Saks and the City

Beleaguered mega-editor Sylvie Fowler (Annette Bening) takes refuge in Saks Fifth Avenue in The Women.

The Women
Directed and Written by Diane English
With Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergen, Eva Mendes, Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler, and Debi Mazar
114 minutes

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

There was a moment when I thought The Women, a remake of the famous 1939 George Cukor movie, was going to lose me, philosophically anyway. A high-powered female (everyone in the movie is female, as in the original) New York magazine editor, up against the wall, considers making revenge the theme of her upcoming issue, a sort of how-to-get-yours for readers (also, presumably, all female). It’s always bothered me that revenge is usually viewed in film and TV as something very satisfying, something we should all vicariously exult in, instead of the negative, shallow, hurtful response it really is.

And indeed Sylvie (Annette Bening), the editor, is hardly ready to send roses to Crystal (Eva Mendes), the Saks perfume-spritzer who’s fooling around with the husband of Mary (Meg Ryan), a sweet homebody who is Sylvie’s best friend. Sylvie even advises Mary, though rather gently, to “kick her ass” when they come upon the curvaceous Crystal in the dressing rooms of a lingerie boutique. That Mary fails abysmally at this—while trying on an ill-fitting white bustier, garters dangling over her dowdy long skirt—is part of her charm.

Again and again the movie seems about to lapse into movie-chick clichés but then rebounds, and often quite entertainingly. I wish that a scene in which Mary’s mother (Murphy Brown—I mean, Candice Bergen) is recovering from plastic surgery did not, despite her bruised face, seem like an endorsement of the procedure, which Mary takes as a given in her own future (a bit ironic, considering Meg Ryan’s obviously worked-on face—what’s with those lips?).

And Mary and Sylvie’s other friends—Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith), a steely lesbian writer, and Edie (Debra Messing), a hippie-esque earth mother—lack dimension, though Edie’s Upper West Side apartment doesn’t; it sprawls unendingly, and she mentions that her husband has just acquired his own space in the building as well. The other home we see—Mary’s Connecticut mansion—is also huge. As in so many Woody Allen movies, money doesn’t seem to be an issue. Indeed, The Women follows in the Manolo Blahnik footsteps of Sex and the City in touting high-end consumption, here mainly in Saks Fifth Avenue, depicted as a wonderland of sorts (though also the locale of Mary’s rude awakening). I was also a little disappointed that Mary gets chic-ified once she finds herself (with a little help from the always-welcome Bette Midler, prancing around as a Sue Mengers–type superagent) at a spa, even if she is a designer.

Still, as she did with the TV show Murphy Brown years ago, writer/director/producer Diane English, with this 14-year labor of love, brings women to the foreground—or in this case, the foreground, ground, and background—and then gives them plenty of clever things to say as they reach beyond mere revenge. These particular women ultimately reject clawing as a way to the top, or a way to hold on to a man, though they keep the Jungle Red polish. I think Norma Shearer would be proud, though I’m not sure about Joan Crawford.

Hypocrisy Now: 16 Questions for Every Voter Who’s Been Paying Attention

Barack Obama

John McCain

By Robert Rosen

1. Is there any chance that this election won’t be ugly, close, and marred by legal challenges?

2. How can anybody have any faith in the wisdom of an American public that twice elected George Bush, when even a corpse would have done less damage and should have beaten Dubya in a landslide?

3. Will Bush, like Augusto Pinochet and Henry Kissinger, be hounded like a war criminal for the rest of his unnatural life?

4. Can the broadcast media raise the level of their political discourse from sub-moronic to moronic?

5. Does Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! know how often she disintegrates into self-parody, or that her ace correspondent, the ever-indignant Jeremy Scahill, acts like a graduate of the Samantha Bee School of Journalism?

6. Has John McCain ever heard the Phil Ochs classic “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” which The Jefferson Starship recently covered with our friend Cathy Richardson singing lead?

7. Does the lyric “It’s always the old who lead us to the war” (see above) remind McCain of anybody?

8. What will it take for people to understand that McCain’s a corrupt warmonger whose bad judgment dates back 25 years, to his first term in Congress, when he tried to influence bank regulators on behalf of his biggest campaign contributor, convicted racketeer Charles Keating, after the failure of Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan cost taxpayers $3.4 billion?

