Helena Christensen.

Kipling, the bag mostly favored by backpackers and European tourists, is upping its image via supermodel Helena Christensen. The brand, which uses a monkey as a symbol, is unveiling its debut Fashion Week ’13 collection starring model/photographer/jet-set bohemian Ms. Christensen with a fancy cocktail party on the now-warm Gramercy Park Hotel rooftop terrace. Expect Ms. Christensen’s pals like movie star Liv Tyler and Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir to be double-kissing the Danish diva’s cheeks all night.

Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue, (212) 995-1330, 6pm-8pm, by invitation only.

Helena Christensen and Liv Tyler. (Dustin Wayne Harris/PatrickMcMullan.com)

“The clothing’s just the sprinkles on top.” So said tattoo artist Ami James, and it could have been the motto for the evening, especially when the chocolate-sprinkled cupcakes appeared later on, one last treat for a collection of self-proclaimed oddballs, from Michael Stipe to Bono’s wife, Irish business woman Ali Hewson, to a late entry looking like the boy next door, Josh Hartnett.

They were gathered last night for the launch of the “Eccentrics Issue” of Vs. Magazine, which coincided with the official opening—or, anyway, the celebrity opening—of Paul Gerard’s Exchange Alley, the two events hosted by brunette beauties Liv Tyler, whose face in close-up stares from the cover of the new Vs., and Helena Christensen, who took the photo.

Mid-Fashion Week, and celebrating a high-end fashion magazine for the fashion-forward and runway-ready, the event was still somehow an escape from the frenzy, a respite. Yes, fashionistas and models mingled with artists, designers and rock stars, but the party was low key compared with the Marc Jacobs soirée on the same night.  The atmosphere at Exchange Alley, a restaurant that already feels local and loved, was one of nonchalant chic. The décor chimed with the night’s theme, black-and-white Hollywood studio shots matching the grayscale (splashed with pink) magazine cover. Mr. Gerard’s cooking, myriad different dishes with an Ottolenghi palette, also fit. The chef confessed to a Jack Kerouac fetish and modestly described himself as a potential eccentric, “more than your average Joe.”

Pity the poor eccentric. Quirkiness advertised runs the risk of cancelling itself out—after all, what could be more commonplace than clamoring for attention? To catch a glimpse of naked oddity one had to peek from unexpected angles, the only way to register, for instance, the tattoo of a cat on the ankle of Cobra Starship’s Gabe Sapporta. Mr. Sapporta, appropriately enough, was engrossed in conversation with Ami James, arguing that to be eccentric meant “never having to think about what it means,” never having to reduce it to a “label.”

Ms. Hewson said she knew “a lot of eccentric people who look totally normal,” and that it was “harder to find a normal person than an eccentric person.”

In this crowd, certainly, a cast of characters chosen not for fame but for quirks. There was a lot of Gaga talk; think eccentric, think Lady Gaga? Not quite. The point of the issue was not staged eccentricity but rather eccentricity as badge of dedication and passion. Mitchell Feinberg—Bronx-born still-life photographer and favorite eccentric of both Jakob F. S., editor-in chief and creative director of Vs., and Vibe Dabelsteen, the magazine’s fashion director—said, “the best eccentrics are those not extravagantly but thoughtfully so.”

Mr. Feinberg’s two photo shoots for Vs. saw conceptual art deal with the disposable: In one he plastered perfume bottles with powder, in the other he drilled a Patek Phillipe with a bullet fired from a .22 caliber rifle. He said that to be eccentric meant “to look at the world in a different way to everyone else.” According to Ms. Dabelsteen, Mr. Feinberg’s way of looking involves “caring about the finest details—that’s what makes him eccentric. Eccentricity and perfection are very close.”

If there was a queen of quirk, it was Colette. This multimedia artist, pioneer of the living art performance, pre-Cindy Sherman, describes herself as a “true New York eccentric”—the fact that she was born in Tunisia and grew up in the South of France sealed the deal. She had no compunction about wearing her weirdness on her sleeve—or rather her head. Her oversized black-and-white hat matched the décor and threatened to dominate it.

