The Sex and The City ladies are continuing their tour promoting soulless conspicuous consumption and offensive throwaway plot lines. They were seen in Japan toasting their fat paychecks and fabulous outfits. Despite the terrible reviews and mediocre box office performance the show must go on.

Earlier today we reported that Sex and The City 2 was second at the box office this holiday weekend. When Monday was included, the film was actually third, with Shrek 4 in the lead and Prince of Persia second. Kaiser pointed me to this amusing recap of the Memorial Day box office results on Gawker, which makes the scary conclusion that we may be in for yet another Sex and The City if the numbers are right. I’ll quote from Box Office Mojo on how the movie performed as expected for a sequel, especially one as shabbily made as this:

Sex and the City 2 notched an estimated $37.1 million four-day weekend on approximately 6,100 screens at 3,445 locations, bringing its total to $51.4 million since its Thursday debut. That’s a huge step backwards from the first Sex and the City, which bagged $57 million on its first three-day weekend and had $68.1 million by day five. Distributor Warner Bros.’ exit polling indicated that a whopping 90 percent of Sex 2′s audience was female, and 54 percent was under 35 years old. By comparison, the first Sex’s opening weekend audience was 83 percent female.

Prince of Persia and Sex and the City 2 ranked a lowly 15th and 17th, respectively, among Memorial Day opening weekends and, in terms of estimated attendance, they wouldn’t even crack the Top 25. Based on their content and marketing, though, it would have been unreasonable to expect otherwise.

People seem to lose their heads in regards to sequels, but, aside from aberrations like The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Sex and the City 2 was closer to the way sequels are supposed to behave, though the movie’s marketers exacerbated the situation with a severe case of “sequelitis.” They assumed that the brand name was all they needed for another summer hit, delivering an utterly inessential and random sequel after the first movie tidily wrapped up the storylines. It’s a wonder that they didn’t subtitle the movie “The Legend of Carrie’s Shoes.”

[From Box Office Mojo]

I’ve passed a lot of time laughing at the terrible reviews of Sex and The City 2, with my favorite coming from Dustin Rowles at Pajiba. He likens SATC to Transformers 2 for women, but with designer duds instead of Megan Fox’s bouncing butt. There were so many excellent lines in his review it’s hard to know which ones to quote. My favorite was this one, “There’s a definite narrative pattern in SATC 2: Each of the four women does something banal individually, followed by a scene in which they get together and process that banality, usually while drinking and wearing something colorful or with feathers.” Kaiser’s favorite part was this:

If you were so inclined, there’s a lot you could take offense to here: Their disrespect of the culture, the extravagance they are afforded (they each get their own luxury car and their own butler), and the way they choose to comport themselves — not just in Abu Dhabi, but in the entire movie — while the country is mired in a recession. Is it tactless to release a movie that glorifies consumption during hard economic times? It seems like a petty complaint to lob against a Hollywood movie, which are often about wish fulfillment. But it’s an easy critique to offer up. Most offensive of all to me, however, were the groan-worthy puns and the hideous word play littered throughout the film (“Abu Dhabi Doo!” “Bedouin, Bath and Beyond,” “Lawrence of my Labia”).

[From Dustin Rowles at Pajiba]

So have you seen Sex and The City 2 and was it a semi-pleasurable way to waste two and a half hours? Could you turn off your brain and just drool at the shoes and clothes? Like men looking for T&A, there are much better ways to get some (online) than paying someone $10 to deliver it to you with a thin plot. I like my shoe and fashion porn silent.

Note: The term “Dog and Pony Show” is not meant as a negative reference to any of the actresses’ features. It’s meant as a traveling circus, and according to Wikipedia “The term has come to mean an elaborately staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince people. It is often used in reference to a series of informational events put on by a company or group.”

The ladies of Sex and The City 2 were on The View on Friday and I finally had a chance to watch it. There’s still all this hype around the movie, with audience members holding signs and Elisabeth Hasselbeck declaring “the girls’ night out is reborn!” Given all I’ve heard about it, I would rather sit home and watch whatever happens to be on television while getting my fashion fix online.

Sarah Jessica Parker was inevitably asked on The View about her twin girls, Marion and Tabitha, who were born via surrogate about 11 months ago. She talked about how much she loves them and how her son, James Wilke, helps her out with them. She didn’t mention the fact that she has plenty of professional help and she didn’t talk about her husband, Matthew Broderick.

Cynthia Nixon discussed her engagement, to same sex partner Christine Marinoni. She said that they can’t yet marry in New York and that their friends have plenty of suggestions for destination weddings to where same sex marriage is legal. Cynthia said that they were going to try and wait until same sex marriage was legal in their state. “We’re going to try and stick it out in New York and… fight the good fight, but we’re not going to wait forever.” She said something similar to People Magazine, and explained that she’s not spending much time planning out the details and was more concerned with her basic right to marry. New York recognizes same sex marriages from other states.

