Recently P.J. Clarke’s, that very Mad Men-like eatery, shut the doors to its second floor—but just to the common folk. The special people, or rather its loyal customers, received a membership card that grants access to the rarefied sanctum of floor two, known as the Sidecar. The upstairs space is more elegant and thus quiet, Read More
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, has announced its partnership with actor Johnny Depp for a new publishing imprint, the predictably Goth-ishly named Infinitum Nihil. The imprint, Latin for “Hasn’t been edgy since Ed Wood,” is to publish Douglas Brinkley’s Unraveled Tales of Bob Dylan. Mr. Brinkley, a noted historian, profiled Mr. Depp for Vanity Fair in 2009. Mr. Read More
After his most recent film, Moonrise Kingdom, hit big with a cast divided between big stars and total unknowns, Wes Anderson has doubled down on the big-star element, with Johnny Depp just having been cast in the newly-titled The Grand Budapest Hotel. Mr. Anderson coaxed a career-best performance out of Gwyneth Paltrow at the Read More
Dark Shadows is outdated, unwelcome and unbearable. Based on a cornball daytime soap opera from the 1960s about an 18th-century vampire living in a 20th-century town on the coast of Maine, it’s so silly that you’d have to be 10 years old to find the boo factor. Read More
Last night’s Golden Globes—which we covered live!—were notable for yet more star worship than even the perpetually star-worshipping Globes usually get up to, and most of the stars were of a somewhat aging vintage. Awards went to practically anyone who might have been on People’s Most Intriguing People of 1998 list: Steven Spielberg for Read More
GQ’s annual man of the year issue is a split run, with covers featuring veteran man of the year Jay-Z, newcomer Michael Fassbender, bromantic Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon, and Mila Kunis.
It’s a quick return to GQ for Ms. Kunis, who shared its cover with a venti iced coffee in April. Read More
The Rum Diary, based on another literary punch-out by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, was made three years ago, shelved in some musty editing room where unreleasable movies go, and looks it. The dust still shows.
Johnny Depp is dismally miscast as the alter ego of the rebellious author with the “screw you” attitude—a wasted, beat-up alcoholic who goes to Puerto Rico to work for a doomed newspaper called the San Juan Star whose faltering editor (Richard Jenkins, unrecognizable in a gray wig) is helpless to draw much attention to world events on a lawless island overwhelmed by gangsters and riots. Read More
The Museum of Modern Art has picked Kathryn Bigelow to honor at its annual fund-raising Film Gala. (It’s MoMA’s recently-hatched version of the Met’s tony cash-cow, the Costume Institute Ball.) Apart from her shiny Oscars, of course, Best-Director Bigelow’s an unlikely candidate: The two previous winners, Baz Luhrmann and Tim Burton, were known for extremely Read More
Just how big was the second weekend of Alice in Wonderland? The four new releases—Green Zone, She’s Out of My League, Remember Me and Our Family Wedding—could only account for 65 percent of Alice‘s total; somewhere, the Mad Hatter is doing a CGI-enhanced Irish jig to celebrate. As we do each Monday, here’s a Read More
With the Academy Awards set for Sunday night, you might assume that Hollywood would keep the schedule light this weekend to avoid any possible conflicts of interest. But no! Two films hit theaters today, and one (the 3-D extravaganza Alice in Wonderland) is sure to siphon millions from what could wind up being the Best Read More
