Drawing on his roots in the fecund 1970s East Village avant-garde film scene, critic J. Hoberman has spent his three decades at the Village Voice introducing readers to the more adventurous cinematic worlds awaiting beyond the realm of Hollywood. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, which was described by Slate as "an extraordinary publishing event." To commemorate his thirty years at......

Left cover by Gretel sent to subscribers, right runner-up cover by Wieden + Kennedy. New York’s Best of New York lifestyle catalog is out, and among the rightful winners, like Best Old School Lobby: The Chrysler Building and Best Dive Bar: Mars Bar, there are some curious ‘bests’ to ponder. In the New York Classics section, for instance, the sterile, six-month old Music Hall of Williamsburg is hailed for its “unequaled” sound and sightlines. This......

Part of the NBC 2.0 philosophy has been to put cheap programming on air as a measure to cut corners and save money. Even before the writers' strike this has meant a string of programs that are “unscripted,” such as cheesy game shows and of course the requisite fakeality nonsense. So taking quarterlife, a Web 2.0 based online show/online community from the creators of thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again, and sticking it......

NYC: Daily News Building, by wallyg at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: an injured police officer at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn, a gas leak on South 8th St. and Wythe Ave. in Brooklyn, and a bank robbery at the North Fork branch on 87th St. and Broadway in Manhattan. The FDNY will be stationing a battalion chief at the Deutsche Bank building until it is fully dismantled. Someone in the Clinton campaign said......

Photograph of Michael Strahan, coach Tom Coughin (holding the Vince Lombardi trophy) and quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning by Tien Mao Gothamist was amazed after the Giants won the Super Bowl, the city went wild, and it witnessed a ticker-tape parade.Barack Obama drew 20,000+ ahead of Seattle’s Saturday caucus.Londonist had Super Tuesday too.Elusive guerrilla street artist Banksy revisits Los Angeles.After the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and came this close to making......

Pinch & S’MAC: Dejected fans of Pinch, the defunct Park Avenue South “pizza by the inch” joint, will not only be reunited with their favorite Pinch pizza, but they can even slather it with the incredible mac-n-cheese from East Village favorite S’MAC. The new cheese and carb cartel will bring the best of both menus together on the Upper West Side, forming a single, unified, belt-busting celebration of starch. If you’ve never tried S’MAC, you’re......

Clockwise from upper left: Photo of Creamsicle from the Lemon Ice King of Corona by joshbousel on flickr; Jamaican beef patties from Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery; Clam Chowder from Legal Sea Foods; artificially steaming coffee from Dunkin' Donuts Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston are putting it all on the line for Sunday's Super Bowl. After winning the awful bet from Green Bay, Bloomberg has a lot more riding on the line......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Lebanese Ilili, saying “Ilili is probably the atmospherically grandest excursion into Middle Eastern cooking that New York has ever seen.” While much of the menu is inconsistent, he loves the kebabs and kaftas. Says the service is “occasionally confused.” And get the essmalieh for dessert. In Dining Briefs, Peter Meehan goes to Abraço Espresso (pictured), says “it’s tiny, it brews excellent coffee, and the little food that it......

As of 8 this morning the starting points for this year's Idiotarod had already been changed twice. As with every year, the effort to dodge police and the scramble to find the most updated starting line is still underway, but the carts should be off soon...and we'll keep you updated. In the meantime, check out Team Danger Zone's ride! Photo via lobster rocket's flickr. 12:35pm - Where are the carts? We just received this message:......

Photo of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King reflected in a Fort Greene storefront window, by Paul Fugelsang Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Stuyvesant Ave. and Hart St. in Brooklyn, a multiple stabbing on West 49th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, and a car in the water on Beach St. and Rockaway Pt. Blvd. in Queens. After a 14% surge between 2005 and 2006, complaints about the NYPD from......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: shots fired on 103rd Rd. in Queens, a double stabbing on Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, and an armed robbery on 94th St. in Queens. Get paranoid!: Not only is your nanny not nurturing your kid to the best of his or her abilities, she's probably beating her mercilessly. Not really, most babysitters love your kids and take good care of them. Set your watch by it: the Williambsurg Savings......

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of......

Luxury cruise line Cunard has many ships, but last night was the first time that its Queen Mary 2, Queen Elizabeth 2, and new Queen Victoria ships were in the "same port at the same time." And the port was the NewYork Harbor, under fireworks and gaze of the Statue of Liberty. Cunard scheduled the three ships' departures to coincide for this one time, an event two years in the planning, requiring logistics planning......

MTV is getting all old school and reporting on relevant music! The channel traveled all the way to Brooklyn for a piece on bands closely associated with the Todd P scene. Best of all, they declare Manhattan's LES dead! Not a great way to promote their new vLES, we suppose. MTVMusic VideosMTV ShowsEntertainment News The network focuses on some great Brooklyn-based bands: Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, The Muggabears...bands many music fans have been embracing for......

The company that founded Chuck E. Cheese, which famously replaced lazy live musicians with ruthlessly efficient animatronic animals, now has their sights trained right on your server. According to this breathlessly excited vision of the future, soon “a new trend will be found at your favorite restaurants”! [Emphasis added.] Computerized touch screen ordering at your table is destined to radically marginalize the entire restaurant service industry, liberating diners from the bondage of inattentive service and......

