George Clooney | The New York Observer

New York Still Loves You, Ben

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:03:35 -0400

The Heartbreak Kid (#1), the reunion of Ben Stiller with his There’s Something About Mary cohorts, the Farelly brothers, managed to grab the top spot here in Manhattan, despite being outgrossed nationally by the Rock’s Game Plan (#7)—in its second week, no less—by a $2 millon margin. Kid averaged a respectable $26,000 on 9 theaters. The native son’s success in the city shouldn’t be too much of a surprise—we even lined up to see...

Objection Sustained! Clooney Clomps Through Colorless Corporate-Law Flick

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:05:37 -0400

MICHAEL CLAYTON
Running Time 119 minutes
Written by Tony Gilroy
Directed by Tony Gilroy
Starring George Clooney, Tilda Swinton

I’ve been spending so much time at film festivals hither and yon that it’s time to get back to the real world. Not that there’s anything real about George Clooney’s new vehicle Michael Clayton, but at least it’s slick, superficial Hollywood hokum with minor but passable wentertainment value that doesn’t...

Soderbergh’s Soggy Casino Caper Could Use a Few More Dames

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:08:11 -0400

Ocean’s Thirteen
Running time 122 minutes
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon

For most of the innocent bystanders in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thirteen, gambling in Las Vegas looks like a win-win proposition. The film, from a screenplay by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, is a preposterous morality tale about 13 guys who are, supposedly, good at heart,...

Cate vs. Judi; Ed and Naomi

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Let the countdown begin. In addition to the rest of the holiday-season avalanche of awards announcements, 10-Best and 10-Worst lists, and last-minute openings to lure Christmas shoppers, moviegoers are now scratching their heads over two movies with titles similar enough to result in shopping-mall panic. Behold: in this corner, The Good German. In that corner, The Good Shepherd. They should show them on a double bill, call it The Good German Shepherd, and we...

Bono's African Hunger Tour on NBC

Mon, 22 May 2006 20:11:37 -0400

We're pathetic. Brian Williams is in Africa for NBC Nightly News to report on the AIDS crisis and the focus of his piece is Bono of U2, his visit. What a great man he is, what an investment he's made in Africa. Act I. Bono in his black shirt and rockstar spectacles, thumbwrestling with an African child. Act II. Williams and British Treasury Minister Gordon Brown—whom Williams touts as the likely successor to Tony...

My Wife's Hairdresser Turns the Tables on George Clooney

Tue, 09 May 2006 21:30:57 -0400

When last I visited the subject, my wife had dismissed my criticisms of George Clooney's political movies, saying I was being mean-spirited. Then fate rallied to my cause. My wife went to the hairdresser and told him about her soft spot for Clooney—and he took my side, and changed her mind. You might say that he did a number on her head inside and out. She was good enough to tell me about it,...

The Smarmies of the Night

Sun, 07 May 2006 20:00:00 -0400

Stephen Colbert was asked, just after the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 29, how the President and First Lady received his evening’s routine. He launched into an account of the pre-party they hosted before the dinner, the highlight of which was his opportunity to introduce one of his right-wing brothers to the President. The brother then turned to the Comedy Central star and said, “You’re the family martyr.” Right, but how did...

Don't Fight With Your Wife About George Clooney

Thu, 04 May 2006 15:11:31 -0400

In retrospect I think that I failed to understand a couple weeks back when my wife said that George Clooney was her type. My wife is good on personalities, and we were talking about actors so I started testing her on types. Spencer Tracy. "Short, angry, pugnacious." Humphrey Bogart. "Wounded. Secretive." Steve Martin. "Ironic, overly sensitive. He would be closest to you." De Niro. "Unfortunately he's become a bloviator." George Clooney. "He's my type." Then...

Syriana: Why It's Good, Why It's Awful

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 12:49:50 -0400

I saw the movie Syriana last night. Here are four good things about it: It is a serious effort to examine the roots of the clash between the west and the Middle East. Director Stephen Gaghan did a fine job of research and then translating that research into a dramatic story, showing that the American need for oil has helped to prop up Arab dictatorships. George Clooney is a superb actor in a moral...

Don't Look for George Clooney in the Flatiron

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:46:23 -0500

Lovin' on the fans! In case you're hoping to win Gawker's contest to get a cameraphone picture of George Clooney out in the city today, we can save you some trouble: When we reported earlier this week that City Bakery on West 18th Street would be closed for the filming of a movie, we narrowed down the possibilities to two: Music and Lyrics By (starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant) and Michael Clayton (with...

