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John Oliver Has Seen the Future, and There Will Be Rocket Boots
1 January 2010 11:00 AM, PST
Photograph by Brad Barket. Welcome to 2010. As if you haven’t been reminded enough, today officially begins a new decade. Which mean it’s time to reflect on the past 10 years and ponder how far we’ve come. Remember answering machines, compact discs, and airplanes without wi-fi? Weird, right? How did the world change so much in what seemed like the blink of an eye? What have we learned about ourselves from surviving the 00s, and how can we use this knowledge to make the next decade a little less sucky? There’s much to contemplate, and quite honestly, we’re a little too hungover from last night’s celebration to tackle such heady questions. So we’ve left the messy business of decennium introspection in the far more capable hands of John Oliver. Why Oliver? For one thing, he’s poised to have a ridiculously productive 2010. He continues to »
Stick Shift's Top Five Cars of 2009
30 December 2009 12:50 PM, PST
As Stick Shift’s editor, writer, and sole proprietor, I got to insert myself into a load of gorgeous metal this year. Since I’m not obliged to write about every car that slides off the assembly line (and since you, my discerning readers, don’t give a damn about things bland or plebian), I usually skim the cream and feature only the sexiest, opulentest, and most recockulous vehicles. This pretty much rules. Except, right now, when it comes to choosing my favorites of the year. In poring over 2009’s columns (and sorting through the piles of bribes, swag, and favors offered up by auto-Industry representatives), I’ve managed to choose five cars that best reflect my personal subjective taste, and represent the highlights of this year’s drives. Like everything I do, this list lacks any sort of clear system. It’s not a ranking, or even alphabetical, but »
British Hostage Peter Moore Is Safe, but Others Are Lost Forever
30 December 2009 8:57 AM, PST
Moore as he appeared in a hostage video.As we celebrate the release of British hostage Peter Moore, the 36-year-old British information-technologies consultant who was captured in Baghdad in May 2007 by 40 armed men dressed as Iraqi police officers, we should also remember those who were not so lucky—including Moore’s bodyguards. Three of them are known to have been killed, and the fourth is presumed dead. According to Wikipedia, the United Kingdom now has an even record when it comes to recovering its hostages: six, including Moore, have been released, and six, including his bodyguards, have been killed. The U.S. hasn’t fared much better: 11 American hostages have been killed (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is believed to have personally beheaded two of them), five have escaped or been released, and another five are still unaccounted for. Among coalition partners, Denmark, Bulgaria, and South Korea have had four hostages taken, »
With 10 Best-Picture Slots, Oscar Delusions Abound
30 December 2009 8:16 AM, PST
January is the month in which Hollywood girds itself for praise. Literally girds—in order to be red carpet ready by the Golden Globes, you pretty much need to stop eating solid food starting on December 26th. Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded the Oscars' best-picture category this year from five movies to ten, even more filmmakers than usual are entertaining hopes, and sometimes delusions, about making The Big List. "There's a bit more optimism associated with best picture this year because there's more opportunity," says Michele Robertson, awards consultant and president of Mrc. Sure, there are the best-picture category shoo-ins—critical darlings like The Hurt Locker, Precious, and Up in the Air. And there is expanded room for well-reviewed moneymakers in genres the Academy typically shuns, like science fiction (Avatar), animation (Up), and violent, farcical revisionist history (Inglourious Basterds). It's also important not to omit the biennial Clint Eastwood slot, »
On Second Thought, the System Sucks
30 December 2009 6:14 AM, PST
• Making his first public comments on the underwear bombing incident, President Obama said the government should have stopped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Flight 253 to Detroit. “”A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” he said. [Nyt] • Obama is getting beat up in the press for waiting 72 hours before speaking about the attempted attack, but a vacationing George W. Bush waited six days before addressing the December 22, 2001, shoe bombing and suffered no blowback. Then again, that was three months after 9/11, back when the commander-in-chief could do no wrong. [Politico] • Bad news for those who enjoy smuggling weed in their Y-fronts back from Amsterdam. It’s full-body scans from here on out, kids. [Reuters] • France failed to pass a carbon tax bill—because it was too lenient on big polluters. Imagine that happening here? Hahahaha! [BBC] • Body double alert: Vera Farmiga used one for her nude scene in Up in the Air, »
15 Songs to Ring in 2010
29 December 2009 1:11 PM, PST
If you've decided not to go out to a lavish New Year's Eve party and instead plan on ushering in 2010 at home, buy one of these bottles of bubbly and queue up your iPod with the following 15 top N.Y.E. tunes courtesy of celebrity D.J. Mia Moretti, who will be saying good-bye to the 00s by manning the D.J. booth at a private party at Hollywood's Tea Room, the sister club to H.wood. 15 Songs to Ring in 2010 Adam Lambert, "For Your Entertainment" Michael Jackson, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" Black Eyed Peas, "I Gotta Feeling" Prince, "1999" AC/DC, "You Shook Me All Night Long" [not available for download] Justice vs. Simian, "We Are Your Friends" Lady Gaga, "Just Dance" Jay-z (featuring Rihanna & Kanye West), "Run This Town" Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire" Beyoncé, "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" Anita Ward, "Ring My Bell" Kool & the Gang, "Celebration" Daft Punk, »
Should We Have Seen Karl Rove's Divorce Coming?