The most exciting story in New York theater this year had nothing to do with the Broadway stagehands' strike, it was the vibrant growth of what used to be called “experimental theater”, a movement that can now really only loosely be defined by what it’s not: non-naturalistic and not made for TV, with an emphasis on bold physicality, collaboration and, sometimes, multimedia. This aesthetically diverse body of work is generally classified as Off-Off-Broadway (some dub......

Where, like last year, we recap the biggest stories from the New York music scene of the year. Album of the Year: The National - Boxer What this album did better than any other coming out of New York all year was create images. It tells stories worth listening to. The opener, "Fake Empire," sets the tone for the rest of the record...slow and moody, yet brash and almost apologetic. Every song sounds like it......

Instead of a lengthy 2007 “best of” food list, we proudly present you (via The Gurgling Cod) with this single edible, the latest and hopefully last stunt luxury foodstuff in a year remorselessly filled with them. It comes, somewhat improbably and definitely ironically, from the gift shop at the newly opened New Museum, and it’s got karats: Edible gold crumbled into capsules, a massive $275 for the starter set. Shown here to the left, a......

The New York Film Critics Circle met yesterday to vote on their “Best of” list for 2007; widely viewed as a barometer for the upcoming Academy Awards, the critics pride themselves as “a principled alternative to the Oscars, honoring esthetic merit in a forum that is immune to commercial and political pressures.” But if one anonymous member is to be believed, the meeting sounds more like a “principled” excuse for an Aint It Cool News-style......

Zagat's updated Best of Brooklyn 2008 guide was released yesterday, filled to the brim with all that the city's largest borough has to offer, including 216 restaurants, 141 nightspots, 355 shops, 25 tourist attractions and more. Like all Zagat guides, this one is a complilation of surveys from the public and each entry is rated on a scale of 1-30. The guide is broken up into five sections: Dining, Nightlife, Shopping, Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining,......

A day after the tragic death of Stephon Marbury's father Donald, some more details have come to light regarding his final moments. Knicks officials insist that Stephon's family asked the team not to notify him of his father's condition until after the game. Apparently this was not the first time Donald Marbury had suffered from chest pains like these. Donald was taken from The Garden right before the third quarter began, but the team only......

Wait a minute, didn't Brian Williams host Saturday NIght Live just two weeks ago, the one where Barack Obama appeared in the opening? Yes, but with the Writers Guild strike still on, Saturday Night Live decided to revisit the recent past, versus dig into old "Best of" clip shows. The unfortunate thing is that Page Six reports 90% of the SNL production staff was fired "until further notice" because of the strike. Other TV shows'......

LISTEN UP: Last month we set up shop at White Rabbit, which was transformed into Gothamist House, with WOXY for 4 days of shows. Now WOXY has put together "Best of" podcasts from each of those days, and the first one is up -- so give a listen! Gothamist House Day 1.mp3 ART: First Friday's are so over, tonight come to Williamsburg for Every 2nd Friday. Pick up a copy of "the only comprehensive guide......

Sometime before 8 this morning, Patrick Moberg and Camille Hayton introduced themselves to Good Morning America viewers, Diane Sawyer and hopeless romantics everywhere. The Subway Cyrano met up with his mystery lady last night for dinner, where they said they "clicked." Hayton suggests the subway moment was serendipitous because she wouldn't have been on it (going to a friend's place) if her house hadn't just burned down. Moberg is compared to a Hollywood leading man,......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: The Simpsons (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., WNYW 5) This is the annual Treehouse of Horror episode airing after Halloween thanks to Tim McCarver and bad baseball coverage. Family Guy (Sunday, 8:30 p.m., WNYW 5) The good news is that it is the 100th episode, the bad news is that it is a clip show. Thankfully the clip show is followed by a new episode entitled “Stewie Kills Lois”......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? We’re in the thick of it now on The Next Iron Chef (Sundays at 9pm on the Food Network). The Amateur Gourmet says “Finally, it gets juicy!” and puts his money on Symon or Besh. He also points out that these chefs—with national reputations—have much more to lose than your average reality food show competitor. “It’s not really a laughing matter when your business hinges on your......

Madison Square Garden will be purring with excitement as the annual CFA-Iams Cat Championship opens its doors tomorrow and Sunday. Hundreds of cats from 41 breeds will be competing for Best of Breed and Best in Show prizes, and there are a number of other events, like watching cats compete in the Feline Agility Competition course and seeing the Parade of Breeds. You can buy purebreds or adopt some shelter kitties, too! We met......

This Saturday and Sunday, Madison Square Garden welcomes the Annual CFA-Iams Cat Championship Cat Show. The show has many guest speakers and events, like the Feline Agility Competition, which is open to the public's cats, too. And, of course, there is the Best of Breed and Best in Show judging. We'll have more about the cat show tomorrow, but we wanted to draw your attention to one of the areas. The Mayor's Alliance for......

We've already announced the lineups for days one, two and three at Gothamist House, and here comes day four (the final day). As a reminder, this year WOXY will be broadcasting from the space -- so if you find yourself at work you'll still be able to listen in! At the end of the week stay tuned for a Best of Gothamist House podcast, also provided by WOXY. Now, without further ado: Saturday October 20th......

We've already announced day one and day two for Gothamist House, and here comes number three. As a reminder, this year WOXY will be broadcasting from the space -- so if you find yourself at work you'll still be able to listen in! At the end of the week stay tuned for a Best of Gothamist House podcast, also provided by WOXY. Now, without further ado: Friday October 19th 7:30pm - Bound Stems (MySpace) 6:45pm......