Fan Fare

Coming Attraction: Sex and the Silicon Valley

Samantha gives a whole new meaning to the personal computer in one outrageous scene in the movie that opens on Thursday.

The bold PR exec Samantha, portrayed by actress Kim Cattrall, is shown multitasking in ther Times Square office — on the phone with a client and working on her Hewlett-Packard computer with one hand, and applying a hormonal cream to her menopausal self with the other.

Judging from the audience’s laughter at the world premiere in Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, this will be one of the sequel’s most memorable scenes, especially for “Sex and the City” fans of a certain demographic.

 Another HP product, designer Vivienne Tam’s “Butterfly Lovers” laptop, gets a nanosecond of screen time with Samantha in another scene. Blink — and you might miss it. Cast members in the Radio City audience on premiere night included Chris Noth (Mr. Big), John Corbett (Aidan) and Liza Minnelli (herself).

Director Michael Patrick King told the audience that the movie had made one of his dreams come true: “To write the words, ‘enter Liza Minnelli,’ and she does!”

After asking Minnelli to stand so the audience could spot her, he added: “And I have to say that Liza Minnelli is a very good ‘Sex’ partner.” He went on to thank a long list of VIPs, including the writer Candace Bushnell, whose column about the lives of single New York women became the basis for the hit HBO TV series and the first movie that came out in 2008.

At a party in Lincoln Center, the new home of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, an HP exec was asked how the Silicon Valley company, known for its PCs and printers, happened to get involved with “Sex and the City.” Satjiv Chahil, who was HP’s senior vice president of strategy and marketing for the personal systems group until his retirement this month, says the movie partnership and product placement evolved through its collaboration with Tam.

Sex and the City 2: the trailer — Penelope, Miley and gasp, Aiden?

Set to the ubiquitous Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ tribute to a dazzling New York, the “Sex and the City 2” promotional trailer was released Friday, and fans were left salivating at the prospect that the ladies, who always loved cosmos, are rapidly turning into ladies who love many other things. That is, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) are returning with more babies, and another exotic trip, this time to the Middle East.

But the biggest surprise in the long trailer (which you can watch below) was the appearance of John Corbett, aka Aiden, who, coincidentally seems to be strolling through Abu Dhabi at the same time as Carrie and bumps into her tanned and in a light shirt, cooing, “This is the best mirage that I have ever had.”

But let’s face it, realism is never why we watched the fashionable girls who whispered what others didn’t dare.  Not only does Aiden make an unlikely return, but there’s Penelope Cruz tantalizing Mr. Big , there’s Liza Minnelli thrusting her arms into the air, and even Miley Cyrus (predictably there to pull-in younger audiences), on the red carpet lapping up the attention with, who else?  Samantha.

The real question is, Can the girls do it again at the box office second time around? (The first cost film around $65 million to make and raked in $415 worldwide, with foreign box office an impressive $262 million).  How much will their staple female audience, (who these days are so enamored with the girls they seem to still want to see them grown up and softened for the big screen),  care that there are less sexual fantasies and jokes that no longer leave them shocked?