On The View, Nixon clarified the hilarious quote she told The Advocate that Christine “was like a short man with boobs.” It was about Christine’s fashion, she explained:

“It is a funny and cute quote… I was actually speaking about Christine’s love of clothes, but how difficult it is for her to find suits that she fits into… She wears men’s suits and she’s a little short for a guy. It’s a challenge.”

The girls then all chimed in about where Cynthia and Christine should get married and how they were all looking forward to a trip.

Kim Cattrall ruled out ever married again after having been married three times. She said “I like being single… I’m very much in a work mode. If I was in a relationship it wouldn’t be a happy one, because I wouldn’t be there.” Kim then said “I wish I had a relationship like we [the SATC women] have. We’ve been together 14 years.”

In earlier interviews Kim said that she would be open to doing yet another sequel, but creator Michael Patrick King and star Sarah Jessica Parker separately said that decision wasn’t made yet. The box office will determine whether they’re drive this series even further into the ground. The numbers are in and they’re not as good as the first film, but not bad overall. Over the weekend Sex and The City 2 was second to Shrek 4, in its second week, but above Prince of Persia, which also premiered this weekend. SATC 2 took in $32.1 million its opening weekend, which was below the opening weekend of the first SATC at $56.8 million.

I was going to hold the Sarah Jessica Parker stories until we got some photos of tonight’s Sex and the City premiere in London, but it’s deader than dead around here, so why not? CB and I have both been a little tired with SJP, honestly. CB confessed that she tried to watch an SJP interview and all she felt was “fake fake fake”. Personally, I don’t think SJP is fake, I just think she’s full of sh-t. Horsesh-t, to be exact. Anyway, SJP has a bunch of new interviews, and most of them are about how fabulous the movie is (everyone else disagrees), how much all of the fabulous clothes cost ($10 million), and how she’s the world’s most hands-on mother. Except for those nine weeks where she dumped her newborn twins on the nannies. Oh, I enjoyed this Parade interview because of the subtext of Matthew Broderick’s “secret life”.

“I will never live anywhere else than New York because I just simply cannot leave the heartbeat of the city. I cannot do it. We have no space in our house in Manhattan. We’re bursting at the seams. I know there are homes with more than two or three bedrooms in the suburbs, but I just couldn’t move there, even to get extra room. I love New York too much,” Parker says.

Sarah Jessica Parker soared to fame and fortune as Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, on HBO and on the big screen. Now, in Sex and the City 2, Parker is feeling a little closer to Carrie, who’s married and still living in the Big Apple. Parker, the proud mother of three kids with Matthew Broderick, juggles marriage, family and career. But she knows which comes first.

Sarah Jessica says, “I love just being with my family — going to the grocery store, cooking dinner, putting my twins to bed, changing their diapers, getting my older son ready for school and packing his lunch. Staying home with my family and my husband is the thing I love most in the world. Is it sexy? I don’t know about that, but it sure is fun and it’s definitely unpredictable.”

Matthew won’t mind watching her smooch with Chris Noth and John Corbett in SATC 2.
“We’ve been together for years. Both of us have starred in movies opposite lots of beautiful, smart, interesting people. But we have still come home to the same house, to each other. Matthew isn’t jealous when I’m in a movie with a sexy guy. He doesn’t seem to show any degree of being threatened by it. I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t care.”

Matthew Broderick deserves a secret life.
“I like having some mystery in our relationship. I like not knowing everything about my husband. I think people should have things that are theirs, things that are the unknown to someone else. I think it’s good to have some privacy and some secrets in our lives.”

The secret to keeping up with your best friends.
“You can be a good friend even when you barely have time. Make the effort to send a note, or call and say, ‘I’ve got children screaming in the background, but I miss you and I love you and I think about you. You’re on my mind, even if I don’t get to tell you every day.’ I think your real friends understand that there’s lots of responsibilities you have with your family, but you just figure out how to nurture your friendships any way you can.”

[From Parade]

I’m all for keeping a little mystery in the relationship, but it’s like SJP is saying, “I know he’s fooling around, with God knows who, but whatever.” Also, when SJP was on Letterman two nights ago, she called Matthew average. Shocking! She was talking about James Wilkie’s height and how he’s “for the moment, more on the diminutive side. Some might call it a Napoleon complex, it [his age] gives him some [confidence] because he is so mature. He’s a brainiac… well I think so, naturally… He’s not quite tiny – that’s on my husband’s side – well, actually Matthew is average… not in personality or in intellect…. no, no, no, no, no… Let me clear this up. For the record, not in personality, intellect, charisma, talent, genuine likeability, well the list could go on and on… Anyway he’s average in height as I understand so the odds of our son being average in height and weight is perhaps promising.” I couldn’t care less that she’s talking about Matthew’s average-ness, but I feel for James Wilkie. That must suck to have your mom call you out on national television for being “more on the diminutive side.” Jeez, Mom.

