Opening Night Report: Larry Ellison's New Malibu Restaurant

Nikita, the most anticipated restaurant of the year in Malibu, quietly opened at 5 p.m. Monday along the Carbon Beach oceanfront. It’s backed by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and named after his girlfriend, Ukranian actress Nikita Kahn. Currently worth an estimated $43 billion, he lives nearby and has in recent years demonstrated an insatiable appetite for purchasing adjacent real estate parcels, including at least nine Carbon homes.

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Situated just across a Ferrari-festooned parking lot from Nobu -- Malibu’s dining debutante last summer -- Nikita shares its neighbor’s penchant for teak wood, minimalist stonework, giant glass panes and a generally understated Zen vibe. Dinner reservations were booked out all week, although the restaurant was only lightly occupied; management seemed to be purposefully easing into dinner service. Lunch will follow in a few months.

The menu, by chef Massimiliano Blasone (previously of the Michelin-starred Apsley's in London), is Italian-inclined Mediterranean through a Californian lens. Expect a lot of handmade pastas and precision-plated appetizers, such as the signature crispy sea bass “cannolo” appetizer accompanied by diced celery and cantaloupe.

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Really, though, the most appropriate culinary description may just be Gazillionaire Grub: very small portions of very well-executed dishes at very high prices. (An itsy-bitsy $25 “lobster salad,” available only at the bar, consisted of two claws and several pieces of endive and frisee, all resting atop a smear of avocado puree.)

The first day’s crowd was almost entirely comprised of eager, in-the-know Malibuites, clad in the city’s particular definition of dressy-casual -- Piaget watch with baseball cap, James Perse top and bikini bottom with Hermes bag. There was quite a bit of talk about the positively-avant-garde-for-the-neighborhood cocktails (a mixology-minded list conjured by the noted Greg Seider, co-owner of The Summit Bar in Manhattan’s East Village) as well as local Fourth of July festivities. Specifically, the one being held at Nikita. It seems Ellison and his other investors have booked out most of the available tables for dinner on Thursday and are arranging for a rather epic fireworks spectacle over the water directly in front of the restaurant that may put other past Carbon barge displays to shame.

Stars Flock to Opening of Helmut Newton Exhibition at Annenberg Space for Photography

A new exhibition of work by fashion photography icon Helmut Newton kicked off in style Thursday night.

The opening for the Annenberg Space for Photography's Helmut Newton: White Women • Sleepless Nights • Big Nudes, was attended by celebrities such as Rashida Jones, Cindy Crawford, Mandy Moore, Rosanna Arquette, Minka Kelly, Bella Heathcote, Bob Evans (an icon himself), Daryl Hannah  and China Chow.

Art world celebrities also came out, such as The Museum of Contemporary Art's Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Michael Govan and wife Katharine Ross, and photographers Matthew Rolston and Lauren Greenfield. They were greeted upon arriving with a big tent for cocktails that contained two chandeliers facing out to Century City's skyscrapers. The scene was a sea of black clothes, black glasses and high heels. Newton himself would have approved.

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As people strolled by the intensely erotic images -- some of them of unlikely models like 1970s and '80s body builder Lisa Lyon -- one of things being uttered was "wow -- no fake boobs! Those boobs are real." Newton brought the womanliness out in every woman he shot, but he also brought out their toughness, their strength, their inner dominatrixes. To wit, almost every photo used garters and garter stockings.

A photo of Charlotte Rampling -- who's appearing on Showtime's Dexter in its last season as a forensic shrink -- was free of fetish-wear (unlike her famed Night Porter image) -- but still made a provocative nude. That was shot in 1973.

Several Newton docs were also shown in the midst of the exhibit, and some of the evening's attendees were also  participants: Cindy Crawford and Daryl Hannah were shot by Newton at the height of their fame and show up in one film;  Paloma Picasso and Elsa Peretti also make appearances.

Famed L.A. photo gallerist David Fahey -- who was on hand -- also speaks in one of the films, crediting Helmut Newton for allowing fashion photographs to veer off of traditional fashion pictures.

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"He didn't make fashion photographs that looked like they belonged in fashion magazines," said Fahey. "He made them art."

One great line in the film: a woman auditions to be shot by Newton. After meeting her, he told her, "You're a nice girl. I'm not looking for nice girls." Maybe that's why in his day, Time magazine dubbed him "The King of Kink." In the film, Bob Evans laughs and says, "Helmut procured more women for me than anyone I've ever known. Every actress was dying to be photographed by him."

Bella Heathcote and Rashida Jones were both wearing pieces by Kelly Wearstler.

 

'Monsters University' Marks Disney/Pixar's Top Latin America Opening

Buenos Aires – The Latin American debut of Disney/Pixar’s Monsters University marked the studio’s biggest opening for the region, grossing $31.7 million across the region.

The Monsters, Inc. prequel opened last weekend in Latin America, and placed itself at the top of Disney/Pixar releases in Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

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The film also topped the studio's debut mark in Central America, and placed itself behind Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 openings in Brazil and Mexico.

In Argentina, attendance for Monsters University climbed at the top and broke both box office and ticket sale records for a debut with more than 802,000 tickets in a four-day weekend that turned out to be one of the strongest in local history, with approximately 1.6 million people attending cinemas according to numbers by Ultracine and Rentrak.

 

'World War Z' Set to Become Brad Pitt's Biggest Opening Weekend Earner

After this weekend, Mr. and Mrs. Smith will no longer be Brad Pitt's biggest opening weekend earner.

The actor's World War Z is set to surpass the $50 million brought in by the 2005 spy film, which co-starred Angelina Jolie. Paramount expects the zombie apocalypse tentpole, which earned a B+ CinemaScore from audiences, to gross more than $60 million in its debut.

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WWZ earned $25 million Friday, placing the title at No. 2 on the domestic box office chart behind Disney/Pixar's Monsters University at $30.5 million.

The movie, co-financed with Skydance Productions, underwent an arduous production process that included numerous reshoots before finally making its way into theaters.

Pitt's last summer film was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which opened to $38 million in August 2009. He also starred in Steven Soderbergh's 2007 heist sequel, Ocean's Thirteen, which opened to $36 million in June. And the actor opened the mythology epic, Troy, to $46 million in May 2004.