Sara Vilkomerson

On Saturday, Oct. 4, the paparazzi were in full blitzkrieg blast outside the Ziegfeld Theatre for the premiere centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, Changeling. Director Clint Eastwood, tall and ever-elegant in a dark suit and blue-printed tie, posed with his film’s star, Angelina Jolie—glam and sultry, and apparently back to pre-twins shape in a black Versace dress. Brad Pitt was beside her, and when they posed together the wall of photographers’ flashbulbs lit up the sky. But further down the line it was a different story.

Jason Butler Harner, who plays the role of Gordon Stewart Northcott, infamous serial killer of the late 1920s in Los Angeles, was taking his first major red-carpet stroll.  read more »

Okay, we don't want to get our hopes up....but this Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland which will combine live action with performance-capture "technology" (meep!) is beginning to sound kinda awesome. In addition to Mia Wasikowska (from HBO's In Treatment) being cast as Alice, and Johnny Depp signing on as the Mad Hatter, The Hollywood Reporter reports today that Anne Hathaway, fresh off all her good reviews for Rachel Getting Married, has signed on to play the White Queen while Helena Bonham Carter will play the Red Queen. Good for Anne Hathaway! Not only has she handled a difficult time in her personal life with grace and aplomb in interviews, but she's doing the smartest thing possible: making good movies for people to talk about instead (it worked for Nicole Kidman, too). As for Mr. Burton's new production, we eagerly await casting news on who will play the Cheshire Cat. Is Jack Nicholson available?

It’s entirely probable that Mike Leigh is having a bit of fun with audiences with his new movie, Happy-Go-Lucky. When we meet Poppy (Sally Hawkins) at the start of the film, she’s a suspiciously bubbly 30-year-old, riding a bicycle, wearing brightly colored clothes and trying to spread good cheer to a foul-tempered bookstore worker. It’s much easier to identify with his mood than hers, and in fact, you might wonder: What’s the deal with this annoyingly cheerful weirdo? Just what the hell is wrong with her? The joke of the film, of course, is that nothing is wrong with Poppy … unless you count being happy and in a good mood even after your bicycle is stolen, you throw your back out or you’re being stalked by your driving instructor.  read more »

At the September 21st Emmy Awards AMC cleaned up: Mad Men became the first basic cable series to win best drama (and won for writing, too), and Bryan Cranston had a surprise win in the best actor category for Breaking Bad. And the network is not stopping there.  read more »

Security was nutty this morning (bag searches and wands?) up at the Walter Reade Theater for the first American screening of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling. Based on a true story, the film is about Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother who returns home from work in 1928 only to discover her son has vanished. After five months, with lots of publicity, the LAPD reunited mother-and-son--only problem was that Christine knew the boy wasn’t hers. And that’s just the beginning of the movie! The rest of it involves untangling the corruption and cover-ups of the Los Angeles Police Department. After the film (which is 2.5 hours long and flew by) 78-year-old Clint Eastwood – tall, elegant, and dry – sat for a press conference. The man looks really good – we just can’t stress that enough. And he’s funny too!  read more »

We saw The Strangers when it came out (we only made it through to the end so we could talk to Scott Speedman) and it scared us into the next week. Very. Scary. Movie. So were a little freaked out to open our mail today and to discover this mask sent to promote the DVD release, out  October 21st. You have been warned. 

Ever since Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and inspired one of those famed late-night bidding wars in Toronto , everyone has been all aflutter to see the film. It’s due to close the 46th New York Film Festival on October 12th (and released by Fox Searchlight in theaters in December) but those wrinkled press and industry types got to see the film this morning. Mickey Rourke, who is in practically every scene of the film, turned in as good a performance as promised, playing an aged professional wrestler who still likes to suit up for the ring, and listen to 80s hair metal as he drives around New Jersey (holla!). People are already talking about an Oscar for Mr. Rourke, and maybe for Mr. Aronofsky too (which is a far cry from how they responded to his last film, The Fountain).

