Susan Sarandon

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 »