Styles & Scenes

Leo gets Stoned, Kirsten and Orlando get Frenched

Maybe you can’t judge a book by its cover.

But you can judge a film by its premiere party star power.

Tuesday’s night party in New York for Martin Scorcese’s  “The Departed” drew a Hollywood icon (Lauren Bacall), a music legend (Billy Joel) and  two Rolling Stones (Mick and Ronnie).  Listen for some classic Stones tunes in Scorcese's return to his "Mean Streets" beginnings. Along with the cast, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson, this party was a pretty big bill to top.

But writer/director Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” party – sponsored by Chanel - at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood came in a close second.

The reigning queens of the night were definitely Sofia - in a Chanel Spring '07 pleated chiffon dress - and her movie muse, Kirsten Dunst, in a Christian LaCroix halter gown.

Penelope Cruz came glued to her “Volver” director Pedro Almodovar. Geoffrey Rush caught up with Angelica Huston, who later chilled on the patio with her husband and Jason Schwartzman. Will Ferrell was there and so was Courtney Love, who is starting to do a Thanksgiving Day Parade float imitation again (shock!).

I think I saw Samantha Mathis (where the heck has she been anyway?) in the crowd. Mike White and Robin Tunney seemed to be in good spirits.

One of the first to arrive was Maria Bello, followed by LA’s ultimate cool trio Donovan Leitch, Kristy Hume and Ione Sky and famed fashion photog Ellen Von Unwerth.

Also in the party: Mischa Barton, Drew Barrymore, Milla Jovovich, The Strokes, and Bow Wow Wow.

Dunst kept close to her patio table for most of the night, closely guarded by her PPP (Protective Personal Publicist) Steven Huvane.

No sign of a hot date for the "Marie" star. But guess who arrived late and snunk in under the radar? Her rumored on-again/off-again beau, Orlando Bloom.

Perhaps now that Bloom’s ex-girlfriend Kate Bosworth has dieted down to bare bones, his eyes are back on the slightly meatier Dunst, who at least has a BMI that might permit her to model in Madrid.

Much like  “Marie Antoinette,” the most impressive aspects of the party were not the actors but the astonishing set, costumes and props.

The Chateau was transformed into a tiny Versailles with a ballroom, crystal chandeliers, Louis XIV chairs, period rugs, huge gilded mirrors and  bouquets of pink roses/ gardenias.

Perrier Jouet was flowing and a decadent dessert banquet was piled with white chocolate boxes containing tiny berries, pastel-colored French macaroons, meringue, tarts, pink and lavender cupcakes and petite cotton candy.

The only thing missing was a few white powdered wigs, which, come it think of it, would have looked better on Bloom than that wierd flat hat.

This isn’t the first time the Chateau – which was actually inspired by a Loire Valley chateau -  has been cleared out and transformed.

“I remember we cleared the lobby out for our very first party,” recalled Marmont’s owner Andre Balazs. "It was for Sofia's 17th birthday party."

How tres, tres appropriate.

By the way, the mystery of where those pink Converse shoes came from has been solved.

Seems Io Bottoms, who plays a lady-in-waiting in "Marie," bought the pink Chucky's in Paris for Kirsten to wear during rehearsals and down time on the set.

"They cost about 80 Euros," she explained, "They were a gift for Kirsten."

Then Sofia's bro, Roman Coppola, slid the funky modern shoes into that shot of Marie Antoinette's fancy French period footwear.

So now you know.

Photo Credits: Mick, Leo and Ron get satisfaction at the New York premiere of "The Departed."
Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.

Photo Credits: Long live the Queens! Kirsten and Sofia party hearty at the Chateau Marmont.
Eric Charbonneau/WireImage
Photo Credits: Penelope Cruz, a buzzed about Oscar possibility, makes the scene at the Marie Antoinette party at the Chateau.
Eric Charbonneau/WireImage
Photo Credits: Better than her 17th birthday party? You betcha. Sofia's table awaits her at the Marie post party.
Eric Charbonneau/WireImage

Annette wins Best Speech at Women In Hollywood Awards

Attention, Golden Globe and Oscar voters. Want to have a great awards show? Give one to Annette Bening.

But a word of caution.  Leave room in the broadcast.The speech might run a little long.

The three-time Oscar nominee (“Being Julia,” “American Beauty,” “The Grifters”) wrote and delivered the most amusing and self-deprecating acceptance speech at the recent Premiere magazine “Women in Hollywood” Icon awards.

Hers was hands down the highlight of a long night that also honored Icons Sofia Coppola, Cate Blanchett, and Sally Field as well as Evan Rachel Wood with the Chanel Spotlight Award for Emerging Talent.

A past Icon, Gwyneth Paltrow, who appears with Bening in “Running with Scissors” (“I’m completely jet-lagged and a breast feeding mess”), introduced her idol by gushing about being in awe of Bening, adding “I have never worked with an actor who has as much force as she does.”

Bening then demonstrated her admirable force.

“When I heard that Nora Ephron had written a speech for a past recipient, I felt so jealous because I knew it was probably very witty and funny,” said Bening. “Then I thought, That’s okay. I can write the speech myself because I know Nora and I've read her new book, “I Feel Bad about My Neck,” which is so inspired, funny and poignant.”

In “Neck,” Epron mentions ""The Golden Notebook.” So Bening read Doris Lessing's book that divides the author's life into notebooks; one a diary, another about writing, another fictionalizes her life and one on her politics.

“The last notebook integrates all aspects of her life and I thought, ‘Self-integration. That’s a good thing to talk about.’ Then I thought, ‘But I don’t really understand it.’ And then I thought, ‘But that doesn’t matter because I’m a celebrity!”

