If more NYU kids were like John Waters, the university’s downtown super-saturation would at least be a bit more colorful. In a recent interview with Details, Waters took a nostalgia trip back to his NYU days, when he, uh, did a lot of tripping: Back then you weren’t very interested in school. Who lasted at NYU longer, you or Woody Allen? I bet Woody went longer, because I think I was there from September to......

Jean-Luc Godard (whose Contempt, starring Brigitte Bardot, is at Film Forum now) famously said that to make a movie all you need is a girl and a gun, and the marketing team for Boarding Gate are banking on it: the print ads show wild Italian actress Asia Argento armed with nothing but a pistol, heels and panties. Times film critic Manhola Dargis thinks French director Olivier Assayas made the movie just so he could......

New Yorkers like to go out. A lot. A website aptly called Outalot allows fast and easy browsing of three nightlife basics: restaurants, bars, and movies (Gridskipper calls it "menupages-meets-yelp"). The Google Map based-site lists restaurants by cuisine, bars by type, and provides local cinemas' showtimes. You can bookmark your favorites (and check out your friends') and green thumbs up/down symbols quickly signify how others' feel about an establishment. Though many New Yorkers pride themselves......

A train hopping skate boarder gets blood on his deck after fending off a brutal rail yard security guard in Gus Van Sant’s moody Paranoid Park. In her rhapsodic Times review, Manohla Dargis swoons over Van Sant’s “use of different film speeds and jump cuts, and his tendency to underscore his own storytelling" in the Portland, Oregon-set film. But Van Sant fan Jeffrey Wells calls it “meandering and even dreary… nowhere near as striking......

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......

Another Will Ferrell sports flick will inflate this weekend, capping off a nationwide “Funny or Die” promotional tour that brought him to Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. The movie is Semi-Pro, which stars Ferrell as Jackie Moon, owner of the 1976 Flint Michigan Tropics, a team in the maverick ABA basketball league. To keep his career alive against all odds, Moon initiates off a series of increasingly desperate publicity stunts to attract fans –......

Museum Guard, by Atomische at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on Amboy Rd. in Staten Island, another bank robbery on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and a scaffolding collapse on Grand Concourse and 149th St. in the Bronx. A building slated for destruction on Governors Island will become a lab for the FDNY to examine the dynamics of high-rise fires and how best to defeat them. Fire crews from cities around the......

Photograph of Queens native Amy Ryan, nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Gone, Baby Gone At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. You can prep yourself with the Oscar nominees list as you watch (or avoid) red carpet coverage. You could read NY Times......

Considering that most smokers pick up the nasty habit during their impressionable adolescent years, it makes sense to put off exposing the tykes to the temptation until they're old enough to poison themselves. Riding that puff of thought, the State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines wrote an open letter earlier this month to film makers this week asking them to refrain from including smoking scenes in G, PG, and PG-13 rated movies. The (Health) Commish......

Ooh, a fun update about the remake of The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three. AMNY's Subway Tracker reports that location scouting is well under way, "Crews were at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station today...crews will be doing a camera test near Jerome and Tremont in the Bronx tomorrow some time (near the 4 line)." Transit officials even confirmed that crews were scouting today! Last September, the remake plans were announced, with Tony Scott directing and Denzel Washington reprising......

With the writers' strike looking like it'll wrap up this week, Crain's points us towards another problem for New York's entertainment industry. Seems our neighbor Connecticut has started to offer up a deal no self-respecting Hollywood suit can refuse -- a 30% tax rebate on all production costs. The incentive program started in 2006 and in 2007 alone we've lost approximately $400 million in production revenue to the Constitution State. The problem has spread to......

Actor Roy Scheider died yesterday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, after battling multiple myeloma for several years and suffering complications from a staph infection. He was 75 and had been living in Sag Harbor, New York (after moving out his house in Sagaponack that Billy Joel purchased). Scheider may be best known for his role as Police Chief Martin Brody in Jaws. One of his lines from the movie,......

Photograph of Kathy Bates and AMPAS President Sid Ganis announcing the nominations by Chris Pizzello/AP While the writers' strike continues and prospects of an awards ceremony are unclear, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went ahead and announced the contenders for their 80th annual back-slapping ceremony. Oscar-winning friend of the academy Kathy Bates was on hand to announce this year's golden picks. From Bob Dylan to Michael Clayton, many of the nominations......

Due to the Writer's Guild of America strike, Hollywood's party, the Golden Globes Awards were transformed from a boozy, fun dinner party to a press conference where presenters from entertainment programs like Extra! and E! News got to announce the winners. Yes, it was as painful as it sounded (Giuliana Rancic, it's not about you); many said they couldn't believe they were announcing the winners but said they would prefer it with the stars.......

Two years ago the famed Saturday Night Fever dance floor was sold at auction for $188,000 when the Brooklyn club where the movie was filmed, Odyssey 2001 (later called Spectrum), was closed. Just yesterday the legendary movie turned 30 and amNewYork got nostalgic looking back at the Bay Ridge kid, Tony Manero, who sought refuge on that dance floor.Thirty years ago this weekend, a tough young kid from Bay Ridge strutted across America's movie screens......

