[Stefan Nadelman via Laughing Squid]
The chance to smell Berry fresh is right around the corner.
Halle Berry is the latest boldfaced name planning to turn her nose for business into a signature scent, having inked a deal with...When the issue came out, the previews were laid out as reviews complete with star ratings. I never at any point or to anyone claimed to have heard these albums in their entirety. Whatever decisions Maxim made after I turned in my work were beyond my control.
Now that they're legitimately grizzled, they sound pretty much like they always have: boozy, competent and in slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans, and the Faces.
It's entirely possible some disclaimers and context were cut away, and likely that if the piece had run in a different section, without the star ratings, there would never have been such controversy.
No matter who is at fault, everyone can now safely review the March issue of Maxim without having read it: "shitty."
(Cover shot via Style Dash)
"Quarterlife" was dead on arrival.
The latest offering from the creative team behind the woefully shortchanged "My So-Called Life" tanked in its network debut Tuesday, drawing...The doll hardly looks like the new Ashley; it resembles the “High School Musical” star before her nose job last November, according to some who’ve seen then doll.“The width of the doll’s nose and the nostrils look like her nose pre-surgery,” cosmetic surgeon Dr. Patrick Abergel, who doesn’t treat the star, told In Touch Weekly.
Because celebrities' doll protégées always look exactly like the celebrity. For example, let's take a look at one of our favorite celebrities-cum-Barbies, Kimora Lee Simmons.
Dolls' hips do lie.Photo: Getty Images; doll courtesy of Baby Phat
‘High School Musical’ star’s doll has old nose [MSNBC]
Photo: Getty Images
The FeldinatorPhoto: Getty Images
• America's Next Top Model is hiding the photos of select winners past in the house. Also, last night's guest judge Paulina Porizkova was amazing. [Jezebel]
• Wildlife photographer Peter Beard partied at the Cavalli party in Paris till the wee hours. [Style.com]
• Zooey Deschanel and Kirsten Dunst are going to the premiere of Erin Fetherston's movie at L.A. Fashion Week. Assuming Dunst gets out of the 'hab. [Nylon]
• The CEO of Victoria's Secret says the brand has become too sexy. Well, that's what you get. [WSJ]
• Check out Gwen Stefani on the cover of the March/April V magazine. Kind of awesome. [Catwalk Queen]
From left, Ali Stephens, Mariacarla Boscono, and Vlada Roslyakova.Photo: Imaxtree
Photo: WireImage
1. Grizzly Bear, "While You Wait for the Others" (live on KCRW)
This new, hypermelodic, reverb-soaked, as-yet-unreleased track is probably now the best thing in Grizzly Bear's arsenal, and even though it's only Thursday, we're pretty comfortable declaring it the best MP3 you'll download this week. [Deaf Indie Elephants]
2. Ray Davies, "Lola" (live on Regis and Kelly)
Davies turns in a fairly excellent acoustic version of the Kinks' classic transgender love song that inspired "Weird Al" to pen "Yoda." [Daily Swarm]
3. Rick Ross feat. Jay-Z, "Maybach Music"
In two weeks, Rick Ross returns with his long-anticipated second album, Trilla. Don't worry about buying it, though — he says he's already rich. [Nah Right]
4. Rick Ross feat. Lil Wayne, Trick Daddy, and Young Jeezy, "Luxury Tax"
No, really, you can download this track for free too. [Nah Right]
5. Redman and Method Man, "Broken Language"
We're not sure what these guys are up to, or why this new song even exists; we guess they just must need the money. Maybe they should ask Rick Ross for a loan. [Nah Right]
Photo: Patrick McMullan, Getty Images
“Throughout the regular season, fans and the media were quick to criticize Manning every time he had a bad game and to question his leadership," he continued. "As recently as late November, after a particularly disappointing loss to Minnesota in which Manning threw four interceptions, many pundits were declaring him a bust. Manning, however, did not give up or lose heart. He remained focused, continued to work hard on his game and on improving his skills.” As with Jerry's "Things We Think and Do Not Say" memo, the letter has recieved some hostile reactions."We know Eli Manning, and Eddie Lampert is no Eli Manning," huffs Portfolio. "Sears isn't the New York Giants. It's the Detroit Lions." The FT is similarly skeptical. "The 'long term' is approaching, and Sears’ eroding profits are not just points on a scoreboard." Sears is "bleeding market share, customers, and cash," retail consultant Craig Johnson grumbled to the Guardian. "If you don't invest in the business, you're not going to win in retail," he said. Looks like someone needs to stop writing their little memos and, ahem, show them the money.
