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Film and the Arts
Comedy Central Finds Election Night A Perfect Party Time
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Features
- Published on Thursday, 08 November 2012 13:15
- Written by Paula Schwartz and Brad Balfour
There's no better way to assuage election night jitters than to drown oneself in drink and stuff faces with food. Especially with such an important race as President Barack Obama vs former Governor Mitt Romney.
So on Tuesday night at the Edison Ballroom in Times Square, Comedy Central held its Indecision 2012 election night party with a large partisan Democratic crowd including such personalities as Olivia Wilde and Adrian Grenier.
The gargantuan space had television monitors hanging from every corner turned to all the stations, including ABC, CBS, CNN, Bloomberg TV and PBS. The television set airing FOX news coverage seemed to be hidden behind a pillar -- not inappropriate though much to their chagrin they were early in calling the election for Obama.
The party crowd drank red-white-and blue hued drinks and munched on sliders, mac & cheese, risotto and dumplings -- such obviously American food. And the décor was a riot of patriotic colors and decorations. Lots of presidential Bobble-Heads, donkey and elephant images.
Upon entering guests were given scratch-off tickets by attractive women in blue wigs and sexy, red halter gowns. Truely patriotic. The loot you could win -- and almost every ticket was a winner -- could be redeemed for Comedy Central t-shirts, glasses and other branded stuff, which made for a nice touch and keepsake memories of Election Night.
Best of all were the Mitt and Barack bobble heads -- but you had to move quick. The Prez’s head went fast, though the Mitt head may be the more collectible -- loser memorabilia usually is.
Attendees enjoyed a patriotic photo booth and a half-elephant, half-donkey cake weighing about 300 lbs. Plush couches in the seating areas had pillows picturing copulating elephants and donkeys, that is donkeys humping elephants and vice versa -- what else. The x-rated pillows were a hot item and guests made off with them even as you leaned against them to watch the news coverage. Meanwhile, the DJ worked a mix of songs from the late 1990s throwing in an occasional song by Adele.
Celebrity guests that were spotted mixing with everyone included 30 Rock-ers John Lutz and Scott Adsit, actors Grenier in an Obama t-shirt and Wilde with her activist attorney sister Chloe Cockburn.
Wilde carried on the patriotic color scheme in her fuzzy hat and blue-and-white starred hand knit sweater. Someone asked if she bought the sweater for tonight’s event. “No, I knitted it when I was a child,” she cracked with a smile.
And in between posing for photographs Wilde kept up a steady stream of tweets.
At 10:59 she tweeted, “AMERICA! You have spoken! Women! You have been heard! Young people! You proved them wrong! Tireless Obama volunteers! I THANK YOU!”
At 11 p.m. the television sets were turned to the Daily Show’s special coverage of Jon Stewart’s “Election Night 2012: This Ends Now,” followed by Stephen Colbert’s “The Re-Presidenting of America: Who Will Replace Obama?” Stewart announced the election results and Obama’s win mid-way through his show and soon waiters passed around the champagne.
At 12:30 am, after the broadcasts, Wilde tweeted, “Real talk: this country is amazing. We take for granted a peaceful transfer of power. No tanks in the streets (unless Trump is driving).”
The party was a blast but had a strange hallucinatory vibe; the mainstream news reporting with their team of “experts” and statisticians converged closer than ever that night to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show coverage and news reporting by their “best F#@ing News Team Ever” of funny faux pundits.
It was all a massive celebration and a little after 1 a.m. the well-lubricated happy election party guests left happily with their t-shirts, Obama bobble heads and fornicating pillows.
Kati Marton´s Paris Love Story
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Features
- Published on Tuesday, 28 August 2012 20:06
- Written by Laura Blum
Paris: A Love Story is a contest between a city and a state (of mind) over which one will become the main subject. Kati Marton’s new book doubles as a valentine to the French capital and a réquiem for 
heartbreak and loss.
The author and newswoman first lived in Paris as a student during the turbulent 60s. She would subsequently return during marriages to the late anchorman Peter Jennings and diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
It was her grief over Holbrooke’s death in 2010 that moved her to write this memoir, as a catharsis. Anyone who has lost so much as a cat will recognize the slow-motion of mourning and rewind of surrender as her memories flicker and glow.
By no means are these all home movies. Some of the most poignant passages replay Marton’s career as a foreign correspondent for ABC News. Though her rocky relationship with Jennings culminated in divorce in 1994, it also scaled ecstatic highs. For all of his insecurities – and attempts to clip her wings – per Marton, her ABC boss and father of her two children also joined her in romantic quests for headline news.
