Vanity Fair articles from November 2007

Vanity Fair archives from November 2007

Folk Heroes; With a folk-music revival brewing, Annie Leibovitz went back to her roots, with a cross-country blitz of the genre's stars, from high priestess Joan Baez to reclusive Ray LaMontagne, to new sensation Feist.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Lisa Robinson All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song. -Louis Armstrong When Graydon Carter said we should do a Folk-Music Portfolio this year, who knew that the music scene would soon be in the...

God vs. Hitchens; The faithful weigh in; notes on a secret son; blame one, blame all; championing Mrs.(Letter to the editor)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Namehere I found "God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!," by Christopher Hitchens [September], to be somewhat unbalanced. I agree with much of his critique of organized church structures. However, I found Hitchens's mocking references...

The Cultural Divide November.
November 1, 2007... PAS DE DEUX New York City Ballet corps dancer Kyle Froman brings his stage experience to life in his beautifully photographed new book, In the Wings (Wiley). 04 The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, opening November 4 in an...

Hot Type.(movies and books)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Elissa Shappell Liberty and justice for all? Ha! That's rich! In Independents Day (Viking), Lou Dobbs argues that the only way we can regain the civil liberties we've forfeited and win back our souls is to elect new leaders with...

BARHOPPING.(Beverly Hills Hotel)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL 9641 SUNSET BOULEVARD BEVERLY HILLS WHY NINETEEN12: The bar is named after the year the Beverly Hills Hotel opened. WAIT, WHERE'S THE POLO LOUNGE: It's still there. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO...

Art of Darkness.(Walton Ford's animal paintings)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Graham Fuller The matter-of-fact cruelty of the animal kingdom has never seemed more disturbingly beautiful than in the outsize watercolors painted by Walton Ford. The pictures collected in Pancha Tantra, newly published by Taschen...

MAD FOR MUJI.(Mujirushi Ryohin)(Company overview)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer Ikea, beware. Martha, take cover! Muji, the Japanese manufacturer and retailer of products so basic in their stylishness that they look almost accidentally chic, is coming to America. Muji-the company's original name,...

COMMUNE.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Matt Tyrnauer Don't be fooled by the California Regency facade of the new Juicy Couture store on Rodeo Drive. The elongated stone niches and reserved limestone facing is not a sensitive restoration of a Gucci or Giorgio boutique....

Hot Tracks.(music)(Sound recording review)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Lisa Robinson The song remains the same... again? What do we learn from the simultaneous releases of Led Zeppelin's Mothership-two CDs of 24 remastered tracks-and an expanded DVD and accompanying CD of the 1973 Madison Square...

Dishy Chicks.(Gossip Girl's Blake Lively)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: John Ortved It's hard to imagine Serena van der Woodsen, Blake Lively's sophisticated, sexy, Upper East Side alter ego on the new CW series Gossip Girl, batting a single perfect eyelash over something as trivial as a Broadway...

EVERYBODY'S ALL-AMERICAN.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Punch Hutton Mad magazine, roller coasters, Route 66, and the holy trio of American sports-baseball, basketball, and football-are just some of the more than 400 cultural symbols captured in the latest glossy pop-culture bible,...

A Monster Classic.(Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Susan Kittenplan Even with a resume that includes Your Show of Shows, Blazing Saddles, The Producers, and now the musical of his 1974 film, Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks still thinks it's difficult to be funny. "One guy was in the...

STAGING A BROADWAY SPLASH.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Leslie Bennetts Staging a musical that takes place underwater is enough to confound anyone, so the Broadway version of Disney's 1989 animated movie, The Little Mermaid, languished for years-until the globe-trotting director...

Flying High.(The Kite Runner )(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: A. M. Homes The Kite Runner is a transcendent journey into an unfamiliar world. Directed by Marc Forster and based on Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel-the first published in English by an Afghan author-this lyrical and profound tale...

WEDDING CRASHER.(Margot at the Wedding)(Movie review)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Bruce Handy Margot at the Wedding is writer-director Noah Baumbach's follow-up to his remarkable The Squid and the Whale of two years ago. Less fully baked than the first film but just as beautifully acted, the new one works some...

Matched Point.(Cassandra's Dream)(Movie review)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Bruce Handy Woody Allen's career has often been seen as swinging between the poles of comedy and his "serious" movies. Two years ago, with Match Point, he may have found the perfect equilibrium: a moral thriller brimming with irony...

Bustling Budapest.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Victoria Mather There is nothing like immediate history to stir the blood. It is within touching distance in Hungary, which over the centuries has been conquered by Turks, Habsburgs, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia. Here, the...

