Richard Gere and Carey Lowell (Getty Images)

The past week was a difficult one for all New Yorkers, and the coming weeks will be as well, for none more so than the city’s homeless. Later in the week, we’ll discuss ways you can help; for the time being, we look forward to seeing you at the Artwalk NY benefit on behalf of the Coalition for the Homeless. The Fendi-sponsored bash and auction promises to bring out some of the city’s most glittering and committed do-gooders, among them arts patron Alec Baldwin, model Coco Rocha and celebrity couple Richard Gere and Carey Lowell, all of whom serve as chairs tonight.

82 Mercer Street, silent auction at 6:30pm, live auction at 8pm, tickets and information can be found at artwalkny.org.

Aziz Ansari and Drake at The Bing Bar

Day 2 of the Sundance Film Festival found The Observer snowbound in the extreme. We're talking enough snow to give Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City transit system nightmares. Astronomic surcharges became the norm as Park City's anemic livery force struggled to even make the most ludicrous time frames: "Yeah I can have a guy up there in like 3 and a half hours?" deadpanned one audacious taxi dispatcher, who seemed to take pleasure in seeing so many city slickers squeal.

Despite the odds, The Observer met up with Ogilvy Entertainment's Creative Director Otto Bell to snag tickets for what would be our first activity of the day—a 3:30 screening of Escape Fire, an uplifting exposé on the pitfalls of the American healthcare system—which marked our event sans bottle service.

• While procuring popcorn, we overheard a cinema staffer: "Dude that's totally the president from 24, and those car insurance commercials..." And in typical Sundance fashion, it totally was.
• Dennis Haysbert found the film "Spectacular!" noting that everyone in America should see it. We had a hard time disagreeing.

Next stop: Back to the den of debauchery and Xbox game demos, the Bing Bar, for Lay The Favorite's cast dinner.

• Seconds in, we find ourselves in front of a freshly bandaged (just a little "don't worry I'm fine" melanoma) William H. Macy who revealed that he took "the Jitney!" to get to where he was at this very instant.
• As it turns out, a slightly more surly Corbin Bernsen "rented a fucking car."
• Mr. Bernsen could pass as a stunt double for co-star Bruce Willis.
• Chick-boner magnet Joshua Jackson claimed that it was in fact "the shuttle bus" that got him here today, which he conceded was "a bit of a smart ass response, but I'm gonna stick with it. Final answer."
• Cigarettes have not been kind to Laura Prepon, but man is her raspy voice awesome. Keep it up, Laura.

A quick stop to the Grey Goose Blue Door for the cast dinner of Arbitrage

• "Troubled hedge fund magnate" Richard Gere illustrated that no matter how many bespoke suits he may be forced to wear on screen, he's most comfortable in jeans and a baseball cap.
• Grey Goose employs a suspiciously attractive waitstaff. We were fine with this.

Sucked back in, we head to Bing Bar to see what Aziz Ansari and Drake have up their sleeves.

• A friendly (read: not so friendly) turf war erupted on the red carpet between film crews for VH1 and MTV after The Observer posited that VH1 clearly had the cooler microphone of the two.
• Mr. Ansari took the stage, promptly reminding everyone just how well he knows Kanye West.
• Drake's seemingly insulting observation that he knew way too many here right now that he didn't know last year ("Who the fuck are y'all?") was incredibly well received.
• Cuba Gooding Jr.

In it's last gasp of life, our phone lit up reminding us that Ryan Raddon aka. DJ Kaskade would be taking the stage shortly at our favorite petting zoo: Tao.

• Door girls at Tao Sundance did not find it amusing when we informed them that their balaclava and floor length parka outfits resembled North Face Burkas.
• Lil Jon somehow didn't smell like pot, an observation that was quickly rendered obsolete.
• Josh Hartnett had nailed down this look that said, "I'm Josh Hartnett."
• Mr. Ansari genuinely cares about the exposed legs of his nearly all-female posse.
• All bars should be open bars.

À demain.

Grace and Gere.

