Gossip Girl actress Blake Lively is so just one of the people, while Helena Christensen is categorically not. Ms. Lively went to Café Habana over the weekend and waited in line! For more than half an hour! Meanwhile, Ms. Christensen walked up to the eatery but kept on walking when she saw there was a wait. [P6]  read more »

In the years since Cristóbal Balenciaga launched his eponymous fashion label on Avenue George V in Paris during the summer of 1937, his maison de mode has outfitted more than a few recognizable dames. And, as an in-depth New Yorker profile from last year pointed out, Balenciaga, the company, has long depended on the celebrity of its more powerful, repeat patrons, which have included: the de Rothchilds, Paul Mellon, the Duke of Windsor, Prince Rainier, Countess Mona Bismark and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

So it was probably with no small effort that the label chose its newest public “face”—the Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Connelly.  read more »

Reservation Road is a suspenseful story of loss and revenge, about the different roads taken by two fathers after a tragic hit-and-run accident.  read more »

“I think movie parties are more fun,” said Chloë Sevigny, in a sweeping, strapless Kelly green gown by Balenciaga, at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute gala on Monday, May 7. “I don’t know—I think here it’s very like a popularity contest. In the movies, everyone’s just kind of like—we’re all just glad to be working.”  read more »

So last year, the movie stars Connelly and Bettany rubbed two pennies together and bought a big Brooklyn townhouse with "a nice backyard and a place for the bicycles"--not far from where Connelly, a Saint Ann's grad, grew up in Brooklyn Heights.... Connelly's story seemed to be over--but, per horror formula, real-estate terror lurched back into her life. Connelly's dream home soon had "two massive floods that completely trashed the whole kitchen," she says, eyes flashing wide, fingernails flying. "Water coming out of the light fixtures. Pipes burst. Twice! They dispatched the Fire Department."

The house that Paul Bettany shares with his wife, Jennifer Connelly, their 2-year-old son, Stellan, and Connelly's 8-year-old boy, Kai (from her previous relationship with photographer David Dougan), is one of the most beautiful in all of Park Slope. Nestled on a shady corner opposite Prospect Park, it is distinguished without being ostentatious. Its Ionic columns and great arched windows seem typical rather than showy. The garden--the disrepair of which was once, Park Slope blogger Louise Crawford tells me, a cause of consternation for some neighbors--is now a well-maintained torrent of tulips in varying shades of oxblood, peach, and white..."