Julie Ragolia and Carlos Campos at his autumn 2011 presentation.

Julie Ragolia has seen more stars in their skivvies than you could dream of! After sinking her teeth at MTV and a slew of glossies eons ago, she moved up the nasty and competitive ladder of fashion editorial... These days, she serves as the fashion editor of 7th Man Magazine and styles mega-stars, such as Rihanna and Sean Combs. Despite his Napoleon complex, street photo Scott Schuman even made her the cover girl of his treasured tome, The Satorialist. The Observer tried to find out if she gets to sleep with any celebs and what exactly stylists do aside from playing with clothes and acting bitchy in the Prada showroom...How did you become a stylist?

It just sort of happened, really. I didn't intend to become a stylist, but I guess it was meant to be. A series of steps toward an academic future in philosophy, with a deep concentration on aesthetics, mixed with some youthful curiosity and a story to tell, led me to a very extended study of fashion as an art form, with clothes as my medium.

Fashion week must be chaotic for you-- what does this season bring?

This is the most fun chaos. I feel lucky everyday for my job, and styling shows is the icing on the cake. This season I am styling two shows: Carlos Campos, with whom I have been collaborating for four seasons now, and TheGreenShow. TheGreenShow is especially exciting for me, as it's the first time designers working in a decidedly conscious, ethical manner are showing at the tents. It's a group show of 8 women's designers, including United Bamboo, who are creating beautiful clothes in consideration of such things as environment, fair working conditions, artisan craft and local production. Hopefully this show will take some of the stigma out of terms like "eco" or "bio", so that such considerations are no longer even a part of our thinking...they just are.

Being a stylist isn't all parties and glamour—what do people not understand about the gig?

That it's a lot of work! You're right, it's not all parties and glamour; it's consideration, and research, and a deep, constant study of the craft, not to mention keeping on top of art, music and all things political in order to keep viewpoints continually fresh and interesting. And sometimes there's a lot of stuff to lug around. Being a stylist is my gym.

What designers inspire you? Who is hot in your mind right now?

I'm inspired by so many designers, but season after season I always come back to Raf Simons and Dries van Noten as inspirations. Both capture the ability to be loud and quiet at once. It's an immense skill, and something I always try to achieve in my styling work.

What's your most awful experience as a stylist? What's stressful?

I'd  be lying if I said I never had an awful experience as a stylist, but they're so few and far between that it's not even worth mentioning. I'm really grateful to be able to tell stories with clothes, and so appreciative that people like what I do that, even if there is a bad moment, I know there will be just as equal a good one to follow. In terms of stress, I think the only real stresses are those I place on myself to always do better, to hit harder. And customs issues at crunch time.

If you had a dream offer to style—who would it be?

That's a hard one! I've styled quite a few from my dream list already...I saw David Beckham in his underwear before he was on the side of H&M bags. I'd love to style someone like Tilda Swinton, who has such powerful presence. She has such distinct style unto herself, that it would be an intimidating but fun challenge. I did tweet recently that I would love to tweak Drake's style. He has so much potential.

Where has the market developed for stylists?

Media has opened the door for stylists to have a greater public presence beyond fashion. We star in commercials, we host events, we collaborate with brands, etc. And as we ourselves become a brand, our images compel some of us to the level of celebrity. It's a crazy phenomenon, really.

What are your social plans? Any good after parties?

I haven't been to Le Baron yet since it opened, even though it's just near my apartment! I'm horrible about going out in the winter, but am looking forward to fashion week pulling me out of my hibernation. I'm also looking forward to celebrating Anna Bauer's book, Backstage, at the New Museum.

Where does a stylist shop?

I think it's more about how a stylist shops, to which I would answer, "unintentionally." I never really go out of my way to shop, but I know I do it because new clothes consistently appear in my closet. I do still get giddy every time I walk through Barney's though.

What sucks about fashion?

