How to Make Friends and Beg for Extras!
Toby Young's tome on Graydon Carter and life at Vanity Fair, How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, is hitting the big screen just like its female counterpart The Devil Wears Prada.
A Few Predictions For Tonight's Golden Globe Awards
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course, we get to play the more enviable armchair critic job hashing out who might be taking home this year's statues after tonight's telecast [8 - 11 pm on NBC].
2006's Top Movies
Okay, so it's been 2007 for the last four days but since everyone's doing it from the critics circles to the awards nominating pools, it seemed worth it to weigh in on last year's movies. However, constructing end of the year top ten lists can be both painful and thrilling. Looking at a long list of the year's movie releases reminds you how many films passed you by in the theaters and playing favorites amongst the pool is never easy. It's much more fun to look at a top 10 and what various moviemakers from around the world have churned out in the last 12 months as glass half full. In the midst of the dreck of horrible new releases are some very bright spots, and here are 10 of our personal highlights.
The Cinecultist's Weekly Movie Picks: Very Special Episode edition
The Devil may wear prada and Superman may wear tight red briefs but what's really should get you hot and bothered on a long holiday weekend is Amy Sedaris in prosthetic teeth and high rise pants. Wooh-wee, that's some sexy stuff.
The Cinecultist's Weekly Movie Picks: Under The Stars edition
This weekend Hollywood says what moviegoers liked once, they'll sure love twice as the sequels hit theaters. Now you may be asking yourselves, did we really need another movie about bad boys in fast cars or another flick about a fat, talking cat? Apparently, we did and they both needed to be set in an exotic international local, Japan and England, respectively.
Meryl Streep to Wear Prada
The Hollywood Reporter says that Meryl Streep will be playing the Anna Wintour-inspired devilish boss in the movie of The Devil Wears Prada. Streep has already played another Conde Nast employee, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, in Adaptation, so we can't wait until she plays Graydon Carter or Jeff Jarvis next (hey, she played a rabbi in Angels in America - she can probably do it!). We think that someone like Lara Flynn Boyle, with aging makeup, would be more physically like Wintour, but these are the movies and Streep can play insane well (see Manchurian Candidate, She-Devil, and Death Becomes Her). Streep does have experience playing people in journalism - she was a thinly veiled Nora Ephron (who wrote for Esquire) in Heartburn.
Boozy Female Executives
As for your crazy male boss, it might just be that he's an unrepentant jerk.
Gothamist Media Review: Lauren Weisberger on Today
The Devil Wears Prada author and recent favorite Gothamist punching bag Lauren Weisberger must have gotten the memo from her publishers about toning down the "ungrateful brat" element of her shtick because her appearance on the Today Show showed a humbler, gentler Weisberger for our times. Campbell Brown asked if the editor in The Devil Wears Prada was really based on Anna Wintour; Weisberger demured and, taking a piece of Kate Betts' advice, said that she was lucky to have a "vantage point" few get by working at Vogue. She said her relationship with Anna was "professional" and had not spoken with Anna re: THE BOOK.
Gothamist Hates Lauren Weisberger
Gothamist Hates Lauren Weisberger
It's official: Gothamist thinks Lauren Weisberger is dumb as a brick.
Wintour of her Discontent
Kate Betts, late of Harper's Bazaar, tackles and reviews the eagerly awaited (eagerly awaited by a small but influential cartel of media and fashion types) book, The Devil Wears Prada. The Devil being Anna Wintour, Vogue editor, the author being Lauren Weisberger, a former Anna assistant.

