At Monday's Costume Institute gala, Christina Ricci reportedly left when she learned that she wasn't seated with her boyfriend and Speed Racer co-star, Kick Gurry; Jeff Zucker avoided Project Runway stealer, Harvey Weinstein, on the red carpet. [P6]

Rudy Giuliani shops for pants at TJ Maxx and his wife helps him! [P6]  read more »

To the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala on Monday, May 5, themed “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” Gossip Girl star Blake Lively wore black gloves and a snug black Ralph Lauren gown involving feathers. She said that her favorite superhero was “Spider-Man. Cause he’s awesome! He gets to swing around, and, I don’t know....” Accompanied by her onscreen (and rumored offscreen) boyfriend, actor Penn Badgley, Ms. Lively had come straight from a photo shoot and had done her hair in the car. “I have no idea what I look like,” she said, adding: “I’ve always seen pictures growing up, being a teenager, and thought, ‘I’d love to go to that, a night just to dress up in ball gowns.’ And here I am!”

Here everyone was, at least in fashion and showbiz and society circles. Oh, to have the superpower of invisibility and be able to flit up the stairs and into the great halls beyond!

Vogue editor and hostess Anna Wintour was the first to arrive, at 6:33 p.m., wearing a Chanel gown adorned with what appeared to be seahorse tails and accompanied by daughter Bee Shaffer, who required two men, including the formidable Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, to carry the train of her voluminous blue Nina Ricci dress up the stairs.  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 »