By the way, if you want to read a slightly interesting piece about Pat Fields and why she dressed the SATC women like drag queen-maniac-clowns, HuffPo has a good one.

Carrie on a Mac in the first film and advertising an HP PC for the second, below

The first Sex and The City movie was full of references to specific brands and companies. Some of the products were long running and integral to the show, like the high end Manolos and Jimmy Choo heels that Carrie sunk all of her money into, and the Mac laptop she used to write her column. The film had all of the trappings but none of the heart of the series, which had its superficial moments but focused more on the characters and their relationships. In the big screen version, the characters were secondary to the overpriced designer brands. The lead character made a major life decision based on retrieving a pair of expensive shoes. It was hard to tell which brands were there as paid product placements and which were necessary for the very thin plot, which was about as rewarding as credit card debt sunk into luxury goods. Ask Lindsay Lohan how that feels.

Vanity Fair has an extensive list of all the brands plugged in the first movie, and it’s mind boggling. At least some of it was just for context, though it all kind of ran together. (NY Magazine even marveled that they were included without payment.) That’s got to be an advertiser’s dream. Carrie’s Macintosh, for instance, was just part of the show and couldn’t be replaced. It’s not like Carrie could switch up her Manolo Blahniks for Stuart Weitzmans. They’re both decent shoes but they have quite a different style profile. Carrie isn’t much more than a collection of brand affiliations and you take one away it’s like you’re changing the character.

Thanks to a partnership with Hewlett Packard, Carrie will be working on a PC in this next film. (Apple claims that they don’t pay for product placement.) PopEater has a great editorial about how wrong this is on several levels. When the film is all about brands it’s particularly jarring when they abandon an integral one for cash. It screws up the Sex and The City brand, too, not that it means anything beyond label whoring at this point. Here are some excerpts from Popeater’s article:

Fans of ‘Sex and the City’ have come to expect certain things from the hit TV series-turned blockbuster movie franchise, and seeing the ladies wear and use brand name, big label products is one of them. We all know the girls love to strut around Manhattan in Manolo Blahnik shoes, eat at the fanciest restaurants in New York City and wear only top designers like Dior, Chanel and Roberto Cavalli. And we’re certainly used to seeing our heroine, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), typing her newspaper columns and books on her Mac laptop — you know, the one she left on her bed for Charlotte (Kristi Davis) to find when she left for Paris, the one she returned to when she came back to her beloved New York.

Carrie’s Mac made an appearance in just about every episode and was prominently featured in the first movie, but you won’t be seeing it in ‘Sex and the City 2.’ Because of a partnership with Hewlett-Packard, only HP computers will be featured in the forthcoming sequel.

According to the New York Post, “Every aspect of Carrie’s life is reduced to a vignette that can be monetized: Going to the Gym (sip on Lipton Sparkling diet green tea, an official sponsor of the new movie!), Having Cocktails with Girlfriends (try a specialized cocktail from Skyy, the movie’s ‘official vodka’!), Getting Married (Swarovski paid to be featured prominently in the film) and, of course, Working On Laptop, Staring Wistfully Out the Window (Hewlett-Packard partnered with the movie so its laptops would be featured, and SJP will appear in the computer company’s ads, of course).”

But fans of the show know that Carrie and Mac were made for each other. The Guardian UK sums it up best, noting, “Carrie is a professional homeworking journalist … Macs were invented for them: people without IT support, with no skills or office training, with very little likelihood of ever accruing any knowledge or expertise, with no backbone or basic housekeeping procedures.”

That’s Carrie Bradshaw in a nutshell; she didn’t even have a cell phone until the shows final season in 2004.

Carrie’s Mac was even a subplot for a season four episode — ‘My Motherboard My Self’ — in which her computer, overloaded from years and years of use (and no backing up!), crashes when she goes to save one of her columns. Aidan (John Corbet), just trying to help, buys her a new iMac, which quickly becomes a symbol for change that Carrie simply isn’t comfortable with. [Celebitchy note: that video is below]

[From Popeater]

Doesn’t Sarah Jessica Parker look like a walking skeleton in that top commercial for HP? It’s hard to look at just her body without a head, and maybe HP should have veered from their regular format for this ad. I know it’s petty to point that out, but I can’t help it.

I’m a PC person, but this really annoys me. I haven’t been looking forward to the Sex and The City sequel and this news kind of pushes me over the edge. I doubt I’ll see it in the theater.

Thanks to Popeater for this story and the videos.