Letter From the Chairman [SEC via DealBook/NYT]
From left, Givenchy, Christian Lacroix, Valentino.Photo: Imaxtree
• The look at Christian Lacroix was ladies who lunch meets rock and roll meets … a black mop.
• Alessandra Fachinetti's first collection for Valentino after Valentino's retirement played it safe. Pleasant, pretty, but safe.
• Dries Van Noten is high on patterns and color.
• Puma creative head Hussein Chalayan's collection had Grecian overtones; we couldn't help but think of Rami's stuff on Project Runway.
• Costume National's structuring is reminiscent of Nicolas Ghesquiere's for Balenciaga.
• Stella McCartney's vegan collection incorporated lace and overblown brocades.
Photo: Getty Images
Vulture has just learned that Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are stepping down as co-CEOs of New Line, which is becoming a unit of Warner Bros. A memo just went out to all employees:
To: New Line Colleagues
From: Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne
Subject: Our Company
This afternoon, Time Warner is announcing that New Line will become a unit of Warner Bros. This is, of course, a very difficult and emotional time for all of us who have worked at New Line. While there is not much we can say that can lessen the impact of this announcement, we did want you to know about the decision before you read about it in the press.
New Line will maintain its own identity and will continue to produce, market, and distribute movies. But New Line will now do so as part of Warner Bros. and will probably be a much smaller operation than in the past. Time Warner hopes that operating New Line as a unit of Warner Bros. will allow New Line to focus on the creative side of movie-making, while reducing costs and taking advantage of Warner Bros.’ distribution systems. The company will be holding group meeting with New Line employees tomorrow in Los Angeles and New York to discuss this announcement, and is committed to letting employees know as soon as possible about how this change affects them individually.For our part, we will be stepping down as Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOS of New Line. This was a painful decision, because we love New Line and the people who work here have been like our second families. But we will be leaving the company with enormous pride in what all of us at New Line have accomplished together. From its humble beginnings 40 years ago, our studio has created some of the most popular and successful movies of all time. Those movies are a tribute to the amazing creative energy and entrepreneurial abilities of the talented people at New Line. They are a legacy that will endure forever.
Although we are stepping out of New Line, we intend to remain actively involved in the industry in an entrepreneurial capacity, and will keep you advised of developments.
We thank all of you who have worked so hard to make New Line such a success. We are very proud of every one of you.
Bob & Michael
Courtesy of Fox
The Walrus Was Paula: This season, for the first time ever, American Idol contestants will desecrate Lennon/McCartney songs on a Beatles-themed episode. Ringo must be spinning in his grave! [E!]
Feel Like Bumming Yourself Out? Why not watch the video for Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog" that Heath Ledger made just before he died! [Defamer]
Music Business Doing Just Terrific: EMI's new owner, Guy Hands, says it would've been more cost-effective (and resulted in better sales) to give away $100 bills with CDs than to employ the music company's 260 A&R guys (who we guess should probably all start looking for new jobs). [FT via Idolator]
Video Games Are Totally Fun: The Times says the video-game industry now realizes that people want fun, social games they can play with their friends — and it's delivering them! No wonder the TV and movie studios are getting their asses spanked. [NYT]
Michael Oliver, one of the cops who shot and killed Sean Bell. Testimony this week has revolved partially around whether Bell and his friends knew that Oliver was a police officer when he approached their car.Photo: Matthew McDermott / Polaris
Friends of Bell Describe Argument Outside Club [NYT]
Related: A Bad Night at Club Kalua [NYM]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Someone who lives on this cute block has a thing against homeless people. Or hipsters. We can't tell which. [newyorkshitty]
Chelsea: After 30 years as the voice of the Chelsea Hotel, telephone operator Amy Miller is retiring. Bet she's heard some bad verbiage in her days. [Living with Legends]
Cobble Hill: Are those yellow boxes on top of this Walentas building going to be bulkheads or illegal beachy cabana things? Only time and angry neighbors will tell. [Brooklyn Paper]
Harlem: Could Jelani Day, the Northeastern-educated 22-year-old Harlemite, be the new face of rap? [Uptown Flavor]
Staten Island: Four Staten Islanders were included in a group indictment of eight alleged members of the Luchese crime family. [Staten Island Advance]
Williamsburg: The latest in obnoxiously hip get-a-grip advertising for the new Edge residential complex hits print. [Copyranter]
An installation view from Ivory and Shelter Serra’s “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.”Image courtesy of Secret Project Robot, Brooklyn, New York.