At the press conference following the film, it seemed clear that Mr. Aronofsky is quite the taskmaster on set. “I won’t say he’s tough because he doesn’t like that,” said Mr. Rourke. “Relentless. Let’s say relentless.”  read more »

“I really believe I’ve known two saints in my life, maybe three,” said writer-director Robert Benton via telephone from his office on Monday, three days after the death of his longtime friend Paul Newman. “William Sloane Coffin, who used to be head of Riverside Church and was a chaplin at Yale when the civil rights movement was won. And the other was Paul Newman. He was, I think, one the best human beings I’ve ever known … one of the most decent, the most honorable. He was extraordinary.” He laughed. “Of course, he would be appalled if he could hear me calling him a saint.  read more »

Do you have plans for Sunday, October 12? Cancel them.

If, in the wake of Paul Newman's death last Friday, you've been wishing to revisit the great actor's work and have been thwarted at your local video store, Turner Classic Movies has stepped in with a 24-hour block of Newman movies.

Per the TCM site, here's how it will go:  

6 a.m.  The Rack (1956) - Paul Newman plays a Korean War veteran who has been brainwashed and is now on trial for treason in this taut drama based on a Rod Serling teleplay.  Walter Pidgeon and Wendell Corey co-star.

8 a.m. Until They Sail (1957) - This drama directed by Robert Wise tells the story of four sisters each struggling to find love and happiness in New Zealand during World War II.  read more »

Bill Maher is a brave man. He’s also a smart and witty one, which is why sometimes watching his HBO show Real Time With Bill Maher can be very entertaining or occasionally cringe-inducing, as he appears entirely unafraid to go there on topics polite society tends to shy away from. (His comments on Politically Incorrect after 9/11—“We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly”—led to ABC firing him.) Because of his outspokenness, people either tend to love Mr.  read more »

We consider ourselves something of an amateur expert on David Letterman, as we've spent an hour a day with him, five times a week, for the past two decades. And so we knew already that the big guy had a lot of affection for Paul Newman (who didn't?). Newman appeared on the Letterman show often, and was always a stellar guest -- elegant, funny, and a great sparring partner for Mr. Letterman, who clearly got a huge kick out of the actor/race-car driver/humanitarian.

Last night, Mr. Letterman was clearly emotional as he talked about his friend and fellow car nut. He told a long and funny story involving the pair's shared geekdom over car engines (Newman apparently put a Porsche engine inside his VW Rabbit).  read more »

We learned a long time ago to always, always take Will Smith seriously. The man can do anything - fight aliens or zombies, be Ali, love German shepherds, etc. Mr. Smith is on a winning streak: last year I Am Legend made a truckload of money. Ditto last summer's Hancock (which we maintain was secretly Jason Bateman's movie, but whatever). But now we've come upon the trailer for actor's next film, Seven Pounds. The story, as far as we can tell, is about a man who did something really bad (we'll guess murderous drunk driving) and is possibly suicidal over it. But he looks for redemption when he decides to change seven strangers lives.  read more »

Earlier this week we learned about the social networking site YA for Obama, started by Young Adult writer Maureen Johnson. Judy Blume was the first author up at bat, and today we have two more. There's "Do The Math" by Scott Westerfeld (um, no), which involves charts and percentages (double no). And then there's "Gossip Girl for Obama" by Cecily von Ziegesar, writer of the Gossip Girl series.

Ms. Von Ziegesar poses the question, is Barack Obama a "Nate, a Dan, a Chuck, a Serena, or a Blair?". Turns out the answer is Blair (hmmm), but for our money the most fascinating thing about this post is the detail of Ms.  read more »

The 46th New York Film Festival officially opens tonight with The Class (reviewed this week by Andrew Sarris), but soggy members of the press and industry showed up this morning for a screening of Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky. The film is all about a thirty-year-old woman named Poppy, an irrepressible schoolteacher in the north of London who is (almost crazily) optimistic and upbeat even when facing down the unhappy people who cross her path...or steal her bicycle, or borderline stalk her. Sally Hawkins stars and owns this one. The actress, previously seen in Mr. Leigh's Vera Drake, will surely be one to watch during award season -- she's already won the Best Actress Award at the Berlin Film Festival.  

This weekend brings Nights in Rodanthe to theaters. It's an unapologetic tearjerker, a love story starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane (click here for Rex Reed's review), based on a Nicholas Sparks novel and directed by...George C. Wolfe?