Sarah Jessica Parker and TMI go together like ice cream and sprinkles. Yes, the Sex and the City 2 press tour has begun, and it is already a buffet of wrongness. Since I’m going to pull from a lot of sources, let’s just do the highlights:

SJP on shooting in Morocco: “We didn’t even have a bathroom. There was literally no interruptions. Kristin Davis got sick. Apparently. If you’re very sick and have a very serious intestinal issue, you just need warm milk.”

SJP on the film shoot: “[It was] laborious and Herculean, but it was one of the greatest experiences of my professional life…To live and work with this cast and that crew every single day to see the sun rise and set over our locations in the most far flung places. To lie in a bed all day with these women exhausted and laughing. To be on a camel with Kim Cattrall, which disobeyed all orders.” [Editor’s note: Did the camel disobey orders, or did Kim Cattrall? I can’t tell.]

On whether Mr. Big is bad: “There is not a villainous move by any man in this movie. Any consequences are on a part of us and the choices [the women are] making and some momentary reckless behavior… It’s all us, and we come home, frankly, a little wiser.”

SJP on doing nudity: “You don’t want to see me topless. You really don’t.”

SJP on other people‘s nudity: “Maybe they’re more equipped to do so. And it’s all been voluntary. There was never any pressure. Never once. It’s too progressive of a community here to have anyone pressured into doing that.”

SJP on being nervous: “I’m excited. But this is also the period when I tend to be very nervous and I worry and I fret and overthink. I’m in a state of turmoil. I fret about everything. I worry that it’s not good enough. I worry that no one will show up…What if the audience isn’t happy?”

On the Photoshopped monstrosities during promotion: “It’s curious to me because everything’s Photoshopped now. I’m curious, because do they ask it about a Will Smith poster or a Tom Cruise poster?”

On letting her 7-year-old son watch SATC: “I’m not going to be able to keep him away much longer. If I can manage to take him out for popcorn for two certain moments, I think he’s ready for it. He has too many questions, and he’s too clever for us to keep it from him. I wouldn’t say this movie is for 7-year-olds, but we’ll find a way of figuring it out.”

On the twins: “This may be the very time to show it to them. They’ll just say, ‘Hi.’ That’s what they’re saying right now, ‘Hi.’ ”

When will SJP do theatre again? “As soon as my children are old enough to put themselves to bed. It’s very hard for me to be away at night. It’s hard to miss that time. They still like me. There’s going to be a point where they won’t want me anywhere near the house. That’s when I’ll come begging, ‘Please, please let me have some stage work.’ ”

On a third SATC movie: “Oh, dear god. I don’t feel entitled to have that conversation yet. Let’s see if anybody shows up on May 27.”

On beauty secrets: “I don’t have one. I feel old and tired! I have children I run round after, I try to walk as much as possible, and other than that I buy every cream possible. I love beautiful clothes and am privileged enough to have access to a lot of them, but they’re returned the next day. They’re not mine!”

On her kids: “Having my boy and now the twins, life is triply delightful. When I [used to] come to London, my first stop was Harvey Nichols, but now it’s all about Hamleys. That store is amazing! The girls couldn’t be more different. One is constantly looking around and reaching out, the other is very serious and slightly aloof.”

On the Carrie Bradshaw character: “I don’t feel like Carrie – my life is so different, my choices are different. But I love her. I love playing her and everything about her – the good, the flawed, the mistakes, the bad choices. I understand that people will blur the lines, but I feel very different. Which is probably why it works so well, because if she felt familiar to me, I would have bored of playing her a long time ago.”

[From E! News, Us Weekly & The Daily Mail]

Lord. That’s a lot of SJP for one day, isn’t it? And you know this sh-t is only going to get worse. SATC 2 doesn’t come out for another couple of weeks, and the way they’re doing the full-saturation promotion, you know that there will interview after interview of this stuff. Am I the only one who is really annoyed when SJP uses phrasing like “triply delightful” and “slightly aloof” to describe her children? Oh, and letting James Wilke watch Sex and the City? Yeah, that won’t disturb him. Of course, I’m still thinking about the television series – God knows, the new film is probably like a cartoon, with a cartoonish plot, so James might enjoy it.

Photoshop much? Sarah Jessica Parker looks cross-eyed on this cover. Anyway, In Touch Weekly’s cover story promises reveal to “SECRETS” of Sex and the City 2, but the part of the cover story already released is just a hodge-podge of stuff we’ve already covered. Like the issue of Sarah Jessica Parker leaving her newborn twins at home while she filmed in Morocco and went shopping in London for two months. SJP already discussed that in her Vogue profile (“I haven’t seen my daughters for almost two months, with the exception of Skype, and I have to tell you. I never felt like this.”) and in a short interview with Star Magazine (“I have enormous regrets about that. They couldn’t travel at the time, because they were too young to get the right shots.”). ITW did get this new admission from SJP: that she “came close to walking off the set and flying home.” Of course, she did not. And thus, Sex and the City 2.

