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Movie About Bin Laden Hunt and Kill Wins New York Film Critics

Roger Friedman
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Movie About Bin Laden Hunt and Kill Wins New York Film Critics

“Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s film about the hunting down and killing of Osama Bin Laden, was chosen today as Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle. Bigelow won Best Director as well. The rest of the choices by the NYFF are really all over the place. The biggest surprise is Rachel Weisz for Best Actress in a movie no one has really ever seen, called “The Deep Blue Sea.” The more likely choices were either Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook” or Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty.”

As we’ve proved in the past, these critics prizes in each city are grest but have little to do with the Oscars. They’re voted on in committees. Politics play a big part in what goes on. Also the critics groups try to pick the “intellectual” choice where it’s highbrow (Zero Dark Thirty) or amusingly kitsch (Matthew McConaughey in the ridiculous but fun “Magic Mike”).

And really– Best First Film wasn’t “Beasts of the Southern Wild”? Hmmmm….

Here’s Paula Schwartz’s take on the winners:

The New York Film Critics Circle has named Zero Dark Thirty the best film of the year.

But jeez, waiting for the New York Film Critics Circle to announce their awards is an all-day affair. Film geeks tweeted about their anxiety and frustration at the glacial pace at which the New York Film Critics Circle announced their picks. The pre-eminent critics group announced their choices by Tweets and posted on their website, (http://www.nyfcc.com/awards/) one by one, as they chose. But you have to hand it to this group: they know how to build up suspense!

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty.

Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner for Lincoln.

Best Actress: Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea. The group is known for following its own beat. Blue Sea, which was released in March of this year, is directed by Terence Davies and is adapted from Terence Rattigan’s 1952 erotic play of adultery and romantic obsession. Weisz won an Oscar-winner in 2006 for The Constant Gardener (2006) but her performance in Blue Sea has received virtually no awards buzz.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln. Last week at the Gotham Awards Matt Damon said Day-Lews was one of his favorite actors.  The method actor is the Oscar frontrunner this year, and every year, when he’s in a movie (except for 2010 when he starred in Nine.)

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field for Lincoln.

Best Supporting Actor: Matthew McConaughey. For Bernie and Magic Mike. Last week the actor received two Independent Spirit Award nominations for Killer Joe and Magic Mike. The actor is on a roll. Last week Jack Black on the red carpet singled out his “Bernie” co-star for his ensemble work and said of McConaughey, that he “was on fire as he has been this year in four different films, kind of an incredible born to do it kind of performer. Even in rehearsals I was watching him, ‘You are having so much fun doing this’ and that’s the secret, I think, to his magic. He truly loves it. Some people are out there just punching the clock, but he’s really feeling it.”

Best Animated film: Frankenweenie. Tim Burton’s stop motion-animated black-and-white tale about a boy and his beloved dog Sparky. The dark film comes from Disney. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cqI6hPra7c&noredirect=1.

Best Foreign Film: Amour. My favorite film of the year, by 70 year-old Austrian director Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon, Funny Games, Cache), stars octogenarian actors Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist, Z, A Man and a Woman) and Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima Mon Amour) as a longtime happily-married couple now facing the end of their lives.

It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and just yesterday at the European Film Festival in Malta won the big prize, for best feature, and awards for Haneke and the film’s stars. Amour is the frontrunner for best foreign film Oscar and Trintignant and Riva both deserve Oscar nominations.

When the film was shown at the New York Film Festival, the director said of his stars, “I wrote the screenplay for Jean-Louis Trintignant. In fact, I wouldn’t have shot the film without him. Not only is he a superb actor but also he exudes the human warmth that was necessary for the role. It was different with Emmanuelle Riva. I’d seen her as a young man in “Hiroshima My Love,” I was immediately smitten by her, but I’d lost her from sight over the years. So when I came to that part I did a normal casting in Paris, I met with all the actresses of the appropriate age. It was clear from the first audition with Emmanuelle that she was ideal for the part. Not only because she’s a wonderful actress but also because she and Jean-Louis Trintignant from a very credible couple.”