If anything, that some of the emphasis has shifted to popularity over content or talent with the infiltration of bloggers or personalities into every aspect of the industry. I'll forever stay a stickler to the analytical thinking of great fashion journalists like Cathy Horyn, Tim Blanks and the likes, as opposed to personal opinions in quips, or anecdotal self-dressing.

Assange. Swinton. Assange. No, Swinton. Assange?

Last week, Michael Bloomberg attended a press conference for the 100th episode of Gossip Girl. “I just don’t see how Blair could marry Prince Louis when she’s clearly in love with Chuck,” said the New York mayor, who apparently had nothing bigger on his plate to worry at that moment, such as the allegations of rape made against Greg Kelly, the son of his police Commissioner Ray Kelly, or the NYPD head’s own cameo in an anti-Muslim training video for NYPD recruits.

“I just wish that Nate and Vanessa had been able to work things out … but, again, I’m just a casual fan,” he added.

We don’t begrudge Mayor Bloomberg his guilty pleasure—after all, we spent all of Monday night watching the premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race instead of doing actual work. We’re pretty sure front-runner Sharon Needles is taking all her inspiration from Lady Gaga, who has been stealing her “signature” look from drag queens and selling the designs to Barneys. It seems only fair.

Julian Assange, who is not quite a drag queen (though if he started dressing like Tilda Swinton we might not even notice a difference), is also guilty … of loving The Simpsons! The Wikileaks founder and all-around creepy person of interest will be supplying his own voice for a Feb. 13 episode, the plot of which we’re predicting will involve Lisa picketing SOPA and Bart teaming up with the Australian after confusing the name of the international whistle-blowing organization with that of a rapper with poor bladder control. We’re impressed with Matt Groening’s ability to convince infamously reclusive celebrities to perform cameos. How does one even get through the levels of publicists, assistants and team of ninja henchmen guarding the abodes of Thomas Pynchon or Michael Jackson and pitch them on doing a Fox cartoon? We’d say Scientology was involved somehow, but Nancy Cartwright’s robo-calling fiasco from 2009 made it clear she wasn’t a high enough in their caste system to be considered an Operating Thetan … let alone a Thetan operator.

But let’s not pick on Scientology too much. After all, we are located in New York, where members are basically regulated to asking people taking stress tests in the Times Square terminal. What worries us more is another pseudo-religion. You know, the formerly fringe one based out of Utah, where a single patriarch rules over a cult that’s become alarmingly more mainstream every year despite its seemingly arbitrary set of rules and scripture. We’re talking of course, about the Sundance Film Festival, which just finished its 28^th year of indie hits and celebrity swag parties sponsored by Bing and Grey Goose vodka. We realize Sundance plays a very important function, since by February most actors are so worn out from the exhausting L.A. awards season that they need to depart en masse for a vacation on the slopes—where they will also be handing each other awards and mingling with the Kardashians.

The festival was originally created to promote independent American filmmaking but has turned into a paparazzi paradise where it’s easier to find Tracy Morgan passed out at a party than a ticket to one of the 181 screenings taking place over the course of the week. Still, some of the original anti-Hollywood sentiment remains in the proceedings: The grand jury prize went to Beasts of Southern Wild, directed by first-time filmmaker Benh Zeitlin and starring an 8-year-old unknown named Quvenzhane Wallis as an impoverished African-American girl scraping by in Louisiana with her father. Expect the remake to star Willow Smith, or even worse, one of the Fanning sisters.

(Un?)fortunately, the end of Sundance is just a placeholder in the middle of a season marked by Hollywood award ceremonies, Fashion Week and Jay-Z’s first concert at Carnegie Hall. We’d ask our assistants to help us with all the RSVPs, but they’ve already taken the time off to start gearing up for South by Southwest. Or maybe we’ll just stay home and watch Gossip Girl.

Charlize Theron (Getty Images)

Newsweek's current issue features its annual pre-nominations "Oscar roundtable"--and either it'll look dated when nominations are announced tomorrow, or we need to adjust our predictions! The panelists are likely nominees George Clooney and Viola Davis (the working-it pair both recently appeared together on an Entertainment Weekly cover, too), as well as Christopher Plummer, Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron.