While her son James was able to fly out and visit her, there were too many health concerns for Sarah Jessica Parker to risk bringing her newborn twin daughters to the set of Sex and the City 2 — and she missed them terribly.

“I never felt like this,” she admits. SJP also tells In Touch exclusively that she really “felt the mother-to-child connection.”

Confessing that she had serious regrets about signing on to do the film, Sarah Jessica came close to walking off the set and flying home — but she opted to stay.

She had good reason. An executive producer — and a Type-A one at that — Sarah Jessica felt like she had a major stake in the movie. She claims she oversaw “every detail, every atom” of SATC2 — and insiders say she isn’t kidding. One SATC2 source says that Sarah Jessica got so involved in the filming, she even helped with some of the wardrobe changes.

And another set insider tells In Touch, “She knew everybody’s name on the crew, even before they all knew each other’s names. She’s a sweetheart, but she’s also a producer and she’s tough as nails.”

[From In Touch Weekly]

I believe she’s probably a great producer for the films, although I do think she passively-aggressively made the first film all about Carrie and her issues rather than giving all of the women full character development. And Sex and the City 2 looks like more of the same – more Carrie bullsh-t.

Speaking of, SATC’s epic costume designer Patricia Fields spoke about SJP/Carrie’s crazy fashion in a new interview, and if Fields climbs any further up SJP’s ass, she’ll be coming out of her nose. Patricia said: “Sarah moves so beautifully. She has a physical and mental grace, so when you put something on her it looks great because she moves so well. When someone is graceful, you can put a gorgeous dress on them – but if they move clumsily; it’s not going to look good. When Sarah walks, her feet don’t touch the ground. She could twirl mid-air… I love all of Carrie’s trends but I don’t like them when everybody’s wearing them and it becomes the only thing to wear, like gladiator shoes. I love them, but they became too common.”

Here’s some of SJP/Carrie’s graceful visage, from the SATC set (and one of Kim Cattrall):

In Touch Weekly cover courtesy of ITW online.

Sarah Jessica Parker is the cover girl for the June issue of American Marie Claire. However, SJP isn’t the only interview. The story (complete piece here) reads like a love letter to Sex and the City, and all four women are interviewed. Uncomfortably, all of their careers are dissected too, and Marie Claire makes it clear who they think the career victor is: SJP. They also spend too much time harping on and on about whether the ladies get along. Hint: they get along well enough to promote the hell out of the movie and cash their checks, so yeah, who cares? By the way, SJP and her “enormous regrets” about not spending time with her twin girls tells the magazine that she’s seen to “every detail, every atom” of the movie. Of course.

SJP on her rumored animosity with Kim Cattrall: “When you’re on set, you’re working 90-hour weeks, you’re never home, you’re exhausted. There are times when all of us have been sensitive, and sometimes feelings get hurt. But I don’t have any regrets about how I’ve treated people.”

Kim Cattrall on the same: “The chemistry among the four of us is very strong. [Why the rumors?] Because the press has to put women in these boxes, rather than show them as the movie portrays them: working together and being powerful. Things just have to be explosive for no other reason than for people’s imaginations.”

Kristin Davis on how everyone gets along: “There was a very strange piece in one of the tabloids that said Kim and I would eat in the restaurant of our hotel and not sit together, which cracks me up,” she says, actually cracking up. “When I would get back from the set, I would go to the gym and get room service. I’m not a put-on-decent-clothes-and-go-to-the-hotel-restaurant person, but Kim is. The story was that we don’t like each other. Ridiculous!”

Cynthia Nixon, truth-teller: “It hasn’t always been smooth sailing,” she says. “But the idea that we’re somehow adversarial is ludicrous.”

Cattrall on what SATC meant for her career: “Sex and the City came along to me when I was in my 40s and already established as an actress,” she says. “And I thought, Wow! I’ve done all of that, and now this on top of it!”

Cynthia Nixon on her memories: “It was a whirlwind, and I’m sure I don’t remember one-tenth of what happened.”

Ugh. This is an actual line in the article: “But it’s Parker who has ridden the SATC wave to icon status, eclipsing her peers by a landslide.”

Cynthia Nixon on SJP: “We go to the theater together, or just go to one of our houses for dinner,” says Nixon. She and Parker have summer homes in neighboring towns, and their sons, who are the same age, are regular playmates.

Kristin Davis on the friendships: “When we first started, we would all drive out to the Hamptons together at 4 a.m. on a Friday night after shooting ended and see the sunrise as we arrived. I love those memories. We worked so many hours, just work work work work work. We were all so committed to making the show good. There wasn’t room for much else. I had my dog, and that was about it.”