And the eccentrics’ most admired eccentrics? A tricky decision; in the worlds of art and fashion, choices are limitless. There was a vote for Salvador Dalí, for Andy Warhol, for Christopher Hitchens, for Diane Pernet, and—Ms. Christensen’s favorite—a “walking piece of art,” the recently deceased Anna Piaggi. Mr. Sapporta chose his girlfriend Erin Fetherston, “because in her spare time she’s a unicorn.”

Terry says, 'Vote Stringer in 2013!'

Terry Richardson may have shot Mila Kunis for this month’s GQ, but the Transom saw him walking the red carpet for the actress’s casual-sex rom-com Friends With Benefits with a beautiful brunette of the totally opposite vocation. The mystery girl walked through the pouncing rows of shutterbugs unnoticed: until now she’s been known for her press releases, not movie releases. She’s Audrey Gelman, press secretary for Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer.

It turns out the pair have been together since the spring, and they’ve been spotted at the various spots and parties that have always welcomed Mr. Richardson with open arms. Despite many a well-documented encounter with women over the years, the raunchy glossy mag photographer hasn’t seemed too interested in settling down with any of the models and ingénues he shoots.

Ms. Gelman is the youngest press secretary in the city, making her a well-positioned mouthpiece to a 2013 mayoral candidate. Before that, she had a coveted spot as an aide in the war room of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

But she’s not the typical type-A city politico. Ms. Gelman’s an old friend of the downtown-famous Lena Dunham and has a featured spot on her forthcoming Judd Apatow-produced HBO series Girls. And let’s hope Mr. Richardson isn’t a Yankees fan: the tattoo inked on Ms. Gelman’s lower lip reads “LET’S GO METS.”

The better half of Manhattan’s unexpected It Couple declined to comment. Mr. Richardson was unavailable at press time, and thus, unavailable. They were also missing from the Friends With Benefits after-party at the Standard. Whom did Ms. Gelman keep Terry from shooting?

Audrey Gelman

Only the likes of Liv Tyler, Emma Stone, Courtney Love, Zoë Kravitz and, of course, the film’s stars, Ms. Kunis and Justin Timberlake. The duo held court in a well-guarded corner of Le Bain, where other attendees scaled rain-slicked benches just to get a glance. The Transom was helped into the cluster of chairs by Ms. Kunis, whom we had last seen cavorting with Wolf Blitzer before the White House correspondents’ dinner.

“You know what? I prefer L.A.,” she said as we sat next to each other, staring out to the Jersey skyline across the river. “It’s nice to be here, but, well, you know.”

Could she introduce us to Justin?

“Oh, he’s doing his thing right now,” she said. He was—Mr. Timberlake was crouched between two girls, entering numbers into his phone.

We waited until he was done and then asked what it was like to play a GQ staffer.

“Well, I played an art director, not a writer, so it was a little different from your type,” he told the Transom.

We concurred, but noted that you can’t get a GQ job without that dapper-writer style.

“And it was fun to edit that piece, though,” he said, referring to a miniprofile of him that ran in a recent issue of the magazine with his corrections scrawled in the margins. “Who was I working with? Um … ”

Wasn’t it Lauren Bans? We were pretty sure …

“Yeah! Lauren, she was great.”

The Transom would have gone on with Mr. Timberlake, the two of us comparing our prose strategies and favorite writers and such, but as more and more people tried to get by the bodyguards, Mr. Timberlake departed the misty Le Bain balcony, perhaps to find some friends, benefits, or both.

@nfreeman1234

Hunnam.

It’s rare to see difficult, controversial issues explored in a contemporary narrative film, and The Ledge, written and directed by Matthew Chapman, is fearless about the danger of commercial failure it obviously faces. At a time when most movies are not about anything important, this one deserves credit for tackling unpopular themes like religion-fueled homophobia and atheism. It eventually fails, not because of its philosophical ideas, but because it introduces so many of them at the same time that even a viewer with a score pad can’t keep up.