Beauty Bounty.(Space.NK)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Emily Poenisch Space.NK, the hugely successful British beauty emporium, is storming the East Coast. "We've had an amazing reaction... everyone's like, 'Why did it take you so long to come over?'" says founder Nicky Kinnaird, a...

LITERARY SCENTS.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Maria Ricapito, Jessica Flint Making perfume is "a bridge to my history, but also a way to find my own universe," says Kilian Hennessy. A grandson of the founder of the LVMH Group, he grew up frisking around the Cognac barrels in...

Hot Looks.
November 1, 2007... 1. Volumize your lashes with Revlon's waterproof 3D Extreme Mascara 2. Cle de Peau Beaute's new Eye Color Quad is a glamorous metallic palette 3. Guerlain's Parure Compact Foundation with Crystal Pearls S.P.F.20 is a powder foundation, in...

EAST HAMPTON.
November 1, 2007... What Donna Karan and the Cinema Society screen Kris Carr's documentary, Crazy Sexy Cancer, under a starry sky. Who Edie Falco, Valesca Guerrand-Hermes, Bob Balaban, Olivia Chantecaille, Fern Mallis, Sandy Brandt, Stefano Tonchi,...

MALIBU.
November 1, 2007... What Ryan Kavanaugh's beach house is the perfect backdrop for a cozy party. Who Jim and Elizabeth Wiatt, Mary Parent, Summer Mann, James Mangold, Cuba Gooding Jr., Dani Janssen, Robert Morton, and more.

EAST HAMPTON.
November 1, 2007... What The Cinema Society and Ronald Perelman host an intimate dinner in honor of Jake Paltrow's The Good Night. Who Blythe Danner, Zani Gugelmann, Katie Lee Joel and Billy Joel, Sandy Gallin, Rashida Jones, Candace Bushnell, Larry Gagosian, Dina...

NEW YORK.
November 1, 2007... What Jefferson Hack and de Grisogono's sexy supper party at the Bowery Hotel. Who Paz de la Huerta, David Walliams, Lake Bell, Nur Kahn, Alice Temperley, Nick Rhodes, Terry Richardson, Charlotte Tilbury, and others.

A Death in the Family.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Christopher Hitchens I was having an oppressively normal morning a few months ago, flicking through the banality of quotidian e-mail traffic, when I idly clicked on a message from a friend headed "Seen This?" The attached item...

A Twist in Time; Spreading like wildfire from the tiny dance floor of New York's Peppermint Lounge, in 1960, a Harlem teen craze set the era's most glamorous hips gyrating-Norman Mailer and Noel Coward, Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy.(Decade overview)
November 1, 2007... Byline: James Wolcott The slick ad executives, their bouffant wives, and the downtown barefoot contessas of AMC's acclaimed series Mad Men-they were too submersed inside their murky fishbowls of moody regrets and countless cigarettes to...

Here's Looking at You, Syd; How did one of pop music's epic breakdowns-that of Pink Floyd's dashing, mentally ill, drug-addled front man, Syd Barrett-find a place in a drama about Communist Czechoslovakia.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Tom Stoppard At a certain street junction in Notting Hill in London there is nothing to memorialize what turned out to be one of the defining fractures in the story of rock music. I think about it every time I pass that way. Forty...

Guilty Feelings.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Dominick Dunne "The gun went off accidentally. She works at the House of Blues. It was a mistake. I don't understand what the fuck is wrong with you people," said Phil Spector to the police on February 3, 2003, the night aspiring...

The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad; The new American Embassy in Baghdad will be the largest, least welcoming, and most lavish embassy in the world: a $600 million massively fortified compound with 619 blast-resistant apartments and a food court fit for a shopping mall.
November 1, 2007... Byline: William Langewiesche When the new American Embassy in Baghdad entered the planning stage, more than three years ago, U.S. officials inside the Green Zone were still insisting that great progress was being made in the construction...

The People vs the Profiteers; Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there.
November 1, 2007... Byline: David Rose On first meeting him, one might not suspect Alan Grayson of being a crusader against government-contractor fraud. Six feet four in his socks, he likes to dress flamboyantly, on the theory that items such as pink cowboy...

Becoming Adolf; Hitler's Toothbrush mustache is one of the most powerful symbols of the last century, an inch of hair that represents infinite evil.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Rich Cohen I decided to grow a Toothbrush mustache. Well, that's not what I called it. Until I started this story, I had only one name for the thing in mind: a Hitler mustache. An inch of hair that speaks of bottomless evil. A few...

Vanity Fair Nominates.(Women Groundbreakers in International Justice award of the Open Society Institute)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Leslie Bennetts BECAUSE social justice-even more than technological innovation-provides the truest measure of civilization's progress, and because the courage, integrity, and pioneering intellectual contributions of these fearless...