Cattrall on the work schedule: “Nineteen-hour workdays are stressful, whether you’re driving a truck, working in a coal mine, or on a set and trying to be your brightest at 4 o’clock in the morning. But there’s a camaraderie that happened through all of that.”

Davis on aging and criticism: “When the last film opened, one critic began her story by discussing our faces! It was traumatizing. But that also gets at the amazing part. We didn’t start on this show when we were 20. Everyone knows how old we are, and we’re still getting to make movies.”

Will there be third SATC film? Nixon says maybe: “If Sarah Jessica and [writer/director] Michael Patrick [King] want to make another, I’m there. I’d go along with them blindfolded.”

SJP on Carrie’s style: “I’ve never revealed as much or been so daring or made quite as many triumphant mistakes as Carrie. But I’m now bolder than I would have been had I never played this part.”

[From Marie Claire]

Here’s the thing – I would totally be down with this film and any other films they wanted to make if only they would make the films more like the television show! You know, with jokes, and an actual plot that moved quickly, and some semblance of character development and genuine human emotion. Instead, I fear that this film will be just like the first one – a series of fashion shows, interspersed with hour-long Carrie-centric pity parties, with a dash of whining from Charlotte and a dash of hardcore emasculating bitch from Miranda. Oh, and camels. Let’s not forget the camels. I hate what they’ve done to a television show I once loved.

Individual photos courtesy of Marie Claire online. Cover courtesy of The Fashion Spot.

This week’s Star Magazine has a short interview with Sarah Jessica Parker as part of her early promotion for Sex and the City 2. Of course this one isn’t going to be as in-depth as SJP’s epic Vogue profile, where she admitted that she didn’t bring her newborn twins to Morocco, where SATC was filming, and that she didn’t see them “except for Skype” for “nearly two months”. After that little revelation, SJP then spent too much time trying to convince everyone that she was just a normal – nay, GREAT – mom. When asked by the Vogue interviewer “How many people work for you?” SJP‘s answer was this: “We painted our patio furniture ourselves. I make my children’s food myself. We put together their high chairs ourselves; we do a lot ourselves! We do our own grocery shopping, we go to the market ourselves, you know? I do my laundry.” Oh, and another one of my favorites – why did SJP want another baby? ““I didn’t want [James Wilke] to have to shoulder the burden of us—later in life—by himself.”

So, basically, we’re going to be hearing a lot more about how SJP left her much-needed newborn girls in the care of someone for seven weeks while she filmed another hyper-consumerism, horrible, fake film. Prepare yourself. This is SJP’s current version – I guarantee she’ll have a new version for Oprah:

Star: How did you enjoy shooting overseas?
I loved Morocco. I didn’t realize Marrakesh was such a bustling city. We went away for seven weeks, and that was a great advantage because, as opposed to filming in New York, no one cares who we were.

Star: Were you able to take the twins?
No, and I have enormous regrets about that. They couldn’t travel at the time, because they were too young to get the right shots.

Star: You already have a 7-year-old son. How much harder is it raising two babies at once?
It couldn’t be more different. I mean, just one alone is daunting, with the diapers, the ointments, the bottles, the pacifiers. You’re carrying suitcases! There is so much more planning it’s like a military operation.

Star: How are you and Matthew adjusting?
It’s wonderful. We didn’t want twins, but it’s a blessing. They are as different as can be in every way, and I think it’s good for them that they will be their own people.

[From Star Magazine, print edition]

See, I do think she’s being honest. I bet she really does regret leaving the babies for seven weeks – although it was probably closer to eight or nine weeks, considering that Vogue profile took place after she finished filming in Morocco, and she was staying in London, relaxing and shopping after her grueling film schedule. So, she regrets it. And nothing huge happened, and I’m sure the babies were just fine, and Matthew Broderick and the nannies took great care of the babies. But the simple fact that SJP did make the final decision to leave them for so long speaks volumes to me, her “regrets” or not.

And besides all of that, why the hell did they need to film in Morocco anyway? One of the great joys of the television series was seeing the women in their world, New York City. Ugh.

SJP on in NYC on April 23 & 29, 2010 Credit: Pacific Coast News.