How good is Newsweek at choosing panelists who will be Oscar-nominated? Some years are great--last year's panel featured six eventual nominees and both the Best Actor and Best Actress--and others less predictive. In the past ten Oscar panels (discounting the two panels speaking to five directors apiece, of whose number eight ended up nominated), 48 actors have been interviewed about their Oscar hopeful performances, with eight missing the mark. These "losers" include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Naomi Watts, so their inclusion isn't exactly surprising.

The rate of an Oscar roundtabler getting an Oscar nomination, 40 of 48, is exactly a 5/6 probability--so one of the current panelists (sorry, Charlize! We really loved Young Adult) will probably have talked about the Oscars a bit presumptively.

Tilda Swinton, we need to talk. (Getty Images)

Articles about the film We Need to Talk About Kevin highlighting the involvement of actress Tilda Swinton:

Time: "We Need To Talk About Tilda Swinton."

W: "We Need To Talk About Tilda."

San Jose Mercury-News: "We Need To Talk About Piper, Tilda."

BBC America: "We Need To Talk About Tilda Swinton."

Lovefilm.com: "We Need To Talk About Tilda."

...highlighting the involvement of actor Ezra Miller:

New York Post: "We Need To Talk About Ezra."

New York: "We Need To Talk About Ezra."

Dazed & Confused online: "We Need To Talk About... Ezra Miller."

...highlighting the involvement of director Lynne Ramsay:

Lede of SlashFilm article: "Forgive me, but we need to talk about Lynne Ramsay."

Emerald Street: "We Need To Talk About Lynne."

Movies.com: "We Need To Talk About Lynne Ramsay."

...and a sentence highlighting awards prospects:

From TheWrap.com: "The undercurrent of the talk on the streets, of course, had to do with another troublesome male figure: We need to talk about Oscar."

daddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Ezra Miller in We Need to Talk About Kevin

On a frosty Friday night at the Angelika, the 7:30 showing of We Need to Talk About Kevin was sold out. As we scooted towards an empty seat in the back, we wondered what could possibly account for such a large crowd for a non-premiere of the Lionel Shriver adaptation.

After the disturbing, somewhat fractured retelling of a young sociopath (played at different life stages by Rocky Duer, Jasper Newell, and Ezra Miller) and his ice queen mother (Tilda Swinton), we found out: as the lights went up, a lanky figure in a full-length fur-coat traipsed the length of the stage and was introduced for a Q&A session. Ezra Miller was going to be taking our questions for the evening.

Mr. Miller, already cutting a flamboyant figure at only 19, opened up the conversation by saying he wouldn't be offended if anyone would rather go out and have a stiff drink rather than talk.

Did Mr. Miller think that the John C. Reilly character might not have been his father?

"I've never read it that way," said the star. (Neither did we, nor for that matter, anyone who had read the book on which it was based.) "But your free to your interpretation."

How much time did the young actor--whose next role will be playing in another troubled teen adaptation for the highly anticipated Perks of Being a Wallflower--spend with the two actors who played younger versions of himself?

"Jasper and I spent a lot of time in what must have been the weirdest play-date ever," said Mr. Miller. "We had a 'Kevin Room,' and no one else was allowed in. We'd talk about how to build weapons and how much we hated our mothers. If anyone tried to come in, we'd throw things at them."

Another viewer said that she was worried that film might inspire copycat serial killers. Was that something Mr. Miller ever took into consideration when shooting?

"Um, I hope not," Mr. Miller said, laughing. "If anyone shows up to school with a bow and arrow wearing a We Need to Talk About Kevin t-shirt, that would be really awful."

Adorably horrifying!

But already there's a trend that needs to be addressed regarding this film. So can we all be on the same page about the We Need to Talk About Kevin parodies being this year's Inception parodies? Look, it's already starting...

We need to talk about Kevin McCallister (Home Alone mashup)

(Almost too easy, since MacCaulay Culkin already played a Kevin prototype in The Good Son. Also, he looks more like Tilda Swinson than Ezra Miller.)

