By Bennett Marcus
Posted 09/01/11 at 12:20 PM
The royal couple finally arrived in New York! Yes, Kim Kardashian and her new husband, Kris Humphries, fresh off their European honeymoon, are in town, and with typical Kardashian understatement, held court at a party for a thousand or so friends on Wednesday, complete with sparklers, a towering cake, and champers all around.
So how is married life going? “Well, it’s been a week. It doesn’t really feel much different,” said Kim on the red carpet at Capitale. “I love New York. It’s fun and exciting, and there’s so much going on here,” she added.
Publisher Jason Binn and party planner Colin Cowie decided to throw the glitzy bash to welcome the newlyweds to the city. But it’s not all fun and games; Kim and sister Kourtney are back to work, filming season two of their reality show Kourtney & Kim Take New York.
Kim chose Victoria Beckham, and Kourtney was in Ted Baker for the party, both English designers. (Just like the royals!) Lorraine Schwartz said that the jewelry for Kim’s wedding, thankfully, all stayed intact. “Her earrings were three earrings in one; the tops were eight carats in each ear, the bottoms were 20 carats each, so it was 56 carats total,” Schwartz explained. “And then we had another stone put in the middle, so she could have three, and I was afraid I would get one piece missing or something not there. But it all came back perfectly.”
By Bennett Marcus
Posted 08/24/11 at 04:25 PM
“I felt like I knew who this guy is, and just tried to wipe away all cynicism and judgment and everything else. It’s fun to play that kind of person,” Paul Rudd said of the stoner screw-up with a big heart he plays in Our Idiot Brother. Plus, there is the character’s goofy look. “There’s something about short-shorts and Crocs and a tank top and a big beard and hair,” he said with a laugh at the Cinema Society screening on Monday. “All of it together, where it wasn’t a hipster uniform, it was just wrong in all the right ways.”
Rudd cleaned up nicely, clean-shaven, hair trimmed and sporting a John Varvatos suit, even though the screening was outdoors on the lawn at the MIMA Tower, a new residential building in Manhattan. (Should you be looking for an apartment with an outdoor screening room, this is the place.)
The movie was shot in New York City, and co-star Steve Coogan is in town shooting another with Alexander Skarsgard. So what’s it like working with the True Blood heartthrob? “Yeah, when I walk down the street with him, people wolf-whistle,” Coogan said. “All the girls scream, and I wish it was for me, but it’s not.”
By Bennett Marcus
Posted 08/18/11 at 03:25 PM
Thank you, Vera Farmiga, for making us feel lazy. The actress recently directed her first movie, Higher Ground; she also produced the drama, stars in it, and appears in every scene. Oh, while directing this project, she had a toddler to take care of, and was also pregnant with her second child.
“This is me creating my own opportunity,” Farmiga shrugged at the premiere on Monday. “You know, you can sit around and hem and haw every time you’re asked about roles for women, and this was my sort of very innocent attempt at giving myself a juicy role.”
We slackers may find some consolation in the fact that in this plum role Farmiga does not get to kiss George Clooney. She already did that, in 2009’s Up in the Air, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Yes, people still ask about that. “You know, I am running out of metaphors as far as what it’s like to kiss George Clooney,” she said, laughing. “But my husband helps me with those, when I’m in need of a new metaphor.”
Chef Todd English oversaw the delectable food at a post-screening party at his Chelsea restaurant CrossBar, where the cast and guests like Gabourey Sidibe, Alan Cumming, and Patrick Wilson sipped and munched on the patio.
The next night we found ourselves at the Hammerstein Ballroom with big stars celebrating their movie The Big Lebowski. So what if that came out in 1998? The excuse was the release of the cult film’s Blu-Ray edition, and 2,000 rabid fans lined up to see Julianne Moore, John Goodman, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, and “The Dude” himself, Jeff Bridges, participate in a Q&A session.
Before the panel, the actors joked around on the red carpet, reciting their favorite lines from the endlessly quotable script. “I like ‘Don’t be fatuous, Jeffrey,’” Goodman said. Julianne Moore (in a custom Jason Wu dress and Tabitha Simmons shoes) had reporters roaring when she revealed her favorite line—which is, well, too filthy to print here. But, Moore said, the line she gets from fans the most is the classic: “The Dude abides.”
By Bennett Marcus
Posted 08/11/11 at 02:50 PM
In much of her new movie, One Day, Anne Hathaway plays a mousy, striving writer, with ill-fitting clothes and dull hair badly in need of styling. But at the premiere on Monday, she was in full-on movie star mode, striding the red carpet in Alexander McQueen and glittering Louboutin heels.
“The hair?” she said when we asked about her movie coif. “I had fun with all of that, especially because I knew we were going into the short gamine look. So I enjoyed it.” (Yep, that was a spoiler, her character gets a good haircut eventually—sorry dear readers!)
“This movie allows these characters to get to know each other over a really long time, so when they say they love each other, when they admit to it, you believe them,” Hathaway says about the plot, in which she and co-star Jim Sturgess spend years as platonic friends when all along – well, you get the idea. “I think this is a movie where the characters earn your belief in their love,” she declared.
Well, okay. The boyishly handsome Sturgess, a Brit, was mopping his brow in the muggy New York heat when he chatted with us on the red carpet, so we suggested he remove his suit jacket. “I can’t take off my jacket, you’ll see all the sweat marks,” he said.
He plays a posh, dashing lothario in the movie, so his character’s clothing is beautifully cut, with impeccable hair that grays a bit over the years. “It’s kind of like the silver fox look,” Sturgess said. “We call it the George Clooney wig.” Later, at the blissfully air-conditioned Russian Tea Room after-party, Sturgess laughed when we pointed out that he still had his Lanvin suit all buttoned up. “When I watched the film it was totally spread open, trying to get some air in there somewhere,” he said.
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