29 December 2009 11:15 AM, PST
Upon hearing the news that Karl Rove has divorced his second wife, Darby Tara Hickson, we went searching through the Vanity Fair archives (as is our wont) to see if there had been any hints that this unfortunate day would someday come. The word “marriage” appears twice in Todd S. Purdum’s 2006 profile, “Karl Rove’s Split Personality,” in both cases preceded by the word “gay” (as in: actively working against). The word “wife” also appears twice, rather more interestingly: Rove’s house is done in soft silks and elegant colors, seafoam and other pale-green shades. The long, harlequin-tiled kitchen opens onto a leafy backyard. This is presumably a testament to the good taste of Rove’s wife, Darby, a graphic designer who once worked for his direct-mail firm. And this: If Rove has ever displayed weakness to an enemy—or to a friend—the occasion went unrecorded. Even his »
Do Knowing, Funny People, or This is It Belong on Best-of-2009 Lists?
29 December 2009 9:28 AM, PST
If you need a reminder of the symbiotic relationship between critical consensus and Oscar buzz, look no further than the top-ten-best-films-of-the-year lists that start piling up every December. This year, it’s a challenge to find a single critic who failed to cite any of the major presumed Best Picture nominees, from The Hurt Locker to Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds to Precious. And yet, more than ever it seems that critics use the space of the top-ten list not just to name-check the expected titles, but also to perform a kind of cinema activism. It’s one thing to use a best-of list to give a shoutout to a barely-seen indie; the fact that the grand majority of casual readers will not have heard of a film like Beeswax, a post-mumblecore feature that screened commercially for all of a week in Los Angeles and made Manohla Dargis’s »
At&T Sucks
29 December 2009 9:04 AM, PST
Let’s try to do this reasonably and with particularity: Every call I made yesterday on my iPhone dropped. A number of them were to my 84-year-old mother who has a hard time understanding why telephones no longer work. I have a hard time understanding this, too. Is it mere success, as At&T seems to suggest? The iPhone is just too popular, straining its network. The fault, in other words, lies with consumer demand and great design, and not with At&T and its resources and infrastructure. But how come for the last two years I go dead in the East Thirties, on 57th Street and Sixth, on 72nd and Madison, on Bleeker and Lafayette, on the Williamsburg Bridge, and about a hundred other specific locations I’m too irate to remember now? Overload would be random (of course, iPhone calls drop randomly, too), but a plainly crummy system »
Remembering Illustrator David Levine
29 December 2009 8:50 AM, PST
Photograph by Gaspare Tringale.Sad news today from New York: David Levine, longtime illustrator for The New York Review of Books, has died at the age of 83. Last November, Vanity Fair published David Margolick’s stirring account of how macular degeneration ended Levine’s association with the liberal journal and, with it, “one of the most remarkable runs in the history of journalism and art.” He went on: In the course of it, more than anyone before him, Levine put together a facebook of human history, capturing everyone from Agnew and Albee to Zapata and Zola. Arguably, only Al Hirschfeld, the indomitable New York Times illustrator who worked almost to the very moment of his death, five years ago, at the age of 99, had so long a tenure or cast so lengthy a shadow, though his range was considerably narrower and his work as apolitical as Levine’s was politically charged. »
Sex-Scandal Charades and Other Unholy Christmas Traditions
29 December 2009 8:18 AM, PST
Martha and George have nothing on Jamie Johnson’s Christmas Eve hosts. It has become a cliché to use pet coddling as a metaphor for wealthy excess, but I can’t seem to shake from my mind a scene I witnessed on Christmas Eve, where a cat snacked on an eight-ounce tin of Beluga caviar. While men and women enjoyed champagne and conversation, huddled around a grand fireplace on Louis Xv chairs, this imperious feline leapt atop a console table in the corner of the room and began to nibble at the most treasured of delicacies. Far from being outraged over the devilish maneuver, people found it riotously funny that a furry little creature should exhibit such unabashed entitlement. Of course, it wouldn’t have seemed funny to the same people had a housekeeper acted so boldly, but everyone typically knows his or her place in a household of high esteem, »