Richard Serra's nephews aren't nearly as well known as the steel-loving uncle (is anyone, really?), but twin brothers and artistic collaborators Ivory and Shelter Serra are making their mark with a new photo-based installation at Williamsburg gallery Secret Project Robot, "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars" — New York's subversive street culture at its finest, rife with unacknowledged Gen Y scenes and relics. The exhibition is up through March 15. —Rachel Wolff
Smells like JCPenney!Photo: WireImage
You may not be able to take the country out of Jessica Simpson, but it's apparently less of a problem to take Jessica Simpson out of the country.
The singer is one of several acts, along...
Photo: AP
It's really easy to hate on Ryan Seacrest. After all, he's a plastic mousse-haired entertainbot whose claim to fame is that he will host the shit out of anything that moves. But we kind of like Seacrest; he works really hard, he's relentlessly good at what he does, and he makes us laugh a lot in what by all rights should be a humorless role as host of American Idol. Unlike most, we thought he was the perfect host for the Emmys, and think maybe they should just put him in charge of the Oscars and be done with it. (At least if he sucks, we won't have our hearts broken, as we did when our beloved Jon Stewart sucked.)
We also like Ryan Seacrest because, as today's Wall Street Journal confirms, he's basically a business genius.
According to the Journal, Seacrest is syndicating his L.A.-based radio show, and in an uncommon arrangement will own and sell a certain amount of the show's advertising time himself. Seacrest has already wined and dined representatives of the Coca-Cola company at his house the night before the Oscars; Wolfgang Puck stopped by to serve them Kobe beef and shaved-truffle mac 'n' cheese. We're pretty sure Seacrest will soon control every radio station in America, and from there will move on to other media, until he — Oops! Ryan Seacrest just bought us! See you later!
Next Up for Mr. Seacrest: Peddling Ads for Radio [WSJ]
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: AFP/Getty Images
Katoucha [...] disappeared near her houseboat in Paris earlier this month, French police said on Thursday.She had been missing since returning to the houseboat moored near the city centre after a party earlier this month.
"There are indications that it is indeed her, but we are awaiting the results of forensic tests before we can confirm it officially," a police spokesman said.
Katoucha was one of the first black African models to reach stardom on the runway in the eighties and was an activist against genital mutilation. Sad. Considering the pale, pale runways right now, extra sad.
Body In River May Be Missing Model: French Police [NYT]
All the horror buffs we know are talking about The Signal, the indie sci-fi horror film told from three different perspectives, each created by a different director. (It came out last week, and it might make you crap your pants. Literally.) One of those directors, Dan Bush, is also responsible for 2006’s A Day in the Life, one of the coolest short films we’ve seen in recent years. Intercutting between a soldier’s harrowing day in the midst of WWII and a young office drone’s day in the sixties (yes, it was inspired by the Beatles song), Bush’s virtually dialogue-free cinematic poem meditates on fathers and sons, the despair of a life unfulfilled, and also the strange subliminal connections people make with one another. It also gets more surreal and haunting as it progresses; indeed, those who’ve seen The Signal may notice some similarities between this short and Bush’s final segment of that film. —Bilge Ebiri
Because you wouldn't know if we didn't tell you: Ricci is on the left, Wintour is on the right.Photos: Getty Images
From left, Rachel Wintour; Rachel Bilson.Photos: Getty Images
Thomas KrensPhoto: AFP/Getty Images
While many Americans carry Bush Countdown Clocks – today ticking at 326 days – last night at a big art-world bash more than a few disbelieving yet ecstatic art-worlders were burbling about creating “Thomas Krens Countdown Clocks.” That’s because on Wednesday evening news spread that Krens, the Guggenheim Museum’s controversial dictatorial head for almost twenty years — 7,300 days, for clock-watchers — will be stepping down from his post. Well, not quite stepping down; he’ll oversee the creation of the gargantuan 452,000-square-foot Frank Gehry–designed museum in Abu Dhabi. (According to the Times, he'll stay on in his current position until a successor is found.)