A distraught young man named Gavin (British actor Charlie Hunnam, the original  lead in the original English television production of Queer as Folk) steps out on  the top tier of a tall building to commit suicide. A cop named Hollis (Terrence Howard) is dispatched to talk him out of it. This is not a good day for either of them. Gavin is a hotel manager who is having an unhappy affair with a troubled hotel employee and accounting major named Shana (Liv Tyler, too long in the tooth to be a convincing undergraduate). Hollis is a devout Catholic and loyal husband who has just discovered he’s been sterile since birth and suddenly realizes his two children are not his own. Gavin also has a roommate with AIDS, which saddles the film with another weighty issue to contemplate, and Shana also has a fanatical born-again Christian husband named Joe (Patrick Wilson) who causes problems for them all.

Gavin has a deadline. If he doesn’t jump by 12 noon, somebody else will die, for reasons that are not revealed until the end. “On the subject of faith,” the cop asks the man on the ledge, “do you have any?” This gives the cynical white man with no hope and the disillusioned but spiritual black man with the survival pep talk plenty of time to knock around numerous viewpoints on death, adultery, minority freedoms, gay rights and the distrust earned by the human race in general. As partners on the ledge, Mr. Hunnam’s conflicted Gavin and Mr. Howard’s distracted Hollis seem more believable than the rest of the characters in the movie put together. They could easily trade places.

Since neither can leave the scene, their stories are related in flashbacks. We see Shana and Joe invite their new neighbors, Gavin and his gay roommate Chris, to dinner, mistaking  them for lovers. Gavin storms out when Joe references a passage in the Bible condemning them to hell, then offers to pray for their sins. It’s a rupture that grows deeper when Gavin falls in love with the suppressed Shana, who is sexually unfulfilled but obligated to Joe for curing her drug addiction. Gavin has been deceived by Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the death of a daughter. God is just another imaginary friend. To Gavin, God creates wars, genocides,  earthquakes and plagues. To Joe, the beauty of eternal salvation is that God gives life meaning. It all turns into an abstract debate between blind faith and a failure to accept heaven as a valid concept without a shred of evidence. Good ideas, to be sure, for a better movie, but the characters in The Ledge exist for the sole purpose of argument, and the script is too narrow to engage the viewer unconditionally.

No spoilers, but the talk all leads to the inevitable confrontations between Joe and Gavin, Joe and Shana, Gavin and Hollis, and Joe reading the 23rd Psalm with a loaded gun in  his hand. Although no setting is identified, the film was shot in Baton Rouge, La., and the river view in the  background is clearly the muddy Mississippi. The direction is perfunctory, the actors all good with the exception of Liv Tyler, who looks less like Ava Gardner than usual—probably because she’s stripped of all makeup and drab as a bone. In the supporting cast, I especially liked Christopher Gorham in the small but pivotal role of Gavin’s gay roommate Chris. The atheist makes the most challenging case for debate, but he’s too arrogant and close-minded to be a true liberal, while the fundamentalist fanatic spouts the kind of extremist fire-and-brimstone dogma and religiously inspired hate that makes him not only unsympathetic in 2011, but naïve. The only suspense in The Ledge centers on one question: Will he jump or not? You eventually find out, but it’s hardly worth the wait.

rreed@observer.com

THE LEDGE

Running time 101 minutes

Written and directed by Matthew Chapman

Starring Liv Tyler, Charlie Hunnam, Patrick Wilson, Terence Howard

2/4

Isn’t it great when this show starts over from the beginning on Bravo? Don’t get us wrong, those later, Obama-forecasting episodes were fun, and who doesn’t love Alan Alda? But there’s absolutely nothing like those first few magical seasons of The West Wing when the show was under Aaron Sorkin's rule. Today brings us the pilot episode, introducing us to the fast-talking, fast-walking characters—each one unbelievably witty and flawed and totally lovable. (Except you, ill-fated and annoying Mandy character. Enjoy your single season!) The major plot points involve dimpled Josh (Bradley Whitford) getting in trouble with religious nutbags while Sam (Rob Lowe) mistakenly sleeps with a high-class call girl played by House’s Lisa Edelstein! God, this show is awesome. [Bravo, 8 and 9 a.m.]

