Vanity Fair articles from May 2008

Vanity Fair archives from May 2008

Editor's Letter.(Editorial)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --GRAYDON CARTER You would never know it from listening to the petty, backbiting dialogue between our trio of presidential preeners, but the most pressing issue of our age is most certainly global warming. Nor will you hear that...

She's Got Earth.
May 1, 2008... Byline: --KRISTA SMITH For Madonna's 10th V.F. cover, photographer Steven Meisel and style director Michael Roberts conjured up a sultry 21st-century Atlas This month, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Ritchie is making her 10th...

The Making Of A Candidate.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... The case against Obama; unswayed by Chandler; Coming Home' s producer objects; hooray for V.F.' s Hollywood!; and more Todd Purdum's article on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was revealing ["Raising Obama," March]. As an...

V.F. Classic.( Sebastian Junger)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... The Serb Army was waging a campaign of terror in Kosovo in early 1998 when contributing editor Sebastian Junger visited the simmering province, situated on the former Republic of Yugoslavia's border with Albania, for his article "Kosovo's...

More From The V.F. Mailbag.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2008... The Mailbag, like so many people, entities, and unsigned reader-mail-roundup columns before it, is in search of Some Truth. Is that too much to ask? "The Hitchcock photo set is the greatest your magazine has ever run," writes Chicago's...

Postscript.
May 1, 2008... Byline: --JESSICA FLINT In May 2005, contributing editor Buzz Bissinger wrote about Fountain--Fort Carson High School, in Colorado, where 35 percent of the students had a parent in the active military ("Absent Hearts"). That's because...

Fanfair.(Robert De Niro)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN BECKER 31 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF THE CULTURE MAY 2008 CHTEAU DE NIRO Robert De Niro, photographed behind the check-in desk at his recently opened Greenwich Hotel, in New York City. The paintings in...

The Cultural Divide: May.
May 1, 2008... 15 Beginning this summer, the Vitra Design Museum is collaborating with the Netherlands Architecture Institute and the Royal Institute of British Architects to produce a retrospective of the late architect and urban planner Le Corbusier,...

Hot Type.
May 1, 2008... Byline: ELISSA SCHAPPELL APPALLING BEHAVIOR: The photos from Abu Ghraib shocked the world. On a mission to uncover what was Standard Operating Procedure (Penguin Press) and what was "being creative," Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris...

Inspired Wrecks.(Ron Hansen )(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --ELISSA SCHAPPELL In his 1991 best-seller, Mariette in Ecstasy, novelist Ron Hansen enthralled readers with his portrait of a mysterious young postulant whose claims of divine possession trembled between passionate faith and...

Tribeca Triumph.
May 1, 2008... Byline: JONATHAN KELLY PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONATHAN BECKER CHECKING IN AT THE GREENWICH HOTEL It is to his great credit that when Robert De Niro decided to build a hotel on the vacant lot adjacent to his Tribeca office he sought to curb the...

Foxtail.(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... 9077 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD West Coast nightlife impresarios Brent Bolthouse and Sam Nazarian have partnered with entertainment forces Brett Ratner, Ben Silverman, Scott Stuber, and Patrick Whitesell in their latest venture,...

My Stuff.(Frida Giannini)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: FRIDA GIANNINI The signature style and effusive warmth of Frida Giannini, Gucci's creative director, have earned her the admiration and accolades of the fashion community. For fall, Giannini's richly layered collection pays homage...

Best Of Victoria Mather.
May 1, 2008... Byline: VICTORIA MATHER THE BEST Romantic Possibility Will it be Vienna, or Basel, or Munich, or lunch in Champagne, or drinking champagne in %pernay? Or will it be the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express? Let's go to Prague and Budapest and...

Straight Up, With A Twist.( Neil Denari )(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --MATT TYRNAUER Denari's clear achievement... Rosettes are all the rage... Jurassic buddy... Woven wonders... Architect Neil Denari admits that every practitioner of his art wants to design a museum, but there aren't...