Randy Newman's theme song for We Need to Talk About Kevin (SPOILER ALERT!)

(Actually performed Eric D. Snider)

We Need to Talk About Kitten

Self-explanatory.

We're sure by Monday Buzzfeed will have a "Top 20 Hottest Screenshots of Ezra Miller Being Creepy" gallery, and then comes more mashups (John C. Reilly from Stepbrothers faces off against John C. Reilly as Franklin? Discuss!), CollegeHumor sketches, and McSweeney's satirical fan fiction.

We can't wait.

At the recent New York premiere of We Need To Talk About Kevin, a scruffy looking kid with thrift store apparel and long-unattended to hair, told The Observer of the decision he’s made to never play a character  he doesn’t deem “honest”. We had just seen him depict an intense psychological battle with his on screen mother, Tilda Swinton, which concluded in the most unforgiving of ways.

Ezra Miller, the young man in question, is promoting not just We Need To Talk About Kevin but also Another Happy Day. In both films, he plays troubled teenagers, giving performances so convincing that he is now in danger of being typecast as the troubled young mind of psychological indie films. What happens once he’s traversed the murky waters of adolescence and appearance, alone, prevents him from performing such roles?

“I’ve been holding out. I am reading a lot of scripts but saying no to a lot too. I think it pays off to wait for the right one," he told us, while sipping a latte at one of the holographic tables of Yaffa Café, on St Mark’s Place. He spoke to The Observer, about the “sacrifices made by artists” – because of the choice between all round commercial success and personal fulfilment. Right now they co-exist for him, although, he’s conscious “there will be times in the future that are difficult.”

The hype surrounding the 18-year-old actor, suggests an inevitability to his success. Born and schooled in New Jersey, he dropped out of education at 16, a decision that he describes as “a necessity”.

“I was an outsider because I had these endeavours that took place away from what is primarily an insular place”. He offered, with a strong self-awareness that is prevalent in his work. “One of the things I appreciate about acting is this process of rediscovery, after you strip yourself down to your most basic form, in order to inhabit another person.”

On the surface, it appears that he can empathize with the troubled minds he portrays. It must be true that he connected with the character of Kevin, at the very least saw an “honesty” in the role to have taken it. Looking at his IMDB, complex and ultimately threatening characters are the most honest ones, to Mr. Miller.

“When I was seven I had this increasing want for horror. My Dad would read me things like Stephen King. I remember being completely fascinated by Edgar Allen Poe because I found his collection. His whole life was about loss. I would definitely play him…As soon as I’ve worked on my moustache.“

So would he find it easier to connect with real-life characters, we wondered?

“No. Not Vanilla Ice," he said, calling to mind the unlikeliest candidate he could. "I cannot find anywhere in me, any sense of connection with Vanilla Ice. I just think, you know, what was he doing for all those years?”

Mr. Miller's indie cred does not stop at films, however. At the age of six, he landed a role in the U.S. premiere of Philip Glass’s opera, White Raven, and he is now a drummer and singer in the Americana / Black Metal / Soul Band, ‘Sons of an Illustrious Father’, who have just released their second full-length album.

Band member and childhood companion of the actor-cum-singer, Lilah Larson, described the difficult time he faced in adolescence. “I've known Ezra to have many struggles but luckily, he's the type of person who uses pain well, who lets the breaking open be a growing.” She told The Observer via email.

In June this year, Mr. Miller was charged “…with disorderly conduct. That’s all,” he interrupted.

He was in possession of 20 grams of Marijuana, whilst the passenger in a fellow actors car. “I had pot on my lap, pot on the floor, on the seat. There was pot everywhere," he recalled. Rather than being concerned with public image or future job prospects, he took a more worldly approach to the charge. “The one thing that I learned from that was about the interaction between police and media," he mused. "There’s this chief of police who’s ringing up the papers to tell them about some person of interest ‘s wrongdoing.”

“I paid the fine in cash just to make my point.”

