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Q&A: Matt Groening
22 February 2009 1:55 AM, PST
Creator of 'The Simpsons' looks to the 31st century, thinks Cartman would chop off Bart's head in a fight.
The irony that Matt Groening's first acclaimed comic strip was called "Life in Hell" couldn't be stronger, since his life over the past 20 years has clearly been anything but. With his flagship success, "The Simpsons," moving into its third decade, Groening has hardly been a one-project guy. He still draws "Life in Hell" every week, and in 1999 he created "Futurama," an animated series that takes place in the 31st century.
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By LARRY GETLEN
No Oscar Night Fever
22 February 2009 1:44 AM, PST
Rumor has it that there is some big Hollywood awards show tonight, but I have more important matters to write about: cinematic discoveries unearthed during my annual visit to the Rotterdam Film Festival in the Netherlands.
One of the strongest films was Pablo Larrain's "Tony Manero," from Chile. I missed it at the New York Film Festival, but was lucky to get a seat at Rotterdam's classy Luxor Theater.
Set in 1978 Santiago, during the brutal Pinochet reign, it is the story of 50-something lowlife Raul (an impressive Alfredo Castro), who has a sick obsession with Tony Manero,
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By V.A. MUSETTO
Michelle & Oprah: Cover Girls
22 February 2009 12:13 AM, PST
'I Want a sound here, a sound like - perfume, coming out of the or chestra pit," said the musical genius Stephen Sondheim to his orches trator, Jonathan Tunick.
"Oh," said Jonathan, "you mean strings!"
More Power to the big O! The Washington Post recently revealed that Oprah and her strong right arm, Gayle King, had spent the day with Michelle Obama in Washington. This probably meant that the brand-new first lady might soon grace the cover of Hearst's huge hit,
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By LIZ SMITH
Fickle Gold Finger Of Fate
22 February 2009 12:13 AM, PST
Los Angeles - Let it be known, Oscar-winning Queen Helen Mirren's La home may be rented by civilians and commoners for, give or take a farthing, $40,000 a month.
Three years after winning Best Actress for "Monster's Ball," the Razzies gave Halle Berry their Worst Actress of the Year award for her "Catwoman" crapola . . . Adrien Brody, who took Best Actor for "The Pianist," hasn't made lots of music since . . . Despite his
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By CINDY ADAMS
Jen, Angie! Angie, Jen!
22 February 2009 12:11 AM, PST
The Academy Awards could bring Jennifer Aniston and "Changeling" Best Actress nominee Angelina Jolie face-to-face. Aniston has yet to turn up at a single event that Jolie has attended since Jolie stole Brad Pitt away four years ago on the set of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." But we hear Oscar event planners have timed the red-carpet arrivals of the two rivals only a few minutes apart, meaning they could run into each other. "Jen, who usually complains about her spot,
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Friendly Cruz Flusters Cruise
22 February 2009 12:05 AM, PST
It was an awkward moment at Creative Artists Agency head Bryan Lourd's house party Friday night that kicked off Oscar weekend when Tom Cruise and his ex, Penelope Cruz, bumped into each other.
Cruise was standing in the living room of Lourd's Wallace Neff-designed Beverly Hills home, talking with MGM head Mary Parent and producer John Goldwyn, when Cruz approached.
A Page Six spy reports: "Penelope tapped him on the shoulder and timidly asked,
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Reege Dodges Guest Conflict
20 February 2009 11:27 PM, PST
Jimmy Fallon nailed down Robert De Niro as one of his first guests, but the host of NBC's new "Late Night" show couldn't get Regis Philbin. Reege let it slip Thursday on his ABC morning show that while he likes Fallon and was asked to come on, he has a "conflict." When Kelly Ripa chortled in disbelief, Regis clarified, "I shouldn't have said that. I don't have a conflict, but I'm on another show and everybody is so sensitive about when you go on.