Over the last two decades Krens changed museum culture in the West. He made museums corporate and ran the Guggenheim like a business – even if that business often careened like an out-of-control savings and loan.
He branded the Guggenheim and kicked off the starchitect phase of museum culture, building and closing snazzy outlets around the world, most notably the grand shining building in Bilbao. Krens turned his museum into a spectacle and opened it up to the public, mounting crowd-pleasers and blockbusters like “The Art of the Motorcycle,” “China,” “Russia!,” “Brazil,” and other unfocused national smorgasbords that had less to do with the Guggenheim’s original mission than in doing deals in other countries. (He also oversaw excellent exhibitions of contemporary artists like Jenny Holzer and Matthew Barney.)
For all practical purposes the Krens clock began ticking last summer when Lisa Dennison stepped down from her position of museum director. It was widely understood that no real candidate for the job would appear unless Krens stepped away from any day-to-day operations, as just his presence muddied the waters around the museum. With Krens finally away trying to change museum culture in the Middle East, the Guggenheim could become a real force in the New York art world overnight. The building is unique; the capable staff is hungry; the art world is eager to welcome the Guggenheim back into the fold.
Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi, a quick check to numerous government Websites will confirm that Israeli passport holders and travelers whose passports bear Israeli stamps will be denied entry visas to the Emirates. Thus, Krens will continue to do what he does best: try to accessorize the museum while sullying the Guggenheim’s good name, recklessly removing the “heim” from Guggenheim. —Jerry Saltz
Guggenheim’s Provocative Director Steps Down [NYT]
Related: How to Rebuild the Guggenheim [NYM]
Sold! Why Lisa Dennison Bolted the Top Job at the Guggenheim [NYM]
Image courtesy of Aveda
Raspberry wax, derived from raspberry leaf.
• Purpose: hydration and smoothing.
• Vegan high-five: used in place of beeswax.
Capuacu butter, derived from Brazilian fruit.
• Purpose: moisture.
• Related to: chocolate.
Jojoba oil, derived from jojoba nut
• Purpose: moisture, cushioning.
• Green factor: tested for use in biodiesel fuel in the past.
Bilberry oils, derived from bilberry fruit, used for antioxidants.
• Purpose: antioxidants.
• Trivia points: said to be used as an herbal remedy for lowering blood sugar and treating diabetes.
—Sharon Clott
Photo Illustration: Courtesy of Universal Pictures; Patrick McMullan, Getty Images
"Perhaps Lloyd would like to come on here and show me the error of my ways and educate me perhaps from his lofty Wall Street perch on how millions of Americans are faring and what their prospects are," Biff Dobbs huffed on air. "Lloyd, you certainly… I would love to have you do it. I would love to have you come on and talk to my face, not to my back, partner. I know it's not the way you do it on Wall Street there, hotshot, but try it here. Come on down. Open invitation."
Um. We actually can't even add anything more to this because it is pretty much the best thing ever.
Goldman CEO Challenged On-Air by Lou Dobbs [Huffington Post]
If you ask Boy George if he really wanted to hurt him, the answer's an emphatic no.
The "Karma Chameleon" purveyor pleaded not guilty Thursday to a charge of false imprisonment...
