Bryan Greenberg.

The second annual brunch fund-raiser benefiting the Olevolos Project, a nonprofit organization that helps orphans and disadvantaged children from the Olevolos Village in Tanzania, is hosted by actor Bryan Greenberg, fellow trendy thespians like Gina Gershon, Jena Malone and Justin Long, and blonde supermodel Julie Henderson. It’s the perfect Saturday wake-up call—the daytime fun includes a deejay, a raffle and a silent auction—all at Lower East Side hipster haven Sons of Essex.

133 Essex Street, (212) 674-7100, 1-4pm, tickets from $150.

Malone.

Director Deborah Kampmeier, whose previous film was the controversial (and poorly reviewed) Hounddog, is now making a biopic of the southern writer Carson McCullers called Lonely Hunter. Jena Malone of Donnie Darko fame will play McCullers. According to a press release the movie "will span 35 years in McCullers’ life and feature notable figures including her best friend Tennessee Williams, her protégé Truman Capote, her roommate Gypsy Rose Lee and collaborator Ethel Waters."

Organizers had lavished as much attention on setting the scene at the ball as on the art. Guests were able to adorn a wire-frame sculpture with crepe paper, and an energetic accordionist (his accordion labeled "Caligula") moved from room to room, performing Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" accompanied by a belly dancer wearing bells.

Actress Parker Posey, wearing neon-pink vintage, was engaged in discussion with her boyfriend, the artist Scott Lenhardt, and a group of clowns in glow-in-the-dark hats and rings. "Should we go up? Should we start down and go up?" The actress decided to ascend the five flights of stairs.

"I loved the clowns--their hats!" Ms. Posey told The Observer, once we'd both arrived safely at the fifth floor. Could she herself be an artist? "I could never do that--I'm in awe of that. I think--if you can make it alone," gesturing at her artist boyfriend. "He's alone in his studio. I need collaborators. I go to actor camp." Ms. Posey plans to make a documentary with former MTV News-woman Serena Altschul about the death of etiquette--oh no, is it really dead? The actress assured us it wasn't, and that her belief in common courtesy was reinforced that morning while listening to NPR.

The Observer wandered a floor down. On the fourth floor, the smell of a certain medicinal drug wafted through the air, though the source was unclear. The student artists' work was all for sale; one artist set out a plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Fabiola Beracasa, in cream eyelet and two-tone spike heels, was on the hunt: "I'm always looking for art to purchase-but if I tell you which art, someone else will buy it!" She knew the game. "This all has me inspired to go to art school. I'm interested in making art out of things other people consider useless or garbage, making it useful." The Observer stepped to the stairs, dodging a pair of roving saxophonists blaring away in the stairwell.

Actress Jena Malone, donning an oversize blue blazer and white floor-length gown, was totally covered up compared to her scantily clad character in Sucker Punch. She said she wouldn't be willing to put paintbrush to easel: "I don't put that kind of parameter on it. Creation is creation." The accordionist roved through again, with his belly dancer jingling behind him.

Yet one more floor down, sitting in the second-floor bar, was Sally Singer, editor of T. "It makes me realize, I couldn't be an artist. I couldn't do what anyone here does." Ms. Singer twirled her hair. "They're training in deeply unironic ways. There's a kind of magic to that."

Ms. Singer had convinced The Observer of the power of art-sadly, we were sitting in black upholstered armchairs, with no art around, save for the bartenders' black feathered wings. (When asked why he wore the wings, the bartender gestured at the gothy décor and declared, "It's the room.") Still, there was something greater here! We had to return to the irony and pettiness of fashion, though: what Ms. Singer was wearing. "It's Marco Zanini for Rochas," she sighed. We apologized for the shallowness of our question, and were cut off. "Listen. I live in that world. It's a spring dress from Rochas."

Ms. Singer's predecessor at T was wandering a floor above. "Oh, it's good. It's like being an extra on Work of Art," declared Stefano Tonchi, now of W. What kind of art would Mr. Tonchi produce? "I'd make conceptual art--I like to make people guess what it is." Would W become conceptual? "No! I want people to know what it is right away."

The actress Leelee Sobieski had surpassed Mr. Tonchi--she already is an artist. "Well, I do paint." And what from the news inspires her? "When one would think inspire, you would think in a positive direction-I don't know what to say to that. Everyone's going through tough times right now." Ms. Sobieski gazed at a painting by a New York Academy student of chickens pecking one another to death. She only looked for a few moments before stepping away, but she looked as though she were inspired.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Edited by Daisy Prince

Click here to see photos from the week's best parties.

The box office has not smiled on movies about the Middle East conflicts or the men who fight them. Stop-Loss, Grace Is Gone, The Lucky Ones, In the Valley of Elah, Home of the Brave, Redacted, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, Body of Lies … they all tanked.

Now comes The Messenger, a sensitive and intelligently considered movie that marks the directorial debut of Oren Moverman, who wrote the abominable, lunatic bore about Bob Dylan, I’m Not There. This one is infinitely superior, but whether it connects with audiences remains to be seen. It would be a shame if it didn’t, because at its center lie three accomplished performances, by Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, that are not to be missed.

It begins with a close-up of eyedrops squirted into a soldier’s eyes like rainwater splashing against vinyl. The eyes belong to Will Montgomery (Foster), an Army staff sergeant who has been sent home with damaged eyesight and decorated as a war hero. With only three months left to serve before his tour of duty ends, he’s anxious to get his life back on track and finish his time in peace, until he reluctantly finds himself assigned the unpleasant task of notifying the families and loved ones of soldiers who are dead, wounded or missing in action. Simultaneously following orders and searching for ways to heal his own physical and psychological wounds proves to be daunting, depressing and hazardous. He has no religion nor grief-counseling experience, and he finds it a hateful job, made worse by his partner on the mission, Captain Tony Stone (a good, calloused performance by Mr. Harrelson), an older-generation veteran with a lifetime military commitment who is also a reformed drunk, married three times, cynical and tough as rawhide. His rules: Avoid contact with the next of kin, and eschew feelings of any kind—no tears, grief or hugs. Will tries to follow his fellow officer’s example, and Stone tries to leaven the hopelessness of the job with salty humor. Upon leaving one house, where he’s been slapped, cursed, yelled at and spit on, he tells Will: “It could be worse—it could be Christmas.”

Despised by the parents of boys younger than he is, Will grows despondent. Then on one call, they inform a woman named Olivia (Ms. Morton) that her husband, and the father of her son, has been killed. Unlike the others, who vomit, scream and threaten violence, she takes the news calmly, with a sadness for the messenger, and an unethical friendship evolves that leads to hope for a more personal relationship in the future. There isn’t much more of a story than that, but every character shows the effects of battle fatigue, in the trenches and on the home front. The actors are quietly effective as they show the different ways they’ve been shaped by the losing consequences of war. Mr. Foster is especially effective as a once cocky kid turned sober adult before his time. Hairy, tattooed and hard as granite, in a role unlike the usual youthful wackos he’s played, in X-Men, 3:10 to Yuma and on the HBO series Six Feet Under, he’s the riveting centerpiece and a total revelation.

The movie itself includes a few regrettable stock war-movie clichés (brawling, womanizing, whiskey-induced vomiting, punching in the wall, remembering dead buddies through tear-soaked eyes), and there is an occasional line that rings false, such as the gentle widow confiding that her late husband’s shirt smelled of “fear and rage.” But mostly The Messenger is a compelling adult film that draws us closer to the characters, scene by scene, as they try to make sense of the war they’ve left behind and the indifference of civilians to what they endured there—and why they were sent there in the first place.

 rreed@observer.com