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Madoff Pal's Wife Strikes Back
20 February 2009 11:26 PM, PST
The wife of Bob Jaffe - the Palm Beach bon vivant in the doghouse for getting the tony island's millionaires to invest with Bernard Madoff - is fighting for her beleaguered husband's honor.
Author Laurence Leamer says Ellen Shapiro Jaffe is waging a fierce campaign to get his upcoming lecture at the Kravis Center axed because of unflattering cracks he made about her hubby in Boston magazine. "She is especially pissed and she's pressuring them," Leamer told Page Six. "You would think she'd be in social hibernation and have better things to do."
In the article, Leamer
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To Walk Or Not To Walk... The Red Carpet
20 February 2009 9:54 AM, PST
Red-carpet treatment?
Not so much at this year's Oscars.
The academy is trying to roll up the famous rug for Sunday night's star-studded event in an effort to increase viewership.
Because last year's viewing numbers dropped to an all-time low of 32 million (down 20 percent from 2007), organizers hope that by downscaling the carpet sequence and asking some celebrity presenters to skip the grand entrance, more people will watch the actual award ceremony.
"There is a hope that some of the people who present will be a surprise," Leslie Unger, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spokeswoman, said in a statement. While "the nominees will all walk the red carpet,
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By MARINA VATAJ
New York (Oscar) Marathon
20 February 2009 9:51 AM, PST
Can't wait to get your "Slumdog" on?
Some Manhattan theaters are offering fans special ways to enjoy Sunday night's Academy Award ceremonies over the weekend.
On Saturday, for the third year in a row, the AMC Empire 25 will offer a marathon showing of all five Best Picture nominees - with generous food and bathroom breaks between the features.
Admission is $30 for the program - including a large popcorn with unlimited refills. Screenings run from 10:30 a.m. ("Milk") to about midnight, when "Frost/Nixon" will wrap up.
This year, the marathon is expanding to the AMC Loews 34th Street (off Eighth Avenue) and the AMC Loews Raceway in Westbury,
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By LOU LUMENICK
Saks Boots Posh Denim Line
20 February 2009 3:05 AM, PST
Victoria Beckham was more successful as a Spice Girl than she is as a fashion designer. The fembot's denim line, dVb by Victoria Beckham, was just dropped by Saks Fifth Avenue, according to fashion insiders.
Earlier this year, Beckham was dropped by Henri Bendel and Kitson because of poor sales of her denim line. Now our source says Saks, which first carried her jeans, felt burned by the wife of soccer stud David Beckham when she sold her upscale designer line exclusively to Bergdorf Goodman.
Though the stores may still
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Bombaby!
20 February 2009 2:59 AM, PST
It's the princess and the Prada - a starlet about to be born, on the brink of a Hollywood explosion. The girl who would run to her family tailor with magazine cutouts of the dresses she wanted to knock off is now being handed custom Oscar de la Renta by the designer himself.
Meet Freida Pinto, the 24-year-old ingenue from the Bombay suburbs. She was an unlikely pin-up - until "Slumdog Millionaire" became the sleeper hit of 2008.
After scoring Golden Globes galore and bagging some BAFTAs, too, the Danny Boyle-directed story has the
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By RAAKHEE MIRCHANDANI
Creative Team Wheels 'Wall-e' Toward Oscar
20 February 2009 2:09 AM, PST
Pixar's "Wall-e" is up for six Oscars. So what kind of minds earn a living making an animated film about a trash-compactor robot?
"Those not emotionally developed beyond age 11," laughed producer Jim Morris. "We're all family-oriented types in touch with our inner child. We trust our instincts. What we'd like to see. It's naivete. I mean, 'jaded' is not a word you hear around here.
"In ninth grade, sparked by 'Voyages of Sinbad,' I was already making little stop-motion films. And when Pixar suggested, 'What if everyone disappeared from Earth and left the last robot on?