Photo: WireImage
"Jason Sudeikis told me not to look into the camera and that they use microphones on television. So that was just … such a help." —Casey Rose Wilson, the newest cast member on SNL [Apiary]
"The '80s are funny too, and I guess we'll look back and the '90s will be funny too, but the '70s are holding strong." —Will Ferrell on returning to the seventies for Semi-Pro [AP via Yahoo]
"It's one of those records that if you never heard it before, it's gonna be dynamic to your ears. If you have heard it before, it's gonna take it back to a time where it felt good, where music was all about feeling good and partying. No killing. No dying. Everybody just lives happily ever after and parties all the time." —Snoop Dogg on his cover of the Time's "Cool" [MTV]
"I don't think I've ever seen so many people [write] 'OMG' in my life." —Rachelle Lefevre on the rabid fans of Twilight [MTV]
Ali Michael, at left, poses with Karlie Kloss, who is
still thin enough to walk the runways. Thank God.Photo: Patrick McMullan
The Wall Street Journal reports that this year, Michael got a little crazy and decided to stop making herself sick in order to keep her weight down — as a result, she gained five pounds. Wrong direction, Ali! Doesn't this girl's manager keep her in line? Anyhow, she's been told this season that her legs are too fat for most Paris runways. Duh, comme il faut. So after walking for just Yohji Yamamoto, she’s cut her trip short and heading home to Texas. Oh, how far we fall. But what an instructive experience for everyone. —Jessica Coen
Wasn't Skinny Supposed to Be Out of Fashion? [WSJ]
Photo: Getty Images
Related: Rufus Wants You to Do It in the Dark [NYM]
Clockwise from top left: Courtesy of Miramax, Universal, Gramercy Pictures, Fox; iStockphoto (reaper)
10. Dick Hallorann, The Shining (1980)
Toward the end of The Shining, Scatman Crothers' Dick Hallorann flies from Florida to Colorado, then travels miles and miles through a vicious blizzard in the dead of night, because his extrasensory gifts have warned him that Danny Torrance is in danger at the Overlook Hotel. When he arrives at long last, seconds after stepping in the door, he is killed with an ax by Jack Nicholson. "Hey, thanks for selflessly traveling thousands of miles to save a child's life," Stanley Kubrick says. "We're not gonna need you here, though. Enjoy slowly bleeding to death from a giant gaping chest wound."
9. Russell Franklin, Deep Blue Sea (1999)
After a bevy of heavy-hitting roles in nineties flicks like Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Die Hard With a Vengeance, Samuel L. Jackson had become one of our most cherished badass action-movie conventions. When he appeared as avalanche-surviving corporate executive Russell Franklin in the shoddy yet deeply awesome Deep Blue Sea, audiences expected him to kick some motherfuckin' shark ass and lead his party of scientists to safety. He even delivers a triumphant, soul-stirring survival speech to his party — only to be interrupted by a super-intelligent shark with a real sense of comic timing. The moment serves as a useful thumbnail for Jackson's post-nineties career: Sam Jackson, once mighty, now masticated.
8. Goose, Top Gun (1986)
Poor Goose. The good-times, piano-plinking, Jerry Lee Lewis–loving redhead was the ultimate wingman: Not only was he Maverick's co-pilot and confidant, he was Cruise's neutered accomplice in the courtship of Kelly McGillis, and one hell of a Jams-wearing volleyball partner. He lost that loving feeling in the danger zone, when he attempted to eject on a daring training mission — awkwardly whacking his head on the cockpit cover.
7. Wash, Serenity (2005)
Joss Whedon's ragtag crew of smugglers flew from TV to the big screen aboard their ship the Serenity (thanks in part to solid DVD sales for the original series), piloted by the ship's class clown, the irrepressible Hoban "Wash" Washburne. But he'll be left out of any sequels — though actor Alan Tudyk enjoys spreading rumors of those sequels anyway — as he takes a grappling hook through the chest, in a scene that would almost be funny if it weren't such a major bummer. Leave it to ruthless Joss Whedon to repay his rabid fans by killing off their most beloved character just before the climactic final scenes.
6. Curtis Manning, 24
24 kills off its characters with a bloodthirstiness that is positively Transylvanian. But no death in the show’s run has been handled with a clumsiness that compares to the icing of Curtis Manning (Roger Cross), a fan favorite known as “Black Jack” because he was just as cool, competent, and calm as his fellow CTU agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), but black. At the start of the sixth season, Curtis’s third on the show, Jack cuts a deal with a terrorist turned informer. But uh-oh! It turns out that the now-helpful baddie is on Curtis’s shit list for killing his buddies after Desert Storm. So, naturally, by-the-book Curtis holds a gun to the informer's head and says he has to die, and Jack shoots Curtis in the neck. The end. Note that though the rest of the season takes place in the same day, Curtis’s grisly passing and entirely out-of-character final moments are quickly forgotten, and the poor bastard is hardly mentioned at all.