It's certainly not an obvious partnership. After all, Mr. Wolfe has made his reputation as being an edgy and inventive playwright (The Colored Museum, Spunk, Jelly's Last Jam), theater director (he staged Tony Kushner's Angels in America for which he won the Tony), and producer of the Public Theater (he was the man behind Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk). Nicholas Sparks spins tales of big gut-busting romances like The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and Dear John.  read more »

Uh oh. Last December we wrote about how much I am Legend freaked us out (seriously, we think the workout our heart got during the film qualifies as aerobic activity). The movie, based on the 1954 Richard Matheson book and starring Will Smith, laid out a vision of New York City almost completely wiped out of humans after the spread of a virus (thanks a lot, Emma Thompson!). The movie left us wondering if we should move to an apple farm in Vermont or, at the very least, go ahead and get that German shepherd.  Since the film made $584 million dollars internationally, it's probably not so surprising that  read more »

It was reported today that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (perhaps freaked out by the train wreck that was the Emmys) have gone for new blood in the form of Laurence Mark and writer/director Bill Condon for next February's 81st annual telecast. The two men previously worked together on 2006's glittery musical Dreamgirls, which Mr. Condon wrote and directed and Mr. Mark produced.  

Late in the day we caught up with the always-delightful Mr. Mark, who said he was both thrilled and daunted in equal measure at the undertaking. The first order of business, he said, was to try and pick a host. "That's a hard nut to crack. It's like the movies...casting is everything." And what of all those Ricky Gervais rumors that were making their way around the web today? "We haven't approached anyone yet," he said. "But all doors are open."  

Choke, based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, opens in theaters this weekend and it's already getting some, ahem, mixed reviews but we, for one, kinda enjoyed it! This is due in part to our deep and abiding love for the film's star Sam Rockwell. We think it started with 2000's Charlie's Angels (which we happened to revisit on TV the other night and enjoyed his dancing bad guy-ness all over again). We know we're not alone, either: Mr. Rockwell was picked to star in George Clooney's directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and was truly excellent in Matchstick Men,  read more »

Anytime a movie opens with the words “based on actual events,” it is understandable to pause. Add to that a sports movie with metaphors about how to play that brutal game of life, and it’s perfectly O.K. to want to actually press pause, and switch over to ESPN. Don’t get us wrong, cinema has given us plenty of wonderful sports movies—Hoosiers, The Natural, Raging Bull (not to mention Mystery, Alaska!)—but the genre is anything but unpredictable. There’s a troubled hero/team, a coach whose tough exterior hides a soft underbelly of love, an insurmountable challenge (usually a championship game) and then a satisfying win—preferably at home.  read more »

The Hollywood Reporter reports that The Notebook director Nick Cassavetes has signed on to direct The Beautiful and The Damned, which would tackle the shiny, bright, and often thorny relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre. Though the glamorous duo were considered the jazzy embodiment of the Roaring Twenties, things did not end well (you know a relationship has gone south when one of you ends up in a sanitarium). Reportedly Mr. Cassavetes is sniffing around Keira Knighley to portray Zelda Saye, perhaps inspired by just how awesome the actress looked in Atonement. But who should play F. Scott Fitzgerald? After seeing Brideshead Revisited we know Matthew Goode could go period, but is he too dark-haired? Hey, what about Ken (Aaron Stanton) from Mad Men?

Unpack the tweed, suckers! It’s time to get serious … the economy is in the toilet, the election is dragging and the sun is disappearing before cocktail hour. The upside: It’s good-movie time, the seasonal cinematic equivalent of trading in your gazpacho for hearty stew.

