— Mindy Kaling was spotted pleading with John Mayer to give his expert opinion on her love life at Koi in the Trump SoHo. We can only speculate that his answer involved calling her genitals racist. Read More
Philip Seymour Hoffman is too young to play Willy Loman, the worn-out failure in Mike Nichols’s new revival of Arthur Miller’s masterful tragedy Death of a Salesman. Despite his drooped posture, crippling exhaustion and inability to stand proud—not to mention his preppie haircut, white as snow—he often looks no older than the two actors playing his sons. Still, he’s such an inventive and resourceful young character actor that he is never less than fascinating. To paraphrase the most famous line in the play, attention must still be paid.
Thank goodness Mr. Nichols is so obviously respectful of this high-water mark in American theater that he is reluctant to change, modify or jazz it up in any way to suit contemporary audiences. He has even restored much of Jo Mielziner’s moody set design, Alex North’s somber music and Elia Kazan’s electrifying direction from the original 1949 Broadway production starring the incomparably powerful Lee J. Cobb—all to brilliant effect, illuminating a sad, deeply analytical portrait of the death of the American Dream. And if Mr. Hoffman is not Lee J. Cobb or even Brian Dennehy in the latest Broadway revival, he serves the play in an oddly benevolent way. Read More
Just like Benjamin Braddock, Max Nichols is moving closer to home. The son of Graduate (and a million other great movies and plays) director Mike Nichols and his wife have just purchased a six-story redbrick townhouse on the Upper East Side.
The Nicholses are leaving behind Greenwich Village, where they owned a duplex. Mr. Nichols Read More
It was Tuesday morning, the day after Labor Day, and Diane Sawyer was smiling brightly and wearing black. Toward the top of the hour, Chris Cuomo, one of her co-anchors on Good Morning America, looked at the camera and ran through the morning’s headlines. There was swine flu spreading rapidly through American schools, an alleged Read More
“I feel like the Benetton ads,” said filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, posing for photos with Senegalese singer Youssou NDour and fellow director Mike Nichols at a screening of her new documentary, Youssou NDour: I Bring What I Love, at the Paris Theater on Thursday night, June 4.
The film follows the recording and reception of Mr. Read More
Depending on which day you read the papers, rehabilitated Kirsten Dunst is chasing Into the Wild actor Emile Hirsch, or maybe Drew Barrymore’s ex, Justin Long. [P6]
CNBC interviewed Tinsley Mortimer as the "socialite-turned-entrepreneur," who designs handbags, lip gloss and clothes. Apparently she’s huge in Japan! [Park Avenue Peerage] Read More
And so it’s back to the ’50s (again). “All plays are dated,” Harold Clurman wrote in steadfast support of Clifford Odets in 1970. “They are products of their time.” Yes; but everything depends on how much the dated-ness shows.
In the current Broadway revival of Odets’econd to last play, The Country Girl, it shows Read More
This weekend, across the country, discerning film-going audiences were able to choose between two types of history: the real kind and the fake. Guess which one won?! National Treasure: Book of Secrets (no. 3), which follows the Indiana Jones-like Ben Gates as he tries to clear his family’s name in connection to the Lincoln assassination, Read More
Julia Roberts is not a fan of showing her naked bod in front of the camera. But those who enjoyed getting a good, long look at the actress’ legs peeking out of a bubble bath in Pretty Woman (all “nude” scenes came compliments of a sultry body double) will want to see director Read More
The great editor Clay Felker, who invented so much of what drives this newspaper and so many magazines in New York City, liked to refer to New York as the “City of Ambition,” a phrase created by his friend Tom Wolfe. What is the City of Ambition? Exactly what you’re thinking: the astonishing combination of Read More