We’ve already discussed the Photoshop hell that is Sarah Jessica Parker’s May cover for Vogue Magazine. I still can’t believe that A) Vogue gave her another goddamn cover and B) Vogue thought we wouldn’t notice that SJP is Photoshopped into non-horsey oblivion. But I hadn’t even gotten to the f-cking article yet. Prepare yourself, because I’m about to go off. This is how the Vogue article begins:

This woman here, poised, polished, and utterly composed in her Dior Haute Couture, is a phenomenally influential force (and driver of merchandise) in terms of culture, fashion, style, and beauty for vast numbers of women in their 20s and up. In terms of her own trade, she changed everything: She turned the twentieth-century American screen heroine on her head. In a black-and-white world with no ambiguity, nice girls were not style icons or sex goddesses. Carrie Bradshaw—as played by Sarah Jessica Parker (“the star next door,” in the words of director Michael Patrick King)—is a triumph of the nice girl who, along with her gal pals, has an interesting and occasionally eyebrow-raising sex life as well.

[From Vogue]

Let’s stop it right there for one damn minute. Are we still playing this f-cking song? The whole “Sex and the City changed everything for women” song? Because it didn’t. It was not a feminist show, these women are not feminists, and the story of Carrie Bradshaw was certainly not “a triumph of the nice girl”. It was a show about friendship, about sex, and about consumerism. It was really funny at times, and it had a few heartbreaking moments, and it was mostly good television. But let’s stop trying to make the show important or groundbreaking or an iconic feminist milestone. It wasn’t. And Carrie is a really horrible, selfish, self-absorbed narcissist, not a “good girl”. Ugh.

The interview takes place as SJP has just wrapped filming on SATC 2, so my guess is last December or something. Just to give you context. Here’s more from the interview:

SJP on being a mother to her then newborn twin girls: “I haven’t seen my daughters for almost two months, with the exception of Skype, and I have to tell you. I never felt like this.” They were born on June 22 last year, Tabitha Hodge (“or Babe”) and Marion Loretta Elwell (“or Kitty”). “Aren’t those great names?” their mom asks, her face split in a grin. “Babe Broderick! Kitty Broderick! It’s like it’s 1940. I wish it were 1940.”

On the surrogate going into labor: She tells of the day Michelle Ross—their surrogate mother, from Parker’s home state of Ohio—went into labor unexpectedly. Parker’s husband wasn’t even home, so it was just she and her son running around the house throwing things into a suitcase. “And I came back into the room and saw James Wilkie combing his hair down in a certain way and standing in front of the mirror. And he doesn’t know that I heard him say, ‘I have to be handsome when I meet my sisters.’ It killed me.”

More on the surrogacy: “I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to get pregnant, but it just was not to be, the conventional way—I would give birth as often as I could, if I could. I cherished all the milestones, the good and the bad.” SJP says she and Matthew wanted more kids because “I didn’t want [James Wilke] to have to shoulder the burden of us—later in life—by himself.”

Surrogacy vs. biological kids: “Meeting your children rather than giving birth to them, it’s as if, um, it’s—suspended animation. The gestational experience is gone. It’s as if everything else disappears for a moment, and the world goes silent and—I can’t explain it except to say that nothing else existed. I don’t remember anything but the blanket on the bed that they were lying on and my husband’s face and their faces and my son’s. It’s literally as if sound is sucked from the room. Time stands still. It’s so different, and equally extraordinary. I am very poor at describing it. But it’s amazing.”

Matthew Broderick didn‘t want to talk about the babies: “I think the biggest thing is you can’t celebrate something that is potentially filled with joy, nor can you share fears and worries about every checkup, you know—the sixteen-week checkup, the amnio, the this, the that. The bone scan, the nuchal test. And the waiting is different, the whole nine months. We couldn’t talk about the fact that we were having children to anybody for soooo long. All the stuff that matters is secretive and worrisome. You can’t talk about how you feel about the woman who’s carrying your children; you can only talk about it to your husband.” She laughs. “And he just doesn’t want to talk about it as much as you do.”

On the SATC characters aging: “We’re still playing—uh, I don’t know how old Carrie is! Is she about 42 now? I think Carrie’s younger than I [Parker is 45], and Miranda and Charlotte are younger than they are in real life. Samantha was always the older lady, so she’s 52 now and talks a lot about what comes with that. In the movie. Talks about menopause. Comedically.”

On dressing differently because they were filming in a Muslim country: “[Costume designer Pat Fields] wanted all the characters to be interesting, sexy, all the stories that Pat likes to tell with clothing, but we had religious and environmental and cultural standards to respect,” says Parker. “You have to look at clothing and women and women’s bodies completely differently. And you start to see how you can still see so much with someone covered. And how exciting that is and how beautiful it is and how draping can be incredibly sexy.” They ended up wearing a lot of long dresses, she says (which we’ll all have to do soon because that’s what famously happens in downturns). “I don’t think Carrie’s worn a long dress in years; she doesn’t really do that. Unless it’s whimsy. Or over-the-top couture.”

Did the women get along? “What I’m most happy to tell you,” says Parker, “is that we four women, despite I guess what a lot of people hope, have never been better. This movie—and maybe it’s because we actually lived together—it was the best! We were together all day long, at night, in the restaurants, in our hotels. It was wonderful.”