9. Why didn’t McCain apply to Keating—a Nixon ally, founder of Citizens for Decency, and producer of the anti-porn film Perversion for Profit—the most reliable litmus test for integrity? That is: The biggest crooks cry “Ban pornography!” the loudest.

10. Why does the media constantly bring up Obama’s mentor and fund-raiser, convicted felon Tony Rezko, but virtually never mention Keating?

11. What’s worse: Helping a man buy a house or defrauding taxpayers of $3.4 billion?

12. Why can’t the media admit that Barack Obama hasn’t lived long enough to learn to be as corrupt as John McCain?

13. What, exactly, is the problem with a presidential candidate who speaks good English and inspires rather than demoralizes every time he opens his mouth?

14. When Sarah Palin’s nudie pix finally surface—nobody becomes a beauty queen without flashing their tits for at least one photographer—will they help or hurt the Republican ticket?

15. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it the Republican Party that excoriated the fictional Murphy Brown for getting knocked up?

16. Why hasn’t the Democratic attack machine branded the Republican candidate “Malignant McCain” (as opposed to “Benign Barack”)?

***

The person who provides the best answers to the above questions will win an autographed copy of Mary Lyn Maiscott’s debut CD, Blue Lights, and have his or her answers published on The Looseleaf Report. Deadline is midnight October 7, 2008. Send your answers to rrosen2727@nyc.rr.com. Decision of the judges is final.

***

For the record: We at The Looseleaf Report would like to see Obama humiliate the honky motherfucker.

Found: Soul in the Hamptons

Aretha Franklin gets a little respect in East Hampton. Photo by Cesar Vera/Ross.

By Mary Lyn Maiscott

I am staring into Christie Brinkley’s baby-blue eyes. This does not look like someone who has just gone through an ugly divorce, someone whose exploding private life has been splattered all over the tabloids. Her face beams; her gleaming blonde hair falls, on one side, behind a small ear; her nose, too, is very small—indeed, there’s something rather touching about it. She has a childlike quality, and I suddenly remember her singing “The Good Ship Lollipop,” Shirley Temple-style, during a Barbara Walters interview years ago. I’ve asked her what song she hopes Aretha Franklin will do—that’s why we’re all in this auditorium on the Upper Campus of the Ross School, in East Hampton, on a gorgeous summer night; we’re waiting for the Queen of Soul to get down and dirty in a building called the Center for Well-Being.

Of course Christie (I feel I can now call her Christie, as you would too if she had flashed that dazzling smile at you—just forget Julia Roberts altogether) mentions “Respect,” but she then says something totally disarming: “And what’s that one that Candice Bergen sang?” Huh? “You know,” she continues, “after Murphy Brown has the baby?”

“‘Natural Woman’?” I ask, though I didn’t know I knew that.

“Yes!” she says, this Uptown Girl, this inspiration for Billy Joel’s “A Matter of Trust.” She will not, as it turns out, be disappointed. (I will; I wanted “Until You Come Back to Me,” a sly song that instantly slows your heartbeat down to a sexy, insinuating rhythm).

Emotional girl: Christie Brinkley just wants some peace. Photo by Robert Rosen © 2008.

Indeed, less than 15 minutes later, only two songs into her set, Aretha Franklin—super-singer to Christie’s supermodel—launches into “Natural Woman,” the pearls forming her pink gown’s halter strap bouncing away, the brass section swaying. At the end, Aretha holds back just a little before hitting the stratosphere with that final “wo-ma-an.” I can’t see Brinkley through the crowd but I’m guessing that she, in a low-cut but tasteful purple dress, is standing, jumping, and hollering with the rest of us.

Which includes actress Rosie Perez, View host Joy Behar, producer Darren Starr, and the writer Terry McMillan, whom Aretha introduces from the stage. McMillan, chic in a white sarong-type skirt, flounces and waves when Aretha praises her “magnificence and savoir faire”; the singer then adds, “The next book can be How Aretha Got Her Groove Back—she lost some weight!”

Of course, as she rips through such hits as “Higher,” “The House That Jack Built,” and “Think,” it’s clear that Aretha never lost her groove and never will. When she wraps her lungs around the glorious aria “Nessum Dorma”—which brought down the house at the 1998 Grammys, when Franklin took over at the last minute for Pavarotti—you feel she has joined spirituality with funkiness in a way to make even the angels moan.

