Viraldice

At the San Diego world premiere of the new Broadway-bound musical based on Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” the house was packed with rock writers, and Joni Mitchell was there.

In the show, lead actors Casey Likes and Solea Pfeiffer sing “River,” one of Mitchell’s most enduring hits.

The show features an original score by Tom Kitt, who co-wrote lyrics with Crowe, in addition to some beloved classics like “Tiny Dancer.”

Post-performance at the Old Globe at an outdoor party, Mitchell “proved she can still party like a rock star” an attendee said, by closing the bash down after 1 a.m. alongside the cast.

We’re told that special arrangements had to be made for Likes, who’s just 17, to be admitted into the party, after he was turned away from a first preview bar bash a few weeks ago.

Also spotted at the opening was Pennie Lane Trumbull, the real-life inspiration for the “Band Aid” character that Pfeiffer plays onstage and Kate Hudson originated in the film.

The musical is set in San Diego, where Crowe grew up.

Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston‘s highly anticipated Apple+ series “The Morning Show” will be screened at The Paley Center for Media in New York.

The screening of the premiere episode, which will be on Oct. 29, at 7 p.m., will be followed by a Q&A with Witherspoon, Aniston, director Mimi Leder and executive producers Michael Ellenberg and Kerry Ehrin.

The series shows the drama of morning news programs as told from the point of view of two women. The series also stars Steve Carell, Billy Crudup, Nestor Carbonell and Mark Duplass.

They also announced that Gayle King will be hosting a conversation with Frank A. Bennack, Jr., the executive vice chairman and former CEO of Hearst and the current chairman of The Paley Center for Media, on Oct. 16. The pair will talk about Bennack Jr.’s memoir “Leave Something on the Table: And Other Surprising Lessons for Success in Business and in Life”

“New Amsterdam” has been added to Paley Center for Media’s upcoming Paleyfest NY schedule on Oct. 15. The NBC show, which stars Ryan Eggold and Janet Montgomery, joins the fall line-up with previously announced events including a 20th anniversary “West Wing” panel with Aaron Sorkin, “The Walking Dead,” “Star Trek: Discovery” and more. It runs from Oct. 4 – 15.

To purchase tickets to these events, please visit paleycenter.org.

Billie Eilish, Woody Harrelson and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” celebrated the show’s season debut at Catch Steak, along with Liev Schreiber who made a guest appearance in the show’s cold open.

Also spotted were guests Larry David, Chris Rock, Owen Wilson and Marlon Wayans.

We hear that Lorne Michaels spent the evening seated with Wilson and the Farrelly brothers.

How many times have you been asked about your life plan? When are you going to settle down? Buy a house? Have children? Have you, when faced with these questions, felt bitter resentment bubbling up inside? Lorcan Finnegan’s surreal and nightmarish sophomore feature Vivarium may be the movie for you.

Vivarium stars Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg (seen together recently in The Art Of Self-Defense) as Gemma and Tom, a young couple looking to purchase a new home and start a life together. Visiting a strangely austere showroom, they're met by a similarly strange real estate agent who suggests - insists, really - that they move into a new development outside town that’s just perfect for them. But when they arrive, and the agent disappears, they find a nightmarishly beige landscape of nightmarishly beige houses from which escape is impossible. They didn't buy a house, but they have a house now, and in that house shall they remain forever. All roads lead back to their perfectly-prefab new abode; as far as the eye can see, there is only this subdivision. Feel familiar, suburbanites?

As Gemma and Tom settle, begrudgingly, into their new home, their daily routine mirrors and departs from reality in increasingly unsettling ways. Supplies are provided in boxes that appear outside their houses. The television plays only fractal noise. Nothing smells, feels, or tastes normal; it’s a permanent version of that surreal sensory discombobulation of having just moved into a new home. As the audience surrogate character, Poots offers weary relatability in the face of a distressing, all-too-familiar situation. As her increasingly distant husband, Eisenberg is at once relatable and monstrous, spending his days obsessively and fruitlessly searching for a way out.

Most distressing of all is the arrival of a box containing a baby, accompanied by a label instructing Gemma and Tom to “raise it and be released.” This baby grows at an alarming rate into a childlike creature that's clearly malevolent in some way. Voiced through a profoundly disconcerting vocal performance mixing multiple child and adult actors’ voices together, this kid is as terrifying in the film as the very idea of parenthood is to many audiences. He’s a nightmare, acting out in increasingly bizarre ways with motivations unintelligible to his “parents,” betraying the fact that he may well be a creation of an unseen, inhuman force; a strong entry into the pantheon of horrible movie kids.

Helping all this along is some terrific production design and visual effects, working in tandem to create a suburbia occupying a nexus between Edward Scissorhands, The Twilight Zone, and the work of David Lynch. Identical astroturfed properties stretch along psychologically-tested curvilinear street patterns ad infinitum; interiors are a perfectly inoffensive shade of off-white; the clouds are picturesque to the point of malevolence. Even the slightly unreal stagebound lighting helps to make everything feel a little too perfect.

Towards the end of Vivarium, the story lurches fully into psychotronic madness, as the neighbourhood’s inner workings start to become more visible - and more dangerous. This sequence sees several “holy shit” moments play out, with space and physics bending to suit the will of the suburb, but while it puts the characters through the wringer, it never quite hits the stratospheric highs one senses it’s aiming for. That’s a budgetary issue, in all likelihood, and while Finnegan finds clever ways around it (think Cube), the hints of the larger film this might have been are still there - if you look for them.

Vivarium’s outlook on society is a bleak one, for the most part. It depicts the world as a banal machine that eats people up, an endless cycle wherein our only purpose is to consume, keep to ourselves, and pump out a new generation to do the same. Contemporary, then, in a time when many find themselves questioning whether humanity’s continued existence is a good thing - or if it even matters. But there’s an infinitesimally tiny glimmer of hope, too: the little moments in which Gemma and Tom throw caution and responsibility to the wind are among the film’s most thrilling. 

The term “vivarium” refers to a contained space for beings to live in - a space controlled enough to facilitate external observation, but that presents a satisfying-enough simulacrum of the natural environment that the subjects don’t feel too out of place. It could be applied to the film’s subdivision, and to its individual houses, but the takeaway from Vivarium is that we’re all living in vivaria, under constant perceived observation, never allowed to fully let our guard down.

In that sense, Vivarium is compelling, depressing, apocalyptic even - and strangely invigorating. When all you have is responsibility and grind, tearing your world apart becomes all the more satisfying. Vivarium is a powerfully focused dystopian nightmare that will connect with many viewers in ways they maybe don’t fully desire. But maybe our world needs to be torn apart in order to be mended.

Don’t be surprised if you catch designer Anna Sui eyeing you up at the Super Bowl.

The fashion star told us that she gets ideas for her work at all kinds of events.

“I am always looking at women and men to see how they put things together. It could be a sports event,” she told us Thursday at the NYC Ballet Fall Fashion Gala. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s always interesting to see how women and men interpret fashion.”

Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant celebrated his 31st birthday with the entire team — including fellow new players Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan at Dave & Buster’s in Times Square, spies said.

Also at the party were Durant’s business partner Rich Kleiman, former Giants star wide receiver Victor Cruz and supermodel Joan Smalls.

Videos posted on Twitter show Durant and Irving playing each other in a game of Pop-A-Shot basketball at the party.

It may be the last time the pair play at the same time for a while. Durant is expected to miss all of the upcoming season with an ankle injury.