Madonna at Tribeca Film Festival

New York Premiere of “I Am Because We Are” at BMCC, Tribeca Film Festival, New York City.
April 24, 2008

Even in celebrity weary New York City, where on Monday (04/21) night I saw Maria Sharapova play tennis with Billy Crystal in the middle of 53rd Street and 14 blocks uptown I photographed a movie screening with Bette Midler, Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker, Madonna still makes news. The platinum blond pulled up in a black SUV and hurried inside the BMCC Theater for the screening of “I Am Because We Are,” at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Gone were the pointed metal breastplates she wore in concert. Tonight the material girl was simply dressed in a short-sleeved brown patterned dress. The big M smiled briefly at the chorus of waiting fans outside the theater before heading into the scrum of photographers who waited inside the auditorium.


“I Am Because We Are” is a documentary directed by Nathan Rissman and produced by Madonna about Malawi orphans who have lost their parents or siblings to AIDS.

I found it strange that while Madonna was out promoting her documentary, Malawi's High Court delayed a hearing to finalize pop stars adoption of a boy from the southern African nation until May 15.

Cast & Credits
Director: Nathan Rissman Principal Cast: Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Desmond Tutu, Bill Clinton, Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Matthews Chikaonda, Madonna Executive Producer/Writer: Madonna Producers: Angela Becker, Madonna Associate Producer: Grant James Editor: Danny B. Tull

Bernadette Peters attended the screening of “I Am Because We Are”. Peters won a Tony Award her portrayal of Annie Oakley, in "Annie Get Your Gun" in 1999.

Then She Found Me Premiere

Loews Lincoln Square, New York
Release Date April 25, NY-LA

About the Film:
Philadelphia schoolteacher, April Epner, is having a midlife crisis. Her husband leaves, her adoptive mother dies, her biological mother, an eccentric talkshow host, shows up and turns her life upside down, and she starts a romantic relationship with the father of one of her students.

Cast:Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Lynn Cohen, Ben Shenkman
Director: Helen Hunt
Screenwriter: Alice Arlen, Victor Levin, Helen Hunt
Script: Novel Adaptation

Genre:
Comedy, Drama, Romance

Gala Tribute for Meryl Streep at Lincoln Center, New York

GALA TRIBUTE TO MERYL STREEP

It was a beautiful crisp New York evening, for the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute to the two-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep.
The crème de la crème of Hollywood stars came out for the gala tribute including, Glen Close, Uma Thurman, and Streep’s only daughter Mamie Gummer.

Meryl Streep won two Academy Awards for Kramer V Kramer (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982).

Fire

I was walking up Ninth Avenue on Thursday (04/03), at approximately 7.30 a.m. when I saw smoke coming from a residential building at the corner of 47th Street and Ninth Avenue. Fire engines arrived at the scene within seconds. The smoke quickly turned to flames as they leapt from a third story apartment window. Firefighters climbed up the outside fire escape and started rescuing residents from the apartment next to the fire.
One firefighter-battled flames coming from the third floor apartment window – thick grey smoke hindered his entrance. One resident was taken from the building on a stretcher as emergency crews performed CPR on him. His condition was not known at the time of the incident. The fire is under investigation.

A Walk Up Ninth Avenue / Hells Kitchen

I walk up Ninth Avenue everyday workday from Port Authority on 42nd Street to 56th Street. I am usually pre-occupied with re-living the past weekend or looking forward to the next weekend. Occasionally I think about the workday ahead of me. I pass umpteen buildings but I rarely take notice.

Today, I decided to live in the present and pay attention to the buildings around me, just in case I am called in to a police line-up and asked to identify one!

I noticed that my favorite coffee shop in Hoboken – Empire Coffee has a store between 42nd and 43rd Street on Ninth Avenue, but I don’t buy my morning coffee there because it’s still 15 blocks away from the office and my coffee will be cold by the time I get to work.

I pass a Tasty-Treat ice cream store that is conveniently located next door to a dentist’s office offering specials on white smiles.

The pavement is always splattered with the spills and stains like a Jackson Pollock painting. There are ice cream droppings and coffee spills, and scraps of food from the numerous restaurants that line both sides of the avenue.

On ‘recycle days’ there are small skyscrapers of cardboard boxes tied up with string lying flat on the ground where the pavement meets the street, as if waiting for a bus.

On 43rd Street and Ninth is a decrepit grocery store called Meatpacking.

Rudy’s Bar a New York landmark sits in the middle of 43rd the 44th Streets, where you can get bucket of beer for $7.75.

Amy’s Bread nestled between 46th and 47th Streets would not look out of place in small town in Vermont, specializes in specialty breads.

The run-down Three Aces barbershop next door to Amy’s Bread, with its hand painted sign and authentic red white and blue barber pole pays homage to the old Hells Kitchen.

Mazzalla Wholesale Fruit and Veg. warehouse, between 47th and 48th Streets, with its cardboard boxes of oranges left of the pavement outside, looks awkward opposite the Amish Market on the opposite side of the street, with maliciously laid orange fruit stand resembling a great orange pyramid from Egypt.