Announced at noon:

Best Cinematographer. Greig Fraser. Zero Dark Thirty. The film, shot in documentary style, is the worthy follow up to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.

Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary): The Central Park Five, Co-directed by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns. The film follows the events of April 1989, which led to the wrongful imprisonment of five teenagers for the infamous Central Park jogger rape. The film provokes equal parts rage and despair, especially since the exonerated, now in their 30’s, have yet to receive any financial compensation from the State of New York for their wrongful imprisonment. Some of them served jail time for more than a decade.

Best First Film: David France’s How to Survive a Plague. In a upset, the film has bested frontrunner Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Last week at Fox Searchlight’s holiday party I spoke to a member of the pre-eminent critics group and he told me he liked Zeitlin’s film but it wasn’t his favorite, so this should have been a tip off.

Best Film Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Screenplay Tony Kushner (Lincoln)

Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)

Best Actress Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea)

Best Foreign Language Film Amour

Best Animated Film Frankenweenie

Best Supporting Actor Matthew McConaughey (Bernie, Magic Mike)

Best Supporting Actress Sally Field (Lincoln)

Best Cinematographer Greg Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty)

Best Non-Fiction Film (Documentary) The Central Park Five

Best First Film David France (How To Survive A Plague)

Elaine Kaufman Remembered: Two Years and No Place to Go

Roger Friedman
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Elaine Kaufman Remembered: Two Years and No Place to Go

Two years ago today my great friend, Elaine Kaufman, the surrogate “mamma” for hundreds of devoted and dedicated fans passed away after two weeks in an induced coma at Lenox Hill Hospital. I wish I could say it was a great way for a great woman to leave us, but I think she knows — up at that big party in the sky– the hole her exit has left in all of our lives.

The Elaine’s crowd continues to wander around New York as if we were in the desert. Some have gone to Neary’s at 57th and First Avenue, but basically we are a doomed tribe. The magic of Elaine’s was Elaine, who we knew with 99% certainty was at her table and waiting for us anytime between 9pm and 2am. She greeted some warmly and others gruffly, but she was there, and a plate of spaghetti or a properly mixed martini was always waiting.

They say it’s the “city that never sleeps” but really only Elaine’s never went to bed. Especially in post-recession New York under Mayor “Mr. Suburbs” Bloomberg, the energy of the late night city has been dissipitated beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Say what you will about Ed Koch, but it was under his first administration that New York produced most of the culture is thrives on today.

Everyone asks me what happened to the restaurant after Elaine passed. She had only distant relatives, so her estate was left to a manager who did not have the temperament to run an eatery for an unruly crowd. She sold the place and the buildings around it within six months of Elaine’s death. Elaine always thought the place would continue after her, her name being the lure. But everything is demolished now. The interior artifacts were sold off at auction.

What do we have left of Elaine? Plenty. The more recent crowd started the Table 4 Foundation in her memory, raising money for young writers. The crowd that goes way back (and for me, that’s only until the early 80s–the restaurant opened in 1963) has memories and photos and great relationships that were born under Elaine’s watchful eye.

She didn’t have kids but she was a nuturer. We thrived because of her. A big smile would spread across her cherubic face every time a great romance or successful business deal sparked because it “started here.” People were married there, or left together, agents were found for writers, scoops were discovered by journalists. The buzz was always contagious. The tone was set by Elaine.

Tonight the faithful will meet at Neary’s and it will be a long night toasting our displacement. But the real toasts will be to Elaine herself, who left her indelible mark on all of us.

