Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



(Mick Jagger and Ellen Barkin via style)

"Among fashion week celebrity encounters, it's hard to think of one as priceless as sharing the dance floor with Mick Jagger. That's what a handful of lucky partygoers got to do last night at Norwood, where the Stones frontman's belle, L'Wren Scott, hosted a dinner and after-party for her Spring collection ... Jagger floated up from the floor below, where he and Scott presided over a dinner table populated by the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Lorne Michaels, and a very animated Baz Luhrmann." (Style)



"Mick Jagger threw an intimate post-show dinner Thursday night for his lady love L’Wren Scott. The power couple invited friends including Ellen Barkin, Narciso Rodriguez, Jimmy Fallon, John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Jann Wenner and Lorne Michaels to Norwood for pasta and roast chicken. 'Don’t I look like I’m interested in fashion?' asked Michaels, who was dressed in Prada" ... Afterwards, guests headed upstairs for more drinks and dancing. Olivier Zahm, Terry Richardson and Jared Leto rolled in after midnight and were joined by Tommy Hilfiger, Lisa Airan and Dree Hemingway." (WWD)



"President Obama has chucked overboard another item of baggage bequeathed to him by George W. Bush: the missile-shield initiative that would deploy 10 interceptors in Poland and a sophisticated radar system in the Czech Republic. To say that this program chafed Russia is to say nothing: The Kremlin even thought it droll to wave Obama into office by announcing—on November 5, 2008!—that it would place nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, Russia’s long-suffering Westernmost enclave, as a countermeasure. And now, seemingly with no immediate provocation, the radar is intercepted and the interceptors are off the radar. What gives? Is Obama capitulating before the Kremlin? Should the hawks be vindicated in their vision of the president (or any Democrat, really) as a foreign-policy weakling? Hell, no. The beauty of this move is that it costs the U.S. absolutely nothing." (TheDailyBeast)



"Justin Timberlake is beyond good manners. At club Avenue the other night, a gorgeous girl told us: 'Justin Timberlake was so rude to me. I was waiting in line for 20 minutes, and of course, he was ushered right in.' When the tipster jokingly teased him by saying, 'Hey, you can't skip the line,' Timberlake turned to her and earnestly said, 'Oh, I absolutely can.' Later the gal asked for a photo and the superstar responded, 'I would, but I'm way too drunk.' Timberlake's spokeswoman had no comment." (PageSix)



"Looking to establish a broader presence in the 3D animated market, Sony got some sunny news Friday, with its 'Cloudy and a Chance of Meatballs' opening to $8.1 million on pace to finish the three-day weekend with a box-office-leading $30 million .. After a rather moribund first post-summer week, the studios are throwing a bit of everything into the pot in hopes of a rebound. And the forecast is looking good -- especially with the broad-skewing Sony animated family film 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs' opening in 1,730 3D locations (and 3,120 total venues). 'I think it’s going to be an enormous success,' a distribution official for a rival studio told TheWrap. 'The first time I saw that trailer play earlier in the summer, I kind of went, Hello, that works!' The film, released in 3,000 theaters, is tracking in the low $20 million range. Production costs, according to Sony officials, were 'under $100 million.'" (TheWrap)



"This week, the most senior U.S. official working with the United Nations in Afghanistan went on 'leave' out of frustration over the lack of response to fraud in the country's presidential election. The head of the European Union's election-monitoring commission said that as many as one-third of the votes President Hamid Karzai received were 'suspect' and should be investigated. And Afghans themselves continue to criticize not just the controversial election, but also the government's response to it. If this continues, it will fatally undermine the next Afghan government and the efforts of its international supporters. Steps should be taken immediately to avert a potentially violent legitimacy crisis. We observed Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential and provincial council elections in Kabul. Among us we have almost seven decades of experience in following Afghan politics, and we feel thoroughly alarmed by the lack of consensus on how to resolve the brewing crisis over the disputed elections. It is by now clear that there took place an industrial-scale effort to distort the election results and defraud the Afghan people. Should this effort succeed, the chance of the Barack Obama administration's stabilizing Afghanistan and the broader region will be grim indeed. No one should be in any doubt as to the gravity and explosiveness of the situation." (ForeignPolicy)



"Here's what I'm hearing now from deep inside Disney. That today's date to announce his exit was chosen by Dick Cook. That Bob Iger was at Wal-Mart all day so there wasn't an 11th-hour meeting with Cook. Disney insiders continue to insist Dick wasn't fired. Instead, as one of the sources stresses, "He had a choice, He just didn't see eye to eye with Bob on how to run the studio. Dick wanted to run the studio his way' ... I hear that Steven Spielberg is devastated by the news of Dick Cook's ouster. Dick was a major reason why Spielberg and Stacey Snider brought the new DreamWorks to Disney. "Steven worships Dick," an insider told me tonight. And now Cook's ouster may imperil a 4th Pirates Of The Caribbean movie." (DeadlineHollywoodDaily)



"Former U.S. President Bill Clinton predicted that Barack Obama would prevail in his bid to win passage of his health-care initiative and that some Republican senators likely would support the legislation. Clinton, the last president to attempt a broad overhaul of health care, said the Obama administration could win over Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both Republicans from Maine. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus introduced an $856 billion plan yesterday that would require just about all U.S. citizens to have insurance or pay a penalty. 'It would be good if he could get some Republican support,' Clinton, 63, said in an interview yesterday in New York, speaking of the Baucus bill. 'I believe he’ll get Snowe and he could get Collins and he might get three or four others.' Clinton said the legislation proposed by Baucus, a Montana Democrat, was as far-reaching as the Senate would accept." (Bloomberg)



"Tom DeLay may be Dancing with the Stars, but it’s President Barack Obama who’ll need some fancy footwork next week as he tries to dodge the dictators during his first-ever visit to the United Nations. Stung by GOP criticism of his Hugo Chavez grip-and-grin in April, Obama doesn’t need the political fallout from any more cozy encounters or smiling snapshots with anti-American rivals. 'Every president worries about Castro giving them a bear hug or Yassir Arafat giving them a bear hug—and every president and his staff take steps to avoid it,” said Nancy Soderberg, who served as the No. 2 U.S. official at the U.N. under President Bill Clinton. 'There’s always a very delicate orchestration of who he’s going to shake hands with.' 'It’s like the American Ballet Theater,' said one aide who planned U.N. trips for two former presidents. At this year’s U.N. meeting, Libyan President Muammar Qadhafi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are two leaders Obama would likely prefer not be on his dance card. Chavez, the fiery Venezuelan president, and Zimbabwe’s leader Robert Mugabe also will be there. But avoiding an insistent suitor at the bustling U.N. headquarters can be difficult – despite the painstaking efforts aides sometimes take to send a U.S. president down a different hallway, or into a different corner of a meeting hall to avoid unwelcome diplomatic advances. 'It’s inevitable that you’re going to be in the same room with people,' said John Bolton, U.N. Ambassador under President George W. Bush. 'It’s not like the Secret Service controls the floor of the Security Council. If Ahmadinejad just comes up to Obama and talks to him, who’s going to stand in the way?'" (Politico)