At a time when the new Russia is more about gangsters than politicians, along comes a benign thriller that is about as thrilling as last week’s borscht. A group of Russian spies sneak across the U.S. border posing as illegal Mexican immigrants. Soon after, a U.S. senator is murdered in an alley in Washington, D.C, played by Detroit. Richard Gere plays Paul Sheperdson, a retired C.I.A. operative who threw in the towel in 1989 after he brought down a coven of Soviet assassins code-named for the Romans who killed Julius Caesar, and especially the bloodiest and most dangerous killer of them all, a monster named Cassius. Now, after more than 20 years, the feds think Cassius has just arrived masquerading as one of the phony wetbacks and suspect him of assassinating the senator. None of this is ever explained, but Sheperdson’s old boss at the C.I.A. (Martin Sheen) implores him join forces with a rookie F.B.I. agent named Ben Geary (Topher Grace) to track down Cassius. Apparently, when the C.I.A. joins forces with the F.B.I., it’s like dumping a piranha in a water tank with a stingray. Sheperdson hates academics, but Geary, despite his youth (he wasn’t even around when Sheperdson watched the Berlin Wall fall), is an expert on Cassius, even writing his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard on him. It’s hate at first sight, but Sheperdson, who shot and killed Cassius himself in 1989, is intrigued enough to come out of retirement and prove them all wrong. The search begins and a lot of dull action ensues.

Keeping that Julius Caesar cast list going, another Russian assassin named Brutus is interviewed in a prison cell and he too is savagely murdered. This time it is Sheperdson who sends Geary home, fearing for the lives of his wife and two kids. Then we see Sheperdson slit the throat of Brutus, using Cassius’s famous trick of using an invisible wire from his wrist watch like an old James Bond toy. Aha! So maybe while we were waiting for the true identity of Cassius to be revealed, it was really secret agent Sheperdson all along. But there’s more. Was he a double agent? Now that the Russians sit beside us at the U.N., who is he spying for? Why do Sheperdson and Geary both lapse into Russian? Who is the real villain? No spoilers here. Illogical surprises are just beginning. Contrived plot twists, preposterous red herrings and music so loud it drowns out the dialogue all contribute to a film that might have seemed feasible in the first draft to director Michael Brandt, who also wrote the silly script with Derek Haas, but it got mangled in translation. You can’t even say that when all else fails, there is always the acting. Hopelessly miscast as an F.B.I. agent on a dangerous mission, Mr. Grace doesn’t look old enough to shave. And rarely has Mr. Gere walked through any movie with so little energy and so much indifference. I’ve seen more fervor on the face of a man parking a car. It will take double time to make up for The Double.

rreed@observer.com

THE DOUBLE

Running Time 98 minutes

Written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas

Directed by Michael Brandt

Starring Odette Annable, Stephen Moyer and Richard Gere

1/4

Joe Lieberman was here on Friday in a bright green tie, dining with Mort Zuckerman. The former governor of Utah Jon Hunstman was also here having lunch with his beautiful wife. He hasn't announced it yet, but I'm sure he will run for president. Everyone was clamoring for Mr. Hunstman! And Bill O'Shaughnessy was holding court at Philip Johnson's table. I think Mr. O'Shaughnessy needs a new hairstyle. We need to send him over to Fred Fekkai. Judy Taubman, the former Miss Israel, was here without her husband, Al, and I told her that Mr. O'Shaughnessy is Al's replacement! Maybe after we get his hair cut.

On Saturday I watched the Yankees play the Red Sox. Lately there have been no Yankees at the grill--we used to have Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter coming in, but that was a long time ago. Then on Sunday I made a movie with Richard Gere called Arbitrage. He is such a professional actor--unbelievable! He was here from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. without ever stopping, and he was very friendly, putting everyone at ease. I played myself. The scene was based on the Four Seasons. They told me to be myself, so I had little fun and did what I always do. A few years ago I also had a part in Inside Man, with Denzel Washington. Where is my SAG card?

Speaking of Hollywood, last night, we had a huge party to celebrate Too Big to Fail, the HBO movie based on Andrew Sorkin's book. They put a gigantic silver bull on top of a pile of money in the pool! Everyone was having pictures taken in front of it. Warren Buffet and George Soros were here. We had Donna Karan, James Woods, Armand Assante, Richard Plepler, Matthew Modine ... Mariska Hargitay and Cynthia Nixon were both looking stunningly beautiful. Stunning! It is really a great movie. It didn't have me in it, but you can't have everything.

Who are these power buyers with a taste for fine real estate, you ask? Ms. Boland is a senior marketing exec, whose clients include Citibank and Marriott. Ms. Granat, a Harvard MBA, works for a Connecticut-based hedge fund.

-- A society power couple has sold their Upper West Side residence for $1.095 million. The name on the deed is Barbara Olcott, one half of the society power duo that also includes her husband Emery Olcott. Mr. Olcott is the former chief exec of Canberra industries, a prominent nuclear company and the couple are also co-producers of Frankenstein: The Musical. That's an eerie combo of credentials if there ever was.