Barbra Streisand Made a Road Trip Movie without Leaving Home

Roger Friedman
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Barbra Streisand Made a Road Trip Movie without Leaving Home

Barbra Streisand made a road trip movie without leaving home. She told the audience at the screening of her new film, “The Guilt Trip,” that one provision of starring in the new comedy was that it had to be shot near her Malibu home. And so it was: “Guilt Trip” tells the story of Joyce and her son (Seth Rogen) driving cross country from New Jersey to San Francisco. But the whole thing was made within 45 minutes of Malibu.

Streisand pretty much got her way for starrirng in her first full length feature since 1996’s “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” She called the new movie, “a long movie” as opposed to her work in “Meet the Fockers” and “Little Fockers,” which required only a few days worth of work each.

The Q&A — held at AMC Century City–was maybe the most revealing Streisand has been a number of mundance subjects in years. We learned that she watches every movie that comes out, in theaters. She’d seen “The Avengers” and “Captain America.” She thought she didn’t know who Jason Statham was, but she did. She was able to describe him down to his beard stubble. She also said that Seth Rogen, the actor, was nothing like her real life son, Jason Gould.

Why did she see so many movies? “I’m in the movie business,” she explained.

Streisand also addressed her habit of collecting all kinds of things, especially antiques, claiming those days were over.

The famed singer-actress-director also conceded that she doesn’t drive if she doesn’t have to. “Sometimes I drive, then I go errrr,” she said, showing a steering wheel out of control, “and my husband says that’s. I say, here, you drive!”

Streisand and Rogen seem to really have enjoyed each other. But only Rogen will be coming to New York to do publicity next week. Streisand, who just finished a mini tour with her three hour concert, is staying put. “I said I couldn’t go to New York, so they brought New York to me,” she said. The Q&A, moderated by Time magazine writer Joel Stein, was simulcast on the internet to screening audiences around the country.

Oscar Buzz: What the Voters, Not the Prognosticators, Are Saying

Roger Friedman
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I’ve spent the weekend amidst Oscar voters. They are everywhere, and they know everything. Forget the prognosticators who rate each movie’s chances based on critics’ perceptions. It’s all baloney. That’s how two years ago “The Social Network” seemed like the winner, when the ground game was being played by “The King’s Speech.” All the seers were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Between the Paramount Christmas party on Friday night, the Governor’s Ball last night, and a private pizza and screening party tonight for a non Oscar movie, “Killing them Softly,” I’ve heard everyone express an opinion.

Based on chatter alone, Daniel Day-Lewis has won Best Actor as “Lincoln.” There are those who think Hugh Jackman has a shot, and not enough people have seen “Les Miz” yet. But DDL is a passionate favorite.

So is Jennifer Lawrence, from “Silver Linings Playbook.” And “SLP” also has a strong grassroots following. People love it. They mention it the way they talked about “Argo” six weeks ago. And “Silver Linings” is still rolling out. One famous director of smart comedies told me at Paramount: “Silver Linings” will win Best Picture.

We’ll see. “Les Miserables” is a potential powerhouse. Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Eddie Redmayne are huge hits with screening audiences. So is Tom Hooper, and so is Samantha Barks. But Barks only has one song and not much to do, so she may be relegated to “beloved part of movie.”

“Skyfall” comes up in every conversation. Some people have said Judi Dench could be nominated in her swan song as M. I thought she’d have her shot from “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” Since Dame Dench runs no campaign and has no publicist on the case, anything could happen. I think she should be in Best Actress, along with Lawrence, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, and Emmanuelle Riva.

Back to “Skyfall”: I’d list it at number 10 for the Oscars, the big commercial movie of the year. Let’s say we accept that the top 5 are Argo, Silver Linings, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, and Les Miz. The next 4 could be: Flight, The Master, Best Exotic, Skyfall. And then you have a last spot that could be filled by The Hobbit, Django Unchained, Rust & Bone, or Beasts of the Southern Wild.

These are the titles voters mention when they’re asking, What have you seen? and What did you like?