Stunning Stilettos.(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --JOHN ORTVED Women flock to some shoe stores, but when it comes to Vivier, they pilgrimage. Roger Vivier's new modern Milan boutique offers classic favorites as well as the best of Bruno Frisoni's designs. The heel haven is an...

Pet Sounds.
May 1, 2008... Byline: --JULIAN SANCTON If Jurassic Park and The Matrix taught us anything, it's that dinosaurs and robots will take over the world if we don't stop them. Right now, Pleo, the teacup-Yorkie-size, animatronic baby Camarasaurus developed by...

Dream Weaver.(Luke Irwin's hand-knotted Tibetan rugs)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --LINDSEY KEENAN Luke Irwin's hand-knotted Tibetan rugs are the stuff of dreams--literally. The doves scattered across his latest collection came to him while he was sleeping. The London-based craftsman takes his artistic...

When He Was King.(George Lois: The Esquire Covers)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --TOM HEDLEY MOMA CELEBRATES ESQUIRE' S GEORGE LOIS DECADE George, it's one thing to be collected by the Museum of Modern Art and inducted into not one but two halls of fame. Quite another when your name has become so well...

All In The Family.(Alex Hurt and Raul S. Julia )
May 1, 2008... Byline: --EDWARD HELMORE HALF ASSIDUITY ARTS MAKES ITS DEBUT Though Alex Hurt and Raul S. Julia met in a nursery on the set of their fathers' movie Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1984, the encounter nonetheless marked the start of a...

Half Naked.( Surfwise)(Movie review)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --GRAHAM FULLER THE PASKOWITZ FAMILY'S SURF ODYSSEY Watching the 93-minute documentary Surfwise, one suspects there was enough material for a 10-hour television series. It tells the cautionary tale of Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, a...

High Notes.(acappella)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: --TODD S. PURDUM A CAPPELLA IS PIPING UP EVERYWHERE A cappella singing flowered during the Renaissance (in Italian, it means "in chapel style"), and it's been beloved by barbershop quartets, doo-wop daddy-o's, and collegiate...

Natural Selection.
May 1, 2008... Byline: --EVE EPSTEIN ELI HALLIWELL USHERS JURLIQUE INTO THE GREEN ERA When Eli Halliwell was approached by Jurlique in 2006 to take the reins of the cult beauty company, he began to believe in fate. He had hoped to start his own...

Beauty.(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... ENERGY FIX Origins' renewable-energy initiative will blow you away: the natural-based beauty brand purchases clean, emissions-free wind power for 100 percent of the energy used in its United States retail stores and manufacturing facilities....

Fairground.(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAFYDD JONES AROUND THE WORLD, ONE PARTY AT A TIME MAY 2008 STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT Guests arrive for Charles Finch's private dinner at Mark's Club, in London, February 9, 2008. POSH SUPPER, PAGES...

The War On The Times.(Company overview)
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN CORBITT The Sulzberger family would never let go of The New York Times . Or would it? With the latest shareholder assault on the "invulnerable" paper's management--this one from a couple of upstart hedge...

Waiting For Obama.(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: TODD S. PURDUM PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARRY FINK From afar, modern political campaigns are all pre-digested slogans, 24-7 cut-and-thrust, and cable-news countdown clocks marking the minutes until the next debate. But in the trenches,...

Industrial Revolution, Take Two.
May 1, 2008... Byline: BY MATT TYRNAUER PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD EBERLE Why can't a building be as eco-friendly as a tree? What if the concept of waste didn't exist? Having collaborated with such giants as Google, NASA, Ford, and Wal-Mart with his "Cradle to...

Monsanto's Harvest Of Fear.(Company overview)
May 1, 2008... Byline: BY DONALD L. BARLETT AND JAMES B. STEELE PHOTOGRAPHS BY KURT MARKUS Monsanto already dominates America's food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation's...

