Amanda Seyfried managed to surprise at the Vanity Fair Oscar party by changing out of her beloved, custom-made Alexander McQueen gown, which I found odd at first since it’s so rare to find Amanda in a red carpet dress that her stylist didn’t make her wear. But I do believe we’ve found the secret to Amanda’s sartorial happiness — dresses that are made just for her. Hence this tomato-red, custom-made Givenchy haute couture gown that Amanda seems quite pleased to be wearing.

I don’t hate this dress, and I even kind of like it to an extent. To begin, the color looks amazing next to Amanda’s pale skin, and the fabric is very interesting. The full skirt carries a certain charm, and the waist (the belt is kind of cool) and bust cut are very flattering to our girl’s body. Where things get a little bit sketchy are with hints of bondage-like details of the straps and built-in-choker. Of course, this is an unusual, one-of-a-kind dress for which (presumably) Amanda had a good deal of input, so I’m going to go with it. This dress looks good on Amanda, but I can’t think of another person who could get away with wearing it. Her makeup looks great, and the swept-back hair is just right too.

Isla Fisher looked gorgeous in a cobalt blue Monique Lhuillier dress that perfectly set off her ginger hair. The dress looks great from the front, and the fabric and train are quite lovely, but the way that the backless part of the dress is cut leaves much to be desired. Isla looks cute but worried that the dress might fall down. Or am I just imagining that part?

Minnie Driver went silver with a plunging neckline, but it’s not nearly as scandalous as Heidi Klum’s Oscar-party boob dress because Minnie’s pretty small busted compared to Heidi. So it’s no big deal that Minnie’s doing it. Remember when she was the “it” girl in the days of Good Will Hunting and Grosse Point Blank? Minnie’s still as gorgeous as always here.

Marisa Tomei (for whatever reason) chose to wear a taupe-colored, beaded pantsuit. This outfit is so shapeless and would be unflattering on pretty much everyone, but Marisa looks really good from the shoulders up.

Photos courtesy of WENN

There are a bunch of parties this weekend in the lead-up to The Academy Awards and we’ll be bringing you coverage today and tomorrow. Here we have some photos from the QVC Red Carpet Style Party at the Four Seasons last night. I want to start with Nicole Richie in Etro as this was a standout dress. The bodice was too complicated with that bizarre paisley butterfly-looking print, and my initial response is “fug,” but compared to the other guests Nicole took a real risk with her gown. There were a lot of plain black dresses and black pantsuits last night. I don’t know if if this risk paid off for her. I’m not a fan of her very smoky eyes, but overall she looked hot without showing too much skin. Her red platform pumps are ill-matched to the gown, although she may have been going for a pop of color to offset the gothic dress.

Speaking of hot we have Miranda Kerr working a green lacy Burberry dress with an open back and sheer neckline. She looks amazing and her hair and makeup are so pretty. I really like her pointy gold t-strap heels too.

Heidi Klum played it relatively safe, for her, in a black strapless LBD with sequin accents. It’s kind of a forgettable dress, but it’s a win for Heidi in that it’s not over-the-top fug and she’s not showing a lot of skin. Her hair is pretty and she surely has extensions but it looks natural here.

Jennifer Hudson looked really comfy in a black fitted tee paired with loose split pants. This looks like something I would wear to dinner and it seems a little too casual. Maybe it would have been more suited to the event if she added a cute jacket and had the pants tailored around her waistline. I really like her jewelry, particularly that cool gold cuff.

When I first saw the thumbnail photo of Marisa Tomei here I thought she was Sandra Bullock in a particularly unflattering hairstyle. Instead it’s Marisa with this poofy coif wearing a fussy lace and mesh dress shirt. Like Jennifer Hudson, I appreciate that she’s wearing pants but that shirt is just awful. Look at the thick silk cuffs and the tiers of mismatched beads and sequins on top! It’s overkill. At least she’s having fun with it.

Photo credit: WENN.com

Whenever I see Marisa Tomei on talk shows, she always seems like such a cool woman with a great attitude about life. After winning her Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, I think people expected her to never live up to that early success, but she stayed in New York, worked constantly on a variety of different projects, aged gracefully, got nominated for another Oscar and… I don’t know, she just seems to have a great life. Well, I didn’t even know she was dating the young hottie and Tom Hardy look-alike Logan Marshall Green, but they’ve been together for a while, and now he’s proposed! So Marisa is going to get married for the first time at the age of 48. Mazel tov!

She was waiting for that special someone. And now Marisa Tomei is set to walk down the aisle for the very first time after accepting her boyfriend’s proposal. The Wrestler star’s groom-to-be is actor Logan Marshall Green, star of the summer blockbuster Prometheus.

The Oscar winning star, 48, and Logan spent a festive holiday season together and that’s when the 36-year-old actor popped the question.

‘He popped the question over the holidays,’ a source told In Touch. ‘She is very happy about the engagement.’