I have my own supporting favorites this year: Jennifer Ehle in “Zero Dark Thirty.” Scoot McNairy in “Killing them Softly.” Nicole Kidman in “The Paperboy.” Amy Adams in “The Master.” I’m sorry but Robert DeNiro is exceptional in “Silver Linings.”

The Oscars are a ground game. The critics choices will start Monday with the New York Film Critics Circle. And they’re all great, but they won’t mean much in terms of Academy voters. Keep your

Senator Al Franken Surprise Presenter at Honorary Oscar Dinner

Roger Friedman
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Senator Al Franken Surprise Presenter at Honorary Oscar Dinner

Senator Al Franken was the big surprise presenter last night at the Governor’s Ball for the honorary Oscars. Franken flew in from Washington to present famed documentary filmmaker DA Pennebaker with his lifetime achievement award. Pennebaker produced a film about Franken’s run for the US Senate, called “And God Spoke,” which was directed by Pennebaker’s filmmaker wife Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob.

Franken skipped the red carpet and did no press so that Pennebaker wouldn’t know he’d come in. He introduced a montage of clips from the 60 year Pennebaker career including The War Room, Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop, Kings of Pastry, Crisis, Primary, Town Hall, Only the Strong Survive, and Company.

It was Michael Moore who did the actual presenting to Pennebaker. Moore fought for Pennebaker for two years, I’m told, as a governor of the Academy. Moore and his wife Kathleen were prominent at the Pennebaker table, and Moore delivered a beautiful speech delineating how Pennebaker came to influence not just documentaries but all of film with his creation of cinema verite– along with pals Al Maysles, Richard Leacock, and Bob Drew.

Pennebaker, who’s 87 and very active still making movies with Hegedus, told a lot of great stories about Bob Dylan especially and how they invented what has now become the famous “throwing cards’ scene that accompanies “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in Don’t Look Back. He also explained one of his many inventions–the handheld camera that could be hoisted on a camera man’s shoulder so Pennebaker could be a fly on the wall in the Kennedy White House during the Cuban missile crisis.

Moore, by the way, has not stopped making films himself. But after an exhausting run with Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 911, and Sicko, he’s taking a well deserved break. He will be back. And we need him more than ever!

Helen Mirren, Colin Firth Will Join “Exotic Marigold” Sequel

Roger Friedman
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Helen Mirren, Colin Firth Will Join “Exotic Marigold” Sequel

Exclusive: The most popular home run of a film this year before Oscar season got into full swing? John Madden’s “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” The film is certainly a contender for Best Picture in Oscar world, one that could easily be in the top ten. It made a fortune here and abroad with stars Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Dev Patel, and Bill Nighy leading an enchanting cast.

Now I’m told that a sequel is in the works. My sources say that both Helen Mirren and Colin Firth are likely additions to the cast. Also, they say that director John Madden and writer Ol Parker are looking for an American actress possibly to round out the cast. My vote is  for Jane Fonda, but no one asked me. The search is on!

What I do know is that the “Best Marigold” sequel will continue the adventures of Dench et al in India. There was discussion of taking the group somewhere else. But in the end it was decided they would stay in India afrer all. The magic of the movie, of course, was the characters more than the location. But don’t be surprised if, after the sequel, “Best Marigold” becomes a TV series. It’s a natural if done right by BBC for PBS. I’m just sayin’…

Sidney Poitier, 85, Hollywood Legend, Publishing His First Novel

Roger Friedman
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Sidney Poitier, 85, Hollywood Legend, Publishing His First Novel

Sidney Poitier, real movie star, the legend, the Oscar winner, the author already, of two memoirs, is publishing his first novel next May. It’s called “Montaro Caine,” he and wife Joanna told me last night at the honorary Oscar gala at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Sidney Poitier is 85 years old, my friends. That should give us all hope.

Poitier was the biggest star in a room that was like the entire galaxy last night. When he went on stage to present an honorary Oscar to George Stevens, Jr.–who runs the Kennedy Center honors, has directed and acted in many important films and comes from a dynastic Hollywood family–it was Poitier who got a standing ovation.

