By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke 11/27/12 6:57pm

Homecomings

Andrew Goldman

Andrew Goldman Returns to The New York Times Magazine

Andrew Goldman made his triumphant return to the pages of The New York Times Magazine on Sunday. Mr. Goldman, you may recall, was suspended from the magazine after he got into a Twitter kerfuffle with novelist Jennifer Weiner over a Q&A in the magazine’s “Talk” column that raised Ms. Weiner’s ire—and provoked Mr. Goldman’s own sharp tongue. The suspension lasted a little more than a month.

For his first “Talk” column since returning, Mr. Goldman played it safe with Lemony Snicket creator Daniel Handler. But that wasn’t the only piece Mr. Goldman had in Sunday’s Magazine. He also wrote a six-page story about Oliver Stone, who is busy promoting Untold History, his new mini-series. In the piece, Mr. Goldman spends a lot of ink describing the director-cum-liberal historian’s propensity for putting his loafers in his mouth. Read More

By Rex Reed 7/11/12 10:41am

movies

Kitsch, Lively and Johnson in Savages.

Savages: From Hashish to Ashes, Cannabis Flick Can’t Stay Lit

What I know about the internecine workings of Mexican drug cartels you could fill in an egg cup—and still have enough space left over for the egg. But this I know: It’s a subject and a subculture that has got to be more fascinating than anything in gonzo director Oliver Stone’s deadly, hateful, preposterous and cliché-riddled movie Savages. He even makes the violence look dull.

Based on one of those Don Winslow carnage epics that appeal to grown men who still read comic books, Savages boogies to the beat of an assault weapon, cutting back and forth between the cold-blooded drug lords in Tijuana and the stoner gringos of Southern California, fighting it out for billions in the Baja Peninsula. The convoluted plot, which would be difficult to decipher with the aid of a microscope, is as familiar as any one of a thousand cable network television series—and Mr. Stone’s dialogue is as wooden as a rocking chair, possibly because his script was co-written by the dubious Shane Salerno (Alien vs. Predator) and novelist Don Winslow, whose grasp of the way real people talk is as phony as reality TV. Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 6/26/12 9:15am

Fanboys

Health Care Advocates Hold March Into Capitol Hill Office Building

Patch Adams is Real, Really Supports Julian Assange

Patch Adams, MD, the clown doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the eponymous 1998 film, has joined several dozen prominent figures of the American Left in asking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange political asylum.

“The ‘crime’ that he has committed is that of practicing journalism,” states the letter, delivered to the Embassy of Ecuador in London yesterday by American advocacy group Just Foreign Policy.  Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 3/28/12 9:50am

Star Power

Sean Christopher Ali Stone at a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 17 (ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

The Son Also Kneels: Hanging with Oliver Stone’s Kid Sean, Newly Minted Muslim

Oliver Stone was deplaning at LAX following a 16-hour trip from Indonesia when he turned on his phone and found it blowing up with texts from his office. Apparently the media—what he called the “paparazzi”—had been in touch. They wanted to ask him about his son, Sean.

In particular, they wanted to know what he thought of Sean’s decision to become a Muslim. Oliver instructed his office to decline comment. Read More

By Nate Freeman 4/13/11 12:01am

Post-Rehab

Ayyy! When LiLo Met Fonzie

The Lindsay Lohan post-rehab goodwill tour made an impromptu stop at Don Hill’s last week at the after-party for the premiere of Ceremony. Henry Winkler was on hand to support his son Max, the film’s director, but LiLo managed to upstage even the Fonz. Indeed, she seemed to be running the show.

“Get them out Read More

By Max Abelson 9/14/10 10:47pm

Money Never Sleeps: Wall Street, Stoned

“Are you a bee? Do you like to sting people?” a handsome banking executive in a merlot-colored suit growls to his protégé. It is early afternoon in the third-floor offices of a midtown skyscraper, the News Corporation headquarters, and select middle-aged men are watching an advanced screening of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the Oliver Read More

By Christopher Rosen 6/15/09 12:07pm

The Week in DVR: Hot Nurses, Gordon Ramsay’s F-bombs, and Val Kilmer as the Lizard King. And, What the hell happens in the The Happening anyway?

Monday: Dateline NBC: Vegas Undercover
Normally, we make a point to shy away from these Dateline NBC specials reports, but, since we’re still on a contact high from watching The Hangover (backlash be damned!), we’ll make an exception here. Chris Hanson, obviously taking a break from outing sexual predators, goes undercover with the Read More

By Christopher Rosen 4/09/09 11:35am

Single Person’s Movie: Scarface

It’s 2 a.m. and you awake with a jerk, alone in your fully lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you’ve already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we’re just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep Read More