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By CINDY ADAMS
To Yell And Back
19 February 2009 9:36 PM, PST
It's not often you find jokes - some of them fairly funny - about Spencer Tracy, Alvin Ailey and Nathan Lane (not to mention the first mention of President Obama in a studio feature) shoehorned into a teen sex comedy like "Fired Up!"
The script for this schizophrenic oddity about a pair of unlikely high school football stars who go to cheerleading camp to score with the chicks - credited to the apparently nonexistent Freedom Jones - appears to have been devised
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By LOU LUMENICK
Truths Buried In Polish Soil
19 February 2009 9:35 PM, PST
Splintered and uncertain, "Katyn" re- creates Po land's experience of denial, rumor and finally the dreadful truth about the Soviet massacre of 15,000 Poles in a forest in 1940.
The film, by Poland's most celebrated director,
Andrzej Wajda, begins in 1939, with refugees slammed between advancing Soviet troops on one side and Germans on the other. Anna, a young mother, searches for her husband, a Polish army officer. Together with professors and other professionals, the officers are im-
prisoned in concentration camps where Stalin plans their elimination.
As Anna and her family struggle to stay alive, the
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By KYLE SMITH
No Place Like This Home
19 February 2009 9:32 PM, PST
An upper-crust Hartford, Conn., family collapses in slow motion in "Must Read After My Death," a spare but riveting documentary.
Allis and Charley raised three sons and a daughter in the 1960s despite the strains of the husband's frequent, long business trips to Australia, during which the spouses sent each other diaries in the form of audio recordings.
These scratchy records, which are of such poor sound quality that the entire film is subtitled for clarity, play jaggedly against a nearly surreal collection of smiley home movies in which the family gathers around a holiday turkey or frolics in the sun.
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By KYLE SMITH
It's Nothing Personal
19 February 2009 9:31 PM, PST
I surely hope Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor doesn't think I have it in for her.
Back in 2007, I gave a negative review to her first movie, "Saawariya." Today I must also pan her second feature, "Delhi-6."
I think she should know my negativity has to do with the scripts, not her performances.
In fact, I find her a pleasant screen presence - I called her "drop-dead gorgeous" in my "Saawariya" review - which is more than I can say about her "Delhi-6" co-star, Abhishek Bachchan.
He gives a rather stilted performance in the
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By V.A. MUSETTO
He's A Cronkite In Claim Only
19 February 2009 3:59 AM, PST
Note to New York money manager Kipton Cronkite, who claims he's related to CBS News legend Walter Cronkite: Your game's over.
Walter's longtime girlfriend, Joanna Simon, and his son, Chip Cronkite, told Page Six that Kipton has absolutely no blood connection to the famed anchorman. "He's no relation whatsoever to Walter," said Joanna, the noted opera-singer sister of Carly Simon. "So often people come up to us and ask us, and Walter says, 'I have no idea who that is at all.'
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Discounts Aplenty, Patrons Few
18 February 2009 10:20 PM, PST
'How Come prices are slashed to the bone for everything except the things I want to buy?" mourned one New York matron recently.
Well, I did go to Maine last weekend, and in Freeport, the greatest, most charming and best little town of all the discount cities I've seen, the buying crowds have disappeared (except in L.L. Bean, which is always open 24 hours a day for business, and where long ago they threw away the key to the front door). Shoppers seemed normal in that big store on Presidents Day.
But you could have shot moose in most of the other outlets,
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By LIZ SMITH
Hollywood Duo Heading To 'I Do'
18 February 2009 10:19 PM, PST
Jackson Hole, Wyo., bigmouths swear Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart took blood tests and got licenses so could be they already are or soon will be filing joint returns . . . Tom Hanks watching son Colin's B'way debut in "33 Variations," now previewing at the Eugene O'Neill . . . I.M. Pei, alone, lunching contentedly at Gramercy Tavern . . . "Love, Loss, and What I Wore," Nora and Delia Ephron's play of comedy and delicious nostalgia, having weekly readings at producer Daryl Roth's downtown theater. Last Monday's readers were America Ferrera,
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By CINDY ADAMS
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