2009 celeb style retrospective

Here are some of my favorite looks from 2009. I'm sure there are many I'm missing!

Are there any that you love or would add? Any trends you noticed this year?

In 2009, Michelle Obama kicked off a new era, experimenting with color, shapes and patterns and always looked great! I think she was the most influential in terms of style for the year. Many of her looks could be translated into something wearable and affordable. I always love what she wears. Check out First Lady of Style & NY Mag's The Cut for a retrospective.

Remember Sarah Jessica Parker in this vintage 1980s Emanuel Ungaro plaid getup? Loved it, even though it looked like it kept falling off. She kicked off the new year just right. Thanks to The Style Collective for the image.

Kate Winslet won the Oscar for The Reader and looked stunning in Yves Saint Laurent.

M.I.A was memorable at the Grammys.

2009 saw the release of the docu The September Issue. Anna Wintour and Sienna Miller looked great at the premiere in Thakoon and Prada respectively.

Breakout star Carey Mulligan also represented Thakoon at September Issue premiere.

Charlotte Gainsbourg at Cannes.

Also at Cannes, Eva Longoria. Though, I'm not sure why she was there? But the Atelier Versace was gorgeous nevertheless.

Kanye had a rough year but I still think he's creative a male artist with the most interesting style. No one can pull of denim jackets and bowties like him!

Little Edie unlocked a lot of style inspiration for Drew Barrymore.

Lady GaGa pulled out a lot of stops with flamboyant outfit changes at the VMAs.

The 2009 Costume Institute Gala at the Met brought out some incredibly awesome frocks. Thanks Le Chic Batik for image!

Iman at Glamour Women of the Year awards in Jason Woo.

Michelle Williams looking lovely at the Independent Film Awards.

Loved this geometric Versace dress (with hints of mint green!) from Mad Men's January Jones on the Emmy red carpet.

A sampling of the many looks of Rihanna.

this land is your land

Up in the Air isn't perfect, but by dealing with how we live now, something that most movies with a Hollywood star eschew, it's an enormously refreshing and moving comedy. Trekking one American airport and Hilton hotel to the next, with light luggage and spiffy charcoal suits, Ryan Bingham fires employees so their corporations don't have to while occasionally giving trite motivational speeches at business conferences. His motto is that life should move along breezily (as the film does in its sparkling first half)--not to be slowed down by accouterments and personal relationships ("the slower we move, the faster we die"). Ryan's cool, controlled life is slowly unraveled by three events: the arrival of a plucky, but naive, new hire (Anna Kendrick), his sister's impending wedding and a romance with his flirtatious doppelganger ("just picture you with a vagina," she says, played with perfection by Vera Farmiga).

The film is terrifically cast. George Clooney continues to be Hollywood's best man, our Don Draper/GQ archetype: flat, never ruffled, self-sufficient and hot in a suit. Yet, with this role, he manages to align gloss with gravitas. It's his best performance. Newcomer Kendrick stomps into the film as the ultimate HR horror show. With her boxy suit and uber-tight pontytail, she is whip smart and robotically efficient with all things technical but hopelessly juvenile with emotional matters. To watch these two characters spar and subtly (and with believability) change into human beings is a wonderful gift from the actors.


The travel/road movie is worn territory--wandering about before a family event (weddings, births, child beauty pageants) yet Up in the Air is distinctly placed in the heat of the recession. At the end of this decade, with outsourcing and technology rapidly replacing human interaction, the country's economic future has never been so uncertain (and so grim). Director Jason Reitman (Juno) gives incredibly moving moments to non actors, recently laid off (from jobs in St. Louis and Detroit), to say what they had said and what they had wanted to say. Some critics have called it exploitation, especially when intertwined with the cool glamour of Clooney, and yet I can't imagine how Reitman could've done it differently or better. How rare it is for a film to be topical without being preachy. Unlike the corporations portrayed and much of what Hollywood coldly delivers as "product," here is a film, chock-full of contradictions, that dares to show the importance of human connection. It's by no means a crowd-pleaser, but winningly Capra-esque.

-Jeffery Berg

top 10 singles of 2009

I'm ready to say goodbye to 2009.

Here are 10 favorite singles of the year. What are some of yours?

1 . My Girls & Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE "MY GIRLS" HD from KNOWMORE on Vimeo.

2. Daniel - Bat For Lashes

Daniel from Bat for Lashes on Vimeo.

3. Seven - Fever Ray

Seven from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

4. Love Etc. - Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys - Love etc. from PSB Fan on Vimeo.

5. Bad Romance & Poker Face - Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga -Bad Romance from Jordan Baylor on Vimeo.

Lady Gaga from Kriztal on Vimeo.

6. Sweet Dreams - Beyonce

Beyonce - Sweet Dreams from Sasha oh on Vimeo.

7. The Fear - Lily Allen

Lily Allen - The Fear from Joshwa on Vimeo.