This seems to slot in nicely with the polarized nature of Mr. Miller’s life.  He is young and has strong opinions, he believes in equality, has natural urges to be a participator and lives in Chelsea—a description that reads like a recruitment ad for Occupy Wall Street, and he was at Zucotti Park on the day they got evicted.

“We were at the Another Happy Day party, standing on the roof of The Standard, having a cigarette with Julian Schnabel. Like, this was a great time. Then we all got a message, because we’re on the mailing list, saying Zuccotti Park is being evicted. So we ran out of the party and went down to the park. We hadn’t been there two minutes when one of my friends got hit with a shield. Lilah got punched and tear gassed and Eamon, who is also in the film, got put in jail and denied access to his essential medication.”

Would he entertain a part in OWS The Movie, we asked? “Oh man. I’d have to read the script first. I don’t know whose writing that.”

Mr. Miller is in constant search of ways to break himself down and build himself back up, in the tradition of his predecessors. In fact, there is a long list of names before him, many of who have succumbed to mental illness by method acting. Outside the cafe, whilst taking quick drags of a rolled up cigarette he offered us a thought, Mr. Miller expounded on the way we live now.

“People in America will always choose the things that kill them fastest," he thought aloud. "Filterless cigarettes, pizza, Justin Beiber. “ Pausing to contemplate, he added, “Justin Beiber is a murderer.”

Soon after the interview we spoke with Ms. Larson about her band-mate, perhaps voicing some unwitting bias. “There is a public myth of Ezra as this dark devilish guy. He does have a lot of demons, as do we all, but he's also a lot of the time the funnest, funniest, most adorable, cuddly, playful guy.”

As an actor, Mr. Miller admires Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, who has progressed through a wide range of roles in a long established career. “I’m always seeking to push myself and strip myself down more and more every time.”  And it feels as though, if he chooses the right scripts, he could well have a long career ahead of him too. Certainly something Ms. Larson agrees with:

“The acceleration that's going on right now is something that's been in Ezra's life for a long time, a sort of inevitability. This was always going to happen. He was always going to do great things.”

Mr. Miller seems old before his time, both in his work and at home (or at Yaffa to be more precise).  He is eloquent and curious, reading about quantum physics on his evenings off. He doesn’t like parties and would prefer to go to an event where “everyone knew why they were there.” But he is also refreshingly young, with teenage confusion that far surpasses his generation.

“The first phone call with my Mom after this intense month of inhabiting Kevin was so soothing, so comforting, to have that idea of myself again.”

He has just finished filming The Perks of Being A Wallflower, in which he plays a senior in high school who shows “an introvert freshman…the real world.” In the future he aims to keep pushing himself.  So surely playing Vanilla Ice will be the pinnacle of his career?

He laughs, gradually becoming pensive. “Yeah. I suppose that’s the aim.”

hkrempels@observer.com

Ms. Swinton and Mr. Reilly.

We Need to Talk About Kevin. Why? I’d rather just ignore him—and this vile, pretentious movie—completely. With an incomprehensible script and jigsaw-puzzle direction, both by Scottish poseur Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher), and a loopy performance by weirdo Tilda Swinton as the half-mad mother of a serial killer, this is the most unwatchable horror movie masquerading as social comment I have seen this year.

It begins in a laughable parody of Dante’s Inferno with a mob of scantily clad people at a Spanish bacchanal writhing in what looks like strawberry sauce. I guess they symbolize Kevin’s victims—dead bodies rolling in blood after he has shot up his school, leaving them in a vat of red paint. Kevin is a maniac who was born evil. As a baby, he screamed uncontrollably. As a child, he was senselessly drawn to maiming and hurting other children without provocation. Uncommunicative to the point of autism, he mainly just stared maniacally, saying nothing. Composed of brief images, like shards of broken milk bottles, the film takes forever for the pieces to form some kind of picture of what’s going on, and even then, some of the pieces never fit. While Kevin’s father Franklin (John C. Reilly) just shrugs and prays for adolescence, his mother Eva (Ms. Swinton, looking more anemic and androgynous than usual, which is saying a mouthful) is not so pulled together herself. When he refuses to take part in toilet training, she throws her son against the wall and breaks his arm. Then, after Kevin sprays an entire room with graffiti, Mom buys a dozen broken eggs, cooks them up in a bowl and picks at the scattered shells before papering another entire room in road maps. We won’t go into the part where Kevin stuffs his pets down the garbage disposal and flips the switch.

