Susan Sarandon

As election night neared, New York’s power elite—but also its creative class, its political class, its partying class, lurched to find the center of gravity for election night.

The premonition that New York’s obvious choice, Barack Obama, was likely to win was not the smallest consideration here.

And then there were those who attempted to provide the city with its own massive town square, to hold election night, for the first time in eight years, as a massive, citywide, public event.

ABC did Times Square, NBC of course did Rockefeller. Harvey Weinstein and Georgette Mosbacher cultivated a list, checked it twice, added a bunch of plus ones and basically accounted for every boldface name in town.  read more »

Susan Sarandon and her family attended tonight's Indecision 2008, co-anchored by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Milling around near the kitchen in the early part of the night--where CNN played on a and popcorn, Doritos and 100 calorie packs of of Chips Ahoy were available for snacking--Ms. Sarandon wondered outloud if anything had happened, as states began to be called for the candidates.

She was wearing New Balance sneakers, and a black and white striped shirt. Her partner, Tim Robbins, wore jeans and a gray coat. Ms. Sarandon munched on Kettle Corn and chatted up other backstage visitors.

A golden retriever trotted through, following some staffer.  read more »

We learned that Michael Bloomberg and Vera Wang are intimidating enough without costumes.

Kelly Killoren Bensimon is not a housewife, she just plays one on TV. 

We went underground with some models at the opening of the Plaza's new mall.  

Susan Sarandon voiced her fears about the impending Bloomberg dictatorship. 

We got to know Anne Slowey at the Stylista premiere. 

"From what I understand, New Yorkers aren't approving of a third term of [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg," said actress Susan Sarandon at the U.S. debut of the French clothing store Comptoir des Cotonniers in Soho on Thursday, Oct. 23. "I'll be interested to see who the opposition is because if they are mad at Bloomberg, they probably stand a very good chance of getting in."

Ms. Sarandon was accompanied by her 23-year-old daughter, actress Eva Amurri. The mother and daughter were invited to the store opening because the brand has focused on marketing to mother and daughter shoppers, often featuring real-life mothers and daughters in their ad campaigns.  read more »

On opening night of "No Why," a show of 50 photographs taken by Jean-Louis Blondeau of his friend, high-wire walker Philippe Petit, the National Arts Club was packed, uncomfortably, with attendees. Susan Sarandon was there, to introduce Mr. Blondeau in a speech. So were Tim Robbins, Cuba Gooding Jr. and the guy who replaced Jesse Martin on Law & Order. Given the size of the crowd, you'd have expected Petite to show—perhaps on a unicycle, wire in hand. He did not.

The photos, ranging in date from the late '60s into the '70s, follow the pair on their run of clandestine tightrope walks way, way up there on Notre Dame and Sydney Harbor Bridge. Their run, and friendship, ended with Petit walking across the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a feat of daring that was recently dusted off in the documentary Man on Wire.

For those who haven't seen the film: sometime in the early morning of Aug. 7th, 1974, after months of planning, Mr. Petit, Mr. Blondeau and a couple of accomplice friends conspired, successfully, to string a high wire across the towers. Mr. Petit, a street performer with an inspired, far-away stare, walked the wire that morning, a quarter of a mile above traffic. Blondeau took the photos, feet planted firmly on the ground, or a roof.  read more »

We've all done it. One minute you get innocently sucked into watching The Breakfast Club on VH1. The next thing you know it's 5 a.m. and you're still only halfway through that Lord of the Rings marathon you stumbled upon on Encore. And as much as you feel cracked out and like less of a human being for sitting in front of a TV screen for so long, you just can't stop watching!

No big deal for Suresh Joachim of Toronto and Claudia Wavra of Germany, who, the Associated Press is reporting, probably just broke the world record for continuous movie-watching after tuning in to 57 consecutive films in 123 hours in "a plastic-glass house" in Times Square.  read more »

DENVER—"There's my girl!" Chevy Chase bellowed as Madeline Albright walked into the backroom of the Vanity Fair-Google party on Thursday, August 28. The towering comedian, who was clad in a blazer, T-shirt and jeans, bent down to embrace his old friend. They discussed plans to get together—Mr. Chase promising an e-mail from "his people"—mugged for the cameras, and agreed that Barack Obama had nailed his speech. "If we're seen together, you're in trouble," joked the funnyman.