The Morning Read

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 03:40:24 -0500

One in five people who paid to sleep in the Clinton White House are paying to send Hillary back to the senate, The Post says. Fred Dicker notes in his column that evangelicals won't get in bed with KT's senate run. Dicker also notes that State GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik will get behind John Spencer. While Pataki was in a hospital bed, his PAC got $75,000 in donations from groups dealing with the state, The...

Oscar Wiles: A Roundup of Delights, Disappointments

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:00:00 -0500

The 78th Annual Academy Award ceremonies started off as a standoff between “niche” host Jon Stewart and the old, tired Academy audience with its nervously glazed smiles—a far cry from the perpetually hysterical banshees at Comedy Central to which Mr. Stewart is normally accustomed. But then the Comedy Central banshees never have to worry about roving cameras picking up their individual reactions. Mr. Stewart held on, however, to deliver some casual zingers later on...

Oscar Wiles: A Roundup of Delights, Disappointments

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:00:00 -0500

George Clooney, Cat Person

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:32:11 -0500

This weekend brings the third annual version of the New York Times Magazine's Hollywood Issue--er, ah, "Great Performers photographic portfolio." Because, y'know, it's not about cramming the magazine with photographs of celebrities; it's about cramming the magazine with photographs of artists. Or, as the magazine puts it, "Twenty-four portraits that limn the faces and bodies of 26 actors--some tabloid famous, others all but unknown--in ways that startle, seduce and reveal." Thus the self-loathing...

Weekend Roundup

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 04:46:00 -0500

You may think Buddhists are all centered and less indecisive than the rest of us. Not so for Richard Gere. Apparently, the actor cannot make up his mind over which Hamptons mansion to take, according to the New York Post. Also, George Clooney, Ivana Trump, and Michael Jordan have trouble in Vegas. Usher is searching for a $10 million downtown pad, according to New York magazine. Courtney Love’s Soho love nest is again on the...

The Transom

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Celeb Xmas Luv!

A heartstring-tugging family movie? A red-carpet premiere just before Christmas? That confluence can only mean that it’s time for The Transom to do its best impersonation of a celebrity gossip column. Saunter along with us as The Family Stone cast and friends share their own Christmas-time tales of awkward moments, alcohol-induced comas and horrible gifts. Hooray! (But first, a note: As the screening began, blond bombshell Rachel McAdams, her form molded in a...

The Transom

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Celeb Xmas Luv! A heartstring-tugging family movie? A red-carpet premiere just before Christmas? That confluence can only mean that it’s time for The Transom to do its best impersonation of a celebrity gossip column. Saunter along with us as The Family Stone cast and friends share their own Christmas-time tales of awkward moments, alcohol-induced comas and horrible gifts. Hooray! (But first, a note: As the screening began, blond bombshell Rachel McAdams, her form molded...

Say Goodbye to Hillywood?

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 08:58:00 -0500

Will Hillary's centrism alienate...Hollywood? That bastion of liberal politics, enthusiastically demonized by conservatives, came up in Pirro's latest fundraising letter, as reported by the New York Post: "Help me send our strongest message yet to Hillary Clinton, the national media and her Hollywood allies that the game is on." But if one actor has his way, the lights of Hillywood could dim as fast as Pirro's own candidacy. George Clooney, who London's...

Oscar Predictions: The Night All Gyllenhaals Will Be Ignored, Or, In Praise of Trannies

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 07:32:00 -0500

The Transom has seen a whole hell of a lot of movies this year and is a know-it-all and a total busy-body and sometimes pretends to be psychic at parties. So, why not jump in the Oscar pool? Best Actress Felicity Huffman beats out Judi Dench and Reese Witherspoon and Naomi, improbably, Watts. Maybe, maybe a nom for Renee Zellweger, who was awful good in that awful bad Ron Howard movie. Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman squeaks past...

George Clooney's Movie About TV Doesn't Get Ike Right

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:00:00 -0400

George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, from a screenplay by Mr. Clooney and Grant Heslov, comes to us as an austere, almost minimalist labor of love and political projection from Mr. Clooney, who clearly intends us to see parallels between the exorcised demons of McCarthyism over 50 years ago and our ordeal at the hands of flag-waving, Bible-thumping demagogues in and out of government today. As Yogi Berra was wont to say,...

Inside The Salmon Spread: Kunkeled, Dentonized, and De-Krensed

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:01:00 -0400

This week in the paper: The Transom, as a former employee of the profile subject, will not comment on Tom Scocca's profile of Nick Denton. However, The Transom will quote this paragraph:"I do find bizarre the level of interest in the finances of a private company," Mr. Denton instant-messaged. "A small private company.... Without an office, even." In his humility, Mr. Denton sounded like a man cruising the Jersey Turnpike on a motor scooter...

