1. Her grandmother is Lena Horne.

2. She makes no bones about nepotism:

"I can definitely say that if you want to be in the film industry, it's really good to be related to someone famous. I would advise that. The closer the relationship the better. It's probably best to be someone's identical twin."

But she admits that her father gave her good habits: "He's been working with a capital 'W' since he was 4. He was an actor in the Yiddish theater. He's now 85 and been working for 81 years with time off to fight in World War II. In terms of a work ethic, that's a good one."

3. Coming from a mixed-race background, she had a mixed-race couple in Rachel Getting Married but didn't make it part of the story, because:

"I think you have to be honest about it. People don't sit around talking about, we're black people and we're going to talk about the nature of blackness. Or, we're Asian and going to talk about the nature of Asian-ness. That's just a lie and a myth. Also, I think that it's dishonest to assume that it's always and issue. I found that in Rachel Getting Married, the people that brought it up, that question speaks more about you than me."

4. Yet, she is working on something about race, called See Also: Sambo; and she's collaborating with Jason Reitman, who directed Juno. She says: "I looked up something like mixed race on Wikipedia and that's [the term] I found." But don't expect the project to be preachy: "I can tell you that it's as irreverent as one can manage. I'm so sick of all the sanctity and February [Black History Month] is the holy month and I want to puke my guts out."

5. The other film she's working on, This Strange Thing Called Prom, sounds awesome: "It's the story about a bunch of kids that want to put on a prom. The school's only been in existence for four years so it was the first senior prom.… They had to figure out what a prom is. They watched Prom Night and half of them were traumatized."

Jenny Getting Noticed [WSJ]

• Cops believe that the robbers are also responsible for burglaries at the upscale homes of "Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing and her Oscar-winning director husband, William Friedkin, Clippers basketball star Cuttino Mobley, Duran Duran guitarist John Taylor and his wife, Juicy Couture President Gela Nash-Taylor, and country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. [LAT]
• And now, here is a stoner soliloquy from the Bard, Woody Harrelson: "A new day, trembling with potential / I am the potentiate, and my life is equal to the task of living of loving, of moving my love"—that's my name for Laura, "my love"—"Yesterday I wallowed in me-hood, following a well-worn path / Today, I jump from bridges, dance on tiny windowsills high above the ubiquitous crowd of unsuspecting faces / Combative. Angry. Hostile. Those were the bedrock of this body's previous tenant and now I, nameless, unnameable, ergo mysterious, incorrigible, march to the musical manifestations, the bass and harp of distant angels, calling me with their many magnificent mouths: Dance, creature! Put down your pen, lift up your limbs, and dance to greet another golden morning." [Esquire]
• Fergie and Josh Duhamel will wed in January! Apparently Nicole Kidman and Kate Hudson will be in attendance. Let's hope Fergie pees before she gets strapped into her gown! [Popdirt]
• Here's a list of Mark Ronson's 99 favorite bands. Now I don't have to be embarrassed about loving Ben Folds anymore, because he's Ronson-approved! [ Guardian]
• Sarah Jessica Parker has spoken to Sex and the City costar Jennifer Hudson, and Parker says, "The little bit that I would share is just that I think she's surviving. I don't know how a person navigates anything like this. And I think nobody is prepared for something like this. But she is incredibly strong. She is a woman of faith. And I think she is figuring out. I can't imagine what it must be like for her." [Daily Express]
• If you want to remember Britney in happier, pre-fame days, check out this cutie audition she did as a wee one. [this cutie audition tape]
• Dustin Hoffman asked for the theater he donated money to build at Santa Monica College to name a bathroom after him. His wish was granted! Who doesn't want to pee in Dustin Hoffman's room? [EW]
• There's a rumor going around that Pete Doherty destroyed one of his arteries through too much intravenous drug use. At least there were no kittens involved this time. [Dlisted]
• If you were looking for more insight into Tara Reid's recent entrance into rehab, try this: "She becomes erratic and is a completely different person when she's intoxicated, which is hard for people close to her to watch." Maybe it would also be good for her if those people close to her stopped talking to celebrity rags? Just sayin'. [People]
• Billie Jean is just a girl who says…she wants £668 million from Michael Jackson. "Billie Jean Jackson alleges she is the mother of the singer's son Prince Michael Jackson II, nicknamed Blanket. The woman demands £668 million in support payment, as well as joint legal and physical custody of the six-year-old." Doesn't sound like a fake nuisance lawsuit at all, no sir. [ Daily Express]
• Now that Debra Winger has returned to the silver screen with critical fave Rachel Getting Married, she's answering questions about the Rosanna Arquette documentary Searching For Debra Winger. “I told her she didn’t need my permission because my name is public domain," the notoriously salty star says. "I understand that it was a lovely film but I decided that I wouldn’t see it so that I wouldn’t have to comment on it. It was deeply embarrassing because after I had spent eight years seeking some amount of obscurity, in one fell swoop she obliterated that possibility by putting my name in the title.” [Telegraph]
• Tracy Pollan, the actress best known for being married to Michael J. Fox, will star in a Lifetime movie about Natalie Holloway. She'll play Natalie's mom, Beth Twitty, in The Natalee Holloway Story. The movie is based on the real life Beth Twitty's book Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith, which in our opinion is a much better Lifetime movie name. [ PR Wire]

Salon:

Maybe the characters Demme is showing us are in some ways too real. There were stretches of "Rachel Getting Married" that made me feel restless and annoyed, itching to get away from the aggressive, overgrown neuroses of these characters: A little of that goes a long way in the movies, and a filmmaker doesn't need to fetishize characters' rampant self-absorption to get the point across. But just when someone says or does something that makes you want to shout at the screen, Demme pulls back and reminds us — by focusing on a particular face, or by showing us a character's awkward body language — that these are, quite simply, people in pain. Hathaway, in particular, with those wary eyes and lips that always look on the verge of quivering, brings much of that pain to the surface: This isn't a character you want to hug — she's got too many angles — but Demme feels so deeply for her that he makes us feel for her, too.