-- Annette Temstet, the owner of Premier Realty Management, has scored an unlisted Lenox Hill apartment for $3.3 million. The savvy Ms. Temstet will enjoy a 14^th-floor spot in the Azure. Those in search of a sparkling Lenox Hill residence need not fear: the penthouse is still on the market for a cool $11.37 million.

-- Earl E.T. Smith Jr., the son of a former ambassador to Cuba, has purchased a $1.4 million apartment at 47 East 67^th Street. Mr. Smith Jr. is one of the many descendants of the very-late Cornelius Vanderbilt. He must have inherited some of the family business sense, given that he scored the apartment for $200,000 under the asking price.

-- Warburg broker Jocelyn Turken has scored a swanky Chelsea pad for $1.2 million. The apartment, listed by rival firm Douglas Elliman, has a dream location at 77 Seventh Avenue in the prestigious Vermeer. Just remember, kids, location …. 

lkusisto@observer.com

Alice in Wonderland

What's the story: Because what Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland really needed was another dimension, here comes Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland ... in 3-D! The macabre director takes the decades-old story of Alice's adventures and turns them into a theme park of oversaturated visuals and unnecessary effects. The result winds up being far less trippy and moody than we had anticipated. It would be nice to say that the talented cast saves this Alice from tumbling down the rabbit hole, but alas, they don't. As the orange-wigged Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp mails his performance in with double postage, and Mia Wasikowska's Alice is utterly boring. Only Anne Hathaway—slinking in and out of every scene like a modern day Norma Desmond as the White Queen—seems be having any fun at all. Alice in Wonderland has gotten some good notices, but we found the film odorous to the nth degree. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Who should see it: Carrot Top.

Brooklyn's Finest

What's the story: Think of Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest as a greatest hits package. That's because if you watch the awesome trailer ("Run This Town," for the win!), you'll no doubt think of Training Day, New Jack City, Internal Affairs and Traffic, among many other cops and crooks movies. Yet since those titles are all pretty badass, the overabundance of clichés seems perfectly okay. Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke and Don Cheadle star as the cops, and Wesley Snipes (no, not that "Wesley Snipes") plays a drug kingpin not all that dissimilar to Nino Brown from the aforementioned New Jack City. The reviews have been solid and unspectacular—our Sara Vilkomerson found Brooklyn's Finest perfectly average—but if you're in the mood for some law and order, you could do a whole lot worse. Like Cop Out, for instance.

Who should see it: Ray Kelly.

2.5 Eyeballs out of 4

The opening scene of Brooklyn’s Finest features a conversation between a maybe crooked cop and a definitely crooked career criminal about the concept of right and wrong. Or rather, in their words, the degrees to which one can be both right-er and wrong-er. That scene closes with a literal bang (along with the first-but-not-close-to-last shocking moment of violence), and for the next two plus hours, we’re immersed in a rather grim world where indeed that line between good guy and bad is not just hard to see, but pretty much nonexistent.

In short order, we meet three cops. All work in the same dangerous Brooklyn precinct, and all are caught up in some sort of simmering state of crisis. Ethan Hawke is family man Sal, with more kids than he knows what to do with and a pregnant-with-twins wife (hi, Lili Taylor!). He wants to move out of his tiny house (an inordinate amount of time is spent talking about the effects of wood mold) but doesn’t have enough money. Then there’s Tango, played by Don Cheadle, who has been undercover for so long he is beginning to forget who he is and which side he is on. Richard Gere plays Eddie, a sad sack who is one week away from retirement, and wakes up every morning to take a shot of alcohol and put an empty revolver in his mouth to practice pulling the trigger. Good times! In case you hadn’t already guessed, this movie makes pretty clear from the start that there won’t be a lot of warm-and-fuzzy feelings. Instead, you will be nervously fidgeting and wondering just how hellaciously this sucker is going to end.

