Results tagged “catherinezeta”

Languishing in cardboard boxes near the mushroom sections in local Fairway stores these next few weeks are Sea Beans, mysterious short stalks of a dark green vegetable, looking like something you might find washed up on the beach, but maybe a bit more edible. According to Elizabeth Schneider’s Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, Sea Beans (aka Salicornia) grow wild in warmer months all over- in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. “Salicornia is not seaweed, as it is often described,” she writes, “nor is it a cactus, which it slightly resembles.” Eaten raw or cooked, its flavor can best be described as sea salty intense, with a sort of grassy asparagus aftertaste. When fresh, Sea Beans are crunchy like snap peas. At the tail end of their one-week refrigerator shelf life, older sea beans can be revived with a five-minute soak in ice water. In addition to their current availability at Fairway (a pricey $8.99 per ½ pound), farm-raised boxes of the vegetable show up every June at NY greenmarkets, often leaving perplexed customers headed for more conventional items like pretty garlic scapes, or local strawberries.

Foodies attack the silver screen! In today's Times Arts & Leisure section, the long history and current feast of food in film is given another look. Would there have even been a Big Night if not for the food? In the coming months, Russell Crowe, the first person we think of when the phrase "good taste" coming up, will star as a man who inherits a vineyard and Nora Ephron is working on an adaptation of Julie & Julia, the Julie Powell book that came from her blog. Fast Food Nation has been filmed, too, and, there will be acompetitive eating movie, All You Can Eat, to add some low-to-middle-brow enjoyment to all the wineries and roux.

The blog Muckracked noticed that the old space where the restaurant Hue used to be was taken over as a restaurant movie set for the Scott Hicks-directed adaptation of the German film, Mostly Martha. Gothamist loved Mostly Martha (uptight German chef becomes guardian of surly niece while dealing with maverick Italian chef at her work), so we've been following news of the adaptation for a while (at one point, Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan had rights to remake the movie). Anyway, the new version will star Catherine Zeta-Jones, as a chef at "22 Bleecker," and we can only imagine that Aaron Eckhart is the new, unconventional chef who melts her heart. Zeta-Jones actually went undercover at Fiamma as a waitress and even garnished dishes to prep for the role, so we expect some gorgeous food photography (Hicks did direct Snow Falling on Cedars, which was lovely to look at, if a terrible movie).

With just two new episodes so far this season, the NY Post wonders if Saturday Night Live is really dead. It's a good, if evergreen question. Horatio Sanz is certainly no Tina Fey during Weekend Update, though Gothamist has been impressed he's been able to hold it together this long. With Maya Rudoph's pregnancy, it seems like most sketches with a female character involve Amy Poehler (who rules, but maybe she needs a break). There are always dark periods of SNL (the years after the original cast left and before Eddie Murphy arrived; after Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and David Spade left), but it's still TiVo worthy, if not stay-at-home on a Saturday night. There's always a chance there's a watercooler moment in a broadcast, and that's what keeps people watching. Gothamist hopes there will be a sketch with this week's host, Catherine Zeta-Jones, that either involves overeating or being married to a jowly old man.

The Post notes that celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Connelly and Catherine Zeta-Jones have MacLaren strollers. For more about celebrities and their babies, check out Celebrity Baby Blog and learn that celebrity husbands are just like regular ones - they want their wives to lose that baby fat - but they just have more money. And look at the hot strollers that the hip mommies and daddies get at daddytypes.com.

CZJ talking about "eating your way to oblivion?" (See it here.) Gothamist isn't going near that one. We will, however, bring up "to zeta-jones," the memorable catch all (literally) created by Elizabeth Spiers during her Gawker reign.

Mysterioso New York service site she loves new york serves up their awards edition, with ones like "The Diddy Runs The City Award" ("recognizing the major achievement of an ego maniac in 2003") and "The White LV Award" ("given to that venue which contributed most to the bling"); and the "Resy." Yes, happy new year, matty, and do whatever slny says.