Up first for the movie-heavy weekend of October 3 is Rachel Getting Married. Jonathan Demme directs, and Anne Hathaway (who must be officially declared as the go-to female of the moment) stars in this drama about a troubled young woman going home for her sister’s wedding. Hooray for familial neurosis! Also up is the very heavy-looking (and scary) Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) with the lovely Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.  read more »

Attention political strategists: don’t forget to court the Young Adult (YA) writing community. Author Maureen Johnson started the social networking site YA for Obama after she realized many of her friends from the YA community supported the senator, and thought (in true YA fashion), "Wouldn’t it be great if we all had a place where we could write about Obama? And if we invited everyone to join?" Judy Blume, author of Superfudge, Tiger Eyes and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing among many others (raise your hand if you learned about sex from reading Forever), is the first author to contribute.  read more »

We stopped watching the new 90210 after we tried to make it through the first episode and found even we (who happen to have a pretty high threshold for terrible television) couldn’t stomach the god-awfulness of it all. But! Apparently Dylan McKay, that wrinkly-headed dreaminess that was Luke Perry back in the day, is a name still being bandied about, because he’s the father or some such nonsense of Kelly’s (Jennie Garth) four-year-old son. Mr. Perry, who has said in so many words that wild horses couldn’t drag him into that mess, will however be showing up on TV after all, on the September 23rd season opener of Law & Order SVU. According to TV Guide, Mr. Perry will be playing a father accused of abusing his adopted child, and elsewhere Sara Gilbert (Roseanne) also shows up as a rape victim.

We were amongst the very (very) few who really, truly enjoyed Burn After Reading, and we will defend it to the very end . Generally speaking, the critics savaged the Coen Brothers film – though in our critics' screening  everyone appeared to be laughing pretty hard. But you know what? Burn After Reading was number one last weekend, earning over 19 million dollars for their best opening ever, so there! And today the Culture Czar received this rather unusual promotional item – a (very comfortable) pillow with a line of dialogue from the film, which was given out at the Toronto Film Festival premiere. Who needs silly t-shirts and mugs when you can have pillows we ask you?

It’s hard enough to get mainstream movies made and distributed (even Jennifer Aniston’s Toronto film Management is still looking for a buyer), let alone get them seen—do we even need to lament again the fact that no one wants to see anything to do with the war? So we admire the fact that a movie like All of Us will even make it into theaters. Because this documentary—about a young doctor in the South Bronx researching why heterosexual black women are being infected with H.I.V. at disproportionately high rates—may be incredibly interesting, but it’s also terribly depressing.

Emily Abt’s first film, Take It From Me, was a feature-length exploration of welfare reform, so she must be conditioned to tackling projects on topics that people would rather ignore.  read more »

Good gravy! Here's another end-of-the-year biggie trailer that looks as though it could be a major contender in award season, It's Doubt, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who also wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning play on which the film is based. Set in 1964, the story centers on a nun who confronts a priest after suspecting him of abusing a black student (which he denies). All the elements are here: Meryl Streep (looking kind of Amish and terrifying); red faced, weird eyebrow'd Philip Seymour Hoffman; and Amy Adams. Boy, this one looks intense. Scott Rudin, unsurprisingly, is the producer. Fun fact: the last movie that Mr. Shanley directed was (a personal favorite) Joe Versus The Volcano.

PS: Though the music in the trailer sure sounds like tinkly Philip Glass, apparently it is not.  read more »

Here’s the thing about all these horribly addictive Bravo shows: even when you pretend like you’re not going to start watching them, they get you. Oh, how they get you! We had sort of made ourselves a little promise to limit the reality show watching to Project Runway and Top Chef. But then, of course, there’s Top Design (how come there’s no ‘see you later, decorator’ this time around?). And when it’s a Sunday afternoon, and not so nice outside, what can you do but watch how on earth these people are going to transform a bomb shelter (serious) into a peaceful and luxurious living space?

So we ended up catching up with the show this weekend (they’re only two episodes in), and we realize we’re a little late to the game, but we can’t help but feel like someone somewhere should have warned us that the attractive blonde contestant named Andrea (who totally won the bunker challenge!) is also known as Mrs. Rick Schroder. That’s right, Mrs. The Rickster!  read more »

It's just a couple more weeks till Clint Eastwood's Changeling opens as the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, and today Variety has posted the trailer and the Todd McCarthy review written back in May when the film premiered at Cannes. Based on the real Wineville Chicken Murders in 1928, Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mom whose son Walter mysteriously disappears. When the police bring back the boy they claim to be her son, Christine is insistent he is not -- earning her a place in the psych ward. According to Mr. McCarthy's review, it is then that the film "really spreads its wings, as ramifications of this tragic but unexceptional case seep through the police department, the legal system, the medical establishment and City Hall in entirely unexpected ways.  read more »

Here's a question....how early is too early to start talking about the Oscars? We're guessing, um, now! But after seeing the trailer for Gus Van Sant's Milk and practically hearing the acceptance speeches being written, we were inspired!

