Banke Hotel, Paris

As befits its name, former function and setting in Paris’s historic banking district near the Opéra Garnier, the recently opened Banke Hotel has all the grandeur and opulence that financial institutions used to have before small branch offices (not known for their attractive design – or any design at all, for that matter) began to mushroom in big cities. The round two-story lobby of Le Banke is something to behold, with its magnificent glass cupola, gold-trimmed black and red arches, and handsome mosaic floor. The hotel’s decorator, owner Jordi Clos, didn’t have to think twice about preserving all that. He has sparsely furnished the lobby with amusing pieces – “diamond”-studded black armchairs, curvy red sofas and one spectacular, enormous gold Chesterfield sofa – that are witty and up to date without distracting from the magnificence of the space. The Gilded Age theme is picked up again behind the bank’s former counters, in the bar, with its gold furnishings, and in the restaurant, where diners can rest their posteriors on gold banquettes or burnt-wood chairs by Dutch designer Maarten Baas.

Read the full article here.

Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddies

For a first date, things were going fairly well. We were at Megu, a pricey Japanese restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, eating perfectly cooked Kobe beef. My companion, a wealthy finance type, was telling me all about himself and posing questions that suggested he was interested in me. Then, matter-of-factly, he said, “Whether I met you on the site or at the Standard, you’d cost me at least 10 grand a month.”

The site he was referring to was Seeking Arrangement, an online network that pairs people possessing resources (“sugar daddies” and “sugar mommies”) with those, usually much younger, seeking them (“sugar babies”). I had become a member a few weeks earlier, partly as a social experiment and partly out of genuine desperation. I was frustrated with my job, which offered little upward mobility, and was thinking about quitting it to pursue my goal of becoming a full-time freelance writer. Holding me back were my lack of savings and my fear of sacrificing a regular paycheck. If I had a hefty allowance from a generous benefactor, though, I figured that I could take the leap comfortably.

Read the full article (web exclusive) in Vanity Fair here.

Rome Turns to the Art of Today

The Eternal City is better known for its ancient ruins and ornate frescoes than for contemporary art, but it's spending about $188 million in an attempt to catch up.

Next week, the art world will descend on Rome for the opening of its National Museum of 21st Century Arts, better known as the Maxxi, an institution designed by Zaha Hadid to be Italy's first state museum for contemporary art and architecture.

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal here.

My Favorite Weekend: Lemmy Kilmister

Ah, to be a single-name star, those anointed ones for whom no further identification is necessary. There's Elvis, there's Marilyn, there's Kobe — and then there's Lemmy. Motörhead's indefatigable frontman, Lemmy Kilmister, will be honored for his long and illustrious music career Saturday night on VH1 Classic's "Revolver Magazine's Golden Gods Award," where he'll also perform a killer version of "Ace of Spades" with Lemmy fans Slash and Dave Grohl. He's also working on a new album and beginning a world tour.

"For 36 years now, we've always been busy doing something," said the L.A. resident. "And now I'm the only original member. But I was fired out of every other band I was ever in, so I had to start my own group. They couldn't fire me out of that."

Read the full article in Los Angeles Times here.

Joaquin Phoenix documentary

It’s far from the Joaquin Phoenix you’re used to seeing onscreen: snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, treating his assistants abusively and rapping badly. And not, apparently, playing a role — or was he? (...) In some scenes in the film, the 35-year-old Phoenix is trying to get Sean “Diddy” Combs to produce Phoenix’s rap album, but the hip-hop impresario is not terribly interested. Another sequence shows Ben Stiller approaching Phoenix about starring in writer-director Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” but Phoenix is barely interested.

Interview with Bret Easton Ellis

Over the course of six novels and one book of short stories, Bret Easton Ellis has put together one of the most entertaining, fascinating, and fucked-up bodies of work in contemporary literature.

The release of Less Than Zero (1985) saw Ellis painted by the media—with varying degrees of admiration and disgust—as both an enfant terrible and the voice of his generation. Written in a stark, minimalist style that calmly and blandly relays a story of disaffection and degradation in Los Angeles, the book seems to me to be the ultimate statement on privileged 80s teenhood.

