And for good reason.

Her cross-dressing Albert Nobbs performance has made her an unexpected LGBTQ hero and one of Newsweek’s 150 Fearless Women (one of just four actresses to make the list). As a sudden spokeswoman for gender issues, The Transom wondered what she made of Congressional Republicans' efforts to limit the availability of contraceptives.
“Shameful, shameful shameful!” Ms. Close, dressed handsomely in a black suit, told us. “Because what’s really behind that is a real violence towards women, it’s about pulling women down to where we were in the ‘50s. I mean it’s disgusting.”

“I find it beyond belief that there’s even a discussion as to whether they should have birth control,” she went on. “It’s beyond my comprehension.”

There’s no such discussion for the polar bears in Frozen Planet, the Discovery Channel/BBC follow-up to Planet Earth on-air March 18. Impregnated female polar bears simply reabsorb the embryo if they don’t have enough fat stored to raise a cub that winter.

Although the polar bears were the undisputed stars of Frozen Planet, it was the penguins who featured most prominently at the soiree. (The mate-for-life birds more politically safe, perhaps?) A penguin ice sculpture glistened on Broadway in the unseasonable warmth. Two celebrity penguins, Pete and Penny, were flown in from Sea World and walked the red carpet (which was in fact blue). And when guests put down their frosty white penguin-tinis and filed into the screening room, they found their seats already occupied by an impressive colony of plush penguins.

The crowd sat with the toy penguins erect in their laps while CEO David Zaslav told them that Delta Airlines had allowed Pete and Penny to freely roam the cabin on their flight to New York.

“True story,” Mr. Zaslev said, as a cell phone snap of a bird waddling up the aisle (e-mailed to him by a Discovery investor on the same flight) illuminated the screen.

After cuddling through the first episode of the series, which is narrated by Alec Baldwin, the audience was asked to leave the plush penguins behind; they would be reunited via a gift bag. The command proved difficult to follow—and not just for the many children in attendance.

“Trying to get me to part with my penguin?” actress Celia Weston muttered to a friend upon exiting the theater, still clutching the toy. “Please.”

Out in the lobby, hungry guests flocked to three sushi bars like shearwaters migrate to fish-rich Arctic Ocean in the summers. Others dropped by Pete and Penny’s receiving line.

Their handler explained to a small crowd gathered that the duo have a longer lifespan than the specimen in Frozen Planet, thanks to the cushy amenities of captivity: mild weather, regular feedings, no predators…

“…manicures, pedicures, massages,” joked actress Samantha Mathis, as a photographer asked her to pose for a photo.

Miranda July at New York Screening of "The Future"

Independent filmmaker Miranda July knows about abandoning a work in progress.

While scripting The Future, her follow-up to breakout hit Me and You and Everyone We Know (the new film opens July 29), Ms. July met writer’s block and couldn’t find a realistic way to get the character of Jason, who sells trees, to enter the homes of strangers and experience a revelation. “Jason was supposed to really discover himself through giving up all goals and ambitions. I knew there had to be some kind of event that changed him. And I had written a million versions of what that event could be.”

One of these versions involved a mass of pink dough. “I don’t remember how the Play-Doh came to be, but at one point there was this huge mass of pink dough that he was bringing with him. I don’t even remember what people did with it.” She chuckled softly and stretched an invisible piece of dough in her hands. “I just remember this pink dough epiphany. Oh, it’s all going to be okay as long as I have this large mass of pink dough in it.”

That’s when she realized she needed to distance herself from the work. She scrapped the idea and called a bunch of arbitrarily selected people who were selling things in the PennySaver, the L.A. classifieds that came in her junk mail every week.

“I started interviewing people in the PennySaver to get out of my tiny, shrinking world,” she said. “And then I met Joe.”

Joe, an 81-year-old retired housepainter, invited Miranda July into his home and touched her life, just as he welcomes Jason into his house and changes his perspective in the movie. “He was a very moving, energetic, soulful person,” July said. “What’s in the movie is pretty minor compared to what knowing him was.”

What fascinated her was the fact that for sixty years, Joe made for his wife nine dirty limericks a year involving exposed genitalia and the like. Then there was the uncanny coincidence that Joe met his wife at a lake in Michigan called Paw Paw, which shares its name with the character of the cat in the film.

In front of the camera, July let Joe ad-lib and “speak in his own language,” while the other, trained, actors received tightly scripted lines. She referred to him fondly as “friend” and became noticeably morose when she talked about Joe’s death on the day after she finished her movie.

“He never got to see the film,” she said, gazing at nothing in particular. But, her writer’s block now a thing of the past, July has written a book about Joe and the other characters she met through making The Future.

July said that her book, coming out in the fall and called It Chooses You, is about “that process of going out without a goal, being open to it choosing you, kind of like Jason does in the movie.”

“The fact that it led back around is sort of magical.”

The series will debut on Discovery's TLC.

"Our family enjoys Discovery's networks," said Governor Sarah Palin in today's press release. "I look forward to working with Mark to bring the wonder and majesty of Alaska to all Americans."

Details about the series were scarce. We can only hope it involves heavy doses of Todd Palin on a snow machine.

In the meantime, for those hankering for a taste of Alaska, we recommend going back and reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's excellent profile of Levi Johnston from the June '09 issue of GQ.

The move has since touched off speculation that Mr. Koppel made the move in order to become the next moderator of NBC News' Meet the Press.

Mr. Koppel's name has long been a part of the rumors concerning who NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker might tap for the coveted position.

Then again, in July, Mr. Koppel seemed to dismiss the possibility of taking over the show in an interview with Gail Shister at Mediabistro's TV Newser, suggesting that NBC News needed to hire someone younger.

Van Toffler, the head of MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, announced the news in an internal memo to staffers yesterday.

"News of Norman's move came as a shock inside MTV, where execs typically exit trailing a cloud of rumors predicting their departure," reported the Hollywood Reporter. "As a well-regarded figure at the company, network insiders were betting that it was more likely she found a new opportunity outside the company than was ousted, especially given the fact that the network currently is in good shape.

"Internal speculation seized on the possibility that Norman could be headed to a top post in Discovery Communications' new joint venture with Oprah Winfrey, dubbed OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network," the report further speculated. “As a black woman with cable savvy and a well-stocked Rolodex, she could be considered a natural choice.”