After a hearty laugh, conversation returned to the speech. Ms. Albright said that while the presidential candidate is incredibly charming in person, she was also pleased with the "diplomacy" of the speech.  read more »

Last night the much-discussed Hollywood contingent here in Denver, who have been lending their "visibility" to myriad events and causes all over town, congregated in the V.I.P. section of the Black Eyed Peas concert. Members of the Creative Coalition's hard-working band of entertainers—Alan Cumming, Tim Daly, Anne Hathaway, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, Josh Lucas, Matthew Modine, Susan Sarandon—were joined by various showbiz colleagues including Jessica Alba and Hayden Panettiere in the balcony area at the Fillmore Auditorium, as Fergie & Co. shook their rumps on stage below.

Meanwhile, local nightclub impresario Jesse Morreale wondered if the glamorous crowd would have enough energy to return for another after after party at the Rockbar.  read more »

DENVER—After hosting a lunch in support of helping diabetes patients at the restaurant Panzano, the Creative Coalition gathered its merry band of New York-based celebrities into a back section of the restaurant to get on with the showbiz-oriented non-profit's lesser known agenda this year: a documentary, called Poliwood, featuring their historic voyage to the Democratic National Convention, directed by Barry Levinson.

The scene in the backroom featured a pep talk from a frumpy looking guy with a bad toupee on refining the rhetoric of Democratic talking points, followed by a Q&A among the actors in attendance, including Susan Sarandon, Anne Hathaway, Josh Lucas, Richard Schiff, Giancarlo Esposito and others.  read more »

The hair-product maven John Paul DeJoria, dressed in a black suit with a black T-shirt underneath, was assessing the hair of Denver during a luncheon hosted by the Creative Coalition this afternoon at Panzano, the downtown restaurant.

“The people of Denver have the nice looking hair,” said Mr. DeJoria, who is the co-founder of Paul Mitchell hair-care products. “I wish they would grow it a little bit longer. I think this is an excellent market for Paul Mitchell.”

Denver isn't such an easy city to get around, especially when the Pepsi Center belches forth its thousands into a relatively small network of streets to fight for cabs.  read more »

Now that we're into the second day of the Democratic National Convention, it's time for a poll of all that "celebrity power" that was supposed to follow Barack Obama to Denver.

While Paris Hilton has not shown up yet (much to the disappointment of John McCain supporters), here are some noteworthy names that attended events during the first day of the convention as put together by Associated Press, with a little additional research by the Daily Transom:

Danny Glover showed up at the Creative Coalition event wearing a Martin Luther King Jr. T-shirt under his blazer.  read more »

Attendees expected to attend the Democratic Convention in Denver include Kanye West, Wyclef Jean, N.E.R.D., Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ed Norton Jr. [WashingtonPost]

Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are fighting to keep St. Vincent's hospital from expanding onto West 12th Street, three blocks from their home. [P6]

Brooke Shields says she got very emotionally involved with the Project Runway contestants when she filmed her upcoming guest judge spot. [The Cut]

The 10 finalists for this year's CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund were announced late yesterday and included: Richard Chai, Alexander Wang, Irene Neuwirth, and Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock of Vena Cava.  read more »

SPEED RACER
Running Time 129 minutes
Written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski
Starring Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, John Goodman

Even for summer trash, this abomination by the creatively challenged Wachowski brothers is a train wreck so bad that words literally fail me, but I will say it looks like somebody ate 25 cafeteria Jello-O congealed salads and then threw up all over the sets. Happily, I was out of town for Iron Man and have no intention of catching up, but slashing whatever I.Q. points I saved was Speed Racer, an obnoxious two-hour-and-15-minute tribute to noise and Fiestaware from the muttonheads who polluted the planet with the Matrix trilogy; it’s pretty much in a garbage pile of its own. Summer isn’t even officially here yet, but for me Speed Racer fires the opening shot for what threatens to be a three-month school-vacation Marvel-comics festival of violence, stupidity, junk and unsaturated fat, aimed at morons with I.Q.’s of 40 and under, and starring assorted hulks, Spider-Men, Batmen, ninjas, robots, superheroes that are anything but super, and Adam Sandler. Few summer movies promise to be more nauseating than Speed Racer, unless you count the one with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as siblings (you need a barf bag just for the trailers).  read more »

O.K., temperatures may only sporadically hitting the 70s, but summer blockbuster season is officially here. Iron Man opened last weekend with a whopping $104.2 million stateside and another 96.8 million overseas ($201 million all together in its first five days). That beats even what the studio was hoping for (a mere $90 million domestically) and out there in Hollywoodland, executive types are thrilled that all the bemoaning and hand-wringing over the death of the box office was premature.  read more »