Sharon Stone Nabs Nobel Prize | David Lynch: ‘Empire’ Strikes Back | Sting Gets Classical; Wynonna Flies In
Sharon Stone Nabs Nobel Prize Gig
Sharon Stone is going to cohost the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 11, and no one deserves it more.
This is considered a plum job, previously held by Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julianne Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Oprah Winfrey and several other Hollywood stars.
Stone, more than most, really deserves this accolade. Her fundraising for amfAR is without peer, as is her devotion to the cause of finding money for AIDS research.
Now the Nobel committee just has to find a nice guy to cohost the show with her. And sorry, Mel Gibson is out of the question.
This is shaping up to be Stone’s year. Her performance in “Bobby,” Emilio Estevez‘s film about the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel, is going to win her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Sharon plays the hotel’s hairdresser, who is also married to hotel manager, played by William H. Macy. In many ways, she is the anchor of the multiple-character drama, and she does her job with unexpected skill.
Stone was on her way to accolades like this last year, when she costarred with Bill Murray in Jim Jarmusch‘s “Broken Flowers.” But her part was a tad too small, and the film — Jarmusch’s best work in years — fell by the wayside. Maybe it was just a warming up, though, for “Bobby” and her role as Miriam.
Stone told me the other night that she brought in her own makeup woman — Tricia Sawyer — whose previous jobs for Stone included “Casino” and “Basic Instinct,” among others. The result was that Stone — who looks pretty ravishing in real life — plays a character who wears her life on her face.
“I’m through with all those other movies,” Sharon told me. “Now it’s just movies and parts for me, like this one. There’s nothing else to do.”
In the meantime, Stone has some other problems. On Friday night at the Robert Kennedy Memorial Dinner, she was accompanied by one of the most obtrusive and least gracious security guards I’ve encountered in some time. The word is that La Stone may have an overly enthusiastic fan out there.
David Lynch: ‘Empire’ Strikes Back
I saw as much as I could of David Lynch‘s “Inland Empire” yesterday before calling it quits around the 135-minute mark. While the screening at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall was full, the audience was incredibly quiet. This may have been because many of them were asleep.
“Inland Empire” is the most boring movie I’ve seen since Gus Van Sant‘s interminable “Gerry.” And that’s saying something.
“Inland Empire,” which still has no distributor and probably never will, is an incoherent mess, with an incomprehensible plot and characters that are astonishingly uninteresting.
I think Laura Dern is the lead and that Justin Theroux plays her love interest. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. At different times, Harry Dean Stanton, Diane Ladd, Mary Steenburgen and Jeremy Irons all rolled by on screen, but I couldn’t tell you what they were doing or why.
Lynch has never been easy. His most accessible work — “Blue Velvet” — remains mysterious. “Twin Peaks,” which I loved on TV, turned out to have no ending or particular meaning. It was just weird.
More recently, “Mulholland Drive” was kind of interesting for about an hour, then also became sort of a psychedelic disaster. And I will never forget people walking out of screenings of “Wild at Heart,” starring Nicolas Cage and Dern, during scenes that involved vomit.
“Inland Empire” — which I thought was a reference to Los Angeles, but I may be wrong — also includes pieces from a short movie Lynch made in 2002 called “Rabbits.” Weird, yes: These are actors with rabbit heads who seem to be performing in a TV show with an audience.
It looks like Lynch may have just cut up pieces of “Rabbits” and stuck them in “Empire.” Who knows? Who cares? Lynch’s brand of surrealism eventually becomes endless self-gratification — sometime around the 60-minute mark — since there is no point. Seeing Dern throwing up blood in a back alley is not my idea of a good time, no matter how “avant garde” it’s supposed to be.
Maybe “Inland Empire” will go straight to video. The version we saw yesterday wasn’t even on film — it was shot on video and not transferred to 35 mm. I suppose there’s no money for that.
I also wonder if Lynch can clear the songs that are included, including “The Locomotion,” which is sung for no reason by a group of prostitutes.
The movie does include yet another raw performance by Lynch-ette Grace Zabriskie, whom you’ll remember as Laura Palmer‘s mother from “Twin Peaks.” Her shrieking at the start of the movie is like a clarion call to all Lynch fans: Here we go again.
Sting Gets Classical; Wynonna Flies In
Sting performed numbers from his lute album “Songs from the Labyrinth” last night for XM Radio subscribers at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room. This is a gorgeous room where performers have the city skyline as a backdrop.
Sting played several numbers accompanied by lutenist Edin Karamazov, all inspired by 16th-century poet John Dowland. He threw in “Fields of Gold” and “Message in a Bottle,” as well, and also played on the lute for a sold-out audience that included his wife Trudie Styler, actress Jane Curtin and dozens of rabid fans.
Dowland’s tragic style of music and lyrics suit Sting’s voice all right, and last night he never sounded better.
Fielding a question from one audience member, the singer-songwriter even defended melancholy as a much-needed emotion and separated it from depression. The answer got a huge ovation from the crowd — only in New York, kids. Sting appears Tuesday on the “Today” show and soon in a PBS special …
Wynonna Judd is my new hero. After playing a show in Houston on Sunday night, she flew to New York Monday and appeared on “Late Show with David Letterman” to sing her duet with my pal, Sam Moore, on “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”
Then Wynonna went home to Nashville, where presumably she’s sleeping before hitting the road to promote her brand new “A Classic Christmas” album, released Tuesday (check out her soulful version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — the girl can sing!)
During rehearsals, she told me a funny story about beating up younger sister Ashley Judd when they were kids. I would tell you the details, but Wynonna added: “If you print that, I’ll sue you!” Well, we don’t want that. But you can imagine what it was like …
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