Moms Gone Wild; Sure, mothers always get blamed for everything.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Judith Newman I'm on the phone with Lynne Spears, Britney's mother, when my five-year-old grabs a wad of cash, waves good-bye, and disappears into the elevator. "See?" says Spears as she listens to me scream at my son. "It's...

Mad About the Boys; Until he fled the country in January, accused of embezzling more than $300 million, Lou Pearlman was famous as the impresario behind the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Bryan Burrough The crowds began gathering outside Orlando's Church Street Station complex early on a sweltering June morning, waiting in line to wander through the abandoned offices of the unlikely multi-millionaire who had...

Lymari Nadal.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Krista Smith AGE: 29. PROVENANCE: Ponce, Puerto Rico. BREAKING THROUGH AS... Denzel Washington's moll in American Gangster, Ridley Scott's upcoming epic about a 1970s Harlem drug lord. Her very first day on set, Nadal filmed her...

Wat if ... OTHER VETERAN CHARACTER ACTORS BESIDES Fred Dalton Thompson WERE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Alford LANDAU DEC. '07 Martin Landau's stump speech quotes extensively from Thomas Paine, Uta Hagen. PESCI JAN. '08 The Committee to Elect Joe Pesci broadcasts TV ad showing Pesci whacking the national debt. VIGODA MAR. '08...

Growing Up Bateman.(Jason Bateman)(Interview)
November 1, 2007... Byline: George Wayne Before Jason Bateman, 38, was the Golden Globe-winning lead on Fox's short-lived series Arrested Development and a fringe member of Hollywood's "Frat Pack," he was a 1980s teen idol, courtesy of television's Little...

As Camelot Began The Unseen Portraits of the Kennedys By Richard Avedon; When President-Elect John F. Kennedy and his family posed for Avedon in January 1961, it sent a message of youth, vitality, and confidence.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Robert Dallek Images by Richard Avedon excerpted from The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, with text by Shannon Thomas Perich, foreword by Robert Dallek, to be published this month by Collins Design, an imprint of HarperCollins...

Some Enchanting Eva.( Eva Green )(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Steven Daly When director Chris Weitz was casting his adaptation of Philip Pullman's metaphysical novel The Golden Compass, actress Eva Green was his immediate choice for the part of the benevolent, 300-year-old witch, Serafina...

The Wilson Doctrine.(Charlie Wilson's War)(Movie review)(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Michael Hogan Given the current Congress's utter inability to end the war in Iraq, it's hard to imagine that a lone representative-let alone one as fond of boozing and womanizing as Charlie Wilson was in his day-could have waged a...

Va Va von Furstenber; Like her husband, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg has built a showstopping New York headquarters for her business-now a $200 million fashion empire, rivaling the splash she and her wrap dress made in the 70s.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Ingrid Sischy A decade ago, when Diane von Furstenberg wrote her autobiography, she rather woefully noted, "It will probably be on my tombstone: 'Here Lies the Woman Who Designed the Wrap Dress.'" Not so fast, fellas. Hold the...

Dorothy Parker's Weekend Getaway.(Brief article)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Edward Sorel Dorothy Parker always had an unkind word for everyone. Her friend George S. Kaufman was no exception-especially after he won two Pulitzers, made the cover of Time in 1939, and had two hits running concurrently on...

The Secret World of Serge Gainsbourg; Sixteen years after Serge Gainsbourg's death, his small, graffiti-covered Paris house is almost exactly as he left it-crammed with mementos of his poetic, nicotine-and-alcohol-fueled, sometimes scandalous life as France's most adored singer-songwriter, lover of Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot, and friend to countless taxi drivers and policemen.
November 1, 2007... Byline: Lisa Robinson Paris, May 23, 2007: Carefully avoiding eye contact with the tourists in the street, Charlotte Gainsbourg quickly lets me into the small, graffiti-covered house at 5 bis Rue de Verneuil. Two blocks from Boulevard...

Shirley MacLaine; At 21, Shirley MacLaine possessed enough poise and moxie to land a starring role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry.(Interview)
November 1, 2007... What is your idea of perfect happiness? Searching for it. What is your greatest fear? The violence of enlightenment. Which living person do you most admire? The people who work with and for me. What is the trait you...

A President by Any Other Name.(Editorial)
November 1, 2007... Byline: Graydon Carter We had George W. Bush on the phone the other day, and when the subject of the Iraq war came up he was surprisingly measured and thoughtful. "As far as the war goes, I initially was very supportive, but less so over...