Antoine Fuqua is a master of this kind of anxiety—much like his acclaimed Training Day, there are moments so nerve-racking one is actually afraid to look directly at the screen (or, as one woman at the screening I attended said after the film ended, “I think I just had five heart attacks”). However, there are some distracting moments of heavy-handedness (do we ever really need to see Mr. Hawke go all Lady Macbeth and try to scrub his hands free of blood?). Mr. Hawke, so baby-faced circa Dead Poets Society, has been completely transformed by age and is completely believable as the tormented Sal. Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes both turn in fine, nuanced performances, and look for Ellen Barkin to try and pretty much succeed in stealing all the scenes she shows up in. But Mr. Gere is miscast as Eddie, too naturally regal in bearing to be the screw-up he’s supposed to be, and for a broken man, he still moves with the same confidence as his younger self did in An Officer and a Gentleman. But along with these occasional moments of clunkiness are excellently executed scenes of real tension. And for those of us who might be deluded into thinking the entire borough looks like Park Slope, it’s a reminder about some of the less savory things going on in Brooklyn besides the overpopulation of Bugaboos.

 svilkomerson@observer.com

When Amelia Earhart, the world’s most famous aviatrix, disappeared in midair on July 2, 1937, somewhere over the Pacific between New Guinea and a Howland Island refueling station, 22,000 miles into the first equatorial flight around the world, she became the greatest unsolved mystery in aviation history. Why has it taken so long to get her story on the screen? Shirley MacLaine tried in vain for years, and others experienced the kind of daunting challenges that could only be equaled by Amelia herself. Here, at last, is the biopic we’ve been waiting for, neatly wrapped up in a broad but sketchy screenplay by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, directed by India’s Mira Nair and starring diligent, indefatigable two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank. It has beautiful cinematography, a star performance that is shocking in its authenticity, a careful eye for nuance and detail and an irresistible blend of action and romance that should spell automatic success. I am sad to report that the one thing Amelia doesn’t have is excitement. The real Amelia had gonads. Amelia has none. It’s a respectable film that is too meticulous to be dull, but the way Ms. Swank plays her, she’s an icon so aware of her self-important image that she couldn’t be blasted out of her complacency with a hydrogen bomb.

This Amelia is a spirited, dauntless, reckless woman with blinders on, but curiously unemotional even in the face of the ultimate crisis. When she runs out of fuel and faces her own mortality, her tough, heavy-drinking and basically unshakable navigator, Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), sweats, shakes and starts praying. But Amelia is as stoic as Lincoln. You want to pinch her. The light dawns. Maybe it’s this sense of marble-faced, dispassionate tranquility that made a cinematic dossier on the life of Amelia Earhart so resistant to adaptation in the past. There is evidence here that despite her heroics, she just wasn’t the stuff of movie heroines. You don’t really learn much about her growing up in Kansas. You just know she’s in love with the freedom of flying (cut to birds), the independence of the sky (cut to clouds) and the beauty of airplanes (other girls were attracted to boys; Amelia hung out in hangars). Following the success of Lindbergh, she finds the key to fame in a man’s profession when she is sponsored by eccentric publishing tycoon George Putnam (Richard Gere) to become the first lady pilot to cross the Atlantic, but gets no further than a segment from Boston to Newfoundland. The movie chronicles the weather problems and near-death escapes from open doors that would have sent other women to the nearest secretarial school for safety. Not Amelia. On her first solo Atlantic crossing, in 1932, from Boston to Ireland, she lands by mistake in a sheep pasture in Wales, but it results in worldwide publicity, dinner at the White House, endorsements for Eastman Kodak, a series of best-selling books, her own brand of Amelia Earhart luggage, a line of fashion styles at Macy’s and a close, lasting friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt (Cherry Jones), whom she takes for midnight rides in the cockpit. Idolized, celebrated and toasted as “Lady Lindy,” she makes enough money to finance her flying expeditions and purchase the love of her life—the famed twin-engine, orange and silver Lockheed L-10 Electra airplane in which she eventually disappears in 1937. She believes in herself to the exclusion of sex, marriage and the distraction of human relationships, but finally manages to have two affairs—with the controversial Putnam, whom she reluctantly marries in 1931, and with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), aeronautics executive and the father of Gore Vidal. Both affairs have to be predicated on the promise of independence and a minimum of emotion. (Amelia loves her Electra more than her husband or her lover.) She won’t rest until she’s flown around the globe, although many women pilots had died trying it. Despite faulty landing gear, electrical storms, sleep deprivation and other health risks, she and Fred Noonan leave Miami in June 1937, backed by Putnam’s love, loyalty and money. Driven and determined to prove something to the world—and to herself—Amelia almost makes it, ignoring Noonan’s advice, taking off from Calcutta in a monsoon and shrugging off her detractors’ accusations of being a crazy, irresponsible, foolish, fame-seeking celebrity. Based on this movie’s research, you begin to agree. Halfway between New Guinea and California, the radio transmitter goes dead, cutting off all signals, and a dead battery in the U.S. Navy signal transmitter makes it impossible for her to receive any incoming instructions. It was the last anyone heard of Amelia Earhart. They’ve been looking for her ever since.

