old feminist adage: A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. It is in that antique spirit that The Heidi Chronicles in a new production at the Music Box Theater follows art historian Heidi Holland (a pitch perfect Elisabeth Moss) through decades of social and political change with the men and women most prominent in her life. She met Peter (Bryce Pinkham just off his Tony winning performance in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder) at a high school dance, and Scoop (Jason Biggs) at a McCarthy fundraiser; those historic markers anchor Wendy Wasserstein’s smart, quip-heavy drama, further informed by the soft rhetoric of consciousness raising, through the strident ‘70’s into feminism’s late ‘80’s moment, when Heidi, still unwed learns how to deal with her aloneness, as did this significant playwright in her real life before her early death.

Ethan Hawke’s Love Letter to Seymour Bernstein

Seymour Bernstein at 88 is such a loveable man, and so talented an interpreter of classical music, it is easy to fall in love with him. But that’s not why Ethan Hawke was so inspired at meeting him at a dinner party, so much that he knew he wanted to spend more time with Seymour documenting him. Hawke’s movie Seymour: An Introduction captures Seymour's wisdom and  generosity. It should be mandatory viewing for anyone in the arts, in fact, everyone alive. Seymour’s gift as a teacher of piano is to supply ample instruction, carrying over into life itself, advocating integration and balance. He believes, “Whatever talent you have is the essence of who you are.” Hawke’s goal was to show young people, how a passion for an art form can inform the art form and life; in this anti-Whiplash, Seymour helps Hawke with his stage fright, ironic because after stellar reviews on the concert circuit himself, as a young man, he gave up performing because the pre-performance anxiety was unmanageable. So it was a special treat when he sat at the piano performing for invited dinner guests at last fall’s New York Film Festival.

Going Clear: Why Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman Had to Part

If Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Alex Gibney’s new documentary only illuminated the outsized personality of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, it would be a fascinating study of one of the most compelling figures of the mid-twentieth century. But this film, based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same title, is so much more, exposing the secretive society within our society Hubbard founded. Given to bizarre behavior, tantrums, and self-aggrandizement, Hubbard wrote the best-selling Dianetics, and with that invented an ideology. Hubbard found a way to avoid taxes by naming this phenomenon a church; and, he understood the one thing Americans truly worshiped was celebrity: John Travolta and Tom Cruise were cultivated to lure a populace to its ranks. When LRH died of a stroke in 1986, his reign fell to David Miscavige who expanded the empire; his speeches to the fold—footage shown through fair use-- are done on a spotlit stage with Nazi-esque imagery crossed with Who Wants to be a Millionaire extravaganza.

Celebrating Rendez-vous with French Cinema at 20: Leading Ladies and Manly Men

What makes French films, eh, French? The facile answer: a focus on love: married, obsessive, at first sight. In its 20^th season the popular Rendez Vous at Lincoln Center, shows a penchant for action adventure—and, serial killers. What happened to the frothy comedies and romantic musicals of the past?  

Benoit Jacquot’s 3 Hearts opened the festival. Known for making each movie a love letter to women, Jacquot’s films were celebrated at the French Institute Alliance Francaise with a retrospective. 3 Hearts features three of France’s best imports: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, in an odd triangle. Deneuve is the family matriarch. Her daughter, Charlotte’s Sylvie, meets Marc (Benoit Poelvoorde). In a coup de foudre, she’s set to leave her life behind to be with him. Fate intercedes. They lose each other, but her sister, Chiara’s Sophie, strangely meets him and falls in love. The problem is Marc, a loser from the beginning, not at all sexy, and exhibits, let’s say, issues of character and ethical behavior. Is this casting the director’s calculation, to play his movie for comedy? Otherwise, this taut drama has you in its grip with intense, intriguing car scenes. 3 Hearts features strong sister ties between Sylvie and Sophie. Irony is: the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg’s real life sister died just after the filming. Gainsbourg now lives in New York with her husband filmmaker Yvan Attal. At the opening night party, Nathalie Baye laughingly complained, she’s the only French actress never to have been cast in a Benoit Jacquot film.

Killing It at the Guild Hall Gala

As galas go, Guild Hall’s is one of the best, a chance for city and country to meet up over art, cocktails, and dinner. On Monday, Hamptonites left their snowy driveways behind, hopped on a jitney, greeted the Manhattan crowd at Sotheby’s, mingled over cocktails and viewed Guild Hall's recent acquisitions at the annual winter love fest. A large untitled canvas features a beach scene by the Academy of the Arts’ new president Eric Fishl. Celebrating his birthday too, the Sag Harbor resident said he’d rather be here on this special day than anywhere else, and then introduced Laurie Anderson, who is so talented “you want to kill her.” If you know her seemingly effortless performances, you what he means. She went on to present the first lifetime achievement award of the night, for visual art, to photographer Ralph Gibson. Noting that he also performed music with Lou Reed, she was most grateful for his laughter.

Helen Mirren in The Audience: Glimpsing Royalty on Broadway

If you have never been to Buckingham Palace, you can now have an intimate view in The Audience, starring Helen Mirren as the Queen, imported across the pond to Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. However much conjured in your imagination, the room in which Queen Elizabeth meets with her Prime Minister every Tuesday (with one exception) over 6 decades, the premise of this sharply conceived drama under Stephen Daldry’s superb direction, is described in vivid detail by an Equerry in full regalia. A dazzling chandelier hangs overhead, two chairs of precise lineage and upholstery reign over the otherwise bare stage, a triumph of understated opulence, in Bob Crowley’s masterful design. And the queen herself, the magnificent Helen Mirren who has honed this role wig to wig, dowdy dress to coronation jewels, nails imperious, witty, wise, sympathetic, and politically astute to a tee.

RIP Albert Maysles, Pioneer Documentarian Dead at 88

This is a boom time for Albert Maysles: his iconic Grey Gardens (1975) in a restored print is screening at Film Forum, and available from Criterion. A new documentary, Iris, about style legend Iris Apfel, a hit at the 2014 New York Film Festival will be released in late April. But then again, in the years that I have known him, he was always working. With D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock, and his brother David, Maysles was a pioneer in “fly on the wall” or direct cinema. A lover of movies, it is hard to imagine not seeing him on the scene at the premieres of the latest, encouraging young filmmakers. As he said to me in a 1994 interview: “Making a film isn’t finding the answer to a question; it’s trying to capture life as it is.”

Multicultural Movement: Malpaso Dance of Cuba at the Joyce

Having seen a rehearsal for the Malpaso Dance Company on a recent trip to Havana, a highlight of our cultural tour, we were eager to see the New York Joyce Theater’s full production. Guest choreographer Trey McIntyre,   from Idaho, was on hand, enthusing about working on “Under Fire” with this talented group founded in 2012 by Daile Carrazana, Fernando Saez, and dancer choreographer Osnel Delgado, whose work, “Despedida/ Farewell,” was in preparation for its world premiere. The company is one of a few in Cuba not supported by the government. The program at the Joyce, through this weekend, is a thrilling affirmation of flourishing independent arts in Cuba.