My son and I bet $20 bucks over this Coco Mademoiselle perfume ad that’s bannered all over Paris. I said it had to be Natalie Portman; he insisted it was Keira Knightley. He turned out to be right, but it is anyone going to tell me they wouldn’t bet on Portman also? Those eyes, the dark hair. At the very least she looks like a hybrid of the two.

“For what it’s worth, I went with a friend to see Indy 4 again today and I agreed with your post that it’s not a good idea to see it twice,” as film critic friend wrote on 5.31. “It’s far less charming on a second viewing. The second half is particularly leaden.
“Worst of all, now that I’ve really thought about it, is how cheap the skulls are. They look like plastic Halloween shell-out containers stuffed with tin foil. Would it have killed the mighty Lucasfilm empire to cough up the bucks for skulls that actually look like something valuable, maybe carved out of quartz or something? And those CGI gophers are unbelievably bad. How could Caddyshack make a puppet look real in 1980 but Lucasfilm can’t duplicate the feat in 2008?”

Yesterday a friend of a friend pointed to a quote from The Reagan Diaries (HarperCollins), which went on sale 53 weeks ago: “A moment I’ve been dreading. George [Bush Sr.] brought his ne’er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political [son] who lives in Florida — the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call [Michael] Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.” — entry dated 5.17.86.

Read Allison Hope Weiner‘s 6.2 N.Y. Times story about….well, should we pussyfoot around or should we just say it? The story was clearly inspired by intimations that Weiner (or people she’s spoken to, or both) are picking up on their insect antennae about M. Night Shyamalan and his latest film, The Happening (20th Century Fox, 6.13).

I don’t believe that Weiner and her editors would have run this story — which, if you boil the snow out, basically says “uh-oh, here comes hard-luck M. Night again!” — if uncertainty wasn’t in the air.
I’ve heard the same stuff that Weiner has about the film. Everyone knows what’s (possibly) going on. But it’s not the Times‘ way to peddle non-attributable rumblings so they run a story that reports on Shyamalan’s past troubles and suggests that perhaps…you know…his troubles may not be over. Because…whatever, his karma or his way of making movies (i.e., insisting on writing his own scripts) hasn’t worked in his favor or his relationships with Hollywood mainstreamers have soured, or because…nope, we can’t say it. The most we can do is tap-dance around it. Which is sufficient because the fumes of a story like this say it all.
Shyamalan “has not been able to undo his reputation in Hollywood as a talented filmmaker who will not play by studio rules,” Weiner writes. “After the success of The Sixth Sense, he criticized Disney executives, dared to compare his talent to Steven Spielberg√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s and Alfred Hitchcock√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s and has steadfastly asserted his reputation as an outsider by refusing to move from Philadelphia to Hollywood.
“His outsider persona continued to work for him, so long as the films The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs continued to make money. But when his films started to falter at the box office — his last movie, Lady in the Water, was drubbed by critics and ignored by moviegoers — the Hollywood establishment√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s support began to wane.
“That failure has put considerable pressure on his new film, The Happening, an R-rated horror movie for Fox that opens on June 13. Another failure would harm the Shyamalan name and make it difficult for him to keep full control over his films.”

From Fox News Adam Housley, the best (most ferocious, most Irwin Allen-y) Universal Studios fire photo so far.

The fire has apparently wasted much of the Back to the Future, the King Kong ride/exhibit and “thousands of videos and reels in a vault,” says an AP story.
“Roughly 40,000 to 50,000 videos and reels were in the video vault, but these are duplicates stored in a different location, said Ron Meyer, NBC Universal president and chief operating officer. Firefighters managed to recover hundreds of those titles from the vault.
“The blaze broke out on a sound stage in a set featuring New York brownstones facades around 4:30 a.m. at the 400-acre property. The fire was contained to the lot but still burning several hours later.

So which rides have been destroyed by the Universal fire? Has City Walk been affected? Any decent photos posted? No time to process this, having gotten off the ferry and now behind the wheel of a rental on 95 north.

I’m filing this from the middle of the Long Island Sound — sitting on the Cross Sound Ferry, which travels from Orient Point, Long Island, to New London, Connecticut, a few times daily. You can actually get wifi on this thing if you have an air card…amazing.

6.1.08, 9:05 am

Yesterday I attended a celebration of the life and work of the late poet and artist Siv Cedering, my significant other’s mom who passed last November. The event was hosted by sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp, the widowed husband, at the sprawling Twin Oaks Farm and Sculpture Garden in Sagaponack, N.Y.

Front lawn, pond, horse stables at site of yesterday’s event — Saturday, 5.31.08, 6:55 pm

5.31.08, 7:25 pm

5.31.08, 8:05 pm

Ms. Cedering was a poet, novelist, screenwriter, children’s book author, songwriter, illustrator, sculptor, painter, musician, and translator. Born in Sweden, she lived with Van de Bovenkamp at the Twin Oaks Farm and Sculpture Garden for roughly 10 years until her death seven months ago at age 68.

“Asked if Barack Obama would wait to get a concession call from Hillary Clinton before claiming the nomination, Obama campaign adviser Anita Dunn said the onus was on Clinton now that the Democratic Party has firmed up the number of delegates needed to claim the party’s nod.

“‘He’s not going to wait by the phone like a high-school girl waiting for a date,’ said Dunn. ‘That’s not Barack Obama.”
Obama’s campaign is 68 delegates away from clinching the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, according to an ABC News delegate estimate. The campaign “expects to win around 38 delegates in the final three contests of Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana. If he hits that mark, it would leave him 30 superdelegates away from his party’s nod.”
Referring to the final contests of South Dakota and Montana, Dunn said that after Tuesday Clinton “can decide how united she wants this party to be.” — from an ABC News story, filed this evening at 8:57 pm.
The Page‘s Mark Halperin quoted Obama himself saying the following this evening: “Ithink that Senator Clinton and former President Clinton love this country. They love the Democratic Party. I think they deeply believe that Democrats need to win in November. And so I trust that they’re going to do the right thing.”

The five porn scenes excerpted in Daniel Murphy‘s “The Five Most Ridiculous Porn Scenes” (a 5.30 Esquire posting) aren’t funny. All porn is fundamentally dreary and depressing because the people involved on both sides of the camera are (a) obviously not very bright and (b) untalented (to put it mildly). But the idea of the piece — the promise of it — is…well, somewhat funny.

(1) “We’re the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along…the moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable“; (2) “Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia”; (3) “I’ve developed a total loathing for [John] McCain, conceited little asshole. And he thinks he’s wonderful. I mean, you can just tell, this little simper of self-love that he does all the time. You just want to kick him”; (4) “You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?” — from Vidal’s “What I’ve Learned” page in th new Esquire.