The room sputtered and roared as Bening went on about a a recently conducted study on narcissism and celebrities that she’d read about in the LA Times.

’The headline of the article was Celebrities: Legends in their Own Minds.” Bening recalled. “And I thought, ‘Well, that’s appropriate. So it’s okay if I talk about integration of self, even if I don’t understand it, because I’m a celebrity and am a legend in my own mind.”

“The article went on to ask if the industry creates the narcissism or if we come in narcissistic to begin with,” Bening said, pausing for “Rest assure, we bring it with us!”

The study also addressed the issue of men being more narcissistic then women. “As you can imagine, in my household,that's a very touchy subject," Bening admitted. "So Warren and I decided to sit down and discuss it. In front of a mirror, of course. And well, all I can say is that it got very ugly.”

Best runner-up speech? Angelica Huston, who introduced her friend Sofia Coppola:

“Sofia and I share so many things in common.We have Oscar winners in three generations of our families, we're fans of rock and roll, fascinated with Japanese culture and tend to wear black clothing. We both had grandfathers who sang opera, and adventurous groundbreaking fathers who gave us starring roles in their films which were met with a volley of hurtful criticism at a vulnerable time in our lives when we had not yet grown into our noses.”

Photo Credits: Bening brings down the house at the Women in Hollywood Icon awards at the Beverly Hills Hotel
Jeff Vespa/WireImage
Photo Credits: Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the most narcissistic of them all in the Bening/Beatty household?
Gred Deguire/WireImage
Photo Credits: Evan Rachel Wood, Annette Bening, Sally Field, Sofia Coppola and Cate Blanchett do a group shot at the Premiere WIH Icon Awards.
Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Forget the cake. Let them wear pink sneakers!

Everyone’s been buzzing about the jaw-droppingly gorgeous  gowns in "Marie Antoinette" designed by Oscar-winning costume designer Milena Canonero (“Chariots of Fire, “Barry Lyndon”). And with good reason.

But for weeks, I’ve been trying to find out more about the pink Converse tennis shoes seen for a split second in a shot of a batch of French period shoes lined up in Marie A’s closet.

I kept my eyes peeled at an early screening and sure enough, there was a pair of pink Converse sneakers hiding among Manolo Blahnick’s  stylized reproductions of 18th century French footwear. Then I saw a photo in W magzine of Kirsten Dunst wearing pink Converse sneaks under her "Marie" costume on the set.

But repeated calls (I was officially pestering) to a publicist kept drawing a big fat blank.  “I've asked but the studio keeps saying the shoes aren’t in there,” my source kept insisting.

But they are there. Or they were there. At a Q&A earlier this week, someone asked director Sofia Coppola about the pink tennis shoes and she explained that it was her brother Roman, her second AD on the film, who put them in the shot.

So why won’t anyone at the studio talk about it? Will the tennis shoes be cut out? No! Say it isn't so!

My theory is that if the studio IDs the shoes as Converse it may cause a product placement issue. Maybe it would ruffle Blahnick Co's fur, who may been told they would receive sole shoe credits for their work with Canonero to create what looks like period 18th century footwear.

Whatever. I love the pink Converse tennis shoes hiding in Marie's closet. And I couldn't have been happier to hear just now that the shoes are still in the film, which premieres next Tuesday in LA.

The modern pink footwear creates a funny, girly, rebellious moment in a frothy film about a young girl who just wants to flirt, shop and party in 18th century France. And the sneaks also work with the film’s punky pink ads and the pink-themed court parties, pink champagne, pink wigs, and pink pastries.

More importantly, the shoes are also an bright pink emblem of Sofia's creative and independent spirit. You go, girl.

Long live the pink Converse tennis shoes!

Photo Credits: Kirsten Dunst stayed comfortable wearing pink Converse tennis shoes under her royal gowns. You never see them on but there is a funny shot of the tennis shoes that remains in the film.
Leigh Johnson/courtesy of Sony

Kirsten strikes poses in Vogue, Sofia gets Vanity Fair's royal treatment

Kirsten Dunst graces the cover of September Vogue wearing a towering white powdered wig and ballgown from the upcoming “Marie Antoinette” and a sly smirk.

Inside are more shots of the actress in more regal high fashion gowns designed by Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Milena Canonero, the film’s costume designer.

Judging from the… oh, let’s be polite and call it “mixed”… reactions to the film, which premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival, this is probably more than most will want to see of Dunst’s petulant pubescent queen act.

Dunst’s “Antoinette” director, Sofia Coppola, is also profiled (“Something About Sofia”) in the September issue of Vanity Fair.

Coppola, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the screenplay for her 2003 “Lost in Translation” and - more importantly - has had a Marc Jacobs handbag named for her, is dubbed “Hollywood Royalty” in the piece.

But at least the profile (fleetingly) addresses  her “controversial” new film (dubbed "a shallow film about shallow people" by one reviewer on IMDb) which did win an award or two at Cannes. Coppola’s movie revises/updates the historical tale by portraying the 14-year-old royal tart as a Paris Hilton-like party girl and the French court like a decadent Chateau Marmont penthouse party.

And the alt-pop score – songs from the Strokes, Gang of Four, the Cure, and Bow Wow Wow – also ups the film's hipness quotient and gives it a thoroughly modern MTV video feel. Which is just what every revised historical film needs.

Enough with cake. Let them eat pop music.

Photo Credit: Kirsten and Sofia party hearty at the "Marie Antoinette" Cannes premiere. But will they still celebrate after the movie opens?
WireImage/Richard Lewis