So what’s “Montaro Caine” about? “It’s sci-fi,” Poitier told me. “Sort of like Indiana Jones, but better!”

And the name Montaro Caine? The spelling of the last name should tell us everything–Poitier’s bff is Michael Caine, a bit of a swashbuckler in his time.

Poitier was one of several speakers who made last night so memorable. Each person who spoke — from honorees Stevens, Pennebaker, Katzenberg, Needham–gave a history lesson about Hollywood.

So did their witnesses– like “Godfather” producer Al Ruddy who told a story about producing a film directed by Needham which entailed accidentally shooting a missile across the old MGM lot and getting them into a lot of trouble.

And through the whole evening, the audience was rapt. Not a sound from this gathering of heavyhitters, no talking in the back. Everyone listened to everything that was said. Every event should be like this. Quite an experience. And believe me they hung on Poitier’s every word as recalled working with both George Stevens Sr. and Jr.

Spielberg, Lucas, Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty, Bradley Cooper All At One Amazing Dinner

Roger Friedman
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Spielberg, Lucas, Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty, Bradley Cooper All At One Amazing Dinner

The list of superstars and their promixity to each other was only part of what Saturday night’s Lifetime Achievement dinner for the Motion Picture Academy so special this year. It was also the vibe in the room. Without cameras and with little press, Hollywood’s superstars gathered for a festive and poignant dinner to celebrate this year’s Oscar Lifetime Achievement honorees–Jeffrey Katzenberg, D A Pennebaker, George Stevens Jr. and Hal Needham.

The honorees and their guests sat at four long tables perpendicular to the stage in the Dolby ballroom in the Hollywood and Highland center. So imagine if you will that the  Katzenberg table had Kirk and Ann Douglas, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Melody Hobson, Stacey Snider, and Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. And, oh yes, Will Smith.

Parallel to that group the Pennebaker throng, with mostly family and Michael Moore with Kathlyn Glynn, his lovely wife, and yours truly. On other side of us was George Stevens’s group, with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Elisabeth Shue and Davis Guggenheim, Quincy Jones, Tom and Meredith Brokaw, Mike Medavoy, and Sidney Poitier with wife Joanna. Just to name a few.

Hal Needham’s table featured famed “Godfather” producer Al Ruddy, his wife Wanda who’s the overseer of Armani everywhere.

And then, just mixed into the crowd were casts and directors from all the big hit movies of the moment, from “Les Miz” director Tom Hooper, battling a cold, to “Silver Linings Playbook” director David O. Russell and star Bradley Cooper. There was everyone from Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal. John Krasinski was there from “Promised Land” and Quentin Tarantino came to toast Hal Needham right after the first screening of “Django Unchained.”

Wait: Richard Gere was in the mix, as was Stefanie Powers, just back from England. And there was a table for all the people from “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” I ran into John Hawkes, a likely Best Actor nominee for “The Sessions.”

I know I saw “Flight” director Bob Zemeckis. And of course, Hawk Koch, new president of the academy, along with Dawn Hudson, who’s running the Oscars so brilliantly now. And new Oscar producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron were there with Seth McFarlane, next February’s host.

It’s always the most fun watching people mix and match. Warren Beatty nearly bowed to the ground when he met David O. Russell, who told him: “I’ve always wanted to meet you. I’ve taken a page or two from your book.” Spielberg and Lucas had the hottest aisle, and Spielberg went into deep confab with Pennebaker.

George Lucas did tell me that there is no director chosen for the new “Star Wars” films but that “they’re in the hands of Kathy Kennedy now.” Lucas really is concentrating on making small personal pictures now, like “American Graffiti.” He joked: “I’ll have to charge $3,000 a ticket.” No joke: if the Rolling Stones command such high prices, maybe small Lucas films will, too. But he was kidding of course.

More shortly on the dinner speeches, and what everyone said.

