Ta-Ta, Dull Do-Gooders: All Hail the New Virago

Great news: Bitches are back!

Being noble and self-denying and altruistic is totally over. Self-involved disco slags with flippy bangs are suddenly all the rage! The caring celeb—that gal who cannot accept an award without professing how “humbled” she is by it—is suddenly déjà vu. The era when even Ginger Spice became a Read More

Ta-Ta, Dull Do-Gooders: All Hail the New Virago

Great news: Bitches are back!

Being noble and self-denying and altruistic is totally over. Self-involved disco slags with flippy bangs are suddenly all the rage! The caring celeb—that gal who cannot accept an award without professing how “humbled” she is by it—is suddenly déjà vu. The era when even Ginger Spice became a U.N. Read More

The Transom

Debby’s Party

The playwright and filmmaker Mike Leigh was recently in New York for three days, and on the Thursday he had lunch at Balthazar with Scott Elliott.

The New Group often presents Mr. Leigh’s plays in New York, and their artistic director, Mr. Elliott, always directs: now the dark comedy Abigail’s Party, Read More

Leigh’s Pad

Since hitting Broadway in August 1998 to take on the role of Sally Bowles in Cabaret , Jennifer Jason Leigh has become a fixture in New York. Even when she hooked up with stage co-star Alan Cumming to write, direct and produce The Anniversary Party in 2001-a movie that revolves around a Who’s Afraid of Read More

Travolta’s Mission: Incomprehensible … Hollywood on Ecstasy

Travolta’s Mission:

Incomprehensible

At the movies, incomprehensible gibberish has become a way

of life, but it usually takes time before a bad movie really stinks. Swordfish wastes no time. It cuts

straight to the chase. It is, to my knowledge, the first piece of trash to

declare its own incompetence in the first Read More

As Penetration Fantasies Go, eXistenZ Is a Tease

David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ is, among other things, a typographical nightmare with a futuristically inspired 16-item glossary of its own. As in several of his previous horrific enterprises, most notably, They Came From Within (1975), Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), Mr. Cronenberg goes into human orifices where no other filmmaker has gone before. In eXistenZ , Read More