5. Donny, The Big Lebowski (1998)
Perhaps no character in the blood-soaked Coen Brothers oeuvre has expired in as embarrassingly tame a manner as Steve Buscemi's dim-witted but genial Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos, who dies of fright in a bowling-alley parking lot as Walter and the Dude fight off a gang of nihilist blackmailers. (The Dude: "They shot Donnie!" Walter: "No shots were fired, Dude.") In further, postmortem humiliation, his cremated remains are carried to the ocean in a coffee can, where Walter scatters them after an incoherent speech about Khe Sanh. A stiff breeze blows them back landward into the Dude's beard.
4. Billy Thomas, Ally McBeal (2002)
Even though we knew that Billy was leaving Ally McBeal somehow (actor Gil Bellows had announced that the third season was his last), he didn’t have to die such a sudden, unsatisfying death. In one mid-season episode, Billy found out he had a benign brain tumor. So, okay, we figured he’d die at the end of the season, after the tumor turned out to be not so benign. But no! The next episode, Billy collapsed in court and died, just like that. Bye-bye, Billy, Ally’s long-term love interest, who fans desperately hoped she’d end up with. After Billy’s death, Ally McBeal, already a weird show (dancing babies, anyone?), kept getting stranger, and eventually went off the air two years later.
3. Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction (1994)
After managing to survive a hail of bullets fired by the roommate of a dead drug dealer named Brett without so much as a scratch, rid his car of a headless body without getting discovered by the police, escape a diner being robbed at gunpoint by Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, and save himself from certain death by reviving Marsellus Wallace's mistress after she overdoses on his heroin, Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega gets shot to death after finishing up a crap because a toaster startles Bruce Willis. Damn.
2. Scott Scanlon, Beverly Hills, 90210 (1991)
Oh, Scott. David Silver ditched you for the cool crowd (and trophy girlfriend Donna Martin … ew), and then you had to go shoot yourself in the face. In a much-hyped second-season episode of 90210 — commercials ran for weeks warning fans that "ONE OF THE GANG … DIES!") — Scott threw a tragic, cowboy-themed birthday party, during which he accidentally killed himself with his dad’s gun. The only thing worse than being shamefully booted off a hit TV show? The fact that teenage girls were disappointed that someone more important didn’t die. Scott wasn’t really part of the gang! They could have at least killed off Andrea, for God’s sake! These complicated emotions are reflected in this YouTube clip, in which a twentysomething girl re-watches the episode and laughs all the way through.
1. Jesus, The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Has there ever, in TV or film history, been less honorable death than Jesus's in The Passion of the Christ? Sure, that's how he met his end in the Bible, but doesn't our Lord and savior deserve better than being whipped, spat on, scourged, mocked, and flayed in a semi-offensive, possibly anti-Semitic piece of religious torture porn? Mel Gibson financed Passion with his own $50 million — for that sort of money, he could've had Jesus die in a light-saber battle with Pontius Pilate, or be eaten by a Transformer or velociraptor. Now that would've been a death for our sins.
This isn't the kind of diss Ja Rule is used to.
Per published reports, State Supreme Court Justice Micki Sherer explained her decision to Ja Rule's camp at an indictment arraignment...FINANCE
• Scott B. Meyer, the chief of About.com, said yesterday that he would step down next week, on the heels of news that Scott Galloway and his merry band of vagilantes were going to try to pressure its parent company, the New York Times, to change the way they handle internet operations. [NYT]
• Two former Wall Streeters take responsibility for insider trading. [WSJ]
MEDIA
• The New York Times' editorial board almost didn't endorse presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Now some Gray Lady staffers are wondering if the newspaper made the right decision. [TNR]
• Rolling Stone does the masthead shuffle. [WWD]
• A New York Times reporter is accused of two lines' worth of plagiarism. [NYP]
LAW
• Could the new one-act, Rankings: A Dramatization of the Incentives Created by Ranking Law Schools, be the next big Broadway sensation? [Legal Blog Watch]
• Outspoken Cadwalader chairman and management partner Robert Link is out the door as the firm grapples with its slipping capital-markets practice. [Law.com]
• How will Barack Obama's tax plan affect BigLaw associates? [ATL]
Photo: Wikipedia
Trader Hits Jackpot in Oil, As Commodity Boom Roars On [WSJ]
Photo: Getty Images
So how involved were you with the screenplay for The Other Boleyn Girl?