Tuesday: Wonder Boys

It's always felt like this 2000 film, adapted from Michael Chabon’s novel, has been sorely underappreciated, when in fact it might feature our very favorite Michael Douglas performance. In Wonder Boys he plays constantly stoned professor Grady Tripp, who’s seven years late turning in his novel, having an affair with married Francis McDormand, and a flirtation with a so-cute-it-will-make-you-break Katie Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire are both excellent (as Grady’s editor and student) and the whole film gets more and more bananas as it goes. And yet, sweet! L.A. Confidential’s Curtis Hanson directs. [AMC, 11:30]

Wednesday: Brideshead Revisited

Do you happen to love period dramas set in England where class is a big deal and the men are irresistibly rakish and dreamy in a totally repressed way? If so, do we have a movie for you! Based on the 1945 Evelyn Waugh novel (and daring to retread on the holy ground of the very popular 1981 miniseries), the film follows young Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) who goes to Oxford and befriends the flaming homosexual and alcoholic Sebastian, and ends up falling in love with Sebastian’s entire family. The cinematography is worth taking a look at, and Mr. Goode will make you forget all about that Watchmen movie. [Starz, 7:40 a.m.]

Thursday: Stealing Beauty

If there was ever a movie that’ll make you wish with all your might to immediately get to a Tuscan villa, this might be it. Directed by the great Bernardo Bertolucci in 1996, Stealing Beauty stars Liv Tyler as a coltish and virginal American who goes to the lush and lovely Italian countryside to stay with family friends of her mother, who recently committed suicide. We quickly learn that she’s looking for clues as to who might be her father, and also for the local boy she kissed four years earlier. Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz and Joseph Fiennes all co-star; the movie can brag about its great use of Hole in the soundtrack; and we can promise it will have you fantasizing about taking a roll in some olive fields. [FMC, 12:30 a.m.]

Friday: Wimbledon: Men’s Semifinals

Here's a question: Is it possible that we’re having more rain than England? It’s hard to see into the future and guess who might be in today’s match, but we’re guessing his name will rhyme with Poger Pederer. It’s a bummer that Rafael Nadal is out, but fun to think who might be up to challenge the mighty Swiss. Andy Roddick? The Scottish guy? We’re rooting for him (Andy Murray) if only because then the Queen will come to the finals—she hasn’t been since 1977. Every day we miss Björn Borg. [NBC, 12 p.m.]

Despite causing a stir with her case of fashionably saggy jeans, Katie Holmes will not be designing her own line of clothing according to her publicist. [Vogue UK]

Narciso Rodriguez will be honored with a Special Achievement in Fashion Award at this year’s American Latino Media Arts Awards, which take place Saturday in Pasadena, California. Jessica Alba will present the designer with the award. [WWD]

Liv Tyler, Hugh Dancy, and Georgina Chapman will appear in Gap's fall campaign that was shot in black and white and features the first full collection by head designer Patrick Robinson. [Vogue UK]

Celebrity stylist Ilaria Urbinati is set to open an upscale boutique called Confederacy in Los Angeles, with actor and childhood friend, Danny Masterson. [FWD]

Chicago designer and longtime friend to Michelle Obama, Mario Pinto, is yet another contender in designing Mrs. Obama's inaugural ball look should her husband be victorious in November. [NY Times]

Five years have passed since the first big-screen Hulk wasted the reputation of director Ang Lee on a computer-generated comic strip nobody wanted to see. That film suffered punishing reviews and a devastating 70 percent drop-off in attendance in the second week, from which it never recovered. But you can’t keep an old, green, 10-ton Brussels sprout down for long. It’s too early to predict if The Incredible Hulk, the CGI sequel, will sink to that same level of box office infamy, but take it from me: You’ll have the DVD by Labor Day.

