Remember that New Yorker cover satirizing right wing scaremongering about Barack Obama and his wife Michelle? It was a big deal for a couple days over the summer, way back during those Halcyon days before the economic collapse drove us out here to these abandoned condos on the West Side where we survive on acid rain water and squab. Oh, right, that has happened (yet). In the meantime, let's have a laugh with the new......

Entertainment Weekly’s #1 “smartest” Hollywood player, Judd Apatow, says “it doesn’t look good” for an end to the writers’ strike any time soon. The well-connected catalyst behind hits like Knocked Up has told the Toronto Star that the studios and producers are prepared to dig in and crush the union’s demand for payment for Internet downloads and movie streaming, “which are expected to become a big part of the industry in the coming years.”It would......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Here’s the breakdown: Fox has Episode 6 of Hell's Kitchen on Monday at 9pm. Read the latest Entertainment Weekly episode wrapup here as well as a (slightly depressing) update on the previous two winners in the Post here. The Surreal Gourmet, Bob Blumer, returns to TV with a new show on the Food Network. Called Glutton for Punishment, it premieres this Tuesday at 9:30pm. Blumer participates in......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? Here’s the breakdown: Fox has Episode 5 of Hell's Kitchen on Monday at 9pm. Read the Entertainment Weekly episode wrapup here. And see Anthony Bourdain’s less-than-flattering assessment of the season here. There’s no new episode of Top Chef this Wednesday, due to the holiday, but Bravo reruns frequently if you want to catch up. See the schedule here. And EW's episode summary is always amusing. Rounding out......

What’s worth seeing on food-related TV this week? Gothamist has got the breakdown: Fox has Episode 4 of Hell’s Kitchen on Monday at 9pm. We love watching Ramsay curse people out. And Entertainment Weekly’s got a blow-by-blow blog, if you want to rehash the gory details. Martha Stewart’s got Matt Lewis from Baked bakery making an almond meringue tart on Monday, and other non-food-related celebrities the rest of the week. On Top Chef, Episode 3......

It's inevitable in a summer season of blockbuster highs and lows that we'd have a weekend filled with new releases none of which look good enough to recommend. Glancing ahead to the rest of the month there's stuff like Ratatouille, Sicko, Evening, A Mighty Heart and Evan Almighty to look forward to seeing. But this week? Nada. Don't believe that could possibly be the case? Check out what other early reviews of this week's releases......

Recipe for a Cuban Molotov cocktail: Michael Moore, Harvey Weinstein, a documentary about U.S. healthcare and a federal investigation. No need to mix, because it'll stir into a frenzy on its own. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and his distributor, Harvey Weinstein, appeared at a press conference yesterday to question why the government is investigating Moore's trip to Cuba for his upcoming film, Sicko. The film, which premiered at Cannes and is scheduled to open......

Tonight at 9PM, The Sopranos will air its final episode on HBO. It marks six seasons over eight years where viewers got to know NJ mob boss Tony Soprano, his blood family and his mob family. Creator David Chase filled each episode with enough angst, passion, violence, and intensity to make pretty much anything else on TV seem half-hearted. As we approach the final hours before we say good bye to Tony, Carm, Paulie......

Trading Places & Coming to America (directed by John Landis) Norbit (directed by Brian Robbins) After Eddie Murphy's Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Dreamgirls last year, there was a long (and seemingly unauthorized) profile on Murphy's career in Entertainment Weekly. Looking at the whole span from the highs of his days on SNL to his mega-fame from 48 HRS and Beverly Hills Cop to the lows of Vampire in Brooklyn and that ill-conceived......

Children of Men (directed by Alfonso Cuarón): Seeing movies in the theater is a wonderful viewing experience—big image, big audio, big popcorn—but there's no rewind button. To really enjoy a film like Alfonso Cuarón's futuristic drama Children of Men, the ability to rewind the really masterful sequences for an immediate second or third viewing almost seems necessary. As you watch Clive Owen's Theo makes his way through the chaotic English countryside in 2027 trying to......

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course,......

Okay, so it's been 2007 for the last four days but since everyone's doing it from the critics circles to the awards nominating pools, it seemed worth it to weigh in on last year's movies. However, constructing end of the year top ten lists can be both painful and thrilling. Looking at a long list of the year's movie releases reminds you how many films passed you by in the theaters and playing favorites amongst......

May the television gods hear our and others' pleas! Last month, the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan broke the news that Tim Gunn was not signed for a fourth season of Project Runway:Will he be back? Ever the modest one, he would only say he "makes no assumptions," but he would come back "in a heartbeat" if asked. There's no official word, by the way, that there will be a fourth season, but it seems more......

If you missed Saturday Night Live this weekend, you're in luck. The best part about the show was the cold opening - a plea from Borat Sagdiyev to visit Kazakhstan and to see his film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - and the video is available on NBC.com. There are also some other skits from Saturday's episode: A requisite Halloween skit - is it us or has......

It's that time of year again, when the New York Film Society at Lincoln Center and a small group of local film critics selects the entries from new world cinema they feel deserves their erudite stamp o' approval. As this year's pre-screening Festival ID tag points out, their 44 years of discernment includes a pretty elite bunch of films and filmmakers, and this year is no different. The NYFF doesn't set out to be mainstream......

