Name Droppings (a movie and screening review of After the Sunset)

I didn't make it into any of these wire/Getty images.... shunned by the press once again, I am.

And, normally I wouldn’t devote this much space to picking on a movie that’s already getting a proper spanking from so many other critics as it is, but since I was lucky enough to attend the New York premier of After the Sunset at the Ziegfeld on Tuesday night, I thought, “Hey, what the hell, let’s kick this flick while it’s down.”

Despite being stuck between hyper-happy, super-friendly, ADD puppy-dog director Brett Ratner, hip-hop and clothing mogul Russell Simmons, and Russell's super-tall, super-hot model/designer wife while I road the escalator out of the theatre to the New Line Cinema SUV's that were waiting to take us to the big premiere party at the NYC Warner Brothers building, I couldn't bring myself to talk to Brett, because the only appropriate way to start a chat would have been congratulating him on his film, but I find his films to be so second-rate that I began choking when I thought about kissing ass.... and I also couldn't say anything snippy or sarcastic, 'cause I wanted to drink the man's top-shelf free booze.

(All the while, Russell’s wife, the once-arrested Kimora Lee Simmons — creative director of the Baby Phat clothing company — kept popping what appeared to be breath mints, candies, or pills into Russell’s mouth, without Russell ever asking for or refusing the mystery objects periodically placed between his lips. In fact he never even looked in her direction, yet she always seemed to know when he might need his, uh, vitamin. When not feeding hubby, Kimora is a flirt, flirt, FLIRT wit da boys! With lots of behind-the-back-and- away-from-the-spouse hand-grabbing with chubby little Ratner, the man who attracts super-models and sports stars like rotting beef attracts coyotes.)

So off to the after party I went, and drink I did – shoulder-to-shoulder with Alan Cumming and his boy toy. After getting good and hammered, I later wandered into the director's private after-after-party, where I spilled a drink on the coats of some celebrities (I’ll likely be barred from celebrity bashes in the future) and kept not seeing Salma Hayek every time she passed by — I never even saw her once, although I’m told that she and Penelope Cruz walked right by me multiple times — I must have been too boozed to notice the short-statured, well-endowed starlets (back to hard-drugs for me, then, ‘cause the John Barleycorn is making me near-sited). I also never spotted Don Devil in a Blue Dress Cheadle.

But I did see Reverend Run and various other celebs.

Article Author: Lucas Brachish

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