If you didn’t waste your allowance on the Marvel comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby 46 years ago, or if you were lucky enough to miss the first film adaptation, this sequel stages a brief opening-credits prelude in flashbacks, showing Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton, replacing Eric Bana) working on a top-secret scientific research project for the U.S. military, supervised by a demented Army general (William Hurt) who is also the father of Bruce’s girlfriend, Dr. Betty Ross (Liv Tyler, replacing Jennifer Connelly). The experiments goes horribly awry in a near-fatal laboratory explosion that leaves Betty without a scratch and Bruce infected with gamma-ray poisoning. Now he’s a mild fellow working in a soda-pop bottling factory in Brazil who turns the color of spinach when his blood pressure rises. Then watch out. Make him mad and he rips his clothes off and morphs into an incredible Kilimanjaro of a hunk—er, hulk—with veins that look like the Amazon River flowing through thighs the size of California redwoods. No wonder Bruce is in Brazil incognito, practicing anger management with a Portuguese guru by working his diaphragm. But the diabolical conservative, right-wing general with the locked jawbone and voice of cold steel (Mr. Hurt, hamming it up all over the place in a witty impersonation of Dick Cheney) wants Bruce captured so he can surgically remove his data bank, replicate it, and turn it into a weapon of mass destruction. (Create more powerful Hulk monsters and the U.S. military could conquer the world!) Bruce doesn’t want to be the Incredible Hulk. He just wants to be the Incredible Ed Norton. But when his eyes turn to neon and his biceps pop his chains like rubber bands, wherever he lands makes a hole so deep you can see Beijing.

After a drop of his radioactive blood lands in a bottle of carbonated fruit juice imported to the U.S., Bruce flees Brazil, wakes up naked in the jungles of Guatemala and wanders barefoot across Mexico to reach the Virginia college campus where Betsy works as a professor of cellular biology. She still loves Bruce, but he’s afraid of sex because there’s no telling what might happen if he got excited in bed. No matter. Liv Tyler has all the passion of mayonnaise.

Just when the déjà vu drives everyone to check their watches for how much running time is left, a villainous rival behemoth is introduced in the human form of a Russian-born guerrilla named Blonsky (Tim Roth), who performs radiation experiments on himself with the aid of an eye-rolling, scenery-chewing mad doctor (another corny over-the-top guest cameo by the dreadful Tim Blake Nelson) and turns into something worse than the Hulk. Imagine a T.rex with a head like a boiled peanut. The mayhem that follows is as rampant and recycled as a contemporary comic-book superhero with CGI can get—and twice as boring. Bruce’s goal: stay alive, keep running, and try not to turn into the Hulk. But war is inevitable; we get two King Kongs in battle instead of one; and the big finale by hack director Louis Leterrier is like Godzilla Meets Reptilicus, all staged in front of the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. For anyone who misses the days when monsters were played by real actors instead of computers, there’s a cameo appearance by Lou Ferrigno—who played the Hulk for years on TV—as both the voice of the Hulk and a security guard. Looking good, Lou.

It’s dismaying to think of all the wonderful performances Edward Norton has given in movies nobody ever saw. This one is high-octane slumming that will keep him in Bentleys for years.

rreed@observer.com

Nina Garcia might be following the cameras and going over to Marie Claire just as Project Runway chucks Elle to make the magazine its new sponsor. [The Cut]

Alec Baldwin tells 60 Minutes that before he left that sweet voice mail for his daughter, he was thinking of running for office and he still might do it! [P6]

Liv Tyler and husband Royston Langdon have officially announced their separation. [NY Daily News]

Jamie Johnson, the Johnson heir and that guy that made Born Rich, is blogging for Vanity Fair, says Wasps are the hot new thing. [Daily Intel]

Paul Giamatti is being considered for the part of Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's W biopic about George Bush. [EW]

Rudy Giuliani shops for pants at TJ Maxx and his wife helps him! [P6]

Liv Tyler might be on the verge of divorce with husband Royston Langdon and looking for a place in the West Village. [NY Daily News]

French political philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who is married to actress Arielle Dombasle has been in town putting the moves on Daphne Guinness. [NY Daily News]

Barbara Walters told Oprah that she's gotten soft and then cried. [Daily Intel]

Hide the children! The Hills got renewed for a fourth season. [US Weekly]

Ugly Betty will begin shooting in New York because a) it's cheaper to shoot on location, b) the producers want the show to feel more realistic, and c) we have a feeling they're madly jealous of Gossip Girl that's gained a following by glorifying our little city. [Just Jared]