UGH. SJP puts lotion on her son: “Because I really like putting the kids to bed. And when I’m doing a movie, for the first few days of the week I can almost always get home in time to put James Wilkie and my daughters to sleep. If I’m doing a play, I miss all of that.” There’ll come a time, she knows, when “my son doesn’t like us the way he really loves us now. He certainly won’t want to have us there and pushing his hair back and tucking him in and putting lotion on his body and the routine that we love. My daughters have a bottle at 6:30 to 7:00 and then they get like a dream feed at 9:30 to 10:00, and I love it.”

How many people work for you? “We painted our patio furniture ourselves. I make my children’s food myself. We put together their high chairs ourselves; we do a lot ourselves! We do our own grocery shopping, we go to the market ourselves, you know? I do my laundry.”

On being named the creative director for Halston: “I came to New York originally in 1976, and then I got this part in Annie. Around the corner from Studio 54. I was a little girl, and for some reason they always invited the cast of Annie to Studio 54, so there I was at thirteen and fourteen, and the doorman would usher us in, literally underneath his arms. And it was 1977 in New York City, and you couldn’t be alive and not know the name Halston. There was every reason to say no, and there were very compelling reasons to say yes. It’s an exciting time at that company. It has had some false starts that are well documented and it is relaunching itself. It has a wonderful legacy, and I couldn’t say no, and I’m…uh, figuring it out.”

How will SJP do it all? “Well, there are 42 hours in the day. How many hours are in your day? We’ll see how successfully I manage this. I, you know, I don’t do movies all the time.” As she says of all her professional choices, “Does it scare me? Am I intimidated? Am I challenged? That’s kind of the way I’ve always made decisions. And luckily, the Halston offices are about a ten-minute walk from my house.”

[From Vogue]

Oh, isn’t she just so real? Barf. This is why SJP annoys me. If she wants to be a working mom, fine and God bless. I don’t have any problems with it, and I think she probably adores her children and wishes she could spend more time with them and she really wants to be an amazing mom, but she also loves to work. Which is fine. No judgment. What annoys me is that she wants to put herself out there like Mother of the Year when she basically handed off her newborns to the nannies for several months just so she could make another narcissistic, hyper-consumerism film that we’re all supposed to think it the apex of modern feminism. Burn it with fire.

Oh, don’t even get me started on how we’re supposed to applaud these women for being working actresses not afraid to age in front in the camera – all the while we’re not supposed to notice the work they’ve had done, or the Photoshop hell that magazine use to make them look plastic. Oh, and the thing about putting lotion on her son… creepy. Jesus, after this interview I totally hate her.

Vogue photos courtesy of Vogue’s slideshow.

I saw the new trailer for the second Sex and the City movie last night, and to say that I was unimpressed could be the understatement of the year. This sh-t looks ghastly. And I’m saying that as a fan of the original television series – but not as a fan of the first film. The first film was too long, too depressing, too focused on Carrie’s whining and self-absorption, and if you’re expecting SATC 2 to go in a different direction, I’ve got news for you: the only new direction is down. Also, I should mention something else – this trailer seems like one big spoiler. It reveals some of what I’m guessing are the biggest plotlines, including (SPOILERS BUT IT DOESN”T MATTER): Aiden is back, Stanford and Anthony are getting married (I think), Mr. Big has a wandering eye, Carrie is in a rut, Charlotte is stressed out, Samantha is still horny and bangin’ everyone, and CAMELS. Lots of camels.

So, yeah… it doesn’t even seem like they’re in New York for most of the movie! All the “important” junk seems to happen in Abu Dhabi! I did learn something new from this trailer though – apparently in Abu Dhabi (and all around the United Arab Emirates), you can drink alcohol - it’s served in hotels and places where Westerners go. I was a little put off by the thought of these Western women getting sauced and horny in a predominantly Muslim country where it’s an article of faith to not drink and not be a horny cougar. Whatever.

Second thing I noticed – this movie is going to be heavy on the guest stars. You get a very brief glimpse of Miley Cyrus’s cameo and we also get a little taste of a ravishing Penelope Cruz as she flirts with Mr. Big. Big looks into to it, too. Yeah… not to be mean, but Penelope is more Mr. Big’s type (and Chris Noth’s type). Also, LIZA WITH A Z!!!! Liza Minnelli is there, I think at Stanford’s wedding…? See what I’m saying? There are no spoilers, because now that you know that Stanford is getting married, and Liza is there (Yay!) doesn’t that make you want to see the movie more? I hate myself.

And why do they do that to Cynthia Nixon? I think Nixon is one of the prettiest and most natural of the “girls” and they made her look like hell. UGH.