Big exclusive news from the night: “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” will have a sequel, set in India, with two new cast members said to be joining–Helen Mirren and Colin Firth. The producers are looking for one more addition, woman, probably American. Stay tuned…

 

 

 

James Badge Dale Will Play Lee Harvey Oswald’s Brother

Roger Friedman
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James Badge Dale Will Play Lee Harvey Oswald’s Brother

James Badge Dale is going to play Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother in a new film called “Parkland.” It’s set between the time JFK was killed by Oswald and Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby in November 1963. Dale, the son of the late great star of “Nine” Anita Morris and choreographer Grover Dale, is hot as a pistol right now in “Flight” after starring in AMC’s “Rubicon.” Our PAULA SCHWARTZ caught  up with in New York:

James Badge Dale has seven minutes screen time tops in Robert Zemeckis’s “Flight.” He plays a dying cancer patient who bums a cigarette from Denzel Washington in a hospital stairwell and riffs on life, death, God, regrets. He’s spritzing words as fast as they materialize in his dying brain because he’s got maybe 24 to 48 hours of life left. The actor is so phenomenal that like me you were probably wondering, who is this guy? Turns out he’s been around a while, with parts in “Shame,” “The Grey” and the tv series “Rubicon,” but his role in “Flight” is something else, a game changer.

Dale was at a luncheon in honor of Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins at Circo restaurant in midtown. (They have a lot to celebrate; “Flight” is a big hit at the box office and has lots of Oscar talk.)

The handsome actor, who has red hair and a healthy build, is unrecognizable from the gaunt, sickly guy in the film. But looking healthy nearly cost him the part.

“I had to beg them to let me read that role,” said the 34-year-old actor. They also wanted someone younger. “They were going for early 20’s, and I understood that but I just fell in love with the role from the moment I read it.” He was persistent enough that they let him read the script and told him he could come back to read. Then they changed their mind.

“The morning of the reading we had this huge argument back and forth,” he said. “Just give me one take as the cancer patient,” he pleaded. After the reading, casting director Victoria Burrows told him, “Okay, now I get why you wanted to read that. Now I have to show this to Bob.”

Dale said he and Zemeckis talked for a long time. “I told Bob why I wanted to do this, that I have some very personal connections there and some reasons that I felt like I could understand what this is to the story.” The director gave him the part but told him to lose weight, “because you’re too healthy.” The already slender actor lost 20 pounds in six weeks.

I asked Dale about the personal connection he drew on for the role, and he told me that his mother died of cancer when he was 15 and that three to four days before her death, “there were moments when she became incredibly lucid and incredibly present even despite all the drugs and morphine and a lot of that was drawn from things that I witnessed.”

Dale’s mother was Anita Morris, the beautiful Tony-nominated actress who played Carla in the original production of “Nine,” and who died tragically at age 50 in 1994. (His father is dancer/actor Grover Dale.)

The actor is now on a roll with three big-budget action films coming out next summer. He plays “the dirty, older brother” of “The Lone Ranger” (Armie Hammer) in the Johnny Depp film. He’s also in Marc Forster’s “World War Z,” starring Brad Pitt, as a zombie ranger during a pandemic. Then there’s “Iron Man 3,” where he plays villain Eric Savin, who in the Marvel comic was a soldier who got fatally injured and then was resurrected.

“Ben Kingsley is the mouthpiece. Guy Pearce is the brain. I’m the muscle,” he said. Being in 200 million movies with CGI “is a weird departure” for him. “I’m more of a ‘put two guys in a room and we’ll just talk to each other’ style of actor. But I had a lot of fun. I learned to ride a horse. I got to beat up grown men in robot suits and shoot zombies with Brad Pitt.”