Tonight, she is donating her formidable services as a benefit for the school—founded by Courtney Ross, the widow of Time Warner’s Steve Ross—which she’s also endowed with a scholarship for performing-arts study. Perhaps as a nod to the importance of education, this most instinctive of performers says while introducing her band (her son Teddy White is on guitar), “There is nothing a singer likes better than having her music played correctly.” All the better for bringing an audience to fever pitch with “Freeway of Love,” announcing that she too is “feelin’ pretty good right now,” and leaving us spent, fulfilled, and yet wanting more.

To wean us off the music, a Latin combo begins to play under a tent adjoining the building. I walk that way, red wine in hand, Franklin voice ringing in my ears, and spot Christie, still smiling and luminescing among the crowd. (Brinkley also funds a scholarship, centering on the environment, for the school, which her daughter Alexa attended and son, Jack, currently attends.)

Later, as I sit outside the center on a boulder (perfectly appointed, as everything seems to be at this tony school set in the woods) and wait for a cab, I watch the many band members carry their instruments to vans and limos. Finally, the Queen herself emerges, a tall gentleman at each elbow escorting her. She has changed into street clothes and looks smaller between the men, her pumps (too big because of her weight loss?) making me think of Minnie Mouse. Her entire lower face and neck are enwrapped in a white muffler—paparazzi-proofing perhaps, but more likely protection for that golden throat against the cool night air. My companion, on the boulder beside me, begins to clap when he sees her, and Aretha turns and gives us, yes, a regal nod.

Sock it to me.

Rocking and Rolling with Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman in Randall Miller’s film, Bottle Shock.

By Victoria Looseleaf

Just a few hours after an earthquake hit the City of Angels, your faithful reporter sauntered into the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, adjacent to my abode, to shoot the breeze with British thespian Alan Rickman. Granted, the temblor was only a 5.4 and situated miles away in Chino Hills, near a huge prison, where I once played the harp in a former life. But Rickman had been on the 14^th floor doing TV interviews for his latest film, Bottle Shock, when the building began swaying.

Trouper that he is, Rickman, who’d also been in our fair city in ’94, when the so-called big one hit and thus making him an old hand at quakes, was perfectly poised to promote the Randall Miller film about fine wines. Check out what he has to say in a series of three mini-interviews (click on “Sausage, Cheese and Red Wine,” “Glass Half Full,” or “Judged By Your Accent”) I did for Spotlight on the Arts on KUSC-FM radio, and have a drink of California pinot for both of us.

P.S. For those interested, I had been at my computer—naturally—when the quivering began, and almost welcomed the disturbance. Cruel as it may sound, I believe it’s time for a seismic cleansing: With Los Angeles’ population getting way out of hand, we don’t need any more actor/writer/director wannabes heading West, while those living here in fear of Mother Nature should pack their bags and, well, get out of Dodge.

Jew on a Camel

By Victoria Looseleaf (we shortened it from ‘Looseleafkowitz’)

After much ballyhooing and back-and-forthing between a battery of New York publicists and this ink-stained wretch, it came to pass that I was able to both celebrate my father’s 84th birthday in West Palm Beach and then jet onward to Abu Dhabi, the richest city in the world. There I would be reporting on the Fifth Annual Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival for KUSC-FM radio, my debut for the station as an international arts journalist.

What is not covered in my Middle Eastern radio musings—but will be part of my book, Dance, Drink, Whatever…One Woman’s Pursuit of Art and Pleasure Around the Globe—I thought I’d give brief mention here.

Arriving in Abu Dhabi (taking planes to D.C., Doha—the capital of Qatar—followed by a puddle jumper to Abu), was a feat in itself, and at the stroke of midnight in a godforsaken Persian Gulf airport, I was met by a sweet driver who promptly took me to the wrong hotel.

After getting our bearings straight (and believe me, nothing is straight when it comes to the Emirates or the Emiratis, for that matter, save for the millions of dollars’ worth of oil gushing by the minute from beneath their sandy soils), I made it to the Millennium. In spite of my jet lag, I was immediately struck by the parade of high-end hookers and hooch available on the premises. As both prostitution and alcohol are forbidden in Islamic culture, I realized I’d arrived in the land of the apocalyptically hypocritical.

This is not meant to be a screed against the UAE, but merely an observation. Admittedly, the Arab society is a closed one, and certainly not one I was able to penetrate in a mere 10 days, this non-penetration thing rampant on other counts, as well, but nothing I'll, er, get into here.

