REVIEWS

PLAYBOY AFTERHOURS

BECOMING ATTRACTION

Ali Sonoma

“God blessed me with a great body,” says model and budding actress Ali Sonoma. “I can’t help it that I’m sexy. I was just born this way.” That natural sex appeal has made Ali a popular spokesmodel and was key to her winning the UFC Octagon Girl Search 2007. The 26-year-old from St. Louis has a movie in the works with (no kidding) Corey Feldman and porn star Savanna Samson. But taking pretty pictures remains her bread and butter, and frankly we like the taste of it. She’s particularly fond of naughty costumes. “I love the cop outfit,” she says, “with black leather. I really like playing the authority figure. I like to carry a gun and handcuffs.” Amen to that.

“I can’t help it that I’m sexy. I was just born this way.”

Smoking Hot Jacket Required

Classic Look of the Month Made in the Shades

The actual Persol sunglasses Steve McQueen wears in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) sold at auction for $70,200. We recommend the new Persol 714 McQueen replicas ($389, eyegoodies.com). Here’s how to complete the look: tie and pocket square ($295) by Brioni, three-piece Garrison plaid suit ($2,095) by Ralph Lauren and dress shirt with long point collar ($340) by Gucci. Tough-guy stare that could peel a woman’s dress off from 10 yards away? Sold separately.

Rolling Sculpture The Art of the Automobile

This month Atlanta’s High Museum of Art opens The Allure of the Automobile, a collection of 18 incredibly rare classic cars built between 1930 and 1965, all monuments to design, engineering and speed. Pictured: the 1961 Ferrari 250 SWB that won its class at Le Mans and a 1957 Jag XKSS Roadster owned by the man pictured above.

Custom-tailor emporium SEW has a history of making smoking jackets. According to proprietor Scott Evan Wasserberger, when male customers try one on they invariably inquire, “Man, do I look like Hef?” Thus the designer’s new “Hef” jacket was born. The merlot-and-black jacket is made of French silk-blend velvet, with silk satin lapels. It has already become a favorite of certain Sopranos cast members. The price for looking good enough to snag seven girlfriends? A cool $1,800 (sewnyc.com).

Dinner Is Served Spring Lamb

Spring Lamb Shanks Braised in Milk

4 large lamb shanks 1 large carrot, peeled and diced ¾ cup diced celery ½ large onion, finely chopped 5⅓ cups whole milk 1 bunch rosemary 2 tbsp. smashed garlic cloves Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 cup dry white wine

Hard Sell Buy Sexual

American Apparel has been pushing boundaries with its marketing since day one. You probably saw the recent campaign in which it quietly slipped porn stars (including Faye Reagan, below) into its ads under such innocuous names as Jillian . A recent visit to the company’s website revealed a close-up of a barely clothed female crotch and assorted nipples. We heartily approve. PLAYBOY: It says here that you worked at a junkyard. BECKY: Can we call it a car parts center? PLAYBOY: Sure. How was it? BECKY: Dirty. PLAYBOY: So what’s your real name? BECKY: Becky Wunder, for real. PLAYBOY: Surely you’ve been called Wonder Woman, then. BECKY: Well, a few of my roommates call me Wunder Butt. PLAYBOY: That’s appropriate. BECKY: I do love my butt. PLAYBOY: We do too. Your roommates have a great eye. BECKY: They’ve seen enough of me. Sometimes I traipse from my room to the bathroom without clothes on. PLAYBOY: So it wasn’t difficult to disrobe for this shoot? BECKY: Right, I love being naked. PLAYBOY: We can appreciate that. But we also love a woman we can have a decent meal with. Are you the salad type? BECKY: On the contrary. I love to eat and cook. Check out my new cooking blog, WunderfulKitchen.com. PLAYBOY: How do you maintain such a curvy yet trim body? BECKY: I do all types of traditional and quirky workouts. I go to the gym, take pole- dancing classes and hula with a weighted hoop. PLAYBOY: You Hula-Hoop? BECKY: Yes, it’s amazing for my curves —the Wunder Butt.

Killer Fiction Hammer Lives

Shortly before Mickey Spillane died in 2006, the master crime scribe warned his wife there’d be a “treasure hunt” after he kicked the bucket: maroons looking to get their hands on unpublished material. “Give everything to Max,” he told her. And she did. Now Max Allan Collins, Spillane’s collaborator and author of Road to Perdition, has expertly completed a second Spillane novel, The Big Bang, out this spring. The book will transport you back to gritty 1960s Manhattan, where Spillane’s antihero Mike Hammer drops acid and takes on the mob.

Employee of the Month Becky Wunder

Movie of the Month Green Zone

By Stephen Rebello

In the taut action thriller Green Zone, directed by Paul Greengrass, Matt Damon plays an Army officer who goes rogue and discovers cover-ups by the CIA and other agencies during the futile search for WMDs in Iraq. Inspired by Washington Post editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Green Zone features under cover intrigue as in a Bourne adventure. “I learned making Bourne that no matter what we tried to invent, we kept being beaten by what was actually going on in the real world,” says Greengrass. “So why not set a thriller against that real world? We’re giving the audience that enjoys the Bourne movies the same kind of dynamic storytelling, a character in search of the truth and lots of action set in a world with a moral dimension. Making a film is like driving into a dark, rock- strewn cavern without knowing you won’t hit a brick wall. With Matt, it’s like having four headlights instead of two.”

Dicking Around

Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan on the hunt for a valuable stolen baseball card, marks director Kevin Smith’s first feature from a script he didn’t write. Few movies have gone through as many title changes; we liked A Couple of Dicks ourselves. At least the script wasn’t sanitized as was rumored—it remains a raunchy R.

DVD of the Month Capitalism: A Love Story

There is no question documentarian and rabble- rouser Michael Moore is adept at putting linedrawing issues on the big screen. The irony of this, his most entertaining movie yet, is that the flannel- wearing populist socks it to the very system that enabled his own success. Moore revisits some of his Roger & Me techniques: Grandstanding, he hollers for Big Business to give the people a refund and seals Wall Street off with crime-scene tape. Moore may be a blowhard, but he’s also a terrific investigative journalist who sheds light on things like “dead peasant” insurance policies, which should infuriate anyone with a pulse. He may not have all the answers, but at least he’s asking the right questions. (BD) Best extras: More than 80 minutes of featurettes and deleted scenes with some famous faces. BBB½ —Stacie Hougland

Tease Frame

English actress Emily Mortimer plays a woman who doubts her own attractiveness in Lovely & Amazing (pictured). American audiences know better after seeing her in Scream 3 and two Pink Panther movies. In Martin Scorsese’s much-delayed Shutter Island, Mortimer goes crazy as an escaped mental patient.