The daughter of two Hungarian reporters has journalism in her blood. 
Born in Budapest in 1949, she and her family fled to America following the 1956 uprising. Marton recalls the childhood trauma of returning home to find her parents gone; she later learned that they were jailed on false charges of espionage.
Later still, she would discover that her parents were Holocaust survivors. Having been raised Roman Catholic, Marton was stunned to discover her own Jewish roots. Several of her books reflect a deep curiosity about her heritage, including Enemies of the People, about Marton's parents, and The Great Escape, about nine Hungarian Jews who escaped Hitler to become influential world figures.
At 63, she still cops to having a “Hungarian temper,” which calm, sturdy Holbrooke apparently knew how to handle. The then Ambassador to Germany plied his diplomatic skills from their earliest courtship. Swanning into Paris at Christmastime of 1993 as she was leaving Jennings, he swanned out -- with her -- to Chartres and the Loire Valley castles. Five days and many history chats later, the two were clutching hands. She writes of their developing bond, "He said that he had waited a long time for me, and I was for him, and that was that."
Over 17 years of marriage, they would gallivant across continents, nestle in Paris and entertain world luminaries in New York, where Holbrooke was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. As a special envoy for Bill Clinton, he even brought Marton to the Dayton talks concluding the Bosnian War -- and seated her at dinner between antagonists Milosevic and Alija Izetbegovic.
Time and physical separation would take a toll on the perfect couple. Kati admitted to having a brief 
affair while researching The Great Escape in Hungary. Ever cool in crisis, Holbrooke stayed the course and they forged a new bond. When not in the same airspace, the two would regularly reconnoitre by phone, including during his stint as U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It was one of these long-distance calls that would thrust her into the saddest chapter of her Parisian love story. The seemingly invincible Holbrooke reached Marton from an ambulance hurtling toward a hospital in Washington, D.C., where he had just collapsed. “I feel a pain I have never felt,” he told her in fear. “I am on my way!” she assured him. “Those were my last words to Richard.”
The book opens with a near blow-by-blow account of this calamity and the events leading up to it. While few readers will have garnered sympathy from the likes of Hillary Clinton or Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Marton relays their caring in a way that invites all to share in the shock.
Whether writing Paris helped its bereaved author to heal is unclear. What's certain is her message: "We'll always have Paris."
Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Re-Opens with New Partner
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Features
- Published on Friday, 10 August 2012 15:58
- Written by Renzo Adler
In July The Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art (MoCCA) shut down their SoHo location at 594 Broadway that they had occupied since 2001, leaving people to speculate what would be the future for the prestigious organization and the MoCCA Fest.
It has been recently been announced by Society of Illustrators Executive Director Anelle Miller that MoCCA’s assets have been transferred to the Society of Illustrators and that MoCCA will now share a space with the Society at 128 E. 63 Street. MoCCA will continue the programming it is known for, including master classes MoCCA Thursday Events and MoCCA Fest.
The Society will curate a special exhibition of works from MoCCA’s permanent collection in their Hall of Fame Gallery (on display March 5 - May 4, 2013), which will run in conjunction with a major exhibit, The Comic Art of Harvey Kurtzman.
The Society of Illustrators was formed in 1901 and has honored illustrators such as
Will Eisner
Milton Caniff
Al Capp
Mort Walker
Winsor McCay
Rube Goldberg
Al Jaffee
MoCCA President Ellen Abramowitz stated, “The Society of Illustrators is the perfect fit for MoCCA and its members. MoCCA’s fundamental principles will continue to be guided by the steady hand of the Society and its terrific staff. The two organizations are a wonderful match, where attendees, members, and fans will have it all under one roof in New York City. To be welcomed into the home of celebrated artists and publishers by a first-rate organization will serve to ensure that the foundation upon which MoCCA was built will continue to have a bright future.”
Here’s hoping that MoCCA can continue to be one of the foremost organizations exhibiting and fostering the work of animators and comic artists with their new partner.
To learn more, go to http://www.societyillustrators.org/
The Society of Illustrators
128 E. 63 Street
New York, NY 10065
"Hatufim" and the Journey to "Homeland"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Features
- Published on Thursday, 09 August 2012 15:18
- Written by Laura Blum
Not since Steve McQueen rode his motorcycle out of Stalag Luft III in the 1963 wartime epic The Great Escape has the fate of POWs so intoxicated the senses.
Now that Hulu is streaming the hit Israeli TV drama Hatufim -- about soldiers who return to their native Israel after being held hostage in Lebanon and Syria for 17 years -- American viewers are discovering the addictive properties of the series on which Showtime's Golden Globes winner Homeland is drawn.
