Modine is hooked on helping out
"Kettle of Fish" star Matthew Modine was munching on some popcorn as he walked along the red carpet at John Hancock Hall just a short time before the romantic comedy made its local premiere and said "with all that's going on in the world, it's great for people to have movies that can let them escape." Saturday night's screening and after-party raised an estimated $100,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and that made the trip to Boston all the better, he said. "The arts should always support charity. . . . There are many ways artists can offer support to their communities," said Modine, who stuck around for yesterday's Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation event that raised $250,000. Modine was joined on the red carpet and at yesterday's Celtics event by the movie's producer, Michael Mailer, who has been out promoting the film, which also stars Gina Gershon and Boston-based actress Christy Scott Cashman, for about a year. "That the film has had a secondary and a tertiary life . . . or beyond is such a blessing," said Norman Mailer's son, who spent seven years during his childhood in the Provincetown Public Schools.
Latinas celebrate a media newcomer
On break from taping her syndicated court show, TV judge Maria Lopez hosted a private party at her Newton home the other night for local Latinas to celebrate the launch of EntreAmigos, a new publication that features snapshots of Hispanics mingling at Boston social events. The magazine, which is a publication of El Planeta newspaper, made its debut in December, with la Lopez on the cover. She's also on the pub's editorial committee. "We are arriving, Boston's Latino social scene," Lopez said in Spanish to the group of about two dozen women as they sat in her living room. This month's issue features on its cover Newton filmmaker Maria Agui Carter, who is producing a documentary on a Cuban-born woman who dressed as a man to fight in the Civil War. The party was also a way for Hispanic women -- writers, journalists, artists, and community activists -- to meet one another and gab in English and Spanish.
Rappaport has his own Curley stories
Jerry Rappaport, who built Charles River Park and who with his two sons and wife now runs the New Boston Fund, stopped by Harvard the other day and talked about part of his past many don't recall -- his encounter with James Michael Curley, former Boston mayor, Massachusetts congressman and governor, and ex-convict. Rappaport was just out of Harvard and Harvard Law School when he was tapped to help run John Hynes' s campaign against Curley in 1949. After a screening of John Ford's 1958 "The Last Hurrah," a highly fictionalized version of the Curley story, Rappaport reminisced about those post-college years in the days when Boston politics was even more colorful and rough-and-tumble than today. "I wouldn't have been in Boston, I wouldn't have fallen in love with this city if it hadn't been to run that '49 campaign," he said. Rappaport, who once debated Curley, said "The Last Hurrah" made Curley ( Frank Skeffington in the film) look much nicer than he was. But he had an idea for casting, if it's re made. "Maybe Leo DiCaprio to play my role," he said.
Actress-dancer-director Debbie Allen was honored by the Harvard Black Men's Forum as its woman of the year at the forum's 13th annual "Celebration of Black Women: Honoring Everyday Heroes" on Saturday at the Fairmont Copley Plaza. . . . After 15 years of working on "Chronicle," producer Lisa Pierpont has left WCVB to spend more time with her family and focus on boldfacers.com, a web-based weekly publication about Boston's hotshots and personalities, which launched in November.
Globe staff writers Johnny Diaz and Thomas C. Palmer Jr. contributed. Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253. 
