When he left his gig at Gucci in 2004, Tom Ford declared that he wanted to go into the movie business. Most people just laughed and the dream seemed to die when Ford opened his eponymous design house.

Ford again fueled rumors last November, when he announced that he'd bought the rights to novelist Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel, A Single Man, about a middle-aged gay professor.

Still, most people simply shrugged at the news, but now Ford seems closer to ever to achieving his big screen dreams, complete with A-list actors, says Marc Malkin:

Sources reveal exclusively to me that it looks like Colin Firth will star as a gay college professor who deals with the sudden death of his lover. The character is helped in his efforts by a lifelong female friend and one of his students.

Firth's rep tells me "he's in discussions" but it's not a done deal.

Julianne Moore will play the friend while Jamie Bell has signed for the student role, my sources say. The story takes place in 1962 in Los Angeles.

The movie, which has yet to find a studio, will begin shooting in November.

Oooo, girl! The claws come out in Sunday's New York Times magazine, in which Yves Saint Laurent creative director Stefano Pilati rips his predecessor, Tom Ford.

Of course, the fashion world's always kneeling down for Ford, who would do it himself if he knew how. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the ceaseless praise doesn't necessarily make him the best designer. Not in Pilati's eyes, at least:

…Pilati doesn’t mince words when he compares the late couturier with Ford, his former boss and immediate predecessor at the house, noting that while Saint Laurent challenged women, “Tom had a very precise vision of the company that didn’t challenge women.”

Pilati told editor at large Lynn Hirschberg that “Tom is talented but not gifted. That’s the way he managed the business. Tom would say: ‘We can’t do this silhouette because she looks fat.’ Or, ‘Oh, no — women don’t like this fabric; we can’t use it.’ That mentality was something to learn but was so far from my way of thinking. Why do you want to be safe? I’m more like: Why don’t you wear gray flannel for an evening dress? I find that fantastic! Not Tom, never."

Tom Ford, we're sure, doesn't give a damn.

Handsome designer Thom Browne may need a new sartorial schtick.

Sure, critics loved his high-water suits, but Page Six offers a sobering wake-up call:

[Browne] is a darling of the fashion elite, but the masses aren't enthralled. Despite his being crowed over by the New York Times and vying for the CFDA menswear designer of the year award (he lost to Tom Ford), fashionistas point out Browne's deal at Brooks Brothers is over, and just last month, Bergdorf Goodman was still selling his Spring 2006 tuxedos. "His stuff may be acclaimed, but it's not very popular with the consumer," one insider said. Browne's rep didn't return repeated calls.

Wait - Bergdorf is still selling 2006 tuxedos? Gawd, we can't believe we live in such a gauche city!

Designer Tom Ford enlisted some pretty models for his latest ad campaign.

And, as a permanent provocateur, he had one of the men, Brazilian Alex Schultz strip to his birthday suit.

Check out the NSFW results, after the jump.

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The New York Times style section today tackles a big, hard, throbbing sartorial debate:

If Thom Browne has come to represent sartorial arrested development, the proponent of a kind of masculinity that suggests one is never sexier than when being carded, Tom Ford is a throwback to a different manliness. In one of those funny confluences that retailers like Bergdorf Goodman are seemingly built to showcase, the two designers and their variant ideas of how men should dress now find themselves cheek by jowl.

We suggest Browne and Ford settle this the old fashioned way: naked oil wrestling.

It's only fair…

[PS: For those of you not in the fashion know, Ford's design is on the left, while Browne's short-legged suit can be seen on the right.]

Ugly Betty actress Becki Newton no doubt enjoyed herself at last night's GLAAD Media Awards. Newton and her castmates, including the ever-adorable Michael Urie, took home the prize for outstanding comedy series, while fellow ABC show, Brothers & Sisters, won in the drama category.

Ms. Jackson if you're nasty accepted the Vanguard Award, and got a little friendly with presenter Ellen DeGeneres. Kathy Griffin won for My Life On The D-List, and shared the award with her lovely mother, just like a gay man!

Tom Ford, meanwhile, awarded Herb Ritts a posthumous award, and a Medusa-esque Sharon Stone presented Rufus Wainwright with Stephen F. Kolzak award.

Check out the rest of the winners here.

[Images]

Remember Tom Ford's naughty cologne adverts? You know - the ones which Out adapted for its glossy pages (pictured)?

Well, now a web designer offered his own take - and it doesn't stink.

The American Family Association has some bald-eagle eyes! We never would have noticed the Volvo C-30's well-placed ad next to Tom Ford's Out-sponsored tush!

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• You really do learn something new everyday. Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, whose work we've never read, apparently likes ladies. She liked a woman so much, in fact, she married one! Cornwell opens up to UK's Telegraph about her wife, Dr. Staci Gruber:

I finally feel rooted somewhere. I feel a sense of responsibility and stability that I didn't have before.
…
I've never been a soapbox person for gay rights, but now I'm in a same-sex marriage I tend to be more open, because I am outraged that it should be illegal in other states.

Looking at this picture really puts things in perspective.

• Refinery 29 gets behind our imaginary main squeeze, Thom Browne.

• Barack, Babs, Oprah and Hillary get into a campaign menage-a-quatre.

• Legendary lobbyist Aubrey Sarvis goes after Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

CONTINUED »

Some of the shots from Tom Ford's shoot with Out proved to be too steamy for the gay glossy.

Not ones to waste a perfectly good Terry Richardson picture, the Out media machine's circulating one particular shot, which they described to us as "super exclusive" but it's already appeared on Radar, who claim the publicist has been saving just for them. Funny, we heard the same thing. How queer - and gay, too.

Of the shot, a boyish take on his vaginal cologne campaign, Ford says:

It was meant to be a play on the new [fragrance] campaign. But there's a double standard with featuring female nudity and featuring male nudity. When people say to me, 'Well, you objectify women,' [I say] I'm an equal opportunity objectifier. We had a lot of magazines reject the female version [of the campaign], so the male version is going to get rejected even more.

Ain't no rejection here, Tommy boy!

The Out staffers love their aforementioned Tom Ford feature so much, they're sharing some exclusive Terry Richardson snap shots. And some quotes:

I have to say that I don't think gay is the most attractive word… Gay makes us sound silly and frivolous, which is probably where it came from - it was first used in a Cole Porter song in the '30s - and I think it was probably a bit derogatory, and so it's not a word I necessarily like, but it's what I am, whatever.

Ford also tells the gay glossy that most of his friends are straight men - and he has crushes on them.

Check out some more pictures - including a steamy shower scene - over at Out.

Tom Ford lets it all out in his forthcoming Out interview.

Apparently the former Gucci designer, seen here through Terry Richardson's lens, couldn't handle his unprecedented early success: Says Ben Widdicombe:

…The man who built his fortune making schlubs like us jealous of his fabulous lifestyle (buy his $3,000 jacket and you can be cool, too!) is going through a midlife crisis.

"All of a sudden, I realized that 40 years had gone by, and I had everything that I ever wanted, and yet I wasn't completely, deeply inside, happy or satisfied," he says. "It was like, is that all there is?"

Our virtual heart just broke… Oh, wait, that was nausea.

Tom Ford's cologne doesn't smell like cocaine! It smells like moist vagina!