With the summer halfway over, it’s the perfect time to splurge on those beach accessories you’ve been eyeing since early May. We’ve put together a slideshow of the eight most divine towels on the market. From Missoni stripes to Louis Vuitton’s classic monogram prepare to learn how to lay out in style. Click through for some uber-luxurious beach towels that are guaranteed to stand out on the sand. Read More
Bonjour, New Yorkers! Over two hundred years ago on July 14, French citizens stormed the Bastille prison, fighting for their independence and ending the French Revolution. And in a year where U.S. and Canadian French expats for the first time will be represented in the National Assembly of France (by a longtime New Yorker no less!), we are more excited than ever to celebrate le quatorze juillet with our French friends.
How will we cope without fireworks or military parades, like the one that wraps around the Champs-Élysées every year? Champagne and pétanque, obviously!
The long weekend of parties kicks off tonight, and below the jump are our five must-dos for the big French to-do. Read More
“I’d be devastated if my son grows up to be a hetero. As a parent, you just envision a certain life for your child. Just imagine the fabulous things he’s going to miss out on! When I think my son might not ever know the joys of having a quarter share on Fire Island, and walking through Judy Garland Memorial Park on the way to the Meat Rack!” Debra Messing said holding back melodramatic tears to a roaring audience last night at Trevor Live, an evening of music and comedy to benefit the Trevor Project.
“Every parent hopes for their child to not be a heterosexual! Think of all the things they’ll miss out on…skinless chicken breasts and brown rice,” Eric McCormick added sarcastically. This was the first time the duo had taken the stage together since their hit TV show Will & Grace went off the air in 2006.
The Trevor Project was founded in 1998 and has since become the leading national organization providing intervention and suicide prevention service to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Every year the foundation honors someone who has helped make progress for the LGBTQ community, and this year’s honoree was Susan Sarandon, an open advocate for increasing visibility and understanding of the LGBTQ community. Read More
As we stood at the black carpet anticipating host Hugh Jackman‘s arrival at Tropfest, a massive outdoor short-film festival held on Saturday in Bryant Park, we eavesdropped on a conversation held behind us between three robust fans of the actor. “I came all the way from Wisconsin to see him!” one of the women screeched to her companions. ”Yeah? Well, I got this custom shirt made,” another woman said, pointing to her shirt with a giant portrait of Mr. Jackman printed on it.
Tropfest originally started in Australia and has spun off into several other countries, and Saturday was the American debut. Tropfest’s founder John Polson discussed the festival with The Observer. “It’s really a celebration and an event more than a festival,” he said. “Geoffrey Rush has called it as close to rock and roll as filmmaking gets. It’s free, and the afternoon is amazing and has everything, even live music. It’s really unlike any film festival.”
At least ten thousand film lovers waited on blankets and lawn chairs, anticipating the arrival of the guest celebrity judges—Rose Byrne, Judah Friedlander, Jennifer Westfeldt, Ted Hope and Scott Foundas—and the screening of over a dozen short films. Read More
Something you should know: Showgirls is one of our favorite films. It isn’t a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s always fun to watch and count how many times Elizabeth Berkley storms out of the room flailing. Should you choose to watch the new Tom Cruise vehicle Rock of Ages adapted from the Tony-winning musical of the same name, I highly suggest having similar expectations.
Last night The Observer headed to the Landmark Theaters Sunshine Cinema for the New York premiere of the film, attended by leading lady Julianne Hough and director Adam Shankman.
Mr. Shankman made the following pronouncement before the film rolled: “I just want to let you all know that this movie was made all out of fun. Everyone sing along! Please, dance in the aisles! The theater is going to kill me for saying this, but someone pull a chair out of the ground and throw it at the screen in true rock and roll style!” Read More
What allows reality TV to exist so plentifully, and to be so successfully engineered, is perhaps our human tendency to experience the same event different ways. Liquoring up scared, fame-hungry young people gets you most of the way there, but it’s the producer-prodded endless parsing of what historian Daniel J. Boorstin termed “pseudo-events” that fill the hours and hours of cable programming we so happily consume: fights over who is a drunk, fights over who said who is a drunk, fights over what actually happened when everyone was drunk, and so on. (Mr. Boorstin also gave us a handy phrasing for the contemporary definition of a celebrity: “a person who is known for his well-knownness.”)
To test these theories, on Monday, The Observer embraced a full evening’s schedule of pseudo-events featuring celebrities and took a Rashomonic approach to the premiere of the fifth season of the wildly, bafflingly successful reality show, The Real Housewives of New York City. We sent three correspondents with varying degrees of RHONY knowledge to three premiere parties hosted by Housewives, and asked them to write honestly of their experiences.
What we learned: Despite perhaps being unwelcome, ex-Housewife Jill Zarin made the rounds. A couple of the Housewives will really miss their extra-large Diet Cokes (thanks a lot, Mayor Bloomberg). If you hang around with a Housewife long enough, you might run into someone actually famous (Liza Minnelli!?). And the show, when viewed with the celebrity cast members present, is even more uncomfortably hyperreal.
Thus we present: the Occasional Viewer’s Story, the Fanboy’s Story, and the Party Crasher’s Story. Read More