What I did want, though, was a bottle of booze for my room. Having been told I could buy alcohol at a grocery store, early the next morning I proceeded through the late March, 90-degree heat and was led to a counter with alcohol.

Too bad it was rubbing alcohol.

The soukhs—marketplaces where rugs, gold, spices and other kinds of Middle Eastern exotica were sold in days of yore—also proved non-existent. It’s all malls now, all the time, the bigger the better—with the insane amounts of construction taking place ruining the environment (and the region allegedly running out of concrete).

But not running out of camels. Wanting to see the legendary camel races, including a 5 million Durham dromedary, I beseeched my Egyptian driver, Wa-El, to take me to the outskirts of town for a little Lawrence of Arabia action. But arriving at 11 a.m., we were privy only to the camels in cool-down mode.

Alas, the races were over, but, after some multi-culti confabbing, I was invited to ride one. With a lot of help from the help, I took to the hump, this Jew on a camel hanging on for dear life.

And loved it. As I loved much about the Middle East. In fact, I plan on returning for next year's festival—should there be one—as well as to explore the real desert, far from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and the cigarette-smoking, cell-phone toting locals dressed in abayas and designer shades, driving Hummers and Mercedes on gridlocked highways, the a/c cranked up in the blazing mid-day sun, as they make their way to prayer.

Debt in Venice

Gondolas at the Rialto Bridge. Photos © Victoria Looseleaf, 2008

By Victoria Looseleaf

It’s been a while since your devoted scribe has posted, but she has been on a series of—as always—remarkable journeys. My most recent excursion was to Venice, Italy, where I covered the Dance Biennale for Dance Magazine.

Yeah, I know. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it!

Here, then, are a few mentions that didn’t make it into my review: I stayed in the most wonderful place, the famed Fenice de les Artistes, which is next door to the even more famous Fenice Opera House and where I was fortunate enough to see Britten’s “Death in Venice;” I met some amazing people, Venetians included, as the city is quickly losing many of its 60,0000 residents; and do feel especially blessed just to have been able to travel there during these precarious times.

And while my trip should be dubbed, “Debt In Venice,” not just because I was stricken with the flu and had to have a doctor come to my hotel (an allergist, no less, in a pristine designer suit, who charged me 200 Euros to stick a thermometer under my arm and write a few scripts for antibiotics and painkillers in a Tennessee Williams-like scenario), but that the sinking dollar in this already water-logged burg made ordinary purchases (water, Prosecco and my newest addiciton, Orange Fanta), astronomical.
Igor Stravinsky’s grave, San Michele, Italy.

Still, there was beauty at every turn and even though I didn’t have an affair with a gondolier or some gigolo a la Katharine Hepburn in “Summertime” (nor did I fall into the Grand Canal like she did in the film), I did go to the graves of Russian impresario, Sergei Diaghilev and composer Igor Stravinsky; I happily attended some incredible dance performances which you’ll hopefully read about; and, finally, I rode around on the vaporetto (water bus) breathing in the glorious sea air of the Adriatic while being transported back in history to the times of Casanova, Mozart and Mariano Fortuny, a magnificent designer whose last name seems to say it all.

Would I return to this magical, mysterious, shell-shockingly expensive place? In an Italian heartbeat, which is a lot different—and much more magnificent, I might add—than a New York minute.

It Was a Very Wack Year

While Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) consults his psychiatrist (Ben Kingley), his psychiatrist consults his drug dealer.

The Wackness
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine
95 minutes

Even the great Ben Kingsley cannot make Dr. Jeffrey Squires, his bonghead, immature psychiatrist character in The Wackness, believable. Fortunately, Josh Peck, playing his patient/dope dealer/partner in crime, the 18-year-old Shapiro (as he’s generally called), does not have this problem. (It’s not Kingley’s fault; the deck is stacked.) Shapiro is a good-looking, resourceful, hip (he’s down with Biggie), nice guy, yet, mysteriously, he has no friends and is a virgin; he’s also burdened with bickering, ineffectual parents. With the sort-of help of the crazy Squires, who has plenty of issues himself, and the doctor’s knowing, pretty stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby), Shapiro begins to shift the balance in his life, so that the dopeness overtakes the wackness. This is true of the movie as well, especially if you’re young enough to feel nostalgic for 1994. —MLM