All the Plot Twists Fit to Print
29 December 2009 5:40 AM, PST
• Terror suspect Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab belongs to a generation of privileged young Nigerian Muslims who “abhor the stupendous wealth their parents have accumulated and they don’t want to have anything to do with them.” [Time] • In related news, if you’re wondering why the T.S.A. seems a bit directionless, look to Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who is holding up the nomination of the agency’s incoming administrator as part of a strategy to prevent its workers from going union. [WaPo] • Sure, Ted Kennedy deserved a tribute during the Senate health-care debate, but orating under the influence? [Nyp] • The knives are coming out in the Palin-Johnston custody battle. [Nyp] • And in Charlie Sheen’s marriage, allegedly. Can we agree once and for all that Carlos Irwin Estevez is not husband material? [Yahoo] • The vultures are circling above the grizzled remains of MGM, which put out one movie this year: a remake »
Poll: Who Is the Mistress of the Decade?
28 December 2009 10:00 PM, PST
Today on Vf.com, Vanity Fair contributing editor Frank Digiacomo takes a look back at a decade’s worth of infidelity, betrayal, and schadenfreude in a piece titled “The Mistresses of the Decade.” There were plenty to choose from, given the abundance of high-profile sex scandals that ensnared everyone from New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to golf god Tiger Woods and Material Girl Madonna. But only one “Mistress,” as we’ve rather loosely defined the term, can reign supreme. So check out the slide show and then tell us: who deserves this deeply dubious honor? Who Is the Mistress of the Decade?(survey software) Related: The Mistresses of the Decade »
December 2009: The Mistresses of the Decade
28 December 2009 9:00 PM, PST
Ever since Bill Clinton took the nation on a long, dangerous joy ride via his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, celebrity affairs of the heart—and loins—have had an anticlimactic quality to them. But that hasn’t stopped the world’s actors, politicians, sports stars, and talk show hosts from getting a little on the side and then getting caught. In fact, after a slow start, possibly due to the Bush administration’s saltpeter effect on, ahem, world affairs, high-end hanky panky seems to have escalated in the latter half of the decade. Is this acting-out a symptom of the arrogance of power, a reaction to the pressures of celebrity, or a sign that the next decade is going to get truly freaky? While you’re deciding, here is Vanity Fair’s compilation of the top mistresses—female and male—of the last decade. »
Fishing for Compliments in the Nissan Gt-r
28 December 2009 1:10 PM, PST
While I was in Los Angeles recently, I was given the opportunity to spend a week in the company of the Nissan Gt-r (a.k.a. Carp-zilla, a.k.a. The Snorting Beast From the East, a.k.a. Hiroshima’s Blowback), a two-ton wedge of mental illness with more power than a week’s worth of new Chinese coal plants, an exterior that looks to have been drawn by Peter Eisenman on four piles of crushed Adderall, and a demeanor somewhere between minatory and Ahmadinejad. This is what is known in the industry as a “halo” vehicle, a low-volume, high-dollar, tech-crammed, and ruthlessly-vigorous vehicle that is meant to cast a golden glow over the rest of the marque’s range, so when you buy a plebian car like the Nissan Versa (a.k.a. The Rollerskate, a.k.a. Cinderella’s Slipper, a.k.a. Inhale and You’ll »
The Best New Year's Eve Parties Around the Globe
28 December 2009 12:00 PM, PST