The couple has been dating on and off since 2008 after meeting while working on a New York theater project together. Marisa has previously insisted she saw no real good reason to get married or have children.

‘I’m not that big a fan of marriage as an institution, and I don’t know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings,’ Marisa told Manhattan Magazine in 2009.

Obviously, she just couldn’t resist Logan’s proposal.

[From The Mail]

Yay! Should we talk about the age difference? I don’t really care about it in this case – they’re both old enough to know the score, you know? It doesn’t feel like anyone is being misled or inexperienced or anything. It doesn’t feel like Marisa is some prowling cougar either – my impression is that she probably never thought she’d get married because the institution wasn’t for her. She only changed her mind when she met her Forever Dong. Praise it!

UPDATE: Oh, so Marisa’s rep denied this! Still, I want it to be true.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I know, I just did a George Clooney-related post a little bit ago, but now we have even more photos! And not just of Clooney – these are photos from the Venice Film Festival photo call for The Ides of March. Unfortunately, there’s no Gosdong (boo!). But there is some fashion porn happening with Evan Rachel Wood. All of a sudden, she’s giving me Cate Blanchett vibes. I know, I know, that comparison isn’t fair to either of them. But you can see a resemblance, right? And this Dolce & Gabbana suit looks like something Blanchett would wear (and work the hell out of). Does ERW pull it off? I think she does. I think Clooney thinks she does too:

Am I going to have to worry about Clooney and ERW? Er… I think I might. Evan once said in an interview that Clooney had come up to her and told her, “You’re really good at going from innocent to sexy in the drop of a hat.” And then he hired her for his movie. And then he invited her to Lake Como. And then… God knows.

More photos… I love Marisa Tomei, and I think she’s beautiful and she’s aging naturally. But she looks like hell here. Part of it is the fug dress, but part of it is just bad lighting and bad makeup.

Philip Seymour Hoffman!!!! I keep forgetting he’s in The Ides of March. He looks so hot. I would jump on him before Clooney. I’d jump on PSH before Ryan Gosling too, by the way.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Alright, here are more photos from last night’s Crazy, Stupid, Love premiere. I already covered the pics of Emma Stone (and her hip horns) and Ryan Gosling. You might consider this post devoted to the old farts (just kidding). First up, The Other Ginge. Julianne Moore plays Steve Carell’s estranged wife in the film, and she wore this black sack dress by Stella McCartney. I love Julianne’s face, I love her ginge, but her style can be hit-or-miss. This dress doesn’t offend me, though. It’s just kind of a boring, shapeless sack (with fug bows), and I’m sure Angelina Jolie will be ordering several. By the way, check out Julianne’s son Caleb. How. Cute.

The real style star, the woman who outshined both gingers, was Marisa Tomei in Vivienne Westwood. This color should wash her out, but it doesn’t. And the fit and design is just gorgeous. Marisa knows how to dress for her figure and for her coloring – and she rocked this look.

Here’s Steve Carell and his wife Nancy. POLKA DOTS. Steve looks nice, though.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Technical awards hostess Marisa Tomei wore this navy blue 1950 Charles James couture dress from Lily et Cie with a conservative neckline and an asymmetrical tulle skirt. I don’t think that photos do this dress justice at all, and I found it lovely on camera. She told TV Guide’s Chris Harrison that it’s been in her closet for a while and she’s been “waiting to wear it.” Kaiser disliked this dress, and I think I can assume that she found it too fussy and ballgown. I thought it was amazing, and a kind of homage to that era without looking too dated. She accessorized with bold Van Cleef and Arpels starburst drop earrings and a matching bracelet.

Tomei’s makeup was too understated for my taste for big event like this, and she followed the makeup trend of the evening by going for a very minimal, muted palate that could have been enhanced with some bolder strokes. (It looks better in photos than it did on screen.) Sandra Bullock similarly had simple makeup. I loved Tomei’s loose wavy hair though, which followed her trend of looking like a throwback goddess without trying too hard. She was gorgeous.

At the Vanity Fair Oscars party Tomei wore a bold fuschia one-shoulder dress with a side pocket and heavy black bangles. That dress was daring and I found the jewelry too much when paired with the bright color. She looked hot though and any complaints I might have about that dress and jewelry combination are minor. I also love that she is 46 and does not look waxy, puffy or at all fake.

In “The Wrestler,” actress Marisa Tomei plays the stripper girlfriend of an aging wrestler played by Mickey Rourke. Marisa, 44, says she prepared for the raunchy role by taking pole dancing lessons and watching the skanky hos on the VH1 reality show, “Rock of Love.”

Oscar winner MARISA TOMEI studied rocker BRET MICHAELS’ raunchy reality show ROCK OF LOVE as part of her stripper research for new movie THE WRESTLER.

The actress tried pole dancing too – just to make sure she’d look authentic in her film debut as an exotic dancer.