So now, with absolutely no evidence or facts or, you know, actually seeing any of these movies, we present our insanely early prediction of which movies will land in the top five for Best Picture next February:

Milk: Gus Van Sant directs Sean Penn—who weirdly somehow got his face to look quite a lot like Harvey Milk, the subject of this film. Plus, look at the star power: Emile Hirsch, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, Victor Garber, Denis O'Hare.  read more »

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3
By Annie Proulx
Scribner, 221 pages, $25

Annie Proulx’s fiction tends to sneak up on you. Her characters, like her writing, start off deceptively slow and deliberate, but then before you know it, you’re weeping over a singular detail—a bloodstained shirt hung on a nail in a trailer, with another shirt placed inside of it, as in her 1997 story “Brokeback Mountain.” Ms. Proulx won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her novel The Shipping News, but there’s something about the constraints of short fiction that allow her to really pack a wallop. And so it is with her latest collection of stories, Fine Just the Way It Is, which revisits the dusty prairie terrain of Wyoming and the flinty, hardened and somewhat desperate sorts who live there.  read more »

Not every filmmaker would choose to open his film with a man offering to shave the bikini line of his girlfriend’s 13-year-old daughter. But so it goes in Towelhead, which hardly pauses when it comes to squirm-squirm-keep-squirming moments. The movie was written and directed by Alan Ball, who penned the once shocking and now much maligned American Beauty (whether you like it is one of those new relationship deal breakers, much like the raining frogs scene in Magnolia). But for us, Mr. Ball will always have a special place in our heart thanks to (at least the first two seasons of) Six Feet Under.  read more »

So far, everyone we know at this year’s Toronto Film Festival has been kvetching about how many movies there are to see, how many places in that Canadian city there are to roam (and how annoying all that Canadian niceness gets after a few days!), and the madness surrounding anything Brad Pitt (for Rex Reed’s full Toronto report, check back on Wednesday). However, something is getting done, as Variety reported today the first major sale of the festival: US rights to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (which just won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival) sold to Fox Searchlight for about $4 million dollars. The movie, which stars Mickey Rourke (!) as a down-and-out wrestler, screened last night, and the bidding took place at the Four Seasons Hotel. According to Variety, other bidders included Lionsgate, Overture, Weinstein and Co. and Sony Pictures. Go, Oscar buzz, go!

Recently we caught the last two thirds of Cameron Crowe’s 2000 Almost Famous on HBO (it’s on again tonight at 8 p.m. if anyone is interested). Remember how worked up people used to get about that movie –- and how suddenly no one could get away from Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”? And just think, it came out before Vanilla Sky and (shudder) Elizabethtown. But Cameron Crowe’s career trajectory is another story for another time. What really struck us was just how darn good a job Kate Hudson did in Almost Famous. At the time of the film’s release, the only thing people knew about Ms.  read more »

Here’s a teensy weensy spoiler about what’s ahead in season five of HBO’s Entourage, which starts on Sunday night. Johnny Drama gets the best line, and it involves the word “meth” (trust us: the crowd at the Ziegfeld theater for the premiere on Wednesday night roared). Beyond that, we’ll try not to ruin any surprises for what seems (hopefully) to be a return to what made Entourage so much fun in the first place.

When it first aired in the summer of 2004, Entourage bestowed a little La La Land glitz and glamour to the HBO landscape, which was sorely missing with the then-recent departure of the Sex and the City gals.  read more »

DVR is a funny thing sometimes…if you’re like us, you find yourself occasionally going down the rabbit-hole with old shows we'd nearly forgotten. In this case, we're newly, shamefully, re-addicted to Little House on the Prairie. By the time we get home at night, there they all are waiting, usually three episodes each day, courtesy of the Hallmark Channel (thank you!). This was our big time favorite as a kid, and reviewing it a quarter of a century later has been remarkable. For starters, there’s just no way on earth this show would make it on the air today.