Slate:

I've never been much of an Anne Hathaway fan. She always seemed, to borrow a phrase some brilliant blogger once used about Gwyneth Paltrow, to be "sprinkling herself with fairy dust." But Hathaway transcends her usual complacency in this role and resists the temptation of using Kym's (and her own) wounded-bird appeal to let the character off the hook. Bill Irwin, the great stage clown who's a Demme regular, is marvelously expressive as the girls' overanxious father. And when the luminous Debra Winger first appears onscreen as their withholding mother, you want to grab her and say (on your own behalf as well as her daughters'): Where have you been all these years?

The New York Times:

The themes of dependency and recovery that Kym brings home in her overnight bag are familiar, even banal. Every unhappy family may be unique, but every addict is fundamentally the same, and if “Rachel Getting Married” had surrendered its story completely to Kym, it would have risked becoming as drab and familiar as a made-for-television 12-step homily.

But Mr. Demme protects the film against such an unsatisfying fate. He is certainly sympathetic to Kym, even as he and Ms. Hathaway conspire to show her at her appalling worst. But he has never been one to restrict his sympathies, and the wonderful thing about “Rachel Getting Married” is how expansive it seems, in spite of the limits of its scope and the modesty of its ambitions. It’s a small movie, and in some ways a very sad one, but it has an undeniable and authentic vitality, an exuberance of spirit, that feels welcome and rare.

The Los Angeles Times:

"Rachel Getting Married" is welcome for any number of reasons. It's a gratifying return to his independent film roots for Oscar-winning director Dem- me, a powerful screenwriting debut for Jenny Lumet, a herculean job of hand-held cinematography by Declan Quinn and a career-changing performance by Anne Hathaway, of all people, as an ultra-troubled young woman set loose from rehab for her sister's wedding.

Newsweek:

Anyone expecting the demure, doe-eyed Hathaway of "The Princess Diaries" or "The Devil Wears Prada" is in for a shock. Kym is a major pain in the ass, and Hathaway's raw, spiky performance makes no attempt to ingratiate. Yet she makes Kym's inner torment so palpable you can't help but feel for her, however insufferable she may be. It's a terrific performance, and DeWitt matches her step for step: you can feel a lifetime of tangled sisterly feelings in every charged moment between them.

The A.V. Club:

Rachel Getting Married sounds like a joyless dirge, but it's actually far from it, and a lot of that is owed to the way Demme harnesses the genuine love and good feeling that buoys the occasion. If he ever retires from directing, he could have a great side business as a wedding planner: The rehearsal dinner, the ceremony, and the reception are brimming with sweet multi-culti touches and great music, including performances by the likes of Robyn Hitchcock and TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe. (The cutting of the cake, for one, may be the most moving moment in the whole movie.) With an easy, freeflowing style—owing partially to the Dogme-style approach that has led some to compare the film to The Celebration—Demme captures the group dynamic of the wedding party, with its seismic shifts in mood from celebratory to melancholy and back again.

The New York Observer:

Up to my eyeballs in draggy, shapeless amateur junk, I am genuinely thrilled to welcome a film this colorful, artistically realized and wonderfully alive. Steeped in the tradition of sound narrative form yet scrappy and unpredictable, acted and written with enormous style but with front and back doors open to experiment and surprise, it’s a film that challenges you to keep a jogger’s pace to keep up with it, then leaves you breathless. With three more months to go, Rachel Getting Married is already high on my 10-best list for 2008.

Entertainment Weekly:

This melting-pot wedding creates a frisson of its own; it's a vision of a new world. I do wish that Demme hadn't let the wedding music, by Robyn Hitchcock, Sister Carol East, and a few others, take over the last act. This much healing-by-'80s-hipster-taste is too much. But Rachel Getting Married is still a triumph — Demme's finest work since The Silence of the Lambs, and a movie that tingles with life.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Shot through with smart humor, "Rachel" outlaws cliche. Sydney's good-looking best man, Kieran (Mather Zickel), whom Kym has previously spotted at a 12-step meeting for struggling addicts, materializes at the wedding like her perfect romantic partner. In a humorously unexpected twist, Kym immediately beds him in the attic and ignores him for the rest of the film. A whole romantic subplot is nipped in the bud, leaving the screenplay room to open family wounds and explore less predictable territory.

Variety:

The characters' volatile moodswings are matched by the restlessness of the HD camerawork commandeered by Declan Quinn ("Monsoon Wedding"). Quinn's camera, few of whose moves were blocked out beforehand, proves ever ready to take off in unexpected directions.

The Toronto Star:

Hathaway's performance as the brittle Kym has been trumpeted as a potential Oscar turn for her, demonstrating her dark side after her roles playing princesses.

But there's more than one award-worthy performance here. As the titular Rachel, DeWitt adroitly plays a sympathetic figure who still manages to be hard to like.

And as the aloof Abby, the MIA Debra Winger returns to the screen with a small but powerful performance that implies a lot of repressed rage and regret.

'Rachel Getting Married' opens today in limited release.

Rachel Getting Married Trailer [Youtube]

*Full Disclosure: my ball n' chain works for Sony Pictures Classics, the company that's releasing Rachel, but that in no way changes my opinion of this trailer or its efficacy as a tearjerker.