With the decade drawing to a close, the pressure is on hot spots around the planet to attract crowds to their lavish New Year’s Eve parties, and the hype can be overwhelming for even the most discerning partygoer. To help you sort through your options, Vf Daily categorized the world’s best events and venues. Concerts If you’re looking to get up close and personal with your favorite musical act, New Year’s Eve might just be your chance to do it—every nightclub in the world seems to be signing up high-profile acts. The hottest ticket is for the throwdown at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel, which has recruited Lady Gaga to play poolside, accompanied by D.J. David Berrie and Jus Ske. (Tickets start at $425.) And D.J. Jesse Marco will be spinning inside Liv at the Fountainbleau. In Las Vegas, 50 Cent will be appearing at Pure, »
A Year's Worth of Answers, Blowin' in the Wind
28 December 2009 11:56 AM, PST
(With apologies to Bob Dylan) How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? Attorney General Eric Holder went all-in late in 2009 by authorizing a federal civilian trial for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. I think it’s a good move, the right move, but Holder has staked upon its outcome just about everything his administration has to say about terrorism law. Ironic therefore, don’t you think, that K.S.M. now in many ways controls Holder’s legacy? Yes, and how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand? The most important death in 2009 did not belong to Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts politician who in a roundabout way helped more Americans than his martyred brothers. It belonged instead to a young woman in Iran, Neda, whose televised death in Teheran »
I'd Rather Die Than Suffer Through Increased Airport Security
28 December 2009 10:24 AM, PST
“Did you pack this bag yourself?” What is it with terrorists and airplanes? Why don’t they ever blow up America’s buses or trains or subways? Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I want them to branch out to other modes of transportation, just that I don’t understand why they continue to focus their efforts on the only one that enjoys substantial (and very expensive) security protection. Maybe they enjoy reminding us that our vast expenditures on security in the end amount to jack squat. Maybe that’s the point: We can hit you anywhere, they’re telling us, no matter how well you prepare. Or maybe they enjoy turning everyday passengers into heroes. Or maybe they’re just as hapless and disorganized as the people we trust to protect us from them. I really have no idea. All I know is that airport »
Three Lessons From the Christmas Box Office Bonanza
28 December 2009 9:49 AM, PST
1. The theater experience isn’t going the way of the newspaper just yet. The recession may have drained Hollywood of much of its financing, but this weekend’s unprecedented $273 million box-office haul—capping off a record-breaking year—proved that if you somehow manage to build it, they will come. Theaters showing Avatar in 3D reportedly accounted for 77 percent of the film’s business, which has emboldened directors such as Steven Spielberg to flirt with the new technology, and will likely reinvigorate the film industry. But 2D did pretty damn well, too, with Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, and It’s Complicated all posting impressive numbers. Hollywood should take note and arrange for Christmas to fall on a Friday every year. 2. James Cameron has officially silenced the doubters. Hype, overhype, scorn, box-office vindication. Call it the Cameron Cycle. It happened with Titanic and it’s happened again with Avatar. »
Avatar, the Most Bootleg-Proof Movie Ever, Gets Bootlegged Anyway
28 December 2009 8:35 AM, PST
“This is the movie that I’ve been dreaming about pirating since I was 14 years old.” So says the punk bootlegger in this witty satire on the geektastic “making of” hype surrounding Avatar. And I can personally attest that the fictional bootleggers in this video have real-life counterparts: I was wolfing down a slice at a non-descript pizza joint in Brooklyn yesterday when a guy came in peddling bootleg DVDs of James Cameron’s 3D sci-fi extravaganza. The whole thing is comical, when you think about it. Hollywood is excited about 3D in part because it forces audiences to get off their butts and go to the theater, but there is still a crowd out there that’s content to pay $5 to watch a shaky Flip cam knockoff in the comfort of their own homes. Maybe the studios should start producing these videos themselves. After all, the customer is always right, »
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