According to Michael Fleming in Variety, former Warner Bros. head Lorenzo DiBonaventura is going to be pitching a live-action movie based on G.I. Joe. Yes, the Real American Hero! Gothamist wonders who will play Cobra Commander, because based on some analysis maybe it'd be great to see Alan Cumming in the role. Other thoughts: Vin Diesel as Destro, Julianne Moore or Alicia Witt as Scarlett, maybe Paul Walker as Duke, Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Baroness.

Wow, the Sidekick is so useful. Certainly in the campaign's favor is that Publicis Interactive got Ghost in the Shell director Itsuro Kawasaki to work on the seven three-and-a-half minute "webisodes," from which 30-second commercials were created. For you Catherine Zeta-Jones fans, don't worry, she appears in these ads in animated form on a billboard. But Gothamist did love how Publicis co-president and ECD Bob Moore explained CZJ's liimited role: "" That's right, Catherine is only available to annoy the mainstream. Well, so be it!

The new Coen Brothers movie, Intolerable Cruelty, stars George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Intolerable Cruelty is supposed to be a throwback to screwball comedies of the 30s:

It's looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones had her second baby: A baby girl, Carys Zeta Douglas. Gothamist wouldn't really care, except for the fact that Catherine had the baby in Ridgewood, New Jersey...where Jen was born! Gothamist wonders if Baby Girl Douglas was born at Valley Hospital, where Jen, Jen's brother and two cousins were all born. Net net, Valley Hospital is a good place.

Today, I go to Chicago. I will not have time to go to the Sears Tower but I will try to find Richard Roeper and kick his ass. Yeah, I think he sucks.

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar.

The evening is over, while Gothamist will be following up with extensive commentary about the actual Oscar telecast, here are the winners and some post-game analysis:

News comes that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah will perform at the Oscars, but not Renee Zellweger. Apparently she declined, and, Ms. Zellweger, we thank you for that. She even admitted not wanting to sing - in a Guardian article, she said, "I was not going to sing for anybody besides my dogs when I'm in the shower, and then Rob Marshall comes along and that was it." Damn you, Rob Marshall! I like Renee a lot, but the "can't sing" thing is bugging me out. CZ-J and QL will be performing the only original song from Chicago, "I Move On," which the original Chicago musical creators, Fred Ebb and John Kander, wrote specifically for the film. Elvis Mitchell described Zellweger: "[her] float-like-a-butterfly voice doesn't triumph over her my-left-foot dance skills"

Finally, someone sums up the biggest problem with Chicago: Margo Jefferson complains how the editing in Chicago takes away from the essence of Chicago, which is the dancing. Yeah, there's all the blah blah about the movie musical being revised, but there's been no great dancing or great singing yet. When I think movie musical, I admit I think Singin' in the Rain, Wizard of Oz, Funny Face, On the Town. Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire or Cyd Charisse whose legs were so long that Gene Kelly had to tailor choreography for her, to hide the fact she was taller than him in Singin' in the Rain. I think Bill Condon, the screenwriter, did a good job in streamlining the story, but when I see the cast of the movie on Charlie Rose, bragging about how all the cutting between scenes was in the screenplay, I think it sucks, because part of the pleasure of watching a movie musical is seeing them dance, not dance in the dark. And for the millionth time, why not Bebe Neuwirth reprising her stage role as Velma in the film? Right, blah blah star power.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, the Orange BAFTA Awards, were handed out yesterday and the big winner was The Pianist, Best Picture and Best Director Roman Polanski. Other winners included Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York, Nicole Kidman for The Hours, Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago, Christopher Walken for Catch Me If You Can (I wonder what he'd rather have done - been in London to pick up his award or in NY hosting SNL as he was last night), Charlie and Donald Kaufman's adapted screenplay for Adaptation, and Pedro Almodovar's original screenplay for Talk to Her. What's funny about British awards these days is that they have corporate sponsors - Orange is a mobile phone communications company. The Booker Prize is now the Man Booker Prize, Man is an investment company. The Mercury Prize, the most prestigious music award in the UK and arguably the US, too (though the US created the Shortlist award), is the Panasonic Mercury prize.