Lots of facts, lots of calendar entries and a collage of information from aeronautical files provides the necessary tools for a documentary, but not enough heart-pounding adrenaline for a tragic historical film biography. There is so little warmth in the character of Amelia that I’m not sure I like her very much. I liked the movie a great deal more, in spite of its shortcomings, but the most amazing thing about it is Hilary Swank. With short russet hair, a nose covered with freckles and a total abstention from makeup, she looks exactly like the subject. Then, miraculously, when you see actual newsreel footage of Amelia Earhart, she looks so astoundingly like Hilary Swank you’ll think you’re seeing double.

rreed@observer.com

It's certainly not an obvious partnership. After all, Mr. Wolfe has made his reputation as being an edgy and inventive playwright (The Colored Museum, Spunk, Jelly's Last Jam), theater director (he staged Tony Kushner's Angels in America for which he won the Tony), and producer of the Public Theater (he was the man behind Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk). Nicholas Sparks spins tales of big gut-busting romances like The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and Dear John. Though Mr. Wolfe directed Lackawanna Blues for HBO, Nights in Rodanthe is his directorial feature film debut. We couldn't help but wonder...why this?

"The rules I sort of live by for my theater career, which I hope to live for my film career, is that if there's something that intrigues me or fascinates me, or I don't know how to do it, then I should do it," Mr. Wolfe said, going on to admit he had never read a Nicholas Sparks book before. "My agent wasn't sure if I was going to like it! But I was just intrigued of people having an act two in their life. I had never done anything so intimate before."

In the film, which is set along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Richard Gere and Diane Lane play two people who are wary at the thought of love, but (of course) can't help falling into it anyway. "They're guarded - this is not spring break weekend love," Mr. Wolfe said. "It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional. I'm perpetually interested by living in places as an artist confronting challenges I've never confronted before and approaching them with as much craft and humanity as I can." And was it, we wondered, a challenge? "Uh yeah," he laughed. "I couldn't hang out with two thirds of what I love about myself, you know? I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness...I couldn't hang out with any of that on this project. But you know, it's going to another land. I don't live there. I took the vacation to The Outer Banks, I met a house and we fell in love, and now I'm back in New York and ready to be hostile George again. I just wrote a very hostile screenplay so that helped." He laughed again. "You know, I like living in different corners of my mind - hey, that sounds like a 1960's theme song for a movie, doesn't it?"

Speaking of the 1960s, Mr. Wolfe is looking at a few possible film projects that all take place in New York City during that time period. "The question of that time was, whose city was it going to be? The answer then is certainly not the answer now, because New York has become so incredibly cosmetic. I miss the edge of New York. It feels so damn precious. I feel like I need to be in eyeshadow and makeup just to set foot outside my house." In the meantime, he's directing John Guare's Free Man of Color. Of Rodanthe he said, "I'm proud of it. It was fascinating and I learned things about myself, playing around and creating a romance. I'm proud of the performances and how the movie looks and how when people approach the movie with an openness it can be deeply moving...and when they don't they don't. What else can you do?"

Walking the carpet alongside the pair were Law and Order SVU's Christopher Meloni, Harry Connick Jr., and actress Viola Davis. 

"I don't get to smile much in most films; I tend to play very heavy duty characters," Ms. Davis told the Daily Transom.  "But this time, I got to wear make up and a dress, and I got to have a boyfriend. So now I get to say, if you see Night in Rodanthe you can see me smile!"

Also present was Body of Lies and W actor Michael Gatson, who said that he was excited to shed some tears again as he had while watching The Notebook, which was also based on a book by Mr. Sparks. 

"I cry at everything; I packed some hankies tonight," said Mr. Gatson. "In the times we're living in we can use some of that." 

But Mr. Sparks said that movies based on his novels can't make him cry. 

"Writing is a slow process so you read a paragraph and it evokes all this emotion, but that paragraph takes me 10 hours to write," he said. "And when you're 10 hours into anything, you feel exhausted more than anything."

When Ms. Lane finally made her way down the carpet, she told Daily Transom that reuniting with Mr. Gere was "fun, funny, sexy, and goofy."

"We get better at not bumping teeth when we kiss," said Ms. Lane.

Ms. Lane said she also had some apologizing to do after shooting the film—to Mr. Gere's wife, actress Carey Lowell, for borrowing her husband for a few sexy scenes.

"You know, it's always just awkward because we're all friends,” said Ms. Lane. “I just said, 'I'm sorry, thank you for the loaner, I'll send it back wrinkle free on Friday.'"