New York, April 29, 2009 – The slew of famous folks who turned out for the Hot Pink Party, a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, did not take that color to heart.  While host Liz Hurley did, in fact, don a bright pink evening gown, and Evelyn Lauder wore a pink wrap over her black dress, and Tommy Hilfiger’s bride Dee Ocleppo wore pale pink, the others all took liberties.  Jane Krakowski and Donna Karan both showed up in bright orange – at least it was spring-like.  And the men, including Hurley’s husband Arun Nayar and peacocks like Michael Kors, Alan Cumming and Christian Siriano, went strictly for grey or black.

New York, April 27, 2009 – It was difficult for everyone at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s tribute to Tom Hanks.  Finding anything to say about the movie star is almost impossible.  “It’s going to be tough tonight,” John Patrick Shanley warned us early in the evening.  “Because he is sort of uniformly a great guy, does his work, never freaks out,” Shanley said. “Anecdotally, he may fall a little short.”

Of the multiple projects they’ve worked on together, Steven Spielberg says Hanks never so much as showed up late or hung over.  Charlize Theron insists that while directing her in That Thing You Do, Hanks never once lost his cool.

Tom Hanks really is that nice guy he seems to be. 

Nora Ephron summed it up: “It’s pretty depressing because then what are you going to say?”  Ephron said if she had a funny anecdote, she’d be saying it in her speech later in the evening. 

Instead, Ephron invented an alternative life story, telling the crowd that Hanks was actually born Pinchus Greenblatt on Long Island, and spoke only Yiddish.  “He realized that since there were already too many Jewish actors – Dustin, Paul Newman, Cary Grant, Whoopi Goldberg – he would have to find another way,” Ephron said in her tribute speech.

So you get the drift – Hanks is a great guy, and roasting him is not easy.  So Julia Roberts solved this dilemma, taking the stage with: “All right, it’s late and I’m paying my babysitter overtime and I have to pee, so...everybody f---ing likes you.”

Atlantic City, April 25-26, 2009 – This weekend Gossip Girl star Jessica Szohr turned into a Jersey girl when she hit Atlantic City’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. 

This was Szohr’s first time in A.C., but she was so busy at the hotel, we doubt she spent much time on the boardwalk.  She got in some retail therapy at the Shoppes at the Water club, and bought a little black dress and matching BCBG heels that she wore to dinner at Izakaya.  Later Szohr hit the dance floor at mur.mur, the Borgata’s nightclub, before hitting the sack. (But where was her guy Ed Westwick?)

On Sunday she again skipped the beach in favor of relaxation at the Water Club Immersion Spa.

New York, April 23, 2009 – Obsessed is Beyonce’s first non-singing movie role, and at the premiere everyone was speculating about what she would wear.  Even co-star Jerry O’Connell was curious.  “I’m very excited to see what Beyonce is going to be wearing tonight, because I know she a lot of times wears things from House of Dereon, but lately has been wearing things from other houses,” O’Connell said, to our astonishment. “I’m sure she’s going to look amazing,” he added.  O’Connell explained that he gets exposed to fashion thanks to his wife, Rebecca Romijn, a former model.  Romijn was off shooting a movie in Canada, so couldn’t be at the premiere. 

And then, we nearly died when B showed with a train trailing behind her Balmain dress, that she said she found on Style.com and had to have. 

Anyway, B took the role seriously, said director Steven Shill.  “I think the result came out really well.  She made my job really easy, I have to say,” Shill told us.  Ali Larter stalks Beyonce’s husband, played by Idris Elba, and the two women have a cataclysmic knock-down fight.  “We were shooting this fight scene for like a week,” Larter said.  It’s a catfight, and Larter says both actresses got equally bruised up while shooting.

New York, April 22, 2009 – After setting his last several movies in Europe, that quintessential neurotic New Yorker Woody Allen has come home, both literally and figuratively, for his newest, Whatever Works.  This movie is set in New York again, and Mr. Allen debuted it as the opening feature of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.  Moreover, Allen appeared at the premiere at the Ziegfeld theater; he is known to shun red-carpet appearances. 

Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood star, and Patricia Clarkson, who was also in Allen’s last effort, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, returns.  (However, the prolific director isn’t putting down professional roots in the Big Apple – his next flick is reportedly slated to shoot in London.) 

Woody wasn’t the only surprise on the red carpet.  An eclectic group of guests included Uma Thurman, Debra Messing, Melissa Leo and Mary-Kate Olsen and Tribeca Film Festival honchos Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal.

Additional photos by Joy E. Scheller

New York, April 21, 2009 - Vanity Fair again kicked off the Tribeca Film Festival with a dinner at the State Supreme Courthouse in lower Manhattan.  VF editor Graydon Carter has been busy opening his new restaurant, Monkey Bar, which he insists is not going after the Michael’s crowd.  “We’re just going after people with jobs at this point,” Carter quipped.

Carter played host, along with Robert De Niro and Ron Perelman, to a crowd of New York and Hollywood power brokers.  Christopher Walken, Regis Philbin, Larry David, Diane von Furstenberg, architect Richard Meier and CBS chief Les Moonves and his wife Julie Chen were among those schmoozing and talking film at the party.  Bono bounded up the stairs and quickly melted into the crowd. 

Kanye West chatted with Spike Lee in one quiet corner during pre-dinner cocktails, and we found Fran Lebowitz and Andre Leon Talley conferring in another.  Debra Messing insists that festival founder De Niro is not intimidating. I was at a very small dinner at someone’s home, he was charming and approachable,” Messing said.  Her Starter Wife co-star Chris Diamantopoulos has also met De Niro, and he agrees. “I didn’t find him scary; I found him actually very, very shy,” he said. 

We’ll take their word for it.