Far from an insightful psychological study, the movie jolts back and forth in 20-year time frames as it follows the shocked expressions of the traumatized mother of a psychopath. Mr. Reilly is nothing more than a domestic cipher as the clueless father. Ms. Swinton acts like she’s auditioning for Medea, but any hint of Greek tragedy is ratcheted up to the duh level by Ezra Miller’s snarling, absurdly precocious and profoundly obnoxious bad-seed portrait of Kevin as a cross between a Stepford baby and Chucky the killer doll. Most of the bloated running time of nearly two hours is used up before we even find out the horrible thing Kevin did at 16 that landed him in prison. Even then, the director refuses to show his murder spree, opting instead for splashing the screen with buckets of corny, symbolic paint the color of cherry tomatoes.

It’s a deliberate example of style over content that leaves you feeling like you’ve been had. Whether it’s about the toxic life of Kevin, whose contempt for everyone and everything around him leads to a homicidal massacre, or about the complicity of a sociopath’s lost, anxiety-riddled mother whose unconditional love played its part in the creation of a monster? She’s more concerned with what the neighbors think. And why all the close-ups of cancer cells? Does it mean that in an age of feminist-distopia Kevin is his mother’s own fatal disease? Does anybody care? We’ve had a lot of films about American school shootings, including Gus Van Sant’s inert and deadly Elephant, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and last year’s wrenching, underrated Beautiful Boy with Michael Sheen and Maria Bello. But We Need to Talk About Kevin (wanna bet?) is a morbid, misguided mess with a fractured narrative, guaranteed to drive audiences away in droves.

rreed@observer.com

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Running Time 112 minutes

Written by Lynne Ramsay and Rory Kinnear

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller

0/4

The star of the feature—which is an adaptation of the novel of the same name, revolving around the relationship between a mother and son—is British actress Tilda Swinton, who also happens to be the face (and hands, we later discovered) of the sponsor.

We approached Ms. Swinton and asked if she was pleased with the reaction to the film? "I have no idea, I wasn't there. You were in the audience," she pointed out. We wondered how she prepared for the role? "It's pretty easy I would say. It's just, as usual, a matter of dressing up and using your imagination." With the conversation seeming going well, she admitted, blankly, "You know what, I can barely hear you so I'm just trying to shout something that makes sense." Unfortunately, at this point the plug was pulled: we had unknowingly jumped the line of journalists waiting to talk to the star of the movie and our discussion had to come to an end. There was just time to ask how it was working with Ezra Miller? "I think he's a dude," she offered, whilst being protectively embraced by someone who had presumably been queueing.

The question on everyones lips, however, was not,"Are you next in line?", but rather, "Where is the writer and director (50%) responsible for such great films as Fargo, No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man, as well as co-host for the evening, Ethan Coen?" As the evening charged on it became clear that there was no answer, just more questions. Is he late? Is he coming? Is he okay?

But wait, is that the slim figure of Waris Ahluwalia, Jewelery designer-cum-actor-cum-best friend of man with whom he was standing, Wes Anderson? He smiled, welcomingly, as we approached and immediately offered, "[The film] was poetry...but I don't seek out sadness in my life...I like stories of power and adventure and promise." Mr. Anderson had left.

The evening was winding down, as was the search for Mr. E. Coen, but we had not given up. Bouncing from guest to guest, nobody had an answer. The room was emptying out and finally we had to admit defeat, there was to be no rubbing shoulders with exactly one half of the Coen Brothers. Despite the lively buzz surrounding the event, we couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment as we made our exit.