Barbra Streisand and Lainie Kazan In the Same Room at the Same Time

Roger Friedman
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Barbra Streisand and Lainie Kazan In the Same Room at the Same Time

It was a Hollywood party at a Beverly Hills four star eatery, but it was a New York night in so many ways. Paramount Pictures tossed itself a little Christmas party for its various films and stars at Wolfgang Puck’s spectacularly renovated Spago. Famed pastry chef Sherry Yard put out chocolate chip cookies and her other mouth watering desserts that smelled like sin. There were also piles of sushi, smoked salmon pizza, and teeny tiny cheeseburgers that melted in your mouth.

Who was there? Well, Barbra Streisand and her manager of 50 years, Marty Erlichmann, commandeered the middle booth on the left wall of the main room and that was it. She did get up and take a brief stroll through the place, but it ended with her exit. She missed fellow New Yorker and great singer from the same era Lainie Kazan, who arrived with Connie Stevens, Connie’s actress daughter Joely Fisher, and Sally Kellerman. “It’s possible,” someone said to Lainie, “it would be too much to have you and Barbra Streisand in the same room at the same time.”

Indeed.

Streisand is about to open in Paramount’s comedy “Guilt Trip” with Seth Rogen. But there were plenty of other Paramount players in the room to console those who missed the legend. David Chase came with James Gandolfini, the pair formerly of “The Sopranos” and with the cool music film “Not Fade Away.” “Did you see David and Jim?” asked Brad Grey, head of Paramount and one of the great studio chiefs of this generation. “It’s like old times.” Grey produced “The Sopranos” for HBO.

The much buzzed about for Oscar “Flight” was represented by Denzel Washington, who arrived on the late side, and Melissa Leo. Director Robert Zemeckis came with beautiful wife Leslie, a documentary filmmaker. Famed actor Robert Forster turned up, and gave everyone in the group a Christmas present– a sterling silver letter opener that works like magic. It’s become one of Hollywood’s mythic gifts. Forster hands them out on special occassions. I asked him, Do you have a closet stacked high with these?

“I have cartons,” he said, refusing still to say where he gets them. Forster is on his way to New York to film a new indie movie with Michael Parks and Dan Hedaya.

There were plenty of Academy voters and just good Hollywood friends, from Colleen Camp and Candy Clark to director Charles Shyer, songwriter extraordinaire Diane Warren hanging with super agent Risa Shapiro, , publicist Nancy Ryder, and her talented actor client James Badge Dale. (We have a story running about him on Monday on this site.)

Still the best thing I saw all night was Sacha Baron Cohen, there for “The Dictator,” meeting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. All they want is a picture with a star. I was happy to see them since many were rumored deceased a long time ago.

“Some of them are,” joked one actor who winced as each one approached with a camera in hand.

Cohen shook each hand and listened attentively to their accents. He even spoke a little Egyptian to one member who didn’t care–he just wanted that photo.

This is Hollywood, kids.

Connie Steven is 74! She just directed her first movie, and it’s opening in New York and Los Angeles in the next couple of weeks. Joely Fisher is very funny. She and Carrie Fisher, half sisters, have very good senses of humor.

“We had good mothers,” Joely said. Their father was Eddie Fisher, who was featured in the Lindsay Lohan TV movie “Liz and Dick” this week.

“Did any of you see it?” I asked. There was a mixed response of yes, no, a little, and someone who said, “What happened to Lindsay Lohan’s face?”

Someone else said, “I liked it,” and there was a lot of guffawing.

PS Everyone is discussing going to screenings or watching their DVDs. It’s Hollywood’s annual homework assignment. Many mentioned Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln, and Sally Field. One well known successful director told me how much he loved David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” I don’t think it’s fair to give his name. He said, “It’s a great movie. It will win the Oscar.” Wow.

Stay tuned: tomorrow night is the Governor’s Ball for the Lifetime Achievement Awards at the Oscars. Jeffrey Katzenberg, DA Pennebaker, George Stevens Jr, and Hal Needham are being honored. Everyone in town is going. It’s a hot ticket in Hollywood. Sherry Yard is making the desserts. Game on.

 

 

 

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