Ty's House

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 20:00:00 -0400

As the "team leader" on the ABC program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Ty Pennington, late of the Learning Channel's Trading Spaces, might be one of reality TV's few break-out stars. The Sunday night show is a smash, literally: Headed by the 39-year-old Mr. Pennington-a self-proclaimed "handy guy" with an impressive physique and a little soul patch under his lower lip-a group of eight telegenic designers charges into the bleak household of a disadvantaged family...

Paltrow Mines a Poet's Pain: A Surefire Oscar Nod for Sylvia

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Christine Jeffs' Sylvia , from a screenplay by John Brownlow, has been criticized for not being completely faithful to the known facts of the ill-fated love and marriage of Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) and Ted Hughes (1930-1998). But what there is onscreen, faithful or not, offers a wondrously illuminating artistic experience for its ideal audience-people like me who know a little but not much about the explosive Plath-Hughes fusion of unbridled poetic temperaments in a...

Mystic River Drifts Into Dark And Deep Waters

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 20:00:00 -0400

The more complex movies become in the commitments they demand of their audience, the harder it becomes to describe them for readers who might want to become potential members of that audience. Clint Eastwood's challenging and interesting new drama, Mystic River , is a good example. A dark and lurid exploration of violence, retribution and the inhuman cruelties committed under the masquerade of friendship, it is so complex it defies linear explanation. That should...

Take a Bow, George Clooney: Who Knew You Could Direct?

Sun, 19 Jan 2003 19:00:00 -0500

George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind , from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, based on the book by Chuck Barris, plays out as an amusing parody of A Beautiful Mind (2001). But whereas the delusional creatures of Russell Crowe's schizophrenic John Nash are little short of terrifying in the vivid, lifelike performances of Ed Harris as an imaginary C.I.A. superior and Paul Bettany as an imaginary college roommate, the possibly equally imaginary C.I.A....

Mooning Clooney Can't Save Solaris

Sun, 01 Dec 2002 19:00:00 -0500

As bad movies go, a dismal catastrophe called Solaris can't go away fast enough to suit me. This fiasco of infuriating pretentiousness and numbing incoherence is the first science-fiction film by the overrated Steven Soderbergh. Let's hope it's his last. Solaris , an elliptical tale of ghosts floating around in outer space, was already snored off the screen in a deadly 1972 Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky. What sane person would want to remake...

Madeline Saves Summer; Out of Sight 's George Clooney, Man of Two Expressions

Sun, 12 Jul 1998 20:00:00 -0400

Madeline Saves Summer

Finally, a summer bonbon for imaginative moppets: Madeline , the popular children's book illustrated and written in 1939 by the late, great Ludwig Bemelmans, has been brought to the screen with uncommon style and charm. Madeline, a Paris cousin to Kay Thompson's Eloise, is a spunky, mischievous and courageous orphan whose adventures have enthralled kids everywhere (selling more than 15 million copies to date, and still counting). She lives with 11...

Sleeping With the Enemy … Of Course, the Enemy Is Jennifer Lopez

Sun, 28 Jun 1998 20:00:00 -0400

Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight , from a screenplay by Scott Frank, based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, crackles and snaps on the screen as the kind of exhilarating entertainment that makes it all look easy. All you need is a good script from a good novel, with sharp, pungent dialogue, creative direction that doesn't sweat, and a brilliantly apt cast headed by out-of-favor George Clooney and rising star Jennifer Lopez as the...

James' Tenacious Heiress Enjoys a Quiet Triumph

Sun, 05 Oct 1997 20:00:00 -0400

Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square , from a screenplay by Carol Doyle, based on the novel by Henry James, should put the kibosh on the trend-spotters who assured us that James could never compete with Jane Austen as a source of grown-up film narratives. Washington Square is a splendid achievement, subtle yet forceful, ironic yet passionate, heartbreaking yet heroic. I have seen two theatrical productions and one previous movie based on Washington Square , each...

Not So Long-Toothed Russell Baker Semi-Retires After Sulzberger Nudge

Sun, 28 Sep 1997 20:00:00 -0400

For actor Alec Baldwin, the response is natural. "When someone pisses on your wife, you want to knock their teeth out," he told The Transom.

The co-star of the current release The Edge , Mr. Baldwin is well aware of the consequences to celebrities who cold-cock civilians. So when he read a piece in the Sept. 7 edition of The New York Times , by Bernard Weinraub, that he contended was unfair to his bride,...