The Rules of Attraction (1987) abandoned Less Than Zero’s spare writing, replacing it with dense, stream-of-consciousness prose in a novel of shifting narration. The disaffectedness was still fully intact, but here it was richer and headier. This book is also the perfect lampoon of the pretension and partying and ridiculousness that happens at liberal-arts colleges.

Read the interview here.

The original Playboy Mansion for sale

Sure, everyone has heard about the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, for this mythical estate is known for hedonism where models and moguls engage in their ritual mating dance, however, the original Playboy Mansion in Chicago was bought by the Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner in 1959. So, before the naked women started gathering at the famed Playboy palace of Beverly Hills, Hefner threw parties here in Chicago during the ’60s and early ’70s before he donated the property to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1974. While all this becomes history, still the iconic importance of the mansion can’t be overlooked, and for those who would love to relive what Hefner did, this exceptional unit at the Playboy Mansion with private patio is listed for sale at $2.9 million. Offering a 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath unit that overlooks the mansion’s gardens and is in the heart of Chicago, this exceptional unit features beautiful architectural details throughout. Better check out the image gallery below:


Read more: http://www.bornrich.org/entry/the-original-playboy-mansion-up-for-grabs/#ixzz0nyo87F9u

Charlotte Lewis in Playboy

Charlotte Lewis

Charlotte Lewis, who starred in the Polanski film Pirates, spoke at a news conference Friday saying “he (Roman Polanski) sexually abused me in the worst possible way when I was 16 years old.”

“In addition to the fact that both myself and his previous victim were underage, I believe that there are other similarities in the crime that he committed.”

She continued, “Mr. Polanski knew that I was only 16 years old when he met me and forced himself upon me in his apartment in Paris. He took advantage of me and I have lived with the effects of his behavior ever since it occurred. All I want is justice.”

[via wwttd.com]

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Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made

Ten books in one tell the fascinating tale of Kubrick’s unfilmed masterpiece

Tucked inside of a carved-out book, all the elements from Stanley Kubrick's archives that readers need to imagine what his unmade film about the emperor might have been like, including a facsimile of the script. This collector's edition is limited to 1,000 numbered copies.

For 40 years, Kubrick fans and film buffs have wondered about the director's mysterious unmade film on Napoleon Bonaparte. Slated for production immediately following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick’s "Napoleon" was to be at once a character study and a sweeping epic, replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras. To write his original screenplay, Kubrick embarked on two years of intensive research; with the help of dozens of assistants and an Oxford Napoleon specialist, he amassed an unparalleled trove of research and preproduction material, including approximately 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. No stone was left unturned in Kubrick's nearly-obsessive quest to uncover every piece of information history had to offer about Napoleon. But alas, Kubrick’s movie was not destined to be: the film studios, first M.G.M. and then United Artists, decided such an undertaking was too risky at a time when historical epics were out of fashion.

TASCHEN’s sumptuous, limited-edition tribute to this unmade masterpiece makes Kubrick’s valiant work on "Napoleon" available to fans for the first time. Herein, readers can peruse a selection of Kubrick’s correspondence, various costume studies, location scouting photographs, research material, script drafts, and more, each category of material in its own book. Kubrick’s final draft is reproduced in facsimile while the other texts are tidily kenneled into one volume where they dare not interfere with the visual material. All of these books are tucked inside of—or shall we say hiding in?—a carved-out reproduction of a Napoleon history book.

The text book features the complete original treatment, essays examining the screenplay in historical and dramatic contexts, an essay by Jean Tulard on Napoleon in cinema, and a transcript of interviews Kubrick conducted with Oxford professor Felix Markham. The culmination of years of research and preparation, this unique publication offers readers a chance to experience the creative process of one of cinema’s greatest talents as well as a fascinating exploration of the enigmatic figure that was Napoleon Bonaparte.

*Includes exclusive access to searchable/downloadable online research database: Kubrick's complete picture file of nearly 17,000 Napoleonic images*

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