She explains, “I had a friend who is a yoga teacher and she does a lot of pole dancing so I asked her to teach me. I went to a lot of clubs and watched to see the different styles of dancing.

“I would practice in a dance room with a bar and a mirror, like a ballet studio. I watched Rock of Love, that reality show with Bret Michaels, where he’s trying to get a wife and they’re all strippers. That was my closest association to the actual world of it.”

And her brief flirtation with the world of the stripper has brought Tomei a new love: “I like going to strip clubs now.”

[From Contact Music]

Well, it’s nice to know that piece of garbage show isn’t totally useless. I’ve always liked Marisa – she’s a talented actress. She went through a dry spell for a while there, so it’s nice to see her working again. Early buzz is that Mickey Rourke’s performance is a powerhouse in this movie. He plays a professional wrestler – based on Hulk Hogan and Randy “Macho Man ” Savage who is trying to make a comeback – sort of like Rocky. If it sounds like a stinker, keep in mind that the director is Darren Aronofsky, the director behind “Requiem for a Dream,” “Pi” and “The Fountain.” So, if nothing else, it will be a great looking stinker about pro wrestling and stripping.

Marisa Tomei is shown at screening of The Wrestler in New York City on Dec. 8. Still photos from “The Wrestler,” including one of Marisa’s character performing at a strip club. Photo credit: WENN.

It’s always interesting to see what happens to the once-popular Oscar-winning celebrities whose careers don’t take off like everyone was expecting. Some make minor headlines with their antics and spectacularly bad movies, like Cuba Gooding Jr., while others just kind of fade away, popping up occasionally at an event or premiere and reminding us that they were once destined for Hollywood greatness.

Have you heard about Helen Hunt, Mira Sorvino, or Marisa Tomei lately? Tomei has had plenty of work in the 15 years since she won an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, but not much of it has been memorable or high-profile. She had a drop-in role in John Cusack’s current film Grace is Gone, about a man who loses his soldier wife to the Iraq war. Tomei’s scene was cut after test audiences took offense to a grieving widower having a conversation with a pretty girl. No one bothered to tell Tomei she was out of the film until she was about to show up at the premiere, though:

Oscar winner Marisa Tomei suffered a shocking humiliation when… producers of the new John Cusack movie Grace is Gone finally remembered to tell her she’d been snipped from the flick – and it could have been even worse because Tomei was told only minutes before her scheduled bow at the premiere! The star was actually en route to the screen when a staffer alerted nitwit execs that incredibly, nobody had bothered to tell her that her cameo role had been cut because of negative feedback from test audiences. In the film, Cusack loses his GI wife in Iraq and goes on a road trip to ease the pain – and while his kids are swimming in a Florida motel pool, he strikes up a conversation iwth Tomei. Test audiences objected, saying he shouldn’t be speaking to a woman so soon after his wife’s death.

[From The National Enquirer, Mike Walker's column, December 24, 2007]

Tomei headed home and didn’t show at the premiere after she heard that she was axed, and can you blame her? How thoughtless and rude of producers not to tell her she was cut until right before the premiere.

She appeared in two other films this year, Wild Hogs and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which was only out in limited release but earned rave reviews. Next year Tomei is slated for War, Inc., also with John Cusack and The Night Job, which sounds like a flop to me since her costars are listed as Ray Liotta and Mickey Rourke. The film is listed as “in production,” and that is likely to mean that’s it’s delayed by the writer’s strike, which has no end in sight. What’s a struggling Oscar winner to do?

Marisa Tomei is shown at the DKNy Delicious launch party on 11/7/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

I loved her in “My Cousin Vinnie.” Marisa Tomei is one of my favorite underrated celebs. When you have an Oscar at home next to your bed stand you can pretty much do as you please. In effort of not letting the man get her down, she once stole a band aid.

“She tells the New York Daily News, “I have stolen recently… Band-Aids! There were five Band-Aids in the pack, and I got a sticker shock at the price, so I just grabbed one, which was all I needed.”

[New York Daily News Via Starpulse]

She defended her actions as preparation for her latest role as a thief in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” Marisa bravely took on the movie in which she has a topless scene. Her co-stars include Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. The plot involves two brothers who decide to rob their parents’ jewelry store. They come to the conclusion that they get the loot and their parents will get insurance money and everyone wins. She has already asked her family toskip seeing the film due to her sex scenes in her role as the wife of Hoffman’s character and mistress of Hawke’s.

“I’m grown up now, so I guess it’ll really hit home. I spoke to mom about it the other day and I said, ‘I don’t know if you really want to come to this or if you want to see it.’ I’d rather you didn’t. ‘She said, ‘We heard already, we know about it’. ‘Having the Sidney factor balances it out. I felt even more comfortable than I did just acting fully clothed. I seem to tap into these kinds of women, the ones you call ‘slut’.”

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Marissa at the Project ALS Tomorrow is Tonight 10th Anniversary fundraiser on October 16th. Image thanks to PR Photos.