Forget the blow jobs of the new 90210 or the “I killed someone” shocker on Gossip Girl. Little House used to go really dark! And not just horribly embarrassing dark, like the time Laura/Half-Pint stuffed her dress with apples-as-boobs and they fell out at the blackboard, or when Nellie Olsen (who could out-bitch any so-called mean girl today) secretly taped Laura talking about her crush on a boy using her newfangled “talking machine” and then played it for everyone at school. Anyone else remember the time Albert’s (the dreamy Matthew Laborteaux) girlfriend was raped in the barn by that dude in the mask? This episode was referred to in my house as “Little Rape on the Prairie.”  read more »

In the upcoming film The Women, a remake of the 1939 George Cukor classic that’s been re-imagined by writer-director Diane English, Meg Ryan’s hair could be billed as a supporting character to its gaggle of stars: Annette Bening, Cloris Leachman, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergen, Eva Mendes and, of course, Ms. Ryan. When we meet her character, Mary, she’s a kind of superhero suburban mom—stretched violin-string-thin between charitable committees, parenting and grouting her bathroom floor—and The Hair is long and exceedingly ringlety. In classic Meg Ryan fashion, Mary flits charmingly if exhaustedly between her myriad responsibilities, The Hair showing the kinetic energy she’s expended in contrast to her best friend, Sylvia (Ms.  read more »

It seems, to us at least, that a truly great romantic comedy is getting harder and harder to find at the movies these days. We’re unabashed fans of the genre—from the classics like The Philadelphia Story to this year’s (underappreciated) Definitely, Maybe, and tons of stuff in between. Heck, we even kinda liked 27 Dresses! However, if there’s one thing to be learned from seeing lots and lots of these movies, it is that nothing is as insufferable as a romantic comedy that doesn’t work. (Hiya, Made of Honor and P.S. I Love You!) And such is unfortunately the case with this weekend’s Everybody Wants to Be Italian.  read more »

Oh David Duchovny. We’re so sad to hear the news that you have checked yourself into rehab for sex addiction. Sex addiction sounds like a totally exhausting thing to have to keep up with, and we can’t even begin to imagine how out-of-control things must have gotten to give a quote to the public about it. We know you’ve asked for respect and privacy for your wife and children (we totally love you too, Téa!), and we totally feel you on that, but here’s the thing we keep wondering. Would it or would it not be less embarrassing (and career damaging) for you and your family if you said the rehab was for some sort of drug or alcohol addiction? Something prescription (of course) and easily mended….  read more »

We here at the Culture Czar happen to be big fans of Variety and particularly of reviewer Todd McCarthy. Many times we’ll read his reviews, nod along, and even make mmmhmmm noises at our desk. Which was why we were shocked (shocked!) to see his review of the Coen brothers new film Burn After Reading, which opened the Venice Film Festival last night:

"After their triumphant dramatic success with 'No Country for Old Men,' the Coen brothers revert to sophomoric snarky mode in 'Burn After Reading.' A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C., only some of whom work for the government, the short, snappy picture tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results.  read more »

Keira Knightley shimmies herself into the most impressive corsets and hairpieces (seriously, the wigs should get second billing) in the lush and golden-hued The Duchess, directed by Saul Dibb. Based on the book Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman, the movie features Ms.

Knightley as 18th-century Duchess of Devonshire Georgiana Spencer, real-life “original It Girl.” Georgiana grows up in splendid English countryside privilege, and is married off by her mother (the still ravishing Charlotte Rampling) to the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) when she is still a teen. But the Duke turns out to be rather cold and distant and seems to care

only about his dogs and his wife producing a male heir.  read more »

When it comes to having a party for anything at all J.J. Abrams–the man who still has us trying to figure out what the heck the deal is with smokey the smoke monster on Lost -- we suppose it’s best to expect the unexpected. But a premiere party for his new show Fringe (premiering September 9th on Fox) all the way out there on 28th street between West 11th and 12th avenue? It actually felt like a J.J. Abrams show.  read more »