Officially, I was a consultant on the film, but I got along very, very well with [screenwriter] Peter Morgan. We talked all the way through, particularly about the language — what people would say and wouldn't say — and about what would have been possible and likely in the Tudor society. And when I went on-set the book was already there: Scarlett had read it absolutely cover-to-cover, and her book was marked up on almost every page. The book was her source material, partly also there's nowhere else to go: My fiction is the closest thing to a biography Mary Boleyn currently has.
You have a very devoted following among women — myself included — who might not usually read romance novels or historical fiction. Do you think it's the nature of women’s fiction that these novels get labeled as "bodice rippers" in a way?
Well, I think that's exactly it — because they're clearly not romantic fictions. When I wrote my first novel, Wideacre, my then-editor said, "You know, you've taken a traditional literary form, the historical novel, and you've turned it into something else altogether." Nobody's really ever called any of my work a "bodice ripper." I think if you look at the jacket, maybe you're not that sure. But no one's ever read any of my books and not realized that they were doing something absolutely fresh.
Okay…
And that's why they sell so well. The Other Boleyn Girl, which was first published ten years ago, has now been on the New York Times best-seller list for something like a month. It's now, again. I think it speaks to modern women because it's an absolute reinvention of an old form. I have a Ph.D. I'm a professional historian. I like to get it right. The fiction is there to breathe life into historical facts.
A lot of the book's negative online reviews have to do with accuracy, and the debate over whether Mary was older or younger … Why do you think people are so hung up on that?
Okay, Mary was younger. There was a time when people thought she was probably older, but that was about 50 years ago. Since then we've found some documents. For instance, Anne went to France first and Mary followed her, so that probably means Anne's the older. And then there's a Boleyn family will which has just been discovered, which mentions Anne and does not mention Mary, and people think that's probably because Anne was born then and Mary wasn't. So I looked at all the evidence, and I made the decision along with, I think, David Starkey and certainly Alison Weir, the two best Tudor historians we have working today. And we all think that Mary is the younger.
There was a bit of controversy recently about casting three American actors in these very prominent British historical roles. Did you feel any conflict about that?
Not at all. I think that the idea that people should be made to play by race is utterly insane. You know, they're actors! Their job is to step into someone else's shoes. I'm English, and the accents seemed to me to be perfect. I don't really mind where the actors come from — they could come from Mars.
Jessica's ideaPhoto Illustration: Everett Bogue; Photos: WireImage, Hulton Archive/Getty Images
I have to tell you, I picture you writing in your library in front of a large fireplace wearing…
Like Proust… [laughs] I'm a modern woman. I write, I work when I can and when I have to. So I'll take a laptop and wait for my kids in the car and write in the car if I have to. I'm very flexible.
That is so disappointing. I really had an image of you in some sort of velvet smoking jacket.
You can stay with that if you like. Your fictions are your own concern. —Jessica Coen
Bohemian chic from Gucci's fall '08 line.Photo: imaxtree
In an online poll of 25,000 consumers in 48 countries … one in five respondents said they would choose to buy Gucci over any other luxury brand if money were no object.Chanel and Calvin Klein tied for second place, followed by Louis Vuitton, Giorgio Armani, Christian Dior and Versace.
Gucci, which is owned by French retail group PPR, shared first place with Giorgio Armani in the same survey two years ago.
Gucci's head designer, Frida Giannini, is good at designing products that sell well in emerging markets in Asia, Russia, and the Middle East, where Gucci sales are booming.
Though Gucci came out on top overall, different regions of the world expressed different tastes in luxury brands. The Chinese liked Chanel the most; Russians preferred Christian Dior; Latin Americans went for Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, and Yves Saint Laurent; and the Japanese prefer Hermès.
As for us in North America? Our continent is the least interested in buying luxury stuff, crappy economy notwithstanding. More than a third of North American survey respondents said they wouldn't buy any of the glittery brands, even they were rich. More proof that those emerging markets are what really matters. We just hope luxury doesn't completely die out over here. Our closets can't stand the thought of unemployment.
Nielsen Survey Finds Gucci Atop Luxe Heap [WWD]
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