8. Happy Up Here & The Girl and the Robot (f/Robyn) - Royksopp

Happy Up Here from Auditory Stimulation on Vimeo.

The Girl And The Robot from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

9. Pretty Wings - Maxwell

Maxwell x Pretty Wings from Kvein on Vimeo.

10. Rockin' That Thang - The-Dream

The Dream - Rockin That Thang from Nashima on Vimeo.

i love you moore

Julianne Moore turns 49 today.

She is a fantastic actor... with a lot of duds on her resume.

Her worst moments are not because of lack of skill. Miscast in Robert Altman's Cookies Fortune and underwritten in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, attempting to fill the shoes of Jodie Foster's iconic Clarice in Hannibal and Vera Miles in the Psycho remake, at times Moore can look visibly uncomfortable.

And yet when Julianne is given a great role to tackle, her performance has a quiet, devastating power. This winter she's bound to impress again in Tom Ford's A Single Man.

Here are five great performances by Moore.

Amber Waves in Boogie Nights

As a the coke-addicted porn star, Moore is at turns tender, maternal and sometimes callous. It's a standout performance in finely acted ensemble.

Laura Brown in The Hours

When it was announced Michael Cunningham's novel would be a film, I wondered how such an interior character like Laura Brown be cinematic? She reads, bakes a cake, reads, throws the cake away, and bakes another cake. And yet, Julianne Moore's Laura Brown is a layered, eloquent characterization. Stephen Daldry wisely decided against having an older actress play Mrs. Brown in a final scene, instead trusting Moore's gifts. Bearing heavy (and daring) aged make-up, Moore delivers a haunting monologue of regret. In another scene standout, she communicates with her husband from another room while weeping, but from the pitch of her voice, she sounds perfectly fine.

Cathy Whitaker in Far From Heaven

Moore's other 1950s housewife is so removed from Laura Brown in The Hours that it's a marvel she delivered these two remarkable performances in the same year. Chipper and naive, she uncovers the dark secrets of her husband while falling into a deep (and taboo) interracial relationship with her gardener. Moore's Cathy is a touching and unnerving deconstruction of 1950s myths and Douglas Sirk melodramas. Like Todd Haynes's film, she is simultaneously antiquated and modern--an amazing feat.

Carol White in Safe

Another star vehicle from Todd Haynes, their first collaboration together, Moore plays a woman who develops a severe sensitivity to chemicals. The film is slightly uneven, especially when Carol enters a New Age clinic for salvation, but thrives on Moore's eerie presence.

Sarah Miles in The End of the Affair

Neil Jordan's film version of the Graham Greene novel is relatively forgotten today but still worth noting for its photography, Michael Nyman score and Julianne's turn as Ralph Fiennes's lover. It's all a pretty gloomy affair but Moore is masterfully understated.

happy feet

Iconic footwear in film. What are your favorites?

Ruby reds.

Diana Ross's silver slippers in The Wiz.

The Red Shoes

Forrest Gump's Nikes.

Seven Year Itch

Hepburn Funny Face flats.

Julia's Pretty Woman boots.

Sex & the City: The Movie

Tell me about it, stud.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

Cinderella

Grace Kelly's loafers in Rear Window. Thanks to Clothes on Film for the image.

John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever

embracing broken embraces

Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces is another one of his visual stunners. Many of the shots, full of aquas, reds and Warhols, possess deep, complex compositions with loving allusions to cinema (including a beautiful shot where a man runs his hands over a television screen a la Godard's Prenom Carmen). Almodóvar writes, "I don't make films 'in the style of.' When a director appears in one of mine, it's more in an active way than as a simple homage or a nod at a spectator."

Broken Embraces feels a tad harsher and more spiteful than his soft, ghostly Volver. It includes a film within a film within a film (!) that seems to be a both a love affair with and a biting critique of movie making. A blind screenwriter recalls a doomed movie shoot (fittingly, Warhol's Gun prints litter the walls of the producer) and his passionate love affair with the leading lady. The producer's gay son records the romance on the set to detrimental results. The story is noirish melodrama, rather ridiculous, but gloriously ridiculous in the same way The Postman Always Ring Twice and Nicholas Ray films are ridiculous. The moody score by longtime collaborator Alberto Iglesias adds to the atmosphere. The motifs of duplicity, the eye and voyeurism runs rampant. All of these themes are alive in a fascinating wig montage where Lena puts on eyeball earrings. This obsession with mirrors and cameras knowingly plays to Almodóvar's visual strengths.

As Lena, Penelope Cruz is again the ravishing muse, pitch perfect and complex and seducing the camera in an indelible way that really hasn't been seen since the 1940s. Her character appears in torn Kodak pictures, in documentary and movie footage. For me, the performance of Blanca Portillo as a guilt-ridden agent really grounded the piece. Her scene in a bar (unusual in tone with the rest of the film), nervously opening up about the past over a glass of gin, is one of the film's most memorable.

-Jeffery Berg

Here are just a few gorgeous shots.