Stealing Weather.
May 1, 2008... Byline: BY WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRAD HOLLAND In 1946, three G.E. scientists found that seeding clouds with dry ice or silver iodide could affect precipitation. The Pentagon soon had hopes of weaponizing the sky. Now it's...

Mad Men.(Mad magazine)
May 1, 2008... Byline: DAVID HAJDU ILLUSTRATION BY MORT DRUCKER The founding lunatics of Mad celebrate the magazine company's 60th anniversary--in the mind of caricaturist Mort Drucker, at least They were just a kooky group of young geniuses before...

The Thistle And The Bee.
May 1, 2008... Byline: BY ALEX SHOUMATOFF PHOTOGRAPHS BY JONAS KARLSSON Donald Trump wants to put a luxury golf resort on a gloriously unspoiled swath of Scottish seacoast. His plan has come under fire by environmental activists and led to a battle that...

All Is Vanities ... Nothing Is Fair: Vanities May 2008.(Kristen Bell )(Brief article)
May 1, 2008... Byline: KRISTA SMITH PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK SELIGER Kristen Bell AGE: 27. PROVENANCE: Detroit, followed by the Tisch School of the Arts, at N.Y.U., alma mater of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Martin Scorsese. YOU KNOW HER FROM... Veronica...

Inside Dylan's Brain.
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW NIMMO AND BETH BARTHOLOMEW People have long wondered what goes on in Bob Dylan's mind. But if you pay attention to what he says and plays on his XM satellite-radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, you can...

Madon Narama!(Madonna)(Interview)
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN MEISEL As she nears 50, Madonna's narrative is shifting. Yes, there's another new super-pop album, Hard Candy , with Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams. But there's also Filth and Wisdom , the feature...

The Green Light.
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MUELLER As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantanamo detainee wouldn't talk, the Bush administration's highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques,...

The Next President's First Task: [ A Manifesto ].
May 1, 2008... Byline: BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. Last November, Lord (David) Puttnam debated before Parliament an important bill to tackle global warming. Addressing industry and government warnings that we must proceed slowly to avoid economic ruin, Lord...

The Arctic Oil Rush.
May 1, 2008... Byline: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUBHANKAR BANERJEE There have been many expeditions to the North Pole, but it was Russia's, last summer, that touched off a furor over who owns the Arctic--and the oil that is becoming more and more accessible as the...

Ocean's 9.(Oceana)
May 1, 2008... Byline: EVGENIA PERETZ PHOTOGRAPHS BY ART STREIBER For millennia, humans have sought out the oceans for the restoration of mind, body, and spirit. Alas, as the 300,000 members of Oceana, an international conservation group (oceana.org),...

Natural Phenomenon.(Renzo Piano)(Interview)
May 1, 2008... THIS FALL, AFTER EIGHT YEARS AND ALMOST HALF A BILLION DOLLARS, WORLD-FAMOUS ARCHITECT RENZO PIANO WILL COMPLETE THE GREENEST MUSEUM EVER BUILT--THE NEW CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, IN SAN FRANCISCO'S GOLDEN GATE PARK--HOUSING ITS AQUARIUM,...

The Edge Of Extinction.
May 1, 2008... Last summer, the Arctic lost more sea ice than ever before--nearly a half-million square miles, the size of Texas and California combined--devastating the polar bear's frozen habitat. Yet, in February, despite a huge outcry, Interior Secretary...

Credits.
May 1, 2008... COVER: MADONNA'S JAMES PERSE tank top from James Perse stores nationwide, or go to jamesperse.com; for DOLCE & GABBANA bodysuit, go to dolcegabbana.it; for GIVENCHY HAUTE COUTURE boots, go to givenchy.com; AZZEDINE ALAA belt from Barneys New...

David Mamet.(Interview)
May 1, 2008... Byline: ILLUSTRATION BY RISKO During his three-decade career, David Mamet, 60, has been an anomaly in Hollywood: a dramaturge whose scripts are the main attraction. With the release of his latest film, Redbelt, this month, the writer,...