While last week's Project Runway couture challenge itself wasn't satisfying, the outcome was well worth it. To see Vincent "Everything I do turns me on" Libretti leave has been, well, liberating, because we don't have to worry about him walking around in his boxers on TV ever again. Unless they make him do it on the reunion show. Anyway, here are our thoughts on the episode: - France is the land of accordion music; the......

Oliver Stone's sure-to-be-controversial World Trade Center movie opens this Wednesday in New York, and already the critical jabs are flying. There was a premiere screening of the movie last Thursday at the Ziegfeld Theater attended by luminaries like Sting and Rudy Giuliani as well as the crank-tastic Cindy Adams of the New York Post. She had this to say on Friday in her column (after offering the caveat that she's not a film critic): "It's......

The life of a public figure is never easy. Especially when you're a loud mouthed radio show host. Saturday night, Stern and his girlfriend Beth Ostrosky were attacked by a man on the Upper West Side. Gregory Forbes allegedly recognized the couple, yelled "Howard!" and got up in the couple's face. After the two jumped in cab the man chased down the cab and spit into the open window. The saliva projectile hit Ostrosky in......

Julie Powell, author, Julie & Julia, creator, The Julie/Julia Project...

If you’re not already overwhelmed by Star Wars’ promotional madness, including the Times Square Toys-R-Us Star Wars aisle and a relentless commercial campaign (M&M;’s M-pire’s new “dark side” candy, Chewbacca grunting for Cingular, Yoda using the Force to snatch a Pepsi, or Darth Vader battling a boy armed with a Kellogg's cereal SaberSpoon), then see die-hard fans geeking out in the Star-Wars Stand-a-Thon. Camped outside Ziegfeld's theatre on 54th, this wait-in-line marathon raises money......

Perhaps Movie City News put it best when they linked to the Observer's story about former Time and Entertainment Weekly writer Joel Stein getting a column in the L.A. Times with the following: "Joel Stein To Bring His Smug Ignorance About Film Biz To L.A Times." Anyway, this is Stein's scheme, per the Observer:Mr. Stein, currently a New York resident, plans to move out to live in Los Angeles full-time at the end of the......

In a subject close to Gothamist's heart (the subject of trying to see a movie), yesterday the NY Times profiled the New York Region > The City > East Village: The Customer Was Always Right? Not at Kim's Video on Avenue A" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/nyregion/thecity/17kims.html">bittersweet closing of Kim's Video on Avenue A, where employees terrorized customers into video selections more associated with Cineaste, versus Entertainment Weekly. The article provides the history of Kim's (a drycleaning establishment turned......

Gothamist was flipping through Entertainment Weekly yesterday and we spied the latest "Ask the TV Critic" with Ken Tucker and it's a doozy of a question: Which is the best Law & Order cast ever? Since you need an access code ("spidey" until tomorrow) to go to EW.com, we've reprinted the entire question and answer: Ken, please put an end to the debate: Which ''Law & Order'' cast was the best? (Note: Anything Noth-less is......

Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine...

For all you kiddies going to see Bill Murray's talk at BAM tonight, Gothamist wants to let you know this isn't the first time that Bill Murray has chatted with Times film critic Elvis Mitchell. If anyone watched Mitchell's old IFC program, Independent Focus, where he would interview directors and actors (watch David Lynch smoke like a chimney...see John Sayles make Elvis Mitchell cringe!), you might remember an episode with Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray,......

Finally! The small sidebar in Entertainment Weekly was not enough to sate Gothamist's interest in Farnsworth Bentley, aka P. Diddy's umbrella wielding man servant/personal assistant/motivational coach (he changed the umbrella for a bullhorn and help the Diddy train for the marathon), and the Times anticipated that. The Style section's lengthy article about Bentley and his new line of umbrellas ($160 umbrellas - brilliant!) told us the following things about Derek Watkins (the un-Diddified name of......

Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lopez are going to be starring in a film together, about a "white female swing band that joins forces with a group of black and Hispanic musicians at a time when women were ostracized from playing male-dominated clubs. Those sex barriers shattered soon after President Roosevelt declared war on Japan and the women suddenly played the hottest clubs and even squared off against the Count Basie orchestra at the Apollo Theater."......

It's all about Baltimore lately. If it's not the Times' Bryan Miller looking at Baltimore area restaurants, then it's another critical rave (and query: Why aren't more people watching?) for HBO's Baltimore-set drama, The Wire. Or it's the Yankees sweeping the Orioles (George Vecsey gives a little Baltimore local color in his piece about how Yankees fans worry and worry and worry). Gothamist knows one Baltimore blogger, and that's eebmore, who has noticed that......

Gothamist was excited to learn that our favorite comedian, Todd Barry, was named Entertainment Weekly's It Stand Up. Since we're not sure if people will recover after seeing the huge picture of Paris Hilton showing some skin on the same page, we've scanned in Todd's mention (also because Entertainment Weekly has an annoying subscription-only policy). Todd stopped by our Happy Hour. No, seriously. Gothamist on Tinkle, the comedy show Todd co-hosts with David Cross......

Gothamist-601am Happy Hour
What happens when Gothamist and 601am ask fellow bloggers, friends, and readers to convene on the Lower East Side for happy hour....