The MTA has apparently narrowed down the list of contenders to develop the West Side Rail Yards - and may even ask them to team up together. According to Crain's New York, the MTA favors the developers who have already lined up tenants. Which means the front runners are The Related Companies with News Corporation and Goldman Sachs, Durst & Vornado with Conde Nast, and Tishman-Speyer with Morgan Stanley. But front runners may need......

Oops! WNBC's Mistake Causes Problems for St. Louis TV Station WNBC issued an apology for putting on their website a list of baseball players who were expected to be mentioned in the Mitchell Report. The apology was also given on air by Jonathan Dienst, who did mention they received the names from two sources. The Fox owned and operated television station in St. Louis, KTVI, picked up on the erroneous list and lead their 11.......

It seems like just yesterday that the Brooklyn Bridge was being blown up by Hollywood. How time flies. I Am Legend, the movie for which this post-apocalyptic craziness occurred, is opening today (get your promotional survivor kit ready!). In the 100 minutes of watching it, you'll meet three main characters: Manhattan, Sam the dog, and Will Smith ("Robert Neville"). The combination is apparently a winning one, as the reviews have been frighteningly positive...it will scare......

Early this morning Hayden Panettiere and other Hollywood elite looked ready to hit the town for a night out even though it was 5:30am. They were announcing this year's Golden Globe nominees, often a good sign for who will be nominated for that other gold statue. All in all New York-based shows and movies fared well as the envelopes were opened sheets of paper were read from. 30 Rock (Best Television Series, Comedy or Musical......

We've been monitoring how I am Legend, the big budget post-apocalyptic zombie movie set in New York, will be portraying the Big Apple ever since filming took place on the Brooklyn Bridge (it eventually gets blown up). Now, with reviews starting to pop up, we're hearing mixed things about the movie but raves about how a futuristic people-less New York City looks. The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson was freaked out, noting how the city is......

During the 80s golden era of Late Night With David Letterman, Chris Elliott was one of the people most responsible for the show's distinctively bizarre style. Playing characters like "The Guy Under the Seats" and "The Regulator Guy," Elliott's contributions were sometimes hilarious and sometimes baffling, but always memorable for their absolutely unadulterated weirdness. He went on to cultivate his peculiar "Chris Elliott" persona in cult classics like the TV show Get a Life and......

The reviews are in for the $180 million production of The Golden Compass, and they’re lackluster at best, which is a pity not just for fans of the novel from which it’s adapted but for New Line Cinema, which was banking on another Lord of the Rings cash cow. Times critic Manohla Dargis calls it flawed and cluttered, although her description of Nicole Kidman ought to sway any dudes reluctant to see a movie starring......

Hello, Lovers! Last night we received the first Sex and the City trailer...finally! We sat down with a Flirtini, called our girlfriends and pressed play to find out what Carrie & Co. have been up to all these months while they weren't busy clogging up the sidewalks and becoming New York's biggest tourist attraction. Turns out we'll be seeing a lot of the same 'ol shenanigans in theaters as on TV: clothes, shoes, talking, drinking...because,......

The DC Comic Watchmen is coming to the big screen, and the NYC sets were recently revealed! They aren't tearing apart town or stopping traffic like Cloverfield or I Am Legend, instead they're filming the alternate universe New York, mostly circa 1985, in Vancouver. Director Zack Snyder said:After a couple months of shooting at various locations and on stages, last week we finally made the transition to our New York City backlot. Since the New......

Have you seen Sex and the City filming around town? Seems like some people are watching the cast of the 'ol show film the new movie every step of the way. The Times chronicled the madness and, OMG, talked to Carrie Bradshaw herself (who was hiding away in the basement of the Bryant Park Hotel). She had this to say of her on-the-job craziness: “I basically just look down between every take because it’s......

Thanksgiving officially marks the start of the holiday movie season, and this weekend, one film seems poised to make a run for the box office crown. Enchanted, the Disney film that mixes animation and live-action to spoof its classic fairy tales, received some pretty stellar reviews. It's 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and most reviews are calling this the star-making performance of Amy Adams, who was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for Junebug......

The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

MUSIC: If you aren't at your local hometown bar this Thanksgiving-eve, drinking with old high school buddies -- we suggest a sonic alternative. Tonight The Hold Steady and Art Brut do their best at making Terminal 5 feel a little bit cozier this holiday season. Buy tickets here. 7:30pm // Terminal 5 [610 W 56th St] // $30 MUSIC MOVIES: If you're sick and tired of the bands playing around town, go check out two......

The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six......

The new trailer for Cloverfield (the JJ Abrams movie due out in January) has been released, and only proves a tad more revealing than the first. With a giant monster destroying New York City, this movie will certainly be for those who like "destruction porn," because nothing really beats the Statue of Liberty being decapitated... Abrams turned the Lower East Side into a war zone earlier this year, but he's been hush-hush about any details......